msycamore

Interesting... by saying 35mm mix, I take it you mean the 35mm Dolby mix and not the Mono?

On your site you state that you believe it's from a different source than Grande because the audiomix on it is different, the print which you used for Grande had the 35mm Dolby mix, yes? so I assume you mean it's different than the DVD audio of Puggo Grande (which used the mono mix from the Swedish 16mm print) am I correct? Sorry, just want to be sure I understood it all correctly.

Does it contain the end credits? I'm also curious to see which X-Wing takeoff matte shot that's on it.

Nice job Puggo, and thanks for sharing PhotoDroid and Shea!

chyron8472 said:

Seriously, CatBus, if Star Wars is so overrated, why on earth do you bother to work on translating subtitles for such a mediocre franchise into so many languages?

Probably because he truly love Star Wars '77 and ESB '80 and kinda like ROTJ '83.

You can dislike parts of this franchise and still be a fan.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Also the clip below shows the kind of stuff George shot before Muren, Burtt, Williams and Co sorted it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQBeIN6IJCQ

So you are using failed special effects footage to prove Lucas incompetence as a director? This is the sort of stuff Lucas got great chest pains from during the production.

It was the first cut of the film when John Jympson was still the editor that was a disaster, special effects and editing was junk at that point. The film didn't start to take shape until Lucas fired Jympson halfway through the production and started to edit the film himself and ultimately hired Paul Hirsch, Richard Chew and his wife Marcia Lucas. The rear projection stuff was just another failed step during the production.

It's amazing to what lengths people are ready to go when it comes to criticizing Lucas. George himself was an uncredited editor on the film, some people seems to forget that. It may be hard to accept now for some but it was very much George Lucas who was the main driving force behind the original Star Wars. Sure, he did have a great team around him but without Lucas as the captain of the ship, it would have sunk.

The later installments in the series is another matter...

SilverWook said:

I thought this guy was kind of scary close up...

What about this one?

;)

CatBus said:

If it helps...

I completely agree with you on TPM, it was a giant turd but like you described it tried to tell a new story, it felt pretty much like a crappy reboot to me. But it's also a movie you can easily just disregard if you didn't like it. ROTJ on the other hand is technically supposed to be ESB part 2 and the drop in quality and shift in tone is huge IMO. The disinterest of the people behind the camera is up there on the screen. ESB is certainly not an easy act to follow up or top, they had basically captured lightning in a bottle twice with SW and ESB, and you cannot expect a miracle every time but you can at least expect that they treat the great story material they had with respect for this final act. IMO it was impossible to screw it up but in some way they managed to do it.

"They took the existing storyline that we loved and brought it to a close." Yes, but in what way did they do it? To me all the great buildup in ESB was basically for nothing, they tied up all the loose ends in a very very hamfisted way. I personally don't care if the film contains the characters we knew and loved when they have ceased to be dynamic and interesting, on the contrary it hurts me, much much more than anything Mcgregor, Portman and Neeson did in that new prequel movie.

In retrospect it's easy to see that there never was any intention to bring the same level of effort into a SW sequel again after the tough shoot that was ESB. Everything that followed was bound to be a huge success no matter the quality, everything hinged on ESB. And it certainly didn't help that 4 planned films now was reduced to 1, so much lost potential...

Ryan McAvoy said:

I guess by "technicaly a better film" I mean that ESB runs smooth from start to finish, flawless at every point. Where as ROTJ has highs and some lows. But the highs are so very, very high. i.e. 

Sarlac pit / Speeder chase / Greatest space battle ever commited to celuloid / Throne room sequence

ESB has no momments to touch the exhileration of the first 3 of these sequences. Vader and Luke in cloud city is on a par with the end of ROTJ though.

I see, you find the setpieces more impressive than in ESB. IMO both the opening batttle on Hoth and the chase through the asteroid field beat all three of those examples, not only in technical achievements but more importantly in drama. That's also why I think the greatest space battle ever committed to celuloid is still Star Wars '77.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Plus ROTJ introduces us to great characters like Jabba and The Emperor who are easily as good as ESB new characters (Lando and Boba).

Jabba is a fantastic creation and I liked Ian's Emperor but I would much have preferred a less Disney-esque cackling sorcerer, after the original mysterious and calculating Emperor we got a glimpse of in ESB I expected something else but Ian is great.

