STENDEC

Krycek87 said:

Looking forward to your releases. The 97' SE was my first viewing of Star Wars on the big screen. I was ten at the time and although they were the special editions, they still hold a special place in my love for Star Wars. 

Thanks ;). I first saw Star Wars on VHS back in the early 90s, but I saw ANH and RotJ in '97 on the big screen. (RotJ was at a drive-in too!) While I personally think of the SEs as inferior to the originals, I'll fight for their right to exist along with every other version of Star Wars. The 1997 editions have their right to history as well, just like the OOT.

Just a quick update on my progress, ANH is now finished and I've started on ESB. As with ANH there are quite a few missing frames from the TB release, but the GKar is mostly intact. There is one important issue though. It seems that all releases of the 1997 SE have 1 missing frame. It occurs at frame number 75282 on the 2004 DVD (and the Blu-ray as well, presumably). It's the last frame of the asteroid hitting the bridge of the Star Destroyer and for some reason it's not in any of the 97 releases - TB, GKar or Laserdisc. With that in mind, I'm planning to leave it out since the evidence would suggest it wasn't there in 97.

Jonno said:

Thanks for making the effort to share this, just a couple of questions:

1 - The 'clipping' on the low amplitude scenes - is this on all BD players or just the one you tried it on? Sounds like something that might vary from player to player (or even according to settings).

2 - Any particular reason why you opted to compress to AC3 rather than leave the track as PCM?

The clipping occurred both on the 2 PS3s (fat and slim) that I tried and ArcSoft Total Media Theatre 5 on my PC, so I think it must just be something inherent to Blu-ray. Can't imagine why, but the waveform itself in Audacity was so low that it was rendered as a flat line, so I suspect that was indicative of the issue.

As to compressing it, no real reason. Just an effort to keep as much video data as possible when I compressed the BDR to 25gb. I can easily reexport from Audacity to PCM again though, since I saved the project file.

I'll see about putting a PCM copy up on the Spleen.

*UPDATE*

OK it should (hopefully) be available on MySpleen now:

http://www.myspleen.org/details.php?id=10265

Let me know if there are any problems.

I've synced dark_jedi's mono track to the new Blu-ray. It was more or less a case of removing the MGM logo from the start of the track (and the end), as it's not on the new disk. I had to compressed the dynamic range a bit as well, because if you leave it unchanged from DJ's, the softer scenes (particularly at the end of the film) get clipped out when you play it in a Blu-ray player. Wish I'd known that before I burnt it to a blank BD25 :P!

I have an ac3 of it that I muxed with tsMuxer. Anyone know if it's OK to put it on Myspleen or is that against the rules over there (also if DJ's OK with it).

Yeah, still coming along. Most of the last couple of weeks were spent waiting for the Laserdisc tracks to finish downloading. I've also had a number of setbacks with Premiere and Encore, but for the most part everything's going well. I haven't started on ESB or RotJ, but all the missing frames from ANH have been restored, the 5.1 and stereo LD tracks are synced up and the DVD menus are nearly finished. I'm hoping to have ANH completed and ISO'd this weekend so that I can start on Empire.

dvdmike said:

 

First encode, not 100% happy yet 

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/148709

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/148710

 

Wow! That already looks so much better! It's really a shame about this colour timing business (and the mono audio track). Why can't they just leave films as they were?! If they're going to go to all the trouble of restoring and preserving them, why screw with the colour timing?? To make the uninformed think it looks better?

Anyway, good luck with this! My copy of the blu just shipped out from Amazon UK the other day, so hopefully I'll be able to fix the thing by the time it arrives :P.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Hard to believe nobody's seeding schorman's Archive torrent, only six weeks old, but I've seen it too with my own eyes.

Regarding the frame analysis, I've been working on a spreadsheet comparison:
-2004 R1 DVD
-DarkSvn '97 laserdisc preservation
-ReivaX
-Flunk (only the first layer of the DVD9, until "She lied to us!")

The LD preservation is missing one field at the middle of Side 3, for example.
Side2 is missing first three frames of the green saber shot, after Praxis explosion. Side1 seems uncut.
You'll have to decide for yourself if any frames are missing between sides. My source isn't reliable that way...

