Skippy The Jedi Droid

Space Hunter M said:

With a glorious thanks to Akaiii, I have made a decent x264 encode of this and distributed it to MySpleen and Cinemageddon. I have synced all available audio mixes (plus isolated score) and a legitimate subtitle translation to create the definitive version of this marvelous film in the English-speaking world. I hope that this attempt is proliferated for years to come until the film is given a proper release in the aforementioned English-speaking world.

Beautiful! Finally seeing the new restoration with the original 4-channel audio is a dream come true!

skywalker89 said:

Hey, wouldn’t it be much more easy to make a reconstruction like Harmy did with his despecialized trilogy? Use the official Blu Ray version as a main source, combined with elements from a late HDTV broadcast of the 2001 DVD Version and some upscales from the Japanese Laserdisc?

I guess you’re not aware of the two HD reconstruction projects done with different techniques that are going on right now.

skywalker89 said:

RU.08 said:

Poita said OK so here it is-

https://we.tl/t-eyzjTRA6Nq
https://we.tl/t-QbGtJE4xya
https://we.tl/t-uJp2DkyP3u

1080p at bluray bitrate. It’s 7-zipped with no password and a checksum file in case you get a bad part.

Not available anymore… How could I get it? I tried to make a color correction of the official 2001 German PAL DVD release and recreate the theatrical version with recuttuing the Pod Race and recreate some other changes with the help of two different TV-records and the Z bootleg, but I gave it up. It would be great to have an HD Scan from your 35mm source. I would want to work with it. I would do an upscale of the German opening crawl from the 2001 PAL DVD for it. This year this movie will be 20 years old, the US premiere was in May, worldwide in August. It would be great, if I could be a part of such an HD reconstrution of it, because it was my first cinema experience of Star Wars as a 9 year old child. I saw some scenes of the original Trilogy on TV before, but this cinema visit was the beginnign of my “Star Wars addiction”. I was born and raised in Germany and still live there, but my parents are from Hungary and it’s my second home. I would want to recreate the German and Hungarian theatrical version of “The pahntom menace”. If I also could get the original DD 5.1 Sound of it, I would try to seperate the German voices from the 2001 DVD and the Hungarian voices from the Blu Ray (or 2015 DVD form the Blu Ray version) and try to mix it with the origjnal theatrical 5.1 sound.

Patience! There are two HD reconstructions going on right now. Wait till those are out and then do the opening crawls.

Great! Can’t wait to see the finished product!

ZigZig said:

• invasion of Naboo (first scene above the planet - previously undetected change) (1 scene)

Interesting. Do you want to elaborate more on that?

ZigZig said:

Some news after many weeks …

Since ChewieLewis’ project (https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Phantom-Menace-99-HD-Theatrical-Version-by-Chewielewis/id/60924) started on the same basis as mine, and since ChewieLewis told me that he wanted to deliver his project as soon as possible in 2018 (and thus, it wouldn’t be possible to collaborate because my work speed was much more slow than his), it seemed constructive to me, for the benefit of all, to restart/reload my own project on a new different base, even closer to the “Despecialized” approach: rebuilding TPM in HD by taking Blu-Ray as the main source (instead of merging HDTV and STDV sources).

As a result, the OT community will benefit from two different approaches:

• a reconstruction from HTDV and SDTV sources (ChewieLewis’ project)
• a despecialization from Blu-Ray (my project).

The process is obviously more complicated, but is well advanced:

• rebuilding every altered scene (mainly via rotoscoping + the modeling technique I developed for the previous project) - almost done
• color grading and cropping on a scene by scene basis - to be done

I have also been able to find other major sources (ie captures from the first DLP version of Texas Instruments in 1999, or negative scans with original cinematographic subtitles).

I’ll try to deliver the final result for the 20th anniversary of TPM (19th May 2019)

NB: I sincerely regret that ChewieLewis insisted so much on finishing the project in 2018 - which was the main reason for our lack of collaboration (since I was not able to work so fast)… finally, his project was not delivered as fast as he said in 2018, so we could have collaborate.
That’s life… 😃

Some comparaisons :
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/029MNNNU
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/WP7PNNNX
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/029CNNNU

That’s great news! I have one question. Are you planning on adding any film grain since the Blu-Ray has almost none thanks to the overuse of DNR? The reason I’m asking is because I saw a project on myspleen where someone had added a layer of grain on top of the Blu-Ray image and it looked really good. It also looked like as if some of the detail was restored that was lost during the DNR process. What are your plans?

Seeing this much TPM appreciation in such a short period of time truly warms my heart!

You can put me to that list too.

Chewielewis said:

I have a brand new Coruscant sequence that uses some pretty interesting technique that I think might be new to the Fanres community.

