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Had a long, long gushing post about WP31 (sounds like a droid!), but everyone has already said all that stuff. 

My issue with the starfield is that it scintillates and shows some gate weave up until the pan down finises, then suddenly it's rock steady.  If you were to look away when it reaches that last frame of motion, you'd never notice, but it's a little distracting watching the whole shot through. 

In the fly-over, as the ass-end of Devastator passes overhead, the ISD motion gets a little stuttery, similar to the pan across of the escape pod falling to Tatooine (yeah, I see it too).  Was the destroyer comped separately into a BG plate you did of the cleaned up stars and planet matte, Harmy?  wondering if there was some time stretch there to match which might explain it.  If so maybe another algorithm for the stretch or try a light motion blur on the ISD element?

Oh, and I'd be another vote for using the film lead as a menu transition to the main movie - that made me giddy it was so cool.  How about vintage trailers ahead of the feature, or the ESB theatrical teaser as well :)

Harmy said:

I'm not quite encoding yet. But I know one thing for sure - I'll be exporting everything straight from Premiere, so I'll need advice on what settings to use there.

Here's a new little teaser :-)

BTW, 005, I couldn't find this in your comparisons. If you wanted to add it, I checked and it's an '04 change.

WTF?!  I knew there was something off about that shot since the SE.  Yeah, yeah, the green flame, but wtf has happened to the flame on vaders wing?!  It went low contrast dynamically, but maximum contrast mag/green!  I mean, you would have to be actively trying to screw that up to get that result.  Again, I just have to shake my head when I think that a team at ILM, then Lucas himself sat there and said "Yep.  Looks good, lock it!" to this stuff.

Just looked at the promo...Tatooine shot is looking good, but it was never a major problem in the SE.  The burn though; I always thought that was introduced sometime after the thatrical run, when they were prepping transfers for home video.  No kidding, it was always there?

Okay, I'll get this out of the way now so no one has to later.

<<Ahem>>

Can you share those frames, Harmy?  I can't believe you're hoarding all of this reference material for yourself.  What happened to community?!  WAH!  My sense of entitlement.

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

Any chance those are 4k scans BTW?

Thanks, Harmy!  Incidentally, re-reading my post this morning it reads a little...curt.  Totally  not my intended tone, I was just trying to jot some stuff down as I was watching....and falling asleep :)

On the animated flashes, I was starting to think that perhaps the digital recomp had made them sharper than they would have originally appeared projected, so that makes sense.  And if the lasers were taken from the GOUT, then maybe that last frame of green #1 may just never have had a strong glow.

I always liked Mike's pass at the colours of the matte paintings he posted when he first started Legacy years ago, I think he pretty much nailed it.

Your starfields by the way...wow.  I'm sure much has been said on the topic, but so much of what sucks you into the film is the visual impact of that very first shot, and it's NEVER looked right since the scan for the SEs in 1997.  I had so much hope that, since ILM fixed a blaster shot no one ever noticed for the BDs, that they had finally, FINALLY put this shot back together the way it was supposed to look.  Seeing the same mess a minute or so into the film was all the proof I needed that the BD release would be half-assed.  Yeah, this is what I remember '77 looking like to my impressionable young eyes.  I no longer have to wince when the movie starts.  If you had accomplished nothing else with your edits, thank you for making the opening of this movie as visually powerful as it was again.

The wipe...aha...because I was looking at it thinking "okay, here is where we're cutting to different elements, right on this line (where 3P0 is desaturated green).  It's a little clumsy, but maybe the best that could be done with what was available.".  So, exactly what I'm seeing, just not yours, and pretty much par for the course from the SE then - a half-baked attempt to deal with the fringe transparency of the wipe to the original element, and insertion of a shot for which there was no reason to change

I wonder if the bright green thing is a specular highlight off of the costume that just got badly affected by the creation of the new wipe.  I'll pop in my Cowclops and take a peek.

The ronto replacement - Oh, I know it's looked worse.  I still have OCPs versions around somewhere.  That's what I was getting at, my guess is there just aren't any elements available in better shape.

