Williarob

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?

SF01 said:

Williarob said:

The biggest problem I found with DV capture is that is uses 4:1:1 chroma subsampling which really reduces the picture quality.

In 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, the horizontal color resolution is quartered to reduce the bandwidth by half. In 4:2:2 chroma subsampling the two chroma components are sampled at half the sample rate of luma: the horizontal chroma resolution is halved. This reduces the bandwidth of an uncompressed video signal by one-third with little to no visual difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

You are completely right about 4:1:1, but you might have missed one important detail. The ISD is PAL and I’m capturing in PAL and in PAL the chroma subsampling is 4:2:0, not 4:1:1, which looks light years better.

Oh, I didn’t know that it was 4:2:0 in PAL. That should look much better 😃 Carry on!

The biggest problem I found with DV capture is that is uses 4:1:1 chroma subsampling which really reduces the picture quality.

I tested it for laserdisc capture, and found it wanting:

Airplane LD captured as DV (4:1:1):

Same disc recaptured as Lagarith 4:2:2:

In 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, the horizontal color resolution is quartered to reduce the bandwidth by half. In 4:2:2 chroma subsampling the two chroma components are sampled at half the sample rate of luma: the horizontal chroma resolution is halved. This reduces the bandwidth of an uncompressed video signal by one-third with little to no visual difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

No, I think the 4K83 file was just encoded without the black bars. Since it’s an MKV that shouldn’t matter, the player or device will add the black bars for you.

JayArgonaut said:

captainsolo said:

Like all the non-scope Bonds for the SE DVD, GF was cropped to 1.78:1. While this is still around the safe limits for framing flat matted widescreen the SE DVDs did crop a bit too much on all five done this way and the 1.66 is the best ratio for the initial three in terms of composition.

Thankfully the 1.66:1 OAR was restored for the GF UE.

Here’s a fun fact: 1.66:1 is not the original theatrical aspect ratio for the first three Bond films, the correct AR is 1.85:1. Since the mid-fifties, the most common AR in the UK was 1.75, but Kinematograph Weekly specifically lists 1.85 as the intended ratio for the first three Bond films. This documentation is from a British trade journal at the time of principal photography so it’s as good as gospel:

A big thank you to Bob Furmanek of the 3D film Archive (http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/) for pointing this out to me this weekend.

Now, like most of you, I like minimal cropping, so I’m glad there are 1.66:1 versions available, but it’s also nice to know how people saw it in theaters in 1962. Looking at an original IB Tech film frame from a 1962 print, we can see that there is slightly more picture information available, my math puts it at around 1.58:1 if you include all of it. I believe it was hard matted in camera to 1.66:1 so there is probably a little more picture information on the sides on the original negatives than made it onto this print.

Waifu2x is another option, and it’sdesigned specifially for upscaling anime… Plus it’s free!

http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

Servanov said:

NeverarGreat said:

I feel like there has to be an easier way to clean a static starfield.

Since the automated dust cleanup presumably erases stars, have you considered stabilizing the shot, running the cleanup, and layering it over the original on ‘darken’? Then if you had just a single frame manually cleaned, it could be overlaid on top of that with the blending on ‘lighten’, which would return the accidentally erased stars.

True. This is actually a trick we’ve been taught at my film restoration business. We make two copies of the frame, and on one we apply an automatic dust and scratch removal, which removes some detail, but then put the dirty layer on darken and the quality is kept while only removing the dust.

So, limited success on this one… The main problem is that both the dust and the stars are “light”, so using the automatic cleanup and blending it with the original won’t work here. Most of the dark dirt is lost in the blackness of space.

To illustrate the problem, here is a raw frame (this is from the pandown, to make it more obvious which stars are missing, but the same is true during the crawl where perhaps only a single star is accidentally erased):

And here is the same frame after automated cleanup:

Now If I put the original frame on top of the cleaned frame and set the blend mode to Lighten, all of the stars return, but so does the red line - in fact it looks identical to the original uncleaned frame. If I set it to Darken, it looks identical to the cleaned frame - the line is gone but so are all those stars. (This is a technique I’ve used before, and it works very well on a lot of shots, but unfortunately not this one.)

