Well the colour I'm sensing too much of in everything with the current settings is blue or the wrong kind of blue. I can only suggest broad changes like this as I don't understand how the settings inter-relate overall (?)
Again this is based on no theoretical knowledge (someone please jump in if you can help) but I guess the colours that fade or get shaved off from fading prints or through generational/pixel loss are those colours that are the finest or most subtle, the sort of extra sparkle/lushness/brilliance that pushes an image over the top into becoming incredibly 'right' and lifelike. For this kind of thing ideally as soon as film print is made it should be scanned with the highest possible pixel resolution / color handling. Even the technicolor dye print must have some tiny degree of loss in it (if negligible). My point being is that pushing the colours that are there around will at some point reach a ceiling in one direction e.g. the flesh tone can't get anymore flesh tone. I'm guessing a person could introduce colour back in digitally - you would be repainting into the film. The trouble is I don't think this could ever be done with the subtlety of natural light on film (well they didn't manage it with Jabba in Special Edition I know that for certain)
This is not meant to be discouraging feedback at all , just when you get into the finer stages of this correction I reckon its going to get tougher!!!
Have you seen the colours on this page:
I know looking at loads of different sources can be confusing on the one hand but may narrow you in on the other. I guessing the last few corrections will have to done just by sense of what it would look a few steps on from one of the sources.
Its impressive what you have corrected in such a short time by the way and really shows up what little care was taken with the Gout release.
You could settle with what you've got so far but maybe you can dig out even more yet.
Hope you will post a clip also.
You_Too said:
frank678 said:
HOLY SMOKES !!! That looks really good!
Also the Leia frame looks just like the Legacy frame posted in this thread
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/StarWarsLegacy-com-The-Official-Thread/post/544995/
Keep up the good work!
Yeah, Mike's screenshots are the best reference we have so far.
There's a bit more red in his shot though, but when I tried to increase red in mine, other shots looked too red. So I'm still trying to find the best balance!
Have you looked at the outtake in the Star Wars Begins documentary at around the 10.54 mark, it matches that too more or less
damn - thats an impressive upgrade
HOLY SMOKES !!! That looks really good!
Also the Leia frame looks just like the Legacy frame posted in this thread
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/StarWarsLegacy-com-The-Official-Thread/post/544995/
Keep up the good work!
Here's how Tarkin looks in Lee Thorogood's Technicolor rendering, for comparison:
http://imageshack.us/f/543/vlcsnap2011121716h17m27.png/
I think you've brought him to life more with this adjustment, and he comes out different to Harmy's colouring as discussed in the despecialized thread, it seems this goes more in a reddish face direction than yellow (or grey)
I thought i'd write up my initial take on comparing Negative1's two recent Star Wars Pan&Scan Laserdiscs preservations which he kindly posted up the CED (FOX+CBS) and the Extended Play CLV PS 1130-80. I compared these with two done by Dark Jedi - Standard Play CAV and 5651-80, which Darth Mallwalker had posted.
All this has probably been catalogued and discussed with much better understanding but I thought I would post my quick take and hope people with the knowledge at their fingertips can correct me 100x quicker than me going through lots of threads.
The 5651-80 P&S laserdisc is from the same film print as used for the Japanese Special Collection[?]. My sense through looking at the Senator Theatre stills and cross-referencing it with outtake scenes from Empire of Dreams is that this master/print retains the most clear record/cluster of the colour structure of the original, that it hasn't been shifted away to the same degree as the other prints/masters. I don't have any understanding of colour theory or in which order/pattern colours fade or how color correction is done - this is just based on my sense of it.
The CED, and Standard and Extended Plays Laserdiscs seem to all be from the same print. This print seems to have the early stages of a green/yellow shift like the one which is much worse in
this picture of the man riding a horse:
https://www.familysearch.org/techtips/2011/12/editing-software-techniques-for-old-photographs
My sense is that if this green/yellow haze thats over this version could be reversed it would look better, and more comparable to the 5651-80/JSC. What makes me think one move might do this is that the Binary Sunset in the CED+S+EPLAYS matchs the binary sunset in the faded 8mm derann still on the savestarwars goutcorrect page, suggesting there was a similar fade happening in two distinct prints (?)
The Laserdiscs from 1993 + Gout all seem to be a different film print again but have been put through a blue filter, so that everything is darker. My sense is if the blue filter could be undone then it would be easier to compare next to the earlier laserdiscs?
