RU.08

Poita, how's the 35mm version going?

I've put the script and previews back up in the op. I may encode it again, I was quite pleased with the results and the fact that it's an accurate representation of the GOUT with some of the issues corrected using the SE.

@Iddyplob you don't need Myspleen to get Harmy's SW Trilogy.

@Nplumb May the Fourth be with you too. :)

For the record I've said nothing bad about TFA...

Yeah, that's why no preservation based on the Bluray will ever be able to get back to what it should be. It is a commendable effort by Harmy to give us the best that is possible with present resources.

You should get him to have a look at some of MikeV's videos.

Legacy could likely be submitted to film archives, even if they can't distribute or show it they can safeguard copies of it until the copyright runs out, whenever that is!

There are three versions on the Spleen presently:

1. "Z VCD" (Theatrical Bootleg).

2. "TB release" (PAL broadcast to DVD)

3. althor1138's LD rip.

I've been working on a HD version, but I haven't had time to finish it yet, in a few weeks I'll finish it and release it.

He's so dumb I can't stand it!

at 8:45 or so... "I was shocked because I didn't know there was any black people in space .. and I don't think there were any black people in the previous movies" LOL - I guess he forgot about James Earl Jones and Billy Dee Williams.

Although he'd have had a point if he had mentioned that Lupita Nyong might be the first ever black woman in space - assuming she plays a human that is and not an alien like Femi Taylor in ROTJ.

Not that I'm aware of.

MrPib said:

Sorry about that.  Guess the sarcasm didn't come through, and I guess he couldn't be bothered to take Danfun's advice.

LOL I got such a huge laugh out of it, it was totally worth bothering Frink for that!

Oh - by the way you can also get it on demonoid, and if it's low on seeders send me a PM.

A brilliant plan by Disney to have Christensen removed from ROTJ?

Not really no, they introduce analogue noise. Just that the grain structure on the digital tape is pretty much gone when MPEG2 compression kicks in. Have a look at ESB -1 grindhouse and compare it to the GOUT" DVD. You'll see that the grain covers the whole of the image, and it dances, whereas the DVD has some of it only in part of the picture because the rest is smoothed out with MPEG2 compression, and much of it doesn't dance like it should. DVD tends to present this unnaturally static grain.

Well as I mentioned before, grain is not retained by DVD to begin with. Take the vader and leia image we've been looking at as an example. On Leia's top there's quite a bit of grain, but over on Vader and the ceiling lights and the walls there isn't. DVD simply can't retain it, it's just not possible for MPEG2 video to do it. In any image you will only ever have the grain of the source partially represented. And remember the way that telecines scan mean that what you get is not necessarily a true representation of the finer grain structure on the film.

But there's nothing wrong with grain, it's the noise that's been introduced with your system that I dislike - all that haloing. And that isn't in the source, it's introduced. Vader's chest plate in your version looks great, if not for all that extra noise that comes with it.

That's the problem with deinterlacing using eedi2. Here's a better version (well I think it's better):

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122076

It's still degrained, but this time I left the residual grain in. No distortion on Vader's chest-plate this time.

And by proper upscale I mean a more complete upscale. You wouldn't use just spline64resize to upscale video to HD.

Here's a quick example of a "proper" upscale. I did this in 5 minutes by modifying my TPM upscale script. It is not fully optimised for the source. It is a somewhat complicated script, but it basically uses eedi2 and QTGMC for deinterlacing, then upscales by a factor of 4 using spline36resize, then downscales to the output resolution via ResampleHQ. There's some noise in this frame for some reason, it may be a bad DVD rip I don't know I can't be bothered re-ripping the DVD right now, and it's based on the NTSC disc.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122056

Yours has more micro detail, but also a lot more noise overall.

Danfun128, yes the 1993 LD masters are 480i telecine's with the exception of ROTJ which is a 576i telecine (from memory I can't remember if the NTSC version of ROTJ was converted from the PAL tape or if there was a separate 480i telecine used for it). Back in 1993 it was more-economical to scan the film for each video format than to convert between the two. It's also what produced the horrible aliasing (happens when each filed isn't precisely aligned).

There are several ways to upscale video. To answer your other question, in order to do a clean upscale you need to fully degrain the source. You can put the grain back in when you're done, or generate film grain that is a close approximation to what was in the original source. As the source is DVD, there's no accurate way for the grain to be represented without being severely affected by the MPEG2 compression - so only a small part of a DVD image can ever hold the grain, and you can see this effect often in DVDs where grain seems to appear in static areas of the image and disappear over the more complicated and moving areas. Degraining is a delicate process - you want to remove as much as possible while removing as little fine detail as possible. It doesn't matter if you lose a little bit of fine detail, it's all about the balance.

A moving object, let's say Ben's face, is slightly closer to the camera in one frame compared to the next. Your algorithm goes through and pulls the detail from the previous frame for use in the current one, yet that detail comes from a slightly different depth. You get a picture with both superimposed upon each other, yes it has more micro-detail and in certain applications in specific situations that would be important (like if you want to footage to appear alongside native HD material). But it comes at the cost of the picture depth.

I'm not saying it's a bad method, I'm just saying it comes at the cost.

Love the telegraph's poll:

"Will you be buying the digital star wars collection?"

"Yes I am/aready have" - 9%

"No - it's overpriced/pointless" - 38%

"No - I want the theatrical originals" - 54%

The problem with super-resolution is that it assumes you're working with a 2D image and what you get is a two dimensional image. It doesn't understand depth and you lose it as a result of searching for more "detail". The image of Ben Kenobi is a good example:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/121686

His face and hair just look flatter and so does his robe. You lose meta-detail in search of micro-detail.

And in motion it just looks worse as is "carries over" the "detail" frame for frame, transporting flat "detailed" images over the depth present in the source.

Harmy said:

OK, so the original LPP looks way better, so what's the point of all this? Just as an interesting curiosity?

Yep. The video looks worse than the stills - the colour is all over the place.

Well the film versions of AOTC and ROTS are derived from the digital versions.

Danfun128 said:

 ...that will be hard to reconcile with the available footage...unless...

But... where's Mickey Mouse?

For what it's worth I pretty much knew it was just the 2011 updated 2004 DVD version. Disney announced and released it very quickly so that fans wouldn't have time to do their research and find out that a 4k restoration has been taking place - originally intended to be used as the basis of the 3D theatrical versions no doubt - but could be used for a higher quality future release. It's just their way of double-dipping until they decide to release the 4k version

Are you kidding? It's always a selling point for any movie! Look how great Robocop 4k looks compared with the older releases.

And besides, a lot of people already own the existing blurays. The digital release should offer an improvement in quality in order to appeal to these customers, especially at the price they're wanting ($20 per movie!)