Video Collector

THANKS PITTREK!!!

I have just downloaded the last two discs of season 1, and must say Pittrek has done an excellent job with these releases.

The re-editing to complete the "missing" episode Three Lessons must have been quite an undertaking. He also had to remove a logo from most of the episode. I like the disclaimer at the beginning, describing the state of the source material and why it doesn't look as pristine as the others. Very professional.

When Pittrek first inquired about this project, I offered to send him captures of the PAL VHS tapes on condition that he make them available to everyone in this community. He has gone above and beyond in doing just that.

Many of you may not appreciate the pure stamina it takes to transfer, edit, restore, author and upload 26 episodes of something. There's a reason noone has done it before. I say we all owe Pittrek a huge debt for doing this!

So go out and shout it from the holy mountain; The Ewoks series is available! And you can find it here, on the OT forum!

grummel2005 said:

so we have to load all the whole files again????

No. I didn't mean the torrent for the discs. Go back to AvP's original post for the covers, and I believe the link now points to the corrected covers. I haven't unpacked the new RAR but the file size and dates look to be new.

grummel2005 said:

AvP said:

Corrected the covers :)

Where do we get them?

 

thx a lot!!!!!

I think he just updated the files at the old link. Try it and see.

sans_fi said:

PolyMeR said:

7FN said:

ator said:

Could I get the links to these?

May I also get a link for these please? Stunning artwork!!! :o

 Has anyone gotten the links to these covers? I would love to get them as well...they are awesome!

 

Thanks

Ive found something pretty similar:

Darth Solo's Manga Covers

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/1637/japanhcopy6ib.jpg

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/1143/japesbcopy9qs.jpg

http://img270.imageshack.us/img270/2900/japrotjcopy4av.jpg

And without titles

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/1141/japanhvj6.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9906/japesbil9.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6638/japrotjcn4.jpg

I could kiss you :-)

Thank you very much.

AvP said:

http://preserv.dreamhosters.com/images/alternatecovers/AvP/ewoks_series_one.rar

 

 

 

Avp, the covers all say "Eposide List" on the back. Could you perhaps make a fixed set available? Thanks.

You_Too said:

Video Collector said:

Purple shadows are not necessarily an error.

In this case they are an error, since there are some reference materials like 70mm scans where areas being purple in the SE aren't purple in the original.

As long as you're sure....

I forgot to say I think your colour corrections are coming out excellent. There is a certain artistry involved in timing the colours, and I think sometimes a neutral approach is not always the best one. You seem to have hit a good middleground.

You_Too said:

The purple shadow problem is already solved with my magenta setting. Also the pink flashes throughout the movie are much better. The blue haze will probably get better now with Darth Editous's plugin.

Just as an aside. Shadows appear purple/violet to the eye under certain lighting conditions. In deserts especially.  It's one of those things the Impressionists observed and started incorporating into their paintings. You see it in a lot of painted artwork even to this day. It's kind of an optical illusion caused by the dark/light contrast and accepted colour theory among artists.

I have seen this show up in photography as well, so it seems it's something the lens captures just like the eye. Just look at the droid's shadows as they approach Jabba's castle in ROTJ and you'll see a violet hue. Purple shadows are not necessarily an error.

SKot said:

I picked up these discs from the source way back when they first came out.  At the time they were the best versions of the trilogy/Special Edition, but they also were the first discs I ever had go bad.  I was never able to copy them due to CRC errors, but I still have them, covers and all.  I doubt they play anymore.

--SKot

Hmm... I'll have to give mine a spin and see if they play, then.

I have just downloaded and sampled the first two discs of Pittrek's set, and I must say these are excellent. Professional menus and everything.

Pittrek has done an amazing job with cleaning up and encoding the episodes at a very high bitrate. The blended frames are still there, but I can't imagine anyone being disappointed with the quality of this set.

The old DivX torrents can die out now. This is the set to get.

Everyone cheer Pittrek on to complete the many episodes still remaining.

I have finished the cover and disc art for season 1. I have sent the files to Pittrek and asked that he shares them with the torrents of the actual discs.

This was made to fit a 6-disc, 27mm spine case. If anyone needs something different I can see about making versions for different cases.

pittrek said:

They are way too bright . At least more bright than your video sources :)

 

Thanks, Pittrek. Yes, these are mostly scans of the actual cels, not screencaps. I figured you'd be familiar with the episodes after having worked on them extensively.

Good work on completing season 1. Congratulations.

Remember when you first mentioned this project back in february? It's been 8 months, but the project hasn't stalled thanks to your tireless efforts and deciding to get a version 1.0 out the door.

I've said it before, these projects stall because people set the bar too high, waiting for that perfect tape to source from, trying to include multiple dubs, just one more pass with that pie-in-the-sky cleanup filter in Avisynth...

Sometimes good enough is good enough.

Boys and girls, I'd like you to help me with a little game I call: "Name that Episode!"

I need to know which image goes with which episode so that I can use them correctly on the covers I'm making. I've numbered them for easy reference.

There may be a few where the background and figures are mismatched. You never know with cells that are sold with mass-produced backgrounds.

Thanks everyone.

1:2:

3: 4:

5: 6:

7: 8:

9: 10:

11: 12:

13: 14:

15: 16:

17: 18:

19: 20:

21: 22:

23: 24:

25: 26:

27: 28:

29: 30:

31: 32:

33: 34:

AvP.

These are looking good. Keep it up.

Thumbs up.

