msycamore

Ah, sorry about that, it was perhaps you Treadwell who pointed it out.

Zombie, maybe none have kept track of it all. And by none I mean the member none. ;)

none said:

Going with the redo theory, would they have re-filmed the lettering or just recomp'd as maybe some new development was figured out in optics?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I guess that the Kodalith would've needed to be re-filmed if a redo took place as just a recomp wouldn't solve the instability. I can actually not see any differences between the sources, but those that are available to us besides the GOUT are in not so good quality that a comparison is easy to make, the flyover special effect sequence seems to be identical to my eyes, but those elements were probably just the same anyway, they even were in the '81 redo despite the matte line clean up (I'm only talking about the two ships and their lasers and impact flashes). But when Verta pointed out this difference in stability and the fact that ILM did film many foreign variations of the crawl combined with the end credits find, it wouldn't actually surprise me if it was done.

none said:

So let's get our thoughts together, and send over a question or two. The blog is still active.

As Richard Edlund's in the first shot, he's got a website too: http://www.richardedlund.com/home

Could be worth a shot. The end credits redo intrigues me just as much. If the crawl actually was updated shortly after it premiered, I suspect it was done on the same batch of prints with the updated end credits.

So true, Star Wars is taken much too seriously sometimes, personally I never have or do care about all the hoopla surrounding the films, my Star Wars interest starts and ends with mostly two films. And all the crap outside of that I couldn't care less about.

captainsolo said:

Wow, thanks for having another go at this. I loved the original capture and frankly don't have any problem with the inconsistencies. In fact, I loved it.

Thanks. Yeah, I agree. It's not that horrible as I make it out to be, but it makes setting the white balance correctly a little tough.

captainsolo said:

Your new samples do look improved and further underline my need to find a copy of this myself.

Hope you're able to find one. Just be aware that this pressing suffers from crosstalk artifacts that I was mostly succesful to get rid of with making 5 captures and using a median script in AviSynth. Some examples of it:

At one point I thought it was just a problem with my player, but I have not seen this kind of artifacts on any other LD's I own.

Exactly how I feel about it. (except The Clone Wars, as I have never seen it).

AntcuFaalb said:

EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood your question. It's probably an IP in bad shape that is the reason for some of it if I would make a guess.

What does IP stand for in this context?

Interpositive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpositive

captainsolo, which edition of Goldeneye is it that you own, I got this one: http://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/07090/ML105544/Goldeneye:-Special-Edition-(1995) and both tracks on that one are incredibly good, very nice mix. The DTS laser may be too good. ;)

AntcuFaalb said:

Lazy question: did the color inconsistency originate on the LD itself?

Yes. The problem just got magnified with my adjustments. Side 2 and 3 are extremely inconsistent in places. Just take a look at the first scenes in the trash compactor and see how bad the contrast and gamma is compared to when we later come back when the walls are closing in. The Death Star battle at the end are the worst, there you have a very frequent inconsistency in levels where some shots even appear desaturated. If you really want to check how inconsistent the levels are there, check the scene where Vader informs the TIE pilots "Several fighters have broken off from the main group, come with me". Almost night in that scene. ;)

EDIT: Sorry, I misunderstood your question. It's probably an IP in bad shape that is the reason for some of it if I would make a guess.

AntcuFaalb said:

You_Too said:

msycamore said:

This cap was done with a Pioneer CLD-D790, would be nice to see this pressing captured by someone with a top of the line player such as a X9 or a X0 player. Right know I plan to just reupload a contrast corrected version of my original capture.

Ok, I'm still interested in seeing this. The samples you posted looked great. They somehow looked clearer than the old version.

I'm still interested as well. Count me in!

Thanks for showing interest.

What you guys are seeing is also the result of some light sharpening. (don't worry, no additional haloing will be present)

frank678 said:

thanks that makes perfect sense - i can see it is best to capture the best range of whats there overall and not whats not there at any given point.

as you were retweaking saturation just wanted to make sure i asked my question at this stage

No problem, I understand your concern. And I actually don't think you clipped any levels on your example, it looks more accurate, but if I went with a setting similar to yours I would blow out details in some other parts later in the transfer, you could of course go shot by shot to get the best results but I will not do that, maybe reel by reel is an good idea, I'll see what I can do.

EDIT: I guess I checked the wrong pic, you indeed clipped the whites on your example.

You_Too said:

By the way msycamore, what LD player are you using?

Without much knowledge about the LD format, I remember reading somewhere that Pioneer X9 or X10 or something are the best LD players, so maybe for a second version it would be a good idea to let somebody with such a player do the capture?

This cap was done with a Pioneer CLD-D790, would be nice to see this pressing captured by someone with a top of the line player such as a X9 or a X0 player. Right know I plan to just reupload a contrast corrected version of my original capture.

