The whole 2004 transfer is basically one big glitch, so even if they got rid of this little one in the last minute, you're still gonna be able to see if it's the same one used for the blu-ray.
It's the original 2004 edition in hi-def. :)
"Crosstalk refers generally to artifacts resulting from interference between two or more competing or adjacent signals. When used alone in the context of LD, crosstalk typically denotes the herringbone pattern that results from the laser pickup reading, or partially reading signal from one or both adjacent pit track(s).
This is usually a player tilt-servo adjustment problem, but is occasionally a mastering defect. The current LD of "Sleeper" (MGM ML101463, batch numbers 97-511A1 and ..B1) seems to have a mild case. The initial PAL release of Pink Floyd's PULSE seems to have lots of colour crosstalk."
It seems this could just be a problem with my player, I checked my disc again yesterday and I could only see the crosstalk I had previously noticed on disc 1, side 2 when playing side 2 by switching sides by the remote, if I switched the sides manually the crosstalk pattern weren't there any longer. :)
Yes, the reason for it being white is that it's either on the print or the IP. It appears black when it's on the IN or camera negative. I also thinks it's just a hair and not actual print damage.
captainsolo said:
The more you do to a LD cap, honestly the worse off the image will be. I did some similar things on some basic LD conversions and the end result looked horrible, especially when scaled to 16x9. I don't really think there's much you can do with filters applied to the source without compromising the image.
Yes, when it comes to this particular transfer I definitely agree with you, all filtering always have some drawbacks. Just nice to hear your thoughts on it. :)
captainsolo said:
This I'm fine with. The white mark now looks like print damage but I really didn't notice it before. It would be nice to see it fixed, but I don't think there's really a feasible way to do so.
If it's handled with care I absolutely think so, I'll most likely attempt it on the PAL transfer when I get it with its better framing and less of the hair. I could also make available a straight transfer of the LD just as it is, I'll see what can be done first.
captainsolo said:
I think we were lucky to even get THX on Laserdisc. I don't think they would have had a video master, so they probably made one from their archived print of the director's re-release. I agree with SilverWook's thought about it possibly being light coming in from the telecine. With it being in the corner I'd say maybe even leaking in from sprocket holes that were damaged. That used to happen on some of my 16mm student projects.
Interesting. Overall, I think this transfer looking pretty good, especially compared to other films of this age released on LD in the early nineties, some scenes are worse than others but sometimes it look surprisingly good.
I have actually no problem with the dirt on this transfer except those two distracting things in the left of frame, they could've easily made it less apparent if they had just centered the framing like they did on the PAL release, the NTSC transfer is mostly cropped on the right side causing problem with the films stylish cinematography in a couple of scenes. That along with the oversharpened image maybe makes the PAL widescreen LD release superior even though it losing more picture-info overall.
I absolutely don't want to use any degraining on it but do anyone got any thoughts and suggestions on the haloing/edge enhancement in this transfer? As I understand it, if I try to reduce it with filtering I'll just causing damage to the rest of the picture, resulting in a softer image, you cannot get rid of it completely, the damage cannot be undone, or am I wrong?
SilverWook said:
There's a similar thing going on with the print Puggo used for Stjärnornas Krig in several places. It could be a light source leaking into the telecine?
There is? haven't noticed. Yeah, my thoughts was also that a light source could have caused those weird spots, just didn't think it was possible?
SilverWook said:
And I think I've finally identified our mysterious white friend. ;)
I knew it! he really is a evil looking dude. ;)
Maybe a potential new avatar...
erri_wan said:
The white thing has become your avatar? LOL
SilverWook said:
It's bad enough that thing floats around the edges of my vision when I'm not watching the movie! ;)
Sorry, I wanted to keep my enemy close. ;) I'll see what I can come up with, was tired of seeing my old one.
No comment on the sample and the weird artifact I pointed out? Here's an even better pic of it:
Any idea what could cause such a strange artifact? It dances around in the left of the frame almost throughout the whole film, it can be very distracting in some scenes, I'll see if I can do anything about it.
This is starting to become very time consuming, I recently went through the 8210 capture and noticed a few bad frames that slipped through the automatic IVTC process I made, something that actually should be expected as no automatic IVTC'ing is bulletproof so I'm currently going through and manually correcting the few interlaced frames and damn is it boring! But I want this to be perfect so I guess it'll be worth it in the end.
Jaitea also sent his PAL transfer my way earlier this week, so I should have it any day now which is great. :)
Also, I noticed that I resized my earlier two samples I posted a few pages back incorrectly, the last one have the correct aspect ratio. (In case you wondered why it looked a little funny)
Thanks! Blue it is then.
Ziggy Stardust said:
^ One of the coolest avatars on the website.
