Max_Rebo

I think people are missing my initial point, and I think that’s my fault because I didn’t really know what it was.

I’m not interested in a technobabble explanation for how communications work, or even ways to reconcile what happens in Rogue One with what happened in the OT. I think the essential point is that the ease of access the rebels had to long distance real-time communications felt instinctively un-star warsy to me. It doesn’t automatically make Rogue One a bad film, and is actually quite fitting for the ‘War Movie’ vibe they were trying to achieve.

I just found it interesting that something so simple instantly struck me as odd, and that’s what led me to thinking more about how things were represented in the OT, and the more I think about it the more I think it’s because of an underlying subtlety of the OT. So a better question to pose would be:

‘In the OT does the Empire restrict access to and/or routinely monitor long distance communications?’

This would be quite in keeping with the totalitarian regimes that the Empire is modelled on, controlling the flow of information and restricting who can talk to who is a really good way of preventing like minded people from forming an effective resistance. It is never out-right stated that this is the case, but it’s obviously something that I had picked up on and I thought it interesting enough to discuss.

Edit: Fixed typo Rouge to Rogue.

stealthboy said:

I don’t care!

Seriously, this is the kind of shit that takes the fun out of these movies for me. Let’s not get all Star Trek and have to explain every damn thing. It’s space fantasy. Let it go…

It’s fine that you don’t care, I don’t care all that much just thought it was interesting enough to talk about and maybe I picked the wrong title, I’m not looking for an explanation, I know it’s fantasy not science fiction.

It’s just something in Rouge One that seemed inconsistent with the OT, like the hyper-drive in Force Awakens being effectively instantaneous, just seems like the people making these films don’t quite understand the foundations they’re building upon.

flametitan said:

So, something more concrete as to what was added to the final product rather than removed/changed, that scene was definitely part of the reshoots: http://collider.com/rogue-one-darth-vader-scene/

Speculation:

Given that the Vader scene at the end was part of the reshoots, maybe there was an earlier version of the ending which didn’t cause continuity problems with ANH i.e “Where are those transmissions you intercepted?”, “We intercepted no transmissions. This is a consular ship. We’re on a diplomatic mission.”,“Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies”. Although this is all kind of true of Rogue One, the way the Captain and Leia try to pretend they are on a diplomatic mission when Vader just personally chased them out of a docking bay doesn’t really work, and why would they go directly from the battle to Tatooine. “My mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed”, well why did you try and do it with a Star destroyer in hot pursuit?

Maybe there was once a version where Leia really was on her mission to pick up Obi-wan, and either the Rebel Fleet relayed the plans to her, or the spies on the ground sent the plans directly to them rather than to the fleet, this may account for the re-positioning of the communication dish, the reason for which wasn’t really explained in the film.

Rogue One had a few scenes with radio operators talking in real-time with ships in other systems, which seemed a bit non Star Wars to me.

I can’t think of any examples from the OT of communications between systems other than the Emperor’s hologram call to Vader in ESB (and there are similar long distance hologram communications in the PT). Maybe there are some implied off-screen?

If ships were equipped with long distance communicators there are many times it would have been useful, Han could have called ahead to Bespin, Luke could have called The Falcon from Degobah to see if his vision was true, The Rebel fleet could have waited safely until the Endor strike team called to say the shield is down, Qui-Gon could have called the council/senate as soon as they had cleared the communications blackout on Naboo. Having Long distance communications really negates the need for a lot of travelling.

I have always assumed the Empire had full control of the communications network so the Rebels couldn’t use it, I guess you could say that the rebels were just unwilling to use it openly for fear of interception/detection, but this is not the case in Rogue One.

Not sure what I’m trying to get at but Star Wars is effectively a Fantasy/Adventure setting and travelling from place to place is integral to that, having the ability to make phone calls rather than go on adventurous quests just breaks that feel a bit.

SilverWook said:

Max_Rebo said:
The falcon leaves Jakku and is immediately picked up by Solo, so either he was in the area or he was somehow able to detect it and instantly arrive via hyperspace, he said it was easy to track, but tracking ships from a long distance isn’t really a thing that can be done in the Star Wars universe (I can’t think of other examples from the films), but maybe he had previously installed a homing beacon.

