msycamore

That's some great news, SilverWook! :)

I know that the transfer on this LD isn't the best and that it's a little dirty in some places but it doesn't matter to me, I'm really excited about this. I don't know, I think I would actually be fine to have it just as it is, without any cleanup. Maybe resize it to 16:9 and improve the contrast a little as I remember it looking flat and washed out sometimes. What do you think? It would be nice if someone could help out and try to improve it of course. When you get the time, maybe you could post a few caps of it here.

Thank you for doing this! If you want a CD-rip of the FSM THX soundtrack or a hi-res poster scan, let me know.

You can find the broadcast, Flunk '97ANH on usenet, it have a couple of corrrupt frames in it though.

There is some heavy motion smearing on the broadcasted versions, especially the scenes in the canyon with Artoo, is it something that is also on these LD's ? It's even worse than the Gout in this scene.

As have already been said, the '97 ANH is dark sometimes, pink sometimes and blue shifted in other scenes, but it can easily be corrected compared to the horrible '04 DVD.

Your caps looking promising!

doubleofive said:

Sure, the SE might match the GOUT a bit better, but this is supposed to be George's final vision of the movie. Unless Luke was supposed to have a white training saber (which I believe is the EU explanation), its still wrong.

If that is the case, EU has developed a story around a videoflaw in the film ;)  The lightsaber in that shot was originally blue, you can see this in various earlier transfers, the color is just washed out in the GOUT and the '97SE transfer.

I wonder what the EU have to say about the yellow TIE lasers in GOUT-Empire. ;)

I don't know if this could be a 70mm/35mm visual-difference as there was many unfinished shots in the earlier trailers, but this fx sequence in the original theatrical trailer is a little different from the finished film.

Trailer footage above with the same frame on GOUT footage below:

As you can see, the two snowspeeders was composited into the scene much earlier in the trailer-footage and they don't have any laser blasts animated to them. I don't have Puggo's super-8 version to check against, it's probably just an unfinished shot but it could be worth checking.

I doubt anyone will notice a single missing frame when watching it normally, if you're not a super-human of some sort. ;)

I agree, Darth Editous, that sounds not right.

skyjedi2005 said:

When these people cheered that the originals versions would not be included it reminded me of that scene from Revenge of the Sith. "so this is how democracy dies.  To thunderous applause."

Did people actually do that!? If so, I don't know what to say...?

Celebration V... it's ridiculous. What is it they celebrates on these events? That these important films cannot be properly watched anymore? It's sad but we all kind of knew this already, the only thing I'll spend money on is the coming Making of ESB book.

I hope you find a good VHS/LD copy then, hopefully SilverWook will come up with something good, he said he will give a LD to DVD transfer a shot in one of the preservation topics, I'll hold my thumbs! I think it is a underrated masterpiece far ahead of its time. Beautiful stylish photography, great Sound Design by the genius Walter Murch and a fantastic score by Lalo Schifrin with great acting performances from Donald Pleasence and Robert Duvall just one year before his big break in The Godfather. Great film by Lucas at a time when he was a director.

Ok, back to the topic, I'm surprised no more footage like the clip we saw on youtube of the screening have surfaced, there seems to have been several cameras in the audience. I hope it does, it would be great to see more of it.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Now this is puzzling:
If Editdroid used DC laserdiscs, then 'DC master' should also contain those frames, right?
So what's GOUT's excuse for cutting them?
My childhood is raped!

That is really weird.

Anyway, this is a very helpful documentation you've done to making various audio tracks sync correctly.

I just downloaded the latest Belbucus ANH '93 remix, and it seems my earlier file of it was corrupt or something because this one is perfectly fine at the spot I pointed out before. Thanks for uploading, Mallwalker!

dark_jedi, have you heard any differences between the audio files at those times Mallwalker pointed out?

It's a good question, Fang Zei. I wonder if Lucas completely own the rights to this film now, like with Star Wars. I've only seen the new cut once, so I don't actually remember, is the new cut of the film still an American Zoetrope production, or is it now also a Lucasfilm production?

Radi0n said:

dark_jedi, quick question:
will you be including the George Lucas introductions that were played on each VHS before the actual film? The ones where he shortly outlined what 'changes' he made?
I'm not even sure if that was an international thing, or only Europe.

dark_jedi have already answered that question on the previous page, it will be a movie only disc, no extras.

What's even more strange about that "Amatuer photoshop edition" is that I can't remember any magazines or major review sites on the web complaining about those horrible glitches at the time of its release, quite the opposite, they praised the beautiful transfers as reference quality, a sort of bar had been set for other releases to top. You have to wonder if they had actually been paid by Lucasfilm to shut up. With that many glitches, in fact all that can go wrong did, you can only hope it was done with purpose by people working on Lucasfilm that didn't like these versions. ;) Becase if Lucas did actually personally oversee this, he must be blind. We original trilogy fans is treated like shit, but I actually think the '04 transfers are even worse, I didn't think that was possible. :)

Zombie, have you managed to get those '77 in theater Belbucus photos? if not, you have four of them posted on this page:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Colortiming-Cinematography-was-What-changes-was-done-to-STAR-WARS-in-93/topic/9805/page/2/

 And here's another one.

I would really like to see the rest of them though, if they even exist.

SilverWook said:

It's mono, IIRC. There is likely no difference between the analog and digital tracks.

