MaximRecoil

doubleofive said:

HA, tiny Lando! I'm torn, as I love the accuracy of the others, but I'm also OK with how Jedi looks with the actual poster art. Maxim, you admit to not being good at rasterized images, maybe someone can take a crack at shrinking Lando and faking more to the side?

 Yeah, if anyone wants to take a shot at that (as well as removing the text/logos if they are feeling up to it), they can download msycamore's file and use "Style B.bmp" (that's by far the nicest scan of the lot, and the best ROTJ scan I've seen, period). Just be sure to not introduce any lossy compression to it while working on it or saving the final file (use e.g. TIF [with LZW compression] or PNG).

I might see what I can do with it as well; this type of manipulation is more in line with the kind of raster experience I have (i.e., manipulating existing elements rather than trying to seamlessly match elements from various sources), though I'm far from a Photoshop guru.

msycamore said:

Ok, the good news is that I actually had quite a few Jedi style B scans, and that the Australian and German versions display a lot more of the artwork compared to the US version. The bad news is that all of them have the "larger Lando artwork", now when I think about it, I'm pretty sure I have seen a third variation of this artwork. Anyway, the Jedi logo cover parts of Leia's body in every version except the US half sheet, but that one is unfortunately not in that good quality.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/1lkhsa

They're all in bmp-format and need some color correction, the Australian posters have fold marks but is otherwise pretty nice looking. Hope these help.

 Those are great, thanks. It is too bad that half-sheet wasn't scanned in at a higher quality because it is the perfect format, i.e., no text/logos and no creases. Unfortunately, the artwork area of it is only 114 mm wide @ 300 DPI, and it needs to be at least 129.5 mm wide. Setting it to 129.5 mm wide brings the DPI down to 265, which isn't terrible, but it is also lacking the fine detail that the other scans in your folder have. I think I'll see what I can do with the one labeled "Style B". That one is beautiful; the best I've seen so far. 

Msycamore, that's interesting. I hadn't noticed it before, but you're right: they increased Lando's size relative to the rest of the painting, and it looks like they added a couple of control levers or microphones or something. It would certainly be nice to have a scan of the correct version, but something like that isn't a make or break it kind of thing to me.

Another irritating thing I've discovered about the ROTJ artwork is the framing. It appears that they used most of the available artwork on the VHS box, as opposed to the ANH and TESB boxes where they only used a small section of the available artwork. This allowed me to frame those so that all of the art that was visible on the original VHS boxes was also visible on my DVD sleeves, plus the original artwork extended enough on both sides to fill in the wider aspect ratio DVD cover.

With ROTJ this doesn't seem to be the case (unless there exists a much wider version of the ROTJ artwork that I'm unaware of). So if I included the full length of the artwork as seen on the VHS cover, I'd come up short on the sides (and I don't want to resort to pillar boxing it). So this is what happens:

As you can see, to get the DVD width, the bottom needs to be cropped significantly shorter than on the VHS, which moves the ROTJ text/logo up onto Leia's stomach.

Here is the VHS cover for comparison:

The ROTJ text/logo is down below her waist. There is no good solution to this problem (unless, as I said before, there exists a much wider version of the ROTJ artwork that I'm unaware of) so I'll probably just have to live with it. It doesn't look bad ... the posters actually put the text up on Leia's stomach too, but they also used white text (instead of gray) and a hard-edged drop shadow behind it as well.

Cobra Kai said:

Maxim, i think the ones from that last link would look perfectly fine.  Also with a little photoshop work you could blend the two together in order to extend the cropped image.   

I'll end up using it if I can't find something better. I doubt it will make much (if any) of a noticeable difference when printed, but just knowing there's a better quality scan out there that I can't use, irritates me.

I actually did line the two scans up in Photoshop this morning to see if they could be blended, but I didn't see any satisfactory way of doing it. There is her entire stomach, her forearms, and her bikini bottom. I think clone stamping would just make a mess for example. The texture is totally different in the two scans, which is the problem. I'm sure there are people who could do it, but as for me, I have far more experience on the vector side of things than the raster.

penguinofgreatness said:

This thread (I think there is a good one somewhere in there) or this site might have what you need. If not, you could pm msycamore. I think he mentioned that he had a bunch of high quality scans he was going to post.

