analog

Yeah, leaving it at that should be good... I'd say that's fair to keep such things to one's self and not be posting all over the internets.

That's a decent laptop, btw, speed of encoding is really dependent on the CPU more than anything else. Only other thing would be USB limitations - if you're stuck at 2.0 on the machine, that's as fast as you can get, unless you had an add-on card that did 3.0.

Any further thoughts on the menu/disc construction? All the reading I've done over that past day makes it seem like it's a little more work than DVD authoring..

YanniD said:

Whilst it would be nice to have a menu driven BD with extras, I personally would much rather have an mkv of the movie with a single lossless soundtrack and all other soundtracks downloadable separately so that I can mux them in as required without having to download more than I need.

In the fullness of time, when Harmy releases the full BD, perhaps he can make available the Bluray structure and supplementary files so that I can simply shoehorn the mkv (converted to m2ts) to match.

I also think any extras should be released on a "bonus" disc.

HD-DVD had a really great feature that allowed external subtitles and even soundtracks to be incorporated into the movie on the primary disc, without them having to be on the primary disc.  I really miss that flexibility with Bluray.

I certainly wish Harmy the best in tackling the weird and wonderful world of Bluray authoring.

That is pretty much the plan as I understand it - to have one file, a .mt2s file, and then a separate download of folder structure for putting together a disc. You'll be able to take that m2ts, use mkvmerge, uncheck the audio you don't want, and have an mkv of exactly what you do want :)

Most software I've used for DVD projects with menus have sucked in one way or another. Limited background audio, limited menu templates, etc., but you eventually end up with something "close enough" to what you want. It's not really difficult, just tedious to mess with and get things as you might imagine them, or "close enough." In other words, it sucks, but isn't really hard to do once you find something that works.

Two other things - some (most) video software loves to use its own codecs, and may or may not "respect" the imported video (or audio, especially with so many tracks...); it may re-render it in the process. You may or may not be able to bypass that, or put the 'original' back in place without some further tweaks (see this thread for an example: http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-161144.html)

After it's done, the only way I can think of to keep it separate would be to create your own ISO from such a program, mount it, and then copy out from there. That way people can put it together on their own, or just have the main file.

A good list of such software http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd

^ what he said. Mkv transcode will not lose quality..Personally, I do the disc route, and play via htpc / 360 @ home. Once we go with bd, I plan on keeping original stuff, an mkv, an a bd for ps3 / blu ray player @ gf's place :) ...she has seen most of 2.0, but I'm waiting for 2.1 on bd so we can watch all 3 (the other two are obviously avchd) :)  ..I don't mind keeping different formats, as this is some worthy material ;)

Very weird. I would hope the analog is clean enough to match, but would be careful

To be clear, the 5.1 DTS MA is done/ready? ...I thought Harmy had given up on including the 85 stereo mix, as it needed to still be GOUT synched? In any case, I also hope you can get things as best they can be!

Harmy - sounds good, thanks!

Regarding the audio, wow... I always wondered what it'd look like in Pro Tools, but never had the time to mess with it. Been using the m-powered version for about a year and like it OK, but find a few things awkward about it. Still, it is "the standard" out there, and is good stuff to learn ;) Personally, I still prefer Audition for some audio tasks, probably because of familiarity. In any case, that's pretty wild to hear all the details concerning the differences.

I think it actually looks pretty decent in motion too, FWIW :)

One question/thought on the film scan for the sandcrawler coming over the hill. First, let me just say it looks good as it is, and I really dig knowing it came from an actual film cel scan :)

Was that color corrected in any of the editions? Maybe it's just me, but it seems a tiny bit bright. Almost like it could use a tiny bit less brightness, tiny bit more something, maybe tiniest little bit towards green with the hue, I don't know. If this has already been hashed out, forgive me!

2.5 - nice! ...if the title is the only minor change, I don't see a huge deal leaving the AVCHD "as is."

I can dig that. Overall, it had to start somewhere.

There's no doubt that it was worth the effort! Thanks!

I noticed that, but didn't notice it was different than 2.0. It also doesn't seem to have the 'gate weave' going on. Seems stable compared to the logo.

NeverarGreat said:

Harmy said:

@NeverarGreat: So, I take it you did not look at the comparison gallery, containing like 350 screenshots from v2.1?

Where is that?

Page 328 - this post: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Harmys-STAR-WARS-Despecialized-Edition-HD-REMASTERED-v21-AVCHD-is-now-out/post/627643/#TopicPost627643

This link: http://uloz.to/xCAaaEE/compar-gallery-rar

animemaakuo - yes, simply use mkvmerge to change the .mt2s file to an mkv. Copy that to a flash drive. Should work.

I did this with ESB and ROTJ and it worked fine. You might need to install the media update.

