msycamore

A few '97SE recomposited shots that isn't on your list:

^ At the time it appears in the film it would be placed between comparisons 61 and 62.

^ Between 63 and 64.

^ Between 66 and 67.

^ Between 86 and 87.

^ Between 92 and 93.

I also noticed that comparisons: 76-83 don't follow the correct order of the film. Below is the order these sequences appear in the film along with a few redone shots that was missing on your list:

'97SE:

All these recomposited cockpit-shots in this particular sequence are also 2004 changes not '97.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Hey doubleofive, I noticed that on this comparison here, you talked about the different scan lines in the strangling scene. In fact, the dot pattern (caused by vertical lines) showed up as early as the 1989 Mitsubishi Special Widescreen Edition pressing, prior to the 1993 Definitive Collection. You can see a screen shot of a transfer here. It's possible that the JSC just lacked some vertical scan lines... and it was always there.

EDIT: I just checked the theatrical Betamax bootleg and it too lacked vertical scan lines so it was the horizontal pattern. Has Puggo released screen shots of that particular scene?

The dot pattern has been visible on video releases earlier than that, as early as 1985 on the US Pan & Scan LD for example. Like I have said before, these are most likely shortcomings in various video transfers and not an actual visual change done to the film.

It's impossible to say without an extensive comparison between the transfers, I've only seen the Pioneer pressing. I'm definitely not an authority on these matters, what Asaki said could also be the case. I'm just basing my assumptions on dirt spots and splices etc.

The scanline pattern differ between releases because of the lack of resolution/detail, if that is down to different IP/film elements used or a shortcoming in the video mastering process I don't know, for Star Wars it seems to exist at least two different IP's, don't know if that is the case with Empire.

Just let me know if you need some specific screenshots for your comparisons from the '97 SE and I'll get them for you, my Empire source isn't too terribly cropped, often equal to the GOUT.

Yeah, I agree that very little have been documented about the process behind these edits, would be interesting to know and see a little more behind the decisions etc., but I guess the less that is documented about it the better chance for the Lucasfilm-revisionism to succeed. ;)

I forgot to mention it earlier 005, but all those reframed shots I listed including these ones already on your list:

are 2004 DVD changes, not 1997 changes.

Moth3r said:

I liked the sample, these old video transfers have an aesthetic appeal that's hard to describe.

I would definitely increase the white level (contrast), then perhaps you might want to carry out a gamma adjustment to darken the lower end of the luma curve.

So I take it the sample video is from a multi-capture median script, while the screenshots above are from the raw captures?

Yes, that is correct, those screenshots are from the raw capture. The sample video was from a median of 5, but to be honest I didn't notice any difference between 5 and a median of 3 but I wanted to try it out. Thanks for the advice, a level tweak is definitely needed to get this to look acceptable.

Moth3r said:

Yes the script above is simple to modify for five captures. There is a noticeable improvement when going from a 3-cap to a 5-cap average, but I've found that five is the sweetspot; more than this and the additional time and storage required outweigh the benefits of a small increase in quality.

Regarding the temporal soften command, I don't think the scenechange parameter (the 4th figure) is required, and I cannot tell any difference between modes 1 and 2 (the 5th figure). Obviously you would use radius=2 for a 5-cap average.

Ok will try it out, thanks for the help. :) Using his DVD recorders combfilter by using composite instead didn't do this any better unfortunately. Sure the picture was much cleaner with less dot-crawl/rainbowing but it looked less saturated and it clearly killed some detail.

Moth3r said:

What method did you use for the IVTC and resize? I ask because there's a fair amount of aliasing visible (it's actually as bad as the GOUT) and I wondered if that was from your processing or present on the source.

For the IVTC I used DoubleWeave(). Pulldown(,) and for the resize I used Spline36Resize. I can confirm that the bad aliasing is unfortunately present on the source, much seems to indicate that this LD used the same source as the GOUT. I've noticed that the JSC and the other pressings of this LD are somewhat better in this regard. This one also shares the same amount of wonderful gateweave we have on the GOUT among other things. I can post a raw sample later. Thanks for the response Moth3r, much appreciated.

EDIT: Good news is that I will be able to get some better results from a new cap, he had mistakenly a sort of dnr preset activated on his recorder when he captured it the first time. Sigh... ;)

The Aluminum Falcon said:

As far as crosstalk, in the clip, I didn't see much, so I, for one, probably wouldn't be bothered by it.

Yeah, most of it got eliminated thanks to the multicap median script, the raw caps looking much worse.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

Speaking of Arnie d., if you really can't live with the crosstalk of this release, he was offering raw X9 captures of the (similarly, smear-free) JSC trilogy to anyone willing to finish it up.