Okay, so the Season 2 set will look something like this, then?:

Season 2:

Disc 1:

The Crystal Cloak/The Wish Plant

Home is where the Shrieks are/Princess Latara

The Raich

Disc 2:

The Totem Master/A gift for Shodu

Night of the Stranger

Gone with the Mimphs/The First Apprentice

Disc 3:

Hard Sell/A Warrior Lurdo

The Season Scepter

Prow Beaten/Baga's Rival

Disc 4:

Horville's Hut of Horrors/The Tragic Flute

Just My Luck/Bringing up Norky

Battle for the Sunstar

Disc 5:

Party Ewok/Malani the Warrior

Extras:

Original Bumpers

Trailers

Toy Commercials

DVD-ROM articles, interviews and episode guide.

Pittrek, how have you handled the double episodes? Have you bunched them together with one set of opening/closing credits, or are they left as individual episodes?

pittrek said:

These are the comics / books which I received + found online

 

Ewoks 01 - The Rainbow Bridge.cbr
Ewoks 02 - Rites of Power.cbr

.....................................

So the comics are the only extras on Season 1?

I'll just put "DVD-ROM archive of Ewoks Comics" as bonus material.

Do you have an episode listing for Season 2 yet?

The covers are more or less finished.

Pittrek, I just need to know what bonus material goes on disc 5 of season 1. If these are done by friday you can include them in the torrent.

I may add some images to the backs once I know how much text to fit.

skyjedi2005 said:

Looks like a professional cover and far better than the most recent Lucasfilm cover art like the BD Release of the 6 movies.

Ha ha. Thanks.

But if this WAS an official cover, it would have to have STAR WARS plastered all over it. And that parchment background wouldn't fly. What's that old Ewok font doing on there? Make it more modern, I tell you! And there has to be more images on the back, from whichever episode, doesn't matter. And the UPC, you forgot the bloody UPC! More action-oriented front, but not violent, mind. And where are the Duloks? Put some Duloks on there! And it's for kids so just a little more gaudy. And some taglines would be good. Put a forest in there, there HAS to be a forest! In fact, make it look like this:

You're fired, you hack!!

Us custom cover designers have it easy, I tell you.

WIP cover:

@AvP: I didn't mean to run you over or anything. If I send you scans of the UK tapes, would you be willing to do the single-disc cases based on those?

Okay, I'm going for the 6-disc case with a 27mm spine.

http://www.genesysdtp.com/index.htm?6dvddetails.htm

There are 5-disc alternatives, but I believe those cases are less common.

One big case is less work than 5 separate ones anyway. It will be hard enough finding good artwork for 1 case. :-) If any of you out there have High-Rez images for Ewoks to share, please PM me or post them here. I will credit the contributor(s) on the cover.

I may do single case versions based on the UK VHSs down the line.

Did we land on a particular moniker for the collection yet? Otherwise I'll just put "The Animated Series Restoration" or something on there.

pittrek said:

Oh where is Godzilla  Fritz when we need him ? :-) If he won't read this I will send him a mail if he can make bigger scans

Ha ha, Godzilla, eh?

I'll be doing the covers for this set myself. Disc art also.

Pittrek, what will be the layout of the discs? How many episodes per disc? How many discs? (I need an episode list for each disc. Also, the bonus features list for each disc.)

Are we going for 2-disc covers or singles? 6-disc covers?

Anything else you want on there? Image restoration by Pittrek, etc?

If I can get it ready in time, we can add the cover/disc art files to the actual DVDs as DVDROM material.

Fritz

Pittrek, my man.

I know it's more work, but I would go for option 1. I'm not going to watch the episode twice to get the whole story, so I'd much rather you made a "complete" episode using both sources.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Scope means that each widescreen frame is stretched vertically to fill the entire frame.  Then it requires a special lens to stretch it back horizontally when viewing.  PG and PSB were scope prints stretched in software after fullscreen capture.

Flat can mean either full frame or widescreen with borders, neither of which require a special lens to project.

Scope is generally the preferred type of 16mm or 8mm print if you're looking for the very best quality.

Then there's the difference between the "Cinemascope" method of squeezing and the "Cineavision" one for 8mm prints.

The Cineavision prints add narrow black bands to the squeezed image to maintain the entire image and not crop it out like the Cinemascope versions do. (As I understand it. Maybe it's the other way around.) I don't know if the actual squeeze ratio is identical, but I suppose it had to be to maintain compatibility with standard anamorphic lenses on projectors.

I have both on my site under the 8mm heading.

What struck me when watching the deleted scenes for the OT, the sandstorm for Jedi especially, was that the dirt and specks seemed to show up in the same places repeatedly. It almost looked artificial, like a cheap "silent movie effect" loop was run over it.

I know I'm being overly paranoid here, but what if Lucasfilm intentionally added the dirt just to avoid people like us the access to high quality footage of these scenes?

I never bothered to analyse the dirt specks to confirm or deny my hunch, I just revel in the conspiracy theory!

The fact that the clips show no resolution above 720x480 adds fuel to my fire :-)

Move along, nothing to see here.

I just got the laserdisc and am sorry to report there is NO behind the scenes footage from Star Wars. Nor is there any interview footage with anyone remotely involved with the production.

There are clips from Empire and Jedi used as examples of sound editing (the Ice hanger as the Snowspeeders take off for battle) and compositing (the speeder-bike chase).

The only FX-related snippet is a brief mention, by the narrator, that the background plates for the speeder-bike chase were shot on a steadycam by Garret Brown, but we knew that already.

I was going to do a DVD transfer of this, but found that my DVD recorder no longer locks on to an NTSC signal. It used to do it just fine.... *sigh*

I've uploaded an entry for this Laserdisc on my Star Wars on Video site (link in my sig) for anyone who wants to see the cover up close.

Yayy!!

Pittrek to the rescue.

I can make covers and labels for these, but I won't be able to get to them for a few weeks.

Just send me the episode list for each disc and whatever else you think needs to be on there.

Fritz