YAREL_RGP

Hi Adywan, I know that among your sources you are using a 2011 Blu-ray downscaled to 720p and upscaled with Topaz AI to 1080p, and the 2020 UHD Blu-ray for scenes and details that look better, but recently a completely new and restored version was leaked using the OCN, without abusive and poorly done DNR as in UHD Blu-ray and with a much higher resolution and details. We know that all of your work on ANH and ROTJ so far has been with the previous sources, but if these versions were to come out in 2027, would you use them to improve your edition? In my opinion the news is quite hard for your situation, since you have had to work hard to eliminate static grain in the UHD Blu-ray, only for a version with the correct grain and much more detail to come out now. (Obviously this is incredible news since it’s a leak from the OUT and not a renewed SE, I say this from your position when working on Revisited)

timdiggerm said:

I also wonder if they won’t do a purist version (original effects) and a nicer-looking version (original but recomposited effects), with the latter being what gets released in theaters.

We were talking about this in TheStarWarsTrilogy forums in the 50th anniversary section, we fans feel that there will never be a so to speak “definitive version”, there will always be criticism about the grain, quality, audio, color, etc., so we think that the original versions should be released in theaters, what was seen in theaters at the time, but in UHD Blu-Ray like Ridley Scott they should release apart from OUT, the SE from 1997, and the recomposed OUT which was an option that like you I proposed. SE can boast that they recomposed effects but there are not that many recomposed, and they were done in 2K, then in 2004 for TESB and ROTJ they recomposed things but in poor 1080p, they should release a completely recomposed version of the special effects in 6K/8K, be it laser shots, vehicles, creatures, backgrounds and if you want even the transitions using the original elements without resorting to the good transitions optically recomposed by Pacific Titles, nor the original composite transitions they are using for this new leaked restoration.

Broom Kid said:

oojason said:
They could be in indicator towards a physical media release (or large-scale internal archival project) - rather than just a DCP for a theatrical run for the 50th anniversary. I do hope we get to see some more of those kind of videos.

I think the dead giveaway this was always going to have some sort of physical release (whether it’s Disney doing it or they license it to a label like Criterion) - even before the official 50th announcement so early - is that they’re working on an Atmos mix next to the theatrical audio restorations.

I’ve heard the suggestions that it could be an internal archival project BUT an Atmos remix nulls all that out. You’d only be doing one of those if you’re planning on a big release, theatrical AND home, otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense to do at all.

I think in theaters we’re going to be able to hear that new atmos track that seems like it’s literally going to remix all the original audio elements, and when it comes out on UHD Blu-ray, there will be options for every theatrical audio track.

JadedSkywalker said:

Are they doing the original VistaVision first gen material. Because that would be like Oh my god. You have no idea how many years I’ve wanted to see those scanned at the highest resolution.

Seeing other films restored from VistaVision its quite amazing actually.

And the idea they found all the so-called lost trims and CRI that was claimed to be junked.

Were we lied to or mislead for years. Or did they really not know where all this material was.

They’ve been saying for years “Oh, they must have fooled us”, it’s obvious, they could always have restored Star Wars in thousands of ways, with the CSM, and if they had problems with contraction or something typical of a movie, digitally it would have been fixed, even any IP coming directly from the OCN would have been enough, maybe we thought that the CRI was so degraded that it was unusable, of course, in the 90s, digitally they could have left it as new

Fang Zei said:

It’s so funny that I actually vaguely remember hearing about this back in 2011.

Even if this was indeed a thing, it’s nowhere near as advanced as how dolby vision or even just regular hdr10 works.

This reminds me more of the “filmmaker mode” they finally started building into new tv sets just within the last several years, which completely turns off any processing like sharpening, noise reduction, etc, and also sets the correct 6500k color temperature (or as close as the tv can get to it out of the box).

Maybe that’s basically what this THX Media Director was, simply forcing the tv into a thx mode over the hdmi connection from the bd player if the disc and player were both capable, but … you should really just have that input set to that mode all the time so that whatever you’re watching on blu-ray is relatively accurate to the industry standards it would’ve been color graded and mastered at.