A homing beacon was mentioned. And the bad guys on the Death Star did track the Falcon to the secret rebel base on Yavin, if you remember.

I don’t remember a homing beacon being mentioned, must have missed it, but it was still damn quick from the falcon entering space to Solo arriving, even if the beacon activated when the ship first powered up.

The falcon was tracked to Yavin because of a homing beacon, without that it would not have been possible, which was my point.

ZkinandBonez said:

Max_Rebo said:
Why did Captain Phasma have authority to drop the shields for the whole planet, and why did nobody notice that it had happened?

Well, it wasn’t the entire planet. Just the oscillator thingy that was a weak spot. They essentially removed the shield covering the Starkiller equivalent of the exhaust port in ANH.

I thought there was a graphic showing the shield going down around the whole planet, but maybe it was just the oscillator, that’s wouldn’t be as bad.

For me Force Awakens was initially OK, but the more I think about it the worse it gets.

The new characters:

Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo, BB8, were all good. I have very few complaints about any of them. Most of the minor characters were OK, except Snoke was a bit pointless and looked bad.

The returning characters:

Han was good, Leia passable, Chewie acted like chewie (but didn’t quite look like chewie, much better than the ROTS costume, but still wrong).

Was initially annoyed by Luke’s complete absence but I can see why they did it.

C-3PO - There was something really off about the delivery of all the lines, seemed more like a poor impersonation than the original character, really bugged me that he addressed Han as “Han Solo” rather than Captain Solo or General Solo. Also there was something off about the costume, it seemed less shiny, but that may have been for practical reasons to avoid camera reflections etc.

The nonsense plot:

Luke goes to find an old jedi temple and leaves a map to his location, when does he do this? before he leaves? or he leaves, finds the temple then makes the map and gives a bit to Max von Sydow, then goes back to the temple? and the rest of the map was somehow in the Imperial archives…

What did he tell Max von Sydow to do with the map? “here’s a secret map, just give it to the first person who comes asking for it”, what if Sydow had died and no one ever found the map would Luke have just stayed on the island till he died?

One of my biggest problems is several populated worlds are destroyed, Leia feels it through the force, so you’ve got to assume Luke felt it, yet he does nothing, just stays on his island waiting for someone to solve his map puzzle. I would hope that might bring him to his senses and make him take action, but maybe he was too far away to feel it through the force?

The starkiller base exhausted the sun it was orbiting in two charges, what was the plan after that? can they move the whole planet to orbit a new sun? or dismantle the whole operation and rebuild it on a new planet? or was the plan to only ever fire two shots, one at the Republic capital, one at the resistance base? That’s a reasonable plan, but someone probably should have said that in the film.

The falcon leaves Jakku and is immediately picked up by Solo, so either he was in the area or he was somehow able to detect it and instantly arrive via hyperspace, he said it was easy to track, but tracking ships from a long distance isn’t really a thing that can be done in the Star Wars universe (I can’t think of other examples from the films), but maybe he had previously installed a homing beacon.

What happened to the poison gas? I may have missed it but I don’t remember anyone re-fixing the poison gas leak.

Hyperdrive now seems to be instantaneous to get anywhere, or maybe they just didn’t travel very far, there were no travelling scenes, just felt wrong. But it’s hard to know how far they travelled as we are never told where Jakku is in relation to anything else.

The gun on the falcon jams in position and Finn doesn’t just climb the ladder to use the other one? Not a massive problem but could have made for a fun scene, and they could have saved the trick with the jammed gun for later in the film. Also why didn’t he go to the upper gun and start shooting when the ship was still on the ground?

Why did Captain Phasma have authority to drop the shields for the whole planet, and why did nobody notice that it had happened?

So many questions, it just feels like they rushed into making this film without thinking through the script, another draft or two could probably have fixed a lot of problems.

