csd79

I am experimenting with a method for registering frames from different video versions of Star Wars. This was attepted before by the x0 project, and Mike V is doing something similar with his Legacy project. I guess with the Despecialized Edition and other upcomming HD projects, doing this in SD is not very relevant anymore, but I'm still interested in it and so might be others.

What I'm trying to do is saving successive frames from two different versions of the movie, and then register frames from one to the corresponding frames in the other version using the command line tool Elastix. Another command line program, ImageMagick is used for some clean-up work. The whole thing is glued together by a primitive Common Lisp program (or more precisely, a set of functions) and a shell script. I'm doing this on Mac OS X by the way. Adapting the systom for other Unix clones sould be trivial. It's also possible to adapt it for Windows, and I may do so one day.

There are a couple of free tools capable of doing image registration, for example the TurboReg plugin for ImageJ. I had the most success with Elastix, and also it is the easiest to use in a batch-like method.

The two sources I'm using is msycamore's Technidisc and Harmy's Despecialized Edition 2.0. The Technidisc is my absolute favourite version of Star Wars on video, and a great LD rip. IMO it has the best color palette and generally the best distribution of lightness levels, even though at some places it is inconsistent. Aliasing is less prominent than in the GOUT (thanks to the overall softness of the image). Light sources don't bloom (no fat lightsaber blades). The plan is to borrow detail from the DeEd2 and try to fix some of the problems in the Technidisc.

Currently the program is capable of going throu a queue of frames automatically. It will also fix undershot pixels (near-black pixels that, after the B-spline transformation, turn into negative and after conversation end up white-ish). As you can see on the samples below (especially on the fourth sample, on C-3PO-s highlights), overshot pixels can also happen. Need to fix those too. Using linear interpolation doesn't cause any overshot pixels, and the quality of registration doesn't suffer either, so problem solved. :)

Another problem I want to point out can be seen on the last sample. It's partially a registration error (upper left corner, the planet and surrounding stars), and partially the fact that the fighters were composited a bit differently in the DeEd (see the Y-Wings).

To do:

• Fix overshot pixels
• Tweak registration parameters for more precision in space-type scenes
• Also tweak more for speed (on a 2.2 GHz Core i3 notebook it takes 2-3 minutes to register one frame)
• Find a better method for extracting detail from the registered images - current method alters the luminance slightly
• Use the transformation data from one frame as starting point for subsequent frames and reduce the number of iterations during registration on them, since the deformations will probably be similar.

Back in the late 80s this adaptation of SW was the main source of my fandom. (I didn't own a copy of the "Empire" comic.) AFAIK they wanted to do "Jedi" as well back then, but one guy from the hungarian publisher accidentally run accross a Lucasfilm or Marvel representative who, upon finding out about these adaptations, made some legal threats. So the adaptation of "Jedi" entered a limbo, until last year.

The artist used the same style with "Jedi" as with the two earlier ones. The only sad point is that it is now based on the SE. (The drawing in the other two books were based on screenshots of the original versions - and memory.)

I have a question here: is it known whether the PAL LDs came from the same telecine as the digital broadcast recordings? If the answer is yes, than probably it would be easy to align the image of the DVB recordings to a LaserDisc capture and "steal" some additional resolution & detail. There certainly is a way to do this in After Effects, and I think there might be one in AVISynth. This way, we would have sort of "the best of both worlds".

Thank you for sharing, Andrea!

It seem to have frozen grain/noise in it but interestingly it seem almost natural. I think with some more tweaking of the noise filter settings it could be perfect.

Although I'm not a big fan of these LDs because of the color palette and the heavy cropping, but I really like the stable, non-shimmering starfields and the fact that it has less aliasing artifacts than the GOUT.

I hope you will do the rest of the trilogy! Nice project!

I don't know much about the subject either, but I believe early generation material probably represents filmmaker intent better, since that's the level of quality they compose their movies in. If we are interested in color timing as well then the final answer print might be the movie. Even with an effect-heavy picture like Star Wars, where generational loss could help cover some "problems", the filmmakers would probably prefer a clean, highly resolved image that could be projected large.

Also, the Negative1 project might actually show more than what viewers in 1977 could see in theatrical showings because I believe their Telecinch device's focus is more precise than that of a regular movie projector.

