Harmy

Actually, I'm planning two MKV versions, the main one with 15000Kbps BD compatible stream and lossless audio and then another, cropped to 1280x542 at a much lower bitrate with the same audio options as the AVCHD for those, who want a more compact MKV version of around 5GB (it's preferable to people making their own smaller encodes with crappy settings from an already re-compressed source) - I could technically already release the smaller MKV now but I don't want people thinking it's the main MKV release.

I mounted the ISO with Deamon Tools, put the 00000.mpls playlist file into TS Muxer (v 2.6.12) and everything demuxed just fine. Then I tried creating a BD folder and it also went ok. But MKV Merge does seem to freeze up for some reason, so that kind of sucks but I have no idea what could be the problem there.

As to the documentary, no I'm not planning a doc like that about ESB or ROTJ at the moment.

Well, TS Muxer can't do MKV and if your player supports m2ts, you can simply use the m2ts file from the AVCHD.

It works for me.

I have to admit it actually wasn't bad.

EDIT:
Here you are.

That is a known issue - if you want to mux an mkv, you'll need to use a different version of MKV merge or first demux all the tracks in TS Muxer and then re-mux them in MKV merge.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Abyss/topic/14153/

The AVHCD is 6500 Kbps, the MKV will be 15000 Kbps.

What? Well, v2.5 will probably be released eventually but not any time soon. First I want to do Jedi.

Oh, yeah, I'm working on it but it's no walk through the park, I'll tell you that :-)

It's up on paradox now! If someone put it up on the spleen, I'd be grateful :-)

@Feallan: I have 8.0, which I believe is the latest version.

So, here's the NFO for the AVCHD version - I'm about to create the ISO image and start uploading :-)

                                                                                                   
 HARMY PROUDLY PRESENTS                                                                               
                                                                                                  
                                                                                                   

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK - DESPECIALIZED EDITION REMASTERED (v2.0)

 _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
|This is a fan preservation made for culturally historical and educational purposes.                                      |
|Fanedits and preservations must not be bought or sold.                                                                   |
|Please report every fanedit or preservation you find for sale to webmasters of originaltrilogy.com.                      |
|Fanedits and preservations are an artform and to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only. |
|Do not support piracy.                                                                                                   |
|_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________|

This is a reconstruction of the 1980 theatrical version of The Empire Strikes Back. The original shots were painstakingly

restored using various sources (listed below) and the film received an extensive shot by shot colour correction.

The remastered version (v2.0) represents a significant improvement in picture quality over the earlier 1.0 version
due to the use of better encoding and higher quality sources and replacing many of the despecialized shots with
higher quality ones.

The AVCHD version contains the latest versions of the preservations of the original audio mixes, three different
commentary tracks and an isolated score.

More information can be found here:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-THE-EMPIRE-STRIKES-BACK-Despecialized-Edition-HD/topic/12511/


VIDEO SOURCES:

1) STAR WARS Episode V The Empire Strikes Back Official Blu-Ray 2011

2) STAR WARS Episode V The Empire Strikes Back 2006 Bonus DVD
  (sourced from the 1993 Definitive Edition Laser Disc Master - upscale by Mattman Omega)

3) Adywan's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 1997 Special Edition Reconstruction 1080p MKV (HDTV source)

4) STAR WARS 1997 Special Edition (Reivax DTV capture)

5) Team Negative1 35mm print scan

6) Custom mattes, 35mm film cell scans etc.

