Harmy

n00b said:

@ Harmy

Is there any chance to get rid of those bright boxes around the Falcon and the TIE fighters at 00:36:42 - 00:36:44? This problem was much less prominent before Lowry "restored" the material though your workprint is already an improvement over 2004.

The problem here is, that the garbage mattes are actually visible in the bright areas of that shot (on the star-destroyer) - slightly crushing the dark areas in space shots (actually increasing contrast - lowering contrast makes the mates more visible) usually takes care of the garbage mattes on the black backdrop of space but there is no practical way I know of to get rid of them from bright areas.

AntcuFaalb said:

I've never had a good understanding of what exactly Harmy's intentions are with his Despecialized Editions. That is, is he shooting for (1) "what's on a theatrical print" or (2) "what would have been visible to the audience during the original theatrical run(s)"?

A good example of my confusion is illustrated by the fact that:

1. Harmy restored several compositing errors that were scrubbed away by Lowry's process for SW DeEd 2.0/2.1/2.5. Some of these were anomalies in a single frame that were likely not noticed by many during the original theatrical run(s).

2. Harmy did not restore all of the original wipes in SW DeEd 2.0/2.1/2.5 and, in many cases, left in the optical wipes that were created by Pacific Titles for the 97SE.

Harmy: I'm not trying to talk-down your work. I'm genuinely confused and I hope you can clear this up. As I've always stated: you do fantastic work and I'm consistently impressed with the quality of your output.

Well, I'm shooting for recreating the look, or rather the experience, of the original version in high definition - in other words, I'm trying to strike a good balance of restoring as much of the original as possible, while keeping it a congruent high quality watching experience.

So, restoring the wipes would definitely introduce some very noticeable quality drops, due to my best source being the GOUT and it would do very little to make it visually more like the original, because unless you're comparing them frame by frame, most of the wipes look pretty much the same in both versions, so the look and mainly the feel of the shots aren't really altered, whereas those compositing errors I did restore, while consciously unnoticed, do alter the feel of the shot and most of the ones I restored were possible to restore without losing any significant amount of picture quality - like this, this, this or this. Restoring those kinds of mistakes is also a kind of a nod to the people who know about them and will be looking for them :-)

Yes, 1080p would need a much higher bitrate - the only way to address that while keeping everything else as is, would be to make it a BD50, which is something I find very impractical and would like to avoid.

I thought about it but for now, I think I'll be sticking to 720p - the other reasons I decided for it still stand. Maybe if there's ever a 3.0 version :-)

Yeah, I originally wasn't going to but now, with the new computer, I can render it in just a few hours and the quality difference between my AVCHD and MKV test encodes was quite big.

Oh, that! In the 1st WP it was there because I used the 97SE for the whole shot but yes, you're right, I'll totally restore that. I totally forgot about it - this is why I have a WP out in the first place.

What additional engine glow?

Actually, spring 2014 isn't unrealistic for v2.0 of ESB.

As to color reference, I'm mostly using GOUT and 97SE.

yoda-sama said:

Harmy said:

 Actually, I already had those finished from way back when and then I decided not to undo most of the other recomps, unless they were very obvious (like the ones with the smoke) until I can get my hands on some of the 35mm materials, so there will be quite a few recomped shots left in the Hoth battle but over-all, v2.0 will still be much more despecialized than v1.0.

I knew you were unhappy with v1.0 compared to what you know you can do now, but I hadn't realized you may have left in a significant amount of recomps.  About how much of the recomp shots were left in v1.0?  Also, did you go with the SE Imperial fleet back then, too?  Just wondering, more than anything (v1.0 is still miles/kilometers better than any other option currently out there).

In the end, the most important thing is that it feels like Star Wars again, even if we know the least offensive recomps have to stay in for a while longer.

 Actually, in v1.0, none of the Hoth recomposites were undone. And yes, the fleet was also SE.

Hal 9000 said:

I'm having trouble getting JDownloader to cooperate, but the comparison screenshots you posted look phenomenal. The snowspeeder compositing looks amazing! That's a level of detail and commitment to the original that will make 2.0 an unmistakable upgrade. 

 Actually, I already had those finished from way back when and then I decided not to undo most of the other recomps, unless they were very obvious (like the ones with the smoke) until I can get my hands on some of the 35mm materials, so there will be quite a few recomped shots left in the Hoth battle but over-all, v2.0 will still be much more despecialized than v1.0.

