adywan

ANH:R & ESB:R 1080p UPSCALE UPDATE AND DONATION DRIVE

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New year. I missed the New Year completely. Fell asleep a few hours before midnight and slept through, so that’s why there was no “Happy New Year” message from me this year.
So we are back in full lockdown again here in the UK. At least there now seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel. So there’s at least a chance now we could get part of the live action shoots done late summer this year. But at least being stuck indoors all day has given me enough time to really play about with the upscale of ANH:R & ESB:R.

I did some tests with the trial version of the latest version of Topaz Video Enhance AI. OMG, what a difference. Much better than the old version i have. They have managed to iron out most of the problems with the older version. It now seems to be able to recognise parts of the image that are meant to be out of focus, whereas the older version tried to bring things into focus. The speed is about 3x as fast. Sadly the pro-res encoder has problems and shifts colours, so i can still only render as image sequence, which creates huge files. Also it has a bug which, when a shot changes to the next, the previous image can bleed into the first 2 frames, or the image quality really drops for those frames. Also, mainly when lasers are moving across screen, you see the ghost image of the laser from the previous frame bleed into the next. The only way to fix this is to do a first pass upscale, then render out a reversed version of the film and upscale this and replace the first two frames of every shot in the film in the editor. A long process, but worth it. Sadly the trial version has run out and I can’t afford the £200 for the full version just yet.

Another problem with the upscaling I found was that there were many shots it just didn’t give good results in the final upscale, so I had to render it again using different settings and replace the bad ones in the editor with the new ones. But a lot still looked bad, no matter what settings I used, especially when I had to use lower res images/ video and used any form of sharpening filter. Strange artefacts where it tried too hard to add details, over-sharpened sections and images that almost look like an art filter had been added to the picture. Very artificial. And it really doesn’t like shots like holograms or macrobinocular displays. Luckily for me I still have all of the original project files , so I have the luxury of re-rendering these shots to help eliminate these problems. I also have the chance to use some element from the new 4k versions of the films to replace the lower quality from the 2011 blu-ray. For example, the picture below, where I enlarged Obi-Wan so he didn’t look like a tiny little figure in the shot. The results were never that great using the 2011 blu-ray, but sort of passed when being 720p. But upscaled to 1080p it looks horrendous. But using Obi-Wan from the 4k version, the results are miles better.

So I will be able to improve all of these type of shots for the upscale version. There are a lot, but many are just an easy re-render with some of the original filters turned off and applied after the upscale process. Plus there are some shots that were originally rendered in native 1080p and downscaled for the original release that I can use in the upscaled version. So it won’t be a 100% upscale for ESB:R and with ANH:R I can swap a lot of the upscaled footage with the original 1080p colour graded master I created when I started that. ROTJ:R of course will be native 1080p. ESB:R 1080p could well be ready in a couple of months after i can start work properly on it.

But now I come to the biggest problem with the upscale. Just rendering ESB:R as an upscale using uncompressed image files, and a few test renders of replacements, it almost filled a 4TB drive. The resulting filesizes are huge. And with working on ROTJ:R, upscales of ANH:R & ESB:R AND being able to back the files up, there just isn’t enough space even with the new larger format drive I have now.

As you may know, last year wiped us out financially with my wife losing her job. We were lucky that she was able to find a job later in the year, but at a greatly reduced salary. This sadly meant that I am no longer in a position to plough any more funds into Revisited for the foreseeable future. So I have no option other than to reopen the donation drive. As I said last time, I was planning on matching the money raised during the last one plus any extra, which would have fully funded this project, which was £3000. I’m just going to use the same Paypal money pool as last time as it’s the easiest thing to do, keeping the same links. I desperately need to get some more large size external drives for backup purposes and a couple more large format internal drives for the main rendering of the upscaled versions. Plus the last batch of materials for the live actions shoots and miniatures.

