doubleofive

Here it is, gang. My magnum opus.

https://www.wired.com/story/put-original-star-wars-on-disney-plus/

Yeah, the 4K transfers were done at 2.39:1. I’m not sure the small amount of “lost” information is worth the amount of cleanup Ady would have to do to 4K83.

The point is… that… if we assume this fan edited scene was in our head canon Last Jedi Revisited that we should… make his lightsaber blue in Return?

Cool. I’m sure Ady is very fascinated by all of this.

TDB has a breakdown of the bonus features.

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/021820-1330

exitzero said:

Comparison of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope 4K Disney+ vs Blu-Ray Version-

Cool comparison video, but it looks like all the laser bolts are washed out. There is a video for each of the first 6 movies.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr-SiCqdZZlpcOrT41cZfvQ/videos

Whatever sources they were using for the Disney+ comparisons were messed up, we discovered the actual video is much better. They also have “SDR vs HDR” videos, and that’s not how either of those formats work.

Like the shot where he puts his hands up? I don’t see any difference from a quick look.

I mean, theoretically there’s 3 years we didn’t see of them trading saves.

digitalfreaknyc said:

V.I.N.Cent said:

^ I’m not on twitter, but have bookmarked doubleofive’s twitter pages:-

https://twitter.com/StarWarsVisComp
https://twitter.com/doubleofive

Any updates or links usually appear on there, and there is some pretty insightful ‘OT & the changes’ stuff on there too.

 

I am very much looking forward to seeing his articles on The Digital Bits re the 2019 Disney+ changes.

His Star Wars article is https://thedigitalbits.com/featured/articles/sw-new-hope-disneyplus-4k-2019

Articles for Empire and also Jedi are coming sometime soon 😃

There’s already videos on the changes.

Tbh TDB doesn’t get any credibility from me. Haven’t for probably close to a decade at this point

Well I hope I’m credible.

DrDre said:

doubleofive said:

I have an article written that goes through every addition & how each one ruins the movies & shows how none of them were actually done for artistic purposes. I hope when it’s published that it will be the spark that burns down the Special Editions, or at least shows that they are so flawed that we deserve to at least have the option to watch the originals.

This to me seems to be completely beside the point. The OOT debate imo is not about which version is better, which is wholly subjective, but which came first, which is a wholly objective. It is about preserving the history of film, and being able to view the films as they were released in their time warts and all.

We need as many arrows in our quiver as we can get. “Film History” can only get us so far, apparently, since that’s the drum we’ve been banging for 15 years. “Han Shot First” was a great rallying cry, but sounds petty now that it’s a meme. Showing that every single addition actively & obviously hurts the movies by being included gives us another angle. The Special Editions are not the phenomena that Disney purchased. They barely stand up as individual films now.

I’d love to have people contribute articles if they’d like, from all of the angles. The more evidence we can easily point to that the originals deserve to be available, the better.

canofhumdingers said:

^that, in my opinion, is the most dangerous attitude of all. “Just change back the most offensive parts” is every bit as revisionist as any special edition so far, but far more insidious and dangerous to history because it appeases the ire of many which reduces demand and interest in the actual original cuts even more. It’s an extremely slippery slope.

My thoughts exactly.

I’m really not liking this defeatist attitude. We’ve been fighting for the OOT for 15+ years. I’m not about to give up now. JJ says he didn’t even understand Disney’s excuse. Which says to me they probably don’t have a valid excuse. Just that they don’t see a demand that would override “George asked us not to”.

The problem I’m seeing is an “I got mine” attitude. Disney doesn’t seem to mind the fan restorations as much as Lucas did (which is why he released the GOUT). The more we go around saying “Well, I guess it’s not coming, doesn’t matter to me because I’ve got [DEED/4KXX/VHS]”, the less likely Disney is going to spend money to give us new scans. I’m not saying we can’t have and enjoy the fan preservations, I’m saying we can’t pretend they would be ANYTHING compared to a professional scan of the uncirculated three color separation backups they have just sitting in an archive. We have to make the demand.

The fact that Disney may be depending on the fans to preserve film history is shameful. And we can’t depend on ourselves to be able to preserve it for future generations. Or even past generations. I shouldn’t have to download shady copies of the movies my parents loved to then convert into a different format to then burn on a disc and hope it works on their disc players. We as fans should not be depended on to distribute the original films.

The simple fact is that the originals are historical artifacts. We need to convince Disney of that.

