Here’s another clip! I’ve been a little absent from working on the project, but I’m back at it.
https://youtu.be/9Zj_pclqc-w
Ladies and gentlemen, version 1 is released.
Check the original post for an update on what I’ll need to tweak for version 2.
For those of you interested, I have rendered a rough preview of the regrade. I figured because of how long it’s been, I should share at least something. PM me if you would like to download it. It’s roughly 16gb, so it’s not that huge.
Keep in mind that this is going to be rough. While most shots are colormatched, there may be a few that don’t match up when returning to a previous camera angle. I plan on doing another pass through the timeline once I finished colormatching to Sanjuro’s color grade. There are going to be a few missing 97 exclusive shots that are missing due to the reference footage being offline when I exported. The cgi rocks are in front of R2 and Greedo shooting Han is missing entirely. I would have linked the footage backup, but since this is a rough preview, it doesn’t really matter.
Have you tried using 35mm theatrical cut prints to undo changes made in 2004 or later, such as the Emperor scene? This would result in higher PQ than SDTV version of the 97SE.
Not theatrical cuts, but I did use Adywan’s 1997 Reconstruction. Looking at laserdisc and tv captures, the coloring is pretty close to achieve the same look. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to look for a good 35mm source. I really wanted to maintain the clean picture quality that the 2020 blu ray has since I’ve always felt these versions, alongside the the theatrical cuts, are deserving of such a visual treatment.
How is this going?
Slowly but surely. Fan edits have taken a back seat on my priority list.
Color matched Jabba Conversation!
https://youtu.be/a4dJL7it0MI
Making decent progress, but there is still the occasional difficult shot that refuses to look even remotely like the source images i have. I’m gonna try experimenting with similar shots from schorman’s 2004 HDTV rips to see if I can get a little closer to a perfect match. Unlike the 2011 Blu ray, it looks pretty clean in regards to grain, so it might blend in with the 2020 footage.
Making decent progress, but there is still the occasional difficult shot that refuses to look even remotely like the source images i have. I’m gonna try experimenting with similar shots from schorman’s 2004 HDTV rips to see if I can get a little closer to a perfect match. Unlike the 2011 Blu ray, it looks pretty clean in regards to grain, so it might blend in with the 2020 footage.
Not sure if this thread applies to preservation too, but I can’t find the rips of the 2000 Japanese Special Edition Laserdisc captures anywhere. If anyone has ANH and ROTJ, could you PM me.
I’m trying to use the color match tool v1.2 on mac to color match an image sequence, but when I import them, the program says “Wrong file type.” I’m using .tif images, which seems to be supported judging by the tutorial.
Kinda late, but are these rips located anywhere else besides Myspleen?
I recently synced and encoded the 1997 DTS Audio Reels for A New Hope into a Dolby TrueHD mixdown using ffmpeg. I’ve been able to playback the audio in VLC through my 5.1 setup, but I think it’s being decoded as 5.1 PCM rather than TrueHD since VLC and my setup doesn’t decode TrueHD.
Due to not owning a home theater receiver that decodes TrueHD, would someone be kind enough to test it themselves for quality assurance? Preferably someone who has a good ear for this kind of stuff. I just wanna know whether or not somethings wrong with it.
As a little update to where I’m at, I’ve color matched everything up until the beginning of the first cantina scene. Making some decent progress while staying accurate to the technicolor print. When I’m too burnt out on color matching, I’m fine tuning the Dolby TrueHD audio to make sure it’s perfectly synced.
