You_Too

Nice! When I was a kid I used to love Lego, and I think I even built some Star Wars inspired things like an X-wing sometime.

If I had seen that Lego Falcon back then I probably would've wanted it more than anything! Actually I'd love to have one on the wall like that guy, if they weren't so expensive.

So what would all those needed parts cost? £600-700 like you said? That's still a lot!

@snicker: That's what I meant. Except the opposite. They should be blended like in 2.1. What you see in 2.0 is the result of Lucasfilm's bad balancing of the contrast in their special editions.

We are closing in on finishing it. The video for both versions are done, but DJ is waiting for the LD audio and then he will synch it, and the menu guy will finish the menu.

snicker said:

Maybe it looks different when output to a HDTV but on my monitor the flattening of the blown highlights has also removed the specular highlights from Artoo's dome and Threepio's shoulder in that shot.

I can tell you from experience of comparing many sources and working a lot on different versions of this movie that the 2.0 there actually has too dark highlights. Star Wars was very bright in those scenes originally. The pushing down of highlights was something Lucasfilm did to the video releases, especially in the 2004/2011 SE.

2.1 represents more what it should look like.

Here are some additions to this thread which I'm not sure if they have been mentioned anywhere before:

(From the GOUT)

61089 - some line in the middle of the frame:

87521-87522 - orange lines:

124395 - strange line on the bottom left:

No matter how stupid this might sound, I think that even though this could be considered a technical step forward, I think film is film and video is video and one of the things that makes a film feel like a film is how the motion differs from reality.

I would love to see The Hobbit in 48fps after seeing the 24fps version just because I'm interested in how it would feel to watch it that way, but I'm pretty sure I will prefer the 24fps version. I can somehow imagine 48fps would look a lot like the motion interpolation effect all new TVs have. Every time I go to an electronics shop they have TVs displaying films like Avatar, motion interpolated to double or triple framerate and it looks horrible.

Thanks a lot guys!

Small update: Even if we will focus on fixing color errors, we've decided to include at least some fixes for some of the worst frames in SW. Like the end of the Tantive scene where Vader walks past the camera and the bottom of the screen flashes yellow before it cuts to the star destroyer in space.

So far all tweaks you've posted have been really good.

Small update: There's been a new 3CD set released of the soundtrack from the film, so DJ is going to synch it to make another isolated score track. He's not sure if the blu-ray menu will be updated so it can be included when he uploads it, but if not, he will upload this new track separately so everyone can mux it in themselves if they want.

Tyrphanax said:

Your dedication is admirable.

I completely identify with your reasoning, as well. I feel like I would do the same thing myself, were I involved in a project like this.

Thanks. I'm glad you appreciate it!

Small update: I've finished fixing the practice orb (or whatever it's called) now. Here's a comparison between the raw GOUT upscaled to 720p and the fixed version:

It's the color of 3PO. In the 2.0 he looks silver-ish. Nice job finding and fixing this one Harmy!

TServo2049 said:

(Remember, the original was the only big restoration project of the three.)

I didn't know that. So they didn't touch the negatives of ESB and ROTJ? I guess at least those two negatives still exist in their original form then!

By the way, it's quite interesting when looking at this shot from the JSC:

Apparently the interpositive used for the JSC was made in 1985, (and was one of the last interpositives made for home releases) so by then the negative had already faded a bit over 8 years. Then, assuming it was the same interpositive used for the DC, they let that IP fade for 8 years too before scanning it. That would explain why the lightsaber looks green already in the JSC, and a very desaturated greenish-white in the GOUT.

AntcuFaalb said:

IIRC, this shot is absurdly dirty in GOUT.

It's so bad that I chose to use it for teaching myself PFClean.

The second wide shot of Luke with the saber is. It just has to be from a different print.

In a way it might sound complicated, but it gives me complete control over how each frame looks.

You know 3PO's oil bath scene, in that one I handpainted the lights behind him, the blinking light behind Luke when he's playing with his spaceship toy, and R2's light since they all had the wrong color. Compared to that scene, this one's a walk in the park.

Alexrd said:

I don't think this was about demand (because the one that exists is a clear minority), specially when Episode III has added grain. I believe it was for the 3D conversion, where the grain gets in the way.