I have an article written that goes through every addition & how each one ruins the movies & shows how none of them were actually done for artistic purposes. I hope when it’s published that it will be the spark that burns down the Special Editions, or at least shows that they are so flawed that we deserve to at least have the option to watch the originals.

#ReleaseTheOriginalTrilogy

The Bull’s Eyed Womprat said:

I’m seeing the word “final” a lot when you all are discussing this latest round of edits. Some people never learn haha…

Lucas is the one who’s never satisfied. Disney doesn’t even care enough to pay attention to which version is being seen today. They won’t change it. That’s what Kennedy meant when she said “They’re his movies and we’re not going to change them.”

My friend at the Saga Marathon says they’re all the 2K versions. They didn’t make DCP of the Disney+ versions.

nl0428 said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

27-disc 4K Skywalker Saga to street 3/31/2020.

(Includes very short, non-spoiler comments on Rise of Skywalker)

https://thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/121719-2000

That is going to be SUPER expensive, but everyone will buy it regardless.

Best Buy Canada has it listed for US$250.

Consider everything on the site but articles to be placeholders. For now, consider Digital Bits to be the exclusive home of what we’ve spotted. ESB should be posted today or tomorrow.

But yes, that is 100% a recomp of the extension.

nl0428 said:

What I don’t understand is that if the original 1997 Special Edition prints were given a new remaster, then how come the sound mixes still sound so compressed as in the 2004/2011 releases? It’s incredibly noticeable for A New Hope.

I mean, just because they rescanned the film doesn’t mean they didn’t reuse the 11SE mix they already had. They certainly wouldn’t recreate it.

Mike O said:

Broom Kid said:

There’s no contract stipulation, and there never was. It was always just a guess.

Seems like an educated guess at this point, though I’d love to be wrong.

I don’t believe anyone at Disney would sign a contract that said “you see that money on the table? You can’t use it. You have to sit on it.”

Them wanting to “respect” Lucas’ wishes, I can get, but swearing they won’t ever release it seems vindictive, even for George “MacLunkey” Lucas.

ESB should drop Tuesday and I already turned in RotJ.

Then we have to GET people to care. I’m never giving up.

joefavs said:

While I was home for Thanksgiving I looked at some of ANH on the TV at my parents’ house, which is set up very well but only does HDR10 and not DolbyVision, And it was really dull-looking and dark and just all around underwhelming. It’s strange how drastic the difference was with the DolbyVision set in my apartment; there are plenty of other movies I’ve watched on both TVs and I’ve never experienced a drop-off in quality this extreme.

That’s probably not HDR, but the tv not having a Wide Color Gamut, which are different but packaged together. My friends got a TV that was that way and they took it back. It’s crazy how they throw an “HDR” label on a single backlight TV that only shows standard colors and call it a day.

sade1212 said:

Huh, that gif shows the ship in the sky is in a different position. I also didn’t realise there were additional scurriers in 1997. Personally, I AE’d out the scurriers from the Bluray footage and use a colour corrected version of that for my own versions (with theatrical audio to remove the squeaking).

I believe the ship in the sky is different because the scurriers were retimed. I GIFed to the scurriers, not the timing.

Here’s the GIF I’ve been staring at.

Note the weird circular replacement spot between the two scurriers in my frames that shows up in the 19SE.

Interesting observation. If I’m reading this right, this makes a lot of sense. There are two wipes to 97SE changes that were redone for HD Branch, this and Jabba. Those wipes were done in 97 optically, wiping from the original-negative live-action shots to the 2K film outs and then cut into the negative. So when redoing those shots, they’d have to make a CG wipe that closely follows the optical wipe that transitions to the new version of the shot. And to do it for the 4K, they’d have to do it again. The Jabba wipe we’ve been looking at, it’s improved somewhat in the 4K (97 Jabba’s tail is less visible). This would seem to be something similar, where the original wipe is quickly followed by an additional wipe to the new shot.

You’re also correct in saying the landspeeder was shifted (to the right, I corrected TDB), but the weird thing is that the left edge of the speeder is in the same position. It’s been stretched a little? Also don’t forget the timing on all of the creatures were redone too, and half of them were erased from the 97SE. My feeling is that they rebuilt the shot for HD with a lot of sharpening, then rebuilt it again in 4K from the “original” negative, but cut out elements from the HD they didn’t want to rebuild (the speeder).

Telion said:

I feel like the wave makes the DS explosions a unique from all the others and makes them feel genuinely momentous in scale.

Agreed. It makes them feel important and unnatural.