CapableMetal said:

Ok, here are the 'standardised' reel change numbers from the previous posts

 

ANH (originally posted by Darth Mallwalker):

0 = first frame

711 = STAR WARS title card appear

28343 = reel 2

59025 = reel 3

90295 = reel 4

117270 = reel 5

147672 = reel 6

 

ESB (originally posted by msycamore):

 

0 = first frame

711 = STAR WARS title card appear

30988 = reel 2

59815 = reel 3

91134 = reel 4

122461 = reel 5

151133 = reel 6

 

ROTJ (originally posted by msycamore):

0 = first frame

712 = STAR WARS title card appear

25055 = reel 2

54317 = reel 3

84511 = reel 4

112587 = reel 5

142918 = reel 6

172032 = reel 7

 

 

Also, I haven't checked the TB of ROTJ yet, but msycamore has previously reported "11 frames around the reel breaks and a few more at various points" missing.

I decided to re-sync my old project files against these staring points and my findings are as follows:

missing frames (when comparing the sources to each other)

GOUT: 3544, which is the last frame of the opening star destroyer shot.

Flunk: 7370-7378, Leia and R2, technically not missing but heavily corrupted

TB: 50173 Luke listening to Ben second frame of shot (exact frame deduced from visible dirt)

Flunk: 53288-53299, death start briefing, bottom quarter of frame corrupted

Flunk: 85123, last frame of Leia before Alderaan explodes (the aspect ratio also changes slightly after this shot with more cropped from the sides)

TB: 85223-85225
Flunk: 85224-85225
Reivax: 85225
This is the transition between the Alderaan explosion and saber training on the falcon  

Reivax: 132114-132163, saber dual

TB: 147671-147672
Flunk: 147671-147673
Reivax: 147672-147674
Lowering of an R2 unit/prep of x-wing.

GOUT: ends at 173114 where a VHS rip of the credits are edited in.

TR: ends at 179418 credits don't quite finish.

by inserting blank frames at the appropriate places the reel changes all line up with the start of a shot, also this probably isn't all the corrupted frames in flunk.

ESB:

These are all done under the assumption that 75205 is missing from both TB and GKAR (also I got bored of writing descriptions of the scenes)

TB: 32733 missing,
75206 missing,
93228-93229 corrupted,
93230-93241 missing,
151133 missing

All reel changes line up to a scene change

ROTJ:

TB: 10612, missing, bib fortuna (may not be this exact frame need to check)
84507, missing, speeder bike (should be ~84511),
142911, missing, running ewok (should be ~142918),
175215, missing, vader unmasking

Then as some unknown missing frames throughout, the reel changes hit these frames coming up 8 frames short when compared to the above reference

reel 2 - 25054 - 1 short

reel 3 - 54314 - 3 short

reel 4 - 84507 - 4 short

reel 5 - 112582 - 5 short

reel 6 - 142911 - 7 short

reel 7 - 172024 - 8 short

Will need to compare it to the gout/04SE to find exactly which frames are missing.

Don't know why ROTJ got such a raw deal with these transfers.

You_Too said:

I've been comparing the 97 SE versions to help dark_jedi with an eventual future project, and I can tell you that the Flunk version is not the best.

Flunk has crushed shadow detail and is oversharpened.

Reivax has some weird frame-blending which adds more smearing, and makes each shot fade into each other by one frame.

The best is Gkar, and TB is second, being a bit more blurry than Gkar.

By the way, by Hybrid, do you mean like layering Gkar and TB on each other to get more detail out of them?

Thought I'd share my experience of this, when I was actively working on my hybrids I thought the order of sources was Flunk > TB > GKAR > Reivax.

The GKAR and Reivax have been through more filtering than the others see comparison pictures here which removed some dirt but also some details see here

Flunk does suffer from having has the saturation, contrast and sharpness by the guy who made it (there's a post somewhere where he says this but I don't know where) and as you say this may mean there are some crushed blacks (i never looked into it but I believe you) and there are definitely some problems with clipping on over saturated reds, but the mid range detail still seems good and the it is the least cropped of all the sources so has some merit. However it may be that the perceived detail (see picture of chewie in first link) is a result of the sharpening that was applied. 

