SS4DarthPayne

AntcuFaalb said:

Did anyone actually need the links? :-/

I do, but I am currently out of the country away from my computer :(

You_Too said:

DJ asked me to post this message:

Hello Everyone,
I know it has been a long time but I am sure You_Too has been keeping you updated on all our progress with our several projects, and we have a lot going on lol, but anyways, I just wanted to say to those that are following our projects that I hope you and your Families have a Happy and safe Holiday Season.

Merry Christmas Everyone and have a Happy New Year! We(Team Blu) have a lot of good stuff coming real soon!

DJ

Happy Holidays DJ!

MerrY Christmas to you too! Thank you for all the hard work you have put in.

Harmy said:

The blog won't even load for me. It hasn't been working for a few days now. Anyone else have that problem?

It's the same for me. I thought about posting here, but I figured I'd give it a few more days. It just won't load on my end.

You_Too said:

No big news but we're at least finished with the first film, both the GOUT-sourced and 97 SE. Well at least on my part anyway.

We're taking a little christmas break and then DJ will put back the fixed frames into SW and I will continue analyzing ESB for color errors and frames that need cleanup. We decided to clean up at least some of the worst ones. But since ESB has thousands of glue marks and flashes we will be very selective.

Cool cool. Glad to hear it. My excitement has not diminished. 

Any new news on this? It always makes me sad when I don't see this on the front page :( haha

AntcuFaalb said:

I can do it tonight.

I'll use 7-Zip to split it into two separate archives and then I'll upload each half to a dummy Google Drive account.

This would be much appreciated. 

Well this digressed a little bit. Oh well, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow. In a vacuum, I strongly think Victory Celebration is the better song. In context, maybe Yub Nub closes the gap, but I remain unconvinced. And to be honest, I think people have strong loyalty to what they heard first. I grew up with Victory Celebration, and most people here heard Yub Nub first. Just imagine if Victory Celebration had been in the original, and in 1997 Yub Nub had been swapped in... I know I would have been ready to riot.

As for Lucas and the Han Shot First shirt thing, I honestly think at this point in time there is absolutely know way to know what he's thinking. I suspect I am a lot less venomous towards him than many, but he simply doesn't make sense. I think this quote in particular gets me: "I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them." I don't know how a rational person says that, on record, and then does what he does in terms of the Star Wars franchise. I don't think there is a rational explanation. If I had to guess at one, I would bet that he truly believes in that quote, but has convinced himself that *his* movies are different, and that they don't count. This rings especially true with the recent discussions on -1's blog, in terms of how hard it was and how much of a compromise it was to do some of the optical effects back in the 70s. If he has actually convinced himself that he would have done the movies that way back then, I think I can start to see the warped logic. This becomes even more dubious, though, with some of the nonsensical changes (Ewok eyes, Vader's no, Luke's scream added and then removed again, etc.) Hopefully that paragraph made sense - I tried to keep it from getting too long but may have sacrificed clarity.

Back to the song choices, I think a huge aspect is what they were used to convey. I think Victory Celebration has a far more epic (I hate to use a word that has been so clichéd lately, but I think that is the right word) and wide-ranging scope, which we see in the shots of the rest of the galaxy. Whereas in the original, as someone said, all we see are our beloved heroes dancing with teddy bears, and I can grudgingly see Yub Nub perhaps making more sense. This then raises the issue of adding the galaxy wide shots, which again, I have no huge qualms with. I personally believe that the death of the dictator of an oppressive regime would lead to widespread celebrating, but others may disagree.

As I've said before, I absolutely LOVE Victory Celebration, and I personally think it makes for an incredible ending to the trilogy. I watched the 97 ending again today, and even though it's the umpteenth time doing so, I still get chills and a emotional torrent of nostalgia for my childhood.

@Baronlando, I know that rough cut you're talking about. I want to say that OCP had it as a Deleted Magic extra, or in the DVD-ROM folder. I didn't realize it was that exact song though, which by the way, is very close to the Star Wars version. I didn't quite realize how close. Also, I didn't realize that this change had such wide reactions. Was Yub Nub that well loved? ;) And as I said in the first post, I absolutely love this song. It's my go-to de-stresser, and has helped me through various difficult parts of my life. 

@bkev, so you're saying that the children's vocals ARE in the 1997 version of the movie? I just listened again (to the TB version), and I really cannot hear it, but again, I don't trust my ears. 

timdiggerm said:

Listening to my ripped copy of the soundtrack and comparing with the 2011 blu, there appears to be a short pause between the build up at the end of the Celebration and the start of the credits music that does not exist in the film. So, really, all you need to do is open the track up in an audio editor (Audacity, Goldwave, etc) and making it two separate tracks would be easy.

Ok cool thanks for the heads up. Yea, that wouldn't be too hard to do in Audacity at all. I was just kind of curious about its release.