Speaking of that, might have been asked before but did the 3D version have the same DVNR in the cinema?

Harmy said:

Sorry about that, I know that recoloring the target separately will be a pain in the ass :-)

Actually it will be much easier than doing the saber. I do it frame by frame in photoshop and painting that orb with the correct hue won't be that hard. I'm glad you pointed this out.

Dunedain said:

I doubt anything else is as bad as the new predator blu-ray, that's horrible. :)

Yeah, I think that's one of the worst blu-ray releases ever.

But what's even worse is that the mainstream doesn't understand how bad DVNR is. On discshop, a swedish online shop where I buy my blu-rays, some customers posted their reviews of the Predator ultimate hunter edition:

"Got a little discouraged when there were so many negative reviews about DNR but in my opinion it's a fantastic solution that I'd love to see on more films/releases. Superb picture and sound didn't make this masterpiece worse."

"I read all these reviews about this film but still decided to buy it. I was 9 when the film was released and I must say that this was like watching a brand new film! Really f***ing good picture, impressive!"

"Really good-looking... This is how an old re-released film should look!"

Reading this, it's not hard to understand how film companies like Lucasfilm can easily get away with releasing a heavily DVNR'd blu-ray. Though it's not as bad as Predator of course.

Harmy said:

That looks great, You_Too :-) One thing I noticed switching between the two is that the target is a very similar color as the sabre in the pre-adjustment picture - wouldn't it have been affected by the fading the same way as the sabre?

Thanks! And yeah, maybe you're right. The little orb is kind of green-ish throughout this whole shot. About the same hue as the saber like you say.

The weird thing is that this isn't true for the second shot, where Luke is hit by the laser from the orb. In that shot the orb has the same color as the Falcon's walls.

Anyway, I guess I'll do a third pass and fix the orb too.

Ok, another little update on what I did today. Like you know if you've read the last couple pages of this thread, me and DJ decided to focus on only correcting color errors in the GOUT, instead of a full cleanup.

As some of you might know, there's been discussions before about Luke's lightsaber in the wide shot inside the Falcon right after Alderaan's explosion.

There's been a discussion over at Mike Verta's forum as well, where he stated that the lightsaber was in fact blue in the original. It was also proved by a screening photo he posted in some other thread around here sometime.

There are two of these wide shots, and while the lightsaber color is faded in both, in the second shot the whole tint of the picture is wrong. The second shot is purple/pink in its tint and blue colors are shifted to magenta.

We decided to fix both of those shots and I've finished the first one today.

With the GOUT being sourced from an interpositive that was quite faded when they scanned it, the lightsaber color in that shot was very faded, appearing as white in the raw GOUT, and as "dollar-green" when increasing the saturation.

I've fixed the lightsaber in the first shot, by handpainting it in two passes. The first pass being the color of the blade and the second pass being the hue of the glow around it. I chose the color by sampling Luke's lightsaber in the "It controls your actions?" shot. Most sources point against the saber in this wide shot being as saturated as in that other shot.

Here's a comparison of what it would've looked like in our release had I not done this, and how it looks now:

Nice work Harmy! But I think that grain added pic would look even better if you hadn't sharpened it.

SS4DarthPayne said:

How is the sorting out missing frames process coming along?

I've made a script where I have the 2004 SE image on top and the 97 SE on bottom. (Only for ANH so far) I'm going to try and see exactly which frames are missing and either replace them with frames from other versions or recreate them somehow.

But I'm going to finish some color correction on the original SW first.

I'll ask DJ what software he used.

They wouldn't be unaltered if they keep some of the CGI, right? :)

And I don't think they need to "take out all the bad stuff". In 1995 they restored the originals for what was to become the special editions, hand-wiping the negatives and everything. I bet they must have kept the pre-CGI versions of that restoration somewhere.

BmB said:

That in itself is one of the better strokes of genius in the PT.

Turning it into science?

Remember these lines from SW:

- Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortr...
- I find your lack of faith disturbing.

How come that they called Vader a sorcerer and the Force an ancient religion, if it was already proved by science many years before? That's not a stroke of genius, that's a major continuity error which the PT added.