You all know I really hate doing this, but I have no other choice at this point in time. Here is the link for the donation drive. Any help is greatly appreciated.

https://paypal.me/pools/c/8fZda4Wcai

Thank you

Adywan

exitzero said:

EvantheKidDS said:

Where is this HD Trailer? Could you could point me if the right direction?

Sorry, it was comparison video not really a trailer. I tried to find it but no luck. Hopefully someone else here will have a link for you.

https://youtu.be/VFp1WuYKWtI

ZkinandBonez said:

I do wonder how they de-aged the voice though. I know how deepfakes and such work fairly well, but this is the first time I’ve heard a voice de-aged.

I’m wondering if they were able to use an advanced version of the unreleased Adobe Voco, or developed something similar. Hopefully we’ll find out in the BTS at Christmas

Tobar said:

Man, I absolutely loved it. And I KNEW IT as soon as I realized it was only a single X-Wing.

The real question was, was it going to be Sebastian Stan or deaged Mark? I really think they gave him that little bit of stubble right before he removes the hood to really make you think it might be Stan under there before they pull the rug from under you.

The effect itself, not perfect. There are definitely a couple of shots in there that are pretty bad but I think overall it worked.

AND THE VOICE! That is ROTJ era Luke all over! The voice is what impressed me the most.

Man I loved it.

Yeh, i have to say, the way they de-aged his voice was amazing. Completely spot on. Shame the facial effect was so damn jarring. Although i watched it on Disney+ in 2160p HDR, i gave it a second watch, this time through the SKYQ box, which only has Disney+ @ 1080p and it didn’t look half as bad. I don’t know if it was the fact that the initial shock at how bad it looked had passed or the fact that it worked better at 1080p max. But the lip sync was still CG game level bad. And the “dead eyes” … yuk

Did anyone else spot the Battlestar Galactica nod in the ep?

13las said:

I hope I won’t be raining on anyone’s parade but that was… bad, right? I’ve really enjoyed this season but that really left a poor taste in my mouth. I thought the pacing was bizarre and that whole final sequence… Yikes.

I’m not against what they did in principle but good god. Would it kill them to recast a role or let an actor play his own age when the alternative is a straight up video game character?

I haven’t seen anyone else’s take on the episode yet so I really hope I’m not the only grump. I wanted to love it but damn.

Completely agree. That episode was bad. It somehow felt cheap too. very “fan film”. It had some good bits but i felt that this was all rushed, just to get to that “wow” ending. And the change in the music style in this ep felt so wrong with some of it being more like a 90’s hallmark film

I just hope everyone didn’t stop watching before the credits finished though. 😉

Well, overall , that was a pretty good season. But, is it just me, or did the effects get progressively worse as the season progressed? Its as if they spent the budget on the first ep. Todays ep featured one of the worse digital doubles ever. It would give the Scorpion king a run for its money. Even the ships looked cheap and nasty effect work.

https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1391691/action/topic#1391691

https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1391691/action/topic#1391691

Work on removing as much of the static grain as possible on the 2020 blu-ray version of ROTJ is coming along nicely. I was surprised at just how bad the problems are on this latest release. Not only do you have the static grain, but also the over use of Digital noise reduction has caused so many shots throughout the film to have less detail than even the old 2011 versions. On top of that you have Temporal noise reduction halo blurring ( where an object/ person moves on screen and the background around it becomes blurry as it passes) and some very bad digital noise reduction motion smearing. As you can see in the image below, Yoda’s face is just a smeared mess in the 2020 Blu-Ray, yet it is fine on the 2011 version.

So many shots in the Yoda Hut scene have had so much of the detail scrubbed away. So i have replaced the worse shots with cleaned up footage from the 2011 blu-ray

There is so much to fix on ROTJ before i can start work on the edit.

But i’m taking a short break from the restoration until after Christmas. So far i have completed up to the arrival on Endor. But it’s a very tedious task and i just need a short break.

