hairy_hen

That's true; it's definitely not as dynamically extreme as a lot of modern mixes.  The peak volume reaches really high at times but the average level is not absurdly low; you can set it at a decent level to hear the dialogue without having to turn down the action scenes.  If you have it cranked up to the point of being completely deafened by the action, then chances are people's voices are bordering on uncomfortably loud as well.

Part of this is because neither analogue Dolby SR encoding nor any of the present day digital formats yet existed, and so mixers at that time were not in the habit of using routinely and purposely using such enormous contrasts.  Even in SW's 70mm mix, which has a far broader and more satisfying dynamic range than any other version of the movie, a certain degree of general restraint is applied for the sake of the total balance.  There are some really powerful room-filling rear channel effects at times, such as the sound of Ben's lightsabre in the cantina scene and his earlier krayt dragon call, and often the high frequency response of spaceship engines can be very strong (although I do wonder if mixing for the X-curve in cinemas may have influenced this, since the highs decay much more in a large room than they do in a small home environment, but the EQ of the mix was largely unchanged for the 1993 laserdiscs).  But the concept of proper dynamic range is not simply a measure of how extreme the loudest and quietest moments are--it's also about how you use all the intermediate volume levels and what is appropriate where.  This is something they did exceptionally well back then, but like so many things it's easy to get it wrong.

I can't actually test the lossless versions, because I don't have them available.  I mixed in just three channels using the stereo tracks and the LFE, and then sent these to Satanika to be turned into 5.1 format.  He did upload the six-track wavs to usenet, but I haven't tried to download them since my access to it hasn't been good and I can't play multichannel PCM on my current equipment.  I'd be surprised if they actually sounded any different from the AC3 aside from the increased fidelity, but I can't say for sure myself.

Off-topic, but I'm still all verklempt after seeing the last Harry Potter movie.  Wow . . .

Thanks to everyone who's commented on their enjoyment of the mixes!  I'm really glad that they add positively to the film experience and that they sound as though they could be the real thing.  My goal was simultaneously to be as authentic as possible and also to create the best-sounding versions I could, and it's great to hear that my estimation of them has proven successful.

As to differences in volume level, I quite honestly have no idea why they would be perceived that way.  Aside from the addition of bass and the bits that had to be replaced using the '77 stereo mix, the vast majority of it is still just the 1993 version, which was made primarily as a direct downmix from the original 70mm printmaster and should be pretty much identical.  I avoided the use of DialNorm and dynamic range compression so that the overall volume would remain identical to the PCM tracks on the laserdiscs.  The LFE channel of course adds considerably to the loudness when present, and the replaced sections are unavoidably less dynamic than the original would have been, but on the whole it's about the same.  Different equipment may handling different formats in ways I don't know about, or individual perceptions may be colouring the results.

Do the DTS-HD MA encodes contain DialNorm, by any chance?  It is a part of the specification, unlike earlier versions of DTS, but I was under the impression that the option was turned off by default.  If it has been enabled, it may explain why they seem to be less loud than the AC3 tracks, but adjustment of the receiver volume would compensate for any discrepancy during playback.

Most of the feedback has been on SW, which is of course understandable since it's the most strictly authentic of the mixes I made, and the film that gets the most attention in general.  But I'm quite interested to hear any impressions of the mixes for ESB and RotJ, as well.  ;)

<devil's advocate>

The thing that cracks me up here is that if the forum rules about no personal attacks were being followed strictly, just about everyone who's ever commented in this thread would have to be banned for their remarks against kenkraly.  But then, there would only be about three people left on the whole forum after that, and the discussions would get really boring, so I can see why it hasn't been done.  :p

</devil's advocate>

A bit late, but I wanted to jump in and say a couple things about mono:

First off, the folks at Dolby and others in the film industry all agree that the centre channel of any audio setup is ideally supposed to be exactly the same type of speaker as the rest of the audio system.  If you have stereo towers for the left and right, then the centre speaker should be a tower of the same kind.  Of course it is recognised that this is not always possible, particularly in home environments, so making compromises for the space of a particular room has become common practise.  But even so, for best results the speaker must be of similar tonal quality and power handling, so that there is no disparity of voicing anywhere in the front soundstage.  Since the centre channel handles the majority of sound in any film mix, including the all-important dialogue, it would make no sense whatsoever to do anything else.  Any system in which the centre speaker is markedly inferior to the left and right speakers is not worthy to be playing film soundtracks.

