RashadShehadeh

I’m aware that the negative for TPM is essentially a print of the 2K DI. But of all companies, can’t Disney have access to the original camera negatives. I don’t buy the fact that Lucasfilm hasn’t stored them, somewhere. WB has been putting in an insane amount of effort into their 4K transfers. Wizard of Oz and 2001 were scanned at 8K and given a 4K DI. Pretty much any WB restoration is now being done in 4K. Sony’s had 4K DIs of pretty much most of their library ready for about a decade or so. They’ve been mastering in 4K since Spider-Man 2 in 2004. Same with Criterion who doesn’t even release 4K UHD discs as of yet, but most of their own restorations have been in 4K, even for black and white movies. Do they even have half the resources Disney has? I doubt it. No, this isn’t some issue with the film industry for classic releases. Pretty much every studio is restoring their own back catalog in native 4K, except Disney. Hell, Batman and Robin and Batman Forever, with all their outdated primitive CGI glory have gotten native releases, and their presentations are getting rave reviews. Sorry, I just don’t buy that the most historically massive film franchise ever, can’t be afforded a proper 4K transfer.

I’m fine with good upscaling for the prequels, even if the digital footage will certainly show its age. The masters were meant for a 3D release and it shows, since detail is basically wiped out with 3D.

I’m not exactly a fan of how MCU movies look even if they’ve been mastered in 2K.

Apparently, the HDR and Dolby Vision on the original saga films is pretty piss-poor. Disney also didn’t bother to even re-scan The Phantom Menace natively in 4K and instead used the original 1999 DI. This is provocatively lazy.
Hell, pretty much all their releases are sourced from 2K DIs. Even their flagship stuff like Endgame!

RashadShehadeh said:

CatBus said:

I’m afraid the subs you’re replacing (from v10.0) were from the Blu-rays. I think Netflix or TV broadcasts are your best bet for alternate Arabic translations. Send 'em to either one of us, they’ll get to the right place.

I know. I was just hoping someone might have access to a Blu-ray with proper subtitles. I’ll try and start a Netflix account and then cancel it.

Edit: It seems I can’t find ANH on Netflix. Can anyone make sure it’s available before I start an account.

Could you also check your e-mail inbox. I’ve provided you with an update.

CatBus said:

I’m afraid the subs you’re replacing (from v10.0) were from the Blu-rays. I think Netflix or TV broadcasts are your best bet for alternate Arabic translations. Send 'em to either one of us, they’ll get to the right place.

I know. I was just hoping someone might have access to a Blu-ray with proper subtitles. I’ll try and start a Netflix account and then cancel it.

Edit: It seems I can’t find ANH on Netflix. Can anyone make sure it’s available before I start an account.

Hey.
I’m currently translating Star Wars to Arabic. Any sources or references would definitely speed up the process. If you find any Arabic subtitles on your DVDs, Blu-ray, or even Netflix (which is more likely to have the better subtitles of the bunch), or television broadcast, feel free to send them to me.

disco4000 said:

RashadShehadeh said:

What are the highest quality versions of the 2004 SE? I think it’s the Sky recordings. If so, could anyone PM a link to those?

Only Ep. IV of the Sky Broadcasts is derived from the 2004 Master, ESB and ROTJ are 2011 versions.

Oh. I see. Thanks. By any chance do you have links to the Ep IV broadcast? And as for the other episodes, the Premiere broadcasts are the DVD versions? If so, do you have links to those too?
Thanks in advance.

Jetrell Fo said:

Cinemax - US 2006 - MPEG2 29.97fps 1920x1080 eng audio

• Star Wars 4 A New Hope.ts (15.36 GB = 16110426 KB)
• Star Wars 5 The Empire Strikes Back.ts (16.52 GB = 17319140 KB)
• Star Wars 6 Return of the Jedi.ts (16.59 GB = 17399141 KB)

I am currently downloading these 3.  We shall see how they are.  I could not find any of the prequels from Cinemax though.

This will be interesting for sure …

😃

Are those the DVD versions? And are they the highest quality rips available? If so, can I please have a link?

What are the highest quality versions of the 2004 SE? I think it’s the Sky recordings. If so, could anyone PM a link to those?

CatBus said:

Posting links isn’t allowed here and threads requesting links don’t usually get much response. I don’t have any links myself, but what you’re looking for is the German HDTV captures of the 2004 SE. It’s a pretty old topic so it might not be among the current discussions. Hope that helps.

Thanks. I’ll try and find it.

Any links to HDTV recordings of the the Star Wars movies? They’re essentially the DVD versions which I grew up with.

rcs709 said:

CatBus said:

The changelog (such as it is, I’m not terribly detailed about it) is on page 52. If you’re interested only in a particular language/type of subtitle, that may make the answer easier.

In 10.1 we will get improvements to Brazilian Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic, possibly Dutch, and maybe even a surprise new language, although I’m trying not to get my hopes up about that.

