msycamore

Those subs are superb! this must be because You_Too is a swedish guy. ;)

Still waiting on my old trusty computer. ;) In the meantime please let me know if this will work or not: http://www.sendspace.com/file/r4m70d

It's a video only sample of the opening titles and the very beginning of the film.

Darth Tater said:

I thought the Telecine subs were original.

 

Yes, they are. It's a telecine of a '77 print. Thread for sub reference: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Greedo-Jabba-subtitles-theatrical-placement-and-fonts/topic/11463/ I really need to update that page with screenshots of all Jedi subs and some better reference material that have since surfaced.

You_Too said:

Darth Tater said:

How does this green light/blue light thing happen in the first place?

I think it must have something to do with them adding some color setting over the whole movie without checking for side effects. Probably the same thing as Luke's saber being green and grey shadows being blue. Just a guess of course.

I think it's alot more complicated than that, see this: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Crushed-Blacks/post/539032/#TopicPost539032 That is just a few examples of the inconsistency that is going on with all the levels throughout the film, that's why one single setting cannot correct the damage, just from one moment to another it goes from being extremely saturated to being very desaturated, what should've been blue are green and vice versa and what should be bright is dull in another moment, I don't know if the blu-ray release have corrected some of this but that's what's going on with all the levels in the 2004 DVD, which create a wonderful mix of disaster.

I'm no expert on this, but one color setting added over the whole movie cannot be the culprit for this.

I forgot to mention that there wasn't any fade in/out on the subs what I can remember when studying Puggo Grande and the bootleg.

Darth Tater, the font used on those are Trade Gothic, it's not a perfect match but damn close. I didn't try to match the theatrical placement on my Technidisc due to cropping, that's why its appearance is different there.

I hated to point it out to you, doing subs is boring work, hope it's not too much work for you redoing it.

Haven't seen your clip Harmy but that line Darth Tater posted definitely appear lower in frame on the original prints and the ellipsis also had three periods.

You mentioned such a version some time ago when we discussed the color of the THX opening titles. As a huge Kubrick fan and a love of that film it stuck.

Yeah, I just never knew they were that sensitive about it. Is that the LD of The Shining with the different colored titles?

Maybe the title of this thread should read, "When did Empire become held in higher regard than Star Wars on the internet?"

Michael Kaminski aka zombie did a great two part article on the reception of the original trilogy 1977-83 which goes into depth of it: http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/originaltrilogyreception1.html

Personally, I think many factors play a role other than already mentioned, in the last 15 years, Empire is also seen as the least butchered film in its SE form, it may also affect peoples view but I must say that IMO it was equally fucked up by Luke's scream and destroyed editing.

Another theory of mine is the constant growing anger and hate fans have with Lucas of today, where they often attribute everything that is good about SW or Indiana Jones for that matter to everyone except Lucas, nothing strange really, I hate what a fucking asshole Lucas is today but I will never forget that he is the genius behind THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars, Empire and Raiders, what this man is doing today have nothing to do with his talent of yesterday IMO. The three K's, Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan, Gary Kurtz were largely responsible for the quality of Empire, but so was Lucas no matter what people think of this man today. But the fact that this was the film he was the least involved with when they shot it, makes this also the most pure to those who think that "the talentless Lucas couldn't ruin this one". It's sad, but this view exist.

The most common view I usually hear is that Empire is the greatest but Star Wars is their favorite, I share that same view, it always was a tie between these two for me growing up but I must admit that I think Empire is the better film now. But Star Wars is still my favorite.

I must also agree with georgec, that the last 40 min or so of Empire are cinematic perfection. Music, editing, performance, cinematography, and special effects are in perfect alignment, I actually believe I have just seen the greatest motion picture ever, every time I see Leia & Luke looking out in the vast space as John Williams beautiful score play. The build up to that cliffhanger is a master stroke, almost too good. Williams is of course a big part of that.

I will however never like that muppet movie where Luke Skywalker has the same hairdo as aunt Beru and where he and Leia are siblings. ;) But in the end, who cares what other people think, as long as you enjoy the movie, others perceptions of it is worthless.

Now, if we all could just enjoy all these films at home in good quality, SE or original, Lucas has made that thing very difficult with all his films.

Thanks for posting that article, danny_boy, very interesting.

Going through the Japanese LD from 1986 that SilverWook sent me a capture of, just like the '82 Betamax, you can see that the Buck Rogers segment appear quite close in its colors to the '04 DVD. So that's basically the timing I will go with, if you don't mind.

They squeezed the opening titles for this transfer, if only the cropping had been better it would've been an even better alternative than the DVD titles, damn!

Another interesting thing is that this release was censored just like Skyjedi mentioned could be the case earlier in the thread.

EDIT: Sorry, ImageShack don't like women's breasts. ;)

^^ I find this one pretty funny as you cannot even see anything in this shot. See the pixelated area.

From wikipedia:

"In Japan, it is illegal for any commercial work to display the human vagina and phallic in an explicit manner. Any publications depicting the penis or vagina must be shrink-wrapped and barred from sale to minors. However, it is not uncommon for pictorial magazines to depict nude women with their genitalia airbrushed over in black, and video pornography routinely depicts explicit sex scenes with the participants' genitalia mosaicked out. Until 1991, the entire pubic region, including hair, was deemed obscene and unpublishable. Recently there has been a diversification in the censoring market with there now being several companies which offer it. The government's sexual watchdog group is still considered to be the more harsh though this in many cases depends upon personal taste as most of the companies practices vary, with some opting for the more controversial (as opposed to the mosiac) big black bar. As of now it looks as if the censorship laws will be lessened due to the Internet's pervasiveness and the underground pornography movement which began in the late 1980's. However, it still has a large number of followers in the society as a whole and regardless of opinion it has become somewhat of a "cultural practice". An example would be that even though pubic hair is no longer illegal to depict, many AV movies still frequentlly censor it and hentai art and films do not usually even have it drawn. This has led some, predominantly westerners, to view Japanese pornography as being somewhat pedophiliac and seeing many of the females as being younger than they really are intended to be."