There is no magic setting for the whole transfer, so I have to compromise when I'm setting the brigthness and contrast for how it may affect scenes later on in the transfer, as I'm not going shot by shot. In some scenes it may even look like you have blown out details even if you haven't, in those cases the details were blown out already in the telecine stage, so you're just adjusting what should be white to be white. Then if things still don't look bright enough for you, you may have to adjust gamma.

mverta said:

I hadn't given it much thought until recently, when I noticed an extreme amount of jitter in the title card, which I have from two absolutely confirm-able 1977 sources, which are identical to each other.  What's odd is that the GOUT title card element is much straighter and smoother in its motion.  Stabilizing my 1977 elements doesn't yield the GOUT result; they have internally different characteristics.  If I didn't know better, I'd say either 1) GOUT was indeed a recreation or 2) There was a second, more stable version of the title card created after the initial release in 1977, but before the 1981 re-release and re-do, which GOUT is based upon.

This is actually not that hard to believe, as they went trough the trouble of revising the end credits, there's a possibility they could also have used a more stable version of the crawl on later prints. Maybe a closer examination of all the '77 sources will tell us something.

Sounds like a good theory, those DVD's that only provided a 5.1 track and not additional 2.0 tracks might have been compromised just for that reason you described. I also think one reason could be that many forget to turn off the dynamic range control option on their DVD players, I've seen it's on by default on many players.

Just to demonstrate the cropping on it with a comparison against the GOUT transfer.

It's posts like yours hairy_hen, that makes me love this forum, so much expertise. I have actually wondered about this on several DVD 5.1 mixes, I guess this particular issue is a quite easy thing to miss when they authoring DVD/blu-rays.

A thing I have been wondering about, we talked earlier in the thread about split surrounds versus mono surrounds or was it in my Alien thread... Anyway, Empire in Dolby ProLogic II sounds completely natural on my receiver whereas Star Wars sounds kind of off in the surrounds sometimes (I'm talking about the '93 remasters) almost like the receiver have a hard time to determine the correct surround field, can this be a kind of clue that those matrixed surround tracks that sound completely natural in ProLogic II were being mixed with split surrounds in mind even if they weren't presented that way on release prints back in the day, or am I just talking complete garbage right now?

Agree.

Love those.  :)

Didn't Rodriguez resurrect that one on one of his films... or was it Tarantino who used that one for Kill Bill or was it for Death Proof?

Puggo, if you're reading this. I find that the VirtualDub filter Color Mill is a very nice and easy to use color grading tool, if you're going to try and correcting the 16mm THX sometime. I have experimented a little bit with the clip you sent me, I can post some examples later. I know that you are busy with other projects at the moment but I just thought I would mention it.

danny_boy said:

Having said that  the public have never been shown which or what frames(that featured optical composites) have/had  deteriorated.

A lot of the original composites are still in the special edition----and they look to be in excellent condition(although they exihibit the extra grain and contrast associated with 3rd generation elements)

 

There's a possibility you would be surprised how few of those there is that are original, there wasn't actually that many of them left in the 2004 DVD version. They could perhaps be counted on one hand or two, this isn't actually a matter of degraded material either any more, it just happen to be a perfect opportunity for Lucas to redo the film, as many shots they recomposited in '97, just as many were done for the DVD, and then it isn't about deteriorated material any longer, it's about replacing every optical shot to get rid of all the grain and ultimately none of the original academy award winning ground breaking special effects work are left to be seen.

I have actually not seen the blu-ray transfer myself, but is there actually additional grain and increased contrast on any of the effects work? I find it hard to believe when Lowry made a big deal of getting rid of such things in 2004.

Interesting info about the incorrectly recorded surrounds on Raiders h_h. Haven't noticed it, I guess they never did correct it but is the same flaw present on both DVD editions? I only own the 2003 DVD.

Ok, did check my AviSynth working files on this today, it turned out I had set a saturation boost of 1.05 when I authored this disc, and that's one of the reasons the later parts of the transfer is so highly saturated in places, I probably thought Side 1 needed some additional saturation and simply forgot to check the remaining sides of the LD. As have been mentioned earlier I also did a fairly poor job on setting the contrast and that also made a big difference.

But I'm willing to correct my mistakes and not do as Lucasfilm and say it was a deliberate creative decision. ;) So I can upload an improved one if there's still interest in that.

Here's a few samples of what you can expect of a 2nd version:

Rebel blockade runner: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4h6ana

Mos Eisley spaceport: http://www.sendspace.com/file/p4nr7f

And again, thanks for all the positive response and all of you who helped seeding this.

"For more enjoyment and greater efficiency, consumption is being standardized."

Just wanted to let you guys know that I have a new working PC now, so I will try to get to work on the audio when I go on vacation in about two weeks. Looking forward to get this out there.

Ah, those naughty nuns... :)

Great!! :)

Baronlando said:

I haven't said that (this week). 

We need more blu-ray cover pics of obscure titles that have been treated better than SW in this thread. :) 

Baronlando said: 

It's amazing that the separation masters were so bungled, it makes you wonder how many movies you think are taken care of actually aren't. I hope at last Empire and Jedi were done properly. (Wonder if THX1138 even got that level of treatment, or was too low-budget for any kind of archival versions, which would make that "restoration" just as bad if not worse. )

I can imagine that separation masters were a costly process so I strongly doubt such an effort was made for THX that was even hated by the studio, but you never know. I guess one advantage for that films condition were its unpopularity. I wonder how common it really was for the studios to create separation masters?