Now, onto some news… While taking a break from ROTJ, i decided to try out upscaling ESB:R using Topaz Video AI. I’d seen so many people raving about this software so i tried some shots from the 720p lossless master to see if it would be worth releasing a 1080p version. Well i was shocked at how good this software is. Now, it does have its problems. You can’t just stick the file in and let in render away and end up with an amazing looking result. Doing some tests i found out that , while one setting is perfect for some shots and gives the best results, its horrendous on others. Starfields especially suffer when they are moving using one setting. You get a strange ghosting effect or they just smear across the screen. You also get sections of them disappear for a frame or two. So doing it several times, using different settings, is the only way to do it. Then its a case of combining the best elements by rotoscoping to give the best result.

One of the major drawbacks though is the time it takes to process. a 3 minute clip took over 12 hours to render. You get about 5 seconds processing/ rendering time per frame. Then there is the fact that it renders to uncompressed png format ( the MP4 option is horrendous quality). The hard drive space it takes up is astounding, so i’m going to have to look into investing in several external drives and larger internal ones.

So, is the quality of the resulting upscale even worth all the effort, just to have ESB:R in 1080p? Well, here are 10 screen shot comparisons showing the finished upscale 1080p version against the 2011 source blu-ray. No sharpening filters have been used on the Revisited upscales, this is just purely the result from the Topaz Video AI software.

(Just click on each tab to see the different shots. To compare each shot just hover your mouse over the image)

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/8778/picture:1

Well, i think the results speak for themselves. It looks better in clarity for the most part than the original 1080p blu-ray. But why don’t i just use the new 2020 blu-ray of ESB to replace the unaltered footage from the 2011 blu-ray? Well, sadly, then latest version of ESB is crap, to put it mildly. It may have better clarity overall in detail, but it is heavily cropped and horizontally stretched, making everyone gain about 20 pounds. I have no idea why this was such a botched release and why it was stretched and cropped as bad as it is, because the other two films don’t suffer with that. You can see just how much of the picture is lost due to the cropping and horizontal stretching. Some shots are worse than others but this gives you an example of the problem.

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/8787

But then there is all the work needed to be done to match the grading of ESB:R for it to match up. It would be like starting from scratch. So , while there may be some shots that i will use the 2020 blu-ray, i shall be sticking with the upscales.

So i have come to a decision…

THE REVISITED SAGA WILL NOW ALL BE RELEASED IN 1080P INSTEAD OF JUST 720P

Upscaling ESB:R should only take a month or two. Luckily i still have all of the project files so, if needed, i can replace a shot that isn’t working in the upscale with a newly rendered version. Then i can move onto ANH:R. All the work i have done so far on ROTJ has all been in 1080p, so no need to do any upscaling there. ROTJ:R will be native 1080p.

And there you have it. Guaranteed someone will say “well why don’t you upscale then to 4k?”. 😉 Sorry, but that is not going to happen.

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Hey guys. I got ESB:R back when it came out and loved it. I recently heard there was an upscale to 1080p somewhere. Does anybody know anything about this?

G&G-Fan said:

bryantmh made it. I can send you the link if you’d like.

ADR14NAT1ON said:

Yes please, I’d appreciate it.

I don’t know how an upscale works, so what should I expect visually?

I’d wait if i were you… Check back a bit later because i’m about to post some news about the Revisited saga…

Not sure why people are using the 480p NTSC version for upsclaing. Wouldn’t using the PAL DVD-9 version would give better results?

Z6PO said:

idir_hh said:

If they start veering down the Snoke/Palpatine/Exogol thread. I’m out.

It may very well be the backdrop of the story…

Exactly. Ever since we saw the kamino symbol on the doctor, when Mando delivers the child, it’s been pointing to the child being the important factor in the creation of Snoke and the resurrection of the Emperor. Todays episode, where the holo recording mentions needing a specimen with a really high “M” count (so glad they didn’t mention midichlorians by name) pretty much cemented that. We don’t get a good look at the failed clones. But the seeds were planted a long time ago. It’s all tied to the Emperors return. But will it turn out to be Ahsoka that becomes the missing piece needed for the resurrection and the child will no longer be needed? That wouldn’t surprise me with Filoni involved, especially now it’s confirmed she will be in the show.

