TK421138

Well, as they say, back to the drawing board again.

   Last night's attempt at using stills taken directly from DarkJedi's DVD transfers of the original theatrical editions proved to be bunk for me. It seems that each frame was in fact cropped for the book. In addition it seems like alternate angles of certain scenes were also used, and they do not appear in the film.

   I thank David for all of his hard work and fully understand why he is unable to participate in this project. Grown up responsibilities sure do suck sometimes.

    This has led me to rethink this project and come up with yet another new approach to it. I'm thinking vintage looking. Since this is a nostalgic thing for me, why not recreate the feel of picking these up for the first time after they've been sitting in a box in the attic for 30 years.

The process is something like this; present a clean image overall intact with a few blemishes and natural age to it. Regarding the audio; the hiss and pop should be there preserving the original sound, however it should be moved to the background and NEVER be intrusive to the listener by obscuring any dialogue or sound effect.

I think this approach is by far the best way of presenting the material that will appeal to both fans of these books and newcomers. I'll begin work on image cleanup right away as well as continue scanning and recording new audio.

"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."

Cheers,

Adam

Ok, I've come to a decision regarding the three main movie storybooks. Rather than scanning in the pages from the book, which the stills from the film look pretty rough, I have decided to rebuild each book with captures from the film. I opted to use DarkJedi's version of the theatrical releases for my captures as they hold true to the original movies in color and sharpness.

So I will in essence be rebuilding each book to look cleaner and overall more professional. I'll be posting the results later tonight for at least Star Wars.

Still looking for volunteers for this project, just let me know if you are interested.

Cheers,

Adam

    Good news to report today! All the books are here and they look fantastic! With the exception of Star Wars Adventures In ABC which for some reason was not printed on glossy paper. This one might be the hardest one to restore, though I won't hold out hope for it.

    Also in my collection are near mint copies of all the Story Of albums and they too look fantastic. I will be painstakingly scanning in each LP cover and stitching them together to form nice complete Hi-Def cover art.

    Anyone else that would like to volunteer to help with this project? I'm sure I can find something for you to do.

Cheers,

Adam

LexX said:

I'm looking forward to this project. I haven't listened any of those audio stories so I'm new to these. I only have the movie stories that were translated here (in 1995).

Welcome LexX and thank you for your interest in this project. The 7" record are I guess a little bit of an oddity in the Star Wars world. First of all a little background information on each record.

Taken from Wikipedia.org. All titles were sold under the Buena Vista Records branding unless otherwise noted. The Narration is done by either Chuck Riley or William Woodson with Anthony Daniels donning the role of C-3PO yet again.

Now as far as the dialogue, these records were very abridged and designed for children so several things had to be considered. One nothing too violent should be contained within the recordings, two each record runs approx 12 minutes so dialogue is not entirely true to the movies. Third, voice actors were hired to read the spoken passages. This results in some really funny readings from Luke, Leia, han and Darth Vader. This alone is worth preserving. The latter books get the voices pretty darn close but C-3PO sound hilarious. 

For actual dialogue and music straight from the movie see the fantastic Story Of albums that 7FN did. Otherwise these books are an important part of Star Wars nostalgia. Hope this info helps.

Cheers,

Adam

General Madine: General Moon, is your strike team assembled

Adam: My team's is ready, I don't have a command crew for this project.

Raphael: RRRRRAAAGGHHHHH!

Adam: Well, it's gonna be rough, pal. I didn't want to speak for you.

Raphael: Growls

Adam: That's one (smiles)

Brooks: Uh, General...count me in.

A little humor to end a satisfying day. Throughout the next week I'll be scanning in each booklet and getting it ready for Raphael to work on as well as recording the raw unprocessed audio for Brooks to work on.

I will also begin mapping out how I want this project to look when finished. Not sure if anyone out there has any ideas but it was suggested that perhaps at each page turn the viewer would have to press the left or right button to advance the page. Either button would in turn make the page turn realistically. Any thoughts on which program to use to make this possible? 

Second thought was, how do you feel about offering two audio options for each book? The first option would be a high quality WAV file with hiss/pop etc removed, so basically a very clean listenable version that is near CD quality.

The second audio option would be the raw WAV capture directly from the record. For the purists out there longing to relive hours spent listening to these records, they might like to recapture that feeling with all the good hiss, crackle, pop left in.

I'm not sure what the menu is going to be like but anyone with experience out there in making DVD menus? Any help would be appreciated.

On a totally unrelated note; I have procured some really nice copies of the Story Of albums along with the Rebel Mission To Ord Mantell audio drama from 1983. Story Of Return Of The Jedi and Rebel Mission are even sealed. Any thoughts on how to scan the covers of the artwork?

