Mavimao

Well, 2, 3 and 4 make up a continuous trilogy...

Nice!!!

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Well, there were pan and scan releases before the GOUT.

The telecines used for LD would go straight to what format tape?  UMatic?  1-inch? And already letterboxed?

I'm not an expert but I think it was 1-inch before the arrival of D1/2. If you watch the special features for the Star Trek TNG bluray restoration, you see them handling 1-inch reels of video tape from the first couple of seasons which were the original film to tape transfers. 

But I'm pretty sure transfers switched to D1 or D2 once those became viable options. 

As far as letterboxing, I would say yes. I would think they just had different telecine masters for the LB version and the P&S version. But again, I'm no expert. 

I'm pretty sure that movies weren't "scanned" as we know it today. They were telecined. I could be remembering this wrong (I've only had very limited experience with telecines and they were mostly through correspondence) but these telecine machine were programmable. So you'd go through the film and punch in timecode in the computer and tell it to up the contrast to so much percent or change the color - whatever. Once you've gone through the whole film and your data is set, you'd hit record and do a realtime transfer to video tape.

I would think the same thing would apply to Pan and Scan. You program the machine to pan and scan where and when you'd want it to. 

MaximRecoil said:

WedgeCyan said:

OK... but weren't the widescreen discs for the '04 SE anamorphic? There is literally no reason to have made the GOUT non-anamporphic other than to insult the fans who asked for it.

Yes, there is a reason, and it has already been pointed out. In short, the masters they used were essentially glorified 4:3 DVDs to begin with. To go from a 4:3 DVD source to a 16:9 DVD, you have to upscale the vertical resolution of the picture area. Upscaling the master when authoring a DVD isn't normally done by professionals unless they absolutely have to.

The SE DVDs came from far superior masters (probably 4K scans) rather than 720x480 4:3 D1 tape, so they had way more resolution than they needed to properly make 16:9 DVDs. Unfortunately, these far superior masters were scanned from negatives which had been vandalized by George Lucas and co. in 1997, and then they vandalized the masters even more (additional retcons, bad colors, washed-out lightsabers, way too much grain removal, etc.) in 2004 before using them to author the SE DVDs. These masters obviously couldn't be used to make Star Wars trilogy DVDs, because they were glorified fan edits, rather than the real Star Wars trilogy.

Anyone else who spends any amount of time on TFN may recognize this as the infamous "you're getting what you deserve" mantra.

Only people who don't read so well, given that I haven't said, suggested, nor even hinted at any such thing.

If I owned Lucasfilm, there would be no "GOUT", nor would the underlying abbreviation "OUT" even exist, because there would be no need for it. The work done in '97 would have strictly been a restoration and scanning process. 16:9 DVDs would have been released soon thereafter. When Blu-ray came along there would have been a new release, following a new 4K scan (scanning equipment has improved since '97). Both releases would have been available in boxsets and individual discs. Film grain would have been left intact in both cases.

AntcuFaalb said:

I can just imagine him approaching and hugging his GOUT DVDs like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.

"It's not your fault!"

"It's not your fault!"

"It's not your fault!"

Your imagination is wildly disconnected from reality, or from anything which logically follows from reality. Assigning the fault to a DVD because it doesn't work ideally on a TV it wasn't designed for, is absurd. It is not the DVD's fault, it is not the DVD player's fault, and it is not the TV's fault. The fault obviously lies with the person who is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak.

By the way, I'm using the word "fault" literally; I'm not anthropomorphizing the GOUT. Saying that it is not the DVD's fault is exactly the same thing as saying that the source of the problem (i.e., the fault) is not the DVD.

Similar things happen when people connect old video game consoles to 16:9 digital TVs, and it is equally absurd to blame the video game console for the results being less than ideal.

And it keeps going and going and going....

MaximRecoil said:

CatBus said:

Oh goody. Well, the majority of the TV's still in service worldwide are 4:3 CRT SDTV's, so we can stop even talking about all this crazy newfangled HDTV crap, then.  I can minimize huge shifts in markets and consumer demand with irrelevant statistics, too!

"Too"? No. In order for "too" to apply, I also would have had to have done it. I originally replied to someone who said that 2006 was "well after everyone already adopted 16:9 TVs", which is obviously false, and not only that, but not even close to being correct. I also said, in that same post, that it was beside the point.

Then you came along with some novel, nonstandard interpretation of my standard English-language text, along with a misunderstanding of the word "current", and this bizarre combination resulted in you calling for people to challenge an idea that hadn't been put forth by me or anyone else. In the process you attempted to downplay the number of 4:3 SDTVs in U.S. households in 2006 with the word "some" (when "the vast majority" or simply "most" is far more appropriate), so I clarified the word "some" for you.

What I didn't do is draw any conclusions from any of it (no need for conclusions when the point is correction or clarification of facts, rather than an essay or editorial). The conclusions that you think I have drawn exist only in your imagination, not in my text.