However, Using a static stars frame (one taken from right before the pan down), and placing it above the auto cleaned layer with the blend mode set to “Lighten” does work pretty well for most of the shot - though of course it can’t be used until the Star Wars logo has gone, or it adds stars to the black area inside the words:

And it’s only good until the pan down, but that’s still a lot of frames.

Every frame will still need to be checked, but this should save me some time painting out the dirt and dust, so thank you for your suggestions.

I’ll give it a try!

The $325 has been raised, the 16mm print has been scanned, and is ready for use as a color reference and for repairing/replacing damaged frames. The Fuji print has also been scanned, so now it is just a matter of time, rather than money - unless somebody has 6 figures they can throw our way, so that we can quit our day jobs and work on this full time.

Cleanup is very time consuming, as this real time video demonstrates:

https://vimeo.com/338040925/ca9015d4f8

In 13 minutes, about 30 frames (or just over 1 second of film) is cleaned. The frame is advanced, forward and back repeatedly, because it’s very difficult to see which white specks are dust and which are stars without checking to see which ones persist across multiple frames and which are only there for a single frame.

It’s quite boring to watch and it’s quite boring to do, but it’s also why there are so few updates about the project. This opening crawl sequence is 2000 frames and will likely take at least two weeks to clean. We all have full time jobs and family responsibilities, so an hour or two per day is the most we can usually devote to projects like this one. Two films in, this is all routine to TN1 at this point, so unless a new technique or new software is being tried, or something weird and unusual is spotted in the footage, time isn’t usually wasted creating videos or posts to update people about what’s happening. If this post takes 5 minutes to compose, that’s 10-15 frames that didn’t get cleaned.

Progress is slow, painfully slow, but it is happening. Every day more frames are being cleaned, color corrected, stabilized, deflickered, and repaired or replaced. (Though not necessarily in that order!)

Different reels are being worked on simultaneously by different people around the world, which makes tracking progress difficult. But don’t worry, when we have some news, we’ll let you know.

Thank you to everyone who has donated, and to those who are still willing to donate. At this point, if you’d like to make a donation to help projects like this one, I would recommend you donate to one of Poita’s projects - last I heard he needed the money for Hard Drives, without which work cannot continue, so donating to him will actually help get some of his projects get off the ground, e.g.:

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Original-Trilogy-restored-from-35mm-prints/id/49756

paypal.me/poit

Though of course donations to us are also always welcome 😃 We always need more software, Hard Drives, and other computer hardware.

The LPP used for the SSE had more picture information on all sides than the Tech prints:

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/KL6WNNNX

Sky_ said:

Omni said:

What other version would they have? I’m pretty sure the deleted scenes as found on the Bluray are the best quality we’re going to get for a while.

Williarob said:

TN1 does not have a better version of the scenes. Surprisingly, the deleted scenes were not on any of the theatrical prints that were scanned.

I saw The Team Negative 1 of the deleted scenes, even though they was damaged like the ones on Bluray, they were much more Sharper a lot more detail, it was somewhere on these forums, cant remember the link, so I wrote to them and not had a Response, most likely they never saw my messages, that why i need help in getting contact with them… 😦

These ones?

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Deleted-Scenes-Reincorporated/id/13512/page/9

That’s from the bluray. Unless you have access to the Lucasfilm archives, there’s currently no better source for these deleted scenes than the official bluray. If they look cleaner and sharper, it’s because we cleaned and sharpened them, but as far as I know, we never completed the project - as you know it’s a ton of work.

TN1 does not have a better version of the scenes. Surprisingly, the deleted scenes were not on any of the theatrical prints that were scanned.

As far as we can tell, there is no uncut version of Dr No, at least not outside of EON’s vaults.

Thank you!

Me too.