What did you say? ;)
EDIT: I had just changed my avatar to something else when I made that joke. ;)
SilverWook said:
I wish I knew. It would have to be something done to the video master since it's obviously the same print. If it's not a digital video master, would they lose a generation adding in the subtitles?
Good question, I'm certainly no expert in the field but I doubt adding in subs electronically would degrade the transfer, but I don't know exactly how they do/did it either, so I guess it's possible. The JSC LD's of Star Wars also seems to display more chroma noise/rainbowing than their US equivalent.
Anyway, I'm starting to like what I see when I'm doing my small test encodes, dirty or not, I think this is gonna be a damn fine transfer. Here's another sample for you: http://www.sendspace.com/file/roskh7
Again, no audio, I'm too lazy for it ;)
I have also found an annoying "flashing white artifact" in the left of the frame which is there largely throughout the film, (you can spot it in the sample I posted) I have no idea what it could be, never seen anything like it before but I guess he is a good friend of this guy:
Here's a few pictures of it:
Doesn't look like regular dirt either.
This is also one of those scenes that looking slightly worse than the rest of the transfer, you can clearly see that the US transfer is the best looking, the Jap have a different black level but it also have lots of chroma noise which is almost totally absent on the US disc. Is the chroma noise something that gets introduced because it's a Japanese NTSC signal?
Ok, some good and bad news. The good news is that I don't need to scan through these and look for frame differences because I am not gonna be able to do a multi cap median on these even if I wanted, which is the bad news. In order to do this they need to match up perfectly and these don't, which you can see below.
The US LD from three different players:
PR-8210
LD-V4400
CLD-D704
The Japanese LD:
PR-8210
LD-V4400
CLD-D704
I am still waiting for the PAL transfer from Jaitea, hopefully I'll be able to use that on the badly framed and dirty 15 minutes segment... either way it's going to take some time because I plan to get rid of the distracting dirt once and for all. And no response regarding the re-release trailer.
Here you can check out the most obvious differences in the mono mix: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/russdawson/mono/index.htm
There is however much more than what is on that list.
What elements was used for the JSC & early SWE pressing seems to have been used for the '82 LD/Beta/VHS as well and probably the other following releases in the eighties. It lacks the "burn marks" missing the same frames etc. That's why I wondered where this '85 IP info came from. Must have been around in '82 already.
EDIT: Nevermind, it seems the last IP for SW was created in '85.
captainsolo said:
I reviewed hairy_hen's 5.1 and decided to compare it to both the original PCM and the 97 mix. So, I popped in my LD's and was surprised at how well the Faces ROTJ held up visually. Nowhere near the V3 or GOUT of course, but still not as bad as you would think.
The 97 image just blows it away. If the GOUT master could look like this without all of that smearing a heck of a lot of things would immediately be better. I've never gone straight from 93/95 to 97 but the jump in quality is readily apparent even on an old 4:3 TV. It just has that pink problem in Mos Eisley...because no official Star Wars release can ever be perfect let alone definitive.
Yeah, it's sad that they screwed up when they made the 97 SE video transfer of ANH, you also have some horrible blue tint in certain scenes. Haven't seen Jedi but I do remember that the '97 Empire looked beautiful and pretty much perfect on LD.
captainsolo, it depends on which 5.1 track you listened to, hairy_hen describes the specifics of every mix on the first page, he did two of them for Empire and Jedi and also fixed a few glitches in the '93 PCM of Empire IIRC.
The echo on Luke's voice at the end of the duel is just one of the many things they screwed up in the '97 remix of Empire. It's heard in the original theatrical mixes as well as in the '93 remastering.
Harmy said:
Wow, that sounds like a hell of a tedious work. I wish you strength and good patience with it, my friend :-) Oh, and I can't wait to see the result, the samples looked awesome :-)
Thanks, I will need it. :) I will test and see if it's really worth the trouble going through these frame by frame. It's nothing I am looking forward to...
Yes, you did. :) Of the three captures, the 8210 is definitely the best but it do have those rolling bars and artifacts on bright objects, THX first conversation with SEN also have what appears to be laser rot which is not present on the other captures.
Haven't noticed the smearing you describe on the 704, but I think this one is the second best out of the three from what I can see, must take a look at what you described. The V4400 is very soft and blurry compared to the other two, but all have their advantages over the other.
A median of all three captures should make the best out of it if I only can locate all the frame differences...
Although the sequel scores were overall horrible on the SE CD's, I think the Star Wars album was pretty damn good, not perfect but they finally included the complete chronological score with the right takes and alternates. Love that release, if only the sequels were of similar audio quality I would've been happy. Love the LP's as well but I actually prefer the Anthology overall.
