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ocpmovie

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22-Sep-2004
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10-Mar-2008
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Post
#146723
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146723/action/topic#146723
Time
Okay, thanks to Bo, Moth3r's ESB arrived yesterday, and I went ahead and spent another day redoing all my compositing and effects work to utilize this clearer transfer.

I didn't use it for the "window" scenes on Cloud City, perhaps because I'm lazy and they looked fine already, but also because I wasn't happy with how the color looked on the Moth3r.

The Moth3r is much much clearer and certainly the clearest transfer of ESB out there, rivaled only by the Citizen and the XO works in progress, but clearly the print used for the original laserdisc transfer was an inferior one. The color is much blander and the contrast is too high, as if a black and white transfer had been pasted at 50% over the image.

This got me into big trouble with some shots of the Falcon on Cloud City - the Cowclops V2 revealead a beautiful matte-painted sky full of purples and yellows and reds. The Moth3r's version was a bland blue, and the original colors were impossible to replicate. I did my best with color correction.

For most shots, this didn't matter though. It certainly made for a nicer FOX logo, once I had color corrected it back to spec.

The other interesting thing about the Moth3r is that it is a different transfer, more zoomed in yet showing more image on the left side of the screen. Odd. So for most of the shots where I used the Moth3r, I actually combined the Cowclops and the Moth3r together, compositing the Moth3r over the Cowclops to reveal more screen image and hopefully a clearer overall shot.

In fact, for most of the shots you're actually seeing three versions composited together - a Making of the SE or 2004 DVD shot on top, then the Moth3r surrounding it, and the Cowclops V2 on the edges.

A complicated matte which will give you some idea of how seriously I take these projects.


It is essentially done and I'll render it out and finish the official DVD tonight.



I have learned a lot from doing this project. I don't know why approximately two frames were dropped from the end of most of the chapters when I ripped them, but the headache that this caused has taught me to rip the whole thing all the way through. I now know how to do this sort of DVD combining work really well - how to hide the joins between the versions and make it seamless. If I did this again, I could do it better. Isn't that always the way?

I may indeed do Jedi at some point in the future, and I will wait for Moth3r to transfer that film so I can get started.
Post
#146538
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146538/action/topic#146538
Time
DONE.




I am still making minor last-minute corrections to the master, but the version I just put to disc is definitely good and releasable.

Should start burning off the first copies tomorrow. Got to figure out my disc art actually. Hey Coov, post that Vader pic in high res in case I want to use that one just for the hell of it.


The copy of Moth3r's ESB that Bo sent me hasn't arrived yet. If it arrives tomorrow, I'll sneak a few shots from the Moth3r in there as a last-minute thing.

The isolated score has been synced, vaguely, to this new edit as well, so it'll work in context.


Trooperman: No one has given me a full list of the musical transitions they would like "fixed." I still have time to alter the soundtrack, so feel free to throw in suggestions. But yes, I've fixed music after Yoda's "That is why you fail," and during Leia et al. chasing Boba Fett and escaping from Cloud City. Also the carbon freezing door closing on R2.

The Hoth material was left untouched, as was much of the film. Because of the quality loss involved, I avoided altering any portion of the DVD unless necessary, to leave it all at the highest quality possible.

Not that the altered portions are of a low quality - on the contrary, the quality is excellent. But people tend to forget how sharp those 2004 SW DVDs really are. A standard that I can't really match on my system, though I can come damn close.

Trying to set a standard here where people forget that this is a fanmade DVD. Undoing the harm that Lucasfilm did.

Enjoy, folks. It's here.
Post
#146513
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146513/action/topic#146513
Time
Okay, I have synced up the sound to the DVD version as captured in Premiere.

Hopefully it will sync up in DVD Studio Pro as well. If so, I'm done and ready for release. Should be so in a matter of hours.

Now replacing the laserdisc audio for the opening and closing music with the version from the isolated score, in search of better quality.


