The Aluminum Falcon

I'm just curious in seeing how much members around here dislike DVNR. By DVNR, I mean Digital Video Noise Reduction and NOT the Delaware Valley Norton Riders. For example, would you refuse buying a Blu-Ray release for DVNR and stick to an older DVD? Do you stay away from GOUT enhancements just because they will have the DVNR smearing inherent to the GOUT?

I just got interested in this topic since I personally refuse to watch Predator and Evil Dead II on Blu-Ray because they are so scrubbed of grain. I prefer watching the first Predator Blu-Ray or the earlier Evil Dead II DVD. In fact, I made a little scale...

Here's the DVNR Opinion Scale (from 1-10):

1- You don't know about DVNR. If given a test between a heavy DVNR-ed source and a light DVNR-ed source, you'll choose the heavy DVNR-ed source.

2- You know about DVNR and are a great fan.

3- You know about DVNR. You can see it and don't mind it.

4- You are aware of DVNR's existence but you simply can't see it or the resulting smearing. Therefore, you're indifferent.

5- You are aware of DVNR and can notice it. You'd prefer it not to be heavily put on.

6- You dislike DVNR. You wish that companies would use it sparingly but you prefer it to transfers with absolutely no DVNR. For example, you loathe the early grainy Predator Blu-Ray and think the newer one is the lesser of two evils.

7- You strongly dislike DVNR. You try to look for early non-DVNR'ed releases if the most recent release is heavily DVNR-ed. You think the early Predator Blu-Ray is better than the newer one because it is less DVNR-ed. Grain is good.

8- You detest DVNR. You prefer non-DVNR'ed DVDs to Blu-Rays with heavy DVNR. You would choose the old Evil Dead II DVD over the heavy DVNR Blu-Ray.

9- You really detest DVNR. You think that even with little DVNR, a Blu-Ray is less superior to no-DVNR and unrestored DVDs.

10- You HATE DVNR! You will do anything to avoid it even if it means avoiding quality. GOUT enhancements are meaningless to you because of the DVNR smearing! You prefer to stick to the no DVNR-ed early VHSes, the Puggo Grande, or any Japanese Special Collection laserdisc preservations. Even the PAL laserdiscs have way too much DVNR for you!

Personally, I am about an 8 on the scale. DVNR really bothers me and I wish it would be avoided.

So, where does everyone else rank?

Hey, RedFive! In my opinion, Spence's edit of Attack of the Clones is the best so far, compared to Attack of the Phantom's lower AV quality and lack of a proper crawl. Although, if Attack of the Phantom was updated with a proper crawl, better AV quality, and without the Yoda fight, I may reconsider. As for Revenge of the Sith, I think hands down that Kerr's Dark Force Rising is the best ROTS edit yet! I personally like it a lot better than Stankpac's edit, which didn't seem to cut as much. 

As for the future, I think that Trooperman's edit or Brash Stryker's edit will be very awesome edits of AOTC. I haven't seen the workprint yet, but would like to. Can anyone help? Also, Bob Garcia's edit of ROTS is definitely going to be interesting!

That was a great clip! I love how you obscure Anakin's face as well as the color treatment. Can't wait to see this thing.

These look pretty good. I'll be interested in this when it comes out.

Asaki said:

It's the V8, and it's at Demonoid.

Sorry I searched and still couldn't find it. Do you mind sending me a PM?

I'm definitely interested! Can you please send me the links by PM?

Asaki said:

The JSC looks so much better.

I need it =/

Alright, I can get working on the torrent. I'll update when everything is ready.

Update: Everything should be ready. I don't know if I'm allowed to say where it is? I know we didn't used to, but I've seen people doing it lately.

Do you mind pm'ing me the links to that torrent? I believe we're allowed to say a website just not a specific link. I'm also a bit confused. Is it a torrent of your VHSs, Dark Jedi/Segaflip's JSC Preservation, or Arnie D.'s V8?

pittrek said:

The torrent would be great for us without usenet access

That might be a good idea. I'd be willing to seed that, though truthfully my internet connection doesn't seed at great speeds...

Wow! That was an epic first 8 minutes! The voice over work was nicely done, not sounding "fan-made" or bad quality, if you know what I mean. If you can maintain that quality of voice acting, then I would definitely suggest overdubbing Hayden just for consistency. Anyway, this makes me eager to see the final product when it comes out. The use of black and white is very nice. I thought that the animated footage might bother me, but it doesn't. The black and white makes it bland perfectly. Also, the music built up such a rich atmosphere absent from the real Prequel Trilogy. The use of the "Requiem for a Dream" music was fine with me. It does blend in well with the atmosphere you're creating. The font at the end is also nice; I would stick with it. :-) I do hope you continue work on this. This looks like it'll be my favorite fan edit yet. You seem to be making a tragedy of Citizen Kane-like proportions.

Don't forget the Stjarnornas Krig! Puggo also made another 16mm transfer of a Star Wars print with the mono mix and Swedish subtitles. The Puggo Grande is better, though.

Just sent you a Private Message, R2-LEO about where to get the Puggo Grande. Just PM me back if you need help.

I just had an idea and forgive me if it is foolish or has been discussed before (which is possible since I haven't thoroughly gone over all 215 pages of this thread).