Yes, I know he did and it would be fantastic to see such nice captures come to good use but right now I'm just happy if I manage to finish the THX LD's. ;)

The Aluminum Falcon said:

In conclusion, yes, I'd be very interested in you doing this after finishing up on THX.

EDIT: Do you mind kindly uploading a sample of the sunset scene? It looks good, no crosstalk, judging from your sample picture.

Yes, I've decided to do it, I think just the sheer uniqueness of this LD makes it worthy of preservation on its own. The sunset is full of crosstalk just like the rest of the film even though it's not visible on that particular screenshot, maybe I'll post one later.

Thanks for the advice Moth3r, I will definitely try it out and see what works best. I guess an average of 5 clips would get me the best results, do you have a script example for that? I'm not sure how it really works, the script command I've used in the past was only for three caps:

clip1 = AVISource("E:\Source.avi")
clip2 = AVISource("E:\Source.avi")
clip3 = AVISource("E:\Source.avi")

interleave(clip1,clip2,clip3)
temporalsoften(1,255,255,25,2)
selectevery(3,1)

Does it work the same way, do I just add two more clips to that?

I strongly believe that the SWE LD's used the same source as the earlier JSC LD's except the Technidisc ANH pressing which seems to be sourced from the same IP as the DC/Faces/GOUT-transfer of the first film. It may however be variations between the various pressings of the sequels in the SWE set just like with the first film, but the Pioneer pressing I own of Empire seems to be from the same elements the JSC was sourced from.

Different cropping doesn't have to mean it's a different source.

Thanks for that link! :)

Very nice looking labels Laserschwert! 

captainsolo, your college screenings of Puggo Grande makes me very happy. Damn, that is so cool! :)

I did manage to get a friend of mine to cap this LD for me as I'm not set up for capturing myself at the moment, he does own an identical player to mine which is an Pioneer CLD-D790, he plugged it into an Panasonic DVD-recorder through s-video. Continue on from my post here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Curious-about-Certain-Aspects-of-My-Primitive-LD-to-DVD-transfers/post/522651/#TopicPost522651

...this LD does have the crosstalk artifact all over the place on all sides, what I was surprised by was that the artifact behaves like random video noise for some reason which is very fortunate, it means that most of it can be eliminated by a multicap median/average in avisynth.

As I was taking some needed little break from my THX preservation I did just that, but the median script didn't get rid of it all and the dot crawl and rainbowing is horrible, maybe his recorders comb filter isn't that good or maybe he should've captured it through composite to get better results, I'll make him try it out for me because I'm not happy with it. I don't know, maybe an average script will do better than median, I will try that as well.

A short video sample of it without audio: http://www.sendspace.com/file/sgpy3s

Just IVTC'ed, resized with no additional filtering done just to show the potential of this LD or not. It's soft, extremely dirty and have horrible chroma noise as well as dot-crawl, it is easily removable but not without sacrificing other parts of the picture, so a cleaner capture is what I will ultimately need.

I have no idea how this crosstalk works, but some of it seems to appear randomly and sometimes it is in the same spots. Here's how it looks:

It's very sad because without it, this could very much be the best transfer of ANH on LD, sure it's very dirty and heavily cropped (except the opening crawl, which btw looks much better than the JSC/earlier SWE pressings) but most importantly, it's DVNR-free and have much better colors than any other LD I've seen of this film, much like the early Pan & Scan transfers.

Another thing I thought was interesting is how close the Binary Sunset comes to the Fox-promo material for the 1997 SE on this LD:

Compare for yourselves with these examples: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-Colortiming-Cinematography-was-What-changes-was-done-to-STAR-WARS-in-93/post/400372/#TopicPost400372

This is most likely close to how it looked when it was photographed without any post production done to it, other than compositing the second sun of course. ;) 

Let me know what you think of the sample, and if you're interested to see me taking a shot at this LD after I have finished THX.

Moth3r said:

I don't know about the early players, but I think the quality of DVD recorders peaked around 2005-2007. Users then moved on to DVR-type devices (e.g. Sky Plus in the UK) or on-demand (catch-up) services.

Interesting, do you happen to know if some of the newer players have worse comb filters/recording quality than the older models of the same brand to cut down on cost or something? I really hate the rainbowing and dot-crawl I'm seeing on most LD captures, and the avisynth filters to reduce those artifacts always destroys the picture in some ways no matter how effective they are.

