RU.08

No idea!

Might I suggest blu-torrents.net? Some of your releases are already there, registrations are currently open, and the trackers torrents are usually large so your BD25's will fit right in. Oh and of course some have already been uploaded there anyway, so you may as well control it.

I haven't actually used the tracker yet but it seems like a decent one.

As I mentioned, TeamBlu's ANH is on the Spleen, it's a BD25 release @ 23.97fps 720p (i.e. NTSC). As far as I know they haven't released ESB and ROTJ yet, so you'll have to wait. I don't ever burn BD's so if I downloaded that version I would copy the main .m2ts file, rename it to something suitable, and put it in my media library and stream it.

You can get some of the other versions on the Spleen. It would be fairly straightforward to convert them to NTSC - I don't have them myself though.

Also, don't confuse yourself by saying "TB" when you mean TeamBlu - the "TB version" refers to the Scandinavian broadcast version, not TeamBlu's. :)

a.b.sw = alt.binaries.starwars, the newsgroup where you can find more 1997 SE postings.

Go to myspleen.org and register for an account (registrations are open without an invite right now so be quick).

On the spleen you will find: 1. the TB release which is a PAL DVDR set of Scandnavian broadcast recordings of the 1997 SE, 2. the G'Kar release which is a PAL DVDR set of German broadcast recortings of the 1997 SE, 3. the 5-star bootleg DVD9s, 4. Team Blu's Star Wars Episode IV 1997 SE, 5. Harmy's respecialised Episode IV. And there are some others, but those'd be the main ones you'd want to look at.

Alternatively you can try a.b.sw.

Fang Zei said:

Which night shots are you referring to?

 I'll post some screenshots later.

Also, just to avoid confusion (and I'm sure you meant to type this), the air taxi sequence is on Coruscant, not Naboo.

Correct, I'm just getting my planets mixed up!

I always liked the blown-out whites in those Theed shots. It gave a more realistic feel to what was going on, like it just happened to be a particularly bright day.

Well I can't say I particularly like the look, but as I said I won't be substituting anything from the BD because I believe the HDTV is sufficient. If someone buys a print and scans those scenes they could easily spice in an improvement a few years down the track.

I'll be away for a few days, so this project whilst not dead will be in limbo for the moment - I will hope to complete it for early January, and yes I will do some more work before Christmas. :) It's really not difficult, it just takes time to script it and trial-and-error concepts, and of course completing the subtitle removal, etc. None of it is very difficult, just takes time.

Also, I may end up releasing a 1080p as well - as I mentioned I don't think the quality warrants it, but if I think there's enough interest I'm happy to do it, it's not difficult.

tehPARADOX is not down...

I had no errors at all copying my disc, so if there's an IFO file that differs by all means send it to me and I will investigate. After all I can easily update the torrent if I have corrupted files somehow! Alternatively you could download just the .ifo files and see if it affects your ability to play the disc.

Interesting comments. DVDSource() is just the upscale function, I altered it significantly a couple of days ago (to take care of the combing artefacts on the DVD) and I'll be happy to post it when it's done in its final form.

To get back to Episode I here is the complete list of changes (Theatrical to DVD) that I'm aware of:

1. Original subtitles removed and replaced with player-invoked subs (and of course burned-in on the HDTV versions).
2. A couple of night shots on Tatooine are significantly darker.
3. The pod-race "grid sequence" and pod-race itself was altered significantly (too much to mention here).
4. Air taxi sequence was incorporated into Naboo, and a previous shot was removed.
5. Orn Free Taa's aids are replaced with two aliens in the Senate.
6. On a night shot of Naboo there is a bridge that was added.

I went through the entire movie scene-by-scene, and couldn't find any other changes. Some of the shots on Naboo have their whites blown-out (see 2nd screenshot in this post), but I've decided not to use the BD at all and to rely solely on the previous releases. So although as you see I can turn the gamma down a bit, I can't bring back the texture on the pavement. Well not unless I want to use the laserdisc, which doesn't have enough resolution to depict the pavement anyway.

Myspleen registrations are currently open without invite (for about another week or so), so you can sign up an account right now if you want!

Interesting if someone has the correct font send me a PM.

Meanwhile I'm removing the present fonts using this code, it's somewhat tedious but I'll get there. As mentioned, later on when the video is resized to 720p I'll have to add some grain back to all those 28 scenes.

For a comparison take a look at HDTV vs. DVD, and HDTV vs. removed subtitles.

Erik Pancakes said:

I'd prefer them burned in and theatrically accurate (fades and all), like they are in Harmy's Despecialized and schorman's AOTC HDTV release. But that's just my preference, of course, and it's your release, so do it however you want! Either way is better than the crappy burned-in ones on the HDTV version.

