Harmy

Those mistakes were an integral part of the original - if I had been able to convincingly restore the matte lines on the Rancor in v1.0, I would have and I'll certainly be attempting it again in v2.0.

This is a great article, about the advances in optical compositing made by ILM for the SW Trilogy - it is perfect to illustrate the point I was always trying to make about how digital recompositing destroys the artistic integrity of the FX shots, even if it uses the same elements, because the method and quality of the optical compositing was a huge part of the original effects. Just look at the article's conclusion:

It took every ounce of ingenuity our crew possessed to make these sequences work. Discussion, planning and storyboarding were a key to the successful realization of these shots. After one-and-a-half years of extraordinary labor, ILM's optical crew composited a total of 415 shots, making George Lucas' The Empire Strikes Back a cinematic reality.

And all that work is lost by re-compositing the effects digitally.

Well, the general brightening seems to work quite well here, so there wasn't really much need for any special treatment.

Cool :-)

Yeah, that's what I call it... :-D

Yes, including trying each of the four RAM sticks separately in all four slots, including trying to disconnect all HDDs one by one, including trying to reset CMOS in three different ways... seriously, short of banging it with a hammer, I tried everything.

I turned it off normally and then it just wouldn't turn back on and I tried all the tricks in the book but it really seems to be totally dead now.

Also, I did get another 2GB RED drive for the system (256GB partition) and non-esential data storage (the rest of the HDD) ages ago.

So, my computer is back to not booting and beeping continuously - I already ordered a different mobo (ASUS Z87-K) and will try to return this one and hopefully get a full refund. They may only agree to exchange it but then I'd just try to sell it and in the unlikely case that I install the ASUS mobo and find the problem was not being caused by the mobo in the first place, I have two weeks to return it without giving reasons, according to Czech law.

This unfortunately means that my plans for working on Empire this whole weekend are f*cked.

I think the shots are fine as they are but if one did want to add a bit more dynamism to the camera movement, a bit of rotation could help. Here's a rough demonstration of the idea: http://uloz.to/xqKJtVAq/escape-from-hoth-revisited-mp4

Not really - I think it should be the easiest of the three, with a lot of despecialized shots useable from v1.0 but it will still take a while.

Cool, I don't really need any for ESB but I will definitely need some for ROTJ.

Beber said:

Are the 720p HDTV-DON releases better sources than the 1080p HDTV-hV ones? On top of being 1080p, they're the same as the 2004 Special Editions with supposedly less DNR than the Blu-rays.

 Yes, the 720p DON releases are better, because they are far less compressed - the hV releases were compressed to hell and since I'm working at 720p anyway, the fact that they are 1080p makes no difference. And they are both the same as the 2004 SE but they don't have less DNR than the BD (at least the OT, it may be true for the prequels and especially episode I definitely has less DNR in the HDTV versions, as it comes from a completely different master).

There are HDTV broadcast sources, which are even better quality than the DON releases but I don't have those.

Nothing really - I have 35mm sources for a couple of shots both of which I already showed but the rest will use the same sources as v1.0 - that is the the GOUT and the '97SE SD broadcasts.

De rien :)

Yeah, I see what you mean rockin.

Replaced just the new Jabba from BD with the 97 Jabba.

Sorry, those links don't work - they just send me to the dvdbeaver main page.

@Ericstormtrooper - the GOUT has clipped whites, so the sabers are probably fatter than they were theatrically (as evidenced by both the JSC and '97SE) - I don't have any definitive reference for it though, as the scene seems to look different in each home video version, so I tried to strike a balance between making the sabre cores white, while keeping them less fat.

@rockin: I didn't get there yet but I'll definitely pay close attention to it, once I do.

@DarkJedi360: There will definitely be French audio, as well as many other foreign tracks.

porkinsred6 said:

I don't really follow the SE restoration projects but how is this version different (when watching at normal speed) than the other SE hd projects? Aren't there non-upscaled HD sources from hdtv transmissions?

 This is the 1997 SE, which was shown in cinemas world wide and had fewer alterations than the 2004 DVD version and fewer still than the BD version. Plus it didn't have screwed up colors and by all accounts it had a pretty awesome sound mix (unlike the screwed up DVD and BD mixes) which we have in the highest quality heard in cinemas in 1997, thanks to Jetrell Fo and CapableMetal, who extracted it from the original theatrical DTS discs and dark_jedi, who synced it and encoded a DTS-HD track from it.

The way I understand it, they are simply different encodes of the same master but the bitrate of the AC3 on the LD was fairly low for 5.1, so the DTS should have the advantage of much higher bitrate but otherwise it should be the same (except for the volume difference hairy_hen mentioned).

Here are some screenshots:

http://postimg.org/gallery/ak2g9kf0/

Possibly, though as you say, it's hard to say for sure.

And yes, those are the artifacts I was talking about.

Here's a new clip. It is a comparison between v2.0, v1.0, BD and GOUT of the first two Luke vs. Vader scenes. It's still work in progress but you should get the general idea of the approach I'm taking here - I really tried to minimize those weird artifacts, which crop up every time any attempt at color correcting this scene is made (which are very strongly present in v1.0) and I tried to keep the colors of the sabers closer to the original (which actually often means closer to the SE than in v1.0).

Thanks for the info You_Too, I updated the information in the first post.

There aren't any in the release but I think if you just download any SE subtitles, they should work but you may have to set some delay.

Oh, well, not much but it was a source in the DeEd and I used it for the Greedo subs, which are left in here.