NeverarGreat

moviefreakedmind said:

I was just looking through some of my families old heirlooms and found a series of letters written by my great uncle from when he was in France during the first World War. 

That's super cool. I wonder if he knew my great grandfather - he was an American who drove ambulances in France in WWI, and we still have his journals from that time.

DuracellEnergizer said:

^I honestly don't know what the hell it is I just watched. A kid receiving gifts and anti-Sith propaganda from Lucasfilm?

That's about it. From the description:

"My son wrote to LucasFilm about how he wanted to get married but still retain his Jedi status without becoming a Sith. He got a big surprise back and finally stopped talking about Jedi Marriage Equality.... for now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta6a78WnrI8

This is pretty fun, but it's even more annoying in light of this that the Jedi Order forbid the marriage of Jedi. It is just a confusing message to send to kids.

DavidMerrick said:

Jedi has been my favourite since I was a kid, and upon reevaluating the whole trilogy as an adult it still is. Luke is mature, imposing, and a true leader. Han is no longer a reckless, selfish rogue; he defers to others, apologizes when needed, and is a true soldier. The throne room scenes with Luke, Vader and Palpatine in the Death Star throne room are among my favourite in the trilogy (second possibly only to the meeting between Luke and Vader on the Endor landing platform), I respect the Ewoks for the cute, terrifying insurgent fighters they are. Most of all, it's just so, so cathartic.

I'm naturally predisposed to final chapters in this way, I guess. The Dark Knight Rises is my favourite of Nolan's Batman trilogy, The Year of Our Lord 1983 (same year as Jedi, coincidentally) is the best of the Red Riding trilogy. It's emotionally and maybe even spiritually fulfilling to see things wrapped up in a satisfying way, and Jedi does that in spades.

I understand it has the weakest plot of the three, and retreads old ground with the Death Star, but to be perfectly honest I'm drawn more toward characterization and the aforementioned catharsis when I read, watch or play various forms of art and entertainment.

So Jedi all the way. Can't wait for the 2.0 of Harmy's Despecialized and Team Negative One's first version of their 35mm scan.

It's interesting how you view Han's character as evolving rather than devolving like most people who dislike Jedi. I like roguish Han more than soldier Han, but I see where you're coming from. He couldn't have stayed the same as a character and still been part of the Rebellion. I guess it's just that he seems rather uncommitted to the role of soldier most of the time.

The Ewoks could have been great as a further lesson in not judging worth by a person's size. Yet again, they aren't treated with as much respect as Yoda was, and so the Ewoks are undermined by the movie itself.

But the catharsis at the end is absolutely great, no question.

kk650 said:

NeverarGreat said:

^The grading of Star Wars was originally very inconsistent, so wouldn't making the colors consistent remove some of the original aesthetic? I don't mean to argue that the inconsistent color grade was intentional or even appealing, but it certainly was a part of the film and any project that attempts to return to the '77 version (such as Despecialized) should endeavor to keep this look in my opinion. And if changes in color are unappealing, the same argument could be applied to the walls of the Death Star, which were also painted slightly different shades of blue/green. Should those be made an even color just because it is more appealing? Or what about hokey costumes that move oddly in some shots more than others? Should the offending shots be doctored? All I'm saying is that a preservation should preserve a movie, warts and all.

Well it really boils down to whether you consider all the reference frames the despecialised edition was based on to be 100% accurate to how it looked during the original theatrical release. Based on the amount of colour inconsistancies from shot to shot during the same scenes, I strongly suspect that is not the case, at least for many of those frames. Either that or the colour inconsistencies were introduced when the colours were being interpreted by harmy, I can't say because I haven't seen those frames. I know from my own experience regrading Star Wars that it is more inconsistant than other films i've worked on, I had to use 30-40 different settings across the whole film to get the grading fairly consistant, I just don't believe it was THAT inconsistant during its theatrical run.

Say for the sake of argument that all the reference frames are 100% accurate and the theatrical release of Star Wars was that inconsistant colourwise, it brings up the interesting question of what should be prioritised in a preservation/restoration, the colour expectations of the audience or maintaining the theatrical presentation exactly, however flawed it is colourwise.

Everybody I imagine will have a different opinion on this and what a preservation/restoration is meant to be exactly. Me, I think a theatrical preservation of Star Wars is ultimately meant to be seen and enjoyed by normal people rather than studied by film historians, colour/fleshtone inconsistencies get in the way of that IMHO, so I would personally prioritise maintaining colour/fleshtone consistency on a scene by scene basis, even if it meant ignoring certain frames that did not coincide with the overall colour scheme chosen.

