frank678

This looks great. Is this from an original trailer/(s) or was it recreated from reels?

I forget, did you determine whether the light trails you see following the ships in space and following some of the motion was already present on the tape or was only in the transfer. I wonder if its on the tape whether theres a way to reduce it to a degree through post processing, when the time comes

AntcuFaalb said:

frank678 said:

Another forthcoming new release. good stuff.

PS78 might get in the way :-)

Let it! The PS78 is a one of a kind thing. Its still pretty remarkable to me that in places this vhs bootleg tape has held onto more of the original colours than several subsequent official releases. it's a crazy state of affairs.

Another forthcoming new release. good stuff.

the fine quality of this makes me kind of sad = why can't the movies look this good , or why can't the movies look even half this good?

outstanding effort and work on this project. thanks for sharing :O)

Asaki said:

frank678 said:

It does look better and not just because of the improved sharpness of the new frames. Looking at those shots of R2D2 the corrected version seems 'quicker' to appear real. As if when its incorrect the brain has to do an additional milli-second adjustment to interpret the image.

Because it's running without the NTSC pulldown ;) And possibly at the wrong framerate, too?

Oh, or maybe you're talking about the screen captures, nevermind.

You'll have to bring me up to speed on the NTSC pulldown/framerate differences between the new clips and previous version. I was looking out for improvement via aspect ratio adjustment and did'nt want to mistakenly attribute that to the mild sharpening that had been applied to the new clips. Correction for fluffy anaylsis is welcome!

TServo2049 said:

Remember, these movies were meant to be seen on a big cinema screen. You *would* be focusing on certain parts of the image. It doesn't justify pan and scan, but I get what you're saying.

Pan and scan is almost comparable to someone redirecting your film. It was'nt composed for 4:3 but I'm going to make a smaller film inside your film. On average it just doesnt work - although mathmatically you are still getting about 50% of a great film.

I agree widescreen seems to be much more powerful when it gets past a certain threshold (i.e. past the size of a laptop or small tv screen) so it feels like it fills up your whole line of vision and merges with natural perspective so the fourth wall disappears. I'm not sure I trust the vlc fit to screen function always works precisely sometimes if the start ratio is correct it seems more correct to just increase size by a percentage - and it either fits your screen or doesn't.

It does look better and not just because of the improved sharpness of the new frames. Looking at those shots of R2D2 the corrected version seems 'quicker' to appear real. As if when its incorrect the brain has to do an additional milli-second adjustment to interpret the image. This is much easier to see (as it is with the colour stuff) with comparison shots. The thing that strikes me about star wars without having really studied it is often the frame stays still (the camera stays still) and the action moves through it. A stable frame size can only help the illusion that you are looking through a window and then make that window invisible. This stuff is all pretty much on a subliminal level for me. I can only really see it when its correct (i.e. using before and after).

Since reading the linked thread below, my theory is widescreen accords more with what your vision does when it takes in a landscape and then within that frame you can focus in

Whereas 4:3 accords more with what your vision does when it just focuses in on stuff

This is why intimate conversations maybe don't always seem that intimate in widescreen. maybe.

So although Star Wars is composed for widescreen and pan and scan is a corruption of the artistry of the original, we would probably be focusing in to small frames when scanning the widescreen image - its just it feels more natural when we do it than when the frame is imposed from the outside somehow - we can instincively feel whats missing - even when we dont know a widescreen version exists.

http://mubi.com/topics/why-is-it-that-the-best-looking-films-were-shot-in-1331?page=1

TServo2049 said:

Isn't the TPM VHS copy-protected? You need to find a way to bypass that if you want to test the machine with that tape.

is there no end to the disappointment and frustration that film can cause?

does the motion in this new clip seem a tad jerky? for example in the first clip when han moves his arm down from the wall it seems much more of a fluid movement. I dont really trust my perception this could be imagination

I never would have spotted this, has it had a noticable effect on the compositional flow of the sequences now you watch it over again or is it more a semi-conscious thing?

Thanks TServo2049, I am glad there is someone willing to post reasoned information to counter my often wild misinformation. This idea of colour timing for standard tv sets makes sense to me now I think back to when my Dad brought home a bootleg of Return of the Jedi for one night only kids and it was a little bit of a let down because it was so dark. (except if probably wasnt that dark at all - it was dark relative to what we were used to seeing)

So would the ITV version look too dark on the old tv sets would you think?

I realize I have moved this thread quite far off topic, I apologize and will rein in future off topic posts

yep raised on pal speed, i thought i was finally used to the correct speed having watched the Technidisc but I think also watching the time compressed 82 laserdisc has completely screwed up my perception of the correct speed forever - best i pay more attention to the soundtrack from now

Putting aside the colour stuff for now - it seems like the audio is a little slow - the pace seems more right when I increase it by 3% via vlc. This is on release v0.0.

?