Yeah, because non-anamorphic disks failing to scale decently on the new TV's people were buying in droves isn't objective. At least you didn't ask if I was on the rag. Buh bye, Mr. Objective.

It isn't the DVD's fault if people display it on the wrong type of TV. 4:3 DVDs are designed for 4:3 TVs, obviously. Pixel aspect ratio has nothing whatsoever to do with video quality, just as much of what you've typed has nothing to do with any of my posts.

This thread:

That line of dialogue is clear as day in the 16mm mono mix. One of the several changes I noticed when I synced the audio. So yes, the line is drowned out in the stereo version.

Distribution rights are just that: the right to distribute. They don't "own" the films, they have no say on what to release and in what quality. As it stands, Fox is the only company who can ship the product on shelves, but they don't get a say in WHAT is released.

If we are to get a Star Wars blu ray in the next couple of years, Disney and Fox will have to make a deal. They'd have to figure out who gets how much a percent of each sale. It's not exactly rocket science. The lawyers will be busy but there's a lot of money to be made, and I'm sure they can come to some agreement.

I'm sorry but I really don't think there was any Lowry cleanup until 2004. From everything I've read, the 97 was a mostly photochemical restoration (bar the effects shots, of course) Even the wipes were redone optically.

I haven't seen or read anything that suggests that in 95-97, they ran the whole film through a computer, digitally scrubbed it and then outputted it to a new negative. The SE negative is a mash-up of the original camera negative from 77 and digitally re-comped effects shots.

According to The Secret History of Star Wars: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/savingstarwars.html

"The restoration of Star Wars began in 1995 and took the combined efforts of three companies: Pacific Titles, who handled optical printing, Lucasfilm, who organized the restoration and brought in ILM, and YCM Labs, who were responsible for color timing [...] It would have been far too cost prohibitive to scan and digitally restore the entire film at that time, so only the shots that were going to be enhanced with digital effects ended up in the computer."

CatBus said:

Danfun128 said:

So you are saying that all SE versions, even the 97se, have DVNR in them?

I'm not sure what Lowry did was technically DVNR, but yes, AFAIK it's baked into the film elements. That said, it's possible video releases have a varying amount of ADDITIONAL DVNR/DNR applied to them that is not baked in, so it's hard to say exactly how bad it is in the sources.

Sorry to hear :(

CatBus said:

I don't see much point in preserving the tracks in their current state--they exist for accessibility, and if better accessibility can be achieved by re-recording the voiceover, I'm all for that.  Don't we have a few forum members with silky-smooth radio voices?  Mavimao?

 Aww! You're too nice. 

AntcuFaalb said:

Spaced Ranger said:

AntcuFaalb said:

... unless there's a glitch in the matrix, I should be ready for a release sometime soon.

Cool! (hopefully some raw/processed compared caps?)

The raw will go on Usenet (a.b.sw) and the median-of-three'd DVD will go on MySpleen and Usenet.

The DVD will be the LD. By this I mean: every frame on the LD will be preserved down to the last one before the A->B side-change and the last one at the end of side B. There will be no menu, but the chapters from the LD will be ported over. The only audio option will be the English 1.0 PCM track from the LD. I'm still on-the-fence as to whether or not to AC3ify it or to just include it raw.

I'd like to include subs and/or CC despite not being present on the LD. This is low priority at the moment.

JEDIT: Whoops, I missed the word "caps"! Silly me. Those are coming soon as well.

 Is the audio digital or analogue? If it's the latter, I don't think you'd be missing much by compressing the audio (it's FM so nothing sonically impressive). I feel like in the case of DVD, the video compression should not take a hit at the expense of a needless PCM soundtrack. 

Just so everyone's clear, I'm the one doing the narration (American from Ohio, living in France). I'm not a professional voice-over artist, so do pardon my noobism :P

I'm willing to re-do lines or, if Harmy wishes, having someone else do it. 

Nick66 said:

The mono mix I think would be a must. What is the source of the mono mix on Harmy's versions?

On Star Wars the mono mix was sourced from VHS tapes from over the air broadcasts in Europe and then restored by a member of this board.

On Empire, it was sourced from a 16mm print (Puggo Strikes Back) 

CatBus said:

RobotWalrus said:

Sweet Lord. I had attributed the problem with the Castillian track to either a honest mistake by whoever put together the GOUT edition or just lazy editing, but after reading what you all mention, I'm beginning to think that they are doing it on purpose.

Not to mention the Russian dub mixes PAL and film-speed sources without pitch-correcting them to match. I get the feeling that dubbing is an afterthought in a lot of places, and not just with Star Wars. The only place I've noticed that dubs get a real professional level of attention is in France.  In fact, I personally had a pretty low opinion of dubbing in general until I heard some French audio for some films.

