hairy_hen

Mike, every time I see a screenshot of your work, I immediately think that's exactly how it's supposed to look.  Though the only time I've ever seen it with (mostly) correct colour was the 1997 theatrical release, which I can hardly remember in terms of technical detail, the version I have in my head is just like what you've been able to accomplish.  It also looks very much like the photographs from last year's Technicolor screening, which are amazing.

That comparison really highlights just how crappy the revised version is, with its unnatural monotone blue shift, crushed blacks, and overly dark general appearance.  Imagine, SW actually looking like film and real lighting again!

I hope you'll keep posting many such images, both for their own sake and so others here can get a better idea of the film's "true" look for their own work.

By the way, do you have any plans for doing ESB and RotJ as well?  While presumably not in as dire need of restoration as the first movie, they also would surely benefit from your expertise.

For the sake of clarity, I think it would be important to identify how each later remix was derived, so its similarity or lack thereof to other versions can be easily traced.  For example, the 1993 mix of SW is simply a downmix of the 70mm version with additional sounds added on top, so its dialogue is identical, while the 1985 version is basically the same as the 35mm stereo except with the tractor beam line added.  The 1997 version comes from an original 4-track master with additional changes layered in, so most of its dialogue is again the same but with the tractor beam and blast door lines added.

The GOUT mixes are all from 1993, so they don't need to be in a separate category.

SW '04 and '11 are mostly the same remix except for a few tweaks, while ESB and RotJ are the same as each other in all three SE versions but with minor changes, so again their dialogue remains the same except where new dubs were added.

One other thing: while I can't state this with absolute certainty, I'm pretty sure that there were no 1985 remixes for ESB or RotJ.  With no content changes, and the total sound being so similar, I think the theatrical stereo tracks were used for all home releases up until 1993.

The 'and' is there all right.  It's just really quiet.  I only discerned it relatively recently myself.

Phasing?  I can't say I've noticed anything like that, but then I haven't had any formal training in this sort of thing, and my sound system probably doesn't really measure up to professional standards.  Do you mean something goes wrong briefly at specific points, or is it a more long lasting issue?

The only main channel edits I made to ESB were to insert a small segment of the 1980 stereo mix into the '93 to put back the missing snowspeeder crash sound, a splice from the '95 Faces audio when the Falcon attacks the Avenger to remove a high frequency glitch in the left channel, and a tiny segment of the GOUT audio to fix the weird music jump at the beginning of the carbon freeze scene.  The alternate version also uses the '97 mix for Boba Fett's departure from Bespin in order to include the unedited music cue as heard in the SE, but that's not on the disc you watched.  I made sure each of these edits was sample accurate and maintained the proper phase, so aside from a possible shift in imaging or EQ I can't think why there would be any issues, unless something about the upmix is making it sound less than ideal, or if the bass isn't quite synched perfectly.

I hope you enjoyed it apart from that, anyway.  ;)

Looks like there's less smearing, greater detail, and less black crush than before.  Great work!

To clarify, there are two ways that complete synch could be restored for RotJ: either the two frames at the end of the shot could be deleted from the video, or the audio could be extended to the proper length.  The latter choice would be more 'authentic', and it's probably easier for me to do it so that the whole projects don't have to be re-rendered.  I'd just need a fresh rip of the '93 laserdisc PCM for that section to fill it out.

Something crossed my mind recently about the in-theatre 70mm recording: if the surround channel wasn't running, then it stands to reason that they didn't have dedicated subwoofers installed, either.  Since SW was the first film ever mixed with separate LFE, it's safe to assume that most theatres when it first came out had not yet upgraded their equipment to play it back at its absolute best.  The boom tracks were intended to be played through channels 2 and 4, the ones in between the LCR fronts, and these may still have been ordinary speakers in some locations.  If that is the case, then the bass may not always have been as strong, since LFE is deliberately recorded at -10 db from the intended playback level to improve headroom, and compensated for at the amplification stage.  This 10 db boost at playback may not have been implemented if a particular theatre was not aware of the requirement, or if their equipment couldn't handle that high a level; in such a case the bass would probably come across more like it does in the '93 mix—definitely there, but not palpable in the same way.

I was thinking about this lately, because if the 70mm bass was really as loud as I think it was, then the recording may have ended up being much more clipped and distorted than it actually is in those parts.  The above conjecture, as well as acoustic concerns, could easily explain this discrepancy, and of course we should not forget that the recording is very old and probably didn't have good low frequency retention anyway.  Still, while I'm pretty sure I've estimated it correctly, sometimes I wonder if I might be mistaken.  Hmm . . .