While on the topic of audio, I’m going to including a lot more options this time around. Listed below are all the audio tracks I plan on including:
-My new 1997 Dolby TrueHD Track
-Shorman’s 1997 DTSHD MA track
-1997 5.1 AC3 Laserdisc Track
-1997 Matrixed Stereo PCM Track
Here’s another glimpse at some more Technicolor/97 goodness.
https://youtu.be/KnOhJHBC2jI
Hey everybody. Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been busy lately. Long story short, aside from making fan edits, I also make my own short films, host a podcast and do all sorts of things involved with the industry. Since things are beginning to look up in terms of job opportunities in my profession, I’ve been putting most of my time into getting prepared for the summer. Naturally, working on this project has been booted to the very bottom of my priority list. Not because I don’t enjoy working on it, but simply because I have more important things to worry about. Thankfully, because I don’t wanna leave things unfinished, I’ve put together a schedule during the week to improve progress. Things may be subject to change, but I plan on getting it out within the year. For those who have followed the project, thank you for the patience and stay tuned.
Hey everybody. Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been busy lately. Long story short, aside from making fan edits, I also make my own short films, host a podcast and do all sorts of things involved with the industry. Since things are beginning to look up in terms of job opportunities in my profession, I’ve been putting most of my time into getting prepared for the summer. Naturally, working on this project has been booted to the very bottom of my priority list. Not because I don’t enjoy working on it, but simply because I have more important things to worry about. Thankfully, because I don’t wanna leave things unfinished, I’ve put together a schedule during the week to improve progress. Things may be subject to change, but I plan on getting it out within the year. For those who have followed the project, thank you for the patience and stay tuned.
Hey everybody. Sorry for the radio silence. I’ve been busy lately. Long story short, aside from making fan edits, I also make my own short films, host a podcast and do all sorts of things involved with the industry. Since things are beginning to look up in terms of job opportunities in my profession, I’ve been putting most of my time into getting prepared for the summer. Naturally, working on this project has been booted to the very bottom of my priority list. Not because I don’t enjoy working on it, but simply because I have more important things to worry about. Thankfully, because I don’t wanna leave things unfinished, I’ve put together a schedule during the week to improve progress. Things may be subject to change, but I plan on getting it out within the year. For those who have followed the project, thank you for the patience and stay tuned.
Here’s a small glimpse at what version 3 of the death star attack is looking like right now. It’s still being worked on, but I’m close to locking this scene down.
https://youtu.be/5Wnvj2kCZjg
Sounds Awesome P.J, can’t wait!!! Did you get my message in regards to the Jabba Scene???
Oh my bad. I’ll respond in a jiffy.
So things are coming together and I have to say, this may be a helluva lot more accurate to the theatrical 97 release than I anticipated. Obviously not one for one, but i am confident 90% of it will be. On a side note, I also am working on a Dolby TrueHD version of the 97 DTS audio reels so that it is practically lossless. I just need to work on syncing it.
Howdy. After taking some time away and recently having a look at 4K97IV and more Technicolor samples, I wanted to return to this regrade and bring even closer to how the theatrical 97 release of ANH looks. I’m currently loading the footage up and retouching it. The two big differences are going to be the Death Star Interior and Battle of Yavin. I’ve realized those two sections really need further touch ups.
Version 2 is finished! Included with the film are two Dolby Digital tracks, one stereo and one 5.1, and an excellent sounding Dolby TrueHD track. I’ll PM previous users who asked for Version 1. PM me if you are a first time viewer. Hope everyone enjoys it.
Howdy! I’m in the middle of adding additional SFX and converting the audio into 5.1, so a version 2 is right around the corner. I also will be using the blu ray release as the footage source this time around, so no more pixelated dvd upscale.
Just added a sample of the Battle of Hoth if anyone’s interested.
Sorry for being so quiet on progress as of late. I actually need some help on this one. Shown below is a gif of one of the shots that I’m compositing the lightsaber effects onto.
I’m using a Plugin literally called “saber” and have it to apply to layers masks. The problem I’m having is masking out the areas of the lightsaber blade so it isn’t layered on top of the characters as they’re fighting. Problem is, the Saber plugin when set to layer masks applies to ALL masks that exist on the selected layer. Anyone with After effects experience know how I can achieve the proper blocking out of the blade? Here’s a link to a video covering the plugin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reSXGxkyr0k&t=1937s
Also, if anyone knows of a better method of upscaling, that would be great. This shot in particular is the best i can do with After Effects’ Detail Preserving Upscale.