AntcuFaalb said:

SS4DarthPayne said:

1) The above is correct, right? Victory Celebration was not in the original? (Just want to double check).

Correct. Yub Nub is the original ending sequence of ROTJ.

-Yub Nub Fan

Edit: Please tell me that you enjoy Lapti Nek!

I'm ambivalent towards Lapti Nek, to be honest, but it's far and away better than Jedi Rocks, no question. And ^^ that picture made me laugh, although I've never seen South Park so I don't know if it's a specific reference haha

Been a kid that was raised on the 1997 SE's (the horror!), I was quite shocked when I realized that my favorite song from all of Star Wars (bar none), Victory Celebration, was in fact a 1997 addition. I think this is a huge part of the reason why I never understood all of the dislike for Return of the Jedi, because ending the trilogy with that song is one of the most powerful closures I have ever seen. This is compounded by the fact that, however blasphemous it may be on these boards, I don't really like Yub Nub, and I find that it packs about 20% of the emotional punch that Victory Celebration does. But I digress. I have several questions about the song itself, and the ensuing soundtracks. I think it would be easiest just to list them out:

1) The above is correct, right? Victory Celebration was not in the original? (Just want to double check).

2) Victory Celebration has never been released as a stand-alone song, correct? It is only part of the 8 minute, 34 second Victory Celebration/End Title track on both the 1997 and 2004 soundtrack releases, correct? For example seen here: LINK I believe it is about the first 2:24 or so.

3) Now, probably my most burning question, is that version available on the soundtracks the version that is used in the movie itself? Because in the soundtrack version, the first vocals sound way off to me. I fully admit my soundtrack hearing is not the most finely tuned (probably from being raised only ever using TV speakers for movies), but the vocals sound almost… childish? In the sense that it seems like kids are singing it? In the Youtube video I linked to, this would be from about 0:54-1:15.

3a) That portion I just referenced, is it actually used in the 1997 version, and I am blatantly missing it, or is it actually not used in the movie itself?

3b) To cut to the chase, what exactly is used in the 1997 Return of the Jedi? Is it only parts of the Victory Celebration track? Is it a different version? Is it exactly the version available on the soundtrack CDs?  To my, again untrained, ears, it sounds like the movie version has a longer percussion buildup – about 28 seconds in the TB version of the movie, while in the version I linked to, there are only about 17 seconds before the… flute? other woodwind? (sorry I’m not musically inclined) comes in.

3b2) Is there anything used in the movie that is not in the soundtrack version?

4) How easy / feasible would it be to simply replace Yub Nub in the GOUT with Victory Celebration? The more I think about it the harder it seems like it will be :(

In short, I’m just trying to learn about this track, since as I stated above, it is my favorite of the trilogy. Thanks to anyone who can help!

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Conclusions: the truth is GL doesn't care much about the original unaltered trilogy, and so the related DVD has not the best qualities (poor video quality non anamorphic taken from the laserdisc master, simple stereo soundtracks). But neverthless the production cost of this DVD was surely very high. So I'm proud to have started this project, with a quality sometimes better than that DVD, using only a PC, a laserdisc player, some laserdiscs and free softwares like Avisynth and Virtualdub. And obviously all the help found here, given by really precious people.

I'm waiting for your comments.

I'll be the first to admit that this project is not for me, but I think it's great how much you care about what you're doing. I think you hit the nail on the head, talking about how you've done this with comparatively simple tools and free software, as compared to Lucasfilm and all of their resources. I must also admit I am quite surprised at how well (more or less), it holds up to the GOUT.

CapableMetal said:

Thanks for clarifying that. h264 can be a real pest to edit because it has so much lag, probably due to its complexity, its generally a good idea to convert to a 'friendly' format first; Lagarith lossless AVI's are good because they're nice and quick. ;)

Related to this, doesn't converting to something lossless lead to HUGE file sizes? Or way back when I was trying to do such a thing, was I doing it wrong? Sorry I'm pretty new at all this

ww12345 said:

@SS4DarthPayne: That's the idea. This is one of my favorite movies, so my plan is to preserve it at the highest possible resolution so that everyone can enjoy it. :)

Awesome. Keep us posted. I would offer to help, but I am not sure if I could in any way haha.

You_Too said:

Ok, now the final shot has been fixed for the first film, and I decided to upload a sample so you could all see the difference!

It's that horribly dirty second wide shot of Luke in the Falcon, before and after http://www.sendspace.com/file/prokuf

Wow. That originally looked awful. Great work, as always. I remain extremely excited for this project. The lightsaber especially looks fantastic. Awesome job on that.

ww12345 said:

Ok, so I missed the anniversary by a few days, but I broke out Song of the South tonight for a family screening, and was once again blown away by how good it looked. I'm determined to get this backed up - it is an awesome source, and I can't believe how much detail there is in this print!