Anyway, now to get back to working on the mix instead of just talking about it.  ;)

Well heck, as long as we're going back to 1977, we might as well just take the whole print with us.  ;)

About the bass . . . well, it seems to me that there are some places where the recording has low frequency hits that the '93 mix doesn't have, but the reverse is also true.  It's hard to tell since most of it is at a low level and not very clear anyway, but that's my impression.  There are spots where the SE's added bass that the original didn't have, too, but then they also left some out.  None of the remixes used the LFE channels from the 70mm, deriving it instead from a separate sound effects master, and each time they made different choices about when it should be placed and at what level.  I couldn't reproduce the original exactly even if I tried, so instead I'm still mostly just going to go with what sounds right to me.  But I think I'll remove a couple small things that probably don't belong, and add a few in that I didn't have before.

Thinking it over again, I've changed my mind: I guess I will remove those two effects.  All the 70mm changes I listed earlier are in the end battle, which is probably what they were most focused on making sound good in the time available, and as msycamore points out, the original surround effects often tend to be partially placed in the front as well (something Dolby refers to as a 2-4 punch, which can really fill out the room), while these are not.  The '93 mix added other effects that only occur in the surround, so actually it probably makes the most sense to assume that they were in this group, since so many other things were being put in at the same time.

If I do this alternate track I keep talking about, then they will of course be left in.  Some extra bass could find its way into that version, as well.

Samples of what I've improved over the last version?  I suppose that could be arranged.  Just have to think which parts would show it the most clearly.  ;)

About the other two films: well, there's not really anything about the current versions that I find lacking, so it's not strictly necessary.  However, I think I would like to do them as well, as the lossless LFE from the Blurays would be a worthwhile improvement, and perhaps the (few) edits could benefit from a little more work also.  Something I've noticed about the '93 mix for RotJ is that the music is sometimes at a significantly lower level than in the original stereo version, so it would be nice to splice in a few more sections of that to get it back to how it was.  Also, the current version is synched to the GOUT in NTSC, but the two most prominent preservation projects, Harmy's and dark_jedi's, are timed to the PAL version.  The NTSC is missing two frames compared to the PAL at the scene change from Dagobah to the rebel fleet, so on both projects there is a noticeable loss of synch at the point: from then on the audio is two frames in advance of the video, which is more objectionable than if it were a delay.  I would have pointed this out before, but unfortunately I'd forgotten about it.  So really this should be corrected.

As msycamore said, the most obvious addition is the screeching sound when the first Y-wing is destroyed by Vader in the trench.  This is not heard in the stereo or the '85, but it is a part of the 70mm version.  I used to think it was something added for the special edition, since I had never heard it before; then when the GOUT came out and I learned about the existence of the '93 mix I believed it to have been first added to that version.  But it's plainly there in the theatre recording, which really surprised me when I first heard it.

Interestingly, in the 70mm this sound is panned left, but in the '97 SE, mostly derived from the earlier generation four-track master which assuredly did not contain this sound effect, it seems to be on the right instead, since they had to add it separately and apparently chose to integrate it in a different way.

There is another addition when the TIE fighters first appear in the Death Star battle: the first X-wing to be destroyed has a different explosion sound than in the stereo mix.  Actually, when I say 'different' what I really mean is 'enhanced', because I think the original explosion is still there, but with a loud additional element layered on top of it.  There is also a short bit of the same screeching sound as the Y-wing example, too.  The '97 mix does not contain these additions and the explosion sounds the same as it does in the stereo mix; presumably they either couldn't find those elements or chose not to include them (or maybe they just forgot).

The third example is the explosion of Vader's wingman when Han arrives to save the day.  To me this really sounds like a newly created element, not just a different integration of the same sound effect as the stereo.  Again, in the '97 mix this specific explosion is absent and was remade completely differently.

Few in number though they are, these changes are enough to show that the 70mm version was not identical to the stereo mix, though they are very close.  So it is possible that the two surround effects I mention could also have been added along with them, after the stereo had already been finished.  The '97 mix does have the echo in the canyon, but not the hyperspace effect.  Some of the '93 additions made it into the SE while others are not heard in any other version, so it's just impossible to say with any real certainty.  No two mixes have ever been entirely alike in terms of what is included or isn't, and with the surrounds absent in the recording it can't be traced quite as accurately as I'd like.  Oh well.