It was my intention to correct all the levels and match the colours all the sources then composite the highs and lows in from the TB back into the Flunk, this should be possible as they derive from a common source and map pixel to pixel. (and it is still my intention it's just very delayed).

But it is fair to say that the TB is probably the best in it's current state, just trying to say that there could still be some value in the Flunk.

Hello all , long time away with real life stuff but got drawn back to the site due to the disney news.

Great to see loads of interest again in the 97 SE, can I help out at all?? I still have all my project files from the 'superset' and I still intend to finish it one day but real life does have a habit of getting in the way.

My intention was always to merge the various DVB sources and combining them with whichever stereo track was best (probably the TB / GKAR) and also syncing up an 5.1 laserdisc rip.

I think ESB is practically done except for some colour correction on ~13 frames, but things got tricky on ROTJ when I tried to get something good out of the blurry TB and heavily filtered GKAR, I'm just looking at some of my avisynth scripts which were intended to automagically fix this but they need a bit more work.

Something I've not seen mentioned is the various cropping and stretching issues in the DVB sources, from memory FLUNK has the largest frame, TB and GKAR are cropped at the sides and REIVAX also has a few lines cropped from the bottom, but all 4 sources line up nearly pixel for pixel (one of them has a sub-pixel shift to the side but I forget which. Also they don't have the correct aspect ratio (even when taking into account the incorrect encoding).

Maybe, I'll post a more comprehensive review of what I know about these sources when I get my main machine running (currently boxed up due to house renovations)

If there is a standard frame count to work to then I might have a look at finishing up the video and let others worry about audio stuff.

But maybe this has already been done or superior audio sources have been found?? I think there's a lot of stuff I'm not following in this thread due to several years away.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Max_Rebo said:

I even went as far as reviewing my project files to see how much is left to be done... and had a bit of a mental breakthrough regarding colour correction.

You still have those? It is nice to see you back around Max_Rebo. Are you considering finishing the set or just reminiscing on old projects

It's not something I ever really gave up on, it's just that real life got in the way. One of the best things about using Avisynth for editing is that the project files are tiny so there's no point in deleting them!

I've been thinking about a good method of colour matching the sources and recently realised there might be an easy way to do it in Avisynth (much easier than previous attempts to write a new C++ filter, or using the python program I tried to write), matching the colours of the various sources is most important for ANH where the creator boosted the contrast and saturation.

However there is way more to do on ROTJ than I ever thought, the filtering of the GKAR version (see this post) affects so many more frames than I thought, including almost every shot of C-3P0 and Vader where it filters out little bits of reflection, and also a lot of space shots where it removes parts of fast moving ships.

Just in the middle of moving house, but I may have another look at this once I've moved.

grisan said:

I sent him a PM about this project and asked if he can upload the TB release for us.

Dammit now I have to login!

I recently returned to OT.com to read about the Blu-ray, but the renewed talk about '97 SE preservation is quite interesting, I even went as far as reviewing my project files to see how much is left to be done... and had a bit of a mental breakthrough regarding colour correction.

Moth3r said:

I also remember reading that the DVD of the 1996 movie was a botched IVTC, with blended fields all over the place. Is this true? (I know I could always Google it, but I can't be bothered right now). If this is the case, then a Custom DVD with the film frames reconstructed (Avisynth SRestore?) would be a useful first step before attempting any edits.

Yes this is true but I have yet to find a useful combination of filters to automatically correct it, there are many blended fields but also a few dropped fields.

I think some of the problem come from it being shot as 24fps and edited after pulldown at 30fps, then all effects shots were native 30fps, so the IVTC screws them up.

I once started correcting it manually (via AviSynth) and got about 20 min done, but I got quite bored and haven't gone back to it in a while.

ChainsawAsh said:

I'd like to see a proper edit of the TV movie that removes any half-human references.

Hell, I might give that a stab after the new DVD comes out later this year ...