I agree that inconsistency in color gets in the way of appreciating the film, but if it was originally inconsistent, that should be preserved in some fashion, and the original inconsistency should be available for film historians, something that just doesn't exist at the moment for Star Wars, except in Despecialized. But I also want nice consistent colors across scenes, so if there was a way to have both versions, that would be the ideal situation. But it would require some amount of artistic interpretation, as there are some scenes with just two shots of differing colors for example. Which one is right? Is either one right, or is the actual color somewhere in the middle? These are tough questions that don't have easy answers.

^The grading of Star Wars was originally very inconsistent, so wouldn't making the colors consistent remove some of the original aesthetic? I don't mean to argue that the inconsistent color grade was intentional or even appealing, but it certainly was a part of the film and any project that attempts to return to the '77 version (such as Despecialized) should endeavor to keep this look in my opinion. And if changes in color are unappealing, the same argument could be applied to the walls of the Death Star, which were also painted slightly different shades of blue/green. Should those be made an even color just because it is more appealing? Or what about hokey costumes that move oddly in some shots more than others? Should the offending shots be doctored? All I'm saying is that a preservation should preserve a movie, warts and all.

Mrebo said:

Not a paradox.

 Just some good old fashioned situational irony.

generalfrevious said:

Alderaan said:

If you take out Jar Jar, The Phantom Menace is the best of the prequels. Not saying much, I know.

 Well, there's Queen Amidala's ear-bleeding robot voice, Jake Lloyd's cringeworthy performance, several interminable Jedi council/senate meetings, and the overlong podrace sequence no one actually likes.

But yes TPM is the best the Prequels ever got.

Hey, don't go putting words in my mouth! The podrace scene is actually quite fun in the theatrical version of the film, even if it does go on too long. In fact, I think that the entire Tatooine segment of the film would work well on its own. I wonder if someone has done an edit starting on Tatooine from Anakin's perspective.

Annnyyywayyy, how about them Ewoks?

althor1138 said:

He is right though. While there has been some detail recovered, everything looks plasticized and speckled throughout are oversharpening artifacts.  Imo, this would look better if the grain was not removed(or at least added back in during the last steps of processing) and any sharpening involved was toned down to the point where ringing is not visible.

EDIT: Also, the aliasing is actually worse in some shots than before.

This is why a laserdisc source should be added to the mix, one that is free of these problems in the first place. That way we can have the best of both worlds.

Ryan McAvoy said:

This page has gone way off topic in the last few posts. Back to topic...

Since I posted the OP 2 years ago the critical consensus on the 6 current SW films hasn't changed much (According to Rotten Tomatoes) but it has changed...

Star Wars 93% (-1)
The Empire Strikes Back 96% (-1)
Return of the Jedi 78% (-1)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 57% (=)
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones 67% (=)
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith 80% (=)

So people still feel exactly the same about the prequels, they like the original-trilogy a bit less (Surprising given the recent OT love expressed in the lead up to TFA) and they still think ROTS is better than ROTJ but now they prefer ROTS even more!

Madness I say! I still can't really understand why many are so dissatisfied with ROTJ, that they'd actually start thinking it was worse than the prequels.

I'd bet that a good amount of this change in attitude comes from people watching the 2011 Blu-rays, which cast the OT in a horrible light.

Are all of the '97 preservations as heavily cropped as the Team Blu version?

brash_stryker said:

Falaskan said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Falaskan said:

Mondess122 said:

AuggieBenDoggie said:

From what his Facebook page says, there is not much left to do. So I'd say late summer or sometime this fall. I also suspect that work has already began on ROTJ:R. Maybe we will see a teaser for ROTJ:R on the ESB:R dvd. He had a Teaser for ESB:R on the ANH:R dvd.

However, I'm pretty sure we've been hearing that since late 2012. Not to critique anyone, but don't act shocked if this once again gets pushed to 2016 or a year later. It's almost routine at this point.

 Not to critique either, but it hasn't needed to take this long either.

Oh, yeah? Please explain.

 

The movie's already there...He has no reason to redo every single frame, make Dagobah miniatures, and such. 

 The movie was already there before he did anything to it. He didn't "need" to do anything. Fixing this stuff is the entire aim of his project!

Ronster said:

 *Squints*

"I can't see a thing in this helmet."

Thread over.

Wazzles said:

CatBus said:

What? No mention of spiders? They happen to be the fiercest killers in the insect kingdom, I'll have you know.

 They're not insects.

So they're outlaws as well. Dangerous bastards.

Darth Lucas said:

Ok, so I don't have a perfect working knowledge of super-resolution, but my understanding is it needs two pictures to work and you are using neighboring frames to accomplish this, correct?

My question is, why not use two different souces, such as the GOUT and another laserdisc release and do this using two of the same frames from either source to accomplish the super-resolution process, thus eliminating some of the issues that may come with using neighboring frames?