This version combines the 35mm and SE sound mixes. Mostly 35 but with some SE thrown in for good measure, when I thought it would be nice to have the clearer sound from the SE.
Post
#146304
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146304/action/topic#146304
Time
Looked at the test DVD closely, and apart from the sound it's as perfect as it's going to get. I am happy with the picture throughout the whole thing, having found clever places to hide the transitions from my material to George's. Much much better than the first version where the transitions stuck out like a sore thumb.

Now I have to capture it to my hard drive again and sync the sound to that.

Bo did send me Moth3r's ESB, so if that arrives in time I'll include some shots taken from that as well, but that'll be a last minute change.
Post
#146283
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146283/action/topic#146283
Time
Well, apart from being out of sync the test disc was pretty good.

After looking at it closely I've made some changes to where the transitions from my cut to Lucas' cut occur, to hide them better. It's a bit like a magic trick, you have to make a big change without the audience noticing much, and do it when they're not looking for it.

I have also decided to make another actual change to the edit of the movie. This is going to be controversial, as the whole point of the Classic Edition is not to have any Special Edition type revisionism.

But I've decided, just to make my own mark on the movie in this edit, to fix a very large continuity error involving Admiral Piett at the end of the movie. It's not that the scene is flopped and his credentials are reversed, there's a bigger editing-related problem in that scene that bugs the hell out of me.

So I've replaced the offending shot in question. Ken Colley's performance doesn't come off quite as interestingly without it, but the continuity is certainly better.


Controversy ho!


At this point the DVD is done apart from the sound sync, which is going to take a lot of time, yet again.

Wish I hadn't already done it twice before ....


My tactic this time around will be to play the DVD in my DVD player and capture it through to the computer in DV format, and then sync that version.

And then ....
Post
#146255
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146255/action/topic#146255
Time
Working on fixing those couple of bad transitions. There's one with R2 on Dagobah (right after a shot of Boba Fett in his cockpit) that I won't really be able to fix, as some frames are missing that even DVD Studio Pro can't read. But I've fixed the transitions that weren't working to work better.

I just have to burn the disc as it is right now, test it and see how it's working, if it's working. With using the original M2V there's so many variables that are hard to control. But very close now.

Rock.
Post
#146159
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/146159/action/topic#146159
Time
Those are amazing, Coov. The woodtone cover IS the cover I always wanted for Classic Edition. That was it EXACTLY. No one ever did anything close to that before, and you hit it perfectly. The burnt "Classic Edition" is the best part, amazing cover.


I like the Vader for Empire too. It would be a good poster if it had more characters on it, and it's certainly a nice alternate.

And the Style D still looks good on black. =) Just right, this whole set, just right.


For those last three covers, could you sneak the words "Classic Edition" onto the front somewhere? Perhaps small or replacing the THX info? It seems a shame though as it works so well without it.


On with the hi-res, please!
Post
#145989
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145989/action/topic#145989
Time
Finished the menus. Might redo some of them to remove special edition shots as I did for Star Wars, though it doesn't seem as necessary this time round. I have screen grabs of these which I'll post.

Main menu is Han at Cloud City. Options is R2 outside Yoda's hut. Chapters cycle between Vader, Wampa cave and Yoda.

Williams' isolated score is on the disc, thanks to Bo.



Synced up the entire film - AGAIN. And it's still way out of sync with the DVD. I can't figure it out for the life of me. Will try yet another alternate idea. It is perfectly in sync with the M2V I extracted from the burned DVD, even Quicktime thought so. Weird.

Some of the transitions from the official DVD to my version are looking really awkward. A lot of the cuts occur not on a hard cut, but on a wipe, so it has to be a perfect match to the frame and it isn't. There are obviously frames missing, the quality of the shots are different (softer, darker and more colorful and with a slightly different aspect ratio) and you get these awful jump cuts. I will attempt to fix these. The missing frames are the most irritating part, as according to FCP these frames simply aren't present in the ripped scenes I'm editing from. There's no way to get them back. So I'm futzing with DVD studio pro which CAN read those frames. And making up the difference in FCP.

