Harmy

Yes.

Yeah, that was a good example of the kind of thing I usually do.
For those who don’t remember, here it is:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/158521

You can actually see the process in my video documentary as well:
https://youtu.be/QXifjbxZDAM?t=15m39s
Though the compressed youtube video doesn’t quite show just how grainy those shots were.

Well, here’s the deal - I do degrain the 35mm shots quite a bit and then add new fake grain to them that matches that of the Blu-Ray to make them match better. There is actually usually some slight detail loss, but it is a necessary evil, because it’s important to make the sources match a well as possible.

Yeah, Laserschwert’s is v2.1, because it already has some of the fixes planned for v2.5 - basically, the plan is to replace any shots, which in v2.0 rely heavily on SD sources (GOUT or '97SE) with cleaned TN1’s Grindhouse Empire as a source instead.

If anyone shows up on my doorstep asking for copies of Despecialized, I will hold you personally responsible, Frink 😄

Yeah, I will definitely do some workprints for v3.0s - starting from scratch, there will be a large probability of errors.

We’ll see about v2.6 - if I did one, it would be just quickly splicing TN1’s shots in place of GOUT shots into the v2.5 lossless master and maybe fixing some of the more obvious color problems (it would probably end up looking somewhat like the Respecialized Edition).

moviefreakedmind said:

The most pressing question I have though, and I’d really appreciate a definitive statement is, Are the TIE fighters going to vanish? If so, have they already been corrected, or is that yet to be fixed before the release?

Honestly, when you first asked about this, I wasn’t even sure what you were talking about, because in 005’s gallery, the description of the shot doesn’t mention vanishing tie fighters - I had to go in and compare the shots frame-by-frame to see it. But the whole shot’s been recomposited and there seems to be little point to just making the tiny little fighters vanish for two frames without actually replacing the whole shot.

As for the Obi-Wan face-branch shot, that is definitely on my to do list for ROTJ v2.5 but I haven’t touched it yet, so we’ll see how difficult it proves to be.

ksakacep said:

I personally think that there is no need to release v3.0 of all of the films at once - simply because SW v2.5 really needs an update and there is more demand for Despecialiazed SW than for ESB and ROTJ (mainly because this film is the most altered). Also, v3.0 of SW will be the biggest leap because apparently a bunch of new sources became available. But that’s just my humble opinion, of course it depends on Harmy and the rest of the community.

Other people already answered pretty well but to sum up - SW will be the hardest one to do, because A) it has the most changes and B) I will already have plenty of Despecialized shots I will be able to use from v2.5 of the other two. So it will be nice to be able to take a break from SW and work on Empire or Jedi for a bit. I actually did consider doing a quick v2.6 or something of SW, because I expect v3.0s to take a long time to finish, but we’ll see.

Wazzles said:

Quick question: Are the wipes going to be the theatrical ones in the 3.0 trilogy?

I don’t know yet - the thing about wipes is that they are very difficult to clean and stabilize and I’m not sure if they are worth the quality drop - will have to do some tests and see.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+DrewStewart/albums/5528361230751063825/5529747315417668658?pid=5529747315417668658&oid=102542760950977079734

Comparing it to 35mm LPP, I’m pretty sure this is not a recomp - the visual difference is caused by the DNR in the GOUT.

towne32 said:

Any idea which of the 3 you’ll focus on first for 3.0?

Most likely Star Wars, although I’m still waiting on some stuff for that one, so it will depend on whether I get it by the time I’m done with ESB v2.5.

My idea is to work on all 3 v3.0s though and release them all at once but we’ll see how that works out.

Yeah, I decided to skip v2.0 for ROTJ, since the v2.0WP got a pretty wide release and v2.0 was supposed to be just the same as the WP only with a couple of fixes, but you’ll see this new version is much more than just that, so the next version, (which should be out late this week or early next week, I know I keep pushing it but it’ll be worth it, you’ll see, 😉 ) will be v2.5, followed soon by v2.5 of ESB, which will get all three movies on the same version and then I can focus on getting v3.0s done (v3.0 will be 1080p, so I’ll need to start pretty much from scratch on those).

Yep - GOUT was only there to check for sync issues.

That would be my guess also.

It’s a commentary and it was made for the SE - I personally think it doesn’t really matter as long as the content is there and syncs to the image. I had to throw out a tiny bit of GL rumblings about CGI in the in the '04 but managed to keep all other content in both.
I was more worried about issues like the background audio being too loud and drowning out the commentary.

mumbles_ said:

Looks great! I just wish it were integrated with Harmy’s DE 3.0 along with TN1’s Silver Screen Edition. 😃

We have been cooperating in the background for quite some time now. Neverar will have a big hand in the colors of the new versions of despecilized.

I don’t really need any more people on the workprint but here are the links to the re-cut 2004 and 2011 commentaries, so if anyone would like to mux them with any GOUT-synced video and give them a listen for any issues, that’d be great:
http://uloz.to/xRsiMaoy/rotj-bd-comm-1-ac3
http://uloz.to/xJV46Rqh/rotj-bd-comm-2-ac3

It wasn’t sent to me anonymously 😄

It’s from a short sample, which was sent to me privately.

Yeah, I remeber that too 😃 Last it was about a year ago.

CatBus said:

Fortunately, the Lowry process seems to have had a harder time scrubbing away grain than it did scrubbing away starfields. Or maybe that’s unfortunately.

Actually, there’s tons of fake grain added on top of the 2004 master.
Check out this screenshot from the BD’s uncompressed ProRes source file:
http://s25.postimg.org/buby9gkjx/Pro_Res.jpg
The same excessive noise that is all over the image actually overlaps into the black bars.

Yeah - I just checked my technicolor references and Tatooine, especially in Mos Eisley, is even more green/yellow tinted than in Despecialized - I actually used some restraint there even back then - nevertheless, I still plan on toning the yellow tint down a bit.

As for replacement shots, I’m definitely going with the LPP for v3.0.

https://youtu.be/3lAVUMiefLs?t=5m48s

Whatever the situation with the actual number of users of that account, team_negative1 always uses the pronoun “we” and never “I”, which means they are not speaking for themselves, but for a whole team of people and therefore it either is a team account or pretending to be one, and so, by the rules (and common sense logic) this account has no business posting personal opinions on anything other than the team’s own projects.

4K is also pretty pointless for a scan of a 35mm exhibition print - it’s definitely useful to have the scan at 4K, because of cropping and such and a 4K scan will be more detailed when scaled down to 2K than a straight 2K scan but for the final product, 4K would make practically zero difference - there could be a huge difference in detail if working with the o-neg or even an IP but not from a print - I experimented with this.

Actually, maybe taking the uncompressed files of the final 2K restoration and doing some kind 4K upscale using the advanced scaling techniques people have been using to upscale the GOUT might yield more impressive 4K results than working in 4K throughout.

Read the last few pages - it really has been discussed at length and frames from other scans of the same print were shown with no streaking - it’s definitely a scan issue

What was it?