Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

Bingowings said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Bingowings said:

Star Wars shouldn't always look the same ...

I'm curious what you mean by this?

It shouldn't always be bright and clear.

The snowstorms on Hoth obscured a lot from view which makes sense, the steam in the freezing chamber created exciting stylised shots.

The sand blowing around in this footage enhances the scene in the same way.

Just because you have a nice looking full scale model, it doesn't follow you have to show it at it's best.

Another example would be the Nostromo landed on Acheron.

It looks more realistic in a story sense because it's placed in a kinetic environment.

Oh, ok, I agree.  The gritty realism is one of the things I prefer about the OT over the PT.  Although I'd draw a line at -the acting shouldn't always be good-   :)

No, just the raws for SW would fit on a 32G flash drive.  Actually, it would probably consume only 20-24G, but flash drives jump from 16G to 32G.

ESB would take another 20-24G.

By "thumb drive" I meant "flash drive".  Best Buy has 32G flash drives on sale for $39.99.

The raw captures would fit on a 32G thumb drive.  Keep in mind that they are the wrong aspect ratio, the wrong speed, and aren't synched with any soundtrack, including their own optical (which was captured on a different machine).

captainsolo said:

I now also like mouse droppings!

Their similarity to raisinettes has its down sides.

Bingowings said:

Star Wars shouldn't always look the same ...

I'm curious what you mean by this?

captainsolo said:

Wow. I am very impressed with what Ady was able to do with the color correction. What is now possible is a darn near perfect looking film sourced ESB.

if you mean "... darn near perfect" in a mouse-dropping sort of way, I agree! :)

The secret to the success of the various Puggo editions is to lower expectations!

Erik's corrections are very good.  I might recommend, for ESB, saying "Return to a galaxy far, far away...",  to match the iconic phrase, but that's just a judgement call.

I'm surprised these were determined to be industrial. I think even the most pissed-off OT fan would say there is significant artistic content in the helmets.

Dr Kain said:

1.  How are these BD quality if they are downloads?  I have never seen anything download no matter where they are ripped from even come close to being as good as an actual disc.

 

You might be confusing "downloading" with "streaming".  If you download HD content and burn it to disk, it is certainly as good as an actual disk (heck, it then IS an actual disk).

3.  I download that img thing, but after reading about it, this all seems way too complicated to put together.  I mean, having to somehow splice the files into one large file without it actually showing and trying to copy them to a BD disc just seems way too complex. 

Nobody said it was easy.  There's a bit of a learning curve to downloading files of this size.  If you think this is hard, consider how much work some of the members here put into the restorations.  Some of them literally took years, for no compensation (most of us spent a lot of our own money making our restorations and making them available).  Ask nicely and people will help... just remember we aren't BestBuy - you're going to have to dig around take a bit of time to get yourself up to speed. But it's worth it - there are versions here that are much better than you can buy in the store.

4.  Has anyone made disc art and cover art for these?  If so, where and what type of paper do you recommend using.  In fact, is an Epson Artisan 710 even going to be worth printing BD covers from?  I have never seen any printer be able to even touch the quality of an official releases cover art?

I have found most of the cover art found on the forums here to be better than official releases, and I just get photo paper and print them at Kinko's.

It's not dangerous at all to clean the reels (unless there is sprocket damage or a lot of splices).  Actually, I do a quick cleaning to try and get the big pieces of lint off of it.  I'm not set up to do a really thorough cleaning, and even after cleaning, the film and the projector still attracts dust and hairs.  So often I have to stop a capture midstream, rewind a ways, clean out the gate, and continue.  Sometimes I don't notice something caught in the gate because it's too small to show up on the viewfinder, but is clearly seen when the image is blown up.  That is frustrating and happens a lot.  Also, after doing 5 or 6 captures, the film is getting dusty again.

Which filters did you use for frame #5 ?

It's not a stupid question at all.  Most 16mm prints are "reductions" from 35mm.  I strongly suspect that all 16mm prints of the OT are reductions.  But I don't know that for sure.  That said, I think they were released by Lucasfilm, and not pirated. But I have no way of even knowing that, for certain.