Cheers,

Adam

Hello everyone, and exciting news on this great project. I just received an email from Raphael including a couple of early samples of rudimentary clean up efforts. It's going to take a while to clean these images up appropriately and restore them to their natural glory. But that is what we are shooting for right?

On the audio front Brooks has volunteered to take his turn at cleaning up the audio rip from the first book I've done. I in turn will also continue to try and hone my skills, but it's gonna take a while to teach an old dog new tricks.

I have uploaded the samples of Raph's amazing clean up samples to Picasa web if anyone would like to see it. To set up each image here is the man himself;

"On sample 1 you'll see a dark area- this is just to show you and emphasize the amount of digital 'dirt' that is embedded in images like this: back page bleed through, shadows, etc."

See the link for pictures:

 https://picasaweb.google.com/109695558536788880331/DroidWorldCleanUpPicsDaveRaphael

Cheers,

Adam

7FN, I have wanted to comment on these fantastic recordings you have done, but my own project has kept me busy until now. You don't know how good it is to hear these Story Of albums in such calrity and depth. They almost leap right out of the speakers. Job well done and a big kudos to you for all your hard work.

I only hope that my project can meet even half the quality of yours!

Cheers,

Adam

Would anyone like to take a listen to my work I've done in audacity to the droid World recording? I think I've removed about as much hiss and noise as I possibly can without affecting the quality of the recording. I would welcome some fresh ears to tell me what I can do better to make it sound great. Still a newbie to Audacity, and the sliders are driving me batty. PM if interested.

Cheers,

Anyone here really good with Audacity? I have my raw unprocessed .wav of the audio I recorded, but for the life of me I can't get rid of the hiss and noise the way I should be able to. Any help would be appreciated.

Exciting news today. I recieved 4 of the 8 books in the mail today. Let the work begin! This is what I have so far;

Droid World #153DC 1983

Planet Of The Hoojibs # 154DC 1983

The Ewoks Join The Fight #160DC 1983

Adventures In Colors and Shapes # 180DC 1984

This afternoon I will begin scanning the books in and ripping the audio using audacity. Pictures to come soon! 

Fandamntastic!

Cheers,

Nearsighted Scrappile said:

As someone that enjoys preserving old vinyl and tape, consider this thread bookmarked.  :)

Well thank you Nearsighted, I too share a huge love of preserving Vinyl records, in fact that is my main hobby, before Star Wars took over. I am hoping I can present a quality project here. I can feel the enthusiasm building here.

    Stay on target!!!

raphael said:

TK421138 said:

By chance does anyone know where I can pick up the artwork for the Story Of Albums. I'm attempting to do my own artwork with what's available on the web but it's not going that well. The size of the images are too small and not of good quality.

 

 

 

There are clean artwork scans included in the movealong releases. Unfortunately, they're not hi-res.

If I can get my scanner working I might re-scan them myself (I have all th albums on vinyl. In fact I was quite lucky with my 'story of Star Wars'. I got it for  1$ and it had never been played!. I also have the cassette version)

Raphael,

That would be really tops if you were able to take scans of them for me. I messed around some more with the stuff I got off the net and it is simply unusable. Just looks like crap. Soon as I get those books in the mail and can scan them you'll have some real work to do here. Should have some starting the 15th or so, all of them by the end of the month.

Cheers,

By chance does anyone know where I can pick up the artwork for the Story Of Albums. I'm attempting to do my own artwork with what's available on the web but it's not going that well. The size of the images are too small and not of good quality.

I thought about the special features alot and I was thinking of adding the excellent Story of Albums to that section. My question is which version to include. I have editdroid's rips of the albums and they sound pretty great to my ears. how does 7FN's version stack up. I hear from alot of you that it is the best out there, but then there is also MoveAlong's version with video for for the first two albums. What shall I do?

So I thought now might be a good time to tell everyone what the layout for the DVD is going to be. This is a rough sketch and may change as far as special features go but the core contents will be as follows:

Star Wars #150DC 1979

The Empire Strikes Back #151DC 1980

Return Of The Jedi #152DC 1983

Droid World #153DC 1983

Planet Of The Hoojibs # 154DC 1983

The Ewoks Join The Fight #160DC 1983

Adventures In Colors and Shapes # 180DC 1984

Adventures In ABC #181DC 1984

Special features to include:

High quality scans of each page

Individual sound files for each book

Rebel Mission To Ord Mantell radio drama

The Ewok Adveture #467 1984

Ewoks: Battle For Endor #470 1985

More details to come....

thank you both for the input, I'll have to check it out. I have no idea how to use the adobe products you mentioned but I am sure there are walk thrus out there plus I can pick the collective brains here for info.

