Laserschwert

I've got only one problem with the DS-explosion: On my screen I can actually see the wipe from the SE-explosion to the classic one, as the latter is slightly brighter than the SE one. Maybe you could match their brightnesses a bit better?

Here's what I'm talking about (I've brightened it up a bit, but at least on my screen it's even visible without that):

Count me in as soon as the transfer of Jedi is done as well ;)

By the way: a cheaper alternative to thumb-drives might be double-layer DVDs... under a dollar per piece, and one of your transfers fits on 3 discs.

Only MC Spuds for denoising and LimitedSharpenFaster (both after the color correction).

The general workflow was:

1. Rendering lossless versions of the clip with DeSratch and DeSpot (the latter one at 3 different strengths, so that I have 4 clips in the end: Unchanged, Despot at low settings, DeSpot at medium settings, DeSpot at high settings)
2. Color correcting the clips and - depending on the amount of artifacts produced and detail killed - choosing which one to use for a scene (and since even the low settings DeSpot erased a lot of the stars in the scene shown in shots 3 - 5, I've used the unfiltered clip here).
3. Rendering out the color corrected version as lossless video
4. Filtering that output with MC Spuds and LimitedSharpenFaster, plus cropping and scaling it accordingly.

Ultimately, though, I didn't use the medium and strong DeSpot clips at all, since they produced too many artifacts. They are a good source though to manually paint out bigger dirt marks and hairs.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Actually, I was referring to stills #2 and #5, and I still claim that some of the stars have been lost.  There are faint stars that are present in the original and missing from the processed versions.  It not so much the importance of those stars, but that it would be reasonable to assume that other detail has been lost as well, however minor.  That said, your color correction and contrast looks very nice.

One of the things I intend to be very careful about, is how much contrast adjustment I do.  I love the look of the blacks/whites in these samples, but if that's what gave rise to the loss of stars, then I have some serious decisions to make.

You're right about #2 (that one got DeSpotted) but here's a brightened up shot #5:

I was very careful during my color correction to not crush the blacks (or burn the whites, respectively), so I'm pretty sure it's all there (I'd even say that because of the contrast correction the stars are more pronounced now). To me it's always okay to have some grain left in the darks, plus that way even fainter details won't get swallowed. I don't know on what kind of "equipment" everybody is looking at these screenshots, but I've noticed that a lot of people tend to have their screens set way too dark...

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Regarding the stills, remember that they are just stills.  The hard part is getting the moving version to not contain artifacts in the process.  I actually spent quite a bit of time experimenting with limitedsharpenfaster, descratch and despot myself, and while I liked many of the results, I didn't like that they occasionally produced artifacts, or removed some detail, along the way.  Notice, for example, that in stills #2 and #5, the number of stars in the starfield that have been removed.

Although you're wrong about the stills #3 to #5 (I didn't use DeSpot on those shots, as it DID in fact kill most of the stars), you're absolutely right about the moving version being not THAT clean. Of course I've picked the best stills to show the quality that can be achieved with careful filtering.

Still, ultimately there would be a lot of manual masking and painting to remove all artifacts and more of the bigger dirt spots. Also the test now shows the image in letterbox format, which of course looks a bit sharper... doing this anamorphically will cause it to be more blurry in the end. Noise removal might be a bit strong as well, as there's practically no moving film-grain left, and I guess that isn't desirable either. Color-correction though was a breeze... there was no manual masking necessary, just straight forward full-frame corrections (although I didn't use any other transfers as color guides here, and only corrected by eye).

But before anybody regards this one as a replacement of the GOUT you should keep in mind that it's heavily cropped and missing a lot of image information on all edges, so doing a full clean up of this might not even be worth it in the end... after all the charme of the gritty film look might be this transfer's strongest qualities, so some careful color correction and a bit less filtering than what I did might be the way to go.

I've made a little restoration-test with the sample Puggo posted:

http://www.mediafire.com/?djagvlxb5bwgix5

I've used AviSynth with DeScratch (to remove some of the long vertical scratches), DeSpot (for bigger specks of dust and dirt - which ultimately still produced some artifacts, which might be removed in another step of fixing those areas up with the unfiltered video), "MC_Spuds" for grain removal, as well as LimitedSharpenFaster for a little, well, sharpening. Then I color corrected the whole thing (each of the 7 scenes with separate settings) in Adobe After Effects.

Besides painting out any of the artifacts produce by DeSpot, another step could be to use DeSpot at stronger settings to remove bigger dirt and hairs, although this would require manually masking this one, as it produces a lot of artifacts in other areas of the frames (and also removes some stuff which is supposed to stay).

Some screenshots:

Hey, good tip... Trade Gothic looks even closer! I'll try to whip something up.

EDIT: Here it is, and for now the closest match:

Yeah, I know about both Identifont and WhatTheFont, but you can't use the latter one on the blurry LD image. I'll try the forums though.