It’s possible that the difference with THX’s Media Director is that they actually took it a step further and tweaked the settings on a title by title basis … but again, that’s not really how things are supposed to work. Lucas, for example, isn’t supposed to grade and master his films expecting everyone’s televisions to be slightly tweaked one way to his specific set of preferences while Spielberg grades his films to another.

Maybe this really was an experiment in what eventually became hdr, and thx’s media director was able to somehow subtly tweak the settings this way and that as the movie played? Very interesting.

True story, I watched the 2011 disc of ANH on a 2k cinema projector in an actual movie theater back in 2017 and it looked surprisingly good. Like, maybe/probably that was just the insane quality of the projector making up for any shortcomings of the old 2004 hd master, but I could finally see where the bold statement all the way back then of it being a “digital negative” came from.

THX always sought to ensure that the colorimetry of their films adhered to the director’s vision, first the thing started with the alterations in the LaserDisc masters of 93, so I would not be surprised if George financed this technology so that interested film directors decided to hire it so that the Blu-Ray editions had the desired colorimetry, and then so that everyone could see the same thing on their TV the technology would calibrate the TV according to the title, but it was quickly forgotten and ignored, I discovered all this thanks to that user a few months ago, I hope I can contact him so he can show me examples of how this technology worked in the Star Wars saga

Anakin94 said:

YAREL_RGP said:
There is no 2K scan of the special edition trilogy, the restoration was all analog and physical,

And how the 2004 SE was made?
AFAIK it’s based on the 1997 SE 2k scan.

In 2004 the only thing that was digitized from 1997 were the SE scenes plus the redone wipes, everything else is from the original camera negative, perhaps in some trailers from 2003 when the trilogy was announced on DVD you could see scenes with the 1997 colorimetry since the digital restoration of the negatives was still in process and they had to show something now, this is the reason why the DVD menus and cover images have very different colors than the HD Master.
https://blog.sporv.com/the-strange-case-of-star-wars-rai-tre-broadcast/ and http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-2004-DVD-Interactive-Menus-vs-Movie/id/15265

That guy with no name said:

In 1997, as part of the restoration, the newly assembled negative was scanned and digitally restored in 2k. does this mean that there is currently a 2k file of the original film(s) sitting in lucasfilm archive?

There is no 2K scan of the special edition trilogy, the restoration was all analog and physical, Digitizing the entire film in 1996 would have been PROHIBITED due to the high cost and limited storage capacity of hard drives, the only thing that was scanned were the scenes that were going to be “enhanced” with CGI like the entrance to Mos Eisley until its exit, (Which was what George always wanted since 1977), or the stay on Bespin, and for some recompositions using original negative pieces, That George Lucas had saved for all these years and that LucasFilm surely has in a Disney vault, if today each piece were digitized in 4K or 6K and those scenes were recomposed, they would look better than ever, and scenes that even in 1997 were never recomposed would look very modernized, it is worth dreaming that one day they will make a recomposed edition…

That guy with no name said:

JAGNUS said:

Hello My friends. This is is amazing. I’m trying to get it for the Mac and @That guy with no name seems to have donwloaded it. May you guys give me the link to the Mac verison of the build. Thank you everyone.

Again, it’s currently in development. I have a testing version… It should be public soon. Williarob is working on it. apologies.

Is that test version the one you used in the color reconstruction of Adywan 1997 on the TESB Blu-ray?

The Star Wars Purist said:

I did try the THX Optimizer stuff for a viewing of ANH one time ('04 DVD, for reference), and I can definitely say I preferred the colors that gave me versus the stock settings on my TV, even despite the slightly limited settings I had to mess with. Not a massive difference, but I recall that it was a bit more natural-looking.

If you still have that THX equipment and have the 2011 Blu-ray, I ask you to try to see if there is a difference. I repeat, this technology was included in 2011 and STAR WARS was the first to use it.

stretch009 said:

YAREL_RGP said:

The colors look amazing, your description of the horrible colors of the UHD edition could fit perfectly with the 2011 BR of Star Wars, now, I have a question. Do you plan to add any language to your version? Since it would be great to be able to see and hear it in castilian, I’m just asking if it’s possible of course.

