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?
I’m just thinking about making this recut of the 2nd and 3rd film in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, so I thought I’d bring it up to see what people thought:
I love FOTR and I don’t think that needs improving.
Now, I’m sure many of you will disagree, but I was quite dissapointed with TTT because for my taste there was too much redundant action and not enough story to justify it. And I thought ROTK would have been really good if there wasn’t so much cheese in the end and if it was a bit shorter.
So I came to a simple solution. Cut some of the action from TTT (namely the whole scene with the hyenas and the subsequent Aragorn subplot, at least half of Helm’s Deep battle etc.) and add all the Frodo scenes from ROTK up till Shelob (the spider) and end TTT in the moment where Sam thinks that Frodo’s dead and takes the Ring, so that it seems like Frodo died and Sam has to complete the quest.
And then ofcourse recut ROTK so that those scenes wouldn’t miss there and cut on the cheese in the end maybe even remove an ending or two (last time I watched the movie I counted them and there’s no less than seven).
I haven’t even started yet, just wanted to know what you guys thought.
Yeah, I'm totally serious, it's dubbed in Czech, I could post a clip of it later but my CPU is totaly occupied reeincoding my HD ESB Partly Despecialized at the moment.
Edit: I added a link to the clip to my signature.
Timstuff said:
...however in the defense of (ugh) George Lucas, Peter Jackson's movies are less than 10 years old, whereas Star Wars was 20 years old when it was "Lucased," and the original production was pre-digital.
Well, that is even more in Lucas' offence, not defence, because LOTR was shot in digital age, new CGI shots or cleaned up effects wouldn't probably stand out as badly or at all. But in STAR WARS, you're aware that you're watching a 30yrs old film and suddenly a CG shot (and a very obvious one too, because it's like 12 yrs old) jumps at you and takes you out of the movie completely and makes you even more aware of how old this film is.
msycamore said:
I think captainsolo means the '97 SE not the '04, I'm not entirely sure but I would be surprised if they didn't have the same colors, they should be from the same problematic telecine.
I'm not sure about that, the broadcast versions are anamorphic and the quality seems to be too good to be from the same transfer the 1997 laserdiscs and VHS used but I don't know.
Also I dug out a back up of my old STAR WARS VHS, which is definitely a pre-1993 transfer. There are a few funny things about it:
1) The first the first scene is squished to fit the roll.
2) The saturation is not low at all, on the conrary the image is totaly oversaturated.
3) It is a dubbed version and in the Greedo scene the English subs are kept and Greedo is dubbed so he doesn't speak an alien language at all.
4) The dubbing is pretty funny. When Luke ask 3PO to tell him about the rebelion, 3PO says something like: "I'm not very good at telling stories, I don't know how to put them, I'm not Spielberg."
Here are pictures of it:
Click to enlarge.
OK, I always read comments about how horrible the 2004 sound mix is and how it has switched rear channels and stuff but what about the stereo mix included on these DVDs?
Is that the same mix or is it a different one and if it is indeed the same one, why even bother putting it to the DVD, shouldn't a stereo set up just play 5.1 the same way as it does the same mix in stereo?
Added new clip for version 2:
Oh, I hope he's ok, I sometimes also suffer from migraines and it's horrible.
But I thought this was pretty funny and that it would be much more consistent with the prequels:
cap said:
...gets a call from his master.
“Hey, V-Man. I was just at the grocery store, and you’ll never guess who’s all over the tabloid covers!”
“Yeah, I know. Luke.”
“We can’t let him become a Jedi.”
“No shit, Sherlock. Don’t worry, I’m on it. I don’t have him yet, but I will soon. Then we’ll turn him to the Dark Side.”
“You realize, of course, that if he doesn’t turn, we’ll have to kill him.”
“Yes, I realize that. *Sigh.* We still on for Poker on Tuesday?”
“You bet. (Get it?) See you then. May the Force be with you.”
No offence, but I think this is all bullsh*t, I don't like the prequels and I hate the idea of adjusting the OT to match with them. If the prequels were never made or were made with more thought of matching the originals (which is the way it should have been not vice versa) we could think that Vader became evil by choice, out of lust for power, not because he was lame. And we could think that he never knew that this woman he once raped had a son (or, as we sadly later learn, twins). But then, when he chases Luke in the Death Star trench and he feels that "the force is strong with this one," which must have been pretty rare in the dejedied galaxy, and later hears that this boy's name is Skywalker he can surely add two and two together. But I think the theory that he'd known all along and even knew where Luke and Ben were is totally off the track and can only be thought of because of the inconsistencies the f*cking prequels created...
OK, using this and Ady's AVCHD I made a partly despecialized HD version, which I might decide to make available but only if 1) I get Adywan's permition to do so as it's mostly his work anyway and 2) if I'm satisfied with the quality results when the compresion is finished.
Oh and sorry, didn't wanna hijack this thread but I don't know wheather a new thread about it should go to fanedits or preservations. Could somebody please help me with that?
PM sent. And if you don't know how to go about using the .dlc files, the answer is somewhere in this topic.
doubleofive said:
http://picasaweb.google.com/doubleofive/StarWarsComOfficial2004ChangesESB
Uploaded the ESB Official Changes, with captions. For those curious on what Ady may or may not have changed back.
Awesome, thank you so much for that.
It seems like almost every single fx shot in ESB was digitally altered :-(
doubleofive said:
EDIT: checked the official pictures, never noticed the cloud change. Sorry.
Hey, where'd you get these pics, I remember seeing this comparison on starwars.com back in 2006 and I keep looking for it but can't find it anywhere...
Oh, and wow, does the original look way more scary...
Well, I'm not a magician... But maybe we could ask Adywan, he'd probably be able to pull that of ;-D
I've been quite bussy lately so I haven't really started working on version 2 before now, but here's a first new "extended" scene, Han shooting first...
Tell me what you think...