Anyways, the fact that all of the stuff I mentioned is so incredibly nit-picky should say something about just how good your editorial and compositing work looks even on the WP.  Gonna start grabbing wp2, and cannot WAIT for ANH final release.  What are the odds you're going to feel up to ESB and RotJ after this massive effort?  I imagine you're going to need a loooooong break :)

yeah, I'm running it off of my media streamer, so shouldn't be an issue.  I think it may be due to dl'ing the first 4 parts from the CZ site, and the other two from RS links.  It doesn't occur in the later part of the video where the RS files would be representin'. 

Think I'm misremembering the sources I used - possibly the DVD which had more detailed edges on the flashes and other animated effects.  Since you seem to have deliberately gone for more for amorphous shapes, did you have some reference for these?

Hey, Harmy, thanks for hooking me to up with the last two pieces of wp1!  Trying to go through it now in pieces as it's got some weird video stuttering.  Not sure why this is as I'm playing it off the HDD of my Aios which handles BD ISOs fine.

Anyhoo, a couple of thoughts about the opening flyover shot on a properly calibrated 60".  Having hand roto'd a fix for this shot it's always bugged me how poorly the HD transfer opens.  While I'm trying to stay away from colour talk, it seems that the T4 reds/yellows as well as the planet matte painting reds/yellows are desturated significantly.  The maroon markings on the ship are almost grey, the engines while brighter, lack some saturation as well.  Same for the matte painting - warm tones seem a little desaturated.  I know you don't want to hear about subjective colour opinions, but it sticks out to me compared to the terrific new lasers.  If you still have the render passes for the lasers it might be worth it to try boosting the warm part of the palette for that shot.

Regarding the lasers and flashes, the first green laser looks fine until it vanishes and reappears a frame later about to contact the T4 (the missing frame is in the original, so that's not my concern).  On that one frame where it reappears it's again dull and totally desaturated grey, just looks like that one frame got missed.

About the flashes, more a question than anything else.  Again, having done a re-roto of my own I remember that Moth3rs PAL disc, which I was referencing, has more detailed edges of the animated flashes than what's on the new transfer and in DE2.  What was the source for those?  I also noticed it in the training scene stills you posted - the detail on the animated flashes have less precise edges than what's on the DVD and BD.  Is that something you've seen a reference to?

Later on, the wipe from lifting 3P0 to Ben's house seems to have a weird grey-green artefact right around 3P0's tummy, and a bright green....something between Luke and 3P0 when the wipe is about halfway finished.

First shot flying into Mos Eisley, have you used an HD still for the background?  It looks like there's static grain on the shot which is why I'm guessing that.  Possibly tie it together with the FG stuff with a bit of film grain applied if so?

The gang being stopped by troops in Mos Eisley - the (presumably) GOUT replacement patch for the left side of the screen does a distracting little geometry wiggle early in the sequence.  Not sure if there's anything that can be done with what exists at this point though.

Greedo shooting - no issue, just....wow, I literally cannot see a seam in this shot.  It blends together flawlessly.  Just...wow.

ANyways, off to bed!

Been a loooong time since I posted, but I've been following v2 with intense interst and't can't wait for release!  One question - I've been grabbing the pieces of WP1 and have 4, however when I try to unrar it says there should be a 5.  Doesn't seem to be a part 5 on ulozto though.  Anyone able to point me to the file?

Thought that has been running through MY mind on the topic - what if someone were to simply generate histograms from Adywan's CC'd HD broadcasts and then applied the histograms to the extracted BD files?  Much like the original ideas was with Paul and correcting the DVDs based on the GOUT.  It seems like that would be a better place to start than trying to find a global correction, no?  Only question I would have is of a technical nature - can you demux, CC, and recode without so much loss of data and compression that it ends up being better than the original CC'd HD broadcasts?

Perhaps you should have said "nnnooo.....NNOOOOOO!!!!!!!!"   This just gets better and better.  I've now cancelled my pre-order, as the presentation is a joke.

Did you guys happen to hear about Vaders' two new "NOOOOOOOOooooo!"s in Jedi :)  Enjoy!

