You_Too

That's some very nice editing of that clip I sent you Harmy! The colors match the other shots perfectly.

dark_jedi said:

lol I was thinking the same thing, I have been following this thread a bit only because my partner You_Too has made some comments but these VHS captures suck really bad, and I have done a few of them myself lol, and on top of that, fullscreen? what is that?

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder what the point of this thread really is? Not to criticize color-analyzing of different versions of the movies, but just like DJ I think fullscreen is way outdated and just the fact that there ARE much better looking widescreen versions out there kills my interest for fullscreen forever.

Yeah of course you can dig up stuff from any source but the best would be to have a raw lossless capture of the LD to start with. I guess this is a DVD you've been working with?

Sounds like a great party!

Too bad none of my real life friends like Star Wars, otherwise I'd have a party like that too.

About that adjustment: In the second pic, the brightest whites in the back are gone. If you're using curves, make sure to not move the top and bottom points of the curve but make a middle point for adjustment, for example. This would prevent that from happening.

Here's an example for you, the same auto adjustment except it's done using curve points in the middle:

From a color correction point of view, of course it could come out with different, even better results than the GOUT.

Personally, I'm not interested in color correcting a fullscreen version though.

Thanks for the info hairy_hen! (And your hard work on mixing the audio)

That's good news for everyone following this project who was wishing for some lossless (at least almost) audio.

Actually guys I might have found what's wrong. Just waiting for DJ to see the pm and reply!

After googling around I found this guy who had plugged his keyboard and mouse into the USB 3.0 inputs on the back of his motherboard and tried to install windows 7. He described it just like DJ, that it "froze" once the first install screen comes up and he couldn't use the keyboard or mouse, since windows 7 doesn't have native USB 3.0 support.

With all my heart, I hope this is what's wrong since it's so easily fixed.

Does anyone know if h_h's new mix is lossless-sourced? Otherwise maybe there's no reason to make a DTS-HD MA track of it?

I think h_h's old SW mix was in AC3 448kbps.

Yep, that sure is one badass rig.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a couple new teaser pics from the upcoming "GOUT-killer" blu-rays to celebrate this. :)

This time it's a couple matte-shots. Raw GOUT upscale on top and new script on bottom.

We still call this script preliminary though, since we need to test it once DJ gets his rig fired up.

@corellian77: Lol at that pic! :)

About thumbnails, I have to show you with an image since if I write the code it will just... become a thumbnail. haha

Result:

You know guys, if you saw Mike Verta's shots from a 70's bulb projection of an original print, you know SW was in fact more "yellow" in the theatres in 1977. Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's something Harmy is aiming to recreate as well.

@DragoonClawNZ: That's some awesome looking covers! Looks great with the inside art.

@Harmy: Watched some more of the workprint and sorry if I bring more of the color-frustration, but here's what I noticed:

Vader's button and lights are still blue there.

On the other hand I wanted to say that I love how the matte shots of the Falcon in the hangar looks now, and the moving grain inside the matte itself makes it look even better!

I think most people here would agree that if you want to do such a project, you have to tone down the grain reduction a lot. What it does when applied this heavily is that it removes the detail within the grain in the picture and comes out as a cartoon/watercolor-looking image.

I'm not bashing your idea, just giving some constructive criticizm.

vbangle said:

If I had to choose one I'd have to side with the top pick. Both seem like extreme examples though.

Actually that's just how the GOUT is, and even the original prints of SW according to some sources: Inconsistent.

The reason it's not seen in the raw GOUT is because it's very desaturated.

Ok, but you're doing a great job anyway. The workprint looks really good! I hope I can look at it a bit more some other day and see if I can help spot more things.

By the way, if comparing those shots in the second pic in the GOUT, they're even more inconsistent. Check this, it's from my script for DJ's project:

Ok, first of all I haven't been able to follow this thread as closely as I used to, so I don't know if any of what I will post have already been discussed or pointed out.

I skipped through the newest workprint a bit, because I thought I'd help out a bit and usually one finds some stuff when just skipping that you wouldn't notice when watching it normally.

So here's the most apparent thing I found. A color inconsistency which I don't know if it's something I caused with the render I gave you Harmy, or the blu-ray itself. I've deleted the render from my harddrive so there's no way for me to check.

Here it is, the color difference is that in the second shots most of the blue colors seem to be completely desaturated to grey.

Yeah, and that's the reason I haven't bought anything Star Wars related since the late 90's. Last thing I got was the 97 SE VHS box but I was a teen back then and had no idea that it would be so much worse than the original.

I wanted to buy the GOUT in 2006 but I just couldn't, since that would've supported the 2004 SE's, and I was disappointed that the GOUT was in 4:3 letterbox.

msycamore said:

If the older masters had been used instead, if they even exist(ed), people would've complained anyway as one of the most popular and influental films of all time deserved better than being presented as bonus material to the bastard child in that case, and sourced from a 15 or 20 year old LD-master. Not even cheap pornos are treated like this.

Of course they deserve better. They deserve the best. But as long as the mainstream keeps praising the SE's we won't see a proper release.

That's why this forum is so good. :)

The stars look more like in the GOUT now but brighter. Good! And the colors look great.

Makes one wonder why they didn't use the SWE or JSC masters for the GOUT DVDs instead.

@g-force:

Yeah, that's something we have to live with. But the GOUT looks so much better this way even with it's downsides.

@Stinky-Dinkins:

I haven't seen any high-end chip upscale results myself. My own BD-player is an LG without any of the chips found in Oppo's players. On the other hand I think a high-end chip would just try and make a smooth upscale with every detail intact, which means even the jagged edges.

In the script we're using an upscale method which involves an antialiasing filter, plus at the end of the script another plugin adds some of the raw detail and grain back in the antialiased video. I doubt even those high-end chips would be able to do all that. Maybe there is some professional hardware that could do better, but not any upscale chip I think.

@g-force:

In my opinion, your pic looks more filtered on the edges, like, more antialiased or something. In my script I've tried to balance between preserving detail and removing jaggies, and I don't think it's oversharpened, but that the slight ringing around edges is just more visible because of it being upscaled.

Due to how low the vertical resolution of the GOUT is, I don't think it can look much better. I'm still trying to improve the script though, but I won't go as far as to make it look like your pic. No offense of course!

@Harmy:

Of course it is possible, like anything with avisynth! But believe me, after so much analyzing of these movies, I can tell you those jaggies are everywhere. I just chose that R2 shot kind of randomly.

Even if it hadn't been hard to do what you're saying, it would create inconsistency since it doesn't only remove jaggies in those shots but also grain and detail. Even in the R2 shot, detail is removed when jaggies is. The current script will create a consistent result with enough jaggies removed to be much more watchable, and just wait until you see what the dirt remover does!

Anyway, here comes another little teaser. A couple random shots from ESB and ROTJ, unprocessed GOUT compared to the script.

Harmy said:

First of all, wow, it's hard to believe these are sourced from the GOUT. Second, is it possible to apply the settings selectively? Like apply the stronger jaggies reduction only to the shots where they are notoriously bad? While there is definitely some detail loss and it would definitely be undesirable to apply this to the whole film, it's not as bad as I thought it would and those jagged shots of R2 would probably benefit from it.

Actually, the jaggies are in every single shot of the movie, more or less. I worked a lot on finding settings that would reduce the jaggies but preserve as much detail as possible, and considering how much loss of vertical resolution there would be in applying more reduction, I won't do it and I think DJ agrees with me on that.

When you see those small jaggies left, think about how reduced they are compared to the source!