That is awesome! If I may ask, what kind of projector is being used there? DLP based? CRT based? It looks pretty good either way :)

I just watched a few scenes on an old CRT based rear projector HD set that I have. ...my LCD cannot do the colors nearly as much justice... Sadly, I don't know how much longer I can keep this TV, as it's a huge pain to move, but every time I question something potentially weird, it's interesting to see on a CRT based set.

Death Star scenes are so much different. The balance is damn near as perfect as it should be. The desert scenes have a special kind of warmth. The bits I just checked were excellent. I think I'll shut up now and go watch the whole thing from the top.

Harmy said:

There are some flaws inherent to the process of course. The green tint, where it appears, is not one of them and is completely intentional and confirmed by other sources beside the IB prints.

Ah yes, very true! And... I forgot about this quote:

--- from http://savestarwars.com/technicoloribscreening.html

The balance of light, balance on the film stock, and timing of individual shots produced an environment that, even if it were actually painted pure grey (some colour photos from the set look suspiciously grey-green as well, which becomes blue under certain lighting conditions) is tinged. This should be considered a valid element of the film's original cinematography. I confirmed this by taking the 2006 DVD/1993/5LD and pumping up the saturation to the Technicolor levels and then dialing out the pink shift (which means adding green and some yellow) until skin tones looked natural as they do in the Technicolor print--the result was identical color balances. Below are examples of the blue and green tinting on the Technicolor print. You can see that the print and camera is responsible for some of it, but by the natural colour of the skin tones you can tell that it could not possible account for the entirety of the tint.

---

In some of the comparison shots, there are instances of the greenish tint still being present, zee944. See Compar.m2ts.m2t_snapshot_13.25_[2012.09.25_12.49.22] for example. Some of the Vader fight scene shots also show some of this, as well as Obi Wan's cloak not quite being brown (12.59.40), but rather a green/grey tint.

Some of this is, I suspect, due to brightening, filtering, etc., and the bits of color that get interpreted in the world of digital approximation (especially fine gradients of colors like grey, brown) gets confused, resulting in sometimes odd choices. ...In other words, to correct one section of the scene, other elements sometimes get affected in unexpected ways, and sometimes, there isn't much that can be done without even more detailed work on those specific elements.

Grey, for example, is probably the most difficult for most LCDs. Add software to the mix that, when bringing up levels of some other colors, affects the bits on another part of the scene, and it's probably scaling the bits that make up grey - which, technically are all colors (Red, Green, Blue), and it makes up choices of its own that can't be helped.

In other words, to correct for this, it might be more work than it's worth, though I do not know. It may also be a matter of re-rendering with a slightly different couple of settings for a couple of scenes. Either way, it'd probably add a lot more work ;)

In all, now that I've had some time to sit down and view more of this, the flow is smoother in this latest version. There are some great corrections in other areas of color which I'm quite happy to see. The other little tweaks I'm seeing in the comparison shots is awesome!

As for commentary, my only advice would be that, if you really want to do it, don't rush through 30 min. of talk - stretch it out. It doesn't have to be two hours of constant talking ;)
Maybe make a few notes for every 10 min. section or so of the entire thing - write down a small note for one thing every 10 min. or so, and if that turns into two or three sentences of actual talking, you'd have a lot added up quickly.

Still have to pinch myself sometimes to realize that this is real, and exists, and is ever closer to the original, in excellent quality!

The tiny file size differences in conversion are likely the tiny differences in time, which is likely due to the credits at the end being slightly longer.

Had a brief time to watch about 30 min. last night and really liked the work in motion, in context, etc.

The color seems "just right" in lots more places, and more consistent.

Burfdaycake - No need for a pwd on the rar site, jdownloader helps to have for getting the files.

animemaakuo - Go back a few pages, 323 I believe. Look at Harmy's post there. Can't hurt to catch up from at least there.

Can't wait to view! Should have time this weekend. Thanks for getting this up so quickly after checking through the final few things!

As for quality, yeah, the AVCHD will be certainly very good, but the BD will be a bit better. Still 720p, but with higher bitrate, it'll look a little nicer, AND include more/better audio tracks, more subtitles, menu, etc..

Currently have the ISO extracted for helping out in spleenland :)

Got through all the screenshots, and really like most of the choices on the scenes.

The last few scenes, the green on the plants is so much more natural looking. The tiny bit of loss in the weird red shift (but only on a couple of the shots that I could tell...) is going to be so much nicer in this.

Thanks again for taking another look at all the scenes here, and going with doing what you feel is right, of course :) Also digging the lesser amounts of odd green hues in places. Super excellent.

Too cool. Lots of good stuff here, even with sidetracked conversations..

Lossless stereo..  very neat. Should fit, I hope.

