madcrow

Well, this is nice. My computer lacks the power to play the 4K release at full speed, but even the 1080P version is a nice improvement over SSE (which wasn’t half bad either). I just hope that this near professional quality transfer doesn’t paint a giant target on the backs of everyone who worked on it. I’d like to see ESB and (especially) RotJ given a similar restoration which can’t happen if the lawyers appear.

Dumb question: has anyone else been having problems burning this to disc and playing it in a standalone player? I’ve tried twice to get this burned and ready and both discs are stuttering messes when played on standalone players (despite the fact that they verify as good in Imgburn and play fine in PC drives)? Is the bitrate actually too high for some players or is the Verbatim media I’m using simply crap that doesn’t read right in certain players?

Does this mean that the new version of SSE is done and in the wild? Now to figure out if it’s worth the bandwidth or should I wait for something from a better scan, since the original SSE is perfectly fine to watch given the nature of the source material.

I honestly think that GOUT syncing is the wrong approach. Given that the print used to make the SSE was missing many frames (including several seconds here and there) a GOUT-synced video would require lots of black frames. It would be crappy to watch. Editing audio to fit SSE would give a FAR superior result.

So Negative1 just had the torrent of this nuked? By lying and saying he was going to be adding a better version? What a jerk!

Is there any way that we can reupload this? Not everybody has Usenet, after all.

Ooh, Star Trek: The Motionless Picture. Wake me up when a copy of The Wrath of Khan or the one with the whales shows up. Those are the only good ST moves.

I’d personally rather see deleted scenes as extras rather than as part of a supercut. If there’s one thing the SE proved, it’s that deleted scenes get deleted for a reason.

Assuming the final release has the original Dolby Stereo soundtrack, you should still be able to decode it to surround with a Pro Logic decoder, as Dolby Surround (which is the format that Pro Logic decodes) is the same as Dolby Stereo (which was actually a surround format)

For other soundtracks, I’d rather see other soundtracks synced to SSE than for SSE 2.0 to end up being GOUT synced. To GOUT sync SSE, you’d have to insert tons of dummy frames at various points, which would kill the viewing experience.

I’ve finally had time to sit down and watch significant chunks of this release rather than just a few quick sample scenes. In general I like it. I’ve commercial transfers (usually of older movies where the original negative is long gone) that aren’t as good-looking. That said, I have some issues with the audio: first, the intro logo and clicky projector noise at the beginning is WAY too loud. It overpowers the audio of the original. Second, the actual audio is a bit muffled sounding. Does this have to do with the low bitrate of the AC3 track or is there more going on? Finally, will a 5.1 track based on the 70mm surrounds be included in a future release? That would be sweet.

The purpose of either the disc or the USB stick would be something that could be put into a BluRay player and watched on TV.

The purpose of either the disc or the USB stick would be something that could be put into a BluRay player and watched on TV.

Chouonsoku said:

After a certain point, going lower in bitrate while maintaining the same resolution will result in worse quality than just dropping the resolution. e.g. 480p @ 4Mbps might look better than 720p @ 4Mbps. With something as grainy as Star Wars, I’d recommend sticking to 480p resolution if you have to use a DVD-5. On DVD-9 720p should still be reasonable, you may just need to play with the bitrate a bit to get it to fit. All of this is a bit moot when using Handbrake though, which can produce some pretty terrible looking encodes. I recommend MeGUI if you need a “wizard” to help you through it.

I use Linux, so MeGUI isn’t an option. X264’s commannd line options are pretty straight forward, but I’ve never had a problem with Handbrake before so I haven’t learned them. As for size, when I did a CRF 20 encode I got a 5.5 GB file that looked great at 720p. It was only when I found that the lousy FAT32 file system used by USB sticks won’t hold the file that I started looking at making an AVCHD disc. Maybe I could try making an AVCHD structure on USB, though I’m not sure how many players can handle such a beast. As for 480p, I didn’t think that was legal for AVCHD.

On the topic of cropping vs. not cropping, it all comes down to how many encodes TN-1 are willing to produce. I don’t know the logistics behind their setup, but you’ve gotta keep in mind that there is more than one project to be worked on and that each additional encode adds a lot of render time. In a perfect world, I think TN-1 should offer two options:

1. Full BD-50 format 1080p encode with any audio tracks planned.
2. BD-25 sized 1080p MKV, cropped, with any audio tracks planned.
3. Chotab’s Dream Sequence: 2160p, x264 encoded @ ~85-100 Mbps, cropped.

Ignore 3, I was just daydreaming a bit. 😉 Anyway, between options 1 and 2 you have a lot of your bases covered. You’ve got the disc crowd and the encode crowd happy, at least the 1080p users. The only people not covered are those that want 1080p at lower bitrate which they can transcode themselves from either 1080p release or lower resolution which works the same way. I personally think it’d be a waste of time for the team to make AVCHD format releases, 720p, etc. because if we have to pick and choose I would prefer only the highest quality offerings that the other formats can be created from at our leisure.

