msycamore

schorman13 said:

My copy of the 1130-84 does have the original fanfare, not the rerecorded version, as does my copy of the 1983 Japanese analog, CLV version (FY570-35MA).

The re-recorded fanfare Neil S. Bulk mentioned and those issues Belbucus described might be what the original '85 pressing was plagued by, the 1130-84 was re-issued in '92.

Looking forward to hear your rip schorman13! :)

I think what you're talking about is blue spill from some of the effects work but the red I was referring to, seen on the medical frigate and some of the smaller ships in the rebel fleet sequence is something else.

I just thought adjusting brightness or contrast with Tweak() instead of Levels() would be preferable as it leaves the chroma untouched. So in the end, it doesn't really matter which way you choose to set the brightness and contrast, both Tweak() and Levels() give you the same results?

There's one thing I have been wondering, in your script g-force, you're using Levels for setting brightness and contrast and that's also how I always have set the white and black points in Avisynth but isn't it actually better to do it with Tweak and only correct gamma with levels?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Levels affect both luma and chroma whereas Tweak affect luma only?

Also, another sequence that may need some correction is the first establishing shot of the rebel fleet at the end of the film, if you guys check it out, there's red seen around the edges at the top of the medical frigate that looks suspicious.

Ah, nice catch Red5! didn't notice that. You can actually see the blue shift on some of my screenshots on the first page as well. Thanks for pointing it out!

Great, will update the first post with your scripting You_Too. Thanks!

Before I update the first post, are we sure this blue shift is present on all those parts in the transfer?

Red5 said:

BTW did you try also shifting the blue plane the same amount and places as the red i.e. chromashift(v=2,u=2)  , the blue error isn't as obvious as the red but it's definitely noticeable.

 

Wait a minute, are you talking about my main chromashift-fix (if so, then the answer is no) or are you talking about this particular shot?

You_Too said:

Thanks. Actually, when looking at it again, it seems shifting blue by 1 was better than 2. When shifting by 2 it fixed the upper right part better, but in the rest of the picture it looks like the blues are too far to the right. Updated it in my post.

On the other hand, since that scene begins with a spinning fade from another scene without the blue shift, I guess it would need some additional scripting to make sure only this shot gets changed. Something I don't know how to do.

Yeah, looks a little better. But what you describe is what I remember happened when I tried it, it gets noticeable on the starfield that the blue gets misaligned once you apply the correction. Also, what you said, the wipe complicate matters, maybe better to just leave it alone.

Or not, damn I need to learn to type faster. ;) I actually don't remember if I tried that, Red5. Both examples are improvements alright.

Once you've seen it you cannot unsee it, that's why I am torturing you guys. I don't want to be alone. ;)

Thanks for the suggestion Red5, am unable to test it at the moment but will check it out when I get my new PC. Maybe you could post a screenshot with your avisynth fix applied?

g-force said:

Okay, final straw.

We should be talking improving upon msycamore's already awesome SWE transfer instead of the GOUT. Just look at that last pic comparison! Post-processing, X0 transfer, how can we make it even better?

I'm so over the GOUT.

-G

Yeah, I feel your pain. It's just that the major problems with the SC/SWE transfers of Empire is the huge amount of chroma noise, rainbowing and color timing, you really need to make an extensive color correction on it to get it to look like it should, and there is also some very weird and nasty hues present in those transfers. That screencap is from arnie.d's superb X9-capture btw, my primitive SWE capture does have somewhat better colors, less chroma noise and zero motion smearing but is nowhere near as detailed, my SWE-cap:

EDIT: Nice, great job You_Too! Thanks. Also, can we get a screenshot of your fix?

Yes, LeoneNut did: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Sergio-Leone-Preservations-Dollars-Trilogy-Fistful-of-Dynamite-Once-Upon-a-Time-in-the-West-All-Completed/topic/5771/

Have not been able to see his work and I'm not sure if they can be found somewhere any longer either.

Another case where it looks like chroma shift of the blue information, see the very saturated blue on the ship in the upper right corner.

I'm not even sure what's going on in this particular case but you cannot fix it with chroma shift as the blue information doesn't seem to be shifted evenly across the picture, I think I've seen it on other places in the transfer as well. It's definitely not how it should look. To give you an idea, here's an example on how this shot looked like in the SC/SWE LD master:

Sorry to hear that, know how it feels.

As you're going through the trouble to fix those color issues, in case you missed it, I'd like to mention that its not only those two shots in the garage I posted earlier that are affected, the color stability isn't back until after Threepio has presented himself. A few more examples:

green turns blue

green turns pink

green turns cyan

green turns blue

green turns blue

Another minor one where blue turns pink.

Sbodge said:

So we can say that the episode numbers starting at 4 was already part of a design and at first they didn't add it because they didn't know if the movie would be a success (speculation) and as the movie was a hit and Lucas made good money he was able to make ep5 and ep6 and then add the episode number in the title? (that would be logical from my point of view)

If you would ask Lucas today he would perhaps say it was part of the design, but the truth is that the 1977 Star Wars was a self contained story and film, if for some reason they had included a title number back in '77, it would've been Episode I and definitely not IV, there's even storyboards depicting the planned crawl for The Empire Strikes Back that says Episode II, somewhere in the writing process of Empire, Lucas realized and decided that he could make the first film be the fourth in a big epic saga.

