nightstalkerpoet

Alright, ran through last night with your Ep 1 (this time to enjoy as opposed to pick apart 😉 )

Suggestions for TAS - lower the pitch of Jar Jar’s voice. It seems higher here, which accents the fact that he already has worse lines in this movie (not much you can do about the lines, “Mesa so smiling to seeing yousa”, “immediately emergency powahs”). You’ve done an awesome job making the two films flow.

I know you’re having some effects work done - any chance you could fix Anakin’s face after he says “I’m sorry, milady”. You’ve removed almost all creepiness. Here it lingers.

Flying through the fire is cool except… when they come out of it, there is nothing behind them to indicate they’ve just come from a red hot area. Made the flow of the chase seem strange to me.

With Possessions, attachments, compassion - by removing possessions, you’ve removed the standard movie trope of 3 things = comfortable payoff. By leaving only two, the scene becomes slightly awkward - since it’s an awkward movie anyway, I think this hurts.

The kiss would work great with a fade out. Fade completely to black silence. Then open to the next morning with Anakin on the balcony. Callback to ANH doing it once or twice, and makes it even more suggestive.

… I don’t know if there’s a different line that can be inserted, or something… but
I cringe every time I hear Obi-Wan tell the Prime Minister when they get up to check on the clones “That’s why I’m here”. He literally just spent the entire conversation explaining he knows nothing about what’s going on and is only there to track a bounty hunter.

I’d go:
1080p x264 adding --vbv-maxrate 18000 --vbv-bufsize 15000 --keyint 48 to your command line

Include the 5.1 track and the commentary track, with your hard subs burnt in.

This should give you a fairly high quality general purpose release.

I’d like to suggest you do 2 releases:

Your typical full bitrate, 30gb releases with multiple audio tracks, and soft subs.

DL-DVD 1080p AVCHDs, English Only, Hard-subbed Theatrically Accurate (or close to).

With so many of us being completionists these days, your preservations provide the best quality option available for the 2004/DVD masters- especially this V2. It seems a shame to me that your work is only really known to those within the OT community, and narrowed even further to primarily those looking for sources for other projects. Something along the lines of “Schorman’s 2004/05 Special Edition Set - 1080p” (~60GB total, as opposed to ~180GB).

I’ll push one last tiny bit for the Garage scene… simply because it shows Padme providing emotional support to Anakin. It shows the transition of worrying about his mom to worrying about Padme.However, my suggestion is far more slim.

INTERIOR: TATOOINE, HOMESTEAD, GARAGE - DAY

PADMÉ comes in with a tray of food and a blue drink. ANAKIN is standing at a workbench, repairing a part of the speeder bike.

PADMÉ: I brought you something. Are you hungry?

ANAKIN does not look up from the bike part.

ANAKIN: The shifter broke. Life seems so much simpler when you’re fixing things. (as PADME puts down the tray) I’m good at fixing things…always was. But I couldn’t…(stops working, finally looks at her) Why’d she have to die? (sighs) Why couldn’t I save her? I know I could have!

ANAKIN turns to walk offscreen. Try and match cut here, matching the turn with-

ANAKIN’s lip quivers, then he turns away. He goes to the ground. PADME watches him. She sits by him.

PADMÉ: To be angry is to be human.

ANAKIN: (shaking his head at her) I’m a Jedi. I know I’m better than this.

ANAKIN starts to cry softly and PADME puts her hand on the back of his neck. She strokes his head as he cries.

Until 120hz TVs came out and we got the appropriate ~24fps + accurately pitched audio, compared to PAL that was effectively 2000khz less audio resolution per second when played back at appropriate speed. 😉

(random tangent deleted)

^I’d say less pink shift. Otherwise, agreed.

I know that most of us are sticklers for quality - this probably isn’t the greatest option for quality alone. However, for compress-ability and space saving, I thought I’d share that I’ve found 2 resolutions that work great for backing things up.

For SD, I’ve begun using 672x504. This uses close to the same number of pixels as NTSC uses in 720x480.
The resolution itself is 4x3, so requires no stretching for full frame. In addition, using a PAR of 4x3, you get a 16x9 image of 896x504.

