And to note the extra bit depth is incredibly useful for color grading work in fanedits.
I’ve run into many issues with regrading the prequels due to the limited amount available on the current blu-rays. Meanwhile working on Solo from the 4K Blu-ray, it’s incredible just how much you can alter the image.
As usual, your color grading is spot on and makes for a look that seems to retain the retro feel but still have proper colors.
And interestingly they make it sounds as if AOTC and ROTS are going to be native 4k masters instead of an upscale of the existing 2k DI’s. Of course the footage was shot at only 2k, but re-rendering the cgi and redoing the compositing would bring about a lot of improvement.
Also I would love if they would fix the color timing on AOTC. Trying to work with the god-awful blu-ray colors is not fun. ROTS has been the most enjoyable since the colors aren’t botched.
Also for the love of god, I hope they bring back the grain or redo the denoising for TPM. I’ve seen some extremely impressive denoising over at the 4K77 forum on SW and ROTJ, so I know you can denoise without making everything look waxy.
Hey, so I tried upscaling ESB:R to 4K. I denoised, upscaled, and regrained the footage all in After Effects.
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOMeBC.png
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOMnY5.png
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOML2z.png
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOMMJT.png
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOMYSb.png
https://i.lensdump.com/i/WOMox7.png
Honestly, I still have to mess around with the denoising and regraining, both of which might be overdone.
So essentially it’s very much a work in progress, but I’m using the same techniques here as I have for my PT regrades.
I’m honestly gonna wait and see if we get 4K versions of these next year in a 1-9 boxset.
Working with Solo from the 4K blu-ray has been a much more enjoyable experience due to the 10 bit, wider color spectrum video source.
There are some ways of upsampling the footage to 10, 12, or 14 bit video and removing compression artifacts, but it’s very tedious, and I’ve only done it for small previews.
If they don’t make 4K releases, I’m going to try and decompress the footage as I have been but try using the photo mode on waifu2x to upscale instead of Instant4K which I’d used in all the past examples.
I know you’ve seen Revisited before, but just for handy, you should look through the changes gallery for Revisited if you haven’t:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/swrevisited/photos/?tab=album&album_id=223428034339453
I know your approach is more modern and radical, but there’s many changes I would say that are worth redoing for your project.
Also, I’m assuming you’re doing this project at 1080p? Just in my experience in working in 4K for my prequel regrades, it’s one hell of a hassle.
That in motion looks great and fits better with Rogue One while still respecting the original look.
Also, are you still doing some color grading to the Skymaster version of 4K77, or are you leaving his color grading as is? I’d say it looks great for what it is, and it’s the best I’ve ever seen the movie. But I think that there should still be some tweaking to make it look more modern.
Also you should check out Adywan’s A New Hope regrade that came out late last year. It’s still sourced from the blu-ray so it’s not as good of a primary source, but it’s the best colors I’ve ever seen from the outdated Lowry master. His skintones are so on point, it’s incredibly impressive.
Not sure why ROTJ:R has to be 720p, why not 1080p?
Shorter rendering times and the limitations of the blu-ray source.
Despite them being sourced from release prints rather than the negatives, 4K77 and its derivatives I think are the best quality sources for the OT until Lucasfilm comes out with from-scratch native 4K versions themselves. The blu-ray does at times have more detail due to being sourced from the negatives, but the scans themselves are just god-awful even before the 2004 coloring changes.
The Skymaster Edition is definitely the best I’ve ever seen SW/ANH ever look.
I’ve edited/cleaned up Scene 38 for anyone interested:
That’s a hell of a lot better. Just needs some color grading adjustments to both the new and original footage, to get it to fit together and up to standard. That blu-ray footage looks god-awful, I wish the original guy had at least regraded it.
Still, I think if it were to be put into the the actual film, I would still tone down the over the top elements of the new footage.
You’re making me think some of this might be useful for an edit after all.
I’ve paused working on this and my PT project, till I can either fix my desktop or buy/build a new one.
My macbook pro is great for editing but since I’m always using it at work and school it’s not available for long renders.
I still think I’ll be releasing this one before any of my PT grades.
If any of you don’t know, there is a really good color grade of Solo called “Solo: The Bold One” which I enjoyed and was part of what inspired me to start my own color grade.
I saw the roadshow cut twice in theatres and I’ve refused to see the standard cut. It’s just not the same.
I’m interested in seeing the new content in the miniseries version, but I’d prefer to still watch it in the original film structure with the proper chapters. I’d welcome a fanedit that integrates the new content into the film, although I know that’s iffy considering no one can say they own a Netflix source.
I had watched ANH:R last week, and today watched the new regrade. Massive improvement over the original revisited’s colors. The skin tones are perfection in most of the movie. I really believe this is the best the blu-ray source can look.