"...pull back on religiously sticking to the print a tiny little bit."

Very cool. I'm glad this was looked at again. Sometimes it's nice to take a step back and check such things again and just go with your own judgement.

As for all the cover business, I'm just going with whatever Harmy comes up with for the BD, and have some nice cases ready for go. Can't believe the AVCHD is almost ready! Hopefully not too much else to do for the final m2ts render.

I just hope the main format doesn't get  ton of versions uploaded..

In other news, there's this -http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/03/an-old-hope-lucas-says-hamill-fisher-and-ford-set-for-star-wars-vii/

Sounds more like an online watch party sort of thing where everyone can get all silly with jibber jabber and virtual popcorn throwing ;)
Something like turntable.fm with video, or a big "second life" party type event.

SpilkaBilka said:

analog said:

If you could leave that seeding it would help greatly. Speed is quite slow.

I'm perfectly happy with the lossless tracks that'll be included (I wonder if it's from this source), but can see the value in having this '85 one in there for good measure.

If I can get this downloaded somehow, I'd be glad to attempt a sync.

That would be great if you could give it a shot, thanks!  I'll see what I can do too (thanks yoda-sama for recommending Audacity).  It will be a learning experience. :) I just finished downloading and I will continue to seed.

I'm also downloading the EditDroid version of ANH from myspleen, which as Treadwell mentioned, contains the 1985 mix, and is apparently GOUT-sync'd.  I was thinking it might be easier to just extract the audio from this (though I don't know how to do that either!  If anyone knows how, please let me know).  I'll keep seeding when it's done in a few hours.

I too am totally happy with the audio tracks that are going to be included- but I'm also a sucker for completeness, and I think it would be awesome to be able to watch SW, and with just the press of a button, be able to switch between all 5 audio mixes that were made for the film (1977 5.1, 1977 stereo, 1977 mono, 1985 home, 1993 home).  But I can be OCD with that stuff, so...

If anyone else has some know-how and is interested in helping get the 1985 mix GOUT-sync'd and ready, I'd really appreciate it.  Thanks!

Cool, thanks :) ....whopping 1.2Kbps download speeds right now. Hopefully that ticks up later tonight.

As for editing audio, it's always a learning experience. If you know nothing going in, it's just going to take a little longer to learn as you go, and there are plenty of good resources on the internet to assist with that.

Hmm. If it already exists, and is synched, I'd say it might be easier to yank it off of that instead of synching the whole thing again from another source, but you risk potentially re-encoding a lossy format, which potentially makes it "worse" (like copying a copy of a photocopy).

This is one of the simplest free programs I've seen to rip .wav tracks straight from a dvd... http://www.aoamedia.com/DVD-to-WAV.htm
From there, you'd encode to something consistent with the rest of what Harmy is already using - which looks to be something like a basic 192 or 256Kbps AC3. Doubtful that the DVD is using anything higher than 224Kbps, but I could be wrong. Be sure to use 48Khz sample rate. ...if all that's too much, I'll still give it a shot ;)

Ahhh, I see... DTS HD... My memory had "lossless" instead of that.
Theoretically, it could be lossless already in this format, but it's impossible to tell without full details of the file(s).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_%28sound_system%29#DTS-HD_High_Resolution_Audio

For those of us with a PS3 as blu ray player, this is also some good reading:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/21/hd-101-how-to-use-dolby-truehd-and-dts-hd-with-your-ps3/

Either way, I think that's a plenty good format! Not really sure there's any benefit to messing with "better" than this, esp. keeping it at ~25GB. Any more, and it might be too much to fit nicely on a single layer disc. ...perhaps it'd be best saved for version 2.5/3.0/??

TBH, I don't even have a receiver to do this stuff, but it's "nice to know"

There's an old saying. "If I were a betting man" ....I would bet that this DTS HD file is already lossless.

As for lossless mono, I'm personally a little "meh" on it. Cool stuff that there can be so many good choices on one shiny little disc :)

SpilkaBilka said:

Harmy said:

Well, if someone can upload it for me somewhere, I'll be happy to include it.

I'm currently downloading the files for the 1985 home stereo mix from the Star Wars Laser Disc Audio Archive torrent on the spleen.  Should be done in about 10 hours.

The mix is split into multiple files (from the multiple laserdisc sides).  Would these files be useful at all to you, Harmy?  I hate to ask you to do more work, but I don't have the slightest idea how to stitch these files together, much less GOUT-sync them.

If you could leave that seeding it would help greatly. Speed is quite slow.

I'm perfectly happy with the lossless tracks that'll be included (I wonder if it's from this source), but can see the value in having this '85 one in there for good measure.

If I can get this downloaded somehow, I'd be glad to attempt a sync.