Edit: These seem alright.

Yeah, I've been to all of those links already, not much luck. The relevant picture in that last link isn't bad, but it is irritating knowing that there is at least one higher quality scan out there that I can't use because someone cropped the bottom off it. I'll show you what I mean:

The top image is a section from the one I found that has been cropped on the bottom (it doesn't go any lower than what you see there). The bottom picture is a section from the scan in your last link. The top scan is higher quality; more fine detail; while the bottom scan almost looks like it has been posterized. I'd like to find an uncropped version of that top scan, or one just as good.

@ penguinofgreatness: Thanks yet again.

doubleofive said:

Just saw the Empire one. That's the cover I grew up with, so its really sentimental for me. I can't wait until its done. If I could find the GOUT, That's what I would put it in.

Yeah, same here. I never owned the VHS tapes, but I rented them many times at "See Zee Video" when I was a kid in the '80s, and that's the type of boxes they were in. I had the GOUT in mind for these sleeves as well.

TESB is done for the time being (I updated the picture I posted) and I'm working on ROTJ. I'm having trouble finding suitable cover art though. I found a good scan of the ROTJ poster, 300 DPI with a good level of fine detail, but it's been cropped on the bottom (to remove the text from the poster). All others I've found have been sorely lacking in fine detail and/or too low resolution and/or the wrong version (e.g. a green lightsaber instead of a blue one).

penguinofgreatness said:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-DVD-Covers/post/431932/#TopicPost431932

These covers have images on them that should be sufficient resolution. They are better than my scans would be, as these ones have no halftone ink artifacts and are nicely color corrected to how they look like on the box.

I came across those earlier actually, but the AT-AT Walker photo on the TESB box is not the same shot that's on the VHS box (on the VHS box the Walkers are firing), and the Luke Skywalker photo is framed differently from the VHS box (his entire light saber and most of his right foot are visible in the frame on the VHS box rather than being partially cropped off).

Are these just screenshots from the movies? I looked for the TESB Luke Skywalker image in the movie, but I couldn't find that exact shot, only a similar shot (but more cropped just like on the DVD covers you linked to). I wonder where the photos came from in the first place? If they're not directly from the movie, I don't think a source better than scanning the VHS box is possible.

I think there are various things that potentially can be done about the halftone dots from scanning the box, or they might not be a problem at all when printed. They are small pictures, and the halftone dots aren't noticeable on the original box with the naked eye. The reason they are so noticeable when scanned in at a high DPI and viewed on a monitor is because a monitor displays everything at ~72 DPI regardless of the file's actual DPI; so when something that is e.g. 300 DPI is viewed, the monitor acts as a giant magnifying glass, making it appear huge / closeup on your screen. If scanned in at screen resolution, it would appear small on your screen the same as it does on the box and the halftone dots wouldn't be noticeable, but it also wouldn't be suitable for printing.

Unfortunately, inkjet printers also use halftone, so you'd get halftone on top of halftone (not sure if it would be noticeable on the actual print though). One thing that can be done is to scan it in at a much higher DPI than needed (like 1200) and then I could resample it down to 300 DPI (among other things possibly). For example, I just did a test with my old crappy scanner (it maxes out at 600 DPI) and one of the few VHS boxes I have here:

I scanned the top image in at 300 DPI and left it as-is. I scanned the bottom image in at 600 DPI and then resampled it to 300 DPI in Photoshop. As you can see, the halftone patterns mostly disappear. I suspect that the results would be even better with a 1200 DPI scan resampled to 300 DPI.

Edit: So this is where I'm at with the TESB sleeve:

It was more work than I expected. For one thing, the font for the "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" text on the spine looked like ordinary Helvetica (bold, condensed, oblique). Well Helvetica only lined up for some of the letters, but the R and the S and a few others were off significantly. I even ran the image through WhatTheFont.com's automated font identification software, and it thought it was Helvetica too. In any event, I had to do a lot of modifications to Helvetica to make it match.