Yeah, of course it's a mono track, don't know what I was thinking. ;) It is also a damn good mono track, far ahead of its time.

SilverWook said:

A dirty little secret of some later model LD players is the analog output was lowered a bit to make the digital sound better/louder. My old player (which does much better at ignoring rot and speckles) is analog only, but sounds great with a CX encoded track. Most of the titles I've captured off of it don't have digital tracks anyway. Hope this isn't a problem?

Interesting story, what a cheap way to make the digital seem better/louder. Well, sometimes the old equipment is better. Analog audio only won't be a problem to me at all, I think you know what you're doing. It was just me who was a little curious about a possible difference between the tracks. I've not that much knowledge when it comes to LD.

SilverWook said:

That looks like my copy. I watched it a couple years ago, and didn't see any rot. Had to wash the Director's Cut DVD aftertaste out of my mouth. ;)

 I can understand that. ;) Great to hear it's in good shape.

SilverWook said:

Should I record both sides in one go, or record them separately at maximum bitrates to allow someone else to work their mojo on it?

Capture the sides separately at maximum bitrates sounds like a dream come true! :) Is the audio in mono or stereo on this LD and do you know if there is any difference between the two tracks besides the analog/digital difference?

I'm really looking forward to how this will turn out, thank you so much for trying this out!!

Have you guys seen this,

Rare re-edited opening of THX 1138 as the studio wanted it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJBxlIFRDKM&feature=related

It's in italian but it has been translated by the poster in the description of the clip, pretty cool.

I have to admit that I pumped up the brightness a little on those 16mm caps to better match the Technicolor ref. photo, the same brightness setting on all three though, and I was a little surprised and delighted how close it came the in theather one.

Here's how they look untouched.

SilverWook, that would be absolutely fantastic! :) Do I understand it correctly if that domestic release you own is the US 1991 Warner Home Video CLV Laserdisc - Cat. 11162 ? It doesn't seem to have any reports of laser-rot either. I would be very happy if you tried to capture it, and I'm sure many others would be too.

There's two of them up on e-bay at the moment, both seems to be in good condition but they're used though, don't know how hard it is to find some new & sealed ones.

http://dvd.shop.ebay.com/Laserdisc-/381/i.html?_nkw=thx+1138&_catref=1&_fln=1&_trksid=p3286.c0.m282

skyjedi2005, I'm quite sure the '96 LD of American Graffiti is the one to get, many reports that the opening credits wasn't tweaked until the film's 25th anniversary screening in '98. But I may be wrong though.

Here's a link to a site that show some of the changes:

http://www.maverick-media.co.uk/movies/thx_1138_1971/changes_001.html

But even that youtube clip and this site doesn't show all of the changes done to it, they are many. Maybe I should compile a list of them. ;)

It looks like I was wrong then, I really thought it was true anamorphic not an upscale, but I guess that an upscaled video would be the most logical in this case. Sorry for the confusion.

eldiablosuizo said:

I just downloaded the Angrysvn preservation of THX 1138 from laserdisc and it looked fine, but could use improvement. It wasn't anamorphic, either, which made me sad.

Just to let you know, I am in the process of making an Avisynth-script to fix the combed frames on it caused by being hard-telecined I guess and I am also going to improve the overall contrast/colors, making it anamorphic, so it can at least be watchable until a better option appears. If you're interested I can perhaps upload it for you when it's done.

EDIT: Forget about it, it's just not worth it. Even though I manage to improve the video, it looks awful. I also noticed that the audio is out of sync, this version really sucks! Now, I'm really desperate to find a watchable version...

I can completely understand why skyjedi2005 can be upset about this little American Graffiti alteration, it doesn't matter how small the change is. It's basically why has it been done in the first place, simply because Lucas can do it. You never heard people complain about those old dirty opticals and natural sky that supposedly ruined the film before '98 did you? The '98 release, is the third version of American Graffiti and the same goes for the '04 THX 1138, will we have a fourth version of these films soon? Probably, it's beginning to become a sick joke really.

Zombie, I think the reason why you never heard so many people complain about the redone opening crawl in Star Wars, is that it was done in '81 vs '98 for American Graffiti, no internet available and when it became available most people on forums was either to young to know about the change or the old-timers had simply learned to accept it for all these years, I never accepted it though ;) so, I was very pleased and very surprised when they actually spliced it in for the GOUT release. Never thought that would happen.

Btw, thanks for making converted screen photos available!

What do you mean, EvilSupes? The 1997 SE Laserdiscs was not released in anamorphic. But, that doesn't matter anyway as the footage in this are original & unaltered and anamorphic, which means it's taken from an entirely different film source than the '93/'95/GOUT was from. And zombie is right, this was a demo-disc made for hi-fi stores etc. to demonstrate THX-certifed audio and video and was never intended for sale. I really don't know if any film was ever released with anamorphic transfers on Laserdisc, but this was a special showcase disc so maybe that's why.

dark_jedi said:

If I had it I would cap it for you.

So, if I was able to get you a decent Laserdisc of THX 1138, would you cap it for me? Also... is American Graffiti a Laserdisc you actually own or have any interest to do a transfer of or do I have to get that for you. ;)

I would seriously try to get them if they could be preserved by someone, who have the proper equipment but I don't know what they commonly go for on e-bay or if they are susceptible to laser rot.

On these caps below you can see that they also changed the credits, not only the sky. The LD is also reported to have a quite different color-timing with warmer and much more vivid colors throughout.