7) Adywan's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK 1980 Theatrical Reconstruction NTSC DVD

8) Puggo Strikes Back (16mm print transfer)


Technical Specifications:
________________________

FORMAT: AVCHD DISC (ISO)

SIZE: 7.9GB (DVD9)

VIDEO: 1280x720p H264 23.976 fps


AUDIO: (all Dolby Digital) Special thanks to hairy_hen, Schorman, Puggo and Mavimao

TRACK 1) 5.1 1980 mix @ 640Kbps

TRACK 2) 2.0 1980 mix @ 224Kbps

TRACK 3) 1.0 1980 16mm mono mix @ 112Kbps

TRACK 4) 2.0 Isolated score @ 224Kbps

TRACK 5) 1.0 1993 LD Audio Commentary @ 64Kbps (silence filled with 1993 LD 2.0)

TRACK 6) 1.0 2004 DVD Audio Commentary @ 64Kbps

TRACK 7) 1.0 2011 BD Archival Interviews Audio Commentary @ 64Kbps


SUBTITLES: (Project Threepio) Special thanks to CatBus

 English [eng] (pgs)
 Chinese [chi] (pgs)
 American Spanish [spa] (pgs)
 Castilian Spanish [spa] (pgs)
 Arabic [ara] (pgs)
 Russian [rus] (pgs)
 Brazilian Portuguese [por] (pgs)
 Japanese [jpn] (pgs)
 French [fre] (pgs)
 German [ger] (pgs)
 Turkish [tur] (pgs)
 Korean [kor] (pgs)
 Italian [ita] (pgs)
 Polish [pol] (pgs)
 Ukrainian [ukr] (pgs)
 Dutch [dut] (pgs)
 Hungarian [hun] (pgs)
 Czech [cze] (pgs)
 Greek [gre] (pgs)
 Swedish [swe] (pgs)
 Finnish [fin] (pgs)
 Danish [dan] (pgs)
 Norwegian [nor] (pgs)

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

The ISO image can be burned to a DVD-DL and should work in most Blu-Ray players.

To burn, you can use imgburn following these instructions:

https://neosmart.net/wiki/burning-iso-images-with-imgburn/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                                                

I don't know, I didn't make the isolated score, all I know is ABC did make it, hairy_hen synced and encoded it and you guys will be pleased to hear, I will be putting it into both releases - I decided to encode the commentaries as mono 64kbps AC3s for the AVCHD, which I think is ok for a commentary track, which freed up a lot of space for not only the iso score track but also more subtitle options.

Yeah, the isolated score will most likely not be included - I have one less commentary track than for the SW AVCHD but the movie is slightly longer, so it will all depend on how the bitrates all add up when muxed together.

moviefreakedmind said:

For everyone wondering whether or not the OUT will EVER be released, we'll know once they release their next blu ray release of the OT. If the OUT is not included, then they're surely going to be asked in interviews, and if they say something like, "those aren't the original vision for the films," or, "those aren't the official versions," then we'll know for sure that we'll never see them released again. If they say, "We're exploring restoration options," or, "the project could take a while," then that means they'll consider it and probably release it eventually. Finally, if it is included (which I honestly think it will be), then there's nothing to worry about.

 Even if it was included, there'd still be plenty to worry about. For one, there is the issue of the transfer - there may be plenty of things to ruin that. Then there's also the possibility, of a fake OOT, where only the most obvious changes are removed from the 4K transfer of the SE they apparently already have. Disney doesn't really have a great track record in this area - lots of Disney movies are DVNRed to death and many are not available in their original theatrical form.

Well, I'm going to a friend's wedding today, so I don't know what state I'll be in tomorrow but I will release the AVCHD version in the coming days, probably on Monday and then the MKV as soon as I get the audio files.

Brilliant! Thanks! How long do you think before you'll have the DTS soundtracks uploaded? I wanted to release the AVCHD and the MKV at the same time.

Yeah, I guess 1980 5.1 and 1980 2.0 should work :-)

I believe, that h_h called it the purist mix, because for both ESB and ROTJ  he also made mixes with some added music, which wasn't there in the original and the purist mixes were purist, because they didn't have that music.

Harmy said:

Well, that interview made me worried not only about Rebels but also about the future of the entire franchise.

Tobar said:

And why is that, pray tell?