Does your UHD disc include castilian audio and subtitles, YAREL_RGP? You should be able to mux them in yourself if it does…

??? First of all if I do that I would have to download the TGWNN project, it usually gives versions with high or low bit rate, I always download the high bit rate version, (which usually weigh a lot) then I get the dubbing and sync it in a video editor, but when exporting it in my editor I would have to adjust the same bit rate so as not to compress it too much, after exporting I would have 2 very large files of the same size, then I would have to delete the original source and keep my synchronized audio version, everything I mentioned is a long process that takes some time, for that it is better that the track comes in the project and that’s it, when you say (You should be able to mux them in yourself if it does) you don’t realize that not everyone has the storage space or time for it, I’m not saying this for myself, I’m saying this for many people to whom this could happen.

The colors look amazing, your description of the horrible colors of the UHD edition could fit perfectly with the 2011 BR of Star Wars, now, I have a question. Do you plan to add any language to your version? Since it would be great to be able to see and hear it in castilian, I’m just asking if it’s possible of course.

Haarspalter said:

The complete Cannes interview:

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

Fast forward to timecode 53:08 … the interviewer asks Lucas a question from a fan, if he will release the original versions in the future. Lucas drops the “it looks terrible” quote a few seconds later.

It bothers me that they put just anyone as an interviewer, if it were someone really informed I would have asked questions like, “If LucasFilm still has the original compositing pieces, why don’t they digitally recompose the original effects?” Since George talks about the restoration process done for the first SE of ANH, and says that the film was discolored and the negative pieces were scratched (Which is a fact), they currently have a restored negative although with scenes altered by CGI, they could easily scan the 1997 SE, (something that Disney already did since they have a 4K scan of that edition) along with the composition pieces and remake the unaltered version recomposing the original scenes, and if there are people who want to keep the garbage matte optical composition then they could also scan interpositives from that time whose biggest problem is color fading but not analog degradation, or even the CRI negatives of those scenes that in the 90s restoration were cut from the negative due to degradation, being replaced by higher quality recomposed negative versions or by CGI versions of course, they have no excuse, and if they complain about the laserdisc it is nonsense since at the time it was the highest quality home video, George makes up those lies to avoid releasing the unaltered version. It’s not because they can’t do it, IT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO.

JadedSkywalker said:

YAREL_RGP said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I think still having to argue with people over why the original should be on Blu-Ray and 4K and Han why Han shooting second is stupid, 20 years after we signed a petition to the get the original released just to get Lynn Hale’s spiel, kind of makes me think it’s a lost cause.

I have 4K77 and I’m reasonably happy with it.

It won’t be lost because the British Film Archive and Library of Congress have the original. Its just not available to the general public. Unless you have out of print DVD, VHS or laserdisc. Yeah none of those is theatrically accurate but whatever.

Does that mean that the original negatives are archived in a place where they are available for scanning at any time today? From what source do you get this information? It is really very interesting

Not negatives no, but LOC do have 35mm prints they have scanned and archived. I’m almost 100% certain BFI has done the same. But I don’t have some inside knowledge.

Lucasfilm has the negatives, and it is true that the O-neg is conformed to the 1997 edit. But they saved all the trims. What is lost is the original color reversal negative, all the wipes and dissolves. Anyone who says they can’t do a restoration is being foolish. It’s not about the money, it’s not about can it be done. It is all about George, he hates the original and does not want it restored.

These are probably positive prints like the 35mm print of ROTJ used for 4K83, taken directly from the negative, Prints that approach the quality or have the quality of camera negative

.