But while I love the grade, I can’t help but think 4K77 would be a better primary source. There’s still that low bit depth, what looks like large radius sharpening (not sure what the proper term is for what I’m seeing), and what looks to be low resolution color channels in certain sections on the outdated Lowry master. I was recently looking at Skymaster’s technicolor edition over on the starwarstrilogy forum to see what someone can really get out of 4K77, and it looks tremendously better than anything that could be sourced from the blu-ray. It’s shocking how clean the edges look and the very low noise. The colors look smooth as heck.
Your colors are on point in the new regrade, but there’s still that awful “Lowry master” look to it, that I don’t think we should have to deal with anymore given the availability of 4K77.
That shot looks just like something out of Rogue One, nice job!
I also watched your color grading for the beginning of the Battle of Yavin and it also looks similar to RO.
The Battle of Yavin has been video game quality since 1997.
All the more reason for the new 4K versions, they need to either revert the scene to the original or use some of that Rogue One CG tech.
The color grading looks nice and I love the new Falcon shot! Consider me interested.
I personally think using 4K77 would be a better source to work off in terms of the color, it seems there’s less color noise and banding. The Lowry master was done at only 8 bit, and I know 4k77 was done at something higher than that.
You’ve probably seen Star Wars Revisited by Adywan, but have you seen Aggelw’s work? He’s been working on a theoretical edit for many years now and is working to heavily modernize the film. Might be some good inspiration there.
All in all, I’d love to see something that fits better with the visuals of Rogue One.
That’s really sad if we end up with a previous SE cut again. They really should make a new, final SE that will fit better with the newer movies and doesn’t contain as many outdated vfx, especially the bad CGI from the 1997 SE scenes. And thankfully while there is the Revisited trilogy, it’s sadly only going at 720p.
I also really want a proper 4K restoration of the OUT, as the sources Lucasfilm has are so much better than the prints we have access to.
But looking at the Karate Kid 35th anniversary 4K release, I continue to be thoroughly impressed at the ability for older films to shine in this new format.
A random thought, but is it possible to remove the blatant Ronto blocking the speeder, while keeping some of the newer elements (like the improved shadow under the speeder) in the panning wide shot right before they stop at the cantina?
I’m pretty sure that’s what he did ANH:R, although I believe he did delete some of the shots, making it a hybrid of the SE and theatrical.
Here’s the Ronto removal from AHH:R HD:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2208559306067135
Has Ady said much yet about the Death Star battle for ANH:R HD?
I’m wondering since I really enjoyed it in the original version, but I do feel that it could be improved with using 3D renders of ships or even better, model footage of ships instead of moving around 2D images. Also maybe redoing some of the special edition shots as the CGI doesn’t exactly hold up compared to the ships in Rogue One.
ESB:R seemed to be a drastic improvement in VFX work over the already impressive ANH:R, so I’m expecting some significant changes.
I really enjoyed the TPM anniversary panel. It was so great seeing a message from George.
When I first came to this website, I was shamed for my love of the prequels, and so I gave into all the negativity surrounding them. But honestly now, I’m really starting to not give a f*** about what others think and just enjoy the films again. I enjoy all the Star Wars films, even if they’re not perfect.
With that said, in addition to my prequel regrades, I think I’m going to start up on my prequel edits again, although I don’t think they’ll be radical restructures as my original plans. They’ll just be my definitive versions that won’t make major canon changes.
At this point I’d just be happy for transfers that don’t look like absolute shit. ROTS is the only one of the 6 that looks correct on the current blu-rays.
I’m assuming it’ll be new versions tho, because Disney+ is going to stream at 4K HDR with select devices, and it would make sense for them to have 4K HDR versions of all 6 films.
I bought the 1995 VHS’s of the OT, the 1997 VHS’s of the OT, 2004 DVD’s of the OT, the 2007 GOUT DVD’s, original DVD’s of the PT, and the Complete Saga Blu-ray boxset.
I own the TFA and RO Blu-rays, and the TLJ and Solo 4K Blu-rays.
And then I did make proper blu-ray copies and cases for Harmy’s Despecialized Trilogy too, so I consider it bought considering I had to buy the blank discs, cases, and special prints stuff.
Those shots look just like something out of the new films and not fan-filmy. I really can’t wait for ROTJ to be the movie it was meant to be!
I’m really excited to see this scanned. I never got to see AOTC theatrically.
The Blu-ray probably does have more detail, but I’m interested to see what the colors look like on a real theatre print, as my project isn’t exactly to be a replica of a theatre print.
I really hope one day we get proper preservations of the theatrical cuts of all prequels sourced from theatre prints.
It just looks like to me you only did negative film stock emulation which is just a recreation of if it was shot on film, not projected on film.
If this were an authentic 35mm print recreation, wouldn’t you also want to emulate the look of a print such as Kodak 2283, which is the most frequently used print stock today?