The finale of Doctor Who didn't quite win the prize for 'worst thing I've ever seen', but it sure as hell made the list of contenders.

Really?  The time-constant of the universe can be fooled just by shrinking yourself and dressing up in a mechanical suit?  How the crap does that make any sense at all?  Never mind the fact that there was actually a duplicate of the Doctor earlier in the year who they could have had take his place!  But silly me, what do I know, why bother to have things fit together logically when you can just string along a bunch of incoherent nonsense to make people think you're a clever writer!

And seriously, River Song.  You suck.  You're a useless piece of trash so convinced of your own importance you can't see that there's not a single redeeming quality anywhere in your entire character.  Willing to destroy the entire universe just because you wuv the Doctor so so much?  Fuck you, you stupid pathetic piece of shit!  That 'wedding' scene made me feel ill just watching it, and if I could create cracks in the universe myself I'd make sure she was the first thing that went in, so she'd never exist.

Hell, I'm actually glad they're taking time off from the show, because maybe this way when it comes back they'll be able to come up with something that doesn't make me want to kick them in the nuts.  It's even more of a shame since, unlike last year, the middle episodes of this series were actually pretty good.

Good grief, what a bunch of bollocks.

me: "Remember that time he completely missed the point of everything anybody ever tried to say about anything?"

. . .

. . .

everyone else: "Could you be more specific?"

Took a bit of a break to rest my ears, but now I'm back at it.

I did listen to those raw recordings, and the surrounds can't be heard there either.  But I think those are what Belbucus used to make the 70mm/1993 comparison track, so it's not surprising.  Separating the comparison channels and playing them back individually, it seems quite clear that the theatre where the recording was made did not have an operational surround channel.  The front channel portions of the '93 mix when folded down to mono seem to match up exactly with the recording, in the levels of certain surround effects that were also partially panned to the front, which really confirms my suspicion.

So while I still can't make any conclusions about the authenticity of those sounds, I'm leaning towards leaving them in simply because I can't prove that they don't belong there.  There are a few places where the 70mm definitely added sounds that weren't in the stereo mix, so it's not unreasonable to think that these may be in the same category.  With so many variations and sources used for later remixes, their presence or absence in those says nothing concrete about this version specifically.

Been going through the theatre recording with everything except the low frequencies muted, and while the bass is often indistinct and not of good quality, it does seem pretty similar to how they mixed it in 1993 for the most part, though not exact.  I'll probably keep the LFE channel mostly the same as before, but I may change a few things based on what I'm hearing.

It was pointed out earlier that there is a problem with the lightsabres in this version, and I have to agree.  In the cave scene they look fantastic, but in every shot of the Bespin duel it's clear there's something wrong going on.  The blades often seem to have a huge 'halo' or something around them, which neither the original nor the SE ever had.  Sometimes the edges of the blades are too sharply defined as well, and the colours are not correct: Luke's is pushing almost into purple territory at times, and Vader's borders on orange.  The sabres on Bespin in adywan's theatrical version do not have these issues; most of the time he got them exactly the right shade and brightened up the dull cores while still keeping them looking the way they are supposed to.

This is really the only significant flaw I can spot in the whole thing—everything else about it is extremely well done.  In particular, the colour timing for most of the movie is so good that I wouldn't hesitate in saying you got it exactly right.  A couple shots on Hoth still revert to having a bluer look than I think they should, and are inconsistent with the surrounding footage, but most of the time it seems spot on.  It's nice seeing Hoth as a shade of dark blue with low saturation, rather than that ugly aqua look that the '04 version plastered over everything.

You should be very, very proud of the work you've done here.  If the problems with the sabres could be fixed for the next version, it would be practically perfect.  :)

I tend to think the laser blasts were re-comped in '04.  The look of the inner cores often seems distinctly different to the way they are in the original, but of course it's hard to say for sure.

If they were, might it explain why they usually stayed a proper red while the flash frames were all turned pink or purple by the screwed up colours?  From the opposite angle, it could also explain why some of them ended up completely desaturated in other scenes . . .

One thing to keep in mind is that some of those old video transfers have a pretty hefty green push, so that's going to affect how the blade shows up.

I guess the stench must have put him off . . .

Maybe the rest of ESB is just Luke stuck in Tauntaun limbo.  That would explain why it's Teh Suxxor.

