To be honest, I hadn't thought about those small jaggies until I saw this comparison. It sure looks smooth now. Good job!
@Dunedain: Such a color correction would indeed be awesome, but when looking at the GOUT it seems that it's technically limited in the way the colors are, compared to original prints.
In the GOUT it's often like hair, skin and lips all share the same red/pink hue, which makes it impossible with normal color correction to fix only the skin tone. In the 70mm scans for example, you can see each color is much more nicely separated from each other.
So you won't see any color correction miracles in this project, but we dug up the colors not visible due to desaturation, and balanced out the biggest problems like too strong reds, and green-tinted yellows.
The manual photoshop work I've talked about only involves removing glue marks, flashes, dirt, burn marks, light bleeding between frames and stuff like that where it's very visible. And fixing the most major color errors like those two pics I posted where Vader's belt lights are pink in the raw GOUT.
@TheObi: We won't change any of the crawls, credits or anything. It will all be left as it is on the DVDs.
What would be really interesting is to see a comparison video of before/after filmguard.
Coming up soon? :)
Your hard work is appreciated. :)
The only thing that looked different when switching from default render settings to optimal in MPC-HC was that the chroma got shifted like half a pixel to the right.
A weird thing though, that might indicate the file itself does have the correct colors, is that when making a script like this:
DirectShowSource("Despecialized Edition v2.0 Final Workprint.mkv")
Opening it in MPC-HC and Avspmod both gives a correct color result.
When opening the file itself in MPC-HC it shows the orange-ish reds. Maybe the codec converts the color, and when using DirectShowSource in a script it bypasses that?
Your setup looks great! And that VHS player looks pretty hi-tech.
It will be very interesting to see the end result of this.
@Mielr: Oh, ok. We've already fixed that color bleeding. It proved to be some kind of combination of an older version of avisynth, and the codec we used for rendering.
The chroma shift in ESB is the same thing, except it's already there on the DVD. msycamore made a thread about it a while ago.
Mielr said:
Why did this chroma shift only occur in ESB?
I don't know why it's only in some scenes in ESB. I just know Lucasfilm are masters at screwing their movies up. And the GOUT trilogy is full of errors.
@guyofownage: Welcome! The usual advice is to get Harmy's version or DJ's. If you want to wait for this thread's project, it's going to take a while since there's lots of manual photoshopping involved.
Harmy said:
@You Too: That's weird, I'll give it a look - it definitely has the same settings throughout; the change must already be on the BD.
Checked the BD and the color doesn't change there.
Harmy said:
Have you read my previous post?
Actually, you posted that while I was typing mine. :)
Anyway, for a lossless codec you could try Huffyuv, it's the one me and DJ are using.
And even if any render would change colors when encoding it to blu-ray later, you could always offset it with a script.
I think it's worth solving, since even though the orangey reds make some scenes look slightly more natural, it's just too visible in the strongest reds that they're off. (At least to me, on a calibrated monitor)
There's also a small thing I noticed in the WP when checking that scene with Leia and R2. When this shot starts, the picture has a cooler tint and suddenly it turns warmer:
You sure aren't alone Harmy, it is this difficult for everyone it seems.
Me and DJ got the exact same problem and had to offset this using a script when rendering our projects.
If you can't find a way to fix it, I'll help you when the time comes to make a script for your final encode.
Like:
1. Render an uncompressed avi.
2. Use a script to encode it for blu-ray/mkv which fixes the colorspace.
Or maybe there's some way to offset it in AE?
I don't know if this is intentional or not, but after watching some of the WP I think it looks like there's been an incorrect colorspace conversion somewhere along the way, or something similar.
It's mostly visible in reds, which a lot of the time looks orange.
To convert the colorspace back to get the reds more correct while watching, I made a script like this:
DirectShowSource("Despecialized Edition v2.0 Final Workprint.mkv")
ConvertToRGB()
crop( 0, 89, 0, -89)
ConvertToYV12()
Cropped it to avoid that brightness change in the black bars. ;)
Anyway, here's some comparisons before this script and after:
It's easiest to see if you save the images and switch between them.
And here are the strongest reds from Leia's scene beside each other:
Hope this will help if it was unintentional.
If you'd wanna change only the reds, you'd have to use selective color in AE, choose reds and lower the yellow slider a bit, and maybe up the magenta slider slightly.
AntcuFaalb said:
I think I might just end up programming a histogram matching algorithm in C for AviSynth.
I'd definitely be interested in that if you succeed. Could be very useful for lots of stuff.
Yeah I also use jdownloader but sometimes it's slow anyway. But I'll try the force start and see if it works better.
Laserschwert said:
You_Too said:
I'll just waitYou_Too said:
can't wait
Make up your mind, man! ;)
Hahaha, actually I made up my mind once Harmy said there's been changes. ;)
It's just that uloz is such a slow site sometimes.
Ok, can't wait to see this!
Are there any changes in this full WP compared to the parts you've uploaded before?
Otherwise I'll just wait for the final release. :)
I did tell DJ that he's been unbanned. He's just been busy with work and stuff.
We're still working with the frame cleanup, though it sure takes some time. And considering I've been a bit ill lately, things have been going a bit slower.
So while I don't have much news for you guys, I can tell you that at least some of the color errors in SW have been dealt with:
For the first shot I got the correct hue from another scene on Tantive. Since the Tantive scenes are a bit low on reds, making Vader's belt really pure green wouldn't be consistent with the later scenes' look.
For the Death star scene, I got the correct hue from one moment where Vader turns left and the left side of the belt has it's green preserved.
Weird stuff really, these errors.
I almost got a bit worried when the photos were switched! I'm glad it was the other way around. :)
Anyway, I bet this method will save you a lot of digital cleanup work. The movie is in good hands!
AntcuFaalb said:
The problem with the Technidisc SWE is that the colors are inconsistent due to a post-processing issue (msycamore's working on correcting this ATM).
Yeah and the contrast/brightness have been altered for some dark scenes to make them brighter. Still looks pretty good to me.
AntcuFaalb said:
Is this 1982 Video Rental Library VHS close to the original? I find the 1982 LD to be too bright.
No idea. I haven't seen that one yet.
You mean like matching the colors of the 97 SE with an older version?
Like you say, no home video release seems to match the original nicely, but from the versions I've seen, I think msycamore's SWE technidisc looks pretty good with it's colors.
What you're doing is worth an applause.
While most of us can only rely on avisynth scripts/plugins and such, you're actually getting real hardware to do the job.
Can't wait to see the final result!
slynger said:
mumbles_ said:
I just watched this today. Fantastic job!! Harmy, are you still working on Despecialized 2.0? any plans for other improvements with Empire or Jedi?
I believe it's been stated that Harmy has plans for both ESB and ROTJ. However, this one required the most work. I'm sure the experts will chime in if I'm wrong.
I think Harmy said ESB has to be done from scratch again.
Oldschooljedi said:
Vader is holding the blue lightsaber and Ben is holding the red lightsaber. This happens only for a few frames, almost not noticeable, but when you know it you see it.
Lucasfilm sure knows how to "color-correct" a scene.
EDIT: Oh, it's in the original? I never noticed this. Maybe because it happens so fast.
Maybe the Senator used a "warm" projector bulb?
And of couse, the fact that this is a shot from a camera.