Further details on the hungarian Star Wars dubs:

Star Wars got released in theaters in Hungary in 1979, with subtitles. That was a somewhat liberal translation (where Chewbacca was called Harah). There was only one film distribution company in Hungary back then, and they were surely aware of the success of the film (it was released as a two-part feature with a short break after (I think) the third reel, so they could charge double fee). Since I was born in 1979 I wasn't there when the original theatrical run happened, but I actually saw a print from that releaase in around 1990 in a theatre that plays mostly classic films. They even had the break intact, haha.

Empire got released in 1982, and there was sort of a marketing campaign around it, which was very unusual back then: there was a cheap black&white booklet you could pick up at theaters, and a hungarian-made comic book version. Also, they made a hungarian dub, so TESB was the first Star Wars-film dubbed.

On Christmas evening 1984 the state television showed Star Wars (for public request, no less) with a dub made for this occasion. IMHO this is the best hungarian dub any SW film ever got. There weren't many VHS recorders in Hungary back then, so most fans made audio-only recordings of it. Also, this was the last time a hungarian TV channel showed any SW movie for almost 10 years. I heard rumors about a showing some years later on a regional channel, not sure if it was only SW or the whole trilogy, but it was allegedly the first dub. So, no TV showings for Empire or Jedi, not until the first hungarian commercional TV channels started in the 90s. I'm not sure if there were any showings of the trilogy before the Special Edition, but I guess if there were, they used the 2nd dubs, not the first ones.

Also in 1984, Jedi showed up in theaters, again with subtitles only. I saw it but sadly can't remember much about it.

There were privately traded versions on VHS with home-made narration. I don't know about SW but I remember seeing Empire this way at my friends place, and also Jedi had such a version, which is now available as a torrent (watching it today is a funny experience).

In 1993 Guild Home Video relased the trilogy on VHS for rental distribution. Since Jedi didn't have a dub at that point, they made one. This was shortly after Hungary became a republic. After the change, some of the crew of the state-owned studio started privately hold studios, one of which being the studio that made the dub for Jedi. Surely they were professionals, so I guess it came out so badly because it was a rush job. (Actually, this time was the start of a decline in artistic quality in hungarian dubs -- not just SW dubs :).)

(According to the hungarian SW Club's site, this first VHS set came out in 1993 but I have a vague recollection seeing them a couple of years earlier, maybe as early as 1989. At least one of the club's members agree with me on this. IMO that site is a reliable source of info, so I tend to believe that my memories are faulty on this, but… who knows. I just tried to find the scans of the tapes' covers on the club's site, but currently it's not availabe.)

I had home-made copies of SW and Empire with the first dubs, and I think back then many fans had them as well. (I couldn't get Jedi for some reason.) Other sources of SW VHS goodness were german satelite channels like Sat1 and Pro7. I remember at one point I had the whole trilogy in german on VHS - recorded by a friend because we didn't have a receiver.

Hungarian fans got the first retail VHS set in 1995, this was the "One last time" THX thing. For this, each film got a new dub with almost perfect consistency in VAs (the first dubs had mostly different VAs between each film). As I wrote earlier, Jedi also received a new translation at this point, made by the guy who translated the first two films in the 80s.

When the SE came out in 1997, they made another round of dubs, mostly with the same VAs as in 1995, and this was a theatrical quality dub in 5.1 or surround or whatever. Some theaters showed the films dubbed, and some with the original english audio and subtitles. These dub versions appeared on subsequent TV showings and the BD set as well (with some sweatening: TESB Vader & Emperor talk is extended, but I think Vader doesn't scream "Noooo" at the end of Jedi).

In 2006 InterCom, the hungarian distributor of Fox tried to convince Lucasfilm to allow them to release the GOUT with the original dubs in Hungary, but they failed, so they passed on the GOUT eventually. The DVD trilogy in 2004 came out without hungarian soundtracks either (as well as the DVDs of EpI and II), so the BDs are the first digital release of the Trilogy that have hungarian audio on them.

