jfett

Bingowings said:

Not going to spoil the plot but the first episode of the new look series was fun but spoiled by some 1990's style CGI and the worst rendition of the theme tune since the Sylvester McCoy era (only the hideous Delaware version trumps it and they ditched that after one episode).

AFAIK they're both the same thing, essentially.

"crappy gout audio"! Digital audio versus digital audio. What did you want? A PCM track? The Laserdiscs had a 16 bit 44.1 kHz soundtrack. D-3 Tape (which is in all likeliness the probable format of the masters) holds audio 16 to 20bit at 48kHz. DVD Video DD standard is 48kHz. You tell me which is the "crappy" audio. "But it's a Dolby Prologic track" - that doesn't matter. Dolby Prologic was designed on and for analogue audio, compression doesn't matter.

Look at it this way: 1. DD AC3 Track @ 192kbps, 2. PCM @ 1.5Mbps.

That's 1.7Mbps. The maximum DVD bitrate is 9.8 Mb/s, therefore your new maximum video bitrate is 7.9Mbps. Yes, strictly speaking it should be 8.1 on a purely mathematical basis, but this is the real world. On the other hand no PCM audio and you can safely set the video's maximum bitrate to 9.4Mbps.

MaximRecoil said:

Using something like Blu-ray discs, and an analog scheme like LaserDisc (but with something better than the composite domain, such as RGB) — if transferred from a 35mm negative, or better yet, a 70mm negative — could the quality of a 35mm film print be matched or bettered?

Something like that combined with a high-end CRT projector (to keep it all analog) like a Sony G90 with a 150 kHz scan rate (well beyond 1080p) would allow commercial theater quality and the look of film right at home, without the hassles (such as switching reels), huge expense, and potential legal red tape of owning actual 35mm film prints. 

It is too bad that some of the best CRT projectors can handle well beyond 1080p, yet the highest quality consumer analog format that can be fed to them is something like LaserDisc or S-VHS. Yes, they display digital 1080p content, but media that's high resolution and completely analog would be really cool. It would probably be indistinguishable from a film print when viewed on an analog display.

The version on the "right" is a copy, plain and simple, the "shadow bars" have nothing to do with the source being digitally modified. The original workprint - as is well established - was a 70mm print. At least the version is actually on DVD, after all it's only die-hard fans who care about, no one else wants nor needs to see that version of the film. I'd suspect that when the 70mm print was copied to 35mm, for some reason it was cropped at the top and bottom, and that process damaged the film somewhat resulting in the shadow bars. They could well have pulled both version from the same film under that understanding since the "shadow bars" showed them where the film was cropped when it was copied to 35mm. Or they might have known exactly how it was copied and done that on the few frames you see that are not colour-corrected and are heavily cropped. That's just a guess; remember people said the work-print was grainy in the theaters, so I don't think they used the best copying process they could when they showed it in theaters...

I was really impressed with ROTJ through this script, really makes it look on par with modern DVD transfers (maybe it was a lot easier to scan then the other two movies?) It's just a shame that SW and ESB suffer from more ghosting and a softer picture. I'd also forgotten to correctly set the subtitle placement, so I had to do it in the XVID stage (which wasn't a problem since the placement was off the picture completely - but it does reiterate the need to have this option preset so that people can decide if they want to leave it at non-anamorphic resolution, upscale to anamorphic or convert to a fully cropped 1:1 pixel ratio). In any case an incredible result, and somehow miles above the retail quality.

g-force said:

And the only reason I'm holding back the scripts is because ROTJ is not done yet. Some of the settings had to be different between SW and ESB, and I'm sure some will be different with ROTJ. I just didn't want the SW or ESB script applied to ROTJ, because I know it can be better. I just need some more time to work on it.

-G

Darth Editous said:

They should have the same framing, but they don't.

Left/right cropping differences can be explained by the vagaries of analogue video capture (by which I mean the laserdisc rips being used for comparison).

Good screencaps. I don't see hard evidence one way or the other for what size the video was before it was put on DVD, however I still disagree about the same 1993 "DC" master being used on the GOUT. They should have the same framing, but they don't. I don't think the source had to have been PAL to obtain the fidelity we can see. They may have used the digital ntsc tapes produced by the scanning process, rather than the completed master. But that doesn't explain why the picture is cropped on the bottom on the GOUT.

The PAL "GOUT" is top, the NTSC "Laserdisc rip" is bottom, I think it's from the "Gonzo" set (which was converted to anamorphic, hence why the picture is vertically stretched). The main thing I noticed was that the cropping is different. More on the sides of the PAL, but less on the bottom. It doesn't necessarily mean that the GOUT came from a PAL source, but it certainly came from a different source than the 1993 DC laserdisc master tape.

Mielr said:

jfett said:

The 70mm is an upscale anyway, so what's the point?

I think even if the original negative is 35mm, a 70mm print is still preferable to a 35mm print due to the size of the frame and the grain structure within.

I'd never heard about this either. Those images have been resized, making it more difficult to tell. However, the source is most definitely not the same:

If anyone can upload some screencaps off the ntsc Jedi (mine are just from an LD rip), we can have a closer look at the detail. It doesn't seem counterintuitive to me that they used a different master tape for Jedi - it seems counterintuitive to me that they used what was probably a D-3 tape in 2006 to master a DVD instead of scanning the few Non-SE scenes required to convert the 2004 DVD to the theatrical version. Heck, maybe they couldn't find the 1993 "definitive Collection" master tape for Jedi and just used a different one.

