Williarob

The Star Wars Trilogy Forum site is back up!

I need to move my sites to a new hosting service.

Basically, after 10+ years of hosting the site on an Unlimited Storage/Unlimited Bandwidth plan, GoDaddy has determined that I have too many files (all the wallpapers, cover art, videos, PDFs, etc.). All of it has to go before they will lift the suspension. They said it is because the platform I’ve been using all these years is being retired and the new platform won’t support this many files, unless I want to pay lots of money for dedicated hosting.

Some of the sites will hopefully be back up later today, including the forum, but the Star Wars and James Bond blog sites will be down for a while - perhaps for a long time. It’ll take me some time to reconfigure them for a cheaper Linux based host.

SilverWook said:

It’s a trick of the light and shadow. If you look closely, it’s a full length VHS tape. EP/SLP had such lousy tracking problems playing back on machines other than what it was originally recorded on, I can’t see a company putting out tapes for airlines using it to just save a few pennies on tapes.

Oh yeah, the right side looked almost empty, but you’re right, I can see the tape there now.

From the photo, it appears to be letterboxed (probably cropped a little too) rather than properly Pan and Scanned. That tape also looks very short, suggesting an SLP/EP recording. Presumably one could create a digital version from the DVD that reproduces this same cropping and then play it, recording the results onto a VHS Tape in EP mode, and then capture that tape back onto your PC…

But… Why? It’s unlikely that the video was edited for content or language so there’s probably nothing unique about it. So whether you are able to make a genuine Delta tape capture or even just a home made VHS replica, it will still just be the worst quality version of this film you’ve ever seen. A novelty sure, but nothing more.

It’s like taking 4K77 and recording that onto VHS and then recapturing it. Sure, you could do it, but why would you? Alright, I’ll admit I have thought about doing that, it would be fun just to skim through it and look at it to see how it compares to the old tapes, but I’d never sit down and watch it all the way through. Well, probably not anyway 😃

It could be that I only had a 32 bit version of Matlab for OSX. I’ll check and see if I still have the source code (or Matlab for OSX)

Yeah, I thought I remembered compiling it for OSX. Was that a 64-bit version? I think Catalina is 64-bit apps only.

Spaced Ranger said:

Now I must find the plain old trailer in it’s present neglected condition (the more scratches & fade, the better) for an A-B comparison.

I realize I’m a little late with this response, and you’ve probably seen this by now, but for others (like myself) who are just reading this thread for the first time now…

I had a 16mm version of this trailer scanned a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0k_r5AXn3E

Same scan with a quick color correction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOs7rNtY1o&t=3s

As of this morning, this project is now fully funded, and not a moment too soon - scanning was completed last night and the print is supposed to be shipped off to its new owner later today.

Thank you to everyone who donated.

Moiisty said:

whats the difference between this and other home releases?

Nothing that I’m aware of, apart from this being a Glorious Technicolor original in 4K.

Preview of Reel 2 just arrived:

I need to raise $575 to get this baby scanned ASAP because the print was just sold and will need to be shipped out soon.

Donations so far: $575 / $575

I requested a quick preview scan of the first reel just to see what condition it is in, and it looks very nice!

If you’d like to see more, please consider donating - every $ helps!

Resolve Studio is not free, but there is also a free version of Resolve that will do everything you need from it.

Just redid the whole project as v2.0 using the 30th anniversary Bluray as the main source.

I have “Despecialized” the Bluray, finally bringing the US Theatrical cut into High Definition. Here’s how I did it:

Reconstructing Highlander
https://vimeo.com/354753162

If you’ve never seen the US Cut, this is not the better version of the film. The cuts only make it shorter and more confusing, and the added scenes don’t add anything at all. But, hey, if this is the version you watched on VHS in the 80s until you wore out the tape, perhaps it’s worth watching for the nostalgia alone.

Also, having compared the two, I will say that I prefer the original Special Effects sequence at the end - it’s not as slick looking as the new one, but it does seem to do a much better job of hiding the wires…

I believe the French version is a little different: It includes the flashback to WWII, where Connor meets Rachel, (which isn’t in the US cut) and doesn’t have the shot where detective Bedsoe spills his coffee while staking out Brenda’s apartment.

I don’t have the French version, but that’s what I read on the Highlander Wiki page:

https://highlander.fandom.com/wiki/Highlander

(scroll down to “alternate versions”)

I did rip the '93 laserdisc which has the US Theatrical Cut.

narth said:

jawa scrapper said:

do not go to forums.thestarwarstrilogy.com and expect to find links to the movies…i just registered and it was a complete waste of time.
jumped through all the hoops and there wasn’t anything worthwhile…so I spent a few minutes to tell others on this forum not to bother, hopefully save your time.

forums.thestarwarstrilogy.com = waste of time.

If you had taken the time to look around, and actually read the posts on forums.thestarwarstrilogy.com, you’d find what you are looking for. It’s not in a direct link because that’s just a stupid thing to do in terms of copyright. It’s almost stupid how easy it is to find what you are looking for.

I suspect jawa scrapper confirmed his email by clicking on the link, but the account had not yet been approved (or was rejected, which can happen if you sign up with a disposable email address like 10minutemail or your email/IP has been blacklisted by other forums for SPAM or trolling) in which case the hidden areas would remain hidden, and it would look like there isn’t much there.