What if Qui-Gon and Count Dooku were the same character?

After all, they seemed to both be mavericks, opposing the Jedi council at times. That way The Phantom Menace and the rest of the prequels are more tied together. Also, their combined character may not be a Sith but just leader of the Seperatists (who may be the precursers to the OT Rebel Alliance). The Jedi won't seem like fools for thinking that Dooku/Jinn is not a killer, and we may sympathize with Dooku. Perhaps for Episode III, Anakin and Obi-Wan can later fight when Obi-Wan finds security tapes from the ship showing that Anakin killed an unarmed Dooku. They may have been supposed to arrest and not outright kill him. The scene may conclude with a line by Anakin that Dooku didn't deserve to live because he gave up his allegiance to the Republic.

I don't know. This is just an idea I had. Feel free to dislike it.

Ripplin said:

Would be fun to convert the whole thing to DVD so others can see it.

That might be interesting. I didn't follow all the Star Wars news back then so it might be cool to see.

Also, none, according to those old news articles, there were a lot of TPM bootlegs floating around... I never saw one but it sounds like they really spread. I can imagine a lot of street corner selling. I wonder what most people did with their copies after the official VHS came out...

The result looks pretty good, TK-949. It should come handy in the future. It seems much higher quality than the plain old G'kar or GOUT. 

What a shame! Those clips looked show promising. Ah well.. hopefully something could be salvaged from them.

Wow, some of the WOW disc looks promising! I know that it just has clips of the movie but has anyone tried a color correction of the GOUT, the 1997 Digital Broadcasts, or the 2004 SE to match the WOW's coloring? It might look pretty good.

Cool! Thanks for transferring this, Echo3. It sounds awesome.

For the '97 release, you can try out the G'Kar releases, which are sourced from digital broadcast tapes so they're pretty high quality (though DVD compression causes some artifacts.) You could also try out Lee Thorogood's preservation of the PAL laserdiscs which have the added feature of great 5.1 audio tracks.

If you're limited to NTSC, then you could get one of the older laserdisc preservations. However, I would recommend holding out for Dark Jedi's V2 of the 1997 SE which has the digital broadcast video combined with 5.1 audio.

Wow. This project sounds awesome. Kinda sounds like Citizen Kane mixed with Homer's writings. In other words, it'll be epic.

Wow! Great to hear this is finally released. Can't wait to see it! Spence, can you please PM me the links?

mikeveli20 said:

So in that case, why even do the Despecialized editions? With the great things that dark jedi is doing with the GOUT, his versions and yours will end up being practically the same.

They won't be practically the same. Well this is a reconstruction, as opposed to DJ's HD upconversion of the GOUT. They won't really be practically the same. Most of this is sourced from an HD broadcast of the 2004 version, and, as good as DJ's samples look, an upconversion of the GOUT to HD will simply not be as good quality consistently throughout as the 2004 sourced parts of this one. On the other hand this is a reconstruction, not being from one master, and containing some contrast errors inherent to the '04 SE. Anyway, from the sample, it seems like Harmy has improved in using the GOUT footage where necessary, so there won't be quality difference. In the case that you still want a nice hybrid, the original despecialized editions are still online and still very good.

Out of curiosity, Harmy, are you just going to put the same old audio tracks on this one: Hairy Hen, the GOUT DVD mix, Czech dub, and commentary, or are you going to add more like some of those seen in DJ's V3 Set?

This stamp makes things void.

Mithrandir said:

So ressuming, what do you think of this? If you put something like "your father was a great warrior kid, If he was here he'd make somethings a lot easier to us" before the attack on the DS would be counterproductive?, or even later, in ESB??

Nice idea. If I remember correctly, there was some dialogue cut from the Biggs scene added back in the SE where another pilot says that he knew Luke's father and he was a good pilot. I seem to recall watching it somewhere a long time ago although this could be a false memory, like the grappling hook.

ChainsawAsh said:

In the commentary, the director says that the voice sounds like that because he wasn't allowed access to any old Dalek voice recordings, and he didn't have any old Dalek episodes with him to watch for comparison, so he did the voice himself from memory.  Poor memory, it would seem.

I'm not going to be changing anything about the film itself for this disc.  However, now that I've got the whole movie running at the proper speed, a fan edit might be on its way after the standard release...

--edit--

Oh, and which one of you is ugnaught over at /r/doctorwho?

According to this, the Dalek voices were originally all right but they were later changed for fear that they could not be heard. Ah well. I actually do seem to recall something about the director doing them himself.

Oh and a possible fan edit! How exciting! :-) A little bit of cutting and this movie could probably be a lot more fun and more like the show.

By the way, I'm not ugnaught.

It's a shame that some sites would just ban you like that Chainsaw. It's good news that the audio tracks sync perfectly. I'm a big DW fan and only have seen the TV Movie in it's incorrect PAL speed.

This should be useful for many all around. Would you ever consider making another audio track with fixed, deeper Dalek voices in the beginning? I don't know, having the Daleks sound so incorrect (high-pitched) always seemed to start things off on the wrong foot. Anyway, I really do love the work you're doing. I'm interested.