Harmy

The demo reel was heavily compressed 720p - even a cleaned up scan of an exhibition print could easily look that good in compressed 720p, so the quality tells us nothing about the source - now I've compared the sabres there with a scan of an I.B. Print and the glows are definitely not the originals, which were much more diffused but the cores actually look very close - both the '97SE and more so the GOUT have the cores blown out and thus looking too fat, so the thickness of the cores in the RMW reel is closer to the original than the GOUT.

Now, the colors in the RMW reel are closer to the way the scene looks in the '97SE broadcasts than on the I.B. print but they look far far better than the 2004 version.

I honestly don't know what to make of this either - Zombie makes some good points about it not being for the 3D release, but I still wouldn't count it out as a possibility - maybe they did do some tests with the 2004 footage and decided, that a remaster was needed for a 3D conversion, because the murky dark 2004 master is completely unfit for a 3D release and as we've learned, the colors and shadow detail can only be salvaged up to a point, so they may have decided that they needed a new master for 3D and today, when you're professionally remastering a high profile film like this from film elements, it would be border-line insane to go any lower than 4K.

Now, they didn't give TPM a 4K remaster but they still did remaster TPM for the 3D release but there's so much 2K CGI in the movie, that they decided to go for the original digital 2K masters instead of scanning film, because the 2K masters would likely have been the source of any complete copy of the movie on film anyway, so by scanning any complete copy of the film at 4K they would basically just be re-digitizing those same 2K files with an added layer of dupe grain and dirt and scratches, only to end up with something that is ultimately still only a 2K to 4K upscale. If they wanted it to look any better, they'd have to re-scan the raw negatives and completely re-do all the VFX, so the film-out masters were the best possible source they had for the completed film. The fact that they then decided to destroy the remaster with DVNR is sad but it also may have something to do with the 3D release - grain just isn't great for 3D.

Well, yeah but that's true for all the threads you post in ;-)

Well, I reported the auction and gave this as a reason:

"Alongside the LaserDiscs, the seller is offering a Blu-Ray bootleg of the films as a "gift"."

(It only allowed 100 characters).

It's technically the same as if he was giving bootlegs of the official BDs as a "free gift" with the LDs.

What should we do about this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STAR-WARS-Trilogy-THX-Faces-LASERDISCS-plus-HD-Backups-on-Blu-Ray-/291236838877?pt=US_Laserdisc&hash=item43cf117ddd

I will simply use whatever best quality footage I have at my disposal.

As to the plan afterwards, there is none right now - I will cross that bridge when I come to it :)

Whole scenes/shots. The quality of the German broadcasts is almost indistinguishable from the BD anyway.

No, it was a much higher quality German broadcast.

I really hope it's not another Death Star.

The VHS was changed in the same way as the DVD, I though that would have been obvious - the VHS and DVD of AOTC did come out at the same time after all.

No problem :-)

That's definitelly a part of the original compositing.

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

As far as I know, the only available versions of the actual theatrical release of AOTC are some bootlegs shot on video camera in theaters - all home video releases have been altered, including the VHS. But to be honest, I don't give a rat's ass about Episode II. I do have a certain nostalgia for TPM but it's not exactly high on my list of priorities either.

Yeah, it's on the 2004 bonus DVD. In 2004, the crew making the docs made their own transfers of '97SE stuff, because the new master wasn't ready yet. The irony of how in the 2004 release a lot of stuff looked better on the bonus DVD and in the menus than in the movies themselves has been discussed at length somewhere before.

EDIT: LOL. From the documentary:

GL: As we went on, we wanted the lightsaber fights to become faster and more intense... :-D

Link?

EDIT:
Do you mean this documentary made for the 2004 Bonus DVD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIefj6dOhnM&list=UUZGYJFUizSax-yElQaFDp5Q

I turned the panels off as soon as they first appeared. I also don't have any ads in my GMail but that's probably thanks to Adblock.

Wow, cool.

It's pretty amazing how well Google Translate handles Spanish to English translation.

Oh, yeah, that was pretty awesome :)

I'm using Firefox and all the links in Stinky's post go directly to the high-res pics.

The thing is though, the colors of the '04 master are plagued by technical issues as well as bad coloring choices.

V1.0 was made before the BDs came out and yes, for v2.0 that is the plan - replace all the BD additions with the 2004SE.

SE for now, just like in v1.0.

Didn't I just say, that the sabers in the ESB duel weren't redone in the SE? They just screwed up the colors. We were talking about the SW duel's sabers, where the sabers were recomposited in the 2004SE (and therefore the BD as well) and they seem to be recomposited in the RMW video as well.

That's really great - thanks for sharing that :-)

@ray: That would probably actually be the best solution - the sound quality of those files is awful, they use the SE soundtrack and they aren't very well edited - there are these distracting volume jumps every time the narration starts and ends.

@Nick66: The script would be the same, plus I don't think anyone really cares to preserve these particular narration tracks made for the 2004DVDs (plus they are preserved in those files) - it's just about having the option of the narrative track.