Thanks for that Mallwalker. Yeah I've been doing some checking tonight for missing frames. So far I've determined that the G'Kar is missing one frame of the Star Destroyer flyover (which isn't a problem since nothing from that is usable anyway - it's in German and the colours and cropping are way off) and that the TB is missing 3 frames from the Alderaan explosion.

Hmm interesting point about the TB vs G'Kar thing. To me it just looked like the TB was softer and had less visible detail, but I could be wrong. It might be worth me cranking the contrast way up on both of them and seeing if there's any obvious lack of detail in one or the other. I have noticed a bit of image warping in the G'Kar, but I haven't checked if it's the same in the TB.

The other thing that led me more to the G'Kar were the stars in that frame on the Falcon. The stars in the G'Kar window are easily visible, but in the TB they're much less obvious. This could just be due to differences in the levels however.

Now about these missing frames, does any one know for sure which ones are missing from which broadcast? Has that sort of analysis ever been done by anybody before? Secondly, I have the SE laserdisc boxset as well. Does anyone know if those transfers have missing frames too or was that purely an issue with the digital broadcasts?

Oh and I'm not having any luck getting the laserdisc audio tracks, so if anybody has them handy and is willing to upload them somewhere that would be awesome. I asked Jetrell Fo if he could send me his copies but he said his internet's not up to the job at the moment (and I'd feel bad getting him to send a disk to Australia :P).

OK I've added some more details about the various releases I'm working with, as well as the fact that my release is NTSC (which I forgot to mention here initially).

You_Too said:

By the way, by Hybrid, do you mean like layering Gkar and TB on each other to get more detail out of them?

Well the 'hybrid' name was basically just referring to the fact that I was using more than one copy of the SE releases (and the audio) to produce one finished film, rather than trying to extract more video info by compositing and so forth. However, that may be an avenue worth pursuing if I can figure out a good way to do it (and if it will produce any appreciably better results).

Hello all. I’ve set this thread up to detail my hybrid DVDs of the 1997 SE trilogy. At the moment I’m about 90% done with ANH, but a couple of things are holding me up temporarily. Firstly, I’ve read elsewhere that some people swear by the Funk release as the highest quality available for the '97 ANH. I hadn’t grabbed this one yet, so I’m downloading the torrent right now from the Spleen and hope to have a good look at it shortly. Secondly, I want to include the 5.1 and stereo mixes from schorman13’s exceptional Laser Disc Audio Archive, however at the moment there are no seeds, so I’m a bit stuck with it.

With that all in mind, here are the details of what I’m hoping to release:

All 3 1997 Special Edition releases of the OT, utilising the best quality digital broadcast copies available. This means that although I have a few choices for ANH, ESB and RotJ will have to be a mix of the G’Kar and the TB versions, as they are the only copies of those two (besides the 5 Star versions, which are by all accounts crap). Each movie will be available with the Laserdisc 5.1 and stereo mixes. Lastly, I’m actually rebuilding the official DVD menus from my copy of the 2004 DVD release. This means that, for all intents and purposes, playing my disks will look almost as if GL had not modified the films for the 2004 release.

I also forgot to mention that these will be released in NTSC format, and not PAL. As I mentioned in the other thread, although PAL does have a slightly larger frame size (576 lines vs 480), the 4% speed up just sounds awful to my ears.

Now to help in the discussion of which release has the best image quality, I’ve done the following comparison frames (the Flunk isn’t included yet as it’s still downloading on my PC):

G’Kar:

Reivax:

TB:

As you can probably see from there, the G’Kar offers far better image quality over all, as the other two seem to have had more DNR applied. Also, the Reivax looks to have had the blacks crushed a bit and the TB release’s colours seem to be off in comparison to the other two. You guys would probably know better than I as to which one is more ‘correct’ however.

To help the analysis further, take a look at these close ups of Obi-Wan’s beard:

G’Kar:

Reivax:

TB:

Based on this, I have to say that I think the G’Kar offers the best picture.

russs15 said:

Try here for info on 5.1 tracks for the SE.  http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Laser-Disc-Audio-Archive/topic/14542/

 

Sweet! :D Thanks for that. Looks like I'll have to request a reseed, but I'm sure somebody on the Spleen will be able to oblige!