Baronlando said:

There was a line cut out where they get into the Death Star and Wedge sees the big reactor thing and says the x wing torpedoes won't even hurt it. But the Falcon and its tricked out gunnery can. In essence it would not have worked if the unconventional Falcon hadn't been there. If that line had been left in it might have alleviated the idea that the same mistake had been made twice. (And made good use of the "character" of the Falcon as well and adding weight to Han's insistence on it being used. 

Interesting...  fascinating how much a minor line of dialogue like that can alter the final results, the power of editing. Whose brilliant idea was it to junk that?

Ryan McAvoy said:

I've been reading alot of the fanedit forum's chat about proposed changes to ROTJ, dissatisfaction with the film and about the prequels being better.

I guess I'm in the minority but by the slimest of margins I rate ROTJ as superior to ESB and the notion that ROTJ is inferior to the visual abortions that are the theatrical cuts of the PT seems like mass insanity.

I can't think of any moments in ESB or ANH that have me grinning like a kid again as some of the sequences in ROTJ. I know on paper ESB is technicaly a better film but the tingles down my spine, wide eyed joy and warm fuzzy feeling elicited by ROTJ tell me different.

So I wanna hear from you ROTJ haters as to why you do hate it and I also wanna hear from those like me who love it. Importantly I wanna hear why you love it because honestly I'm not 100% sure why I love it so much!

You state that you know that ESB is technically a better film but you are not 100% sure why you love ROTJ so much but I think you pretty much explain why you favor ROTJ over ESB - it's called Nostalgia.

Personally I consider it to be a piss poor continuation and sequel to ESB but I can't say that I hate it, I just don't watch it. In my mind it just wasn't the sequel that a film like ESB demanded. In my mind we never got the true continuation, just a wrap up party in the woods that treated all the great narrative, set up and plotting of ESB as something of a chore Lucas now had to deal with. I still to this day cannot understand how some found ROTJ to be a satisfying sequel and at the same time attacked Phantom Menace.

Bingowings said:

You got the bit where I said it was my opinion right?

I believe you are a hipster and are following some sort of a trend. ;)

Bingowings said:

If you want to talk soap the whole Leia, Han, Luke triangle is pure soap.

I've actually seen daytime soap operas with much better drama and acting than what is seen in the Leia/Luke conversation in the Ewok village. :)

Deja vu... similar thread here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Since-when-did-ROTJ-become-less-highly-regarded-than-even-Episodes-II-or-III/topic/14909/

DuracellEnergizer said:

But my feelings tell me that its weak, not that it sucks *shrug*.

ray_afraid said:

Other things that the article doesn't point out is the SE song and dance in Jabbas palace and "Yub-Nub". Again, just embarrassing.

It does point those two out, it just doesn't judge the quality of the SE addition due to the article being written before the Special Edition was actually out.

I found myself agreeing on most points of that article and laughing pretty hard the first time I read it. ROTJ sucks... search your feelings, you know it to be true. ;)

I'm pretty sure it's Trajan Pro, you probably still have it... you used it for the old SW DVD menus IIRC.

I don't remember which model he used but it's one of the better ones going by various tests done over at Videohelp forums, Silver will tell you. That odd checkerboard pattern is visible sometimes but it's so insignificant on his captures that it's not a real problem, on the one I tried to cap the Technidisc however, holy shit was it bad, a newer Panasonic model.

It would be great if you could post a sample or two from your LD. :) I'll try to point out which scenes I'd like to see samples from a little later. Thanks!

EDIT: misread your post, I see you haven't access to your player at the moment. Well that testpattern posted over at lddb shows that you have really fine equipment, interesting thread.

AntcuFaalb said:

msycamore: Speaking of 3D comb filters, do you notice any checkerboarding on the first frame of a sharp scene/shot-change?

Unfortunately yes.

SilverWook said:

Maybe I should try a capture into my DV camcorder one of these days? (Just on the problem scenes as a test.) The DV input of my DVD recorder might bypass the filters used for analog video.

On the other hand, without the DVD recorders combfilter we would have captures with bad dotcrawl and rainbowing instead. So you did the right thing of course, the combfilter in the recorder I tried out was horrible, combined with the lousy composite signal of my player it was basically unwatchable.

