I'd consider going to Celebration if a critical mass OTcon took shape. I could only do the weekend, though. Unlike most of you fanboys, I have a job :) :)
It's called Deleted Magic. Really, really well done and fun to watch.
Having said that, in my opinion, the movie is MUCH better without the deleted scenes. They are plodding, and remove some of the mystery that makes the first film so effective. One of George Lucas' greatest strengths, and also one of his faults, is that he wants to show you everything. The tight editing and leaving some of the details open to imagination worked out for the best. I'd go so far as saying it was editing that made the difference between a fun film, and one of the greatest films of all time. It didn't win an academy award for editing for nothing.
Hmm, it actually got pretty good reviews.
What movie is that from?
Yes and no. Revisionism in the OT is worse because it happened after a 20-30 year gap. Thus the changes in OT cause it to lose its cultural window in time. By contrast, the changes in the PT happened roughly within the same cultural context time-frame.
That said, CPY kicks a--, so anything that preserves him I'm all for.
The Yahoo Finance article is quite good -- manages to accurately catch some of the fine points.
Actually, if you look again at PSB, some of the Hoth scenes have rather blue snow. Especially around when Luke gets caught in the snow and ends up in the cave. I was surprised at how blue it looked on the print, and I think the scan reflects that. So it might depend on what specific scene you're talking about.
I'd bet that with the crushed blues on the blu-ray, Harmy's job was more difficult.
One thing I would like to see on a proper release, is the COMPLETE deleted scene with Biggs, Luke, and Red Leader - with the complete dialog about Luke's father.
Deshaker has a ton of tunable settings. I sometimes set the maximum movement to a very small number, and I also limit the motion sensing area to a portion of the screen that I know doesn't have any action in it.
For stabilizing, I use the Virtualdub filter called Deshaker. Actually I use it a LOT, on both old film and old video. It's slow, but it really does a nice job. There are a lot of arcane settings, so if you have any questions on how to use it, or what settings I use for different situations, feel free to ask.
There are spot remover filters available for Avisynth, as well as dedicated software. Back when I played with some of them, I didn't like the detail that they also removed. However, my need was different than yours.
I enjoy watching the prequels as eye-candy, but they aren't really movies. They're more like sappy video games. Perhaps they could have been made into movies with:
I almost added "more CPY", but that goes without saying. The music I might actually keep.
Seriously, the one thing about the PT that made me really sad, was the Yoda lightsaber fight. That pretty much destroyed his character. After ESB, I pictured Yoda fighting with the force as his ally, with great efficiency and grace. A slight move or gesture here and there, bending the force to tie the opponent in knots. What a missed opportunity. Instead they stick his tail in a light socket and have him leaping around like a maniac, totally out of character and with virtually no hint of the force. It was painful to watch.
Could have been something funky about the camera. Ok, go for it. :)
Harmy said:
Yeah, I did get that clip but I didn't use it in the end because I thought what I had gave better results. I can do just the color if you want but I'd still recommend doing this kind of processing now, rather than on an already re-compressed source.
Ok, as long as you think that the artifacts are something other than what normally occur in NTSC interlaced video, then go ahead and apply the processing. Just keep the sharpening very mild.
Am looking forward to seeing the color-corrected footage! Thanks again!
They all look great. I also can do mild sharpening and reduce interlace flicker on my end, and I prefer to examine their effect on an encoded NTSC DVD. So I think my preference would be to have just the color correction, without the additional processing. Unless you think that those artifacts are caused by the color correction, or a byproduct of getting in and out of AE.
I'd be interested in other opinions on this, too. Chewtoie?
I forgot - did you get that small additional video of the desert scene where C3PO and R2D2 are approaching Jabba's palace?
Thanks everyone! Especially to Harmy. It is going to be fun getting this project back up again. Next up - sound sync!!! Ugh, the most tedious step.
Perhaps I should clarify how I am encoding the video for DVD. I'm using TMPGE, which has a setting for the frame rate of the incoming video as:
"23.976 (internally 29.97)"
That tells TMPGE that although the video file format is labelled as 29.97, the actual frames in the video look correct if played at 23.976. I also tell it to set the pulldown flag. It then takes all that into account and produces an MPEG2 file that looks correct when played on a DVD player.
This is why I don't want the frame rate settings in the video altered if it can be avoided.
If I were really being picky, the frames look correct if played at 24fps. But since I haven't had any problem with audio drift, I've just let TMPGE do its thing as described above.
Chewtobacca said:
It won't. I understand what you are saying about not wanting anything to be altered at this stage apart from the color, and that's fine, but you shouldn't apply RFF flags to 29.97fps video. At some stage, you will have to slow it back down to 23.96fps and then encode with RFF flags i.e. apply pulldown.
Sorry if I'm being dense, but what do you mean by "slow it back down"? The frames that are currently in the movie already correspond to 24fps, not 30fps. Why do I need to slow it down further before pulldown? I didn't do that for PG or PSB (at least I don't remember doing that).
By the way, thanks everyone for helping harmy look into this!
The camera I used is DV. However, it was not filming a DV movie. Instead, it was being used simply to pass images to Cinecap software that assembles the frames into a DV movie on the computer. Since DV plays at 30fps, but the 16mm frames were intended to be played at 24fps, that movie appears fast when played.
I don't need any of that altered - in fact I don't want any of it altered in any way. Just the colors corrected. DVD pulldown will take care of the speed later. I think that Harmy is having trouble figuring out how to save the color-corrected movie without AE making other changes in the frame format. Is it possible to have AE detect the format of the movie, and just save it in the same format?
[btw, as for the featurettes, i can't do pulldown on part of a movie, so in some cases I just left clips fast. If it's important for a clip to run at the right speed within a standard DV featurette, I can have Cinecap do a pulldown in the typical way of adding duplicate frames.]
June 1977 in a theater in Logan, UT while I was at a summer camp. I was 16.
I'm not sure where I first saw ESB and ROTJ.
You wouldn't want to change the speed because I intend to do the pulldown later by setting the DVD pulldown flag on the final DVD.
If you end up unable to deal with the interlacing, perhaps you could describe the color curves you ultimately used, and I could try and replicate them in Vegas or Virtualdub?
NeverarGreat said:
More publicity:
http://www.slashfilm.com/star-wars-despecialized-edition-documentary/
Nice article, but yikes those are some seriously brain-dead comments. What demographic is that site? They make TFN sound sane by comparison.
Download worked fine for me - looks great, it's coming along nicely.
I should start a CPY petition.
Tobar said:
Just another in a long line of inconsistencies between the prequels and the OT.
But easily fixable with CGI, a new sound mix, and a new force ghost.
I think we should start calling it the "Special" Edition.