Master Lawdog said:

TDS91939 said:

Watching an Anime of a New Hope would be a guilty pleasure. The Lightsaber fights would be intense

The prequels already reached a very intense type of battles, the anime is not very graphic when they want to turn Star Wars into an anime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib_4A2CG2Ag

Mmm, a Star Wars anime doesn’t fit, attempts to turn Star Wars into anime always fall into the typical clichés, highly stylized eyes to make everyone look Japanese, Darth Vader too fat, or Luke looking like a big eyed kid whose sole purpose is to freak out like everything is cool, it doesn’t fit at all, if they make an anime adaptation of Star Wars, it shouldn’t look like an anime, it should have more JoJo’s style animation or something that really sets it apart from the rest, not a blatant copy of My Hero Academia with Star Wars characters.

Shadow98 said:

The guy with no name may be able to help find the bad shots. He worked on a remaster of the 2020 Blu-ray of Star Wars and fixed many of the known problems, including detail loss, static grain and displaced power windows.

Since his project was never officially released, but he is still active, you might ask him if he knows a list of problematic shots on the UHD Blu-ray or if he could even provide finished, fixed shots.
If you would like to find out more, here is the link to the project: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/STAR-WARS-EPISODE-IV-2020-4K-blu-ray-Remastered-WIP/id/99662/
Maybe that would make the work for v3.0 a little easier. 😃

In fact, on the ESB Despecialized forum I already told Harmy that TGWNN is working on that remastering of the 2020 Blu-Ray adding details that were erased by the strong DNR and that only exist in the 2011 BR, currently he is working on 4K77 remaster, but I could ask him for a list of scenes where the 2011 BR looks better to fix the 2020 one, although the best thing would be to rotoscope those elements that look better in the 2011 BR to add them to the 2020 BR, since they are usually background elements like the rubber walls of the Millennium Falcon, since other elements that are closer in the 2020 BR usually look better.

Harmy said:

YAREL_RGP said:

Harmy said:

And some recomposited shots that were only done in 2004, like the imperial fleet introduction.

Hello Harmy, I don’t know if it’s too late to ask this, but if you end up doing a ROTJ 3.2, and when you have to do ANH AND ESB 3.0, will you do DNR to the 4K Blu-Ray image to carefully eliminate the static grain from these masters like Adywan and That guy with no name are doing in their projects, and then add non-static fine grain back to it to make the image less dirty? Or are you just going to add grain on top of the image without cleaning the static grain first?

If someone did that and released a regrained version, I’d be super happy to use it as a source but I really can’t see myself doing that for three entire movies myself, it’s just too time consuming.

I think Adywan is going to release his ROTJ color correction before Revisited, which has the grain corrected, if you ever make a ROTJ 3.2 you could use this version and then add your colors. If you want to do it when it comes out of course. By the way, TGWNN is working on a 2020 4K Blu-Ray remaster of ANH that also fixes this issue and adds details from the 2011 Blu-Ray that were erased by the 4K DNR. Although this project will take a long time as he is working on another project of 4K77.

Harmy said:

And some recomposited shots that were only done in 2004, like the imperial fleet introduction.

Hello Harmy, I don’t know if it’s too late to ask this, but if you end up doing a ROTJ 3.2, and when you have to do ANH AND ESB 3.0, will you do DNR to the 4K Blu-Ray image to carefully eliminate the static grain from these masters like Adywan and That guy with no name are doing in their projects, and then add non-static fine grain back to it to make the image less dirty? Or are you just going to add grain on top of the image without cleaning the static grain first?

Harmy said:

And some recomposited shots that were only done in 2004, like the imperial fleet introduction.
Hello Harmy, I don’t know if it’s too late to ask this, but if you end up doing a ROTJ 3.2, and when you have to do ANH AND ESB 3.0, will you do DNR to the 4K Blu-Ray image to carefully eliminate the static grain from these masters like Adywan and That guy with no name are doing in their projects, and then add non-static fine grain back to it to make the image less dirty? Or are you just going to add grain on top of the image without cleaning the static grain first?

CatBus said:

One of the true 1977 mixes has been on home video – pre-1985 releases of Star Wars have the 1977 stereo mix. The best quality audio of the 1977 stereo mix was from a pan & scan Japanese Laserdisc, and is included with most preservations.