Thanks for the great stories, guys! I never tire of hearing that stuff :-)

BTW, a new workprint of the first hour of ESB v2.0 is out now. More info here.

I'm surprised at the low reaction as well. Maybe there aren't that many people subscribed to this thread any more. I think I'll post about it in the SW thread.

Probably not - I just did a quick pass on the colors there.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I'll look into it.

Oh, absolutely it would - which is what I'm hoping for for v2.5.

OK, the workprint is now up - considering that it's half of the whole film, I can't put the links here but you can PM me for them.

Well, actually, there were quite a few shots in ESB, which were flipped horizontally and therefore the badges were on the wrong side - they fixed this in the 2004 SE, putting the badges on the side they were supposed to be - most of those shots were already put back to how they originally were in v1.0 but this one I missed. And I had to use the body of the officer from 97SE for it, so that's why there is a loss in detail and the whole thing had to be made a bit darker but the camera is moving the whole time, so in movement, it looks fine.

What's worth noting is how often the blacks are not really black in v1.0 and yet, there's less detail in them than in v2.0 - for example in the screenshot preceding the one with the flipped badge.

The v2.0 will be more completely despecialized than v1.0 but I'm holding out for some better sources before I do a v2.5 level despecialization for a v2.5 version - I just want to get a new HQ version out there asap, even if the despecialization isn't quite complete - for example, I decided that for v2.0, I'll only redo the most obvious re-comps, so many of the re-comps in the Hoth battle will stay and as you can see I decided to go back to the SE on the Imperial fleet as well, because the transition to the low-res sources was too jarring.

So, I finished encoding the workprint of the first 65 minutes of ESB v2.0 at the AVCHD bitrate (6500Kbps) with the slower settings - the results are ok for an AVCHD sized file but I tried encoding a small chunk at the bitrate I'll be using for the MKV and it was of course much better.

I'll probably upload the AVCHD-sized (3GB for 65 minutes) workprint tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are some comparison screenshots between the v1.0 AVCHD and this AVCHD encode - the difference is quite staggering sometimes, especially considering that the bitrate is more or less the same for both files and you can clearly see, why I find v1.0 almost embarrassingly bad at this point:

http://uloz.to/xmzy5R6N/esb-1st-half-v1-0-vs-v2-0-rar

(The 1st picture is always v1.0 and the second picture is always the v2.0 workprint.)

EDIT: The workprint is now out. PM me if you want the links.

Yeah, I'm using the BD but I sync it up with the GOUT, so the frame numbers should be the same as v1.0...

Also, the scan was done in 2004 for DVD and it has been repeatedly demonstrated, that it actually doesn't resolve much beyond 720p.

Well, his is pretty new - he bought it this year.  And it did only take like 20 seconds for his system to fully load after the beep but then mine takes under a minute, and the 40 seconds difference isn't worth the money in my book.

Well, I already once said I'm not a big fan of those backs (but that's just my personal taste). But what I'd probably do with the fronts is to try and bring their colors closer together - something like this:

It would need more work but it should give you the idea :-)

You mean my AVS script? I pretty much just use avisynth to put together the pieces, because I always render the lossless movie in several parts, which fit on a BD25, so that I can back them up easily:

Here's the script I used for the ESB worprint:

reel1=AVISource("N:\ESB v2.0 file 1.avi", audio=false)   
reel1
assumefps(24000,1001)      

And that's it.

As to SSD, I actually just bought another 2TB HDD for my system, because I had some trouble having the system on a 3TB HDD and I managed (after quite a fight) to move my system to this new HDD. I really need all the HDD space I can get and I have worked with my friend's PC, who has an SSD and it wasn't all that - yes, his system and programs start faster but the difference didn't seem that huge to me - the longest wait, when I start my system, is before the motherboard beeps and the booting starts, which would be exactly as long with an SSD and I doubt the programs would run much faster once they were loaded because then they're running from RAM and Swap file, which shouldn't be on the SSD and the data I'd be using also shouldn't be on the SSD, so an SSD would probably save me like 5 minutes total every day, which is why I decided to forgo an SSD and just go with more HDD space.

Nah, I looked into it and it was so vastly different from anything I've used before, I decided to pass on it.

Do the HDDs need to be empty for the tests? And how long do they take?

OK, good to know.

And I imagine the 64bit x264 would be fast, since the 32bit only uses about 2GB out of my 16GB of memory.