I'm actually in the process of building some hybrid DVDs of the 97 SEs. So far I've got ANH nearly done, using the crawl and unsubtitled scenes from the TB release and the rest of the film from the GKar. The GKar is by far the best in terms of quality, but the subs are hard coded and can't be easily removed, so I've intercut sections from the TB to remove them. I've also converted them to NTSC since although PAL has a higher res, I can't STAND the 4% speed up (and I'm from Australia, where PAL is the standard :P!)

By the way, if anyone can point me in the direction of some 5.1 ac3s of the 97SE audio tracks, I'd be very grateful (assuming any exist). All I've got at the moment are the English audio tracks from the GKar and TB, which are Stereo only.

Here are some screen caps from my VHS rip for those interested:

http://imgur.com/1v0bN

I actually have this version of Casino Royale in its entirety as I managed to purchase a copy of the Collector's Edition VHS. The only part missing is the last few seconds of the credits, which to my knowledge was never recovered.

I even copied it to my PC as well. I just haven't done anything with it since then (it's just sitting as an AVI file on my hard drive). I was going to make a DVD version of it but I kind of lost interest. If you guys are after it though, I can pick the job up again :P

Just wanted to drop by and say congrats Harmy! You've done a top notch job as always! I'm downloading through Myspleen now. Can't wait to see the finished result. I watched version 1.0 last year and have been eagerly awaiting version 2.0.

Georgie boy has once again been beaten by the tireless efforts of this community. Makes you wonder what state Star Wars would be in these days if Lucas himself cared about the films as much as we do.

Truly great stuff! TIE Fighter is still the best Star Wars game I reckon (hence the cover art in my avatar :P). Your project should be the soundtrack if ever there was a remake, or a port to modern systems anyway (oh and yes I have played the Total Conversion for X-Wing Alliance for those who know of it, but it just doesn't FEEL like the original TIE Fighter sadly).

Awesome to hear everything's still going strong -1! Can't wait to see the finished product. Bearing that in mind, could I imopse on someone to send me a myspleen invite please :P?

For me, what makes the PT fall apart visually is the lack of grit. Nothing seems real because most of it isn't. It's all very clean, fake looking, sterile and cartoony.

The best example I can come up with for this is the theatre sequence in RotS. Palapatine and Anakin are there discussing the sith and the war, but while I'm watching that scene I can't get the memory out of my head from the making of footage of them sitting in a blue screen box. Virtually nothing in that whole sequence is real, aside from the actors and the seats they're sitting in. Every single thing around them is digitally generated. Why? Because George didn't want to have to build a real set to work on (or, God forbid, go on a real location and shoot there). That's also part of the reason I think that the actors seem bored throughout most of the films. They had literally nothing around them to react and interact with.

Another aspect is that to me the visual designs of the PT look like cheap imitations of Ralph McQuarries' work from the OT. Like somebody described the OT's production design to someone down the phone and said, yeah do that. The designs have hints of McQuarrie's brilliance in them, but only in so much as they are derivative works.

Thoroughly awesome stuff. It brings a small sigh of relief anyway. At least we know now that the films will be looked after internally, but the fact that they'll also be effectively off limits to the public for at least the next century is certainly still very saddening.

The continued misuse and abuse of the copyright system is so aggravating. It was originally written as a law to help both content creators and the general public, whereas now it is used as a weapon by content owners (not even necessarily the creators) to wield AGAINST the public and to enforce their hold on the property. Lifetime plus 70 years? Give me a break. The only people who are going to care about Copyright after that amount of time are the greedy corporations who still want to milk money from it. I'm looking at you Disney!

Also, reading the response from Lucasfilm that the LoC could ONLY show the Special Edition, even for just a private screening, is absolutely disgusting. If it were up to me, I would've just exercised the right to show it anyway. If Lucasfilm don't want to oblige the LoC in any way, why should the LoC oblige Lucasfilm?

TheBoost said:

ps.

