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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

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Members
Join date
20-Sep-2006
Last activity
30-May-2025
Posts
3,220
Web Site
http://www.hardbat.com/puggo

Post History

Post
#731083
Topic
The forum was down for maintenance for several hours
Time

RicOlie_2 said:

I wouldn't mind that as an option, but as it is now, ot.com looks better than most forums out there, in my opinion. I don't find the light text on dark background at all hard to read, either, if that's your complaint.

Being someone with poor eyesight, the current format is hard on my eyes.  Some years ago, you could choose the format, and one of the options was black on light blue -- much, MUCH easier to read and didn't leave my eyes tired.  Virtually every other forum (and I read several) are dark on light, rather than light on dark.  OT.com may look cool, but of all the forums I read, it is by far the hardest on my eyes.

Post
#730207
Topic
Pets
Time

meet Natasha:

Kids aren't in the cards for us, so Natasha is our daughter.  See that look in her eye?  She's very mischievous.  She also loves people - whenever the doorbell rings she runs to the front door.  We call her our "greeter".

I've had lots of pets over the years - dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish, mice, rats.  The worst loss was our pet rat "Felix" - rats have incredible personalities and can become very attached to people.  When she died of lung cancer - she couldn't breathe and went into a panic, running up to us as if begging for help.  She died in my hands, gritting her teeth, it was awful.  After that I never wanted a pet rat again - they only live for 3 years, just enough time to become a member of the family and then they die.  Dogs and cats are better choices.

There is a very interesting scientific account of animal consciousness in the book "Consciousness: an Introduction" (by Susan Blackmore).  There is debate surrounding consciousness and cognition in animals because of their limited language abilities, but often strong memory skills.  There is also reason to believe that different animals experience different sorts of consciousness, because of differences in their sensory apparatus.  Imagine what your consciousness would be like if you couldn't see color, but you could detect infrared signals.

Post
#729757
Topic
4K restoration on Star Wars
Time

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

While I understand (now) that the LD master was letterboxed, presumably that master was made from some earlier scan.  I'd also imagine that that scan was better resolution than letterboxed 4:3.

I'm pretty sure a fairly direct film->...->D-1 pipeline was used. The storage costs for a digital scan of a film at >NTSC resolution would have been massive in '92/93 and it still would have been on tape.

So if I understand you correctly, the letterboxed LD master was likely the highest resolution entity they had, other than the original film?

I guess the reason that I ask, is because the letterboxed format wasn't the only format that the OUT was available on.  There was also pan and scan, and PAL.  Presumably the pan and scan was at a higher resolution (albeit with cropped sides).  So would those different format masters have been all generated from completely different scans?  Might instead there have been one master scan from which these various other masters have been made from?  And if so, why not just generate a new anamorphic master from that scan?  Or, back to my original question, is it more likely that they saved the various masters but not the scan from which they were made?

Post
#729723
Topic
4K restoration on Star Wars
Time

AntcuFaalb said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

While I understand (now) that the LD master was letterboxed, presumably that master was made from some earlier scan.  I'd also imagine that that scan was better resolution than letterboxed 4:3.

I'm pretty sure a fairly direct film->...->D-1 pipeline was used. The storage costs for a digital scan of a film at >NTSC resolution would have been massive in '92/93 and it still would have been on tape.

So if I understand you correctly, the letterboxed LD master was likely the highest resolution entity they had, other than the original film?

Post
#729483
Topic
4K restoration on Star Wars
Time

MaximRecoil said:

Yes, there is a reason, and it has already been pointed out. In short, the masters they used were essentially glorified 4:3 DVDs to begin with. To go from a 4:3 DVD source to a 16:9 DVD, you have to upscale the vertical resolution of the picture area. Upscaling the master when authoring a DVD isn't normally done by professionals unless they absolutely have to.

I have a question for you for whomever might know...

While I understand (now) that the LD master was letterboxed, presumably that master was made from some earlier scan.  I'd also imagine that that scan was better resolution than letterboxed 4:3.  Are we to presume that the scan from which that LD master was made no longer exists?  Would it be customary for a studio to make an LD master from a scan, and then discard the scan?

An answer of "yes" would support your description that upscaling would be necessary to produce an anamorphic DVD.  It would also surprise me, but I don't really know what constituted normal practices at that time.

An answer of "no" would support that this really was an intentional f-u to fans.  Because it's hard to imagine that it would be so hard to generate a higher-res, standard anamorphic master if the scan was still available.  I did essentially the same thing to make Puggo Grande and I was using a 1999 workstation.

Post
#728990
Topic
What did Ghost Obi Wan mean?
Time

SilverWook said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

When ESB was produced in 1980, Obi-Wan didn't even know Leia was Luke's sister.  I don't even think George knew that.

When they had Obi-Wan deliver the twins to Ben's farm in ROTS, nobody at Lucasfilm stopped and said: "oops, loss of continuity, we can't do it that way".

 He only delivered Luke to Owen's farm. ;)

Right - actually, I knew that.  Mis-typed.  The actual problem was his knowing that there were twins and being thusly involved in hiding them.

Post
#728668
Topic
Info Wanted: What are the "essential" OT fan-edits to have?
Time

kk650 said:

What Adywan achieved with Star Wars Revisited was pretty damn impressive in terms of special effects but he takes too many creative liberties in his Revisited releases for my liking.

I like them as fan-edits -- I expect a fan-edit to change the movie.  War of the Stars changes it even more.  For something true to the original, choose a preservation project.

Post
#728554
Topic
4K restoration on Star Wars
Time

Maxim, let me try to clarify.  People consider the GOUT a "horrible RELEASE".  A "release" is a particular packaging of a movie that is officially produced and sold.  Releases are by their very definition embedded in the context of their release date.  Given the release date of the GOUT, "horrible" is an apt description because it doesn't meet baseline standards of releases at that time.  You're right it isn't a "horrible movie" or "horrible video quality", but it is a "horrible release".  That phrase requires no additional clarification of context.

A fan-edit is a completely different sort of "release" and would understandably not be held to the same standards.

I don't necessarily begrudge Lucasfilm using the laserdisc master for what he considered a "bonus disc".  I don't even begrudge the excessive DVNR, etc.  It's the non-anamorphic format that makes it a "horrible" release.   In 2006, the choice between anamorphic and non-anamorphic is akin to simply checking a box in the encoder software.  The fact that it isn't anamorphic was clearly to intentionally lower the quality.  With no extra effort whatsoever, Lucas could have improved the video quality dramatically just by filling in the check box as was the case for virtually every other film release of that time.  It is unfathomable that a producer would intentionally lower the quality of a release so dramatically, to sub-baseline levels, and that's primarily for me what makes the GOUT rise(!) to the level of "horrible release".