No, and no amount of nerd rage is going to make this a David and Gloiath story as the media and some blinkered fanboys would love to see this.  Ainsworth is a vacu-former, who made landscape pond liners.  He was hired to vacuform the TK lids from the sculpture Liz Moore created (this came to light when Brian Muir came out with some info on the RPF boards after the first ruling).  Ainsworth WAITED until she had DIED to try and claim that he alone sculpted the helmet.  He has further claimed over the last few years that he designed around 200(!) characters in ANH; that LFL just told him to make whatever, and they threw it into the film.  He claims that all he was given was a copy of 2" sketch of the whole character, but "that was enough for me(sic)."  The art leads on the film do not recall ever having spoken to him.  He was a tech responsible for reproducing the helmet en masse, not an artist or designer. 

The judge who ruled on the case did not decide for Ainsworth.  Rather, he said Ainsworth's story kept changing, was faintly absurd and overall not credible.  However under UK law the judge ruled that the design fell under industrial design (which carries a 15 year max copyright) and not a work of art. The ruling was not that Ainsworth was the creator or owner, but that the copyright had expired, and anyone could produce and sell within the UK. LFL has won the right to pursue for damages on product sold in the US from the Uk court, and we'll see if they persue that option. 

Ainsworth has been utterly unable to demonstrate that he can convincingly sculpt anything, producing absurdly clumsy sculpts in an attempt to give his case some credibility.  It has FURTHER been pretty clearly shown that what he has, which he is passing off as his original ANH molds, is a recast of pieces of a RotJ suit, and a recast of an inaccurate fan-made helmet.  His molds are so far from ANH screen accurate, let alone original, that when new details came to light very recently about the teardrop indents, he frantically requested pictures from people so he could ADD THOSE DETAILS TO HIS SUPPOSEDLY ORIGINAL MOLDS. 

There's more, much more, but understand that this guy is a lying sack of crap, and a psychopath, willing to say and do anything, including taking credit from an artist who cannot respond, and above all of THAT who does not even have any better pieces than your average ebay seller, but charges vastly more.  No matter what your feelings about LFL they are CLEARLY in the right in this case, not Ainsworth who is a common recaster trying to pass off his crap as something it demonstrateably cannot be, and not some heroic artist taking on "the man".

Hmmmm...wellllll...that's alot of talking out of your ass, isn't it, Adywan?  Unless you've managed to eke something other than "maybe we'll get a release on BR inn 2011" from Sansweet's quote.  There's no reason to think the things haven't been screwed with more - anybody remember the report out of an ILM source a couple of years ago that said there was some work being done on the battle of Hoth?   BS perhaps, but the same kind of BS that said McDiarmid was being inserted into ESB a few years ago.

  BTW, just introduced my 5 year old to ESB using your CC version last night - tough call between that and a processed GOUT I did with trailers, simply becuase of the goddamned crushed blacks in the HD version, good god those are distracting!!!!!!!  While I wish it was free of all the SE distractions, it was a HELL of a lot better than that cyan piece of crap that was dumped to DVD.  Thanks, dude, and keep up the nice work!

Also, please consider the fact that for proper film scanning, the LAST thing you want to use is a flatbed - any diffusion between the film and the CCD or CMOS, such as, say, a plane of glass, will reduce the quality of the resulting scan.  I used to run into this pretty regularly when working with 35mm negs vs. medium format negs; the 35mm stuff was done on a Nikon film scanner (no glass), but the medium format stuff had to be done on (a very nice I'll admit) Canon flatbed.  No comparison at all.

The issue with the GOUT isn't just the stabilization.  There's also been a hell of alot of damage done by the NR smearing and odd interlacing.  No amount of processing is going to fix that stuff (I've done all three movies through the 4.02 script, and, while a great improvent, you can't create detail where none exists).

Er....at the risk of going against the overwhelming tide of everyone on this site getting their rocks off with the GL hate, but, you all DO realize that the guy neither directed, lensed, edited, scored, nor ran things at Presidio during post, right?  Not that KotCS is by any means perfect, nor am I a huge fan of how the prequels turned out, but for christ sake, this turning him into some ogre who abducted Indiana Jones is getting old, really, REALLY old now, can we please move on from South Park already?