Then I thought the 20th Century Fox logo on the lower right hand corner of the front of the box would be easy, because I'd seen one on SeekLogo.com earlier while searching (in vain) for a CBS/FOX logo. So I downloaded the one from SeekLogo.com, and it turned out to be different (though it looks about the same at a glance). With some research I found out that the logo I needed was the style used from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s, and I couldn't find a vector version of that. So I had to make that myself.

The vector TESB logo on the front that I got from SeekLogo.com didn't quite match but it only needed minor modifications to line up (a little shearing and tweaking of a few anchor points). Whoever vectorized that logo did a nice job. 

penguinofgreatness said:

They are "®" symbols

 Thanks again.

I think I'm going to need to use scans of the screenshots from the back of the VHS boxes (I don't know of any other quality source for those specific images). I have the TESB sleeve done except for the screenshots on the back. Could you scan the screenshots from the back of your TESB and ROTJ (if you have it) boxes at 300 DPI to a lossless format (such as PNG or TIF with LZW compression)? Or do you know of a different high quality source for those exact images? 

BTW, I got ahold of some of that software that a lot of people on this forum seem to be using to render 3D mockups of the DVD cases:

@penguinofgreatness: On your scan, on the second-to-last line, after the words "Panavision" and "Laboratories", what are those little superscript dots? Are they ™ symbols?  

Thanks for the scan, that is a big help.

Oh, btw when you are done with the covers, could you please make alternatives that don't have the hi-fi stereo or CBS/FOX logo on the front side of the cover. I think I would like this look the best. The covers look great.

doubleofive said:

I have Illustrator, so that would work nicely! I need to play with vectors more, my 5 could use some sharpening...

What do you want to do about the fonts? Here are the options:

1. I could send it as a PDF that retains AI-editing capability. That way it *should* embed the fonts (otherwise it would substitute e.g. Arial for Helvetica if you don't have Helvetica installed on your computer; which would ruin everything). However, I *think* it only embeds the fonts for viewing in a PDF reader; I don't think it will do it when opened in Illustrator.

2. I could expand all the text into vector objects, which makes fonts irrelevant, but it is nice to have font-based text for ease of editing if you want to do so.

3. I could include the fonts that I used when I send the AI file, and you would need to install them on your system.

Also, what version of Illustrator do you have?

PM me with your email address along with what you want to do about the fonts.

LexX said:

It is on my covers. But like I said, they weren't in English but the copyright stuff should be the same. I have ®* next to both TESB logos on the spine and on the front.

 Yeah, it is on the front of the scan I'm working from too (I hadn't got that far yet). Thanks again.

doubleofive said:

If I ever complete my A New Hope Revisited ReVHSed, I'd love to get access to your template or just permission to modify your finished cover, as this is exactly what I was going to go for as the basis of the cover.

Yeah you can modify the cover. Also, if you have Adobe Illustrator or some other vector program, I can send you the vector file. Everything except for the front art and back screenshots is vector. Some of the vector stuff I found online (the Closed Caption, FBI, front STAR WARS, and VHS logos). The other non-typed stuff I made myself.

There was a Star Wars text logo available online for the spine, but it didn't line up right, so I made my own. There was no vector CBS/FOX logo that I could find anywhere, so I made that too. Vectorizing/tracing is one of my areas of expertise (it used to be my job), but it is tedious, so if a suitable vector file is already available, I'll use it.  

Another question: on the spine after the big "THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK" text, is that another "®*"?

LexX said:

It's ®*

Thanks.

Can someone who owns the VHS releases tell me what the first few characters of the following text is from the lower back of the TESB box (I could only find low resolution scans for TESB and ROTJ)?

It looks like maybe:

®™ & ©

Is that correct?

Edit: I could use a readable scan of the bottom of the front of the TESB box too (the credits section). Does anyone have one?