Second, it is generally agreed among audio professionals that mono film tracks are meant to played from the centre speaker only, and as a listener I agree with this.  It is for the same reason the dialogue is nearly always centrally located even in multichannel mixes.  Doing so firmly anchors the sound to the screen, and allows it to emanate directly from the speaker to the listener without interference.  (There is certainly a case to be made for dialogue panning in multichannel mixes to reflect the position of characters onscreen--Pixar films notably often do this, and apparently it was a common practise in older 70mm films--but it is ideally restricted to specific artistic purposes only.)  In mono mixes, everything is centrally located, and it stands to reason that it should be heard as such.  Playing mono tracks from the left and right speakers creates a 'phantom centre' effect, and while this is effective enough if the listener is positioned in the right place, moving very far in either direction will cause the imaging to collapse to that side, which spoils the illusion that the sound is coming from the screen.  Worse, with identical sounds being emitted from multiple locations, they will interact with each other in unpredictable ways according to the acoustic properties of the room, nearly always resulting in phase cancellation and smearing, and in general causing a disembodied effect that is usually considered undesirable.

Done properly, signal processing can create interesting effects through phase tricks to more effectively wrap the audio around the room even in mono, which some listeners may find pleasing, so there is a place for it.  But regardless, the majority of the track should still be coming from the centre speaker.

Dual mono encoding is unnecessary, and is probably done mainly to accommodate those with analogue stereo setups.  Using Prologic II or a similar algorithm will cause a dual mono track to be diverted to the centre speaker instead of the left and right.  Depending on the receiver, a track encoded as true mono will go to the centre if put into 'direct' mode.  It is helpful if the receiver is able to remember to switch formats with each type of incoming signal.

It is entirely understandable that some may not wish to listen to mono mixes, because 5.1 sound can be very appealing and going back to flat-sounding older mixes may leave a sense of disappointment.  The Academy mono optical format was a pretty low fidelity system, with a very limited frequency response and a tonal characteristic that often comes across as harsh and biting, especially with music.  As far as I'm concerned, the advent of Dolby Noise Reduction was one of the best things that ever happened to the world of film audio.  However, I do have major problems with many modern remixes, because they take broad liberties with the source material that do not reflect the original mixers' artistic choices at all, and there is definitely something to be said for hearing a film exactly as it was when it was released.  Also, a lot of old films don't warrant being remixed in the first place, because there is no real improvement or benefit to doing so, either for technical or artistic reasons; in other cases a remix may be more acceptable in order to improve the sound quality and so forth, but only if no changes to content are made and the general balance remains faithful to the original version.  Sadly, this happens far too infrequently.

Although I appreciate the Beatles, I've never been a particular fan, so I can't comment on their music with any real authority.  But I have heard some of their stuff in both stereo and mono versions, and without fail the mono mixes were superior in every case.  The stereo versions were missing many background instrument tracks, and the hard panning of elements to one side or the other was a very gimmicky and unsatisfying mixing choice.  There was no proper stereo imaging at all.  Even from eliminating this absurd panning alone the mono versions already sound better, and the much better mixing and artistic choices in general make them the versions any Beatles fan should want.  Any concern about whether to play from a centre speaker, dual mono, or any other mode becomes almost irrelevant compared to just having the properly mixed version of the music in this case.  ;)

I'm still too far gone at the notion of Frink not wanting a thread to go off topic to be able to take any of it seriously.  Call me back in a few days when I've stopped laughing so hard.  :p

I love the dresses, the music, the cars, the pretty much innocuous federal government.....I could on and on about how much I love this era.

Hey, you know what I love about the 50's?  The fact that racism was still socially acceptable, and even expected!  All the hoopla about commies and nuclear war sure made it a blast, too!  What's life without paranoia and constant fear, anyway?

That continuous draft that ran for years so you could be sent off to die in places like Korea wasn't half bad, either . . . and how dare women think they can be anything but good little housewives like in the good old days?

But I will say that Grace Kelly was one of the most beautiful women who ever lived.

It is very strange how the GOUT can look like such rubbish in many places but then in others actually manages to look pretty acceptable.

The reason the Blu shots look superior to the v3 dvd is because of the superior resizing up to HD resolution.  Although it has to be said that its further colour tweaking provides a definite improvement as well.