There isn't any differences between the tracks in terms of content like it was with ANH in '85. (tractor beam line) It is basically the same track as on the earlier LD's (which most likely is the original 35mm Dolby Stereo). I believe it was just digitally re-mastered/enhanced in '85.

A few more reframed shots that isn't on your list.

I'm sorry that I didn't point them out earlier, I actually knew about these and thought these reframings had been covered already and was surprised when I went through the comparisons today and saw that they wasn't.

The difference in composition of the reframed shots would of course be even bigger if the GOUT transfer had utilized the same amount of picture information the 2004 DVD transfer does.

The following shots were re-framed for the Special Edition. Original on top, SE below.

Escape from Hoth

The Asteroid Field

Inside the asteroid

This is no cave

Attacking a Stardestroyer

Attached to a Stardestroyer

Laserschwert said:

Who made the international crawls anyway? Was it ILM themselves?

As I understand it and what I have read through the years, the international crawls were all done by ILM, so I guess the pattern for updates should be the same as the US releases:

STAR WARS

1981: The opening scene was redone with a new crawl.

1997: Crawl and opening scene was redone, logos along with the preface - A long time ago... was remade.

2004: The preface - A long time ago... was remade.

The Empire Strikes Back

1997: Logos were updated.

2004: The preface - A long time ago... was remade.

The Return Of The Jedi

1997: Logos were updated.

2004: The preface - A long time ago... was remade.

13 International versions of the crawl and preface was also created for the 2004 DVD release according to DVD producer Van Ling.

Edit: Sorry, I saw in the Schnittberichte-links you provided that the updates for the German releases doesn't match the US releases.

Yeah, it's very unfortunate, it could've been such a good source, some scenes look very good though.

fishmanlee said:

Do not forget the music when Boba fett takes off.

I didn't, I just mentioned what I did like about the SE film. The music itself is great of course but IMO the scene worked even better without it.

LexX said:

msycamore said:

The two musical transitions to the Imperial fleet in The Empire Strikes Back as John Williams intended was nice to hear restored.

Oh yeah, and the one when Slave I escapes.

In this case I actually prefer the lack of music like it was presented in the original film, but I can understand why some people prefer to have that sequence scored, I think it works in both ways just like the previously mentioned transitional cues. They went for a less is more approach with the original Boba Fett-departure which IMO makes the scene much more powerful.

The Aluminum Falcon said:

I actually was thinking of getting another laserdisc pressing of it, but am holding off since I am getting a DVD transfer of the whole Special Widescreen set (including a fixed ANH) in a trade right now. After I get the DVDs, I'll still probably end up getting an LD copy of my own. I'll tell you my findings.

Nice, don't expect to much of the Technidisc-pressing of ANH though, I recently got it captured by a friend of mine on his set up, and what I thought could be a possible problem with my player wasn't actually the case. Even though I am glad that my player is alright, I was dissapointed to discover that this pressing indeed have the "crosstalk". This film really have an home video-curse.

I will post a sample in Mallwalker's thread later...

Harmy said:

Talking about scan lines, check this out:

It's taken from DJ's GOUT upscale. I sharpened it and tweaked the contrast a bit to make it more apparent, but the vertical scan lines are apparently there in the original, only they get lost because of low resolution.

Yes, the vertical pattern was always there in the original, I've seen it in other transfers as well, it's weird that they got rid of just the horizontal lines for the recomposites, everything including the rolling bars are still left intact. Maybe they were a separate element.

The two musical transitions to the Imperial fleet in The Empire Strikes Back as John Williams intended was nice to hear restored.

captainsolo said:

Since you're capturing straight to a DVD recorder, I don't think there's much more you can do to improve things. From what I always understood there's only so much that those can handle.

I think DVD recorders have come a long way since the early players hit the market, some players comb filters can be very good. Look at the captures SilverWook, Jaitea and Nerfherder made of THX 1138, looks pretty damn good to me. All captured on recorders. Some good examples by Moth3r in this thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Laserdisc-players-screenshot-comparison/topic/12907/

In the end you will always need to do some post processing to get LD-captures to look any good, tweak the levels, multi-cap average/median, IVTC and resize etc. The clipped white levels have nothing to do when the transfer was made, there are shitty transfers made today just like there were good ones made in the old days. Could be just that LD pressing as mine doesn't look like that at all, quality of recorder/player. Be sure to turn off all "picture enhancements"-presets on your Laserdisc player if you have any, besides the clipped white levels it looks oversharpened.

Otherwise you could always track down a new copy of that LD (Pioneer-pressing), the SWE LD's are very common and are often up on ebay.