So, in terms of official home releases:

• 1st round of dubs: 1993 rental VHS set
• 2nd round of dubs: 1995 retail VHS set
• 3rd round of dubs: 1997 SE VHS & 2011 BD set

Chewie was called Harah only in the 1979 theatrical subtitles of SW. The Ewoks were not dubbed in the first Jedi dub, but C-3PO's alien language parts (with the Ewoks and at the gate of Jabba's palace) were replaced with some random babbling which sounds very stupid. (In the later two dubs they tried to use the same alien words as the english track.) As for different versions cannibalizing each other, I don't know exactly what that means, each dub is a completely different recording.

* * *

Actually, Jedi's first dub isn't that bad, but it has many low points. The translation feels very raw, could use some refinement. Most of the VAs are very good for their part but some (especially C-3PO) just aren't. And some minor parts weren't voiced by real actors, resulting in some lines spoken by random pilots and soldiers sounding very flat and un-dramatic. Since Jedi is the film that could use the most "help" IMO, this is most unfortunate.

* * * 

CatBus & Harmy: both the 1st & 2nd round of dubs were cleaned up and synched to the GOUT multiple times. There are at least two different releases that have them, both from the same sources, with a 3rd version in the works.

* * *

One last addition: in 2005, I attended the midnight premiere of RotS which was organized by the Hungarian SW Fan Club in a multiplex in Budapest. The film started playing on multiple screens at midnight, and accidentally I ended up ín  the room that was "designated" to the hardcore fans, where the film was shown in english with subtitles. Also there was a short speech at the beginning by a club's leader and the trailers for TPM and AotC. And, as a special "treat", just before the film started, they played a hungarian-made abstract animated short that was originally played with Star Wars back in 1979. It had nothing to do with SW itself, or maybe there was some symbolic/reflective link, but the main thing is that it looked very good & not faded at all. I can't state that it was chopped off of a 1979 print but still...

Sorry for the long post & the off-topic ending.

More on the hungarian dubs:

Among hungarian fans, there is no consensus on the artistic quality of the dubs. For older fans, the original dubs hold a special place, as these were the versions most of us had a copy of on VHS back in the 90s. Translations for the original dubs of Star Wars and Empire were written by András Schéry (translator of many great american films of that era), who thus laid down the basis of the hungarian Star Wars canon. His translations have minor differences from the original text, mainly making some of the most complicated lines more accessible. In my opinion, with these dubs the films are easier to take seriously.

The THX and the Special Edition dubs used the same translations, with some ridiculous changes (for example, C-3PO reffers to himself as "human-cyborg PR manager" in the SE).

The first dub for Jedi was made for the 93 rental VHS, in one of the then-recently-created sound studios. Both the translator and the director were well known names, but still the result is pretty much catastrophic. For the 1995 THX VHS the original translator (Schéry) returned with a new translation, which, although not as fresh as SW and Empire, was much better than the first Jedi translation. The Special Edition dub used this new translation as well.

Both the original and the THX dubs are available on hungarian torrent releases. The THX is sourced from either VHS or a TV broadcast as the quality is very good. The old ones are recordings made from the master tapes of the first (rental) VHS release, with lots of tape noise, but in pretty good quality either.

negative1: Sorry if it sounded like a critique, it wasn't meant to be.

Nice job! I really like the look of your sample, Thorr. I can only hope that negative1's versions will be of similar quality.

It's great to see film-like SW again.

You_Too: it's your work, and I understand your reasons. Actually I downloaded your wip curve files some time ago, but I left them on my other machine when I recently moved to another courtry... ehm :) Looking forward to your final results, I'm sure they're going to be great.

dark_jedi: that's why you said that V2 is not for everyone? Because the whole project is just a huge ego trip? 

Sorry for bumping up an old thread. I wanted to play around with You_Too's script but the curve files in post #4 seem to be unavailable. You_Too, could you upload them again please?

Thank you

I'm probably wrong, but "deleted, extended and alternate scenes" could mean "some replaced OT footage included", no? (They might pass as "alternate".)

(But if so, only in SD, of course. :) )

I'm interested too, could someone please PM me about this?

I did a little experiment with RGB filtering instead of YUV (in After Effects) to try and push the GOUT color balance toward what we see on the Technicolor print photos. In comparison, what I see in the GOUT is lack of contrast and lack of deep green/cyan. Also the colors are desaturated but I wanted to see what can be achieved without drastic saturation tweaks.