Ziz said:

Just use legal size paper.  Or, if your printer can do "full bleed" photo printing, you might be able to squeeze it onto letter size paper.

 I don't have any paper here suitable for photo-type printing. I only have ordinary, cheap letter paper and even if I could fit it on there, all photo-type images look bad printed on that stuff, no matter how good the source is. But I have some suitable paper coming in the mail soon.

Okay, how does this look - link?

I've never made a DVD sleeve before, and I don't know if that will print out nicely or not (I'm waiting for some blank sleeves in the mail to try it for myself). I'm open to comments/suggestions/criticisms.

The next two (TESB and ROTJ) won't be as tedious as that one, because a lot of the graphics/text is reused on all three boxes.

penguinofgreatness said:

Wow! You are very dedicated. I can't wait to see the full thing. Glad you found a decent font to use for the PG text.

I found a better font for the PG text, and if it is not exactly what was originally used, it is plenty close:

The top image shows the new text outlining the PG box on the original scan of the VHS box, and the bottom image shows the new text / PG box by itself.

The font is Univers Condensed Bold (Univers is an old and major font, right up there with, and similar to, Helvetica).

Dark gray then? Excellent. That makes it easier than if there really was some blue in there.

Your current version has a mistake. The ratings box uses the wrong font, (causing some letters to be a little taller then others) and has a drop shadow beneath the text. (which the original did not have)

That's not a drop shadow, that's just the original text on the original scan of the VHS box underneath it that you're seeing (I have the opacity of the scan at 50% which makes the printing on it look shadowy; it wouldn't be in the final file of course).

The thing about some letters being taller than others is just an Adobe Illustrator rendering anomaly (the picture I posted is just a screenshot of the file opened in Illustrator); they are all the same size because it is typed from a single font, and if you zoom in (within Illustrator on the actual file) or print it out or export it to a raster file or whatever, they are all the same height.

You're right that the new "Parental Guidance Suggested" font that I used is not an exact match for the font used on the original box.  I wasn't real happy with the whole PG box anyway. The only thing that matches as well as I like is the "some material may not be suitable for children" font (which is ordinary Helvetica [albeit with custom kerning], like nearly everything else on the whole VHS box).

The 2006 MPAA Handbook that you linked to is nice because it is official and it is vector (I actually already have that file as it happens, because of a project I did a few years ago where I needed the rated R logo). The problem with it is, it uses plain old Helvetica for both the upper and bottom boxes, while the logo on the VHS box only uses regular Helvetica for the bottom box, and some type of condensed (narrow) font in the upper box. Helvetica Condensed was the closest I had so that is what I used, but I don't consider it final. I'll see what else I can find. 

One distinguishing characteristic about the original upper box font on the VHS box is the fairly straight sides to the letters (look at the "G" and the right side of the "D" for instance), so maybe that will help me find the correct font eventually. If all else fails I could simply trace (vectorize) the letters myself (it wouldn't be the first time I've done such a thing by any means; that's how I made the CBS/FOX Video logo for example), but in order to do that, I would need an extremely high DPI scan of it (because it is so small on the VHS box), like 1200 DPI at least. Hopefully I can find the right font though, because tracing/vectorizing letters is quite a pain.

I'd also like to find the highest quality versions of the photos that are on the back of each box. I have some 300 DPI ones that I cut from someone else's VHS-to-DVD sleeve project, but they were already JPGs and I don't know how many times they went through JPG compression before I got them. They look good, but I'm just wondering if there are better versions available? Scanning them directly from the VHS box is not a good source, because the scanner picks up all of the color halftone dots from the offset printing process. I don't know where the ones I already have came from (they weren't scanned from the VHS box at least, which is a good thing) ... maybe screenshots from HD versions of the movies?

Edit: I think the font is just an extra condensed version of Helvetica (which would make sense, because the MPAA has always used Helvetica in their ratings boxes). If I squeeze Helvetica Condensed to make it as narrow as the original font, it is a pretty close match. I need to see if I can find some versions of Helvetica that are more condensed than what I already have.

