msycamore

The '97 Special Edition was often marketed "The way Lucas originally envisioned it". The simple truth is that most of it was research & development done for the upcoming prequels all paid for by Fox. That's why most of the updates are so random and out of place. If the new additions hurt the story or pacing never was a question it seems. And with this R&D approach you simply don't get a nice finished product, you cannot add or update one effect to state of the art of '97 and leave other effects state of the art of '77 untouched. So even the more nice looking CGI effects like the added sequence of the Falcon taking off from Mos Eisley feels largely out of place, not only does it hurt the pacing, make some earlier and subsequent effect shots look weak, the way it is shot simply don't mesh with the filmmaking style of the original film. In short, a Frankenstein monster...

Besides using these old classics as a vehicle for his R&D, you also have Lucas modern sensibilities for filmmaking that just boggles the mind; Greedo missing Han at point blank range, censoring of Imperials getting hit by laser fire, Luke screaming like a bitch (audio lifted from ROTJ) in his act of self-sacrifice in Cloud City, showing the audience exactly how Vader ends up on the Executor even though we all assumed he didn't use teleportation or flew from Cloud City like Superman, and on and on... often over-explaining to make sure we all see and hear what's going on, the wampa sequence is another. Except for the censoring, this is simply bad filmmaking, nothing left to your imagination, no subtlety allowed.

odel0022 said:

I guess I was referring to stuff like, the 2011 blu ray change of hiding r2d2 behind a rock during the Tuscan raiders scene. Why after 35 years would he change that? Changing obi wan's krayt dragon call? Items like those. They aren't enhancing the film, just changing it.

Basically the same reasons he did those changes in '97. New over-explanations, sprinkled with R&D for the upcoming 3D release I presume. He simply doesn't look at it from a story point of view or an artistic one when doing these things. If he did, the most logical would be to remove the stones hiding the fact that the landspeeder isn't hovering without support instead of adding rocks for R2-D2's hiding place, not even that stupid addition is consistently done or even makes any sense. For Obi-Wan's "krayt dragon call" in the original film, they used the same sound that was used for the dewback earlier in the film, with his track record of over-explaining things, I thought he altered it because the sound effect was similar to the sounds of the tusken raiders but it has now been changed twice. Now I am over-explaining. ;)

frank678 said:

no offense to russs15 but it looks like danny_boys capture is a marginally richer resource based on the gold saturation of 3PO. For someone whos had chance to look at the two captures side by side is that true all the way through the captures?

I just took that screenshot from another thread where danny_boy had posted it, no idea how his copy compare to Russ', but based on that screenshot I agree that it does look to be a more solid capture.

Jonno said:

I've compared the raw MPEG-2 rips and, while the conversion to AVI hasn't helped the definition, the clipping is definitely a factor of the recorded DVDs.
While ADC technology in set-top DVD recorders does vary considerably in quality (not wanting to cast aspersions on Russ's AV kit!), it seems more likely that it was a limitation of the consumer-level VCR that created the tape in the first place.

 Yeah, it could be the original recording but I've actually seen this amount of blown out whites on LD-captures apparently caused by some DVD recorders. It sounds weird I know.

Jonno said:
Anyway, I'm presented with a bit of a quandary here - I certainly hadn't planned to make any revisionist alterations to the image (indeed my proposed editing workflow - as outlined earlier - is intended to obviate any transcoding at all).
I wonder what the best approach is - make my edit as a 'pure' preservation of this tape, then hand over to someone else to make improvements to the image as they see fit? I'd be glad to hear peoples' thoughts on this.

I think your original plan sounds good - pure preservation, then someone else may make further improvements on your work if needed.

danny_boy:

Russ:

Russ (white level tweak and de-interlaced):

AntcuFaalb, I can tell you that ANH - Technidisc will at least be a piece of cake for you, IIRC there wasn't any changes in cadence, never encountered an easier LD to IVTC.

The 2nd shot of the crawler was recomped in '97 as well...

top: original below: recomp

see the different position of the crawler.

The sandcrawler matte shot was digitally recomposited for the '97 Special Edition. The indicator is that the 3-frames-animation of the beacon is a little bit different than the original in its appearance, and if you have sharp eyes you can also see that the crawler itself is placed just a tiny bit below the ridge in the original whereas in the SE it stands atop the sand dunes.

Top: original ('85 pan & scan) below: recomp (2004 pan & scan)

^^ Nice camera angle they used. :)

I don't experience any trouble with the page or his site, but the issue may have been solved since then of course.

SilverWook said:

I asked about THX over at the HTF, and was told it probably resides with American Zoetrope.

It looks like it's Warner Bros who owns it along with the distribution rights going by the DVD/Bluray cases of the 2004 cut, no mention of Lucasfilm at all. But I guess that American Zoetrope have a say in it as well. There really should be a petition started in order to get the 1971 studio cut and 1978 restored cut released.

If it was the same telecine used for ITV's Christmas 1987 broadcast, it is the updated more common credit roll:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGnV6yC0QpI

Yet another cue mark:

Impressive that they haven't turned red after all these years! If only a scope print of THX would appear...

Examples of cue marks on the ITV - broadcast...

a square with black and white moving stripes appears in the upper right corner signaling that an ad break is coming, an additional circular cue mark is also seen on four frames:

then this print also have these...

4 frames of motor cue:

4 frames of changeover cue:

first frame of the following reel:

I find the points of these reel breaks a little odd. Saw at least one other of these when Alderaan is blown to smithereens. Does it tell us anything about the source?