Maz handing Chewie the medal at the end of ROS doesn’t contradict with giving him a medal in ANH:R. He wasn’t being presented with his own medal in ROS. Maz was giving him Han’s medal, that Leia had been keeping. It was a memento of the friends he had lost and it was being passed down to him. It was an inheritance, not a prize.

They’re popping up on Etsy now. I don;t have an account there so can’t report it

https://www.etsy.com/listing/869108652/star-wars-despecialized-the-updated

www.etsy.com/listing/873191784/star-wars-despecialized-editions-on-blu

One of the worse HAS to be Bollocks, erm i mean Bollux 😉
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bollux

https://youtu.be/GBlBhpxW2P0

Ed Slushie said:

Were Jawas’ hands always furry?

Some had furry hands in ANH

But why the hell do Tatooine Jawas now have red eyes? And a nice little nod to ROTJ there. The jawa is holding the same item used by Han when he is trying to save Lando when hanging from the skiff.

Fang Zei said:

I wasn’t paying super close attention to the sound, but recognized at least one version of it. Can’t remember now whether it was from ‘77, ‘04 or ‘11 (staying vague for people who wander in here without having watched the first episode of season 2, yes I know it’s the spoiler thread).

Anyway, not going to rewatch now just to listen for it again. But that was fun.

it was '77

Work is continuing on processing the 2020 blu-rays to remove the horrendous static grain . Its a very long process though. Having to create multiple masked layers, lots of rotoscoping so that only the areas that need processing get processed (and to enable different levels of processing to sections of the picture) so that you don’t scrub away the detail (like the digital noise reduction has sadly done for so many shots on these new versions). It’s very tedious. So far the first 37 minutes of the film have been completed. This side of things is going to continue well into the new year, but the result will hopefully be worth it. I really wish that it could be an easy fix, just adding a layer of 35mm grain to hide it, but that doesn’t work. Yes, the final result will have some added real 35mm grain, but this film does need to end up with around the same amount of grain as the previous 2 films or it will look completely out of place when watched back to back. Some shots are beyond repair though. Shots that have had so much digital noise reduction applied than the image is blurry and lacking detail. Detail thats actually better in the older 2011 blu-rays, and those are notorious for lacking detail. So its a case of swapping out the destroyed shots and replacing them with either their processed 2011 versions or from footage taken from 4k83. These shots also have to be regarded and processed so they don’t look like they are from completely different versions when viewing. In the end though, it will result in a much better looking version of this film.

When i get bored and tired of the monotonous rotoscoping work, i like to test out what the final grade could be like. Using the 4k83 scans as a reference, i’m able to get this film to look pretty close to how it looked originally. The 2020 blu-rays, for some reason. look washed out and have a very brown tint to them. The highlights are completely flat too. Luckily these are still a better grade than the older 2011 blu-rays, so i’m not having to remove that bad blue tint that was added to the films. Fixing the highlights alone has brought out more detail in the picture but fixing the grading is really making this film look so much better. Being able to bring out colours and tints that were hidden underneath the brown flat current grade. I’ve attached a couple of comparison samples, but the best way to see just how the grading looks compared to the 2020 blu-rays is through these links:

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7GZDLNNX

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/9ECJJNNU

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compare/screenshotcomparison/7GZD7NNX

Ronster said:

Good work would be great to see the scenes just cleaned up…

Even though the scenes themselves are the main focus I have a feeling the Vader deleted scene on the death star goes inbetween C3P0 entering the Lars Homestead and then emerging from the bath tub.

The fact that it blacks out is a bit telling.

As for Audio, the audio spoken by Vader used in the holiday special is actually meant to be for the scene aboard the tantive and the line spoken by Vader in the film aboard the tantive is for the deleted scene… It was swapped because the scene was cut.