Actually, I was referring to stills #2 and #5, and I still claim that some of the stars have been lost.  There are faint stars that are present in the original and missing from the processed versions.  It not so much the importance of those stars, but that it would be reasonable to assume that other detail has been lost as well, however minor.  That said, your color correction and contrast looks very nice.

One of the things I intend to be very careful about, is how much contrast adjustment I do.  I love the look of the blacks/whites in these samples, but if that's what gave rise to the loss of stars, then I have some serious decisions to make.

If Lucas hires someone to design something for him, and that person designs it as a term of his employment, then whether or not Lucas designed it, he owns the design.  I'm no fan of Lucas, but in this case I think he has every right to protect the designs that are so integral to his product line.

It's exciting to see people experimenting with the captures. I am happy to give a copy of the raw transfer to anyone who wants to play with it.  I made that offer for the PG, and I make the same offer with the PSB.  Remember, though, that the raw transfer isn't yet complete - there are dropouts still to patch and I want to get a decent baseline white balance from Adywan done.

Regarding the stills, remember that they are just stills.  The hard part is getting the moving version to not contain artifacts in the process.  I actually spent quite a bit of time experimenting with limitedsharpenfaster, descratch and despot myself, and while I liked many of the results, I didn't like that they occasionally produced artifacts, or removed some detail, along the way.  Notice, for example, that in stills #2 and #5, the number of stars in the starfield that have been removed.

Actually, some people might prefer such a version since it would be cleaner, sharper, and thus probably easier on the eyes. I just want to ensure that my release is as true to the original 16mm film as I can.

After I get a single decent transfer of all three reels complete, synched with the optical sound track, I'll be happy to let others play with them.  Whether I end up prefering it over mine or vice versa isn't important, because again I have no problem with multiple versions emerging.  In fact, it was always my intent for these captures to lead to multiple releases.

The difference between PSB and PG, is that the prints of SW were seriously faded and the print of ESB is not.  So, with ESB, it is reasonable to strive for the most accurate color transfer.  With SW, I was trying to get a decent color balance with an appropriate amount of red removed.  So if I were to ask Adywan to color correct PG (which I don't intend to do), it would be an entirely different kind of job. It's not just a question of finding the right white balance, because the original colors no longer are present on the filmstock, as they are for ESB.

danny_boy said:

The 1080/24p Attack Of The Clones was blown up to fill an IMAX screen which has  a bigger surface area than the conventional 70mm screens (that the 35mm Star Wars was blown up to**)----with no complaints.

My friends and I saw pixelization in the theater during AOTC on a normal sized movie screen.

Unfortunately the OP specified "home video" release.  So you have to pick which one of those will be transferred directly to blu ray :)

Ken, I'm curious, what do you do for a living?

Maybe the glitch is another artistic decision?

I just received one in the mail two days ago - haven't looked at it yet.  The other is in someone else's possession, and I don't think it's subtitled. Both are supposedly in excellent condition, but of course you can't really tell for sure until you project it large enough to scrutinize. You can't see scratches (or mouse droppings) just by eye-balling the film.

Yes, I have already been granted access to two 16mm prints of ROTJ.  That will complete the droology.

Now, if NSF would just grant me 12 units of release time for artistic sabbatical, I could get these dang transfers done!!

Indeed... he could then say: "I even went to OT.com and asked THEM what was the very best source, and I used exactly what they told me, and STILL they aren't satisfied!!"

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Perhaps a color corrected Puggo Grande after this...(I know, wishful thinking)

The color issues with the PG were an entirely different situation.  PG was heavily red-shifted... PSB just has poor white balance.  With PG, I was comfortable making a judgement call as how much red to remove before it started looking unnatural. There's no way normal color could be restored to PG, it would be like asking Adywan to polish a turd (especially reel 2).  However, I think that with his skills PSB will have excellent color balance.

Adywan had finished his color corrections on one of my captures of Reel 1.  He had to apply two different color corrections because there were differences on either side of a splice partway through the reel.  I haven't had a chance to review the video file yet, but the screen grabs he sent look fabulous:

I'll be shipping him captures of reel 2 next (there are three reels).

My first impressions are that I was wise to approach Ady.  :)

p.s. - please note that all mouse droppings were left unscathed.