I hadn't heard about the new dvd ...(quick look at wikipedia and Galifrey base) ... looks like there will be more special features but a new / fixed transfer seems unlikely.

xhonzi said:

Couldn't care less/Could care less.

This is another one of my "words mean things" pet peeves.

Couldn't agree more, every time I see someone write "I could care less" they always mean "I couldn't care less", I just wish people would think about what they write.

I couldn't care less about x - means you are unable to care less than you do about x, there is nothing that you could possibly care less about.

I could care less about x - means there are things you could care less about than x, but this is practically meaningless, it just means you care about x to some unspecified extent, it's not the least cared about thing, it could be the most but then you should say "I couldn't care more", so really it is just at some unspecified midpoint in your range of ability to care.

dark_jedi said:

Well I have not heard from anyone I PM'd about this so I was wondering does anyone know of any links to the 97 SE re-ivax(think that is what it is called) and the flunk versions?

I am just going to take a stab at this myself,this would look better than a LD rip anyway.

Thanks

Sorry, been really busy at work and not been on here much, i'm happy to share what I have.

General update: I've done nothing! sorry everybody. Been to busy will be less busy in April, and this is still top of my to-do list.

Sorry I've only just seen this,

I got copies of flunk and Reivax off Russ, I think he sent me his only copies on the understanding I'd return them somewhen (which I haven't yet but I will), I can send you copies if you want, although these only exist for ANH.

I also have the 5.1 tracks from the LDs that Adywan ripped for me.

PM me.

Just digging this thread up from the depths, unfortunately there are no updates. I have recently brought a new house and been doing DIY in just about all my spare time, also I've had some silly deadlines at work and been on holiday, but I just wanted to let everyone know that this is still an on going project and still a high priority, it's just a matter of finding the time.

Dunedain said:

Max_Rebo: Thanks for the update! :)

I hope after you release this NTSC DVD set that you will consider going back to your prepared pre-DVD source files (just before you encoded them for NTSC DVD) and color correcting them back to the GOUT's more correct original colors and releasing a set like that (no other changes, just the color correction). :) This way we can also have a Star Wars SE set with the very nice overall image quality of the SE's, but with the more correct colors from the GOUT. :) Even if the GOUT isn't perfect in this regard, it's far more accurate (especially in certain scenes, as we've seen from the screenshots) than the SE and the best non-SE source we have available.

It would be great to have a choice to watch the Star Wars trilogy SE version as it was broadcast or watch the SE with the original non-SE colors restored. :) Also, I'm not sure if anyone has ever color-corrected the SE before, so it might be a first ever achieved by a fan project. :)

I would say this falls under the heading of long-term plans, it is something I have considered but I have several other projects to complete before I would revisit these.

Johnny Ringo said:

I'm sure all the deleted scenes are of poor overall quality. - as in, all of the dvd versions released.

Yeah the quality of the deleted scenes is really bad but the special edition 2 disc does have a couple more scenes, both from the end of the film.

Wikipedia:

Two "extended ending" clips were included on the two-disc edition. The first was Picard talking to Dr. Crusher about her return to Starfleet Medical and Crusher remarking how she works with a bunch of young doctors who are ready to cure the entire quadrant. The second was Geordi and Worf packing Data's possessions in his quarters. As they are cleaning up Data's cat Spot jumps into Worf's hands and Worf states he is not a cat person. Geordi sees how Spot has taken to Worf and replies, "You are now." Immediately following this scene is the introduction of Commander Madden, which is included in the deleted scenes of the DVD.

I like both scenes and they help wrap up the characters, however both of these have text across the frame so would need a lot of clean up to be usable.

Doctor M said:

Bumping a fairly old thread here, but has anyone ever put together an edit of Nemesis?

I found a YouTube trailer for "Nemesis Revisited" a supposed upcoming fan edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCdAs0RKpVA

I can find no other evidence that such an edit exists or is in progress anywhere.

I'm rewatching Nemesis now for the first time since my original viewing years ago.  My impression is currently that if all references to B-4 and Data's death were removed (and some shaving of exposition), this movie could be better.

