Harmy

Yep, already got that one covered as well :-)

This definitely couldn't be caused by pal framerate, so I must assume it was always like that.

@ Cobra Kai:

I actually already tweaked this particular one, for the exact reasons you stated in your post.

csl said:

 

An idea came to mind earlier: have you considered "regraining" ? Aside from giving it more of an authentic classic aesthetic, it'd sort of alleviate a big issue with the 2004 Lowry masters which is the grain freezing they suffer from. Grain will stop moving and start moving in the background and it's sort of jarring.

OK, I'll just come out and say it: I did! And I'm not changing it. I added some light grain to the scenes where the static grain was a big issue; the desert sequence until the canyon wipe and the selling the droids sequence. It's there in the last WP and I think it works great.

Also, you could layer on some heavier fake grain to sections that use the GOUT to detract from the lowres murkiness I suppose, could give it a "once lost footage but recovered from worn elements" look to it. Maybe.

I've always been doing this, adding fine grain makes SD upscales look more HD.

Again, what does that have to do with your "never recruited and directed the actors,liased with the art,special effects and production crews and consulted and collaborated with the musical composer or concieved of the ideas and scenarios that are encapsulated in the scripts." argument, which it was in response to?

Midnight_Trooper said:

I like the green in some places. But overall I strongly dislike the colors. Things seem washed out and tinted. Not natural looking at all. I would not put huge trust in whatever source you are matching to. A proper direction for the colors, sure. But I think its a shame to loose the vibrancy and correct tones you had brought back to Star Wars with your old work in favor of this new dull green look.

Here are some comparisons. 

New on the left, old on the right.

---------------------------------------

Beautiful starfield.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/2.jpg

Another great starfield but the planet looks sad compared to the old colors. I wish the black of space could be a bit blacker.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/3.jpg

Very green.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/4.jpg

Good skin tones.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/5.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/6.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/7.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/8.jpg

Leia has lost her glow.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/9.jpg

The next shots are all about sky color and the green tint.

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/10.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/11.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/12.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/13.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/14.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/15.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/1.jpg

http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p64/Midnight_Trooper/Star%20Wars/16.jpg

 

Overall, I agree with the green being a part of the original look. I just dont agree that it should be so dominating. I like the direction you were previously going in much more and I think that look is truer to the films than a possibly faded and captured in a way unknown (to most of us) piece of film stock.

 

Sorry if that comes across as hostile or that I am picking on you. I know what work you have put in to the research. Just my own feelings on the matter.

 

 

 

It's apparent from your screenshots that there's something wrong with your settings - blacks aren't black in the screenshots from the new WP (even the black bars), which makes everything look faded. If you're using MPC, try rightclick > render settings> reset> optimal render settings.

Look at those reactions, I'm glad I do it for me to like ;-)

Whether you like the colours or not will always boil down to personal preference, that's why I stick close to my source - some of the colours seemed weird to me at first too but I came to like them and now wouldn't want them any other way.

Also:

@Hostmaster: It's of course going to be in one piece, like V1, this was just a bit of a joke, which I'm a bit surprised no one commented on before :-)

@TServo: Yes, I did :-)

CatBus said:

You_Too said:

And finally, in the "look sir, droids" scene, the hatch in the background is grey.

Can't believe I missed this.  I'm handing in my card right now.

Crap, same here! I'll need to fix that.

And I'll make the transition in that wipe gradual and fix that other thing.

Thanks guys!

georgec said:

kilik64 said:

But what if we make fun of it and have a good time doing that? Make it ok then?

Want to laugh at the movie and have fun?

http://redlettermedia.com/phantom-phriday-mr-plinketts-phantom-menace-commentary-track/

RLM:

Even though it’s fucking horrible, do you still plan on seeing The Phantom Menace in 3D this weekend? Why not plug your ears with two hours of Plinkett droning to make the experience more painful? I mean less painful! Below is the Mr. Plinkett Phanton Menace commentary track! Put it on your mobile device and listen to it in the theater while you watch the film (and definitely DO NOT pay to see another film and then sneak in) or sync it up with your DVD or stupid Blu-ray. Or just listen to it on its own because that’s not weird at all. Click here or the banner below to get the commentary track:

This is awesome! Totally gonna do that!

That's the thing though, burn marks, scratches and colour inconsistencies are just as much due to the technological limitations of the time as matte lines or rubber masks. The colourtiming process was much more difficult then than it is today with digital technology and that's why it couldn't be as perfect as today. Same goes for handling the film. Today, most of the editing work is done on a digital scan of the film, back then it was all done by hand in a lab and so accidents sometimes happened and little scratches and burnmarks appeared on the original negative and became a part of seeing the film. Some could argue that a matte line around a model takes you out of the film or seeing a wolf-man in the cantina takes you out of the film, and they may be right but that doesn't mean it should be removed.

@Jan: Well, this is something that happens every time there is a wipe, the noticeability of it depends on how different the colourtiming is from shot to shot.

I agree. I'm going to see it next week. It's pathetic...

OMEN!-_-! said:

Harmy said:

OMEN!-_-! said:

Are you making these releases to be enjoyed by viewers or simply as a 100% accurate reference for future generations of what the theatrical print looked like when it came out in 1977? Optimally the answer would be both but if push came to shove, I would prioritise the former rather than the later and think you should do the same.