Edit 2: This is Helvetica Medium Condensed, slightly narrowed:

The weight is perfect, but the sides of the curved letters (like G and D) are still not straight enough. Helvetica Compressed has the straight sides, but the weight is far too heavy. Very annoying. If a medium version of Helvetica Compressed existed, I think it would be dead on.

What color were the boxes (e.g. the spine, the bottom of the front, and the dark stripes on the top of the back)? From various scans I've seen, it sometimes looks black or dark gray or bluish gray. Also, what color were the lighter stripes on the top of the back?

I'm working on making DVD case sleeves that look like those VHS boxes (I have the first one finished except for choosing the final colors). I know it has already been done before, probably more than once, but I don't think anyone has used the correct font along with the correct kerning before, because matching the kerning is extremely tedious, and most people wouldn't care about it anyway. However, simply typing out the text and calling it good has a "typed in Word" look to it that I don't care for.

In the old days professional typesetters layed out text manually with variable kerning with aesthetics in mind, and it has a certain look to it that you don't get by simply typing on a PC and leaving it at that.

For example, here is a picture of some of the new text (and some logos; I made the CBS/FOX logo because I couldn't find a good one already made) on top of the original text on a scan of the VHS box:

That's weird. I was using an old copy of PowerDVD that I've used for years and I've never gotten any lines on a movie like that before. I just tried the GOUT discs with Media Player Classic and no lines at all; thanks. 

I wonder what is unique about the GOUT discs that makes the lines happen in this old version of PowerDVD.

They have subtle horizontal lines through the picture that fluctuate, i.e., fade in and out. It is most noticeable on TESB:

That's a screenshot from TESB showing the lines, and here is a screenshot from about a second later where the lines have disappeared:

Those lines appear and reappear about every second throughout most, if not all, of the movie.

Is this just the way the discs are or is there something wrong with mine?

I'd be surprised if we didn't see this in the next six or seven years the way things are moving now.

Optical discs with 1 TB capacity were first demonstrated in like 2004 or 2005, and now they are talking about 3.9 TB with HVD using the same "holographic" storage technology.

As far as the original question though, no you could never 100%, let alone better, replicate film through electronic means, no matter if its analog or digital. Its simply not possible; the process of converting it into electronic signals means you can never get it in a pure form.

I'm talking about equalling or bettering the quality of a 35mm film print (see thread title and OP). A film print already has a degree of loss compared to the original negatives; so all that would need to be done is to equal or reduce that amount of loss for an optical disc format; and you can equal or exceed the quality of a film print. It is certainly possible in theory. 

Problem is, what are you gonna play it on? The best TVs out there are limited to 1080p, so it doesn't matter how many extra pixels the video has. It will downsize to 1080p so the TV will be able to display it.

High-end CRT displays can go beyond 1080p. For example, a Barco Cine 9 has a maximum resolution of 3200x2560. Digital displays are not the be-all and end-all that they are made out to be. As far as I'm concerned, they are 1 step forward and 2 steps back.

Um, I'm pretty sure you can't store a terabyte of information on an optical disk. Even if you split it across multiple disks, like Laserdisc did, there's no way to get close to an uncompressed 35mm 4K scan (at the least). I'll admit, off the top of my head I don't have exact figures, but the space to save a 35mm scan is at the very least in the hundreds of GB range, and I'm pretty sure, actually in the terabyte range.

You're thinking in terms of digital storage, which is not what I'm talking about. For example, capture a 2 hour movie from LaserDisc in uncompressed video with enough resolution to do it justice, and that will come to what, a couple hundred gigs? Whatever it comes to, it is far more than a LaserDisc's digital storage capacity would be.

BTW, there have been optical discs demonstrated with a TB or higher capacity. HVD claims up to 3.9 TB capacity.  

Aside from which, digital display can't 100% replicate the color and density of film.

It would be wasted on a digital display anyway, simply because of the conversion to digital, which defeats the purpose; which is why I was talking about displaying it on a high-end CRT-based display.