Hope that helps 😃

Swap = “well done commander there will be no one to stop us this time”

Have you even watched the deleted scene? It’s clearly meant to be placed long after Luke meets Ben, when the’re at Mos Eisley. The clue is in the very first line spoken; “We’ve closed the spaceport at Mos Eisley and started a search operation”. And the dialogue for Vader can also be heard spoken by Dave Prowse. None of it corresponds to anything said aboard the Tantive IV. And the Dialogue for that scene that Vader speaks in the Holiday special was specifically recorded for that special. long after the film came out. It was recorded at the same time JEJ recorded his dialogue for the cartoon section.

EDIT: According to the novel the deleted scene with Vader & Tagge takes place right between the Han & Jabba scene & Luke & co reaching docking bay 94.

I’d recommend PFClean.

https://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk/pfclean/

Hadrian sunrider said:

adywan said:

Hadrian sunrider said:

StarkillerAG said:

Dude, stop trying to blame everything on TLJ. That movie wasn’t universally hated like you think, most people actually liked it. The reason Solo bombed was because of Disney’s terrible marketing decisions, and TROS’s performance is actually pretty good for the third installment of a series. The anger of a few hardcore fans had nothing to do with it.

Revenge of the sith made more than AOTC

Return of the Jedi was dead even with empire strikes back

The sequel trilogy just went downhill with every installment with its latter two installments having the worst legs in December box office history

Do you really want to argue with math?

Well, lets talk the maths…

Stats or original release for the OT:

ANH - $503,015,849
ESB - $400,083,259
ROTJ - $374,593,074

And those were different times than now. Before the internet and before the rise of the internet trolls and “youtubers” shitting all over everything. ROTJ broke weekend box office records, but the numbers dropped pretty fast after the first week.

Sith made more than AOTC because of the hype surrounding Vader appearing in it and people hoping it would feel more like the OT. They wanted to see the Vader hunting down the jedi, they wanted to see the duel over lava and anakin become vader. It is something fans had wanted to see for decades. You can’t beat that type of hype.

So lets use other stats. Ticket sales. Est # ticket sales for each film (domestic) in ascending order:

ANH 178,119,500
TFA 108,115,100
ESB 98,213,400
ROTJ 94,059,400
TPM 90,312,100
TLJ 67,594,500
ROTS 59,324,600
ROS 54,984,300
AOTC 53,468,500

Jesus, fans must have hated ESB. Just look at how many less tickets were sold for that films compared to its predecessor.

The sequel trilogy performed perfectly well. You have to remember that China is a HUGE market for the film industry and its only in recent years that China has even shown any of the Star Wars films. So they haven’t grown up with the films and have an attachment to them as we all do. So a big chunk of the box office market is gone right there. Yet all three earned over $1 billion.

Solo under-performing had nothing to do with TLJ either. Right from the films announcement a lot of the fanbase just wasn’t that interested in the idea of it. Having someone playing Han Solo who wasn’t Harrison Ford turned them off the film right away. That was back in 2015, when Star Wars fever was at a high, 6 months prior to TFA being released. And then followed all the reports of the troubles during the making of it etc. That really didn’t help.

Then you had George jumping in and throwing his dummy out the pram after TFA because they didn’t use his story treatments> calling Disney the “white slavers” etc. You have that section of the fanbase that were loyal to george that decided they were going to boycott the Disney Star Wars out of loyalty to George.

On top of that you had the “Legends” crown that were boycotting everything because “Disney destroyed our Star Wars”

But what is really turning fans off Star Wars, isn’t the movies or TV series, but a certain section of the fanbase. Sucking the fun out of any online discussion about the franchise. You can’t even discuss the Disney films without a bunch of assholes jumping in, telling them that they are an idiot/ moron who must have low IQ if they liked the ST.

Wow…a 4 million ticket decline

Such a disaster

TLJ and TROS still dropped worse than any of the Star Wars sequels

And it’s not the fans that are killing the hype for Star Wars…it is the lack of interesting characters with long term value.