The default audio is the 5.1 in lossless DTS, but they are also there in standard Dolby AC3 format, so you should be all set.  That's in addition to all the stereo tracks, in case you prefer those.

The Sarlaac scene looks very good.  The only issue I could spot was that the pit itself was visibly unstable in the shot of Luke standing above it when the camera is looking directly downward.  Other than that, fantastic.  ;)

I've been away on a much-needed vacation, so I haven't had a chance to check out the final version yet.  Sorry I wasn't able to get you those Greedo subtitles in a timely manner; but it looks like you did a good job with them.  I'm glad my notes on the colour correction were helpful.

I can only play any kind of HD files on my laptop at this point, so I'll have to wait for the dvd before I can watch it completely, but I'll look for the high-def version anyway since it would a shame not to have it around for whenever I do manage to upgrade.  Based on what I saw from the workprint, I am sure it is going to be fantastic in any resolution, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Thanks for the props on the 70mm mix, as well--I'm always glad to hear that it's being enjoyed.  ;)

Sorry for causing some holdup with this, but life can be pretty stupid sometimes.  I know Harmy's been waiting for me to do the rest of my notes on the colour for SW, and here they are, finally.

The tone of the list becomes notably snarkier as it gets to the end, because by then I was becoming very annoyed at the idiotic incompetence of the colour work done by LFL in 2004, especially during the Battle of Yavin.  ;)

28'15: rocks beside R2 are showing up pinkish

Throughout the 'Obi-wan' conversation, rocky backgrounds change colour with the camera angle; in shots of Luke they are nearly white.  In the original they are more consistent (though the general fade and red-shift may influence this).

30'13: this shot is very desaturated.  Ben's robe is nearly black instead of brown, and R2 looks nearly black and white where in the original his blue panels show up clearly.  Many shots throughout this scene appear desaturated, but this one in particular.

Imperial conference: skin tones seem too pink.  Closeups of Vader a bit too blue?

43'29, 43'34, 43'40: a light to the left of Luke is a nasty magenta.  In the original it was normal red.  This light also shows up in the background at 44'45, still pink.

46'43: to the right of frame, pink lights on the back wall are supposed to be red.

Colours in the Greedo scene are odd.  In addition to the scene being too dark in general, Greedo seems strangely blue-shifted.

48'19: This shot of the Death Star had a stronger blue tint in the original version, as did the subsequent shots of its interior.

48'52: Evidence of the SE floating probe can still be seen, because the ground changes colour where its shadow would have been.

Pink flashes and explosions when the stormtroopers shoot at Han in the docking bay.

During the Falcon's escape from Tatooine, shots with the camera behind the characters appear almost black and white, but the shots with the characters facing the camera are fine.

54'24: Obviously giving Luke a blue saber is a vast improvement to this shot, but it seems a little bit oversaturated and the hue a little too dark.

57'02: The remote's laser blast is completely white instead of orange.  (in the shot of it actually hitting Luke it is the right colour again)

58'20: Han's shirt seems to have a fairly strong green cast in this shot.  Occasionally in a few later shots too, but not as much.

Pink flash frames and explosions/reflections during laser battles in the cell bay.

The red lighting in the trash compactor has a pink tint throughout the scene.  It is particularly noticeable in the actual lights above Chewbacca at 1:15'22, for example.

1:16'35: The blues seem too green-shifted in this shot; however, this could be a subjective bias on my part.

1"20'02: pink explosion flash

1'21'28: pink laser impact on stormtrooper and reflection on wall

Pink flash frames and explosions/reflections throughout subsequent laser battles.

Lightsaber duel is problematic because too much blue has been removed from the background (compare to Technicolor shots).  Blades themselves are usually pretty good, sometimes slightly too purple or pink.  Ben's cloak continually changes from brown to dark grey.

1:26'09, 1:26'19: weird blue glow around light in right of frame

More pink flashes in laser fight.  Particularly evident on stormtrooper at 1:26'24.

1:28'24: This shot looks pretty red-shifted.

1:28'25: A bit hard to see since it goes by quickly, but the TIE fighter Han is firing at has a really strong green colour.

The Millennium Falcon's engine glow is often plain white and missing its blue edge from the original.  This is probably a flaw of the SE re-composites, however.

1:32'44: The 3D model of the Death Star was blue in the original, not white.

1:32'52: This shot looks weirdly desaturated (compare to Technicolor photograph)

During the rebel briefing scene, the model of the Death Star is again white instead of blue.