Indeed, I don’t think that TN1 needs to do all the subencodes. They just need to provide a good file that can be used as a source for other people. That’s why the “no 50 GB version” stance is so disappointing.

The flexibility argument makes sense. By the way, what sort of bitrates and options would work if I wanted to make a 720p version that fits on a DVD-9 as a “fake” (AVCHD) Bluray. I tried doing a 2 pass encode through Handbrake at 8900 kbps and while the resulting file looks great (certainly better than HD from Netflix), the resulting data doesn’t fit on a DVD after being run through tsmuxer. How low can you go before things start looking like crap? Is it possible to go down to 4000 or so and fit on a DVD-5? I’ve currently just burned the raw MKV of my 720p encode to a DL DVD, but I understand that an AVCHD-format disc might have better compatibility with hardware players.

team_negative1 said:

The 1.1 version will probably not be re-encoded. We are still testing it out.

However the BD version will definitely be re-encoded.

Team Negative1

Will the BR version come out as an MKV for those of us who don’t/can’t burn physical discs? Also, will there be a BD50/50 GB release for those who want ultra-high quality for projection or as a source for further projects?

One silly/naive question: when producing encodes for standalone viewing (as opposed to burning to disc), why bother to encode the full 1920x1080 (or 1280x720)? Why not just encode the “active” image area (1920x820 or 1280x546)? I find that any viewer that I care to use (VLC on PC, BSplayer on tablet/phone, built-in player on my Bluray player) can handle the file and readd the black bars on its own.

Great work. I just got a look at the release and it’s pretty impressive. Until the project to do a 4K scan and cleanup of a Technicolor IB print finishes, this is sure to be the reference against which all Star Wars versions are judged. One thing I do wonder is if there will be any way for the community to fix/add the missing frames? Will there be a way for those who want to work on such a project to get access to the cleaned-up-but-not-yet-compressed frame scans?

I just got a Myspleen invite and noticed the preview reel from this summer. While it’s not “perfect”, I do think you’re on the right track. I’ve seen commercial releases that don’t look as good as what you’ve done. I’m looking forward to seeing the rest 😃

@ray_afraid: The Sith are evil/Dark Side force users. The Emperor and Darth Vader are Sith.

I'm excited for Episode VII, especially as it appears that the original cast will be back (at least as supporting characters). I'm not too sure about JJ Abrams though. I'm not really a fan of his TV shows or what he did with Star Trek.

Lucas's influences aside, I do think this will be an awesome comic. Dark Horse Star Wars and Dark Horse Conan are two of the only comic lines I regularly read and this looks like it will be even cooler than usual.

Star Wars always reminded me more of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky it did Hidden Fortress... I've always thought that Lucas claimed Hidden Fortress as a source in order to keep people from looking at just how much of Star Wars' DNA actually comes from Nevsky.

In the 90s, LucasArts was awesome: X-wing, TIE Fighter, Monkey Island, Sam and Max, Grim Fandango... The list of awesome games from the 90s is epic. Frankly, though, their more recent output has been pretty mediocre. It's sad to see one of the legendary names of game development going away, but I'm thinking maybe it's for the best.

My guess is that the future of video is split. On the one hand you'll have collectors and videophiles who will continue to buy physical media for its superior quality (both in terms of picture quality and in terms of available extras like commentaries, extra documentaries and other stuff not usually found in online releases) and so that they'll have stuff to show off on their shelves. This will probably be a fairly small bit of the market, sort of like Laserdisc was, but it will probably be better stocked with titles as production costs for BluRay discs (and probably whatever will come next after them) are much lower than LD production costs were. On the other hand, the "normal" people who just want to watch their movies and TV reruns and who don't care much about picture quality once it gets to the "good enough" stage will move to streaming and digital downloads.

A friend of mine recently passed me copies of PG and PSB and I was quite impressed with the amount of time and effort that went into producing the transfers. However, I've also seen other video from 16mm sources that is lightyears sharper than the Puggo transfers (the gorgeous HD footage in the Ken Burns national park series, for instance) This got me thinking: is the softness seen in the preserved 16mm copies of ANH and ESB a function of the prints themselves (possibly stemming from cheap optics in the reduction or duplication process or from suboptimal focusing during the making of the print or the use of bargain-basement film stock) or is it a case of the telecine technology used to being able to capture all the detail in the original?

Also, I've heard that some of the high-end Super 8 prints made for serious collectors in the 80s and 90s can be sharper than most of the 16mm prints of the films in question. Has anyone seen the Derann ANH and RoTJ or the Classic Home Cinema ESB to know if this is the case with Star Wars? Certainly I've seen videos on Youtube showing very clean and detailed Super 8 footage, so theory suggests that it's possible...

At its best, Star Trek was excellent television with clever premises, memorable characters and lots or charm. However, it was rather uneven from the start and by the third and final season, it was starting to get rather repetitive. Star Wars at its best (The Original Trilogy plus a few bits of EU stuff most of which came out before the prequels) is pure adventure distilled into awesomeness. I like Star Trek but I LOVE Star Wars.