I don't hate the look/feel of the movie.  It's different, and that makes it stand out from the other films.  I don't see the similarities to Wrath of Khan everyone purports to be present, but that doesn't bother either me because WoK is awesome (even if this isn't).

(Edited for clarity.)

There are 2 edits on the FE forums, although they are not yet released:

Nemesis:Revisted

STAR TREK:Shinzon Rising

FanFiltration said:

When did they start calling Klingon ships "Warbirds"? That was the name for the Romulan ships.

it seems a writer's error from Enterprise has slipped into the canon of this new reality!

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Klingon_warbird

Darth Solo said:

I've Never thought of it like that. Ive always regarded it as an actual meteor the second time hoth is hit (as nothing happens after the impact - not that Luke checks, granted. Perhaps, some sort of random meteor activity around Hoth, when the probes are launched would justify Lukes reasoning?), even though the same shot is used. But im not buying this time shifting thing at all..

I have always thought of it as being the same impact seen twice, it never occurred to me that it would be anything else, the script seems to support this viewpoint although it mentions Luke noticing smoke from the impact but not actually seeing the impact, but it is clear that it is the same impact, (I realise this doesn't matter and Ady is not following the script, he is just making it the best it can be even if that disagrees with the script which is just fine with me)

The Script said:

EXTERIOR: GALAXY -- PLANET HOTH

A Star Destroyer moves through space, releasing Imperial probe
robots from its underside.
One of these probes zooms toward the planet Hoth and lands
on its ice-covered surface. An explosion marks the point of
impact.

EXTERIOR: HOTH -- METEORITE CRATER -- SNOW PLAIN -- DAY

A weird mechanical sound rises above the whining of the
wind. A strange probe robot, with several extended sensors,
emerges from the smoke-shrouded crater. The ominous mechanical
probe floats across the snow plain and disappears into the
distance.

EXTERIOR: PLAIN OF HOTH -- DAY

A small figure gallops across the windswept ice slope. The
bundled rider is mounted on a large gray snow lizard, a
Tauntaun. Curving plumes of snow rise from beneath the
speeding paws of the two-legged beast.
The rider gallops up a slope and reins his lizard to a
stop. Pulling off his protective goggles, Luke Skywalker
notices something in the sky. He takes a pair of
electrobinoculars from his utility belt and through them sees
smoke rising from where the probe robot has crashed.
The wind whips at Luke's fur-lined cap and he activates a
comlink transmitter. His Tauntaun shifts and moans nervously
beneath him.

dark_jedi said:

I really do not understand this "need" for the PAL version when you guys can play the NTSC just fine,maybe someone can explain why you would prefer this version?

but what sux for us is we can't play the PAL version just fine,we have to convert or watch it on a shitty DVD player that does an even shittier conversion.

NTSC DVDs tend to be very gittery when played back on PAL DVD players (at least on mine they are) I assume this is a combination of 3:2 pulldown and format conversion (that would be the same kind of 'shitty conversion' you're talking about, just because they play NTSC doesn't mean they play it well).

Maybe I have only tried DVDs that haven't been properly flagged for progressive playback, or maybe it's because my DVD player / TV don't handle NTSC signals properly. But 3:2 pulldown is as annoying for me as PAL speed up is for you. In the end it just comes down to everyone liking what they're used to.

I intend to download you NTSC DVD of the cannes cut (which, knowing the quality of your work, I'm sure will be properly flagged) and I'll let you know if it plays back properly on my system.

captainsolo said:

Why would Jedi be filtered like this?

Well actually the GKAR version of all 3 films are filtered in the same way, it's just that ROTJ is the only one where the other available source is worse. I think the filtering was applied by the broadcaster or maybe it's result of re-encoding the video after the hard subtitles were added (which will also be masked out using the TB version).

The real question is why the TB version of ROTJ is so much worse than the TBs of ANH and ESB (which are far supperior to the GKAR versions), this is probably due to processing done by the annonymous person who originally made the TB discs, the video for ROTJ is also a different size, 720x576 instead of 704x576 (although both of are valid PAL DVD formats)

Hi everybody,

yes this project is still ongoing although I haven't done anything in a while.