But I didn't know that they released an English THX version in PAL, I'm under the impression that they only released PAL THX LD's in foreign language versions?

Lord Grievous said:

Is anyone interested in improving the GOUT DVDs as best as possible? I've seen several threads detailing how to do stabilizing, colour correcting and upscaling the image of these versions but I can't seem to find a single restoration project that does all this for all three movies.

I know that Moth3r did something similar for the GOUT Star Wars, but it's only for the first film :(

As far as laserdisc rips of the '93 Definitive Collector's Edition go, the GOUT is the best, it might not be what we expected but I'm yet to come across a better rip to start this project with.

What I'm suggesting is something like this:

1. use the retail PAL GOUT as a basis because it has slightly more resolution

2. stabilize and colour correct the image, and remove grain as much as possible (just compare these colour corrected images with the original GOUT: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/post/336687/#TopicPost336687)

3. create custom AC3 5.1 soundtrack based on the '97SE laserdiscs and '93 Collector's Edition

4. make them as 3 DVD9s

I'm not much of an AV editor myself but from what I've seen on these forums I know it's not a question of if it's possible but rather if anyone wants to do this?

So are there any dedicated AV'ers out there who want to do this?

Thanks,

LG

Why don't you do it yourself, if you're so passionate about it?

I'm not much of an AV'er either, but I still managed to get G-Force's script to work (manually finding and downloading the avisynth plugins one-by-one), resize it to a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio cause that's what I wanted and put the mono soundtrack on SW... it isn't hard. May take about 40hrs to encode per movie, but that's life. I have ESB at 60% encoded at the moment and about 14hrs remaining!

By the way this is what I did:
1. Rip DVD.
2. Use DGIndex to create dv2 file.
3. Prepare an altered "G-Force script" (this was the most involved step, there were three things I altered - 1. the video ratio, 2. the video size (no overscan), 3. the subtitle placement, but this rolls over into the next step.
4. Load said script in vdubmod, and check frames to ensure I'm happy with the result.
5. Save in vdubmod using the option "direct stream copy".
6. Wait for 40hrs.
7. Make AVS file, this was the contents:
AVISource("StarWars.avi")
AssumeFPS(23.976)
8. Use vdubmod to create XVID.
9. Use vdubmod to mux audio. (BeSweet was used to re-encode from a PAL "framerate" to an NTSC framerate).

PAL "gout" as a bias? Yes, because the overscan bars were removed. However this is a very small and negligible difference anyway. I'm not really a fan of removing grain, it was necessary because when I tried to keep it I didn't get the full benefits of the script, and also the picture is more "noisy" than "grainy" imho. More important is antialiasing if you ask me.

The "gout" is not an "LD rip", it is a DVD mastered from a digital tape previously used as a laserdisc master (probably D-3 tape since the audio format is 4 channel PCM and this is exactly what is on the LD in the form of 2 for the audio and 2 for the commentary track). Basically all they seemed to have done to it (besides using a different source for the SW crawl) was to IVTC it and then master it as a DVD using MPEG2/AC3. They didn't bother to convert the subtitles -although imo player invoked subtitles suck- or even to convert it to anamorphic (which really is inexplicable). It isn't the first DVD to be released from a laserdisc master tape, however most ld-based DVD releases were well before 2006. I'm pretty sure LFL didn't bother to scan anything pre-SE for the 2004 DVD since original pre-2004 SE elements are clearly evident on the release.

Why Lucas molested his movie I do not understand, but watching the SE "Jabba" scene just makes me think he's really lost the plot. If the dialog was more unique it may be interesting, but he almost reiterates word-for-word was Greedo said. Like putting Ian McDiarmid into ESB and making ridiculous new lines for him, I don't understand it, and Lucas himself seems to be the only fan of his SE.

The 70mm is an upscale anyway, so what's the point? A lot more cost for no benefit to going to a more "original" source. Like mastering a 70mm negative of AOTC when the movie was shot in digital?

I used the PAL disc, however, I just found my old Laserdisc rips and the framing is identical. I'm not sure what set it is, but it is anamorphic and it has two soundtracks, the second is the commentary, the menu looks like this. Here's the screenshot. I was wondering if the Pwnage Edition used the 2004 disc for the non-SE scenes?

I attached the mono sound to it (setting the frame rate to 23.976fps and a delay to sync it), I believe you were involved in the creation or release of that soundtrack, no? Where can I find other mixes, like the theatrical stereo mix and theatrical tracks from the other movies? Is it only available through usenet?

Aleksbmw said:

Im thinking of releasing a blue ray format release also, since whats the point in IVTC the whole thing then cramming it back into interlaced for a dvd.
Progressive > interlaced. Technically by the way those owning the re release gout dvd can watch mine with no trouble since the master tape is basically the same.

I'm a little confused, I thought G-Force only released a script, not a DVD?

I'm also confused by the, link in Mother's post above to pwnage edition, this is what the "GOUT" DVD looks like through G-Force's script (although I did modify it to produce a 1:1 pixel aspect ratio instead of 16x9) click here.

Why is my version cropped on the right?