I'm trying to do a median of the three captures from the US LD, for some reason they differ in frame counts when I line them up, don't know yet if there are dropped frames or duplicates. I suspected it was the IVTC that caused this, but the same problem remains when I now line them up before doing IVTC.
The IVTC process was not the reason behind the frame difference, now I have to scan through the captures and see where they differ. :(
No problem :) was just me thinking that you didn't have the patience listing these minor differences any longer. Maybe it would have been easier for you to list which effect sequences that are still left untouched. ;) But I don't think there is many left to list now.
danny_boy said:
Does anyone here have(or have read) the actual article that this blogger is referencing?:
http://aspectratio.wordpress.com/page/2/
For the last few weeks I have been reading through back issues of Mix to get a sense of how the magazine has reported on the development of digital sound technology in Hollywood. One article that stood out from the rest examined the theatrical re-release of the original Star Wars trilogy in 1997. Larry Blake, the author of the piece and a sound practitioner himself, confronted the whole question of whether or not George Lucas was committing heresy by tampering with the “original” films. Essentially, Blake found that even in 1977 there were multiple “originals” in theatrical circulation.
SNIP
This brings me back to Larry Blake’s Star Wars article. During the original release of Star Wars in May 1977 Twentieth Century-Fox released no fewer than four versions of the film to North American theaters. While audiences may have seen the same film, they heard three different ones. Star Wars was one of the first films to be mixed in Dolby Stereo and the very first film to employ a low frequency effects (subwoofer) channel, resulting in some very experimental mixing techniques. No one was quite sure how to best create a multichannel mix and the tools were not yet in place to ensure that the Dolby Stereo mixes were problem-free. By my count, there were four separate mixes readied for distribution: a 4-track master (LCRS, or Left, Center, Right, Surround), a 6-track version (LCRS+LFE), a 2-track Dolby mix (LR), and a mono track.
I agree with you what is said here is very confusing and I strongly suspect something isn't right about this info, never heard of a fourth mix created for US theaters in '77, three mixes were made and the two stereo versions was created from the 4-track master but that wasn't released as its own mix, it was the groundwork they based the 35mm and 70mm stereo versions on.
danny_boy said:
To be sure, the differences among the sound tracks were not merely cosmetic. Some sound effects, foley, and dialog were missing from some mixes. Ben Burtt recalls that as he and his sound crew scrambled to create the various mixes in the weeks leading up to the film’s premiere “there was a lot of stuff [in the 2-track version] that wasn’t in the stereo optical [4-track], including lines of dialog and sound effects, because opticals were being cut in after the mix.” Burtt notes that the simple-stereo 2-track mix “was the first mix finished and was also the least complete creatively, because at that time the stereo optical [format] was an unknown quantity and Dolby wanted to test it and find out how it was going to work. That mix was rushed out of the door, and we didn’t think it was that important because it was only going to be heard in a few theaters.”
Recalls Burt, “By the time we go to the monaural there were even further developments: more changes in dialog, more changes in sound effects, different processing.” He goes on to joke that “There was an offscreen line of Threepio’s, where he says, ‘That’s the main power station tractor beam switch, and you’ve got to go there and turn it off.’ And that was not in the 6-track version of the movie; it was only in the stereo optical [4-track]. It wasn’t even in the mono print, and I don’t know how it happened, but we found that line and now it’s back in.”
So there was a lot of stuff in the two-track that wasn't in the optical 4-track? then he go on and say that the Threepio line was only in the optical 4-track not even in the mono print, to me it sounds like someone confused certain facts when he wrote this.
This is what I trust: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2003/star_wars/index.htm
(1) 35mm two-track (four-channel) Dolby Stereo
(2) 70mm Six-Track Dolby Stereo
(3) 35mm Academy mono.
(For international release, a fourth format would be available for exhibition: 35mm four-track magnetic stereo.)
danny_boy said:
Has anyone here managed to decode that surround track on the 1982 VHS tape?(or the 1982 laserdisc for that matter).
Yes, Belbucus captured the Laserdisc audio a few years ago, it is now used on several fan made DVD's.
No, the four-track master mix served as the basis for both the 35mm and 70mm stereo versions and apparently the 1997 SE audio mix.
If you're still updating this here's a few more '97 re-composites:
Original
This one I had my doubts on, but if you check the stalk of the city, the lack of garbage matte around the Falcon and engine glow, you can see it's been redone, very accurate to the original.
SE
Original
This one just before he drops.
SE
This one I cannot actually tell if it's been redone or not (the engine glow on the Falcon definitely look like a recomp though)
Original (GOUT)
Original (JSC)
SE
The four-track magnetic stereo was created for international release according to: http://www.in70mm.com/news/2003/star_wars/index.htm