You know, I think I might have another idea for 10.1. iTunes has HD versions of the original trilogy with subtitles in the following languages:
-Arabic
-Bulgarian
-Cantonese
-Croatian
-Danish
-Dutch
-Estonian
-Finnish
-French
-Greek
-Hebrew
-Icelandic
-Indonesian
-Latvian
-Lithuanian
-Malay
-Norwegian
-Portugese
-Romanian
-Slovenian
-Spanish
-Swedish
-Traditional Chinese
-Ukranian
-Vietnamese
Perhaps you could use these to improve your existing subtitles. The only problem would be line changes (“You’re lucky you don’t taste very good” vs “You were lucky to get out of there”). Thanks in advance.

I’m already pretty confident about the Arabic subtitles I’ve done for Empire and Jedi. But it would be great if I could get a recording of ANH with Arabic subtitles so I could use as source.

detola said:

I just wanted to say thank you!

I used your BluRays as the base for my own Box Set that I will give to my Dad this Christmas… and your Work is Awsome!
THANKS A LOT!
It just makes the whole set more Professional and neat to have your menues… also loved the Specials you collected… keep up the great work!

Looks amazing! Can I have the resources and images you used to create these? Particularly that poster on the box.

MakingStarWars.net, a more reputable Star Wars news website claims that official releases of the original theatrical cuts of the OT. I wouldn’t immediatly dismiss the claim since Rogue One director Gareth Edwards claimed to have seen a recent restoration of the original Star Wars in 4k at LucasFilm. The website also claims to have fetched the rumor from multiple sources. The site itself acknowledges the pervasiveness of the rumors over the years and even starts its report by stating that it has stayed away from reporting many of them. This time, however, the editor says he has credible intel, although he doesn’t delve into much detail.
Could we hope to see the releases? Any comments?

Avatar_Emil_Borg said:

http://www.geek.com/tech/star-wars-prequel-trilogy-coming-to-3d-blu-ray-rogue-one-in-editing-and-new-star-wars-tv-in-the-works-1664746/

It was a rumour dating back to last summer. It was said that it will launch alongside TFA’s 3D Blu-Ray last fall but it didn’t.

I was wondering if anybody has access to a copy of the 3D version of TPM. I have no knowledge of how it was stored. Well, the OriginalTrilogy.com community is a resourceful one. Why not ask?

towne32 said:

I’ll try to explain the terminology to you, which should help you maneuver these kinds of questions a bit better:

Lossless video encoding creates files that are hundreds of gigabytes, or larger. It is used as a permanent archive of a video stream, that can then be encoded (with loss) into more compressed formats for viewing. Or, to import into a program for editing.

You can’t go from one lossy format to another lossy format without re-encoding and losing some information (with lossy being anything used for actual viewing, such as blu-rays and DVDs and such).

But you’re not interested in re-encoding. MKV and M2TS are containers that hold video and audio streams. The Despecialized streams, including the x264 video stream, are blu-ray compatible. So all that needs to be done is putting them in a new container (m2ts). There is no loss involved in that process. It is also very fast. Seconds or minutes, as opposed to hours of encoding. This is called multiplexing or “muxing”.

You can remux an MKV to blu-ray m2ts easily using tsmuxer (gui). If you choose blu-ray format, it will put it in the correct directory structure (and ISO if you like), so that it is ready to burn. You can also choose to demux the MKV. This will give you all the video, audio, and subtitle streams in the MKV, which can then be imported into programs like Encore. You might need to change the file extension of the video stream for Encore to recognize (I vaguely recall it preferring .m4v to .264.

Don’t worry. I’m familiar with the subject (for example: Harmy probably sent you the raw encode of the Despecialized Edition of the original Star Wars, to avoid even the slightest quality loss compared to version 2.5). But from what I understand here I can execute the process you were generous enough to explain, and just copy the m2ts video file and load it in Encore to make a custom Blu-Ray from scratch…
I’ll also change the file extension.

towne32 said:

RashadShehadeh said:

towne32 said:

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

If I do recall correctly Encore allows musing 64 tracks as a limit (Audio and subs combined). I just have this sort of obsession about things looking authentic. I guess I’ll look up some tutorials. And this may sound dumb, but maybe converting it (maybe to m2ts) could leave the quality intact ? Also, great job with the colour correction done in Star Wars 2.7

Thanks.

I could have sworn Encore had a limit of 8 audio tracks, but I might be completely misremembering. 64 might indeed be the limit with subs included.

I’m not sure that Encore would accept an MKV in the first place, so remuxing it to m2ts or simply demuxing the streams would be the way to go anyway. It’s really about whether Encore accepts the streams as compliant or not. Presumably their standards are either excessively high for our purposes, or unable to properly detect the properties of our streams. I’m pretty sure that njvc’s earlier attempt with the 2.7 stream resulted in a re-encoded file. It’s quite possible that it just will not want to burn an unprocessed x264 encode, and will try to re-encode to h264. Anyway, if so, swap back the stream you want with multiavchd.