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

pittrek said:

msycamore said:

That's what I tried to explain, those scenes should be darker and was originally, and later brightened for video.

Thanks ! My English is definitely not as good as I once thought :-)

 It's cool, my English isn't that good either. :)

Nice results! thanks for posting. :)

I really hate that you're so limited by working in YUV (YV12) colorspace, you have so much more advantage, control and accuracy in RGB, as I understand it a colorspace conversion, YV12 to RGB and back to YV12 is a very lossy process and always not recommended, right?

That's what I tried to explain, those scenes should be darker and was originally, and later brightened for video.

The scene with R2-D2 in the canyon where he is captured by Jawas was one of those sequences shot-day-for-night, they turned up the brightness for those scenes in the early days of home video, the '93 DC LD was the first time they didn't. You can even see when it occur as it's done step by step in the wipes.

Other such scenes are the shot of the Sandcrawler just before "Look, sir. Droids.", in Empire you have the scenes with Luke seeing the apparition of Obi-Wan on Hoth, Luke's arrival on Dagobah and his later encounter with Yoda. These were often presented in broad daylight in the old video releases.

TServo2049 said:

When you do your revised version, will you do any color correction to individual shots?

Yes, definitely, I know exactly what you mean about those lightsaber scenes aboard the Falcon, besides the overall yellow tint and green highlights on this LD, some shots like those you described need to be corrected individually. The same goes for contrast and brightness in many scenes.

TServo2049 said:

(And I was just thinking - that guy in the Netherlands with the X9, do you think he could do a better-looking rip of this disc?)

There's no question about it, a CLD-D790 cannot compete with an X9. Other things of importance is of course how you capture it, how many captures you're willing to do for post-processing etc.

Btw, which guy with an X9 are you speaking about?

I sent you a pm, ecto001.

Yes.

Discussed a few step below this thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-GOUT-crawl/topic/13419/

Why re-create it when you can just scan the real thing.

Harmy said:

OK guys, you've probably already seen this but I thought I'd repost here, since I think that, although it would be quite inexplicable, it may actually be an intentional change, because it's only the soldiers that are totally blurred and not the AT-ATs:

 

Adywan just posted this:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/93945

It's a comparison between the Blu-Ray and a 35mm scan of the original version. The Blu-Ray fails miserably.

Maybe they were trying to conceal the AT-ATs' feet being hazy by making it appear that there was actually a misty haze on the ground level? Because it does look less like the AT-ATs are floating in the air.

 

That's an ugly one, it's like that on the 2004 DVD as well, the same blurry mess and loss of detail is also seen on other sequences in the battle, here's a few examples before that one. I don't have a 35mm scan to show the difference but even the motion-smeared '97SE TB demonstrate the difference.

top: '97SE TB / bottom: '04 DVD

The detail doesn't matter, as long as we get rid of all the grain. ;)

g-force said:

none said:

But there seems to be a specific caveat which made the lightsaber hit blasts fade more into the background. 

 

That's the DNR. It tends to remove things that only last 1 frame.

It looks to me like the same reason the star fields, glow of engines and lasers got eaten up by whatever Lowry or Lucasfilm used to artificially enhance/clean up the films with.

"In 1997, the shot of Luke jumping down following Vader has been extended by two frames.  The next shot of Luke entering the pipe has been shortened by two frames.(1997 Change)"

This is just where a reel change occur, those two frames didn't make it when they produced the GOUT, they are included on the PAL version of the disc however.

EDIT:

"In 2004, blast fire from Ion Cannon is white.(2004 Change)"

"In 2004, blue square above switches is now black.(2004 Change)"

I can definitely see color in the blast fire and blue in the button, this is just how things got their look and appearance when the worst colortiming of all time got applied and approved by George Lucas. It affects everything in the transfers, I seriously doubt they sat down and decided that this blue square should be retimed so it appear dark blue, it's just how everything down to every minor detail gets affected by the new colortiming/fuck up. But if these kinds of things help people on this board when they work on their edits, I can see why you list it.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I'm interested in seeing the color correction you achieve.

Yes, I will definitely share my results with you if I come up with something nice, it can be some time before I do though, depending on when I get my PC back.

thxita said:

Reinstalling Windows never solved anything. A format and a fresh install is the only good solution but requires backing up all the data

Oh sorry, that's what I ment. My buddy suspect the problem is either memory related or something with the bios...

I now have the files Puggo sent me of SilverWooks print and as you've already seen it's very red-shifted but I think it can be corrected quite well. Thanks again Puggo for scanning it and SilverWook for providing the print. I should also tell you that a simple re-install of Windows didn't solve my computer issue :( a friend of mine good on computers is working on solving the problem. I hope I can get back to work on this as soon as possible.

I think both the Han Solo saber and Vader's saber in the cave look suspect in your caps and are probably fiddled with, but I don't think the sabers were recomped in the carbon freeze chamber. Like I said earlier I think it's just a matter of the clipped white level and DVNR that makes the GOUT blades to appear thicker. You can also see DVNR-artifacts in every saber clash. Here's a couple of screenshots from the SWE LD.

But at the same time, all the optical grain and built in dirt was eliminated in all the lightsaber scenes for the 2004 DVD's, so they are all changed, recomped or not.

EDIT: also, great finds none. Hope I don't come across as some know-it-all-guy, just expressing my opinion.