To me it looks like maybe the Italian BD was color timed to look like it did when projected with a light source typical for that time. Which does look more natural to me than the cold look of the older BD and DVD releases.
If you've already taken care of aliasing, I'd say a simple Spline64Resize does the job. As for Msharpen, there are two options: Msharpen(1) will dig out detail from within grain, and Msharpen(2) will sharpen lines and contours. Just make sure to add blur afterwards to not make it look oversharpened, like Blur(0.2) for SD or 0.4 for HD or something like that.
Those last clips looked great! I would so love to watch the whole thing in that quality. The last few ESB clips looked pretty nice too.
@Doctor M: Banding is different, if I remember correct banding is when you look at a gradient that's supposed to be smooth but it has sharp lines in it. Moth3r's issue is something else that is caused by the TV.
I'd say either the TV isn't calibrated or it just pushes some colors way too far in saturation and/or luminance. The reason you notice it more in this one is probably because of what I had to do to get the reds down to a sensible level. To balance them I had to use Selective Colour and it also darkened them a little bit, making them stick out here and there but there's no other or better way to do it without messing them up a lot.
That said, I know enough of this stuff to be 100% sure it's not in the source. The color correction on this one is done over several months and I've watched it so many times over and over and made small changes and corrected things. I'm working on a colorimeter-calibrated monitor as well as have a TV that's also calibrated with colorimeter for watching.
Here's how that shot looks on the BD:
If I brighten it to look like in your photo it looks like this: (Which isn't how it should look since it's a pretty dark shot)
Thanks for the review Moth3r, I'm just curious to know exactly what you meant with this:
Moth3r said:
- colours may have been pushed a little too far in some places - I noticed some false contouring in some backgrounds (although this could well be a limitation of my plasma display)
What do you mean by false contouring? And could you post a screen or point me to some scene where it happens?
In my opinion it was done right in the Italian release. It looks fantastic. This new one is truly horrible and I hope all fans of this film will simply boycott it.
analog, thank you very much!
Just to clear things up, the theatrical DTS track was originally synched to the 24fps theatrical prints and first had to be converted to 23.976fps, then I synched our video to the 2004 SE and finally dark_jedi had to synch it to the 2004 SE audio to make it work.
We do plan to fix the 97 ESB and ROTJ too, but everything takes a lot of time and we've got some side projects at the moment so unfortunately you guys will have to wait.
@captainsolo: Thank you so much for your review. It feels great when somebody really understands and appreciates how much work went into this.
And thanks to everyone else too of course! Your appreciation is what makes this worth doing.
bcarter27: Check this out: http://www.conancompletist.com/EN/anx/proce_anx/proce_annexes_img.html
There's also a page with info about that scene: http://www.conancompletist.com/EN/proc01.htm
That site has lot of goodies for Conan fans.
idyll said:
Maybe by the time raw footage from a certain film scanner is released, Team Blu will consider doing a restoration and Blu-ray release of it.
I think there are lots of people out there who are capable of doing that.
No worries, I would've replied yesterday but was too tired.
I've tried several different LD sources before, and the problem is that there's not enough resolution to make them look good in HD. Not at all like the GOUT does now anyway.
Because even if the JSC has no smearing, the master still has the same aliasing as the GOUT (which I suspect is because it's missing one field. For some reason I've seen many LD masters of other things with the exact same problem) and they've also brightened some dark scenes and stuff. On top of that, put the fact that all the grain and dirt is there and then put the analog noise and rainbowing that is common with LDs.
There is simply no way we'd ever use an LD as a source for a project. And after these three are all released, I seriously don't think me and DJ ever wanna work with Star Wars again. Not to this extent at least. It's been extremely time consuming and exhausting.
Let's hope Disney will wait for Mike. Nuff said. :)
I strongly doubt they ever used the Tech print as a color reference since ANH 97 SE was screwed up even in the theaters from what I've heard.
You see, the first thing I thought when looking at the colors of the ANH 97 SE releases and digital broadcasts was "why is the whole thing tinted cyan?" except for the Mos Eisley part of course.
Then somebody made a post which I can't find now, about how he/she and a photographer friend went to see it in 97 and the photographer mentioned there was a lot of cyan.
So yeah, if they had used the Tech print as a reference it would've looked way cleaner and better.
schorman13 said:
You_Too or Dark_Jedi, could you share what font you used to render the subtitles? They look really good.
It's been a long time since I made them but I'm pretty sure it was TradeGothic LT Bold. I think I had to tweak it a bit to fit the original size of the subs too.
Mielr said:
I've only had a quick glimpse of SW SE so far, and it also looked very good, though a bit softer than SW '77, which I'm guessing is due to the LD source(?)
First of all thanks for your nice review! Anyway, the source for the SE is the TB version. It's a digital broadcast which is not perfect and does have some compression artefacts too. We did our best to make it look as good as possible.
Yeah I'm looking forward to see poita's stuff.
Anyway, the things regarding removed should probably be removed since he's asked us to keep it secret anyway.
How trustworthy is that site? I know Disney loves money just as any other film company so they obviously do know that they would make a ton of money if releasing the true originals, but on the other hand I really doubt it.