I fail to see how Star Wars never existing is better than its original form being awesome.

freviouslogic = FAIL

I once had a dream that I had to save my best friend by putting him inside a Tauntaun.  After that I climbed in after him and we watched Inception.

I don't understand why this wasn't in ESB.

There will be no difference from the stereo version and the '93 mix, because I did not alter that part of the track in any way.  It is completely impossible for any part of the SE mix to have ended up in the main channels, because the main channels of the SE were not used at all.  Phase-cancelling isn't really going to work completely either, for several reasons: one, the upmix likely altered the phase relationships of some parts of the sound; two, different lossy encodes cannot be completely recombined in this manner because different parts of the total sound have been discarded or retained; three, the 5.1 track is a few milliseconds delayed compared to the stereo version; and most importantly four: the stereo tracks on the disc probably have DialNorm applied, which reduces the total volume of the audio, while the 5.1 version does not, and therefore comes across at exactly the same level as the source laserdisc track.  It is simply louder by a consistent amount, which I know very well can cause a lot of confusion about what sounds better or worse.

There does seem to be something a little bit different, but nothing about it sounds wrong to me, and I believe that the above reasons (which are out of my control) should explain any discrepancy.  The only other thing would be if something went drastically wrong with the AC3 encode and upper harmonics of the bass somehow ended up in the main channels or something, but I highly doubt this is the case.  I don't know if that's even possible, actually.  If it did, I should think the result would be a lot more distorted.

Satanika, I'd be grateful for any help you could provide with the flyby.  At this point I'm pretty sceptical that what I've been trying to do can actually work, but I've been wrong before.  I ended up deleting my prior attempts, but I'll send over the source files and we'll discuss it.

Made some more progress last night, so now I only have the beginning section of the movie to work on before moving to the LFE channel, though I may do a bit more tweaking to the quad laser battle.  I've again been able to retain more dynamic range from the '93 mix by keeping the replacement sections shorter, and I've also been more conscientious about the exact synch and phase than before.  The improvements tend to be subtle, but I'm pleased with them.  Still haven't decided what I'm going to do about those two surround effects, though, because I can think of convincing reasons both for keeping and discarding them.  Anyone else want to weigh in on those?  To restate, it's the echo when the Jawas blast R2 in the canyon and the 'slipstream' or whatever when the Millennium Falcon is in hyperspace just before arriving at Alderaan, and I can't decide whether to think they were '93 additions or part of the original mix.

Since you were the one to do it, we ran our quill pens through it.

Jeez, do we need to hold up a big sign that says "JOKE" or what?

I think I will probably not include 'close the blast doors' in an alternate track.  Since it would not be a strict preservation but rather a composite of the parts I like best about various versions, it wouldn't make much sense to put in something that would annoy me when I watched it myself.  ;)

Some of the other dialogue changes are interesting, but the alternate stormtrooper dubbing sounds nothing like the rest of them, and I don't care for those at all.  The tractor beam line doesn't bug me because I grew up with the '85 version.

What the mono version improves over the others are the sound effects and a more polished sense of continuity.  As an example, the fact that the comm system starts beeping almost immediately when Luke, Han and Chewie are blasting out the security cameras in the detention block—if you listen closely you can hear that it is there during almost the entire firefight, while in the others it doesn't start until after the shooting has stopped.  They also moved the stormtrooper line "How long have you had these droids?" about a second earlier, giving the impression that Luke has to think for a moment before replying; in the others the lines are much closer together.  Little things like that show how much effort they put into that version, but unfortunately most of those nuances would be very difficult to replicate given what I'm working with.  I would simply try to include some of the more obvious sound effects but leave the rest of it the same as the 70mm.

Haven't made as much progress as I'd have liked the past two days, because I've been trying without any success to make the opening flyby work as I wanted it to.  Unfortunately, it seems impossible to remove the added sounds while retaining the proper dynamics.  The EQ of the two sources is just too different to get them to blend, and the switch is instantly obvious no matter what I do.  So it looks like I'll probably have to do it the same way I did before, which is to use the less dynamic track for the whole thing.  Someone like Belbucus might be able to pull it off, but I'm not nearly that skilled.  Although, maybe I should try to get in touch with him before giving up on it completely . . .