It is pretty clear that some of the transitions are going to be a little jumpy no matter what I do. The sacrifices I make and the pain I go through to be able to use the 2004 transfer, I tell ya.

The nice thing is that these little jumps have nothing to do with being a special edition shot. So people will expect some jumpiness when the special edition shots are being removed, and yet it'll look fine. Yet in one or two utterly normal scene transitions - bump. Dammit.

I should be done by now. Sigh. Well, it's down to the wire anyway, very soon now.


(My, this entire thread has just turned into me bitching, hasn't it? ... Much more problems than usual on this edit, due to the odd hybrid principle behind it. Funny that the first edit was done in about a day and a half, but then I had to redo it about a million times due to these little technical hang ups ...)
Post
#145934
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145934/action/topic#145934
Time
ESB Stereo from the Definitive Collection, Cowclops v2 PCM version.

The "demented wookiee" line will indeed be in this edit, kind of an easter egg for fans. I can see why it was cut, but it was fun to sneak it in there.

Luke's line in the Hoth battle "This is it!" just before the other guy gets shot has also been restored from the SE.

The SE/70mm versions of several music cues have been restored, as they are indeed much better. After Yoda's "That is why you fail," Leia et al chasing after Boba Fett and escaping from Cloud City, that kinda thing. Some of the Hoth battle is also from the 2004 discs, deferring to the fact that the dialogue was clearer.

99/100ths of the movie of course remains the 35mm soundtrack.






(For ANH, since you asked, the soundtrack was from the Definitive Collection TR47 PCM stereo, with some additional material from the mono mix, as heard on an old PAL TV airing. The opening and closing music was from the SE CD soundtrack to make it much clearer, something that I probably should have done here too for the Fox fanfare at least.)
Post
#145704
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145704/action/topic#145704
Time
Hey Coov, excellent work. One change - please remove the trapezoidal "Star Wars" logo from the bottom of the front of the "Circus" cover. It interferes with the design terribly, and is redundant. "Classic Edition" might even work better in the blue space above Vader, as the image is a bit large and it interferes with the speeder ... but I think that without the trapezoidal "Star Wars" it will work.

(Actually, you may or may not want to remove the trapezoidal "Star Wars" from the bottom of the back cover of both the "Circus" and the "Style A" type covers, as it now reads Star Wars Star Wars Classic Edition, which is a bit redundant. Although it's in line with Empire and looks good.)


Your design works much better with the "Style A" type ANH poster, which is sad as the "Circus" poster is the intended one for Classic Edition. Ah well.


Excellent work.

And yes, perhaps an alternate version could be created with some information about the discs and the edit on the back.

(Perhaps the alternate version of Empire could, just for the hell of it, use the flat [non-tilted, rectangular] version of the Empire logo in place of the trapezoidal Star Wars, just to have a version that says Empire on the front. Although I prefer having it just say Star Wars, that's classy and people already know what movie they're looking at.)

(Another possibility for the ANH Circus poster, although it would be a pain to do, would be to replace the "Star Wars" text up top with the regular non-trapezoidal Star Wars logo in gold, to give it more of a uniform look. Just throwing out ideas for anyone who wants to waste their time in Photoshop.)



Here is the official disc art for Star Wars Classic Edition.

http://orangecow.org/starwars/CEdvdround.jpg
Post
#145474
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145474/action/topic#145474
Time
The 35mm soundtrack is very very different from the 70mm actually, it's not just a couple lines. It's a lot of things. Those who want the 70mm soundtrack can watch the '97 special edition! The 35mm version is the one that's being forgotten, and thus needs to be preserved.

Even if it's hell to sync.


I can tell some frames have gone AWOL during transitions from scene to scene. Few frames missing from the ends of wipes and that. Oh well.

It's looking good though, the picture is releasable now. I used the Photo JPEG version for most of it.