For HD, I’ve begun using 1152x864. This uses a similar number of pixels to 1280x720.
The resolution itself is 4x3, so requires no stretching for full frame. In addition, using a PAR of 4x3, you get a 16x9 image of 1536x864.

HEVC works exceptionally well at these resolutions.

Instead of the other stuff, try and fix it by lowering the orange highlights. I think it’ll be good after that.

Ok.
Semi crazy idea but…

Imagine the Droid factory with Padme removed.

It would take effects work, but if you paint her out of a few shots in the initial hallway (including removing her from the shot of the doorway.)
Skip the door closing/platform-withdrawing/Anakin hanging shots.

Use the Shot of Anakin jumping down. It looks like Anakin runs through the door and immediately jumps down, with the battle continuing.

The rest of the shots of Anakin can be arranged and strung together, leading up to being caught by Jango.

That way her and Anakin are captured separately. The sequence serves a purpose.

V6 - absolutely outstanding. I felt like I was watching the same movie… But enjoying it 😱

Based on your stated goals, here are my thoughts/criticisms to perfect my now go to version. 😉

Add some of the battle droids weird dying noises to all battles where they appear. They are too silent in the initial Jedi fight.

Cut “Again, you come before us, your highness”. It contradicts that contacting them is a sign of getting results.

Maybe after the queen says “The Federation wouldn’t dare go that far.” Put in the last part of Panaka’s line “They’d be finished.” Here you’ve cut excessive legalese, but I think that tiny part will add to the scene.

Put a small shot of jar jar antics back in Anakin/Padme meeting. Against general film practice not to, and was literally the only point it felt like an edit.

When Maul sends out his probes, cut the first shot earlier before they appear 3D near the screen. Doesn’t feel OT in the way you’ve made everything else feel OT.

Remove the the line about “I didn’t actually come here to free slaves”. We’ve already established this at dinner, and it’s kind of harsh for his character. Plus, he’s clearly taken an interest so saying that is irrelevant. Her final reaction shot works just as well after “I don’t know…”

Cut the shot of Qui-Gonn saying good luck right after he says “May the force be with you.”, before he caresses Anakin’s head.
Crop the part of the shot of Anakin putting his helmet on so it looks like a new shot.

Change Jabba’s subtitles from “Welcome.” To “Welcome to Boonta Eve”. It far better matches what he says, using Return of the Jedi to judge the length of a sentence in Huttese vs English.
I always interpreted Anakin saying “(on) Boonta Eve” to be referring to racing ON that specific track, and prefer that to it being a holiday.

Maybe show the shot of the bullets hitting Anakin’s pod as if on the tablet the group is watching. Then reinsert the announcers saying the line about the tusken raiders. The spectators wouldn’t have a view of them on the ridge.

Replace the cries of agony from the Droid sucked through the pod turbine with droid dying sounds for consistency.

Swap Padme saying “Look, Here he comes.” She was super stressed earlier, her delivery is too positive. Use the Shot of Jar Jar from later saying “Here he comes” and being excited.
Padme was far more likely to be positive with Anakin close on Sebulbas tail after catching up, which seemed impossible.

I’d take out 3PO vision as Anakin says goodbye. Move the lines he says to the shot of 3POs face. Remove “I’m going to miss working on you.” to make it fit.

After Qui-Gonn cuts the probe droid, cut straight to the shot of Darth Maul walking to his ship. It seems he’d have a way to monitor them without them reporting (or just have felt with the force), and is coming because he saw/felt Qui-Gonn cut it down.

Anakins “Hi” is awkward meeting Obi-Wan. I’d stick to “You’re a Jedi too, nice to meet you.”

I’d leave in an oops for when Anakin launches the ship. Showing a little guilt at disobeying.

After Obi-Wan goes at Maul with QG down, show the first few strikes then jump straight to the closeup shot. The beginning looks far too choreographed.

Great job, getting better every release!

Any luck, would love to check this out.