Maybe it's selfish of me but I am making these first and foremost to be enjoyed by me and second to be enjoyed by others that enjoy the same things I do. I enjoy watching films that look and feel like they were made when they were made and like they were shot on film. An occasional spec of dirt, burn mark, matte-line or colour inconsistency add to that feeling and enhance the experience for me.

Fair enough, I can definately see where you're coming from. I disagree about purposely keeping noticable imperfections in a film that you have the ability to remove but agree 100% about ultimately having to please yourself and no one else. Probably the only way to stay sane with a project of this sort of scope. I'll stay quiet now (at least for the time being hehe ;) ).

Well, that's the thing though, how far does a noticeable imperfection go? Is it a matte line, is it a bad rubber mask, is it a spaceport consisting of only two streets lacking digital dinosaurs or an unconvincing model shot? Lucas had the ability to remove all those things that were imperfections in his eyes and he did it and that's why we're all here. There are many people who see grain as an imperfection. It's just not that easy.

delusions_of_grandeur said:

Harmy, 

The latest work print is simply amazing. I still think some stars are missing from the area of the star field I highlighted above, but that seems like a fairly trivial issue, and frankly, I may just be losing my mind anyway.  

No, you're right, it's a different starfield, I already tried to replace it but this shot is really bad in the GOUT. It's a small miracle that I even managed to get the SE starfield to be this bright, I actually managed to create a luma-curve preset that recovers starfields thanks to this shot. It doesn't work for every shot but generally it yields good results. In the WP I also used it on the shots of Tantive IV's engines exploding, Tantive IV getting pulled into the stardestroyer's docking bay and the stardestroyer above Tatooine before the wipe to the droids in the desert.

Oops, moved this two posts down...

OMEN!-_-! said:

Are you making these releases to be enjoyed by viewers or simply as a 100% accurate reference for future generations of what the theatrical print looked like when it came out in 1977? Optimally the answer would be both but if push came to shove, I would prioritise the former rather than the later and think you should do the same.

Maybe it's selfish of me but I am making these first and foremost to be enjoyed by me and second to be enjoyed by others that enjoy the same things I do. I enjoy watching films that look and feel like they were made when they were made and like they were shot on film. An occasional spec of dirt, burn mark, matte-line or colour inconsistency add to that feeling and enhance the experience for me.

Yeah, I know there's a little bit cropped there, but it's pretty negligible. As to the colours, the green tint is actually still quite moderate compared to the actual IB print. And the original was wildly inconsistent as well.

That's interesting, because I use single pass VBR encoding in Premiere for these workprints and it lets you set the average bitrate and maximum bitrate and shows you what the final size will be, and it is usually very precise.

So are you saying that if I used this for the final encode, the quality would still be the same as using 2pass encoding, or is that a different thing?

EDIT: Oh and that framing glitch was fixed on the Blu-Ray and I intentionally restored it, so not only would I not fix it, I actually unfixed it ;-)

BTW, I added RS links to the previous post.

STAR WARS DESPECIALIZED EDITION v2.0 WORKPRINT 3 REEL 1 

uloz.to

RS pt 1 2 3 4

I just watched it and personally I think it's pretty effing awesome!

Now, I'd like to hear if you find any technical errors and such. The colour-timing stays as it is here, since it's very close to a well preserved Technicolor print. The only thing I'm willing to change may be some glaring error, like colours suddenly changing in the middle of a shot or something like that.

It took my poor computer 8 hours to render this 19 minutes long video, and that was only single pass rendering, I'm kind of dreading the rendering time of the finalized film, especially since I plan to do a 2pass render.

Yeah, and I actually really wish I could restore all those as well but it would be an impossible amount of work, so I guess the burn marks will stay out as well.

WILL YOU FUCKING SHUT UP ABOUT THE FUCKING COLOURS!!! JUST HEARING THE WORD SKINTONE MAKES MY OWN FUCKING SKIN CRAWL!!!

There, sorry, had to do that, because when I posted the WP2.3 I said this:

Again, try to keep the colour comments to a minimum, since the colour correction is very much preliminary. I want to know if I forgot to undo some changes and stuff like that.

And being quite tired, the above was my actual real-world reaction ;-)

It apparently premiered here two days ago...

So, what do you guys think about the re-framing? I think it works pretty well.

TServo2049 said:

Before we beat this dead horse anymore, I will change the subject back to the DEED:

I just looked at the new shake, and it looks great! You did exactly what I was talking about, moving certain frames off-kilter just like in the original version.

Still, I will give a little constructive criticism. Not every frame in the shake was blurry. Look at my screengrabs from the Puggo Grande - there are some frames in the shake which don't look to be blurry, smeared or anything. The ones that look to be unsmeared to me are frame 3, frame 6, frame 9, frame 12 (and maybe 11?), frame 15, frames 18-19?; it looks like there's no more optically smeared frames after frame 21.

Also, is there any way that the smear frames could be actually smeared, rather than just doubled at partial opacity? Couldn't it be done in Photoshop?

Take a look at those Puggo Grande frames - it's good to have a reference that's not DVNR'ed.

See, that's why it's a bad idea to edit posts to add more information to them, I never noticed you posted those.

Check it out frame by frame, there is motion blur, it's not done by doubled frames with partial opacity.

Thanks :-)

Yes.

You're joking, right?

Anyway, here's the shake video as promised:

https://rapidshare.com/files/1945769420/3P0_1st_shot_reframe_compar.avi