I mean, if they did want to release them, what would the source be? The old faded interpositives used for the GOUT? The altered negatives? (Which would probably need another restoration process anyway) The Laserdisc masters - JSC or 93 or whatever - are out of the question since they're probably on Betacam tapes (DVD resolution) or something.
DoomBot said:
I believe The Good, Bad & Ugly is the only one getting the new transfer.
I wonder what they thought was wrong with the Italian one. Thanks for the new screenshots. Just as horribly bad as the rest.
DoomBot said:
Here's the Italian BD vs new:
Thanks for that comparison. I was about to ask for one when you posted it. I have all three Italian versions with English audio synched to them and in my opinion they blow all other releases away by far. Not only does the color timing feel way more suiting for the films but they also have a pretty clear picture quality.
This new US BD of TGTBTU is horrible beyond words. At least from what those screenshots show. Check screenshot 2 in the other comparison. Cyan sky...
I wonder how the other two films will compare. Either way, I'm glad we have the Italian BDs.
SamS said:
Yes, there is an occasional bit of aliasing, but when compared to the 2006 GOUT DVDs, I'd say it's 90% eliminated. I'd love to know what technical process was used to reduce/eliminate the aliasing? I came here in 2006 in attempts to correct the aliasing myself, and upscale the GOUT DVDs to anamorphic. I succeeded in the anamorphic part, but never got anywhere with the aliasing.
I tried many methods until I found an avisynth plugin called QTGMC which on its very slowest setting did an amazing job on antialiasing. Especially since it didn't destroy any detail while doing it.
SamS said:
Also, how did you guys get so much damn detail out of the original source? So impressive.
It's a combination of a careful upscaling and using Msharpen to dig out detail from within the grain.
SamS said:
I have downloaded but not watched the 97SE, yet. What was the source for this one?
The so called TB version. We looked at all available sources and this one had the most preserved detail.
dark_jedi said:
We want to thank the asshat that posted our covers at this site without any credit at all, damn seeing this stuff is just so damn cool, bravo to this person for being so classy and doing this, very nice.
Just wait until our stuff starts showing up on ebay... This is just how it is, unfortunately.
FrankT said:
Although if I did have to nitpick about something, it's that there's a slight bit of aliasing at least once in the film. But it's hardly noticeable. Come to think of it, there's a lot of motion smearing too, but that's just because it's an upscale.
The aliasing and smearing are there thanks to Lucasfilm. You'll never find another version sourced from the 2006 GOUT with less aliasing than ours though! :)
Harmy said:
Hey guys - congratulations on finishing the first third of this awesome project!
I only had the chance to skim through it so far but it looks great! You've certainly come a long way here since 2006! I really like what you've done with the 97SE too and it's great that there's finally a project with the DTS audio connected to it.
Thank you Harmy!
And a huge thanks to everyone for appreciating what we've done so far. We know that things have moved slowly but we've also been doing a lot of side projects so that's part of the reason. I've had a cold for about a week and a half now, so reading all the nice comments and reviews makes me feel a little better.
This is not much but I dug up an old post where I compared the raw 97 SE with our version: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-OT-1997-Special-Edition-Info/post/608625/#TopicPost608625
Some images aren't there anymore but what's there will give you an idea of the difference. I don't have the files for ANH 97 SE anymore so I can't make any new pics.
And right now I'm having a tough cold, so I kinda don't have the power to put together a bunch of screens from GOUT vs our version right now. I'd just say grab it if and when you can, because it's the best the GOUT will ever look.
FrankT said:
Was there a V1 Blu-ray at one point?
There was, but people had just begun testing it when I jumped in on the project and started from scratch with a new script. I guess DJ chose to call this V2 so it wouldn't confuse those who had already gotten test discs from him.
PDB said:
Goods points, You_Too. We had that discussion about the changes in colors for the Road Warrior Blu-ray. They scanned the negative which was cool/blue but the original release prints where warm/yellow exactly the same as the old DVD and LD. The release prints where chemically processed to be more yellow to give that desert feel. The cinematographer planned it that way and took great lengths to achieve that look. When WB went back to the negative, they simply scanned it and release it without trying to reproduce the original release print's look.
That's also what happened to Conan the Barbarian on blu-ray. It has the look of the negative, without the color timing that was done for the theatrical prints.
PDB said:
Speaking of laserdiscs and Cameron. Aliens is interesting. I have been capturing my old LDs lately. Trying to make backups in case my player finally bites it. When I watched my capture of Aliens (letterbox/theatrical), I expected it to look like the DVD. Nope. The DVD has a little more muted look in its colors. The LD is warmer and has more saturated colors. I actually kind of like the LD's colors better then the DVD's. Suffice to say the BD, DVD and that LD all look different.
LD's are interesting indeed. Sometimes when an LD release is very different and warmer in the colors than the usual home releases, it makes me think maybe they did that because of TVs not being calibrated back then, like some compensation for the otherwise cold look it would get when viewed. Of course that's just speculations but it would be interesting to know the truth about it.
Then of course, it could be that when some LD's were released, maybe they scanned the negative or some kind of pre-color timing print and accidentally "got rid of" the intended look.