NeverarGreat

darklordoftech said:

Humby said:

darklordoftech said:

Anyway, the sequel trilogy can do things to compensate for the prequels. For example, Luke could say, "The Jedi used to believe in midichlorians, but we now know that midichlorians don't exist."

In my eyes, I would much rather have a PT plot point be ignored than try to be fixed.  A scene like this would take me out of the moment.  Memories of Qui-Gon and young Anakin, memories of Palpatine's silly create life speech, these would all come flooding back and seriously take me out of what would probably be a meaningful conversation about the force (the only place a scene like this could probably fit).  Overall, it just seems unnecessary, other than appeasing a few disheartened fans.

I don't mean to pick on your idea, specifically, but it was a good example for me to explain why I feel it is more important to let the prequels be, reference them only in a broader manner, and leave the details out.  That way, those who want to ignore the prequels can continue to do so, but those who enjoy the prequels aren't completely left out.

If you avoid dealing with one problem, you create more. For example, if you let midichlorians exist without mentioning them, you'd have to come up with a reason for the Jedi not bloodtesting people that they would bloodtest according to all logic. In case you're wondering, I do think that The Joker's non-mentioning in Dark Knight Rises is awkward.

Additionally, there are things that I WANT to be mentioned. For example, Palpatine's scheming.

Avoiding a problem may not work in real life, but framing a story to exclude awkward continuity issues is a good strategy in movies. A movie is like a dream in more ways than one. It need only be engaging and continuous in the moment. There's no reason for Leia to explain the nuanced reasons why she is leading the Death Star to the Rebel Base. It would simply slow the story down, and reasons can be invented later in the viewer's mind. There should be reasons for every action of course, but they don't need to be stated outright.

But surely you know that it was George's original vision to have everyone be purple-skinned aliens, don't you?

I did see this, don't know about the movie, but it's got that excellent technicolor look to it alright. It makes me sad to see films like Into Darkness and The Desolation of Smaug go with really harsh red and blue gradients instead of allowing the original colors shine through.

The Complete Saga Blu-ray has arrived! This marks the fourth time I've bought copies of the original trilogy. Luckily I got this one half-off, because I wasn't prepared to pay money for the prequels. Dirty rotten thing to do, making someone pay for that just to get the bonus features. Anyway, the project continues....

frank678 said:

just to be contrary, i prefered your first result! can you make two versions? one theatrically accurate one and then one with a green/yellow tint called the "limited edition/frank edition" or something

That's not contrary, I like the first one better as well. This is why I keep referring to the Senator photos, though they're probably inaccurate in several ways. They just look gorgeous. I'll try to match them, then pull it back to the other sources. The final will land somewhere between the available sources in terms of brightness and color.

Yeah, the the green was too heavy. Rendered a new one:

Incidentally, in this shot there is a single frame where Leia's face gets much more saturated. I would never have seen it if I wasn't going frame by frame, but it's in the Blu-ray as well. I wonder if it was in the original movie.

The green is for you Frank!

Well, and also for matching to the Senator photos, and, yeah.

Yeah, it's not particularly problematic, it's just that I'm trying to get a feel for the differences. Not a game changer by any means.

Just getting a feel for the Death Star interiors:

Same settings for both shots.

In preparation for working with the Blu ray, I thought it would be a good idea to determine in what ways it differed from the DVD. Looking at the pink flashes and the highlights, it seems to me that the DVD is actually better than the Blu ray. The Blu ray seems to turn the highlights red to a greater extent than the DVD, and in some cases the highlights actually have less detail than the DVD!

I used a screenshot of the Blu ray that I found online for this comparison. The highlights are clearly blown out in the Blu ray, and also in the GOUT for this shot, though I didn't include it in this comparison. Despecialized seems to fix this problem to some extent, but some detail has already been irretrievably lost in the Blu ray, such as in the bright part of Luke's hair and the ridges on his armor, so it's obviously not present in Despecialized in these places. I'll continue examining the Blu ray, but I'm disappointed that the DVD is a better source in some regards than the Blu-ray.

Pink removal:

I'd say your new attempt is quite an improvement, and probably not possible to get clean audio in a silent scene.

As to the amplitude change, I'm not sure it matters in any case. I used the Amplify effect in Audacity to make the volume of both tracks similar. The thinking behind it was carried over from when I was trying to cancel out audio by inverting the waveform of the copied audio track, and to successfully cancel the two waveforms they needed to be of equal height. Again, not sure that it matters when using Knockout, but I did the same thing to the Leia hologram speech and it seemed to improve the quality.

Your hat is nice.

@ Frink: Your version seems to remove all traces of the music, which is remarkable considering how much louder it is in this scene compared to the Leia Hologram scene. You mentioned that Windows Audio Recorder is whack, have you made sure that it's not using input from a microphone? That messed me up when I tried this approach.