A) They say that the Rebels may be introducing characters, whom we will meet in the new film episodes and it will be a whole intertwined universe - I don't like this idea much, because I'm beginning to have quite high hopes for the new movies but so far, I like Rebels less and less with every clip I see from it - it reminds me of those Saturday morning cartoons, which I used to like as a little kid (who also loved the Phantom Menace) but when I see them today, they are super cheesy and lame. I wasn't a huge fan of TCW but I never got that feeling of a cheap 80s or 90s cartoon from it.

B) They make a big deal about not wanting to shrink the universe, yet, just in the few clips released so far, we've already seen cameos of Obi-Wan, 3P0 and R2.

C) "I love origins stories of characters that you think you know everything about and then you learn the real story..." Does he mean like Obi-Wan, Darth Vader or Boba Fett? Urgh...

D) It seems to indicate them being seriously misguided, if they think that the show has the look of McQuarrie paintings - to me, it looks like cheap digital animation, about 15 years behind the current development, with a half-arsed attempt to imitate the Disney drawing style for the character design. TCW, while it was also not up to scratch with the latest digital animation tech, probably because the budget wouldn't allow it, made the best of the bad situation and had a unique, brush-painting like style to the textures, which they say they have here too, even supposedly imitating McQuarrie's brush techniques, but I see no trace of it in the clips they released so far. It would be so beautiful, if they actually went with (ideally 2D) animation, which would truly look like McQuarrie paintings brought to life, but alas, that is not what we seem to be getting here.

E) Apparently the favorite SW movie of the current generation of Lucasfilm employees is TPM, because "that's the one they had as kids..." Really? Really? :-(

F) The lightsabers - this could technically fall under D but I think it's worth mentioning separately - they say lightsabers are designed to look like in the original SW. Well, from what I've seen, they really don't. They maybe share some similarities with the ugly recomposited sabres from the SE, like the blade edges being too sharp and the colored-glow edges being way too sharp, instead of diffused, like in the original and the blades are way too thin - they say that this is on purpose to make the look more like Ep. IV but the sabers in SW are nowhere near this thin - not even in the SE. Plus the lightsaber fighting style seems to again be the kind of acrobatic jumping around, like in the prequels.

That'd be very cool - but it would still need to be scanned and the scan would need correction to look like the print, which I'm pretty sure Poita is already doing with his print. It would be great though to have scans of two different well-preserved prints for comparison.

There wasn't any definitive color source like the I.B. print of SW, so I had to improvise a bit, so I sort of looked at different home-video releases and preservations and picked the color timing that seemed most likely to be close to the original, so the colors here are not as close to the original timing as in SW but I think they do look really nice an have a nice retro feel to them and are likely far closer to the original timing than either the BDs or the 2006 DVD.

Poita however recently obtained an 8mm print with beautifully preserved colors, so it is possible, that I may have a good reference for timing the v2.5 release, if I can get samples from his scan of it.

darklordoftech said:

JediZombie said:

darklordoftech said:

ratpack1961 said:

You can make a good Star Wars story without Vader (KOTR)

How is KOTOR a Star Wars story? Not a single character from any the movies appears and the story doesn't affect the movies in any way.

 Star Wars has become bigger than the original characters for a lot of people. For me, Star Wars is any story that takes place in the GFFA. The original Saga about Vader and Luke will always be the best, but it doesn't have to be the only one. It's a giant universe with endless stories to tell. Why shrink it down to just this one?

That's like calling a Thor movie "Iron Man" because it's set in the Marvel universe.

Not really, none of the Star Wars movies actually had the names Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker in the title. It's like calling a Thor movie a "Marvel Universe" movie.

So, a question for hairy_hen (and I'm posting it here, since it may be an interesting debate): What should I call the 5.1 mix for Empire (and eventually Jedi) - for SW, it was a reconstruction of the 70mm 6 track mix but here, the situation is a bit different, if I understand it correctly, so what should I call it in the NFO?

Well, that interview made me worried not only about Rebels but also about the future of the entire franchise.

No.

I might try - I do have an HD scan of it somewhere.