That is definitely not the case here, there's only a couple of scenes I've noticed smearing and that it may be the combfilters fault is still only a guess of mine so it would maybe be nice to get it proven right or wrong instead of speculation, if you'd like to go through the trouble  I can post examples of the problematic scenes for you to check. What really baffles me though, is the dropped frames/fields in the video, so weird.

AntcuFaalb said:

Does the 704 exhibit "CLV smear"? Most laserdisc players do.

Very few don't. A few examples of laserdisc players that don't exhibit "CLV smear" are: Panasonic LX-900, Runco LJR-I/II, Pioneer HLD-X0, Pioneer HLD-X9, and a few others.

"CLV smearing" looks like bad DNR artifacts sometimes.

Yeah, I've read about the infamous "CLV smear", it's a good thing you own a player who is said to not exhibit smear then.

SilverWook said:

I can only speak to the titles I own, but I have music videos that smear pretty badly on the 704. I archived them with my PR-8210, as most were analog sound anyway. In a movie like THX, I could see some smear around Pedro Colley's head in the white void sequence. I have read elsewhere even with all the DNR turned off, the 704 still applies some processing to the video.

msycamore, I'm pretty sure I transferred the pan and scan disc with the 8210. If you can hear audible buzzing on the soundtrack, that's what it sounds like with CX turned off. The disc didn't have CX encoding.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone slathered VNR all over the video master while censoring it for the Japanese release. Keep in mind it's a much older film transfer, even the telecine could be the culprit.

I can unfortunately confirm that there is indeed NR present in the captures, it may be present in the actual LD-master as it's there in all caps including the two UK LD caps. For the most part of the film it's fine but there are a few scenes which have clearly lost fine detail due to noise reduction. The thing is, when it occurs there's not a lot of movement in the picture and it's in these instances where it's also is as worst in the early pan & scan LD which makes me suspect the combfilters in these DVD recorders could be the culprit. It appears that sometimes the 3D adaptive filters fail to switch to 2D during motion when it suddenly appears in otherwise quite static shots, it very much reminds me of what I noticed when I first tried to capture my Technidisc SW-LD through the comb. Anyway, it's definitely not the end of the world, the WS LD-caps looks great, it's just a few scenes which exhibit this.

However, I began going through these captures again systematic looking at where they go out of sync with each other and I've encountered dropped frames in several places, actually there's fields missing in both the 2's and in the 3's in the PR-8210 US which are present in PR-8210 JAP and vice versa, including US from the 704. So you have 2:3:2... and suddenly 1:1:1.... in short bursts where it happens, still need to check the others so we can determine if it's a LD player hiccup or the fault of your DVD recorder... fucking weird.

Moth3r said:

RU.08 said:

Moth3r said:

Why are you carrying out IVTC? Couldn't you just use force film in DGIndex?

What's your final intended format? If making AVCHD/BD then I think you'll have to add the black borders to the side to make the horizontal res up to 1280.

You can't use force film on titles like this, it was "scanned" in a telecine machine the same as 1993 star wars LD's were. This title was originally a laserdisc too.

Actually, you can use Force Film on the Star Wars DVDs, even though they originated from laserdisc masters.

Generally, I never use Force Film if I know the source is "hard telecine" as opposed to "soft telecine".

Absolutely - but do you know for sure that this is hard telecine (i.e. does the Ignore Pulldown option give you telecined output)? Force Film can deal with minor breaks in the pattern and keep sync.

I do remember that you couldn't use Force Film on this one successfully as with GOUT, recall spotting combing in several places, I ultimately did an IVTC on it as well.

Fucking love Robocop, agree with many here that this old transfer is still a solid one. I cannot see why you would want to degrain it though, I simply opted for a simple 16:9 resize. For those who resize it, keep in mind that the left and right borders shifts wildly during the transfer.

borisanddoris said:

Popped in my Criterion LD copy recently and forgot how wonderful this one is. The Blu-rays both suck a big one. Anyone here anything about a future Criterion re-issue on Blu? I won't hold my breath.

The 2.0 PCM holds up nicely as well. I've never heard the 5.1 mixes on DVD or Blu, but it did have a 70mm 6 track mix upon initial release.

