Glad to see someone else giving these films the work they deserve. Most impressive work here.
“A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.”
This has potential and I really enjoyed their episodes, even if not anywhere near my favorite. Surprised they’d announce this series before a rumored Rebels sequel series.
I’ve been waiting for this product, Photon, for a long while now, and it seems it is finally in beta form for the public.
I’ll be trying to learn it in addition to continue learning Davinci Resolve. I think this has the potential to put my film emulations to the next level.
Got a chance to watch the new 4K Dolby Vision version of Lawrence of Arabia, and my goodness did it remind me what a proper film restoration is supposed to look like with the latest tech. It was bright and grainy and the colors looked more like old film stock than some of the HD clips from an earlier release I found on Youtube. I pulled up Empire Strikes Back by comparison that looked dull and waxy by comparison. (Of course LOA was shot on 65mm vs 35mm for SW, but I don’t think most of what I was seeing was due to that).
I even watched King Creole, a B&W film staring Elvis Presley from the 50’s, in 4K Dolby Vision and that looked better these 4K versions of the Original Trilogy. (forgive some sections that were restored from a late generation print, but otherwise the vast majority was sourced from the original negative).
I seriously am more and more disappointed and confused about how these movies continue to look like absolute shit when compared to other classic films.
Just watched this movie from the DVD I got from the library, never knew it wasn’t available in HD or 4K officially.
Do you guys feel this release is better than the D-Theatre RIP?
I haven’t watched his rebels episodes yet, but shouldn’t Rex be like super old and dead by the time of the Mandalorian? I mean, he was a clone who ages faster, right? And his timeline of clone wars-rebels-post ROTJ would span, according to official cannon… …wait. Less than 40 years?! What the crap? The events of TPM, the clone wars, the fall of the republic, the empire, the rebellion and all happened in a span of just 36 years?! That’s ridiculous!
Well, I guess if you compare it to the historical timeline and of the lead up to WW1 on through to WW2 and the aftermath, it’s not that preposterous, but it still seems a bit far fetched. Whatever, its all pretend anyway.
There’s a rumor that in a yet unnanounced animated Rebel sequel series, Ahsoka and gang will find a way to slow down or even reverse Rex’s accelerated aging.
Still something does seem like the timeline from the beginning of TPM to the end of ROTJ is a bit compressed.
No need for that, but I appreciate the offer.
My state did open up last week, so I may be able to go back to work soon, but still haven’t heard anything back.
So how accurate are these colors to a preservation of the original negative?
Wondering if this would be useful as a color reference for my TPM regrade.
So I’m thinking of trying out this tool for my PT regrading project, and I’ve been wondering what might happen if I’m trying to match the 10 bit frames to 8 bit frames? I’d imagine it may create artifacts.
I’m definitely going to have to dive back into rewatching The Clone Wars from the start. I’ve owned the blu-ray’s of seasons 1-6 for a while now for viewing fanedits, and for use of potential fanedits of my own. But honestly, I’ve seen most of the episodes only once through. I have very fond memories of The Clone Wars, but I was less critical of the prequels at that time.
In all honesty, I get more enjoyment these days from the tv side of Star Wars then the movies. They are just able to dig into details the movies don’t have time for and really give us lots of time to get to know the characters. Plus, they seem to explore some aspects of Star Wars that are a little less mainstream.
And specifically for the animated series, there’s always that 80’s/90’s Saturday morning cartoon feel, especially in Rebels, that makes me fond of my childhood.
Unfortunately, my current laptop is slowly dying, and I may have to replace it sooner than I had planned. Once the tech stores open up again, I’m gonna get it checked out, although I suspect whatever repairs it may need will not be worth the cost, and it’ll just be better to get something new. It’s still functioning fine for basic applications, but start doing something more demanding and the whole system freezes up.
Not to mention, that I’ve been currently out of work due to the COVID crisis, so money is quite limited, though it has given me more time to work on this.
It’ll probably be a new laptop likely, so not the eventual desktop that I plan to get. I’m waiting for the next generation of GPU’s from NVIDIA and AMD for the desktop. (likely I’ll be going with a NVIDIA GPU as it has more optimization for video rendering and AI applications).
Playing around with TPM in Davinci Resolve, I know I’m going to be able to achieve far better results than with Premiere, it’s just going to take quite an adjustment for me to learn all the necessities of color grading in Resolve as it is a lot more complex.
For reference here’s probably the best comparisons I’ve seen between 2011 1080p releases and the 2019 4K releases.
TPM: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/819-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-I.html
AOTC: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/820-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-II.html
ROTS: https://www.hdnumerique.com/dossiers/821-test-4k-ultra-hd-blu-ray-star-wars-III.html
Pretty minor improvements, but still worth it. It will be good to see what AI enhancements can do to the footage.
My goodness, that’s the best comparison I’ve seen in the improvements in the color for this 2019 release. Certainly a much better source to work off in that respect.
How much extra detail there is, seems to vary, but pretty significant in some areas. Shame there’s so much DNR in the image a lot of the time, it looks just awful zoomed in from that aspect.
Video Enhancer AI still needs a lot of work in training the AI compared to Gigapixel which produces better results however it doesn’t take into account multiple frames or have good motion consistency. I think it’ll get there eventually.