@TServo2049: I'm honestly not hearing the echo you speak of during the Death Star explosion.  I didn't do anything to that part other than add bass from the 1997 mix, which is in its own separate channel and should not interfere with the mains.  If there is something there I'm not noticing, it's either in the source track or is some kind of artefact from the upmixing.  But I'm just confused about what you mean by this, because it doesn't seem to be showing up on my end.

The Bluray sound mix has only a few minor changes from the DVD version.  Everything else about it is exactly the same messed up, distorted pile of garbage that it was before.  If you think this sounds good, you need to have your hearing checked at the very least.

Well, aside from raving and sputtering inarticulately about how abysmally asinine and excrementally foolish Lucas has become, the only other thing I can really say is thank friggin' Zombie Jebus for what Mike Verta is doing right now.

He and those private owners who have apparently provided materials to him for restoration work give hope that the thing will live on even if all other avenues fail.  To hell with copyright, I think it's clear that private restoration is a moral imperative at this point.

If I end up making an alternate version, most of the loud in-your-face '93 additions will still be taken out, but the ones that don't stand out so much will be left in.  Certainly all the ones that came from the mono mix would be retained.  This will also allow greater retention of dynamic range by not having to substitute sources except where absolutely necessary.

But whether I do a track like that will depend on whether I can obtain recordings of individual sound effects from the mono mix.  I'd really like to put in the deceleration effect when the Falcon comes out of lightspeed and the whining machinery sound when caught in the tractor beam, as well as some other things, but I don't know if there are good sources for them.  Does the Sounds of Star Wars book have those effects?  I can't take them from the SE's because they're mixed in with other sounds.  I'd probably use the '85 mix to put in 3PO's tractor beam line as well, but I'm in two minds about closing the blast doors: I know many people like this line, but I myself don't care for it.  I first heard it in the SE and have a hard time accepting it as 'genuine', even though I know it is; plus it just seems unnecessary.  Have to think about that some more.

That music echo in the '77 stereo is rather strange, although it does have an interesting effect.  I guess it's an early use of the surround channel in Dolby Stereo, but perhaps one reason they made the '85 mix was to tone down this element.  Since it's delayed compared to the front channels, I don't think it would affect the imaging much, but I'm not sure.

I now have the lossless LFE from the Bluray, so I'll probably be using that where I can, but since most of my 70mm bass comes from the '97 mix, for which we only have a lossy source, it will only affect a relatively small portion of it.  But I think I will use the lossless bass for the other two movies also, and for them I can most likely use the whole thing.  Well, almost: it turns out that the volume of the Bluray tracks is pumped up so high that the loudest bass is actually clipped, which is completely ridiculous, so the lossy versions would still have to be used for those parts.  Incidentally, while I don't have the entire 2011 mix for ANH, just from looking at the LFE channel I can immediately tell that the vast majority of the movie sounds exactly the same as the 2004 version—there are only a couple minor differences, which is exactly what I'd predicted.  So the Bluray is still the same messed up pile of crap as the dvd for the most part.

For anyone who's interested, take a listen to the '93 mix when R2 gets blasted by the Jawas, and listen to the rear-channel echo just after this.  Now listen to the '85 and '77 stereo mixes: hey, that sound's not there!  It isn't in the mono mix either, but it is in the SE's.  Is it a '93 addition, or was it part of the 70mm version?  I can't decide.  The in-theatre 70mm recording doesn't seem to have it, at least not the one I have, but then that recording doesn't seem to have any of the surround effects at all, so that tells me nothing; also, the mono version completely omits everything that was in the surround channel of the others anyway, so again that's inconclusive.  There's another sound like that during the shot of the Millennium Falcon in hyperspace, a sort of 'backdraft' or something in the surround, which is only heard in the '93 and no other.  Again, I have no idea whether it was a part of the 70mm version or not.  What to do, what to do . . .

The desaturated laser bolts are all over place.  I noticed many of them when I was making colour correction notes for Harmy's version.  In addition to the ones in the opening flyby and the remote, many shots in the Death Star battle are also affected.  In one shot they will look great and then a moment later they have no color at all, or only a little bit, it's ridiculous.  There is also a weird thing going on in a couple places where they have a nasty blue edge, so that instead of appearing to be green blasts with a yellow core, they are blue with a green core.  Looks pretty horrific when you consider that in the original version all the laser blasts were consistently coloured and fully saturated.

As for crushed blacks, there's no way the film was ever supposed to look like that.  It's true that the old video transfers were blown out and had little contrast, but the movie's 'true' look was very natural, not filled with darkness that obscures all the shadow detail.