In search as well.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I’ve released an Alternate Version of my Empire release, which uses Adywan’s Emperor from The Empire Strikes Back Revisited to match with RotJ. Anyone else got a spleenter in their finger?

Getting them all on Mega currently, I’ll send you the links once uploaded.

Anyone else, feel free to PM for links. 4GB a piece.

I hate to be “that guy”, but just in case noone on the team has caught it, the site name is misspelled at the end.

Otherwise, beautiful trailer!

Correct - no worries! I’ve found with Jedi that you never quite know what you’re going to get. Either it benefits from the workflow getting honed with the first two films, or it suffers from being left until last minute because they want to perfect the first two.

I still highly recommend all three soundtracks you released, just didn’t think Jedi SE meshed as well with GOUT video.

Clearly, the test watch didn’t go well. 😉

With that said, I’ve completed the set and released Return of the Jedi today.

Here are the notes I’ve included on the spleen:

• Originally, I’d intended on using a different video source. Something about the PAL Gout always rubbed me the wrong way. Luckily, after months working on trying to find the right source, I realized what was wrong - the colors were just different enough from the NTSC Gout to hinder my nostalgia. With a few small adjustments, I found a middle ground that matched the PAL Gout color of the first two (which I really liked), and am quite happy with the results.

• In my pursuit of the right video source, I also questioned if Hal’s SE RotJ mix was what was throwing me off. Throwing on the standard 93 mix, I realized that in comparison to Star Wars and Empire, the SE mix of Jedi just didn’t feel as raw and powerful to me (definitely a fault of the source, not of Hal’s wonderful audio offers). With this in mind, and wanting a matching 256kbps audio track, I chose to use Schorman’s raw 93 Mix. This was resampled with SOX using a linear filter to avoid any phase shifting that would ruin the surround mixdown, and encoded to ac3 with Aften. I’d love feedback on how this sounds on your systems in comparison to the audio of the first two.

I’ve decided for the moment not to redo Empire yet, as I’m pretty happy with this as my ideal OT set.

With that said, keep an eye out for the NSP/PT. In the spirit of lower quality sources, I think this is an excellent opportunity to release an upscale of The Phantom Edit and Attack of the Phantom with proper crawls. They will be followed with Revenge of the Sith, but I haven’t quite decided which edit I’d like to use. I’m very partial to Dawn of the Empire, but would love feedback on which edit people feel best fits with the two Phantom Edits.

Seed and Enjoy! 😃

I’m still curious on which sources have extra frames (per your notes, since your final releases have them removed for GOUT-Sync), but am pretty happy with a script I found on Doom 9 for the process of detecting your inserted black frames.

#Specify the name and location of the output file
filename = “e:\output_black_frames_rotjswe.txt”

#Specify the threshold that will be considered black (0 = pure black)
global blankthreshold=16.1 #24 seems to be a reasonable number for black frames sourced from analog

AVISource(“D:\ROTJ\rotj.avi”).killaudio()

#Only look at half the fields (speeds up processing, though if you remove selectodd, it should help locate
#any half frames)
i=separatefields.selectodd.ConvertToYV12()

#Write the frame number
WriteFileIf(last, filename, “(AverageLuma(i)<blankthreshold)”, “current_frame”, append = false)

Bummer! Hope all is well with you poita - have you experienced anything like that before?

Do you still have the Gout Sync notes for RotJ Special Widescreen Collection? Color matching and was hoping to skip searching for the inserted black frames. (Actually, would be nice to have those notes for all releases you’ve done. Could even be used in reverse to quickly locate all additional frames available.)

Hey Frink, was wondering if you have Stankpac’s Ep 3?

The interesting thing is that when Adywan releases Revisited HD, it could probably be color corrected to this Technicolor grade, using Ady’s CC Blu-ray and Dre’s color match tool.

I tend to attribute these differences to different monitors and viewing conditions/surrounding. A few years back I spent hours on a sequence tweaking things with the room dark to wake up the next day and realize I’d desaturated it to an almost laughable amount.

Hey, if you can reasonably bring things back to life, why not? 😛 The thread really is a fascinating window into the past.