 One of the most impressive French dubs I've experienced is the one for Nightmare Before Christmas. Not only did they translate the songs to reflect the original lyrics, but they did so by also using words that would mimick the mouth expressions of the puppets as to avoid any desyncing between mouth and words.

example:  http://youtu.be/yjPw2pBK39Q

I'm personally in no hurry and the shots will be worth the wait, so I agree - take a breather  

Harmy said:

Yeah, I still haven't seen the movie and am waiting for a decent preservation to watch it.

You're in for a treat! It's definitely non-conventional, but it's a great example of 60s-70s American cinema when directors were attempting to defy cinematic standards, and studios - desperate to keep people coming to cinemas - gave them free reign. Of course, those films didn't really bring people back to the cinemas and the film almost bankrupted American Zoetrope and paved the way for more mainsteam blockbusters. 

It's also great to watch back to back with Star Wars since you can see influences between the two. 

Wasn't that the Spanish track that Catbus put together from different sources? He might have been missing that part in Castillian Spanish and had to splice in frog DNA. Nature found a way!

Matt_Stevens said:

I really feel battles need to picked and chosen carefully. The damn matted in eyebrows are atrocious. For the love of Pete, that's one we can just let slide. It's not a big deal, but becomes a bigger deal with them matted in. It's terribly distracting. 

Certain other oddities about these are kind of perplexing. Why not show R2D2 with his true blue sections during the finale in Episode IV? Reverting to black is kind of silly. That is one issue about the original effects where they were forced to go black for R2 because of blue screen. Showing the true blue would be fine with me. It's not a horrid CGI change or some stupid creature matted in. It's a flaw that has been fixed. I don't object to those at all. 

That being said, I bow doen to the expertise it took to pull these off. 

I'm finally burning all three of these to DVD DL and will show my nieces (ages 10 and 12) each film, one per Saturday... And it is their first time. They have yet to see a single STAR WARS film and know nothing about them. 

Not even who Luke's dad is. So I'm pumped. 

For the record, I for one would like Star Wars 2.5 as a 50GB Blu-Ray. Or even a 25GB Blu-Ray. Either would be a huge improvement of heavily compressed 720p (which still looks fantastic, so don't get me wrong). 

Last thing... Why not leave PCM as is? I just don't buy into compressing it down. 16 bit LPCM cannot be beatand should be left completely alone.

 I don't speak for Harmy, but it's been discussed to hell and back what his despecialized versions are: re-creating the original theatrical versions, warts and all.

Because we don't have these versions that many people grew up on and were products of their time, Harmy is painstakingly trying to put them back together. If he were to let slide any "fixes" then it just becomes a slippery slope of each individual's preferences. If they bother you (or anyone else), you (or anyone else) are completely entitled to making your own version with your own personal adjustments. I'm sorry, but asking Harmy to let SE changes remain is like asking Adywan to make his Revisited versions look more like the original.

I agree that the matted eyebrows stick out a bit in version 1.0, but 2.0 looks like it's going to correct that, along with higher bit-rate video and audio. The end product should be a 25gig bluray (the MKV of ANH 2.5 and ESB 2.0 are already compressed to this target medium)

Also, the majority of the audio in the new 2.0 despecialized are losslessly compressed, so there is absolutely NOTHING lost sonically in the conversion.

AntcuFaalb: I'm looking forward to your project and can't wait to see any screenshots you may show us. I have the old DVD-5 laserdisc transfer done by some-guy-on-this-board-I-can't-remember-the-name but it's definitely lacking in quality. 

I honestly don't remember the 1st time I ever watched it. It always just seemed to exist in my life. I was only one when ROTJ came out in theaters so I definitely missed the initial run and I grew up watching it on TV in pan and scan. 

For all the flack the 97 edition gets now, it was really eye opening seeing it for the 1st time in widescreen in a large theater. So much detail you never noticed before. 

It's DV, not DVD. 

Ion cannons were used on certain ships in the Roque Squadron games. They could momentarily disable certain things like laser cannons. in retrospect, they were actually pretty crappy weapons because it was easier to just hit whatever with actual lasers and freakin blow it up. 

Zer0Squared said:

yoda-sama said:

Since you mention it, there were a couple of lines that struck me a little funny, I'll try to find some time to go through and pick them out.

Same here.  I helped do the English subs for it and had to listen a couple of times at some words that you kind of rushed over quickly, but when I wasn't paying attention to the subs, it sounded great. :)

One of the things that kind of bothered me is having an apostrophe 'S' after the name John Williams.  After researching it, I saw that it could be written and pronounced either way, but the majority showed that it should just be written as Williams'   ...and pronounced just as his name sounds.

Also, there are small areas where there is a 'sucking in' sound when you breathe in that can probably be muted in the recording to help smooth things out.  An example being at 5:45 between the words 'method' and 'used'.

At 6:08, when you pronounce 'aliasing', it should be with more of an 'S' sound instead of a 'Z' sound, with the emphasize just on the first syllable.

Otherwise, wow - great job!!  Very smooth voice!

 Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, just make a list of what's wrong and I can re-record them. I'll jot down what you've written here.