I have yet to see someone who wants to see Rey ever again

I could find a million fans who want Vader to be given a tv series or a movie

I can find no one who wants to see Rey even mentioned in future films

That is what is killing Star Wars.

Maybe get out of your little closed " the sequels are shit" circle and you’ll find there are plenty of people that would like to see Rey back at some point, along with Finn, BB-8 and other sequel characters. And of course you’ll see more people wanting a vader spin off. Vader is embedded in pop culture and has been around for 43 years.

StarkillerAG said:

Could you stop your constant anti-sequel spamming? People here have varying opinions about those movies, but it seems like the only thing you ever post is “sequel bad, everyone hates the sequels” which is just not true if you look outside your echo chamber for more than 5 minutes.

Yeh, his constant anti-sequel spamming pretty much proved my point that its the fans destroying star wars and not the films doing this. It just seems to blow this type of fans brains that people may have a different opinion on the films and actually like them. Its as if they have to try and force their view that nobody likes them, down peoples throats until they comply. THAT’S what is putting people off Star Wars.

exitzero said:

Are you still planning on adding more rebel troop action to the Endor ground battle? Is that going to be done with green screen, or are you going to do some actual filing in the Redwoods?

We’re going to be filming in the redwoods. Covid and the fires have been a major setback to our plans, but hopefully at some point we will be able to shoot the scenes needed.

TheAlaskanSandman said:

CMMAP said:

TheAlaskanSandman said:
Keep pushing and nit picking!

Ok mate you asked for it :p
From your latest tease, I personally think the added flames on Naboo (e.g… behind Qui-Gon) are moving too fast.

Those are all real fires filmed on green screen, so the physics are proper. They’re not simulated flames. So slowing it down might not look right. Itll also mess up the frame rate

Just checked out your trailer. Very nice work there. But i have to agree that the flames are moving too fast. Also the smoke is too. Using real effects doesn’t always give you the real world physics. This is true when you are using effects that are from a small fire to create an effect of a large one. You have to slow down the fire element fx footage to give the scale of a large fire.

In this shot, the smoke needs to be slowed down to around 60% of the original speed, maybe 50%. The fire, to at least 50%, but probably closer to 40-30% to give the scale required. Doing this won’t effect the frame rate of your composition. You can use after effects built in time stretch feature, with blending set to pixel motion, to apply that to the layers your fire / smoke elements are on, without effecting the compositions , or any of the other layers, framerate. I prefer to use the Twixtor Pro plugin as this gives much better results. Fire can be a pain to slow down as you can get blending effect problems. Artefacts can be painted or masked out for the most part. Which is why i prefer using something like twixtor because it gives you more control over the results. You can get great results with smoke when slowed down though. You don’t get the same sort of artefacts and the results are almost always perfect.

Now, in the following shot, the smoke is way too fast to give the appearance of the scale you need. This smoke should be slowed down to about 20-30% of the original speed. I’d say its closer to 20% but working with things like this you just can’t know for sure without actually testing out the speed on the source files. A lot of this is done by eye so it’s a lot of trial and error.

Here’s a quick test to show how slowing down the smoke and fire can give the effect of scale you need. Obviously i had to slow the whole first shot down because i don’t have the separate elements and there are a few glitches with the fire in the second one because its reacting to the background elements that wouldn’t be there when treating them separately. For both shots the smoke/ fire was slowed to 30% of the original speed using twixtor. Youtube’s compression messed up the smoothness of the result causing the smoke in the first shot to look a little jerky. it isnt like that in the file i rendered, so thats not an effect of slowing it down with the plugin.

https://youtu.be/9cwRWifwstw

Something i did notice, however, in the trailer i downloaded from your googledrive. The framerate is set to 24fps. It should be 23.976 when working with the blu-rays. This has caused some duplicate frames. Is your project set to 24fps or 23.976?