1:37'51: This shot appears blue-cast.

During the Battle of Yavin, the flight suits of the rebel pilots are usually a light yellow-orange instead of the strong red-orange of the original, though not always.

1:38'57: The Death Star had a blue tint originally instead of being plain grey in this shot.

1:39'00, 1:39'05, 1:39'07: In addition to the issue with the flight suit colour, the green on Red Leader's helmet seems really punched up.  It's more of a yellow in the original, anyway.

1:40'08: pink explosion

1:40'14: The turbolasers look wrong here because they are a mixture of green and blue, while in the original they are green and yellow.  Also the subsequent shot.

1:40'34, 1:40'59: These explosions look unnatural because they are pink and oversaturated.

Y-wings dive into the trench: Easy to miss because it goes by so quickly, but the laser blasts in this shot are very screwed up.  The first ones are very nearly blue, instead of green and yellow as they should be.  The second set are completely white with no colour at all.  The laser blast when they actually enter the trench is almost completely desaturated; what little colour is present is a pale blue instead of the original green and yellow, again.  Looks pretty ridiculous.

1:42'42: Very strange problem here.  Gold Leader's helmet is too green and punched up, but the green of the laser blasts going by him in the background are almost completely desaturated.  How did this happen?!?!

Actually, the problem of desaturated laser blasts happens several times during the Y-wings' trench run, both in exterior shots and in cockpit shots.  In addition, the Y-wing targeting computer readouts are green-shifted.  This is very weird . . .

1:43'12: Vader must have decided to redecorate his TIE fighter with a magenta mood lighting theme.

1:43'18: Whoa!  Crazy pinkness in Vader's targeting computer.  Funny, he never struck me as a 'pink' sort of guy . . .

1:43'22: Vader's laser blasts lookin' really wimpy without any green in them . . . and why is the right wall of the trench turning purple, anyway?  Inevitable pink explosions to follow, of course.

1:43'41: Seriously, what is going on with Red Leader's helmet?  Yellow don't get no respect.

1:44'32: Come on, LFL, you had the green lasers going great a second ago.  Why are they suddenly really dull here?

1:45'01: There's that green helmet again.

1:45'08: I really feel like I'm starting to repeat myself with this desaturated laser stuff.    A bit less bad than before, though.  This explosion is a major improvement over how it looked in the 2004 version--kudos on that.

1:45'17: Pink flash before this dude blows up.

Maybe you could substitute the second trench dive for the earlier one, because the laser blasts look much better this time.

1:46'41: Return of the blue lasers from before.  Somehow they've become blue with a green core instead of green with a yellow core.  Yuck.

1:46'44: These lasers are pretty dull.

1:47'09: The grid thing looks too blue-shifted instead of green.

1:47'13: Some major blue spill around the outlines of Luke's cockpit.  Definitely not there in the original.  Must have scewed up while re-compositing the bluescreen elements.

1:47'16, 1:47'37, 1:48'17, 1:48'40: Return of Vader's pink mood lighting.

1:47'36: More of that blue weirdness, this time on the TIE fighters.

1:47'38: Three guesses what colour Biggs flashes before he blows up.

1:47'47, 1:49'05: I can't tell what sort of mood theme Vader's going for this time, because his red lighting is so desaturated.

1:48'41: More bluescreen weirdness, no doubt, followed by a vaguely purple explosion at 1:48'44.

1:48'56: The stuff on the screen here was white in the original, not blue.

1:49'06, 1:49'11: There's that pink targeting computer again, followed by the pink lighting at 1:49'12.

1:49'13: Vader's laser blasts are very dull green, almost white.

1:49'15, 1:49'16, 1:49'19, 1:49'23: Now I know Vader's really got something special planned, because his wingman is getting in on the pink mood lighting too!  Too bad Han had to go and ruin their plans . . .

Hmm, those torpedoes are looking pink too.  Someone at LFL must have a really weird agenda, because this many instances can't possibly be purely accidental.

The white glow surrounding the Death Star explosion seems too strong.

1:50'01: One last hurrah for pinkness before zooming off into the endless depths of space.

I've refrained from mentioning it through most of the movie, but 3PO is looking particularly dull at 1:50'43.

Victory celebration: Luke's jacket is dull yellow instead of a strong shade as originally, while Han's shirt looks white instead of pale yellow.  R2 definitely looks very punched up in his blueness, though that may possibly be excused by his just having been repaired and repainted.  ;)  The white level in the last shot looks a bit blown out.

As before, anything I haven't mentioned is pretty much perfect, or as close as it's reasonably possibly to get with the source material.  And may I say again how very impressed I am with the elimination of the CGI and the compositing of the original shots?  With only a few minor exceptions, they're all integrated extremely well.  You've done a fantastic job, truly.

Sorry the delay with this, but I hope it will prove helpful once again.  :)

Edit: I forgot to say this earlier, but I'd imagine that many of the desaturated laser issues could probably be solved by substituting the blasts from the upscaled GOUT, since those look just right.  It's probably easier than trying to add colour back into something that just doesn't have it, or re-doing them by hand.

There are many thrilling tales about the sea; and other, less thrilling ones only marginally connected with it.

Sorry, this isn't a very good announcement . . .

Absolutely, between that and seeing more of the TARDIS interior it felt positively retro.

I didn't say it was boring because it wasn't about the main plot for the year.  It was just a really dull and tedious episode--and being a two-parter means that the next is sure to be just as bad.

And for the love of Jebus, will they get off the fuggin' Earth and go see other places and other times?  Only about 10% of the episodes actually bother to do that.  For a show with such a huge potential, having a vehicle that can literally go anywhere, anywhen, they sure haven't been making use of it.  In the old show they did that all the time!  And many of the companions weren't even from here at all, or were from other eras of history.  But no, we have to keep seeing present day Earth over and over again, even though it's a completely boring place to be in a science fiction premise.  Blah.

lol

I always liked Basil of Flowery Twats, myself.  ;)

Edit: *insert inevitable Frink remark 'your mom likes flowery twats'*

This talk about anti-Wookiee racism needs to die, pronto.

To quote Willow Rosenberg:  "Bored now . . ."

Searching for well written stories on fanfiction.net is usually like looking for a penny inside a planet-sized pile of rancid maggots.  And even the minority that aren't obviously written by illiterate thirteen-year-olds tend to be pretty 'meh' for whatever reason, be they insipid 'romances' completely inappropriate to the universe's story premise; unimaginative plots; full of awkward phrasings; blatantly out-of-character behavior among the leads; or just plain boring rot in general.

And yet it's really the only place to find anything at all for a lot of fandoms, if you're not involved in the online activities of others and know where else to look.

I occasionally write myself, though I'm certainly not what you'd call prolific.  I don't claim to be the best writer ever, not by a long shot, but I at least put a lot of effort into characterisation and making sure everything feels 'authentic' to the premise of the world.  But sometimes I really think I must be one of only 5% of people who actually bother with any of that, or even has an understanding of basic grammatical principles.

Fan fiction tends to have a pretty bad name among 'normal' folk because of these things, and quite understandably so.  But that's a blasted shame, because some of the good ones you can find by looking hard enough are actually at least as well written as professional published works, and sometimes even better.  Talk about having a frustrating hobby.

IM IN UR RETAILZ CENSURIN UR BRAZORZ

This episode was pretty damn boring.  And sure as hell didn't deserve to be a two-parter.  Why waste two entire episodes on such a weak premise that's already been mined previously?  The point of a cliffhanger like that is supposed to be to get you excited for what happens next, but in this case I don't even care--it's just that 'meh'.

Also, I can't stand the way they've been doing the lighting lately.  Everything is so damn dark and dull, you can't see what's going on half the time.  And the mixes are really burying the dialogue behind the music and sound effects: combine that with the fast-paced and strange nature of the speech, and even for someone with a good ear such as myself just the basic act of deciphering what is being said is quite difficult.

Overall, not very pleased with the way things are going, in either storytelling or technical quality.

UR ALL LOOZER EEJITS!!!!ONE!!!!!11111!

:P

Going with the unintentionally filthy lines mentioned a couple pages back, how could we forget this gem:

"Luke, at that speed will you be able to pull out in time?"  "It'll be just like Beggar's Canyon back home . . ."

For the sake of being even remotely on-topic (lol), I'll say that I consider ESB to be the best film dramatically, but SW is still my favourite overall, as it's the most fun and wins for sheer awesomeness.

I'm glad my notes are helpful.  Don't worry, I certainly wasn't expecting you to do all of them, especially since many are only minor issues, and some would take a tremendous amount of work in isolating small portions of the frame individually to prevent altering the rest of the image.  But I figured it would be better to point out everything I could find, rather than not being thorough enough.  ;)

Looks like you've highlighted most of the worst offenders, so the biggest issues will be resolved while the smaller problems pass by mostly-unnoticed.  And I didn't mention this before, but pretty much everything that I didn't point out looks amazing, practically perfect much of the time.  I'm quite excited about this.

I shall continue with notes on more of the movie.

Okay, it's been a bit slower going than I expected, but I made a fairly comprehensive list of colouring errors for the first 25 minutes or so of the movie.  I'll be doing the rest as soon as I have time.  As I said before, most of these are 2004 issues, and not anything that Harmy did incorrectly.  The beginning of the movie seems to be the most screwed up, colour-wise, while later scenes are wrong only intermittently and in smaller ways.  The 2004 version's overly-dark appearance seems to have been partially corrected a lot of the time, so the colours aren't unnaturally popping out quite as much as they were before, but the crushed blacks are still an issue sometimes.  Sometimes people's faces look strangely flat and dull as well, but it seems to be a limitation of the source that would be very difficult to fix.

I should point out beforehand that I'm not a video expert, and am much more oriented towards the audio side of things.  Because of that, I watched this with the sound turned all the way off, so I could focus completely on the image without being distracted.  When just watching the movie, a lot of the issues I spotted wouldn't necessarily call that much attention to themselves, but going through it a few seconds at a time in many cases the errors become very obvious.  Some of them I was already aware of from reading Mike Verta's site; the rest I spotted myself, and there may be others that I haven't seen.  So without further ado:

First shot: The rebel ship's laser blasts are dull and muted where they should be bright red.  The Star Destroyer's laserfire is completely white and dull with no colour at all, but it is supposed to be a vivid green.  Fixing these in some way is not optional: it must be done to make the iconic opening shot come across the way it should.  I would imagine that substituting the blasts from the 720p upscaled GOUT would be the easiest way, rather than painting them in by hand, but I couldn't say for sure.  The moon in the original is bluer, and the Star Destroyer was more white with a tiny hint of green shading, and not a flat grey.  Tatooine seems not quite right, but I'm having a hard time describing exactly how.

Second shot: (2'21)  Now the lasers are correct, but the rebel ship should have a dark maroon colouring, not bright red.  Tatooine seems too pink.

Third shot: (2'27)  Strong pink tint to the entire frame.  The rebel ship again should be maroon, not bright red.  The pink cast affects the engine glow and the explosion.

Interior rebel ship: C-3PO almost always appears dull yellow instead of his strong gold colour from the original.  R2-D2 is usually far too blue (should be a darker tint and less saturated).  The walls of the ship may possibly be 'too white' if that's possible, or maybe there's still some blue-casting to them; it's hard for me to say for sure.  To me the very slight red tint from the '97 SE looks a lot more natural.

2'49: 3PO is especially dull in this shot and R2 is much too vivid.  Reds are far too strong, seen in the 'sunburned' skin tones of rebel troops and the reflections on 3PO.

2'56, 2'59: 3PO is dull, and R2 blueness punched up too far (also applies to the shots immediately afterwards).

3'10: The white level is pretty blown out in the background.

3'20 - 3'25: White level blown out, and the closeup of the rebel's face is too pink.

3'29: The white level is again blown out.

3'31, 3'34, 3'36: Strong pink tint to fire/explosion and its reflections on the walls, all of which are much more orange in the original.  Every single flash frame in the laser battle is a rather hideous shade of magenta.

3'37, 3'39, 3'42: The coloured lights in the background behind the stormtroopers are too saturated.  They should be obscured much more by the smoke--3'42 is quite the worst offender for this.

Speaking of the smoke during this shootout, in both the GOUT and 70mm film scan it has a blue-grey look, while here it is a plain white.  Something about this just seems off, but I don't know what could be done about it.

3'49: A strong blue cast to this entire closeup shot, most visible in the rebels' shirts.

3'53: Red lights behind the rebels are strongly oversaturated.  Rebel shirts a bit too blue, and lasers slightly pink.

4'06: 3PO is again dull yellow instead of strong gold.  R2's blue is very punched up, but the rebels' shirts are the correct shade.

4'09, 4'11, 4'13: R2 blue punched up too much again.

4'47: The red level is very oversaturated.  Rebels running by in the background have lobster skin-tones, and reflections on 3PO pop out way too much throughout the scene.