Never used audacity but it should be pretty easy to figure out, similar I'd say to Spin It Again. So which file format is best to output to? wav. MP3. flac.?

Brand new find!

While digging around in storage I found the old copies of the book and record sets from my childhood, very rough shape, but soooo cool!

OK, the books have been purchased, it was a big investment but in the end I think it will prove to be the best option for quality sake. I should receive them all no later than the end of the month.

The next part will be scanning the images in, granted I don't have a super high quality scanner, I think it should do the trick. Perhaps I can lean on some of you to help me out in restoring them to their best look possible! I'm so excited I can't wait!

I checked out Adobe's rather expensive software and I just don't have the dough for it. The next step for me to do is scan in the pages and try to record high quality lossless audio. Any suggestions as to the best way to do this would be much appreciated. Again I use a program called Spin It Again which is pretty darn good but the output is still MP3.

Onwards and upwards!

Cheers,

Brooks, thank you, I have checked that site out, in fact that is what spurred me on do do a proper restoration of each book. I use it as my guide for what the project could be. Though it probably will no be Flash based. I have not been able o contact the creator of that site, my last attempt was more than a month ago. Would you be willing or able to scan in a few samples from the books you have so I can see what it looks like?

Thank you AntcuFaalb for your excelent post. You really have a way of cutting right to the heart of things. I wouldn't take on a project like this if I didn't think that there would be an interest in it. I know that creating something like this to the best of my abilities will no doubt bring with it a mix of both compliments and criticism.

I'm not doing this for the admiration though, I am simply expressing the creative effect that Star Wars has had on me and in my life. I want to share that with you all, but I also want to make sure it's something that hasn't been done to death yet. In combing these forums I don't see that anyone has undertaken this before so I am excited to try it out.

I am going ahead with this project. I will be posting screens as I go along and update as I make progress.

Cheers,

Adam

anyone out there interested?

Thank you everyone for responding so well to this topic. I appreciate all of your feedback. In talking with Raphael it seems the sources I have are too far gone to restore. Besides the audio is atrocious at only 192 kbps. I want this to be a project I can be proud of and something you fans can relive day to day forever and pass on to your children. Therefore we have to have the best source for the graphics and the best source for the audio.

However in doing my research online I may have found a happy alternative. For just a little investment I can procure all 8 Star Wars read along adventure sets still in shrink from Amazon.com. It will be roughly $134.00 to buy them which I think is pretty darn pricey if you ask me. What we are talking about after all is 8 24 page books along with 8 7" records.Vintage paper and plastic is expensive!

So I ask you all, is there a serious enough interest in this project that would warrant me purchasing this set, as pricey as it is. This is a serious investment and would take some time to finish properly. Could I count on some of you to guide me through presenting this in the best intended way possible?

I would need someone to help me work on the audio, I could work on it with Cool Edit Pro but I am only a learner so my skills are minimal at best. Raphael, would you be able to work on photo restoration if I scanned them in uncompressed? We can settle that part later. Once I marry audio with the graphics, what program should I use to present this? I want it to be just like picking up a book only on a DVD with each book's pages turning automagically for you while in sync with the record.

I have currently applied this concept in Powerpoint using fades at the end of each page and I think the results are pretty good if I do say so myself. I've seen this done as a flash program but I don't really like flash and it needs to be compatible with all DVD players which is why each page should turn for you. Is there a better program than Powerpoint that has more options or control?

SO MANY VARIABLES TO CONSIDER!

Give me your thoughts......

Cheers!

Adam

raphael said:

If you need any help with restoring the hi-res images, tell me. I'm a professional digital image restorer and recently released an e-book of restored 1970s concert/tour programmes.

Gimp's ok, but it just doesn't have the functionality of photoshop.

For anyone with the books, please scan at least 300dpi

Audio-wise, I'd be getting uncompressed rips (mp3 is no good at all, especially for preservation), and release as FLAC.

image restoration:

 

raphael, You are my new best friend! I could use oodles of help in restoring these photos to their former glory. I was just looking at them and they are really quite awful although vintage looking, but I know how finicky true Star Wars fans are about things looking just so. PM me and we can work something out. The images I have aren't the best so be warned. If anyone has any uncompressed rips of this I'm all ears!

Well what I am planing on for now is finishing each book and then bundling it all on a DVD with each section having it's own chapter i.e. All the Star Wars books, Indiana Jones, Star Trek etc... If you want to see scans of each page they are available to the public on picasa web albums. Don't think I'll sync the movie to the soundtrack as the dialogue in the story books has been edited and it is hilarious to hear the original voice overwork they did. You thought David Prowse had a bad accent as Darth Vader? wait till you hear this guy!

oohh think this is the link to find it.

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos