OK, I've got a question which will probably expose me to riddicule :-D but I'm gonna ask anyway: Can I create a working AVCHD from an MKV just by remuxing it in TS Muxer or would I have to reencode?
Well, that is what I meant of course, I didn't mean he'd be flying around like a bird, only hover just above the ground.
OK, here's an interesting thing, I'm adjusting the 97 SE Czech dubbing to this, for my little brother to watch and they apparently used the same translation as for the originals, Luke says "you're lucky you don't taste very good" and Vader says "bring my shuttle." I always thought I remembered Luke saying "you're lucky you don't taste very good" in the SE and now I know why :-)
I'm now tempted to buy the fullscreen 2004 DVD box but I just don't want to buy the goddamn 2004 DVDs for the 3rd time. But it would look awesome to have the silver boxes on one side and the golden boxes on the other. I'm torn :-(
OK, I added a few new babies to my collection:
And I know EU isn't exactly aknowledged as a reference here, but in the Han Solo trilogy Hutts are said to be using anti gravity sledges, i think it would have been quite a reasonable solution.
Well, I meant if they had to put it back, they should have at least done it right :-)
It would definitely be next to impossible to put the original ROTJ Jabba in the scene digitally using just the ROTJ footage, but a way in which it would be doable would be shooting a bluescreen puppet. Luca$film should have done that, I'm sure they still have the original Jabba puppet in storage somewhere, they could have just shot the scene with it, with Jabba being on some kind of antigravity platform, and as Han walks around him, Jabba could have just turned to keep facing Han and no stepping on tail would have been necesary. But well, the Jabba scene is redundant anyway...
Oh, and I'm not sure what exactly the 2:3 pulldown means but the ripped videos are 23.98 FPS.
Chewtobacca said:
I wonder if Adywan's made any progress on an HD version yet. Even if an HD version isn't possible, a DVD-9 would probably be a substantial improvement all on its own.
You would have found that by browsing the thread :-D
adywan said:
Now unfortunately doing a HD version just won't work. Downscaling the 1080p colour corrected master to 720p still retains most of the detail, but upscaling the GOUT to 720p just really brings out just how bad the quality is when spliced in with 720p video. It just doesn't blend in at all. So the DVD version is all there will be, i'm afraid
You can find a thread about my shot at it in my signature.
OK, that's a lot of questions to answer, so I'll start from the begining.
OK, I'm really a total amateur so I don't use much professional tools. I used a freeware DVD ripper to rip to uncompressed AVI and then used a program called AVI Recomp to upscale. I cut in Power Director, which is not a professional tool but it's got many usefull functions and it is quite user friendly. I tried Sony Vegas but for me it was just too f**king complicated. From Power Director I saved a 25 GB Mpeg2 and then compressed that with RipBot X264.
I'm making this mostly for my own use and I'm quite satisfied with the results, I only wanted to share it with anyone who'd be intrested, I'm not pretending it to be a professional work.
And to the screenshots, yeah I kind of figured the source files would look better (and that goes to the HD files as well) but I must work with what I have.
I've made both a DVD5 720p version to watch on my computer and a DVD9 1080p to watch on my tv.
And yes, I did tweak the colours here and there just to make it fit with the rest of the footage. I mostly just worked with the contrast as the AVCHDs are a bit more contrasty than the DVD. Only in the case of the Wampa cave I deblued the shots a little and also applied a denoise filter because there wasn't much detail, only grain (and the GOUT kind of grain at that,) so I felt it fit better if it was just smooth.
And as to what SE scenes I'm keeping, well I kept all those I didn't change, so all those not mentioned in the first post. I only forgot to mention that I did ofcourse remove Luke's scream when he falls down the shaft.
Also, I managed to fix the sound, so it is now fully 5.1 and there should be no dropouts anymore. It was a pain but once I figured it out it was doable.
I may have figured out a way to fix the audio myself but we'll see.
Thanks Frink, I'd already known you were interested, the sad part is that you seem to be the only one. Oh, and maybe EvilSupes, I might consider uping the 720p version even just for the two of you but I'd really like to get the sound fixed first. And also ofcourse I want Adywan to approve.
OK, I still have not heard from neither Adywan nor any sound editor willing to help.
Also it seems that people are not interested in getting this but I'm happy to at least share information about my efforts.
I've now finished a similar project with STAR WARS and will post about it soon.
Thanks.
PM sent.
Wow, that would be great, I almost forgot about this, thank you. And take your time, I'm preocupied with other projects at the moment anyway.
Wow, that is just awesome!
ratpack1961 said:
When Luke is upside down in the Wampa cave, and fails to reach for the lightsaber, I remember then hearing Obi Wan's voice instructing Luke to "use the Force". After hearing this, Luke then reaches out and tries to grab the saber using the force.
Anyone else hear of this bit of dialog in any of the released versions?
Well, now that you've said it I seem to remember that too, it's also like a hazy childhood memory. I just checked and it's in the novelization, which I've read as a kid, is it possible you remember it from there?
Lord Grievous said:
As for the Jabba scene, would it be possible to use ROTJ footage?
This was already discussed:
Harmy said:
vaderios said:
Harmy said:
Well, I once came up with this idea:
I was surprised to see no one seems to have come up with this. If the Jabba scene was to be kept, it would have to look something like this IMO.
How? :)
-Angel
Well in answer to your question I put together a small video, it was done very very roughly and I'm sure someone as skilled as Adywan could make it way better.
TMBTM said:
It's a nice try on few frames, but doing the whole sequence would be another task. Jabba needs to look at Han in the eyes (not always maybe, but sometimes at least), plus his movements needs to match the scene, plus the lips synch, plus in the end of the scene he turns his back to the camera and I don't think we have good footage of that in ROTJ.
All in all I'd say I doubt it could be done that way. Or at least it would not be easy, even for someone like Adywan.
I guess making a new CG Jabba would be even easier! (not that I want that scene back, just answering the question)
Oh, I just wasn't sure whether you meant this or the new logo. That is weird though, because the DC was released in 2003 so one would expect it to be either the originally used logo or the new CG one, that's why I didn't even consider that it could be a different logo as Alien is one year older then TESB.
I'm probably gonna use the poster as a coverart for this version, although it is a bit of a joke. I thought while I'm making the PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION I could take the SE poster and partly despecialize it :-)
Oh, right, I see, didn't compare them.
Well the HD Alien is the Director's Cut so maybe that's why it's different. Also what do you mean, the original logo?
!!! These versions are now obsolete. !!!
My new Despecialized Editions of STAR WARS, TESB and ROTJ and are now available. The new Despecialized Editions are of higher quality in all aspects:
Picture quality: Although the PDE is 1080p and the DeEd is only 720p, the DeEd actually contains more detail due to using higher quality sources and having less compression artefacts:
Sound quality: Some of the sound mixes in the DeEd are encoded at higher bitrates from higher quality sources than the PDE.
Quality of Despecialization: Where all the original shots in the PDE were only upscales of low quality souces, in the DeEd the original shots were painstakingly reconstructed in order to better fit within the HD footage:
Click for bigness:
***
STAR WARS TRILOGY - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
When burned to a DVD9, this should play in PS3 and most Blu-Ray players.
After Adywan made his TESB theatrical reconstruction DVD I thought: "Hey, this would be a cool thing to have in HD," and asked Adywan if there's gonna be an HD version. The answer was no, and quite understandably, too. We all know that Ady's a perfectionist (and we love him for it) and he wasn't satisfied with how the original scenes (recreated using a cobination of GOUT, Ady's AVCHD and hi-res matepainting scans) blended with the HD ones and he wouldn't want to release anything that he felt to be half-arsed :-). While I must agree with this to a certain degree, I personally don't mind a few shots being a slightly worse quality, if I get a good cut of the movie with an over-all great picture. So I decided to do it myself and since some other people expressed interest in it, I decided to let you know that using the recreation DVD and Ady's AVCHD I made a partly despecialized HD version of TESB and than proceeded on to make partly despecialized versions of SW and ROTJ, which I decided to make available because Adywan gave me a green light and enough people expressed their interest even after they've heard the BUTs...