Pssst..Giganews has a free trial large enough to grab a few of the harder to find items.  It's WAY faster than torrents (for example, I grabbed both ANH HD and ESB HD today, and am plowing through some other stuff I wanted to get a hold of too), and ends up being more economical if your ISP caps transfer amounts, as you're only recieving, not sending to other peers.  Just thought I'd mention it from one who till recently was afraid of bothering with Newz.

You're absolutely positive the burn was 100% verified, Boba Fett's Wife?  If you didn't, try it with imageburn, as it seems to have the strictest verification (moreso than Nero).  I grabbed a copy of RotS 1080p which had various sync issues until I reburned and got a no-error run through Imageburn.  I would have thought the Sony would be at least as solid as my Samsung 1500.

Sweet!  Please keep 'em coming!  Can't wait for AotC!  Quick question, Ady - Any chance you'd be willing to post an HD version of your re-rotoed ANH opening shot?  What I initially did was down-res the HD version and append the opening shot of ANH:R onto it to get rid of those awful, dull, streaky, decaying remains of laser bolts, then mixed in your ANH:R audio for the sequence when I discovered a few extra laser bolts; would be REALLLLLLY nice to have the same thing on the HD :) 

The long encode times are why I went with an uncompressed version of the films first, THEN encoded that.  Too many little things that were occassionally going wrong or I'd forget when trying to do the whole thing in one go.  If you've got the space, I'd highly recommend doing it this way, as it also lets you play around with the MPEG encode without having to re-render the script.  It ALSO would allow someone to render a nice XVID or h264 of the films as well...damn, I wish now I'd saved my uncompressed files...

Ah well, no worries, just another minor mystery :)  Jedi looks pretty damn good, though!  Thanks again for all your work on this script - I know which version of the films I'm going to instroduce to my four-year old!

"just recently it was suggested that when Luke approaches Bespin that it should be later in the day because the sun is setting shortly after..."

Hmmm...I'd urge to you rethink it again, Ady.  Even though logically it works, emotionally and metaphorically, the sun doesn't really start going down until absolutely everything has fallen apart for our heroes.  Here, Luke is arriving to save his friends, and we don't yet know how badly that's going to go south.  The more blue, optimistic, well-lit environments support that emotionally - the young hero is here to save the day.  When it's getting to be clear that he's totally overmatched, and the other band of heroes is desperately just trying to escape from Cloud City with their lives, and then shortly after we find that one of them is simply not going to make it out, we start getting that terrific melancholy lighting, and the metaphocial sun setting on our heroes.  I think you risk shifting the mood too early if you start sunset at Luke's arrival.  Anyways, just a thought...

g-force, I'm running Jedi through v4 now - I think you might have to add a line in the subtitle section to deal specifically with Empire.  If you remember a while back when I ran ESB through v4 there was always an error; RotJ and ANH do not return an error, and that seems to be the only section that actually references the episode number, and coincidentally, the line only has specific instructions for a value of episode 4 or 6:

########## subtitle stage
episode==4 ? ANH(last,PAL) : episode==6 ? ROTJ(last,PAL) : Nop()

dark_jedi, do you get an error on Empire?  NO biggie, but what do you think?

Anyone suggest a decent way of doing the 3:2 pulldown?  I've been chugging along fine with ESB GOUT and a number of other projects in CCE and HC, but for some reason when it comes to ANH GOUT the mpeg always ends up terribly jerky, even though the uncompressed avi is fine.  Turning off pulldown from a run through HC fixed it, but obviously it'll have to be done at some point to be DVD compliant.

These are sounding really interesting.  Without violating the rules, any hints for possible alternative distribution of these, apart from that Rapidshare seach thingy?  I'm a little hesitant after the post about the amount of crap that signing up meant installing, but would love to get my hands on them.

I did finally loose the streaks, but I'm not sure what did it.  I'm leaning toward replacing the DLL which goes into a system folder (I can't recall, but I think it's part of the FFT package?).  As I mentioned above, I downgraded AVISYNTH, re-upgraded without any success.  I went back and completely wiped out my plugins and re-downloaded all of them from the links G-Force put in this thread, and something there solved it.  I've re-rendered the lagarith version, but have been busy doing a quick downconvert of Adywan's corrected ESB to DVD, and haven't done the mpeg encode yet to the v4 ESB.  Good luck!

Ady, another PM.