Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

thorr said:

Regarding the border, if you would, please just crop it to the top/bottom and sides of the frame leaving the curved edge on the corners alone.

I'll consider that.  It depends how "noisy" it is in those corners.  Sometimes they can be distracting if there's a lot of junk in them, or if the soft borders clash too noticeably with the sharp borders of the rest of the image.

If you want to adjust the color, brightness, etc. please be careful not to wash out the brighter or darker areas.  It might be fine just to leave it as is and not adjust this at all, but you are obviously the best judge about that.

Definitely, I'm going to try and be extra careful throughout on this.  My goal is to make sure that everything that made it from the print to the raw cap, is retained in the final version.  Some color correction will be necessary, as it is pretty much impossible to find a single white balance on the camera that works on an entire reel.

Nerfherder said:

Ditto. Even though the source material perhaps isn't in the best of condition every bit of resolution helps. I was watching the Puggo Grande on a 110" screen last week, upscaled via an HD 1080p Epson projector. Whilst it looks fab and REALLY gives one the feel of seeing it 'for real' again (ahh those worn prints of the early 80s!) the blocking/compression in having to squeeze it onto a DVD-5 and the encoders freaking out over all the film grain and dust/scratches etc is really quite apparent. If you're going to the time & trouble of scanning in a film, might as well push the boat out with the encoding to make it as 'perfect' as possible instead of possibly having to do another transfer further down the road...

By the way, I ran a test for reel 1 of Puggo Grande last week at full SD bitrate (which would fit on a DVD9)... it's hard to say if many people would notice any difference.  I was hard pressed to see any difference, but I think I saw some at the borders of horizon and sky in the desert scenes.

After I'm done with PSB, maybe I'll go back and make a HD upscaled version of PG.

thorr said:

I just realized that this is already in quasi-HD (basically anamorphic HD, like how DVD's work, but more resolution)!  You captured this at a vertical resolution of 480.  If you do a horizontal stretch to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, this comes to 1128x480.  You aren't adding any horizontal resolution, but you are gaining vertical resolution compared to DVD.

PLEASE, pretty please with sugar on top, convert this to an HD format and not just stick with DVD.  It is debatable if you should convert it to a standard resolution like 1280x720p in which case the picture area would be 1280x545 because you are upscaling the vertical a bit which might introduce artifacts.  Either way (1128x480 or 1280x545) would be a drastic improvement over 720x306.

Here is a sample pic:

http://i53.tinypic.com/343rxvp.jpg

 

This sounds like a good way to go.  So now I have some questions...

In the past, I would use the anamorphic flag to have the player stretch the video horizontally.  So, not having worked with HD video before, is it the case that HD video doesn't use such a flag?

And if that's the case, then the entire horizontal stretch is done in software?  Any suggested tools that would do the best job at that?

I finally have a scan of reel 3 that I'm satisfied with.  Now I need to go back and re-scan reels 1 and 2.

Right, on the 16mm film that this thread is about, he DOES fade in.  In the 8mm project from a couple of years ago, he doesn't fade in.

SW: +1
ROTS: -1

canofhumdingers said:

I'm not really one for fan edits but projects like this & the work DarkJedi is doing have gotten me to broaden my horizons and venture outside the general star wars discussion...

Thanks for the kind words.  Actually, I don't consider this a fan edit because I'm not changing anything about the movie.  Ironically, the officially released version is, to me, a fan edit.

xhonzi said:

They also have a forum for 2D-3D conversions.  And, low and behold, you can already download the OT (2004 SE's) in 720p 3D glory!

That's actually pretty cool... the ultimate fan edit!  Anyone here sufficiently situated to do a review?

Both scenes in question appear to be from the 35mm.

After reviewing the captures I've done so far, I have concluded that I need to go back and recapture everything.  I had too much dirt in the film path for my satisfaction, especially in reel 3.  Surprisingly, dirt shows up more clearly when watching it in motion, rather than in still frames, because the dirt doesn't move with the picture so it stands out like a sore thumb.  And cleaning the path at each capture doesn't guarantee new dirt won't get in halfway through a reel.

Back in the Puggo Edition thread (5th page, I think), some frames were posted by Starkiller showing two visual differences: the Emperor's hologram not fading in, and the satellite dish being absent when Luke is hanging from the bottom of the cloud city building.  A couple of posts later there are some audio differences as well. I'll check out the visuals tomorrow.

There's not much cleanup to do.  Very slight color correction, scene-by-scene tweaking of brightness/balance, some isolated repairs, resizing, and building an appropriate border.  Then the audio..., etc.

Just finished first scan of reel 3.  It's looking good!

I always thought that "Greedo" should be "Grido" - pronounced the same but spelled differently in the subtitles.  So that his greed would be more implicit than explicit.

SilverWook said:

The Emperor hologram seems slightly different somehow, or all the fine scanlines lost with the old video transfers?

Yeah I wondered about that.  Those aren't interlace artifacts, because when I tried telling Vegas to remove them for the still, they were still there.

By the way, these are caps of reels 1 and 2.  Am doing a first capture of reel 3 now.  I still have at least one more capture of reel 2 to do as well.