4'54, 5'01: The reds again seem too strong, and have a pinkish tint. The 'columns' on the walls should be somewhat greener.

6'19: R2 blue may be punched up a bit?

6'31, 6'39: Slight blue cast to the frame?  I'm not sure if this is actually wrong or not.

6'37: Magenta explosion flash.

6'47: Pretty noticeable garbage matte box around the escape pod.  It is blue while the space around it is black.

6'55: Red tint to the shot inside the escape pod?

3PO and R2 arrive on Tatooine: The sand and sky are somewhat desaturated.  3PO is dull but the blue levels of R2 and the escape pod are punched up (seems especially noticeable at 9'27).

R2's blue level is more appropriate at 9'37.

9'58: The landscape seems pink-shifted.

10'46: The sky is not blue enough.

10'54: The canyon should be lighter/redder, not dark brown.  This applies to the entire scene, but especially this shot.

11'44: Smoke from the Jawa's gun is pink-tinted.

12'45: Green tint on sandcrawler lights.  Not sure if this is incorrect or not.

Sandcrawler interior: first appearance is very dark.  Crushed blacks particularly bad here.

14'54 - 15'31: This entire scene inside the sandcrawler is heavily red-shifted, especially noticeable on 3PO and on the ceiling behind him.

15'48: Sky not blue enough.

16'03, and throughout entire droid sale scene: Sand desaturated; sky should be more vivid blue; 3PO dull yellow instead of strong gold; R2 blue very oversaturated (especially in closeups).

Interior moisture farm garage: 3PO consistently dull yellow instead of stronger gold.  R2 sometimes bordering on oversaturated but not quite crossing the line.

20'24: Leia hologram should be less aqua, and the flashing light portions should be brighter in this shot.

20'21: The background outside behind Luke looks slightly blown out.

21'29: R2's blue is punched up again.

22'16, and elsewhere in dinner scene: The rocky walls and ground behind Uncle Owen are desaturated, especially at first.  They should have a moderate brown level, not plain white.

22'34, and elsewhere: Uncle Owen's clothing is missing its yellow hue.  The original version had a slight green cast throughout this scene, which is not present.

22'53, 23'35: The light at the left of frame is slightly pinkish.  In the original it is orange.

23'27, 23'36, 23'45, 24'00, 24'07: Whites in the background are a bit blown out.

The sunset scene is kind of problematic.  It looks rather dull at 24'11, too red at 24'28, and the closeups of Luke seem washed out (possibly a limitation of the source since the 2004 version is very dark).  The sky behind him doesn't seem bright enough, but its actual hue is fairly good from a subjective point of view.

24'46: Garage interior was more green-shifted originally (minor).

25'10, 25'17: The sky's blue should be a bit stronger, particularly through the binoculars.

25'26, 25'34: The ground seems bluer than it should.  In the original it maintained a hue more distinct from that of the sky above it.

All right, I need to take a bit of a rest from looking at this now, but hopefully these notes will prove helpful in further colour correction.  I'm aware that some of these are already being taken care of, and that others may prove difficult to eliminate.  A lot of this kind of thing is pretty subjective, but getting right up close with it, the 2004's numerous errors are quite obvious, and it's baffling to me how so many blatant mistakes or 'creative decisions' could have been made, especially when the movie already had such a great look to begin with.

I'm sure it's a major pain to correct all those flash frames, but it will be well worth it in the end.  All that magenta being thrown in your face just looks so wrong.  I have no idea why only the flashes are pink but the laser blasts themselves stayed red, it's really bizarre.  In the GOUT the flashes are more of an orange.

I'm still working on that list of colour issues.  Nearly all of them are simply 2004 problems that haven't been fixed yet, and aren't anything you did incorrectly.  Hopefully I'll be done with that soon.

Would it be more helpful to have the subtitles as video files for the correct duration, or just as still images that you can work into each appropriate frame?

Just finished watching the workprint.  Had only meant to flip through it a bit right then, and save an analysis for later, but I just couldn't stop looking at it!  lol

The compositing work is superb, you've got a lot to be proud of with that.  The colouring is already miles ahead of the 2004 version, and would be pretty watchable as it is.  However, there are still a number of issues with the colour, and tomorrow I'm going go go through it again and make a detailed list of everything I see.  Many of these issues are fixable, although some of them may not be, at least not without tedious work, but I'm sure we'd all like this to be the best it can be.  ;)