Hey thanks again! I wasnt sure if people would want to do this. Well the ITV version is the clear challenger here for me. Its got that slight grey-brown-greenness over it but otherwise its as good (maybe that 'burnished' thing undercuts the lifelikeness a bit=but not much). 1982 and 1987: too pink. I expected more of the UK 1982 tape it looked a bit pink in the frames you posted in your Pan and Scan thread but I thought the first tape wouldnt have looked so washed out right out the gate (compared to say Empire).

Do you know anything about the Krieg der Sterne Vhs - if its the same or not?

I wanted to check with you or anyone else in the know this version corresponds more or less with the version on the 2006 bonus dvd a.k.a. GOUT?

Brooks said:

I agree Frank, I wish the color on the tapes were more vibrant like the actual film. I'm not sure how I could fix that without giving everything a blue'ish tint? Also, that would be more true to the original but not to this version of the tape. I remember back in the 90's when they released a blue tie fighter for the action figures it was strange to me because I always thought of them as white or gray (after all that's what the toys were when I was a kid in the vintage days).

To be fair that PS78 still must have too much of a blue and green tint overlaying it (as it seems to have it over the whole second half of the film). The Technicolor screening video clips are better at showing the subtle levels of it. I don't know how to fix unless as you say you put a tint on it which I agree is not really faithful but also undercuts that versions integrity. It is mostly grey anyway - it seems better to work with the grain than against. I was always used to these scenes being as they are in this as a kid and it didnt bother me in the least - it was the end battle who cares about historically accurate colour fidelity when you are five! Simpler days!

the tie fighters are grey in star wars at least

blast you negative1 and your trump cards! :O)

what about this frame:

some previous runner-ups: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Calling-all-Color-Correctors-Can-this-source-yield-a-different-set-of-results-to-Gout/post/561945/#TopicPost561945

russs15= if you want to throw up some early PALs/the ITV tape against this one I reckon it will take on all comers!

grisan= 1982 german Laserdisc bring it on!

i'm not messing about on this one - this is a still throwdown!!

*Terms and conditions apply: I B Technicolor screening is excluded :O)

What stops me from fully liking this version of the film anymore is I've learnt the Death Star had subtle tints of 'space blue' that faded away ending up leaving it to look too monotone - grey model on grey model

but back in 1978...

Brilliant work. You've tamed the reds nicely, I think I'm seeing a slightly eased off contrast improving space in stuff like the Han cutaway shots against the cantina wall, but most off all you've somehow got such a nice texture going on, it almost borders on filmic (its really hard to see any clue of tape distortion in places, like this shot, which I think shows off what youre doing with this stuff:

finesse tweaking to get that from vhs i think

Asaki said:

frank678 said:

...its like someone spilled pink blamanche over the mona lisa.

But even the Mona Lisa isn't the same colors it originally was: http://www.lumiere-technology.com/Pages/News/news3.htm

Holy S***! All my cultural touchstones are turning out to be incredibly flawed! We need Lumiere Technology working on the Blu Ray this minute

AntcuFaalb said:

 

That's Release v1.1 ;-) Here's what I plan to do:

Release v1.0: Median2() of the five captures, but otherwise unaltered (w/ any of the five captures available upon request).

Release v1.1: Resized v1.0 with gentle filtering; e.g., cropping and possibly some brightness/contrast, HSV, and levels tweaking if the general consensus of the people here is that it's needed.

This entire process will be very transparent and community-led. I may have the PS78 VHS, but it's really our responsibility to preserve the magic it contains.

As you know, an ad hoc committee is forming in #OriginalTrilogy. Is anyone against making this a bit more formal for PS78?

I'd say keep an unfiltered release in reserve in case you later want to scale back any changes you made (i.e. do the opposite of George Lucas). Also i'm guessing if you capture the best spread of information at the capture stage the less you will need to do after, which it sounds like you are planning to do in earnest. I'd be wary of making this project too formal that it becomes a chore for you - i'd say the only responsibility on this is don't chew up the tape - and getting all that original colour goodness out would be a bonus

TServo2049 said:

Also, a word about aspect ratio correction - as I said before, this is a raw telecine of an anamorphic print with no aspect ratio correction, so it is both squeezed by 50% (approx. 1.20:1) and cropped by the telecine operator to fit the 1.33:1 aspect ratio of the video realm. Thus, the image needs to be horizontally stretched 2x, to an aspect ratio of approx. 2.66:1. Unfortunately, VLC doesn't have such an option.

When you do finish v1.0, could you do an alternative 2x stretched version as well? It would have to be horizontally stretched to 1440x480 to preserve the full vertical resolution.

Have you experimented with "force aspect ratio" you enter in a value 266:100 in video preferences and save, and it plays it like that on restart. This is how it looks doing that.

However, if thats not right another thing that might work is use an aspect ratio calculator counting the number of pixels and try to find the correct force aspect ratio numbers to output that number of pixels.

Here are a second settings for playing the PS78 taking TServo2049s advice to shift the hue,

contrast 0.85, b 0.94, h 351, s 0.98, g 1.22

Using the above and setting the aspect ratio to get to widescreen and fitting to screen I believe this is the most consistently accurate colour version of the original star wars available to watch on the internet.