Sample frames (raw, unprocessed) posted:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/StrikesBackPics.html

TV's Frink said:

I think SW fanedits should be after SW preservations....Other preservations seems like it gets much less activity.

I'm actually fine with that too.

Moth3r said:

The "Other Fan Projects" is meant to cover projects such as de-specializing efforts, fan-made documentaries and miscellaneous stuff like split-screen DVDs. I've never been 100% happy with the forum titles and descriptions, so feel free to come up with some suitable text.

Thanks Jay, for switching them.  I know it's a very minor thing, but I think over time the order sends the right message.

Regarding the name of the thread... what about replacing the word "other" with the word "related", as in:
"Star Wars Preservations and Related Fan Projects"

Things such as split screen, documentaries, and despecializing are all related to preservation.

I agree. Jedi Rocks is the single most egregious change to the OT, and the one segment of the SE that is absolute unwatchable junk. While I disagree with all of the changes, I can understand them. But this one is incomprehensible to me.

For one thing, it is inconceivable that music in Jabba's Palace, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, that they would have the exact same Vegas show music as we have, with blues riffs and Tower of Power horn arrangements. And secondly, the CGI is utterly embarrassing. The fact that it is actually in the movie is the most solid proof of George's insanity, IMHO.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

There is a slight reddenning at the top 1/4 of the screen.  It is most noticeable during the crawl, because the yellow letters gradually fade to orange as they move up. It's as if the film sat for a while with one side warmer than the other.  It should be pretty easy to fix in post.

I just realized that this statement I made is utter nonsense.  Such a situation would cause reddening on one side, not at the tops of the frame.  Now I'm curious how the tops of the frames on the crawl could be more orange.

Will post screen caps soon.

Just finished two scans of reel 2.  Harder to get a good white balance because most of the reel takes place on Dagobah.

Rather than saying something glib, like I already have my face on my avatar, I'll just say that if anyone really wanted to find my actual face, it would be extremely easy just by following a few links. I've done a lousy job of hiding.

Moving discussion from Adywan thread...

I think that it sends the wrong message to have the "Fan Edits" section above the "Preservations" section.  It's not that I think that preservation efforts are inherently any better than fan edits, it's that preservation is what this website/forum is all about.  The whole purpose of OT.com is to ensure the survival and rescue of the original academy-award-winning versions of the original Star Wars trilogy. So why is a topic that is primarily about making more changes listed first?

George has made a series of fan edits (initially called the SE), and many others have made fan edits too (arguably better ones).  But if the original versions of the film were available in high quality, this forum would likely have never existed. We'd all probably be happy members of TFN. This forum's primary purpose (I think) is not to promote more changes to the OT, but to find ways of making available the original theatrical versions that don't have changes.

Furthermore, I think that calling the preservation section "preservations and other fan projects" could be improved.  As it is, it relegates the various preservation efforts to "other" status, making it seem all the more that Fan Edits are the main reason for the site, but if people want to also do some other things like preservations, that's nice too. Again, wrong message.

The irony is that if George were to release both a new SE with many more changes, and also an HD restoration of the OOT, and he decided to discuss technical details of his work here, his discussion of his new SE would appear higher in the forum than his discussion of his restoration of the OOT.

My suggestion is to move the two preservation sections above the two fan edit sections, and to rename the first preservation section "Star Wars Restoration and Preservation Projects" or "Star Wars Preservation and Restoration Projects", whichever you prefer, without the "other".

Thoughts?

I've never used Vegas to edit mpeg files directly, only .avi, and the bugs still come up, albeit rarely.

Apologies to Frink for doubting that the choice of codec could help.

"Slobber of the Jedi", although that might not be as enticing as other potential names :)  Come to think of it, that wouldn't be an entirely inaccurate title for AOTC.

The drift in this thread illustrates why I have suggested that the "preservation" section should be listed above the "fan edit" section. This website is supposed to be primarily about ensuring the survival of the original trilogy as it appeared in theaters and in its original academy-award-winning form, not about promoting fan edits. There's another excellent site for that.

I have absolutely nothing against Star Wars fan edits (my hard drive contains several!!), but as long as we put fan editing as our #1 topic, it's going to send the wrong message about what this community is all about. That's my opinion, FWIW.

For that matter, there has been significantly more traffic in the preservation section, at least lately.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Finished the first capture of reel 1.

That was relatively fast!

There are three reels, and I only finished the FIRST capture of reel 1.

I still have to do additional captures of reel 1, then repeat the process for reels 2 and 3. Then after I have the raw material, the hard work begins.

Plus it looks like I'm getting a 2nd print to work with.

This is going to take a while.

Finished the first capture of reel 1.  It looks really nice, pretty much all the way through.  I don't think I'll need to do another complete capture, just a couple of isolated spots.

There is a slight reddenning at the top 1/4 of the screen.  It is most noticeable during the crawl, because the yellow letters gradually fade to orange as they move up. It's as if the film sat for a while with one side warmer than the other.  It should be pretty easy to fix in post.

p.s. - as an aside, I did a high bitrate encoding of reel 1 of PG and will compare tomorrow morning to see if a DVD9 of that would be worthwhile.