Mavimao

Dunedain said:

 

Would be great to get a lossless capture of the mono mix from a print. :)

What's the opinion here among our knowledgeable Star Wars fans as to the restored mono soundtrack, how good (close to it's theatrical quality) does it sound compared to the theatrical stereo soundtrack that has been preserved from laserdisks and such?

 

Well considering the sources are European VHS recordings of air broadcasts from the 80s, it's actually pretty good. Belbucus did a wonderful job considering what he had to work with. 

The only other available source I can think of is Puggo's 16mm project. But it suffers from the inevitable pop, hiss and warble of 16mm optical. 

Also know that academy Mono was a really piss poor sound reproduction medium, so what people heard in the theatres back then, wasn't exactly high-fidelity. So like what Catbus said, it's pretty close to what people heard. 

TK-949 said:

Yeah, maybe I overreacted, too. But all Iwanted was a simple "yes" or "no" answer, not a lecture in quality. Or grammar.

And I respect Harmy's work, as well as everyone elses to preserve the movies we love.

If I knew how to do it myself, or had the time to learn it, I wouldn't have asked in the fist place.

The problem I had is that your initial question was so vague - ANH in full HD - that it could have meant anything (Bluray? But that's SE. Harmy, only 720p but the detail is still all there. Project Bluray? It is the highest quality version of the official OUT) There are so many projects and versions, each with their pros and cons, the answer isn't a simple yes or no. If you'd explained earlier what you wanted we could have pinpointed you to something without the hostility. 

So, voila, I'll shut my trap and wish you luck with your project. 

I'm, sorry, I don't, read minds, I'll be, more careful, next time. 

In response to your ever increasingly cryptic needs: the Bluray. That's it. 

Found it! 

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-v21-AVCHD-is-now-out/post/618348/#TopicPost618348

TK-949 said:

Because Harmy's isn't FullHD, it's 720p. I'm looking for 1080p.

Technically it's not 1080p but Harmy pointed out with examples that the BD source is from an older 1080 scan from the early 2000s for the DVDs. Because the scan is old (and pretty lo rez for a film scan) that there is absolutely no loss of detail when you downsize it to 720p. 

I'll try to look for the examples, but Harmy put two photos side by side, the original 1080 frame and a frame downrezzed to 720 and then uprezzed to 1080. There was no difference. 

I would say go ahead and do the best you can now. Call 2.0 as a test file for all of us to view and comment on incase there are things you could improve or things you may have perhaps missed. Then the final public version will be 2.5

Harmy's Despecialized?

That's exactly it. Dolby stereo is backwards compatible with earlier mono systems but since Star Wars was the first film to complete its soundtrack in the then new system, they didn't want to take the chance if there were problems. So the mono mix was created with further tweaks made by George Lucas. 

Btw, whatever happened with this 1st generation VHS tape version?

yoda-sama said:

I'll add to that list of 2.1 nitpicks, I still think the color timing of the background seems too green when Luke is cleaning R2, which you did think was necessary to address later when Luke walked out of the room.  It isn't very consistent, IMHO.

Color timing in the pre digital age was never consistent. Nowadays we can make minute changes in contrast, brightness, curves, shadows, etc.

Back then, you got your shot as best you could in the can and left it at that. If you wanted to make changes you could only plop in some filters in the printer between the negative and the IP, up or down the brightness, perform a bleach by-pass... But that was about it. 

You kids are really spoiled. 

The Griff said:

What's the deal with LPCM 5.1? Does it simply require too much bandwidth/size compared to DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD because its uncompressed?

This. Way too much bandwidth. And if we count the three original 77 mixes and the 85 and 92 home video remixes plus a number of foreign language tracks... It adds up. 

With lossless compression you get a perfect copy of the master track in a smaller file size. 

Woo hoo!!!!

Poita-geist?

Poita-house steak?

pufnstuf said:

SKot said:

pufnstuf said:

As a matter of fact I picked one up a few years ago on the D&M fan forum... I'm not 100% it's the actual fan club tape or perhaps a first generation dub, but the quality is very good.  Thought there were plenty of good copies out there already.  I can MySpleen it if people are interested.

Definitely, I second that!  Somehow that one has escaped decent preservation, and even the best copies I've seen have been lacking.  The community would definitely benefit from a nice transfer of that copy.

I think the same goes for the Bob Hope Christmas Special with the Star Wars spoof...that one was even more scarce at one point, and I still haven't seen a very clear copy to this day.

--SKot

So the version I have on DVD is not a direct dub from the fan club tape... It's an copy of a copy... Not terrible, but the fan club tape (which i pulled from storage this weekend) should prove to be a better source.  I don't have any decent VHS equipment anymore, so we'd need to find someone with professional grade equipment with the means to extract the most from a VHS source.  Any suggestions.

Should we start a separate thread?

If I'm not mistaken, Antcufaalb has a pretty sweet VHS setup. Might want to ask him. 

Hmm... Seems ominous. Have they gone underground??

I'm jizzing in my pants. This forum's wildest dreams are coming true. Just a quick question: what formats can you scan with this machine?

Take all the time you need, Harmy!

The holiday special! That makes a lot of sense. Well here's to seeing...

Just saw the comparison video: wow! I see the clever rotoscoping you did! How did you manage to get the transparency effect back in the cockpit POV shot?

Darth Lucas said:

Thank you all for the opinions.  I'm going to check out Dark Jedi & You_Too's v3.  Seems to be what I'm looking for as the main problem I have with Harmy's Despecialized Editions is color correction.

The color correction in Harmy's depecialized is the original 77 color timing. 

His shirt was probably white in the myriad of video releases that you've seen in the past 20 or so years.

However, the color timing on Harmy's project is based on a non-faded print from 1977, so this is pretty much how people back then saw the film.

Poita! You're awesome! Not to derail the thread or anything, but I've been curious about those 8mm prints you won... (that was you, right??)

Actually, La Guerre des Etoiles is a pretty decent translation. Les Guerres de l'Etoile makes it sound like they're fighting over a single star. 

'Star' in Star Wars is an adjective so the title describes battle AMONG the stars or in outerspace, not battles FOR a star. 

A more authentic translation would be Les Guerres Stellaires. 

But I find that there are one too many "ère" sounds and doesn't quite have the same vocal lyricism of La Guerre des Etoiles. 

Bonjour mes Frenchies!

Just one question: in Harmy's thread, we've derailed the conversation a bit talking about French titles of movies and I put forth the hypothesis that in France, the title Star Wars is used more and more than La Guerre des Etoiles and that today the French title LGDE is used to reference the first film from 77 and Star Wars is used to reference the franchise. Ai-je tort?

I'm an American who's been living in France for a long time (going on 9 years now almost) so I don't have the same cultural background as a French person, so what do you guys think?

Guspaz said:

Quebecer here, you never see it referred to as anything except "La guerre des étoiles". It's definitely not just for the 70mm or 1977 release, its the normal name of the whole franchise. But then you will see "Star Trek"...

Hmmm, interesting! I'm in France and both Star Wars and La Guerre des Etoiles are definitely used. However, I don't really have any French friends who are big fans of the movies, nor hang out at any French Star Wars forums, so my hypothesis was purely conjuncture in nature. 

Star Trek on the other hand is REALLY obscure in France. Most people here might have heard of the name Spock, but before the 2009 reboot, it only had a really tiny following.