Current status:

ESB is almost complete I just need to finish syncing the 5.1 track

ANH video is edited but it requires colour correction to match the different sources (new avisynth filter required so I need to brush up on my C++)

ROTJ is just a mess the sources are both crap in different ways so it's not as simple as cutting between them, one source is really soft and noisey and the other is sharp but has been filtered in such a way that a lot of small details, like sparks and blaster bolts, have been lost, basically it's anything that's small and moves really fast, whatever filtering has been done has obviously interpreted it as dirt and removed it.

here are some examples, TB(soft and noisy) at the top, GKAR (sharp and filtered) at the bottom, in the middle is the difference between them:

If you compare the images you can see that each black blob on the middle image corresponds to a bit of debris from the explosion in the top image that is not present on the bottom image.

I don't think this one needs any explanation.

So what I am going to do is use the GKAR as a base and then Re-composite all these missing bits back in where they should be from the TB, which sounds really difficult, but I've done some tests and if I'm careful I should be able to automate the process by using the middle image to generate a mask which can be used in the overlay. I'm confident this will produce good results but I need to do a few more tests first.

I will keep you posted, but don't expect a release in the near future as I want to complete all three and release them at the same time (in case I realise something when doing ROTJ which could make ESB better)

dickalan said:

this 'project' is taking forever - started over a year ago!

Many thanks for your 'useful' comment - you have keen powers of observation!

Zion said:

The 4-eyed stormies are a result of the rudimentary DVNR process, which I'm sure used some sort of temporal algorythm, but that's not really what I'm getting at here.

Yeah the DVNR included a lot of temporal smoothing, the 4 eyes occur because the position of the stormtroopers black eyes and black headband lined up in subsequent frames. Temporal filters always have problems with movement in the frame and should therefore be avoided (at least in my opinion).

The Photoshop filters that I've highlighted here seem more advanced than any simple temporal softening or averaging filter applied in Avisynth. The median filter doesn't just average all frames together, but seems to intelligently take the most consistent information and eliminate the anomalies like noise, burn marks, etc. (much like the TooT process).

but even using a median filter if you use subsequent frames from the same source you will get problems with motion, the only way to avoid it would be to mask out any areas that show movement (this can be done automatically in avisynth) then average the remaining areas of subsequent frames before re compositing the moving objects, but this would probably result in a noticeable difference in quality and any advantage is lost as soon as the camera moves.

I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite like it in a video filter. Most temporal noise filters tend to leave their own unwanted artifacts in the frame on anything with motion.

and your examples show these problems, i.e. Luke's 'trail' across the frame, the only reason it's minimal is because you averaged out a lot of frames and Luke doesn't stay in the same spot very long, temporal softening is only usually applied to 1-2 frames either side if you do this then you will see obvious blurring.

Sorry for ranting on about this but I really don't like temporal softening, it's a quick and dirty way of removing noise which removes detail on movement and destroys film grain.

Now onto something I do like, averaging of multiple captures to improve the quality of an analogue source.

What I'd love to see is how these Photoshop filters stack up (no pun intended ;)) against similar Avisynth functions when merging 5-10 captures of the same source.

The problem is this will not remove scratches and burn marks as they will be the same on every capture, theoretically a mean filter would be the best for removing analogue noise as it is a completely random effect, however the median filter would be advantageous in removing dot crawl, and the effects of laser rot which may not be the same on every capture.

We discussed different averaging methods using Avisynth in the V8 thread, and it isn't very easy to do a median of multiple frames with any in-built functions as it excludes them based on the difference between whole frames not on a pixel by pixel basis. However it would be possible to program a new filter that did a median for each pixel of the frame, or an even more detailed statistical analysis (assuming a large number of captures) taking into account the standard deviation etc. to deduce the center of the distribution of values for each pixel.

I would be interested in using this filter to average captures from different sources but without any temporal softening, what does it look like if you use the filter to combine your 'before' shots from the DC and the SC?