STENDEC, I love both your avatar and your handle.

Thank you! :D Can't go past TIE Fighter when it comes to awesome Star Wars games!

One thing that you guys bring up that I didn't mention before is the overuse of themes from TPM in AotC and RotS, particularly Duel of the Fates and the Trade Federation march. It always stuck out at me as really... lazy for lack of a better term. I tend to think, again, that it was Lucas' desire to reuse the music rather than Williams'. There were examples of reuse in the OT of course, such as the themes for Luke, Leia, Yoda etc. but they always slotted in properly. It felt like a reprise, rather than a recycling of music from the previous films. In the PT I feel it was the opposite. Whenever music from one of the other films appears it sounds like they just went to the archive, dug out the recording and shoved it into the scene because they figured it would fit OK.

I imagine this has probably been discussed before (if not numerous times) and if so, my apologies, but I was wondering if anyone else shares my viewpoint on something. For me, the scores of the Original Trilogy are just awesome through and through. Every single track is memorable, provocative and timeless to my ears. Luke's theme, the Imperial March, etc.

However, I have always felt that John Williams kind of dropped the ball a bit with the music of the Prequels. Now I know for many, thems are fightin' words, but believe me I have the utmost respect for Williams and everything he's done (the guy's given us more instantly recognisable theme songs than any other composer in film after all!). I may be just biased because I admittedly hate the prequels, but none of the music within them has ever stirred any sort of lasting impression in me, not even Duel of the Fates or Padme's theme. I tend to think it may have been Lucas' direction, but I don't know. Does anyone else agree?

The one thing I take solace from when George goes off on one of these megalomaniac rants is that he is getting increasingly more defensive and subversive about Star Wars, which suggests that the pressure to release the OOT is growing and starting to bite into him a bit. I dare say that there are many people high up in the film industry that have mentioned it to him more than once. That combined with the constant stream of criticism on the internet has started to show signs of really wearing on him.

I still don't necessarily believe it will convince him to change his mind, but I do feel it's starting to become more of an issue for him than it has previously. He can't just simply wave his hand dismissively any more. When films like Blade Runner, Terminator 2, Avatar, Spider-man 2 etc. can have every version of them presented in the same Blu-ray set (even occasionally on the same disk) with minimal effort, George's claim that it's too hard to do it for Star Wars becomes more and more transparent. Compare the vitriol of the 2011 release to the 2004 release and you can see a massive jump in the level of backlash. That has to count for something in George's head, even if he himself won't admit it. Plus let's not forget that the OOT has in fact been released on every major format since home video started (except Blu-ray obviously). Granted, the DVD release was just a Laserdisc port, but non-the-less.

From what I've heard, Rapidshare is a pretty safe bet at this stage. Apparently they've already beaten two attempts by the US Copyright authority to have the site taken down. Then again, Megaupload actually complied fully with the DMCA rules (in as much as pulling down illegal content as soon as it was reported goes anyway) and that didn't exactly work out well for them, so who knows.

Personally, the collector in me says I would be very happy to own every version of the films restored to the maximum possible quality - the originals, the '97 Specials, the '04 Specials and the '11 Specials. I wouldn't mind all the different audio versions too - 35mm, 70mm, '93 mix, etc. However, the only ones I'd really want to watch would be the original cuts. The option to watch the others would just be a pleasant bonus.

Having said all that, I still don't think I could ever fully forgive George for what he's done. If he came out and just flat out admitted how much of an a-hole he's been about it, then yeah I guess I could. But if it was a case of "Here's the originals for god's sake. Now shut the hell up already!" I would probably be less inclined to thank him. :P

Hi dark_jedi. Are you still offering copies of this audio restoration? I haven't heard the original Terminator audio track in years, so I'd be keen to get a copy if I can. Thanks in advance!

Well... F*** you too George!

Seriously the sooner some pristine 35mm prints of the OT end up in the hands of fans, the better. It's pretty obvious now that the only way George will ever restore and release them properly is if there's already a pirated version out on the internet stealing his business. Nothing matters more to George than money... Except obviously suppressing and destroying film history. That's clearly more important than money.