(I'll probably just make my own version with burned-in subtitles for myself if you stick with the .ass/.srt method, anyway.)

Yes it will be very easy to do that. I may end up doing it myself if there really is enough interest. In any case the difference will be really small. I may be able to get the fade effect to work with the .ass, I haven't tried yet.

Thanks for letting me know AOTC has the theatrical style subs on it, I've re-matched the style I had to it (only a very slight change - font size down to 48, no bold, no outline). It looks almost identical, except that it appears LFL used a slightly different version of the font itself (most letters look identical but the e's look slightly different).

Okay I now know how the subtitles look. I've also converted them to their theatrical versions (none are on two lines and there were some minor grammatical differences).

Subtitles 01-27

Subtitle 28:

Here it is correctly styled over the DVD image:

I'm not going to burn them in I'll use a .ass in the MKV and a .srt with the .srt.style file. That way people can change them if they want (eg. in another language). In the theatrical version all but two of the subs fade in and out, that will really be the main difference between burning them in and using a subtitle file. The other difference is the shadow is less theatrically accurate, but it's a detail that is really minuscule.

Here is the style (with the video size currently at 1280x546, but I will change that later to add black borders and bring it to Mod-16 i.e. 1280x560, the black borders you see in the image above are not in the HDTV version but I used the DVD for that preview and calibration which is slightly cropped).

ScriptType: v4.00+
PlayResX: 1280
PlayResY: 546

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, StrikeOut, ScaleX, ScaleY, Spacing, Angle, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Encoding
Style: Default,Franklin Gothic Demi Cond,48,&H00E0E7D3,&H00FFFFFF,&H00000000,&H00000000,0,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,0,2,2,10,10,82,0

You can use it in either an advanced sub station alpha file (.ass) or a .srt.style file.

schorman13 said:

This shot is actually available on the bonus DVD.  It's part of the extended podrace grid sequence. (Yes, there actually is a longer version!)

There's a different shot that is present on the DVD version, but is trimmed compared to the theatrical version.  It's right when the fans are standing up to cheer for Sebulba.  I'll post a screen cap later.

Thanks for that information, I'll be able to use the Extras DVD instead for that one shot. Yes I know about the trimmed shot it's this one:

It's not extended on the Extras DVD so I'll take the entire shot from the LD/TB sources.

Extras DVD:

Harmy said:

BTW. how do you make a question mark with your Shift key broken?

 hold Alt press 6, 3.

Here are some full sized screenshots (they've been cropped to fit on the page). The top image is the unprocessed HDTV resized to 720p, the bottom is my final corrected version. You'll notice the original is over-sharpened and has a pink hue. Although certainly not the worst offender in terms of over-sharpening (I've seen some BDs that look like total sin), it's pretty ugly on the crawl.

Purpose:

To preserve The Phantom Menace theatrical cut.

Status:

Incomplete.

Source material:

1. Official DVD.
2. Schorman’s HDTV prservation.
3. althor1138’s LD rip.
4. TB DVD (Scandnavian DVB rip)

Thanks go to:

• Schorman - who not only did beautiful work on his HDTV preservation, but also let me know about the Scandanavian cap which is now absolutely vital in providing greater quality to the Theatrical scenes.
• althor1138 - who capped the Japanese LD, which yes is superior quality to the Scandnavian cap.
• Andrea - who is also capping the Jap LD.
• DrDre - his upscale work with the GOUT proved a useful insight into improving the upscales used in this preservation.
• YouToo - for uploading the Z-VCD to the Spleen. The Z-VCD is essential for recreating theatrical subtitle placement and timing.
• grisan - for uploading the TB release to the Spleen.
   

Discussion:

I originally thought this would be a nice easy project… nope. It’s quite complicated!

The first thing I did, which was time consuming, was to sync the HDTV and DVD versions to the LD.

The next thing I did was colour correct the HDTV and DVD rips. I also worked out how to process the image so it comes out nicely with both versions. The DVD is upscaled in Avisynth to 1080p, and is then used to remove the HDTV’s burned-in subtitles. This was time consuming, but it’s done.

Before:

After:

Download: Early preview clip 1080p (9MB)

I had to degrain the HDTV source in order to get a seamless match between HDTV and DVD. I then add back grain, as well as boosting the grain slightly in the rest of the film.

The subtitles are then put back using my pseudo patented subtitle script, as so:

Now on to the LD upscalling. For reference, here are screenshots of the two scenes that do not appear at all on the DVD. The top is the DVB (TB DVD version), the second one is the althor1138’s LD, and the bottom is my version downsized back to SD.