In terms of dialogue, there’s no difference between the 1977 stereo and 1993 mixes. In terms of sound effects, the obvious one is the shattering glass sounds during the cell block shootout. A lot of fans (myself included) think of these additions as precursors to the Special Editions – the 1985 mix was at least a mashup of the various theatrical mixes, but the 1993 mix brought in stuff that was never in the films before. I’m sure there are other changes too, but I just don’t listen to the 93 mix that much (for that reason).

As far as sound quality goes, the 93 mix is probably technically the best-sounding official Star Wars mix ever made. But I just can’t get past the non-theatrical elements, so I prefer the 77 mixes (hairy_hen’s six-channel reconstruction is my favorite).

I know this thread is 4 years old but I have a question, is the audio track on the 1993 Laserdisc PCM?

How is the project going? looks pretty good

Funcha said:

I actually looked into this a bit more and there apparently is something called THX Media Director metadata added to these releases. But apparently the only way to access it is via players with built in THX Media Director circuits, of which I have no idea if there are any.

Considering how poorly these were color timed from the start though, I’m extremely skeptical that watching any of these discs in Media Director mode will magically restore everything to normal. If that’s the case, why is the standard color timing so bad?

People complained a lot about the color of the 2004 DVD, I guess Lucasfilm took advantage of the THX media director technology for the 2011 Blu-ray and made a color correction,But this is only exclusive to buyers of players compatible with this technology, If you don’t have this technology then you would have to watch the horrible grading of the DVD, The price of these equipments is very high, I suppose it is due to the scarcity and lack of fame of this metadata technology, It’s not just about the player, but also about a compatible TV or projector, the cables, and their respective calibration.

That guy with no name said:

YAREL_RGP said:

That guy with no name said:

This is a full-scale restoration/remaster of 4k77.
Full shot for shot color correction, shot for shot dust/scratches removal and
DNR/regraining. I want this to be as close as a professional remaster of the original film could look like.
no more green tint, no more deep blacks. No More Dust/Scratches

Sources:
.4k77 1.4 (NO DNR)
.4k78
.Star Wars Silver Screen Edition (used strictly and only for color reference)

Release info:
Aspect ratio - 1920x1080. (A 4k version will be released later)
Frame rate - 23.976
Audio tracks -
track 1, Original '77 stereo mix.
track 2, 70mm 5.1 mix.
track 3, mono track.

Preview comp:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aioDr3Oxq7T4Ie4JnkXtQEQDBt-uddgs/view?usp=sharing

btw accidentally switched the clips in the second part to 400x zoom. sorry.

Some time ago Sky Dude did a 4K77 remaster, removing the grain without color correction, but because of the DNR he added, several details were lost. Will your project be more careful?

yes. he went overboard with the DNR. I’m not really gonna use that much, just to take the edge off. the correction really hides most of the grain.

Will the color correction be similar to Adywan’s work, giving the film a more modern look without sticking to the look of a Technicolor film?

That guy with no name said:

This is a full-scale restoration/remaster of 4k77.
Full shot for shot color correction, shot for shot dust/scratches removal and
DNR/regraining. I want this to be as close as a professional remaster of the original film could look like.
no more green tint, no more deep blacks. No More Dust/Scratches

Sources:
.4k77 1.4 (NO DNR)
.4k78
.Star Wars Silver Screen Edition (used strictly and only for color reference)

Release info:
Aspect ratio - 1920x1080. (A 4k version will be released later)
Frame rate - 23.976
Audio tracks -
track 1, Original '77 stereo mix.
track 2, 70mm 5.1 mix.
track 3, mono track.

Preview comp:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aioDr3Oxq7T4Ie4JnkXtQEQDBt-uddgs/view?usp=sharing

btw accidentally switched the clips in the second part to 400x zoom. sorry.

Some time ago Sky Dude did a 4K77 remaster, removing the grain without color correction, but because of the DNR he added, several details were lost. Will your project be more careful?

I have a question, are these the original Vistavisión parts!!?