There aren’t any links here either, does that make this site a waste of time too?

Thanks dmetal1 - that was very helpful 😃

This is awesome! My player just broke two weeks ago, so I’ll be happy to take it off your hands. I’ll send you a PM and make arrangements for shipping.

Here you go - this is from v1.0, with no Digital noise reduction, sharpening or color correction:

And here it is on the DNR version, color balanced, sharpened and with less noise:

No guarantees that either of these are the “correct” or “actual” colors as they appeared in 1977 when projected, but hopefully it’s a better image than what you currently have to work with.

How did I miss this? Is the link still available?

The 4K version of Jedi DNR 1.2 is still encoding (it’s already been encoding for a week!), looks like it is projected to be done sometime this weekend.

Not to belabor the point further, but if I may…

This site is called “Original Trilogy” and while as a community we disagree on many minor points about a lot of things, I thought the one thing we did all agree on, at least in this section of the site, was that we were all striving to obtain the Original versions of these three films. Well, the original theatrical version of Return of the Jedi has these two “extra” frames in it. Therefore, in my opinion, since we now have every single frame from Return of the Jedi in 4K, from this point on if you are deliberately cutting frames out of the middle of the film for any reason, then you are clearly creating a fan edit, and not a preservation of the original theatrical film.

That said, I have huge respect for CatBus and all he does for this community, project Threepio is fantastic, and I really hope I haven’t pushed this lively discussion too far.

I’m happy to agree to disagree on the audio syncing front, as he noted above it is something we can revisit in the future. And more to the point, I’m happy CatBus (and many others) are content with Despecialized. Harmy did an amazing job on all three films, and I think they’re awesome. In fact I’m actually more excited to see what Harmy can do with 4K77 than I was with the original project.

And ultimately, that’s the best thing about this community. With every official version of a Star Wars film, the fans are split a little further apart. Some loved the prequels, some hated them, some love the sequels, some hate them, some people love film grain, others hate it… There are just so many versions of each OT film now, and members of this site are responsible for a great many of them - maybe even more than Lucas! But unlike Lucas, we shouldn’t try to force everyone to watch just one particular version.

We can all watch whichever version of the films we enjoy the most.

CatBus said:
Harmy’s plans have never been for anything above 1080p, so using existing Blu-ray footage seems plausible.

I didn’t talk to Harmy about Jedi, I was just extrapolating based on his recent video about Star Wars Despecialized 3.0:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-QP-tQR0XY

In which he explains how and why 4K77 footage will be cut into and conformed to NeverarGreat’s color correction of Despecialized to create the new version.

It just made sense to me that if he uses 4K77 for Star Wars, he would use 4K83 for Jedi because as of right now there is still no higher quality source for the original shots.

Many of the Despecialized tracks have already been conformed for 4K83, so in my humble opinion, clinging to a crappy DVD from 2006 as the defacto standard when all the other versions of that film already have those “extra” frames seems like a waste. Why not conform the remaining audio tracks and then throw that GOUT disc away after the new version is released? But I guess that’s just me.

I do know that 1080p is as high as he wants to go, and I don’t mind that at all - I don’t think the 35mm sources resolve much more detail than 1080p anyway. But I also think that if an official 4K Bluray of Return of the Jedi comes out next year, Special Edition or not, that would be my first choice for the basis of a new Despecialized - unless they really cock it up. Downscaled to 1080p, it should still look better than the current bluray and will hopefully be easier to color correct.

If we’re really lucky, it won’t even need despecializing. But if that happens and the official release is 4K83 sync’d rather than GOUT sync’d, will you be cutting those frames out of that version too?

CatBus said:

ChainsawAsh said:

Better, I think, to start transitioning everything over to the new frame-complete standard now.

That makes sense if other video preservation projects join in. But that’s been asked and answered. Other video preservation projects are not joining in. So here we are, so providing compatibility releases of 4K83 seems to be a stopgap… and possibly an indefinite one.

The only other project I recall you mentioning is Despecialized. Are there any other potentially ongoing Return of the Jedi projects that aren’t based on 4K83?

I mean, I can understand why nobody feels the need to go back and try to add two frames to projects that were released years ago, but has anybody actually gone and checked the sources for all of these alternate audio tracks? Aren’t some of them from VHS tapes and laserdiscs? The original film always contained these “extra” frames and no doubt many of the PAL and NTSC sources used to create those alternate tracks actually still had them. We already know that they don’t all sync perfectly to the GOUT.

I also think it is fair to assume that any future Return of the Jedi projects would either be based on 4K83 or on a new official 4K Bluray Release from Lucasfilm, or most likely some combination of both. If Harmy ever feels the need to revisit ROTJ Despecialized, these two sources will likely be his starting point, not the current Bluray, nor any previous version of Despecialized (unless it’s used purely as a color reference). Which means, going forward, the complete film as presented in 4K83 will become the new standard for Return of the Jedi.

And Frankly, when 4K83 already looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRqmZAat4uw

Why is anyone still watching GOUT or patched Bluray versions of this film anyway?