Interesting…

Chewielewis said:
Im stuck on Subtitles again.

Just in case you haven’t come across one particular thread I’ll link it here:
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Attempting-to-re-create-Phantom-Menace-alien-subtitles/id/18180

I’d also love to have the link for the latest version. Thanks in advance!

Chewielewis said:

I guess I should be clear about the scope of this project. Really I’m just trying to recreate what they would have released on DVD had they not done the extended version. Somewhere out there on a shelf sits 3 D-5 HD video cassettes, holding a rough as guts telecine of the interpositive, used to create the laserdisc and the VHS. Thats what im trying to achieve, with the theatrical subs and cinema DTS as a fun extra.

That’s something I’ve always wanted to create by myself but with my very limited skills haven’t been able to do so. Answering the question “What the DVD would have looked like if it was released at the same time with VHS, VCD and Laserdisc?” I’m definitely looking forward to your version but also ZigZig’s and poita’s version because everyone has a slightly different goal and the end result will be different. It’s really nice that there’s finally three ACTIVE theatrical TPM HD projects going on!

poita said:

Reel-2 of ANH is on the scanner now.

Very nice.

J0E said:

So in anticipation of this release I bought the VCD set of the Special Editions, if anyone wants me to take scans of the disc art for this release I can if anyone wants to make something out of them for this.

I’m propably going to use just a CD case instead of a BD case so your scans would be helpful.

Donated! My body is ready!

Here’s another one who’ll gladly donate. I’m really looking forward to this. Give me a couple of days…

Thaddäus Tentakel said:

AntcuFaalb said:

A German DVD of Sleeping Beauty came out in 2002. Does anyone know if this predates the Lowry restoration? http://www.disneyinfo.nl/dvddetail.php?film=1863

It could be - here are some screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/Q3uIi
Compared to the Platinum/Diamond Edition the picture is slightly cropped and has a more filmic look.

I’d say that’s before the Lowry restoration. Looks great.

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

NeverarGreat said:

I really like the filmic contrast, and most of the shots look wonderful in terms of color. There’s only one real issue for me, and that is in the blues. The holograms and Obi-wan’s saber have too little luminosity, leading to strange gradients with the surrounding colors. The Federation ship interior also takes on a strange blueish green tint. Here’s an example of a shot that doesn’t benefit from this grading in my opinion:

It also seems like the reds are unnaturally dark.

Some shots look phenomenal though, such as this one:

The soft pinkish gray walls with blue panels really works.

That’s the main thing I’ve noticed too, going over it again. As I was trying to render a longer version of the first preview, my computer crashed, so I had to redo some work and the new color settings and decided to go back to the start of the movie and that’s thrown me off a little. If anyone can tell me their opinion what looks good and what doesn’t, I’d greatly appreciate that

The biggest problem to me is shown here:
http://imgur.com/NDgaD2S
I’ve watched the same scene from VHS, VCD, Laserdisc (two different captures), DVD and Adywan’s recontruction and the contrast isn’t that radical in any of them. You probably used the Z bootleg as a reference in that one?
You definitely need to tone it down. It almost looks like someone is shining a flashlight at Qui-Gon.

yotsuya said:

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

Here’s basically the first 8 minutes using this look. This weekend I’ll look at the photos and see if i can match to that.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3yEI3sJQlBTFlFTmJCVjl0V2s/view?usp=sharing

Very nice, but the colors are too yellow and too bright. At 21:01 to 21:11 there are two shots that will get blown out if you have things too bright. And you have to watch the reds and turquoise colors to be sure they don’t turn out too orange or too green. Palpatine’s costume is a mix of green, turquoise, and blue with the collar being blue. If it looks green or turquoise, there is too much yellow. And Queen Amidala’s red outfit here in the beginning is very red without much yellow. It felt like it was leaning too far in the orange direction.

Contrast also needs some tinkering. Qui-Gon’s cloak looks black in many shots even though it’s obviously brown. Looks like it has crushed blacks…

Here’s the same comparison with a higher quality version of the promo still so it’s easier to compare:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/213249

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

Here’s a comparison shot, to hold over until this video preview finishes rendering.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/213242

In case you haven’t noticed the official SW website has many high quality stills from every movie. TPM has the original stills that look really nice. Only one of the stills, the one featuring Yoda, is replaced with a never one from the Blu-Ray version.
http://www.starwars.com/films/star-wars-episode-1-the-phantom-manace-story-gallery

