theMaestro said:
Williarob, have you experimented with Mike Verta’s technique of layering different prints in order to remove grain & get closer to the o-neg’s grain structure? I guess it’s not the goal to implement such a thing for this project, but if you manage to figure that out then future projects could perhaps look even better than Legacy. Because it does seem like you now have the absolute best prints to work with and so the only step remaining to surpass Legacy would be Verta’s grain removal technique.
I have tried averaging the layers on a single frame (using this technique: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-averaging-noise.htm), and the results were pretty good. However, I don’t have as many prints as Mike does (nor as much time and patience). As I understand it, Mike has some proprietary software that carefully examines the pixels in each layer and makes choices based on how many match/don’t match? Something like that. I don’t think he’s just averaging the layers and since I don’t know exactly what he is doing, it’s hard to try it out.
I can tell you that for the layering to work, every layer of every frame has to be perfectly aligned, and color matched and that any dirt or damage on any of the layers will come through at least faintly if averaged, so all layers would have to be cleaned of dirt first. There may be a way to Median or Subtract or Add or some kind of blend mode that gets around this problem, I just don’t know.
On top of this, our scan of the LPP is not nearly so sharp as the Tech and Eastman scans, so if I throw that in there it may soften details and result in losing some detail rather than gaining it though for most shots I suppose the Blu-ray could be thrown in there too to offset that, if you were so inclined.
So the answer to your question is, I’d love to try it out and I’m open to suggestions. But just aligning and color matching two prints at a time is a lot of work and gigabytes of data!
And that right there ^ is why Mike Verta looks down on projects like this one. He’s a perfectionist. He took the time to get better scans and to make sure he had all the disk space he needed, and he did spend the time aligning each frame of every layer. His attention to detail, and the amount of time and effort he was willing to pour into his project is just way above anything that we are willing to do, and that is what will always make Legacy Edition superior to any other project, and I’m fine with that. That’s why I didn’t get upset by what he said about the Silver Screen Edition. He was just stating the facts as he saw them. Compared to Legacy Edition, I expect the SSE does look pretty crappy, and no doubt this project does too. I do think he rather missed the point of our project though, which wasn’t to compete with Legacy or to make the best version of Star Wars ever. The point was to try and reproduce the theatrical experience of watching the LPP print projected and I think we achieved that quite well. The point of this project of course is to make the best version of Star Wars ever, (so far, not including Legacy Edition), and I still think we are on par to hit that goal.
I don’t have the time or the experience or the knowledge or the resources that Mike has. That’s why I’m still really hoping he succeeds with Disney. I’d rather watch Legacy Edition than this project, and I’m sure most of you would too.
But I do enjoy working on the film. It gives me something to do during my down time, and figuring out ways to improve the quality, to speed up the process, to automate the repetitive processes with scripting, it’s that sort of thing that makes it fun to me. Part of the reason I am sharing the experience with all of you is because I need your encouragement to keep going. Now that I have figured out most of the “how”, it is just a matter of doing. Knowing that all of you are eagerly waiting for more gives me a reason to do some more.
So, thanks for sticking with me.