And as stated, the font is clearly NOT Franklin Gothic... hence the animated GIF. ;)

EDIT:

Funnily enough your alternatives from Identifon mentioned "News Gothic" which I've tried right away:

And with some tinkering (like moving the dots of the "i"s) it matches very well. Thanks! :)

Does anybody know, which font was used for the German titles?

It's clearly not Franklin Gothic...

Reminds me of this:

HERE's an image of the original on Drew Struzan's own website. So, the one above is just a badly scanned and color-"corrected" version (presumable scanned from one of Struzan's artbooks).

EDIT
Here's an equally crappy snapshot I just took from my "The Movie Posters of Drew Struzan" (which is absolute worth picking up):

HeKS said:

do we have much reason to think any significant number of people would know about him being under suspicion in the first place - as distinct from all the other people under suspicion at the time - so that a newspaper announcement about him being cleared would be warranted or make sense?

Well, judging by the scene when the Dean gets Indy out of his class, I'd say that once his students got wind of it, the news spread all across the university, and then beyond that as well...

Or we'll just have it be in the school's paper ;)

I agree that we need one of those short headlines, definitely... first of all, there's not enough space on the table to have the newspaper only folded in half, so I had to quarter it. Second of all, the newspaper isn't even in focus, so the lettering has to be rather big to be visible in the (slightly blurred) background. And third, we only have a couple of seconds to read the thing, so a 3-word-headline should work best. The wedding doesn't need to be mentioned in the headline, I think. Maybe in a subtitle that's barely visible (but works as a nice easter-egg).

I think not everyone in that fictional world knows "Dr. Jones", so having him named as "Local Professor" or "Local Hero" might work best, as it sounds like a headline to get the readers interested.

By the way, which newspaper are they reading over there? In 1957 that is...

I haven't continued yet... do we have a head line?

Looks like one of the many Helvetica-fonts to me...

http://www.linotype.com/catalog/fontsampler/?PHPSESSID=2ae4cfe8a73888fbe99856d4f379d918&id=136875

Boujou for matchmoving and 3dsmax with VRay for modeling and rendering.

Here's the (more or less) "photoreal" newspaper:

Version 1 (full 1080p)

Version 2 (720p with panning and zooming)

The masks are still the same, so the Dean's arm is still going behind the newspaper, and the bible's edges are still a bit rough when it goes in front of the paper. I'll fix those when finalizing the thing with a proper article. Any ideas on that?

Sluggo said:

Will you be making the final footage available to other editors?

Of course... looks like that's probably the main thing I'll be doing, providing the digital edits on shots needed for other fan-edits. My own edit might take a few more years anyway, so I'll try to help out.

HeKS said:

If I had any suggestion it would be to lose the double fold of the newspaper.

 

I've had it folded in half at first, but there wasn't enough empty space on the table to have it that way, without putting it at an angle that makes it hard to read. Maybe Indy didn't make it to page 1 anyway, so his article is only 1/4 page...

Anyway, the next step would be to design the page itself...

topdawg193 said:

Can't decide between your versions. Maybe the third one is a bit too slow? Then again, I suppose you do need time to take in the newspaper. But as it's only a headline/maybe a picture you'd be seeing, would you really need a lot of time?

I'm not sure either... but after all this is probably the simplest and most subtle way to integrate the newspaper... and if we have a short but concise headline, a short glimpse might be enough to "get it".

I've made some tests regarding the newspaper shot in the Dean's office.

Newspaper Version 1 (the pure 1080p-shot with the newspaper inserted)

Newspaper Version 2 (the shot rescaled to 720p with added panning an zooming to frame the paper better)

Newspaper Version 3 (the same as version 2, but with part of the video slowed down to keep the paper in the frame for a longer time)

The newspaper itself is just a dummy... the content has to be changed (obviously), the finished thing would be photorealistic and the masks (to keep stuff "in front" of the newspaper) aren't final... this is just a "quick" test.

Does it work?

topdawg193 said:

But I was thinking that, as it is an office filled with inanimate furniture, pausing over the desk may not seem too unnatural.

The main problem here is that the Dean is always in the frame as well... pausing the camera move would mean pausing him as well, and that's obviously not going to work. I'll look into the shot more closely, maybe I'll find a way.

I think the shot of Dean Stanforth getting the bible out of the drawer at the end would lend itself perfectly for adding a newspaper to the table (it even has an empty spot for it)... although I haven't entirely figured out, how to get closer to the paper, as the camera dollys towards the table and then pans to the bible in his hands. Adding a newspaper to the table via a 3D-matchmove should be quite doable (as I did with the photographs), but making the camera go towards the paper instead of the bible will be tricky. Plus we'd lose the transition from this bible to the one held by the minister (though I can totally live without that).

Just for fun:

jones1899 said:

Oh, it was a PM. He just wanted to know about the format of your photo swap and if you posted it. 

Yeah, he has contacted me now, I've send him new links.

jones1899 said:

Also, infodroid has a couple questions about your Connery photo replacement edit.

Where? Did I miss it in the thread?