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

I looked through some photos, watched the Z bootleg a few times, and I messed around with some color grading in Premiere Pro, and came up with this very short video. I’m using my TV as a monitor, so I’m not sure if this will look the same for everyone else as it does for me, and we still don’t have anything 100% to reference, but I did my best to do something that could make the blu ray look bett/ close to what we have, and I am really liking this for those outdoor shots. Let me know what you think.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-3yEI3sJQlBVEZrblhDM01heVU/view?usp=sharing

I like that. Looks more filmic. Some close ups of Jar Jar would be nice in the next sample. Maybe also some desert shots?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHRy1VO6_dQ
Here’s a raw film scan of TPM Trailer A (teaser). As you can see nothing has been done to the footage. Not even stabilized. Sadly it’s only 240p but we’re mostly looking at the colors… and the trailer is in Japanese 😛
We could compare this to the film reel LHSmarchingredcoat won.

yotsuya said:

I’m not comparing mine to any other TMP version. I created a color correction for the GOUT based on the Mike Verta techicolor sample scans and the ROTJ grindhouse. Then I color corrected the 97 SE trilogy to that and applied that, with some tweaking, to TMP and arrived at a very nice color correction. A bit yellow in some places, especially the pod race sequence, but overall it has very nice tones and the light sabers look right. Most importantly the colors match the photos I took at the costume exhibit. I’ll see if I can post some samples. The DVD is almost identical to the TB and ORF in cropping and color, I just had to make a small tweak to get it to match. The Blu-ray is very different.

I’d be interested in seeing your results. Could you include the shot with Padme and Panaka?

I guess I was wrong. I just skimmed through the DVD and compared it to a couple of Laserdisc screenshots and it almost seems like the Laserdisc has a different color timing, a more natural one. I’m not sure though. Maybe it’s just the way it was recorded from the player.
Could the Laserdisc also work as a reference? It is pre-2001 after all…

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

I have downloaded the Z VCD from myspleen to use as a reference for the next run, and I created a quick album of shots from my Collectors VHS set for comparison to the other albums: http://imgur.com/a/ddnI9

Yeah kk650 is a lot closer to the VHS.

Here is a quick comparison of the kk650 and 1080p for about 3 and a half minutes in: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/212747
You can see kk650 has a strong teal tint through the window, and Naboo looks very bright and soft (the white atmosphere is teal here), compared to 1080DVD.
The VHS to the 1080DVD: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/212749
The 1080DVD to the Z bootleg: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/212755

That’s actually a pretty tricky shot to compare. The difference isn’t that stricking between different versions.

I also just won an auction for a 35mm Film Reel of TPM Trailer A, so hopefully this could help us!

Impressive. Most impressive. That could help indeed.

I was just quickly skimming though different TV spots and the color timing is very similar to the VHS version like in this one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylfCMt0-vC4

Jesta’ said:

Correct me if I’m wrong, the VHS is the theatrical version?

Yes it is and the only official home video release to have that color timing as far as I know. I have no idea what the VCD version looks like.
The Japanese Laserdisc is also a theatrical version and was released around the same time with the VHS but it actually had the atroucious pink tint that was later seen in the DVD version. At least I remember it looking like that. I just looked at a couple of screenshots from the Laserdisc and they don’t seem that pink so I could be wrong…

LHSmarchingredcoat said:

Hey guys, sorry for all the posts!
I’ve been doing some thinking, looking over the source videos, and reading your posts, trying to figure out what the next steps are. I’ve taken a liking to the 1080DVD for the most part, and I’ve heard that this is a good main source and starting point to use. But, I feel that the space scenes don’t look very good, lots of the starfield becomes a blue-white noise to my eyes, and I also feel like there’s still too much saturation/ pink tones throughout the 1080DVD. I’m leaning towards the color grading in kk650’s at the moment, it looks more natural and balanced, aside from the brightness/ contrast problems in a few shots that just couldn’t be fixed using the Blu Ray. Seeing as we don’t have any good scans yet of any film strips (aside from willarob’s 4K scan of a trailer, on which it looks like proper color correction or sharpening hasn’t been done) and we have publicity photos that aren’t consistent with each other, what do you guys think we should use as a color reference for now?

Here’s some links for albums contains shots from the kk650 and 1080DVD for comparison.
https://imgur.com/gallery/lGpcC
https://imgur.com/gallery/1JF3x

Obviously anything pre-2001. Isn’t the color timing pretty good in the official VHS? At least I remember it looking more appealing than the DVD. Then there’s the legendary “Z” bootleg that I even own on VHS. That one would definitely have the right color timing but the lighting of the movie theater messes everything up + the quality overall is pretty bad.

I don’t know how familiar you are with RU.08’s attempt at recreating the theatrical version but I’m going to link the thread here anyway: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/TPM-1080p-Theatrical-Preservation/id/17311
^ Really good information here!
Maybe you could find something useful regarding the colors…