Flesh colors in the GOUT are not so much redish but purple-ish, so green should shift them in the right direction; also it can move the color of the Death Star corridor walls out of no-color and pure blue.

The big s-shape of the master curve is (supposed to be) the contrast boost; then the whole thing is moved upward (= gamma boost, because now the picture is pretty dark). Also I added a hole at the shoulder to protect highlights somewhat (they are already blown out in many places). The green curve is in a little counter-contrast, so shadows would be shifted toward green in the output.

I did tweaked shadow and highlight saturation, both by less than 30; highlight saturation is actually dialed down. (I think the peaks of  the saturation curve you see here is also equivalent to less than +-30.)

There are 3 shifts in the hue curve. The first two is for the droids, I wanted them to look like the first grab of that 8mm print Zombie posted on some other page (which is I think beautiful, color-wise). The third is for (hopefully) spreading the newly added green.

First I tried this setup as a one-light, then added another layer for tweaking the levels for individual scenes, but this was a half-assed attempt. As you can see on the screenshots below, some scenes are still too bright/dark, also some could use a little more/less contrast boost.

Also, check out the second image: that fishy green pattern on the wall is caused by the RGB-curves (appears in some scenes in the first three reels). It also moves, thanks to the color fluctuation -- which is emphasized by the raised contrast. Generally, as Zombie mentioned in regards of the saturation boost, this kind of drastic tweak brings out noise. Worst are the desert scenes with half of the screen being flat blue and the other half flat yellow. By the way the input video was processed with G-Force's script (which is great!), minus anti-aliasing and resize. Maybe the script could help with the emphasized noise (doing the color tweak before the script).

I think these settings might be a good alternative starting point. Unfortunatelly I don't have time to take it any further right now.

zombie84: I think you're right about the degraining issue in home video releases. Here's why I'd still prefer the "clean" approach with GOUT: this noise filter they applied for the laserdisc back in 1993 seems to be a temporal one, which means it compared neighbor frames to figure out what is noise and what's detail. The result sux, and it's negative effect is present on every frame, although sometimes it isn't very visible. So the filter created this static layer of artifacts on top of the "cleaned" image. Every time the camera moves, you see these remains of past frames. Even if these artifacts contains the trace of film grain or just dirt, I think at this point it's not valid image content and better to get rid of it. Having said that, G-Force's script can't do it perfectly, so it's still a compromise.

But as you said, it's good to have different versions of this thing, and I'd say everyone should take a look on this new EditDroid disc.

Too bad we're stuck with the GOUT as the main source. (It's the root of lots of evil. :)  )

Just watched this DVD. My 2 cents:

Since it's really the GOUT sharpened up, the nasty layer of artifacts caused by the denoiser (on the master tape for GOUT) and also the aliasing is much more visible. This, together with the compressed shadows creates a starker image, but it's not really detail, just dirt. The shadow compression helps the image in certain scenes, but it hurts in others (by making the faces too dark - see the cantina scene).

The making-of text in the Extras menu is confusing. Why doing the upscale & sharpening in Photoshop, why not use a video app? It probably also explains why they did the "color correction" with one setting for the entire movie instead of addressing problematic scenes on their own. "Great pains were taken to retain the look of the 1993 telecine...": then why did they alter it in the first place? :)

I watched it with mono audio so I cannot speak of the 5.1 track. The two things I really like in this DVD is the menu intro animation and the fact that the shadow compression made the faces look better and less "flat" in some scenes. (Also the Greedo subtitles look good.)

I think this DVD is a nice addition to the line of GOUT based custom DVDs but the G-Force-enhanced version looks better. Also, the levels settings in G-Force's script retain the proper amount of shadow detail without hurting anywhere IMO (and it's also just one setting for the entire movie :)  ).

Hi

Anyone know about  a torrent tracker where the German Boradcast files are still seeded? I'm in Hungary and my ISP doesn't provide Usenet acces.

thx

I think you won't find a COMPLETE list. All three movies contains subtle changes, some of them can be find only by frame-to-frame comparison. In 'Star Wars', lots of composite effect shots were redone by digital composition, some of them slightly differently, or a few frames longer etc. In 'Empire' and 'Jedi', lots of shots were edited down to make room for SE footage. One way to make a good comparison is by assembling a split-screen version of the films (which I did in Avisynth - loong edit list).