 Here's a comparison of the various Laserdisc projects: http://www.aptirrelevance.com/otscreenshots/screenshots.php

Each one seems to have slightly different cropping, so you may need image registration software to do this, but none of the laserdisc releases seem to have any of the 'haloing' artifacts of the GOUT (seen around 3PO's shoulders for example).

I've watched Star Wars countless times, but I've only just noticed that there is a massive '94' carved into the wall beside docking bay 94. It always just appeared to be a random design before.

GeeTeeUK said:

Something seemed off to me about Chewie the moment I saw him - then I realised: they seem to have given him black, glassy, ewok-style eyes whereas he used to have people eyes.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice this. I've been banging on to my mates about it but they all think I'm crazy!

Are you looking at the high resolution teaser? Because in that you can pretty clearly see the whites of his eyes.

Drifter1989 said:

Handman said:

PLEASE buy the Blu-rays if you plan on watching the Despecialized Editions. Do NOT support piracy.

Getting the Harmy despeshalized versions on MySpleen is the legit way to get true unaltered versions and they look great even if I use windows media player on my PC and my PC isn't exactily a top of the line machine. MySpleen doesn't exactily support piracy, I think that's why they have the invite system. I got my despeshalized editions through MySpleen. It's if you get it through pirate bay without buying the blu ray versions is the non legit possibly ilegal way. 

It doesn't matter where you get Despecialized from; if you don't have the current official versions, you most certainly are in violation of the fanedit rules.

13las said:

Haha! Wow, I just spent a good ten minutes looking for pictures to make a comparison before I understood what you meant. Okay, so did they look digitally altered to anyone else? Please tell me I'm not crazy.

 You're not crazy.

That said, they look normal to me, and I have no idea why they would digitally alter them.

I think that this trailer may be better than the one for Episode 1, and that's saying a lot. I've watched it a dozen times already.

I'm avoiding the spoiler thread, but I don't think the new trailer has any new surprises that people wouldn't know if they've seen the leaked concept art several months ago. So I'll just give my first impression.

First, JJ plays it safe, with numerous nods to the original trilogy. Those are appreciated, but what's really exciting for is the new ship and armor designs in action. Digging the more aggressive Empire and the general sense of a lived in yet not excessively cluttered universe. The atmosphere is good, the style is good, but of course these are things that we know JJ can do well. The big question is not whether he can set the scene, but whether he can tell a story that rises above mere fan service and nostalgia for the past.

DrDre said:

Inspired by the discussion with RU.08 I decided try to reduce the noise. It appears that due to the high resolution of the upscale, much of the noise inherent to the upscaling method can relatively easily be removed using an advanced filter, without a significant detail reduction. Here are some comparisons between the noisy and denoised SRV3: 

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122096

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122097

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122098

Here are the comparisons with the Avisynth Spline64Resize:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122116

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122117

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122118

The noise is now generally less than for the Avisynth Spline64Resize and less than for the source material. 

Here's a denoised video sample:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_LYKyZDiajY1YwNGFHZmdEZUU/view?usp=sharing

The detail is retained, but the cost has been reduced. Thanks to RU.08 for keeping on the pressure. ;-)

These are some great comparisons. I was concerned about the 'double haloing' effect that the noisy SRV3 had on the source, but the denoised version does seem to minimize or eliminate that. Could you post similar comparisons for the shot of Leia on the Tantive for example, I'm really interested in how this changes the distortion in the eyes of characters, since the previous one tended to add artifacts in the iris especially.

I'd very much like to see this, these cuts look very reasonable. I wonder though if there's a 2 or 2.5 hour movie in here somewhere. If someone did that without it feeling rushed, it would probably be my go-to version. Severe cuts to most movies would be required, but someone's gotta respect the bladders of the audience!

God I hope that's not what plays before TFA. Awkwardly truncated Williams music would be a rough opening.

1: Those jokes were from Playboy magazine, apparently.

2: My definition of 'clean' in this case is 'free from monstrous depictions of caricatured religious iconography'

:)

bttfbrasilfan said:

So, I just made a color correction LUT for the Grindhouse release in DaVinci Resolve. It's a quick solution to fix some color degradation problems and can be applied in almost every modern video editor, like Premiere or Final Cut.

Here are some examples with before/after comparisons: http://i.imgur.com/0w17vDs.jpg

And here's the LUT for download:
https://mega.co.nz/#!hsBDHKKY!kuTxtlqZf2lc9UG8iPjx-_rO3_L7FOd-CwGt6fD9cdE

I am not quite satisfied with this results yet because I think it degrades the greens a little too much (see Bobba Fett).
I will give more details of how I did it later so that people with more experience can try to do it better than I did.

Your example is on the left, my tinkering is on the right. I agree that there is a bit too much blue in the shadows of your examples, but other than that I'd say it's pretty spot on.

http://imgur.com/gallery/662z9ij

And if anyone gives me a skyscraper bunny...they might get a cookie.