It seems like the early laserdiscs then have no colour correction done but whats happened is purely the result of organic change? Maybe if someone could understand the order and pattern in which the film colours bleed they could reverse engineer back to an approximation of the Senator Print. This seems to be what zombie84, Harmy, You_Too, Lee Thorogood, are all doing by different methods but I wonder if one single colour correction could work on the earliest laserdiscs also.
Please jump in and set me straight on anything or everything i'm getting wrong. I haven't really done my homework or studied the differences in great detail , i'm hoping for any helpful pointers.
negative1 said:
hey people,
i'm uploading the files to another server,
so hopefully you won't have issues with
the ones i use. i'll let you know again
when they are ready.
later
-1
I got hit by a file size limit on these for some reason, but I was able to find a pass which let me get them. Files all good - all set for study ...
Toning down the green has definitely made it better. I think the light in ben's hut should be a touch more purple/or less blue somehow so the wall looks like its white but with the desert colours on it. It seems like boosting the colours too far can make it look like a technicolor film from the 1950s in places but this may be fixable. I realize only so much can be done on one setting without throwing out other scenes. So far though this has definitely brought the Gout to life
The green cast seems to match what happens to the desert blue light coming in the doorway at this point
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/9/vlcsnap2011121616h57m52.png/
As you can probably tell I have no idea how to post images but the above frame is from empire of dreams [also here:http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/13/vlcsnap2011121608h52m58.png/] - this is closer to whats in my head
edit: outside the hut the light and colours would be something like this:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/266/vlcsnap2011121615h59m46.png/
This is real tricky to get my head round but i might as well take a guess anyway.
Theyre in the desert in Tunsia and so theres this almost tropical light coming in from the window
with greens and purples which changes more to brown in the shade and corners of the room.
As the prints faded its lost some of the green and purples and looks more brown. In the Gout frame it doesnt look like theyre in Tunsia. In your corrected frame it does look like they're in Tunsia but now theres too much colour put back in. This is why all the outside shots look better in your rendering. But it needs to be more subtle now.
Well this is my guess. HELP!
2
My sense is the balance is somewhere between
1.
Huge improvement!
For me personally LeeThorogoods project needed further work as some of the colour levels ended up making some scenes look unreal to the point it took me out of the movie early on. It looked as though this was the result of it having one setting or not enough modulation of the settings.
This promises to be an improvement of that project if you are able to modulate further with what you already have. Which already looks impressive.
I like how the outdoor scenes/natural lit scenes look with these adjustments especially the Ben's hut frames. I'm hoping you will continue to use your skills and good eye for correction to see what else can be done to improve the Gout. I'm also hoping at a later date you might see if a washed-out Pan and Scan laserdisc can be improved on from what you do here with the Gout...
negative1, would you consider uploading a clip of the star wars transfer from this set, if there is not multiple demands for the whole upload ?
mverta said:
So, in the end, it's do-able. It's just an odyssey of work, research, and asset acquisition. Oh yeah, and a shit-ton of money. :)
While I am enthusiastic and impressed about the Legacy project (as much as is possible given its doubtful I could ever get to see it), I still think the human eye on its own, by calibrating itself with just what it sees in the real world, can arrive at an image which looks the most convincingly lifelike to it, relative to a given condition, and then transfer that to work within the range of a non-professional monitor.
I think too much talk of subjectivity and lack of Lucasfilm materials/technology could end bogging a project down - better to push on intuitively and see if what you produce is better than whats out there, which with this project seems to be the case.
The adjusted still looks less lifelike and flatter to my eyes, it seems Harmy might be nearer to correct imo
mverta said:
There is no one pristine Tech print out there that we know of; not even a rumored one. The print which showed up at the Senator Theater, for example, is about a C to C+ at best, having a lot of platter damage and a somewhat dodgy Reel 6, though people think that looks great. There are far better ones out there. And, if you were able to acquire multiple Tech prints of superior quality to the Senator, you could probably get about as close to definitive as is likely to be gotten...
_Mike
Mike, how can I acquire multiple Tech prints of superior quality to the Senator?
Interested to hear about this and how it looks via Betamax
thanks for the heads up :O)
Thanks for pointing me to this Darth Mallwalker - I finally got onto Usenet to get this 92 FS today.
I feel stupid for praising this pan and scan version but I think it manages to really retain the
life-like effect of a film print. And the colours although washed out, are still real-seeming.
I think I've got to watch some more widescreen versions on a bigger monitor, because I think I
must not be seeing the whole field of whats out there - But so far this is the preservation thats
really surprised me.
If negative1 posts his better pan and scan version in due course it will be good to get to compare them.