The pics I took were just from R2, and from the pre-screening/cleaning process, so they weren't shot against my proper screen (and were shot in the afternoon) so the lines you see running through the pics are not on the print (obviously). I've got a video uploading to Vimeo right now, and I'll post a link as soon as I can

 

Wow. I don't venture outside of the Star Wars stuff too often, and I am by no means an expert, but those pictures look fantastic to me. I would absolutely love to see this get preserved in a high-quality manner somehow. Song of the South has interested me for a long time now, and it would be great to see it in great quality.

You_Too said:

A small update: Since the 97 SE cinema DTS was in 44100hz and synched to its original 24fps source, we had to convert it to 23,976fps and 48000hz. This was done by using the command line tool eac3to, which did it very nicely and it still sounds great.

After that, DJ has already synched both ANH and ESB. He synched the audio to the 2004 SE versions, since we use those as our reference to synch both video and audio.

Since all conversions and synching alters the audio in some way, we decided to go with encoding it to DTS-HD MA 5.1 for the blu-rays, to keep any loss in quality as minimal as possible.

Awesome! I am glad to hear it. How is the sorting out missing frames process coming along?

Asaki said:

If you figure it out, let me know. I haven't been able to "hack" ComicsKingdom since they restructured in October (though I haven't had time to try as hard as I'd like to).

You can zoom in a little bit and save the GIF: http://safr.kingfeatures.com/idn/ck/content.php?file=aHR0cDovL3NhZnIua2luZ2ZlYXR1cmVzLmNvbS9TYWxseUZvcnRoLzIwMTIvMTEvU2FsbHlfRm9ydGguMjAxMjExMjNfNzIwLmdpZg==&tok=420061f838dee5950c432468eca2e886

but obviously that URL can't easily be hacked to get to the different sizes, like you could before. It's especially terrible trying to read the Sunday pages of Dick Tracy...it's like they just have everything completely automated and don't check or care if you can actually read the words on the page!

I didn't have much trouble sniffing out the zoomed version, I think this is the link: LINK

If that didn't work I threw it on imgr too: LINK

Yea, those look great! Seeing them side by side gives an especially clear comparison.

Well no one else has posted, so here goes. I just grabbed the 97 sample and watched it. I think it's pretty much what you'd expect it to look like, an upscaled version of one of the broadcasts (that's the TB, right..?) Visuals-wise, that's exactly what it looks like. Let's be honest here, it isn't miracle-level like what you guys have done with the GOUT, but from what I can understand you've put in 5% (10%? Less?) of the effort in on it as you have put in on cleaning up the GOUT. 

As for comments, from the audio side or otherwise, unfortunately I'm pretty worthless. Being out of town I only have my laptop and its built in speakers, so I have no way to judge the (surely awesome) DTS audio. I mean, it sounded great to me, but I don't know how much that is saying. It sounded synced, but again, audio has never been my forte. 

When it's all said and done, I'm very excited for this aspect of the project as well. As I've said before, I grew up with the 97 versions, and they were the first physical copies I ever owned. VHS baby. Judging by how I turned out, even though my first viewing was tainted by these versions, I still grew up to love the movies. So once again, thank you for all the hard work!

As for your first post, it sounds to me like just color-correcting and releasing is the best option at this point, but again you guys know best. Good luck with it all!

You_Too said:

I still think if we keep doing this project the way we have, it might take us years to finish all three.

Even though SW has many frames with dirt, glue marks, flashes and all, it's nothing compared to ESB. ESB has thousands and thousands of them and it's not only single frames, because it's the GOUT we're talking about. Glue marks and such things are smeared into the frames before or after so it all usually needs cleanup in more than one frame.

In the near future I think I'm gonna discuss with DJ if we should only clean up the color errors, like Tie lasers being yellow, the Falcon's laser being green etc, and leave the rest as it is. 

My vote is that you guys use your discretion and don't get burned out (aka probably slow down on the individual frame cleanup). But I'm just one person. More importantly, though, I hope you're doing alright! I had some surgery about a year ago. Not fun stuff. 

As you said, no matter what you guys end up doing, the GOUT will have never looked this good, so I take that as a win. Simple as that. You guys are doing incredible work

If this is for the 97 SE's, which I suspect it is, I am just as anxious as you to hear them in all their glory, but at the moment I think I'm just going to wait for DJ and U2's version instead of attempting to fiddle around with them myself. As a general rule of thumb, they are very good at what they do, and I believe that U2 confirmed they would include the DTS track

CatBus said:

FYI, it was another boy!  A friend of mine had jokingly offered to show my kids how to throw a ball properly, and I'm afraid I may have to take him up on it now.

A sincere congratulations! I don't know if it's your first or not, but either way, it's the start of a new chapter for you. Best of luck in all that is to come. Somewhat related, I am just now starting to try and snag these, but it is slow going at the moment. The thoroughness is to be commended, and I can't wait to test out the German subs