I wanna do 4K upscales of the Revisited Trilogy once Ady releases the full bitrate versions, which won’t happen till ANH and ROTJ are done as well.
Well there’s no way this can be the next movie coming out in 2022. Thor: Love and Thunder is coming out earlier in the year, and a Marvel movie is no small undertaking.
Curious to know of who of the known writers/directors is doing the 2022 film. I’d hope we get an announcement this year, but maybe we won’t…it’s not like they’d have to start shooting till Fall 2021, so it might not be till next year we even find out who’s or what that movie is.
Anyhow, count me in as excited! I really enjoyed Jojo Rabbit. And he did an admirable job with the season 1 finale of The Mandalorian.
The only thing I could see people complaining about, is his tendency to focus more on comedy. I think he’s excellent at it, but I know many disliked those types of jokes in the sequel trilogy.
That said, I’ve been the person that’s been advocating for “genre movies” for Star Wars, like what was originally promised for the anthology series, and we saw Lucasfilm pull a 180 on that. So hell if someone wants to make a funnier Star Wars movie, go for it!
Decided I will be transferring to doing these grades to Davinci Resolve instead of Premiere Pro/After Effects. I’ve played around with Resolve before when trying out my own grades for 4K77, it just has a lot more freedom and ability to control the footage to what I like. That said, I’m going to have to do some online learning to really get the most out of it. I’ve used the Adobe suite since 2011 regularly versus Resolve being only since end of 2018 in small tests.
So it might be a while till I can upload another render, but rest assured the new grade will be a lot better.
I’ve been looking over the resources I’ve received of scans of the theatrical prints for TPM, and have been studying the colors closely and hopefully I’ll get something close to the look of these or at least what the current official grade looks like printed to print film stock.
AOTC and ROTS will replicate both negative and print stock, as well as some lens distortion adjustments to make them closer to the anamorphics used on other Star Wars films.
Also, I recently saw the film “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” which was shot on Kodak 7219 and my god it looks beautiful. Now it is a 16mm film so it’s a bit softer and grainer than would be for these projects, but it’s a a film that has a very raw film look to it, in other words that it is not overly digitally graded unlike in many modern films still shot on film. It’s definitely a good modern piece to study what true modern film stock looks like without excessive digital tinkering.
To that note, there’s a lot more filtering to be done to recreate the look of film beyond the color grade, which I am further studying. They may not be in the initial releases. Steve Yedlin’s (cinematographer on The Last Jedi) material has a lot to say on this.
I was thinking that it could be cool to try and make a 3 in 1 sequel edit. If somehow Starkiller Base and Palpatine could be eliminated, I’d be very happy.
You’re seriously a master at grading these films, I really appreciate your work. It’s so nice seeing these films look like how they should look.
I love that they mo-cap’d Ray Park for the fight scenes, you can immediately tell how much more grounded the choreography is.
So how exactly does frozen grain end up being there? Is it some denoising artifact, or did they just use a single frame of grain when regraining the footage?
I’m definitely interested in more movie edits of The Clone Wars. The series has some extremely high points, but also very low ones.
I want to tackle them one day, but it’ll probably still be a long time before that ever happens.
mmm, grain…I miss that stuff.
TPM and TLJ Yoda puppets both don’t look quite right, but I still much prefer them over digital Yoda. Ideally you would have a puppet as the base and then CGI enhancements to that. Hell having a reference puppet in scenes where Yoda would have to be all CGI would help too.
Anyhow, I’m looking back on the grain, and I’m going to do more tweaking to it. The past two renders have used real grain plates, which while real grain, does have it’s setbacks given that it is a loop overlayed over the footage. The footage itself doesn’t have an impact on the way the grain appears, so in that case a digital simulation would be better, but that can be hard to pull off. So I’ll do more research and try to figure out a solution.
Also I was looking at some classic movies in 4K HDR on Disney+ and some of those movies had very similar grain levels to that of the renders some thought were too grainy, which makes me want to head more back towards that direction. Possibly, I could always have multiple grain options similar to what is the case for 4K77 and 4K83.
I’ve been watching other new 4K HDR transfers of classic movies on Disney+ and almost all of them look infinitely better than the original trilogy. For a movie shot on film, it’s depressing how the 4K version of the original Santa Claus movie with Tim Allen has better use of HDR and left more grain in tact than these transfers of the original trilogy. A silly 90’s family comedy has a better transfer than these legendary movies??? What the heck?
Did some more work on the grade for TPM today, still frustrated with it, but making progress.
Is there any place with a scan of a theatrical print or more images of it? I’m really curious what the contrast levels should be for a lot of the scenes, as well as the overall white balance to the image. In my current grade, some scenes look horribly flat while other times the blacks look crushed. Not to mention, my current grade is making white balance differences between scenes more apparent which I’m not sure is more accurate to the theatrical presentation or not.
I will say my current grade in some parts looks eerily similar to the new 4K version of 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of colors, which I think means I’m on the right track.
Overall though, I think it’s important for me to establish a blanket grade for each film, not only for first releases, but as a base for scene by scene and shot by shot grading for the future releases.