I've made an audio clip from the Phantom Menace AC3, using the exact settings that I've outlined above, except that I increased the amplitude of the right channel by 3.

https://vimeo.com/78791476

Password: toostrong

It has a tinny ring to it as well, and you can still hear the music, but if you're planning on putting other music over it, it may be acceptable.

No restarant would be complete without some Pallies. While we're on the subject of the prequels, you'll also need some strange fishlike things hanging from strings and something on the menu called "Jawa juice", which is usually just Sunny D in a Jawa-themed cup.

Bingowings said:

The other tip I would pass on (not just for losing weight but for thrift reasons too) is never waste stock.

If you are boiling vegetables or meat transfer the stock to measuring jug and when it's cooled down cover it and refrigerate.

If you have any left overs like random vegetables, Brassicaceae cores, leaves and storks, meat bones etc Just fry up an onion and maybe some garlic, throw in some herbs after a few minutes throw in the scraps and a chopped potato and leave to simmer for about an hour.

Sift out bones or stringy storks and if you like blend it.

You will have that most mythical of things, a free meal (or as free as to make no odds).

As it was mostly liquid it will also be very filling without having much in the way of calories (depending on the ingredients naturally).

Soup making is an essential life skill. No two soups will be the same.

There is very little need to starve if you can make soup and it will balance your weight.

Yes, yes, to Bingowings you listen. Soup, remember the soup!

I learned how to make soup last year, and it has helped me tremendously. When we get a whole chicken, we have a meal off of it and then the bones are picked, cooked, and simmered to produce a fine broth. Add a bottle of original V8 juice and you have the beginnings of a fine chicken soup, just add whatever else you want.

You can do the same with beef bones, which we got from a local farmer along with an eighth of a cow. The procedure is a bit more tricky to get right, but you have a formidable stock that can contain anything.

Tyrphanax said:

Also, UK peeps. Go be in Star Wars.

I like that they may be going for an original trilogy dynamic with the casting of unknowns for the main characters. Having the old crew return in a mentor position would make sense, and focusing on unknowns would help to make the movie unique. They certainly don't need to sell the movie with big names.

Reegar said:

Is there anything I might do to help?

Not unless you can flash-forward, speed up the pacing, or invent a plot device to get him off this rock. :)

Love the slower pace though, it reminds me of the Radio Drama.

Ah, Biggs is right, Luke's never gonna get out of here!

The intention is conflicted with regards to shots like this. The goal is to return the movie to its '77 technicolor look, but do as much as possible with color correction. So do I attempt to fix the color on things like the sky in this shot or the Leia hologram even though these elements have been physically altered? I think that the answer is a cautious yes, for though the offending elements would need to be replaced in a true restoration, I would like to release a version of the movie that is in the spirit of the original, colorwise. Perhaps I've gone too far in worrying about something that is a non-issue, but someone who knows how the original looks would probably be bothered by a blue sky instead of a red one. So as long as the color correction of an SE element doesn't compromise the correction of the original elements of the shot, I'm going to try and fix it as much as I can. Harmy did the same thing with his version 1 of Despecialized where the blue of the Leia hologram was corrected. Later he replaced the element altogether.

Basically, I'll do my best to make it look like the 77 technicolor version unless it compromises the rest of the image.

Yeah, the artifacts are a problem. I reworked this to minimize the artifacts and rendered it, but as you can see there are still some artifacts around C-3PO, and Luke's manual rotoscoping job is painfully obvious. This looks like a job for Team Negative1!

So it may be true that the sky was cut out of the frame for the SE, and that would make sense, but I'm just trying to get it as close as possible with color correction alone:

Thanks for pointing that out Harmy, I didn't even check Despecialized on that one. Your image came from the comparison image gallery, so I'll make sure to double check from now on. The real image is much better.

How do you think this shot was changed? I would guess that the background was isolated with a chroma key of some kind and then the color was swapped. This would mean that the original sky remains, it's just a different color. Or would the entire sky be replaced with something else? That doesn't make sense.

Chewtobacca said:

NeverarGreat said: Password: icare

Haha!  I like the password. :D

That scene looks incredible.  I've never seen Star Wars looking so good for color.

Thanks! Of course, it's much easier to make a single scene look good with a single set of settings than an entire movie. Going forward, I may just post shots and scenes like the Binary Sunset that are entirely different than the DVD, as these are the ones that will take most of the time to get right. The above shot is an example of that.

Another test to see whether the original sky color in this shot could be recovered:

I'd say so. But unfortunately for the DVD, most of the detail on 3PO's shoulders is on the blue channel, so it's a compromise.

JEDIT: I've updated the image. This one keeps almost all the blue detail by turning it red.

Here's an uncompressed video of that scene:

https://vimeo.com/78428369

Password: icare

This one's a bit more subtle.

Getting the brightness right for these scenes may be the most time consuming part of this project.