I think I'm going to include one little deleted line that isn't in either version (or any released version). It's in the carbon freezing scene. It might be silly to include it in a serious scene, but we'll see how it plays.
Post
#145405
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145405/action/topic#145405
Time
The 70mm mix was never released on home video, and I don't think it was ever bootlegged either. Until the SE no one had really heard it since its frequent theatrical screening in 1980.

Here are two threads about the differences.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=9&threadid=1765&STARTPAGE=1

http://www.dvdanswers.com/index.php?r=0&s=8&c=29

The 70mm and SE contain a lot of little extra lines of dialogue. The 70mm would have been completed before the 35mm, so these lines were deleted or replaced for the 35 for some reason.

But as far as I know no one has documented the music changes .... which would come in really handy right now.


As far as the CE goes, rendering it out in VideoJPEG resulted in some oddness - every edit point was suddenly off by two frames, or between one and eight frames. This made all the careful compositing and FX work I'd done now useless and screwed up (as even the still frames were suddenly on the wrong frame.)

It was a simple matter to fix the less complicated edits, like the carbon freezing chamber, so I'll be rendering those out in videoJPEG, but for my own convenience the other edits (where the DV artifacts were less visible) will remain in DV form. Shouldn't make much difference as the major sins of the DV version will be fixed.

I also fixed Vader's lightsaber a bit more in a few shots where people had complained it wasn't bright or contrasty enough on the '04 DVDs.



What's going to be a real bitch is syncing up the audio though now. I guess I'm going to have to render out the entire damn movie again straight from the test DVD, and sync to that.

Again.

Onward and upward! This is turning out to be more complicated than I thought, but at least I know what to do if I ever have to do this again.

Haven't even thought about the menus yet.
Post
#145363
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145363/action/topic#145363
Time
This is what Trooperman posted in the 70mm thread.

"I like the 70mm mix not only because of the alternate/additional dubs and effects, but because of the original music. The best example of this is the cue after Yoda’s “That is why you fail.” In the 70mm, JW’s wonderful transition is intact. It was hacked in favor of more tracked music in the 35mm. Which I hate."
Post
#145318
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145318/action/topic#145318
Time
Beautiful, Coov, minimal and beautiful. I highly approve. Bring on the download.


If people really want more information on the cover than that, I suppose they could add a little something in small print in the black space - but that'd be a shame, the black space looks nice. =)


Great cover.

Love to see it for the first one, with poster D on there.


Meanwhile - I was wondering about HuffyUV, yeah, Windows only I guess. Too bad. But PhotoJPEG is working fine.
Post
#145118
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145118/action/topic#145118
Time
I got it! I got it to work ... all right.

Right now I'm rendering everything using the Motion JPEG codec rather than DV. It looks good. I can spot the tiniest bit of JPEG compression perhaps on the black bars ... but even that I'm not sure about. It looks nice, and it transfers to M2V well.

My test was "I love you/I know" and that is a huge improvement of course, it looked awful before. I've cracked the code now. No damn artifacts on all the reds, just lovely Empireness.

What I think I'm going to do now is render possibly the whole thing over again as motion JPEG, or the material around the carbon freezing material at the very least, pretty much the whole ending actually. Knowing me, the whole thing.

Whenever I do this again, I'm going to use any codec other than DV, as DV has just been this huge ugly mess for anything that wasn't DV to begin with. Motion JPEG I think is all right because it doesn't seem to be insanely hard drive space intensive ... but I'll learn about that now I guess.
Post
#145103
Topic
Classic Edition: The Empire Strikes Back by Ocpmovie (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/145103/action/topic#145103
Time
Heheh.


In sadder news, this filter still has done absolutely nothing to remove the DV artifacts. I don't know what to do. I don't really want to release ESB this way because the carbon freezing chamber scenes don't look that great, and I don't want to roll back the edit back to the pink saber to fix that.

I have one other idea (using a completely different codec to render it), but I don't know if anything's going to work on these things, so I may just have to let it be. Ah well.