...So, there are two BUTs to this:
1st BUT is the version: It is not a recreation of the theatrical realease but only a partly despecialized version, i.e. I just removed the IMHO most offensive changes. You can read the full description bellow. This is why I wasn't sure whether this should go to FANEDITS or PRESERVATIONS but I feel about it as being more of a preservation.
2nd is the quality: As I said before, the reinserted OOT shots do not blend perfectly. But they blend OK, unlike obvious CG in an othervise non CG movie. You really only notice the difference in quality if you're looking for it. I played the scenes to my friend and asked him afterwards if he thought there was something wrong with them and he didn't notice anything.
NOW TO THE FILMS:
STAR WARS - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
I used the 2.0 soundtrack from GOUT and adjusted and trimmed Adywan's AVCHD to fit to it, so I virtually recreated the theatrical cut. Then I also replaced some of the most glaring CGI and other offending changes with the GOUT.
Most of the despecializations done can be seen in this video: SW:PDE
Although there is a quality difference, I still prefer watching this over any other version out there as it’s HD for the most part and it’s a lot closer to the original.
I also adjusted the original Czech dubbing to this because I want my little brother (and some time in the future my kids, although I'm hoping that by that time there will be a proper Blu-Ray release of the OOT) to be able to watch STAR WARS in a better way than the old fullscreen VHS.
I used the same fox logo as for TESB (see bellow) even though it is not the right one but it's close, it's high quality and at least for me it gives it the vintage feel all the same. And also it will then be the same for the whole trilogy.
In v2.0 I fixed the framerate issues and I used a different way of upscaling the 2006 DVD than for the first version and I think it looks a lot better (you can check for yourselves here, there are basically all the changes that I made in that video, exept for very minor stuff like trimming a few frames here and there). This time I used only Adywan's AVCHD and the 2006 DVD. For v2.1 (now avaiable on RS, if you are interested PM me - check out the sample video) I did some very minor tweaks like sharpening the GOUT shots a bit.
In addition there are 5 different audio tracks.
and here's an nfo.
[RELEASE TiTLE ]..[ Star_Wars_1080p_PARTLY_DESPECIALIZED_EDITION_v2.1_Harmy ]
[ FiLE SiZE ]......[ 7.9 GB -- DVD9 ]
[ RUNTiME ]........[ 121 mins ]
[ GENRE ]..........[ SCI-FI | FANTASY ]
[ RESOLUTiON ].....[ 1920 x 1080 ]
[ SCAN TYPE].......[ Progressive ]
[ FRAME RATE ] ....[ 23.976 ]
[ ViDEO ]..........[ AVCHD @ 7448 Kbps ]
[ AUDiO 1 ]........[ AC3 6ch @ 448 Kbps 1977 70mm English 5.1 (Hairy_Hen's 70mm reconstruction 5.1 upmix) ]
[ AUDiO 2 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 256 Kbps 1993 English 2.0 (2006 Bonus DVD sourced) ]
[ AUDiO 3 ]........[ AC3 1ch @ 96 Kbps 1977 English 1.0 (The mono mix restoration thanks to Belbucus and Moth3r) ]
[ AUDiO 4 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 192 Kbps Descriptive Commentary for the blind (VHS sourced) ]
[ AUDiO 5 ]........[ AC3 2ch @ 256 Kbps Czech 2.0 (VHS sourced dubbing) ]
[ SUBTiTLES ]......[ English -- not hardsubbed ]
[ SOURCE ].........[ Adywan's colour corrected SE AVCHD (HDTV sourced), 2006 Bonus Original Theatrical Release DVD (Sourced from 1993 Laserdisc master) ]
I used the 2.0 soundtrack from 2006 BONUS DVD (GOUT) and adjusted and trimmed Adywan's AVCHD to fit to it, so I virtually recreated the theatrical cut. Then I also replaced some of the most glaring CGI and other offending changes with the GOUT. Han, ofcourse, shoots Greedo in cold blood.