These episode numbers weren't really a big deal back then, some were obviously a little bit confused by seeing Episode V in the crawl on Empire in '80 but most people just took them as an homage to the old Flash Gordon serials which the films emulated. Oh, some time have passed since the last one, that's the way I saw it back when I first saw Empire in '80, not thinking I had missed three episodes. ;) I had actually no idea about planned sequels/prequels then.

The title Episode IV - A New Hope first appeared in the published script of the film in '79. That published script is a little bit different to the real actual shooting script. But fans who read it and those who were members of the fanclub etc. knew about the future title change, a few years before it actually materialized on film prints in '81.

The '85 re-mix have wider imaging and sligthly better fidelity but other than the tractor beam line it should be identical to the original Dolby Stereo in terms of content, I've also heard some say that the music reverb are not as pronounced in the re-mix as in the original.

CatBus said:

Okay, one last question...are there any GOUT sync guidelines for these (particularly ESB and ROTJ), or just any general guidelines for how to make a good sync?

Yes, the sync delay offsets on Belbucus original uploads:

• Star Wars  (all mixes)  +1.017 sec
• Empire  +  0.948 sec
• Jedi  +1.015 sec

It could also be worth mentioning that hairy_hen have since repaired a slight glitch in the PCM track of Empire (a high pitched sound appearing when the Falcon is "attacking" the Stardestroyer) and a glitch in the '93 mastering itself (a jump cut in the music just before C-3PO says, "If only you'd attached my legs, I wouldn't be in this ridiculous position." The music cue starts and then it seems to start again less than half a second later). The absence of the whining sound effect when the snowspeeder crash in the '93 remaster is still a little mystery.

georgec said:

For which version of ESB does the cropping take place? On the blu-rays? 2004? 1997?

On both the '97 and '04 editions, not seen the blu-ray so I don't know if further alterations have been done, a few shots were still left alone on the DVD.

Interesting, so we have Tom Christopher, the Lucasfilm editor in charge of the restoration say that 748 shots were redone on the first film and Lucas says 375 were replaced, that would perhaps make the 373 shots not mentioned by Lucas enhancements? or vice versa? Speculation...

danny_boy said:

To be fair it looks like the film was restored to the best of Lucasfilm's ability given the technology and expense at that point in time.

HD/2K scanning of an entire film was in it's infancy and also incredibily expensive in 1996.

New prints were made of  Close Encounters(20yrs),Saturday Night Fever(20 yrs) and The Godfather(25yrs) to mark their respective anniversaries in 1997 and none of them had scans at all-----the new prints were struck directly off new internegatives -----compared to those films above -----I think more effort was put into restoring Star Wars(which at least had partial scans---allbeit to produce/add effects)

(Even fellowship of the Ring which was made in 2000/2001 was 70% scanned and 30% photochemichally produced)

The original negative was disassembled cleaned and reassembled. The original film was never restored, no matter what you say. Restore means; to return something to an original or former condition. This was never done. Instead, 748 of the 2,228 shots in the film were redone, that's a little bit more than one-third of all the shots in the film.

danny_boy said:

And in a literal sense-----the supression(of the 35mm prints) of the "original film" of Star Wars can go right back to 1981 when "Episode IV" was tacked onto the begginning-----because the theatrical re-releases in 1981.82' 83'and 85'(in 83' and 85'---Star Wars was part of a triple bill with ESB and ROTJ) all featured these new "altered" prints------ but no-one complained back then!

Why didn't VHS and laserdisc fans complain in 1982 when the "altered" version of star wars was released for the first time on home video?----- why did'nt they complain that they could not hear the mono mix on that 82' video tape/laserdisc?

Yes, but who says there weren't complaints? You can easily compare it with American Graffiti which also got an updated title sequence in '98. There are fans who don't like it but most people don't care or first take notice when they suddenly see a big walking dinosaur in front of the camera. These minor alterations have a better chance to succeed with going unnoticed by the large crowd, you can still to this day hear people that are confused by or unsure if Star Wars had a title number in its crawl back in '77.

More '97 alterations, these three cockpit shots were treated with camera shake, it's all very subtle so a comparison won't do.

The original footage didn't have camera shake, instead they shook the cockpit.

Great examples with the Leone films, as I said in the beginning of this thread, MGM seems to be the great champions on bad video remixes. I never bought the extended The Good, the Bad and the Ugly DVD because of this issue, still own the first MGM DVD with the additional scenes as an extra, great release for its time.

I think I posted this in another thread: http://www.forafewdollarsmore.net/

But it's a nice breakdown of all the major issues with For a Few Dollars More on video.

Fantastic!! will be interesting to compare its quality with the analog track. Didn't even know a digital track existed. Thanks for doing this! :)

woodsyallen said:

Regardless, I'd love to see this special 70mm mix synced to the BRD video if at all possible... thanks in advance.

It's been done, just give Jonno a PM.

Nicely done intro reel, Jonno! Like that you used the trailers for Zombie and Phantasm.

CatBus said:

2. Some contention here.  I believe it's a recreation, but a really really painstakingly good one.  Not significantly different.

Would you care to elaborate on why you believe the crawl was a recreation? And when you say so do you mean only just the crawl or the entire opening shot?

Maybe someone with expertise could explain what causes chroma shift? What makes it a little odd is that it's not present through the whole transfer.