The first scene is on the extras DVD, so it is upscalled from that instead of the LD+DVB mix. At the moment the upscalling is provisionally completed.

The upscale script is complicated, and slow. It needs to be done in two parts, due to only being allowed to call a certain script once in Avisynth. The scenes are pre-rendered so they can be imported into the final script.

It is mostly based on the laserdisc, although the TB source was used to boost the quality slightly. The LD resolution is 708x274 and it was not cropped any further. Getting the video to look acceptable alongside the true HD material is a very challenging endeavour. Thankfully there is only a handful of scenes where this is necessary.

Release info:

The release will be a 1080p x246 MKV file, encoded to conform with BD comparability. The audio details will be confirmed at a later stage. It will be synced to the LD version.

As should be clear if you’ve read this thread, it’s always been my intention to share the scripts, etc, that I’ve created for this project along with the final product. I have already posted some of the scripts I’ve written, and I’m happy to share information that may be useful to others. Avisynth scripting can take considerable time, and I usually don’t want to share things that are still a work in progress, but be assured that every script needed to recreate the final release will be released in the fullness of time.

I have also uploaded the non-retail SD material. This includes all the deleted scenes I intend to use. This is so everyone has an opportunity to use them for their own needs. I can also make available any of the HD upscalled scenes for the LD material - while it’s still a work in progress I have rendered the present version.

Screenshots:

• Laserdisc vs Upscale (4 scenes in the link)

• TB vs upscale (4 scenes in the link)

Video downloads:

Preview clip (52.3MB).

Sebulba scene - DVD version:
1. Uncompressed AVI (96.8MB)
2. x264 crf16 (2.56MB)

Sebulba scene - LD+DVB version:
1. Uncompressed AVI (96.8MB)
2. x264 crf16 (2.34MB)

Upscale scenes:

These are all the scenes requiring upscales. The x264 are transcoded with a crf setting of 10, or you can download the lossless AVI files (Lagarith).

• DVB recording (x264) / Lossless AVI (TB source)
• LD rip (x264) / Lossless AVI (Althor)
• LD rip (x264) / Lossless AVI (Andrea)

The first part of the upscale is the alignment script, since these videos were already cropped to use it you just need to remove the first crop from each source. Note that this script presently is only calibrated for Althor’s rip and not Andrea’s one.

Harmy said:

And that's only from a print, I imagine an IP or the composite used in the original negative (if still usable) could yield far better results!

That's how the shot is meant to look, it was optically composited multiple times so by the time it reached a 35mm print it was something like a 6th generation copy. They could easily scan the camera negative for that shot (if it exists) and create an artificially grain-free version with all the original detail intact (including the wheels on the speeder!)

I don't think disney is interested in releasing the pre-SE's. Just like they don't care about releasing theatrical versions of their own films.

While he was complicit in 1997, a month before his death he told a different story about the DVD version:

Is it satisfying that Empire has been changed the least of the original trilogy with the 1997 Special Editions and DVD release?

When the film was released in 1997 and later put into DVD, I was very gratified that it was almost unchanged, except the sound was much improved, whereas Star Wars and Jedi had big changes.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/oscars/2010/10/irvin-kershner

Sorry I don't mean to be rude. These are the scenes that are exclusive to the Theatrical version:

0:55:47

1:19:23

And these are scenes that were altered (2000 Jap LD version on top, 2002 DVD version on bot).

If you do have a HD recording of it I would certainly be interested in it.\

The Theatrical version runs 132 mins, the 2002 version runs 136 mins (about 3 1/2 min longer in total).

I mean the theatrical PT subs, of course I can load the DVD. I believe the font used in every SW film is Franklin Gothic Cond, which looked a little different (in the OT) before it was digitised. If there's a 35mm film cell scan of the subs I'd like to see it.

chyron8472 said:

No it won't. Most things expect USB devices to be formatted as FAT32, and it has a 4GB file size limit.

I guess you have a point there. Some TVs (eg Samsung and Philips) will accept NTFS no problem and others won't.

So it had the shorter podracing sequence? I'm right to be skeptical, since the VHS and jap-LD were the last we ever saw of the theatrical version...

Why do people even bother downloading the AVCHD version if they don't know how to burn it? The MKV is higher quality and will play on any modern TV from a USB stick... surely people can work out how to do that!

Althor, I've sent you a PM.

@bbhaltz a 720p upscale is quite possible and relatively easy, but to be honest if you want a 720p version you're best off going with Harmy's incredible despecialised editions.