Any good lossless encoders? And it’s pretty rare seeing one that can convert to .m2ts…
And also how can I burn it into an ISO?

towne32 said:

I’ve only used Encore. I’m not sure what a better or easier option would be (there aren’t very many options in the first place).

Most software will probably try to re-encode something like Despecialized, as they detect or assume that it is not BD compliant. If that’s something you can’t get around within the software itself, you can just author the disc and then replace the main video using multiAVCHD. People have posted a guide for that around here before, I think.

As you’ll see with njvc’s discs, Encore (and probably anything else) will also limit your audio track count. With multiavchd, you can then go ahead and add all the extra ones you want. You’ll just need to use your remote to access them instead of the BD menu.

If I do recall correctly Encore allows musing 64 tracks as a limit (Audio and subs combined). I just have this sort of obsession about things looking authentic. I guess I’ll look up some tutorials. And this may sound dumb, but maybe converting it (maybe to m2ts) could leave the quality intact ? Also, great job with the colour correction done in Star Wars 2.7

I’ve been looking for quite a while for one. I’ve been constantly seeking one. I was recommended Adobe Encore but I never quite got the hang of it. I also heard the quality would be slightly downgraded if I were to author one (the case for the Despecialized Editions). If this wasn’t the case I would love links to some tutorials. Otherwise I could use some recommendations.

schorman13 said:

^…^ said:

schorman13 said:
The crowd shot and the Sebulba shot are available in HD, thanks to the “Digital Movie Collection”.

They should be included in “The Podrace: Theatrical Edit”, right? Do you know if the deleted scenes are available in HD as well?

Some links that could be useful:
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/TPM-1080p-Theatrical-Preservation/id/17311
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/THE-PHANTOM-MENACE-THEATRICAL-HD-Toppers-Version/id/17137/page/1
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-97SE-in-HD-using-super-resolution-and-more/id/17781

Upscaling laserdisc and/or DVB for the few missing shots is, until we have a 35mm scan, the only way to go - and the result is not bad at all - http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/195979 (don’t know if it’s possible to squeeze more details than this, from a laserdisc…)

Unfortunately, they aren’t HD.

If anybody’s willing to upscale them, it shouldn’t be too time consuming, as they are only some shots and instances that all add up to less than a minute of footage, if I’m not mistaken. There’s gotta be someone who possesses a reel or a 35mm scan. We can attempt to contact any of the people behind the posts linked.

^…^ said:

schorman13 said:
The crowd shot and the Sebulba shot are available in HD, thanks to the “Digital Movie Collection”.

They should be included in “The Podrace: Theatrical Edit”, right? Do you know if the deleted scenes are available in HD as well?

Some links that could be useful:
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/TPM-1080p-Theatrical-Preservation/id/17311
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/THE-PHANTOM-MENACE-THEATRICAL-HD-Toppers-Version/id/17137/page/1
http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-97SE-in-HD-using-super-resolution-and-more/id/17781

Upscaling laserdisc and/or DVB for the few missing shots is, until we have a 35mm scan, the only way to go - and the result is not bad at all - http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/195979 (don’t know if it’s possible to squeeze more details than this, from a laserdisc…)

The shots can always be cropped out. As long as the quality doesn’t clash. Thanks, these links are quite useful.

yotsuya said:

I believe everything in ANH and ROTJ would be on reels 3 and 7 respectively. There is no need to worry about the audio as the DTS theatrical audio has been archived for all four of these.

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Phantom-Menace-Theatrical-Version-NTSC-DVD-ADYWAN-NOW-AVAILABLE/id/10615/page/1
Adywan apparently has attempted to do so a while ago. If his version is truly an accurate recreation of the theatrical version we can use it as source. Or contact to see if he has any new resources that can be utilised.

yotsuya said:

I believe everything in ANH and ROTJ would be on reels 3 and 7 respectively. There is no need to worry about the audio as the DTS theatrical audio has been archived for all four of these.

I was just told. The audio should cover a remarkable part of the rectifications done in between the 1997 SE and 2011 SE. Although we would need the color corrected version of the Blu-ray to get started. The cropped cockpit shots in the Falcon can be taken from the Despecialized Edition.

clutchins said:

Harmy used upscaled laserdiscs from Team Blu. We don’t yet have a time frame for any new Blu releases so I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

Well, I did take a look at the changes in Empire, and the changes in between the 1997 and 2011 SE were only corrections, involving audio, colour palettes…
Using the Despecialized Edition and colour corrected version of the Blu-Ray, (maybe the DVD too), the 1997 Special Edition is achievable. The audio tracks are available. If there are any changes your took notice of, can you send 'em?

clutchins said:

The only missing element is a scan of some 35mm prints. Williarob has Reel 1 of Star Wars scanned, but I don’t think anything else is scanned.

TeamBlu has, apparently they plan to release it soon… the entire OT…
Harmy used theirs for his Respecialized Edition…