Yeah, the original mix is great and also a little bit of a milestone as it was one of the first films with Dolby Spectral Recording. Haven't heard the DVD/BD 5.1 mixes myself but heard reports of Basil's score being drowned out by sound effects in certain scenes such as in the drug factory sequence. Both the 20th Anniversary DVD and MGM/FOX BD does apparently contain a discrete version of the original mix in Dolby Digital 4.0.

althor1138 said:

I used several successive calls to generalconvolution to create an edge mask on the right side of bright areas next to dark areas and then shifted the mask over to match the right-edge halo of my laserdisc player.  Then I used overlay with the mask and mode="multiply" to get rid of the halo. This isn't on every disc though so I guess it's combination of the laserdisc and the player which creates this sometimes.  On ESB and TPM it's not very prominent like on SW for example.

Nice, thanks for that. I think most of the edge-enhancement artifacts we see is present in these transfers to begin with already, I don't know how much more work you're willing to spend on the 720p but you could easily improve the look of it if you wanted by just correcting the chroma shift in it, think it's most visible in the first few reels... good examples are the red wall lights on the blockade runner, the red light of Artoo in the canyon and the binary sunset, but I recall the shift isn't off by the same amount from scene to scene or is that constant so it may be a little tedious work.

http://www.geocities.com/siwalters_uk/chromashift.html

an example I did on arnie.d's cap to demonstrate the ugly bleed/shift in it, not perfect but definitely an improvement. Just a suggestion... hope you leave the 480p unfiltered.

althor1138 said:

It alternates between the raw capture and the settings I planned on using. 

Yeah, stupid me... it took a while before it hit me. Sorry, I'm really slow today. :)

althor1138 said:

You should probably not watch this temporally but step through it. I just wanted to see what people thought of the settings. I haven't done the 720 yet.

If you want an epileptic seizure, I can recommend it. Anyway, the sample looks great, the reduced haloing is nice. What filter are you using for the dehaloing?

althor1138 said:

Here is a little clip.  It is interleaved with 1 clip being the raw capture and the other being the adjusted clip I plan on using for the 720p version.  I've just adjusted the levels and tried to not crush or blow out any information.  I have applied a halo reducer which I think I'm going to use.  I wouldn't say it fixes the right-edge halo problem but I think it makes it better. 

Hey, what's up with the "strobo-effect" or is it only a problem on my end? And how do I get to check the 720p version??

CatBus said:

The first question is an easy one: how do the ROTP burnt-in subtitles spell "Wookiee"?  Please oh please tell me we're not about to have a new canon spelling ;)

It's "Wookiee" in the theatrical prints.

CatBus said:

The second question is harder to figure out how to answer precisely. What are the ROTP burnt-in subtitle timings? But since my project is GOUT-synced, I'll have to figure out a way to convert your frames to GOUT-timed equivalents, and any help would be appreciated there too...

You can find the theatrical subtitle timings for GOUT in my script here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Greedo-Jabba-subtitles-theatrical-placement-and-fonts/topic/11463/

It was based on Video Collector's "theater performance" - Jedi bootleg.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Except giving credit to James Earl Jones... that was overdue.

What's funny is that he still goes uncredited for the work he did in Empire, in '97 he only got one for the first film, (he was already credited in Jedi) but then again in those current fake cuts you have credits such as for Clive Revill's voice acting which can not be heard... so I guess it's not that important, it's beta versions for sale afterall.

You learn something new every day...or night. It's nice you're helping out with this Mallwalker!

Very much agree, Skyjedi. Walter Murch is one unsung hero. All his sound work with Coppola and Lucas is unmatched, well Ben Burtt's early work isn't that bad either. ;)

SilverWook said:

Preserving the pan and scan is a good idea. Maybe somebody can use it someday to "undo" certain shots like the albino lizard.

Yes, that was one of the thoughts I had, the other being the somewhat unique things about it such as the colors and odd computer displays specifically produced for the pan & scan format but unfortunately this one will not be more than a curiousity, there's bad dnr and I mean at the level of GOUT-bad in some instances. I guess you must have activated the noise reduction by mistake or it is simply the fault of the 704. No problem though, I know you only captured it for the color questions we had, not for release.

Spaced Ranger said:

My comment was only in regard to the U.S. releases (I'll edit in the "U.S." mention). Bizarro-world isn't limited to there. :)

Yeah but like I mentioned, SilverWook's English language 16mm print contains the missing SEN-footage and that different order of those scenes. If it's a print made specifically for TV or not, we don't know. U.S. still seems to be where most of bizarro-world comes from in this case. ;)