Harmy

Found it on the spleen - excellent!

44rh1n, I agree about the grain - that may be the best way to go. I might add a little bit more grain than the average modern remastering to hide the artifacts from the excessive denoising and also to better blend the sources but nowhere near print grain levels.

Also, I have been waiting forever for someone to replicate the theatrical grading of Lotr Fotr on the EE but I have fallen out of the loop on fan - restorations. Is your color restoration available anywhere, please?

I thought about that but I don’t think it would be possible without creating lots of unwanted artifacts.

Space pube will likely be back, as it was only removed because the shot was recomped digitally 😂
The logos will be original, no question. 😊

I am now in contact with oohteedee and we’re talking about collaborating on v3.0 using his D+xy versions as a basis and despecializing them further.

I have said before that now that we have 4K77 and 4K83 as 100% true theatrical preservstions (with 4K80 hopefully coming soon) the focus of Despecialized can shift to being what a modern transfer of the movie, if the SE never existed, could be. This is why I don’t think power-windows, not 100% theatrically accurate grading or redone wipes and such are really a problem.

Thank you, CatBus, I’ll think about it but I think we can find an easier way - I’ll probably buy them when they come out and then get remuxes from some bay 😄

I will also definitely try to set up some collaboration with oohteedee, because it seems he’s already done a lot of the work and maybe I could just provide him with despecialized shots for his version to replace shots that in his version are just cleaned up scans but could be put together in higher quality by despecializing.

Yeah, that’s not exaxtly cheap and then you have to at least double that price for shipping to EU and import taxes.

Broom Kid said:

seeing Harmy and oohteedee come together to create the ultimate de-specialized edition would be pretty cool, if they wanted to pool their resources together.

Who’s oohteedee? Links please?

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-V27-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713/page/665

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-V27-MKV-IS-OUT-NOW/id/12713/page/665

Hi, guys, I know I haven’t updated you in quite a while and it’s because I haven’t really been working on Despecialized.

One reason was that I have been waiting for the new 4K Blu-Rays to come out and now they have and together with the 4K77 project, they should be a great source for a version 3.0 - they do seem to offer have more detail than the 2011 BDs, even though the DNR is pretty awful, but I will definitely try to add grain to them - ideally real scanned 35mm grain, which I might even be able to extract from Star Wars scans to keep it super-authentic.

Right now there are several problems with using the new UHD masters though.

1. The UHD Blu-Rays haven’t come out in Europe yet, as far as I know.
2. They are really expensive, so I’ll have to think twice before purchasing them when they do.
3. Even if I buy them, I don’t even have a UHD player, let alone UHD BD drive, so I haven’t got the ability to rip them or even view them.
4. Even if I could rip them or get them in some other way, I have no idea how to properly work with HDR streams.

So, if someone could help me with the proper HDR workflow, it would be appreciated. I don’t even really want to make the final result 4K HDR - I’d like the result to be a regular BD, as I feel like this way the sources will match better and there shouldn’t be a significant loss in quality anyway but would like to source the HDR BDs to use the better dynamic range for color-grading.

But maybe, in the end, it would be best to just use the regular BD versions of the new transfers, which would eliminate all the above problems and I could work as I am used to.

The main reason work on Despecialized has slowed down significantly in recent years is that I have a full-time job in the visual effects industry and, frankly also more of a social life, so I have far less time to work on Despecialized and, to be honest, also less drive, because after coming home from work, where I stare at a monitor all day and work on VFX, I seldom feel like doing the same thing at home.

Another reason is that the 4K77 version is wonderful and for my own viewing pleasure it is quite sufficient and I actually really enjoy it for its retro-charm.

But it is still more of a preservation of what the experience of watching a slightly beat-up print in drive-in theater would have been rather than what a proper modern transfer of a milestone film should look like and that’s what Despecialized v3.0 should supplement, when it gets finished.

In my country, the COVID-19 crisis, at least so far, hasn’t reached a point where it would prevent me from going to work, so I’m still working, albeit, since there’s no new productions being made, the post production side of things is winding down as well. But after the current big work-project is finished, which should be at the end of may, I’d like to take some time off and finally get going on Despecialized again. I’m not sure, though, if, given the current economic climate, I’ll be able to afford to do that.

I finally had a chance to properly check the new transfers out and I’d say the worst issue is the heavy dvnr. I’m surprised no one is complaining about it.

I just took this 100mpix pano of my Star Wars collection - thought I’d share here 😃
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YEoBMPYM1Q9GeYJ4zDsRDifd7pdO0TWS/view?usp=sharing

Well, I kind of softened up on the issue over the years - erasing history is wrong, sure, but thanks to the frustrated fans here taking matters in their own hands, we’re closer than ever to having those versions in 4K77 and 4K83 and hopefully soon 4K80. These preserve the films the way people saw them in theaters back then, so we, here on this, site got frustrated and angry and that drove us to make sure history won’t be erased for those who care. Honestly, I ,of course, hope the originals do get an official release one day but as long as the fan versions are available and Disney doesn’t push against them being freely available to those who want them, I’m happy.

Sure, the general public won’t get to see fan preservations, but the general public doesn’t really care either way, since to them it’s just a movie - they don’t think about film history and how the films were made and so they will remain ignorant - but the general public is totally ignorant of much more important things in history and elsewhere. And the people who do care can get them and research them for historical reasons very easily, thanks to this site.

So, at this point, to me, it is mostly about “I want the version I like”. The main reason I like Star Wars any more is the technical stuff - marveling at how they were able to achieve those shots with the technology at the time, so the altered version are completely uninteresting to me. So for my personal enjoyment, I want a good looking, clean release of the original versions but it’s not really about preserving history any more, it’s about wanting the version I like.

EDIT: This will all actually only be true once 4K80 is out - right now, the 35mm versions of Empire are kind of lacking, though again, for historical research purposes, they’re kind of ok too.

That it definitely will. My point was simply that there’s little point to 4K when even the 1080p Blu-Ray has more fine detail.

Well, actually, and not surprisingly, the comparison of the print scan and the Blu-Ray posted in the TPM thread clearly shows that the Blu-Ray has more fine detail than the scan.

The quality drops noticeably.

Honestly, I’m not surprised he’s seen it - Simon Pegg is a good friend of his and he tweeted about it a couple of years ago. But I’m surprised he’d mention it in an interview.

Maclunky 😕

https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1204960815821946880
In this twitter video JJ Abrams talks about how he wants the original version of Star Wars to be released and mentions Despecialized Editions. Bad news is, he pretty much says the originals just won’t be released officially.

To me, the blu-ray looks by far the best - sure, the waxines is a problem, but since it still has way more detail, adding some grain should solve that. And even the HDTV seems to have more detail - the problem there is the compression, which eats a lot of the detail up. Check out the handlebars on this picture:
http://www.framecompare.com/screenshotcomparison/J1BJCNNU

But is there less image on top and bottom or more on the sides? Or something in between?

Can that be done? And would it yield a 10 or even 12 bit image? That would be awesome!
As for whether this changes anything for Despecialized, yes, the change is that I will now definitely be waiting for the 4K Blu-Ray or at least a full bitrate 4k web-dl as a source.

Mandalorian is “out there” in 4K HDR, so the drm has clearly been broken on day one, so I think for those of us who won’t get D+ until 2021 (and believe me, if I could get it now, I’d be the first in line), someone will put the new masters out as well.

There were definitely some recomps done for 2004 - for example the introduction of the imperial fleet in TESB. Would be curious if they recomped it again for 19SE or kept the original compositing.