Jonno

Great work ChainsawAsh - particularly the Star Wars cover! Retro rules...

Damn. I found (in the aforementioned hoard) a tape promisingly labelled 'Star Wars', which turned out to be nothing of the sort (though I expect Star Wars was on that tape at SOME time in the past!)

The other tape I grabbed was Empire, which was accurately labelled but the recording dates from the early 90s - nothing particularly nostalgic about that! The search continues...

Yep, that's the fella. Lovely work.

There have been trailer contests on this site before, actually (can't lay my hands on the thread right now). Another one might be fun, if there's enough interest?

I guess the problem with making Star Wars trailers is that we're all so over-familiar with the material, so it's tricky to keep it looking fresh.

JD's RotJ trailer was a very nice example (it's on the Returning to Jedi disc - I think it won the last competition?)

My boss is currently storing boxes and boxes of VHS tapes at our office while his house is undergoing some improvements. He reckons he's been recording stuff since the early 80s, but can't remember what in very much detail! I'll have a peek when he's not around...

I hope something comes up here, cos I'd love to see that again too.

This is the best scan of the TV Times cover I can find right now, any advances? :-)

Looking forward to this, and hoping the Thunderball and Planet of the Apes projects also come to fruition before too long!

That's good to hear, sir.

I watched BE again only the other day - no matter how many times I watch it, there's always something or other that takes me by surprise. I'm eager to see if SWB can accomplish the same!

Could make a little more of the hands holding the sabre too, i.e. a short green one (oof) held by Yoda claws...

Of course, no reason why that design couldn't be extended to the others (since we're trading in 'what ifs' anyway) - I might have a look at that some time.

Though it would be nice to have some discs to put in them - if anyone's successfully run the G-Force script on ESB or ROTJ, please let me know! :-)

Anyway, here's the full Star Wars cover:

http://rapidshare.com/files/206759638/PWNAGE_VHS_full.jpg.html (freebie account, so limited downloads).

If you notice an issue with the black levels, I know... Photoshop and I are not on good terms at the moment! Suffice it to say, your printer won't know the difference...

Bingowings: Yes, I've got those tapes from the Executor set somewhere too. The simple lightsaber designs were certainly nicer than the new 'paintings' on the individual versions (I guess it was around this time that LFL decided they needed to reinvent the wheel for every goddamn release!)

No idea if that set is worth anything, though as an aside the documentaries - MOSW, SPFX, CC and FSTJ - look far better on those PAL tapes than anywhere else I've seen them...

Ziz: Unfortunately the other UK rental tapes were a lot less distinctive:





I don't even have these tapes any more, though I doubt they're rare if anyone was inclined to rework them...

I love the retro approach to custom covers (particularly considering how bloody awful the official design ethic has become), so I was all set to use MoveAlong's design for my Pwnage disc.

However, for a few pennies I laid my hands on an original UK rental VHS - a tape with particular nostalgia value to me - so I thought I'd have a crack at reworking its cover for DVD:

Of course, it should be used with a white amaray for the full effect:

I can make this available - and indeed the original scan - if there's any interest.

Hi Ben

Welcome to OT! There’s really no rule to distribution here, and it’s very much particular to individual projects – your best starting point is to look up the thread on the work you’re interested in, and see what methods are discussed.

In the case of bigger projects, like Jambe Davdar’s or Adywan’s Star Wars releases, there are usually healthy torrents available for quite some time (Myspleen and Demonoid are favourite trackers around here).
More ‘classic’ Star Wars projects are best found via newsgroups (alt.binaries.starwars is the best source by far).

Beyond that, your best bet is simply to ask someone to send you a disc! There’s no harm in posting a message in the relevant thread and asking for some kind soul to volunteer a copy, or otherwise directly approaching someone who you know has it. In either case, you’ll want to use the private message function at some point, so make sure that’s switched on.

Most folks on here are good guys, so if you’re nice about it (and you clearly will be) you should have no trouble tracking down the stuff you want. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to have something to trade, but I’m sure your music discs will come in handy there…

Hope that clears things up a bit! Happy hunting…

Jon

Sounds like Moire (interference created by the print dot pattern). If there's an anti-Moire / Descreen option in your scanner software, that should help considerably...

What resampling are you referring to?

The cropping and resizing, chiefly, though its image stabilising may also prove useful.

The thing is, I don't know AviSynth/VirtualDub all that well (G-Force's GOUT corrector has been my first real experience with that) and for all I know, its resampling math is as good as anyone else's, but AE's always been highly regarded for this sort of thing.

Maybe something to try after the official version gets done - you seem to have everything nicely in hand so far!

Mmm, fair enough... it's just that if Puggo thinks that the flicker and distortion at the edges are a serious problem, we should probably listen to him.

Any chance of a brief full-motion sample of this new transfer at some point? I have a feeling that After Effects might offer the best toolkit for the manipulations required, particularly in terms of resampling quality (though I'm very prepared to be corrected here!)

Well, here's a quick sample of a feathered mask. It's 5 pixels around the edge, which covers the worst of the various distortion while preserving most of the picture information.

No idea what this will look like in motion, of course - I can imagine that the softness would be fairly distracting on smaller screens (if the image isn't filling your field of vision).

The idea of cropping off pixels altogether is troubling, though - particularly considering how much the image has already been trimmed on this print. Having said that, have you checked to see if the re-framing is uniform throughout the film?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Although the film is full of noise, grain, and scratches, it is very watchable on my 58" screen, in anamorphic widescreen.  My first impressions are that it is considerably more enjoyable to watch on a large screen than the GOUT, despite the myriads of grain and blemishes..

That's great to hear. I'm a big fan of the original Puggo edition, and it sounds as if this is going to be a whole new level of retro splendid!

On the question of cropping, I wonder if this might not be the best approach:

(d) leave it and crop with a slightly curved border.  I find this idea intriguing, and wonder what folks would think about it.  I'm not entirely sure yet how I'd do it, but it seems like it should in theory be an easy solution.  I could also pursue some sort of hybrid approach, like a feathered border.

 

Does Vegas allow you to create a gradiented (graded? gradaded...?) mask?

I think a slightly 'windowboxed' effect, with a soft vignetted edge around all four sides could be very effective method in masking those distortions, with the extra benefit of evoking that lovely 'projected' look.

I don't know Vegas very well at all, but we do have it running on some edit suites where I work, so I could have a poke around the masking options and get an idea of what's possible...

*ahem*

Ady sent me a PAL DVD-9 for PIFing way back when, which I offered copies of right here in this thread, but the response was hardly overwhelming...

So here it is again, one more time - I'll send three copies out to the first three folks to PM me. UKers would be preferred to save on postage!

Get em while they're hot...

Yes, there are several awful transfers of this film on the market - that's the problem with PD stuff - but MGM's transfer (which is on this release) is as good as this film is ever likely to look. I'd urge you to check that one out before spending any time on restoring the inferior releases.

BTW, fun as TLMoE is, it certainly is not better than the original novel (whose subtleties have eluded every adaptation to date).

Heck, it's not even as good as The Omega Man... ;-)

MCBarkingSpoon said:

I love Adywans fanedits and others as well, just some films are good enough to be left alone.

I'd argue that KotCS is bad enough to be left alone - it's so intrinsically weak that no amount of re-editing is likely to save it.

But that's probably not the sort of support you're hoping for.