Version 2.1 improves on the first version in several aspects: It is a 23.976 AVCHD, there are no more framerate issues, the upscale of the GOUT footage is superior, there is more different soundmixes available in this version and it contains English subtitles.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
Version 1 was never released due to framerete issues, so I'll just give information on v2.0: Here's a video of the changes. I made v2.0 the same way as the others - adjusted Adywan's AVCHD to fit to the GOUT sound, only for Empire of course I used Ady's reconstruction DVD for the original footage.
Thanks to using Ady's reconstruction instead of GOUT, the difference between HD and SD isn't as obvious as in the other two. I think that to someone who wouldn't know about the changes it would be practically unnoticable (not invisible, but if they were following the story and not focusing on picture quality, they simply wouldn't notice).
I tweaked the colours of the reconstruction footage in two places: Deblued the Wampa cave shots to fit with the AVCHD colours and returned the pinkish/orange tint to the Cloud city mate after Luke leaves Dagobah, I know it doesn't make sense in the context of the story but it was like that in both the 1980 original and 1997 SE and I simply like it that way.
Also I found out that Ady's reconstruction 5.1 mix syncs perfectly just as I demuxed it from the DVD. So there will be Ady's 5.1, GOUT 2.0 and Czech 2.0.
RETURN OF THE JEDI - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION
RETURN OF THE JEDI - PARTLY DESPECIALIZED EDITION 1080p AVCHD v1.2
VIDEO:
Resolution: 1920x1080p
Codec: AVC
Frame rate: 23,976 fps
Bit rate: 6795Kbps
AUDIO:
1) 5.1 EN 448Kbps
2) 5.1 EN 448Kbps
3) 2.0 EN 384Kbps
4) 2.0 CZ 256Kbps
SOURCES:
Video:
HDTV (1080p broadcast of the 2004 version)
DVBt (anamorpic PAL broadcast of the 1997 version)
DVD (2006 nonanamorphic DVD of the 1983 original version)
Sound:
1) hairy_hen's 5.1 custom mix based on the 1993 mix, with the Special Edition LFE chanel added, and deleted music restored to the Obi-Wan scene
2) hairy_hen's 5.1 purist mix based on the 1993 mix, with the Special Edition LFE chanel added, but without the restored music
3) Belbucus' 2.0 1993 LaserDisc PCM capture
4) Harmy's 2.0 1992 Czech VHS dubbing capture
What has changed:
The whole cut was conformed to be in sync with the soundmixes of the original 1980 version.
Over-all basic colour correction was done with special care to restore the original look of the lightsabres.
Lapti Nek, the original Sarlacc pit scene and the ending celebration (including the Anakin ghost) were restored very close to the original version.
Here are some videos:
Lightsabres test and a splitscreen comparison
Sarlac (it's a bit different in the final version)
---
Please note that due to YOUTUBE compression the samples are not a true representation of the actual quality.
PM me for the links.
Yes, the GOUT makes it pretty clear that the decision to make it open sky was done for the SE, hence the new matepainting of the bulding.
Also, I noticed that at the moment Leia starts walking, there is some obvious bad rotoscoping visible on her head bun in the SE, which doesn't seem to be present in the GOUT, will this be adressed?
bkev said:
Reivax seems to be good quality to me, but it's in PAL - speed and resolution. That's an annoyance, least for me.
I don't get it, I uderstand the speed problem (although I don't notice it myself) but why resolution? Isn't PAL higher resolution?
Also, could someone, please, help me get my hands on any of these anamorphic '97 SEs?