Yes, the SWE LD's are all free from DVNR. Like Asaki said, the Technidisc pressing of the first film happened to be from a different print than the other ones, that's what made it so unique. That isn't the case with the ESB and ROTJ SWE discs. But that doesn't make your project uninteresting in my book, I'm especially interested to see what quality you can get out of ANH though, as my capture was done using the combfilter of the LD player, the combfilter in the DVD recorder introduced motion smearing, that's why I avoided it.

Even if there's bigger and better things on the way, I don't think we should stop preserving old LD-transfers if there's improvements to be made.

I wonder if it was my post above that locked the forum yesterday? Anyway, I made a quick look at your uncompressed recording, only got half of the transfer - disc 2, but the white levels were the same on that one. I guess it's the doings of the DVD recorder. But like I said, most of the blown out detail can be restored. My last example of the Yavin temples isn't the best example but I posted it to show it is prevalent throughout the transfer. I think it will be tough to restore the frames properly though.

danny_boy, thanks for the info. Yes, it's definitely a different print and telecine but the splice glue and lack of Tantive corridor marks tell us that it is at least derived from the same or similar film elements for the most part that was used to create the 80's home video master. In the year of '82 three different pan & scan transfers saw the light of day, four if the PAL rental tapes weren't just straight NTSC to PAL conversions. Remember that we had Video 2000 at school back in the day, good players.

Russ, I'm pretty sure his version is the same telecine, the tear he described in the dinner conversation is on yours as well. I've also seen a few screenshots from his in some of the threads around here that match yours, no Tantive corridor damage. But it would of course be great to see some more screenshots from it, especially if the recording includes the credits.

russs15 said:

It could be anything from the original VHS, the VHS to DVD recorder process, the low quality setting on this particar version of the transfer, the DVD to AVI conversion process or any combination of the four things.

If the higher quality DVD file looks as bad - blame the VHS or DVD recorder!!! Either way, we are screwed.

Jonno really has his work cut out on this one.........

Hold on, we're definitely not screwed just because of this, on the contrary, this old recording is in much better shape than I thought and it looks fantastic for the most part, and like I just demonstrated much of the lost detail in the highlights can be restored. And I've only seen your compressed avi yet. It's a real gem IMO. :)

Don't know if this is the fault of your DVD-recorder Russ or if it's only in your compressed avi, but the whites are quite severely clipped. But some of the detail lost in the highlights can be restored, a few examples using avisynth:

Levels(0,1,255,0,235,false)

top: original avi below: corrected

This may be old news to you Jonno, but I just thought I would point it out just in case. I know that some DVD-recorders had the bad habit of capture video either too bright or too dark.

russs15 said:

This is pretty much the same for me. Of course, don't forget that this has the Monomix soundtrack with all the different audio dialogue differences that have now been so well documented.

To me, the retail releases of the 80's and 90's just were not right to my eyes and ears compared to what I was brought up with.

Yeah, agree. I remember that the recording I had in the 80's didn't include the first third of the film for some reason, started in Mos Eisley, but it didn't stop me from watching it repeatedly. :)

TServo2049 said:

Actually, now that I think about it, the presence of the clouds on the ITV print actually makes some sense - remember, it also lacks the Tantive burn marks, which means that the picture might have been derived from the same, or at least a similar, film source as the official video masters of the era. (I wonder if it has some of the same damage, like maybe those dark blobs during the saber training...)

After my quick look, the ITV appears to share the exact same splice glue as the 80's video masters, including the last reel up to the group shot before the credits. Makes a lot of sense as it also lack those tantive corridor marks. The opening crawl splice and the dissolve to the end credits makes this an odd beast...

Another credits variation: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Early-print-variations-X-Wing-takeoff-End-Credits-etc/post/605211/#TopicPost605211

danny_boy said:

I recorded this broadcast myself in the summer of 83' and again in christmas 1984 on my then trusty V2000

Interesting, so this telecine was at least broadcasted three times, does your recordings contain the credits? if so, which ones: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Credits-Leaders-Thread/topic/12960/

I think your recordings would be a great asset to this project: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/1983-UK-TVS-Star-Wars-premiere-anybody-still-have-a-recording/topic/14122/

zee944 said:

Everybody is so pessimistic here!

My reason for beeing pessimistic is simply... what came first, the idea for a new line of Star Wars toys, or making Star Wars Episode VII the film?

jero32 said:

These 32mm are basically third generation, so they're gonna look a little "softer"than a direct o-neg copy.

Didn't Mallwalker suggest that you should change your username to jero35 so that it sticks? ;)

Thanks for the update Jonno, take your time. And thanks again Russ for sharing this! Would be interesting to see how Moth3r's recording compare, did danny_boy get back to you regarding his copy, Jonno?

So, this was first broadcasted in UK October '82, did ITV continue to use this particular master several times in the 80's? I got very nostalgic watching this without really knowing why but then I realized that it simply must've been this same transfer I had recorded on a betamax tape in the 80's (unfortunately lost to time) it sounds silly yes, how the hell can you remember that? But this is Star Wars, that tape was basically burned into my memory, you cannot miss the greenish hues and film-like contrasty quality of this early pan & scan transfer.

Discovered that this version was apparently broadcasted in Denmark as well, so I guess Swedish Television could've broadcasted the same master back then. Ok, enough of my useless babbling, are you going to keep it in PAL format? Not really necessary but would be nice with an alternative version with the main feature in NTSC.

Yeah, I recently got to see this one myself, and it's fantastic in its film-like quality, the theatrical timing is mostly intact.