poita

I am going ahead with scanning the 1997 Star Wars-A New Hope Special Edition from two 35mm prints.

If anyone would like to help out with this, please let me know.(Check my signature for details)
I intend to have the first print scanned towards the end of November if I can get the funds together, definitely will be done before Xmas.

I’m not a fan of the Special Edition, but there are no High Definition home releases that are true to the 1997 SE Theatrical Release, the Blu-ray has a ton of changes compared to the SE you saw in cinemas in 1997.

Also, it will be helpful with restoring the Original 1977 Star Wars, as a source of frames missing from the original prints that we have (where they weren’t changed from the OT)

 
Any help appreciated with this, it is an expensive endeavour, but one worth doing.
Once this is done, I will be getting back to THX and the Original Trilogy.

For many this version of Star Wars was the first they saw on a cinema screen, so it deserves a preservation.
 

UPDATE
We still need funds to scan reels 3, 4 and 5.
Previews are up for the other reels.

I will be putting together a version matched to the print, so that we can see what the colour looked like and what changes were made.

I’m going ahead with ANH so any help appreciated.

I need to make a decision on this by the end of the week.
So if anyone is interested and still on the fence, by all means speak up/donate so I can work out if I can go ahead with it or not.

I still haven’t seen AOTC, I really should try to watch it.

Thanks!

Ah, exporting frames is a whole other bag.
Pulling frames is part of the problem.
This is further exacerbated by then viewing the pulled frames in any given program, where the colour can look different yet again.

One way to avoid the problem is to use software that takes it into account properly, Davinci Resolve is free and works well for this and is properly colour managed.

Page 572 of the Resolve 12.5 manual sums it up pretty well.
http://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/DaVinciResolve/20170302-d3e39a/DaVinci_Resolve_12_Reference_Manual.pdf

NeverarGreat said:

towne32 said:

dahmage said:

oh man, that bluray looks so terrible, and your regrades so wonderful!

Just to nitpick, haven’t we clarified that the blu-ray always looks much more purple and terrible once the frames have been processed in any way? I mean, they still have crappy blue-ish grading, and Dre’s is a million times better. But it doesn’t look as bad as the frame grabs often suggest.

I forget who finally worked this out. Williarob or Neverar maybe? It unfortunately gives a little bit of credit to the pro-SE/PT trolls who have claimed, in the past, that our comparisons exaggerate the BD’s flaws.

It was an issue that I noticed when exporting video from Premiere, and again when uploading to youtube or vimeo. I think it has to do with Rec 601 vs Rec 709 decoding confusion. But if you just pulled the video into any video editor, did a frame grab from that program (or just frame grabbed from VLC), and uploaded it as a still image, then it should be an accurate representation. The blu-ray really is that purple.

I’m sorry to bang on about this again, as anyone that puts up with my rants will know that I have been on about this before, but it is corect that if you pull a frame from the Blu-ray, and compress it and upload it and view it on a PC, then the colour will be way, way different to how it looks on a television.
Leaving out the problem that most people do not calibrate their computer monitors at all, the colourspace of the Blu-ray or DVD and your television is completely different to the colourspace on your computer monitor/graphics card combination.

Also, different browsers and playback software can even display colours differently, some programs use the ICC profile incorrectly or not at all, which gives even greater differences.
This is why we use a broadcast monitor (or calibrated television) hooked up to a dedicated Broadcast output card when colour correcting, as what you see on your PC screen has little correlation colour-wise to how it looks on a television.
The only way to properly judge the colour of a BD, or the results of a colour correction is to encode and play it back on a TV or via an output card to a TV (such as a Blackmagic card).
An output card bypasses the ICC profiles and drivers of your OS, and delivers the correct colourpace file directly to a TV or broadcast monitor that uses the matching colourspace, gamma etc.
Then of course you also need to have calibrated the TV to ensure the colour looks as it should, before being able to judge the colour accurately.

If you rip some frames from a Blu-ray, import them into a video editor with the correct colourspace settings and then output them with the correct LUT to convert it to the colourspace, gamma etc. being used on your PC then you get in the ballpark, but again, the software you then use to view it will often screw up the colours anyway.
If you want to judge the BD colours, calibrate your TV and watch it on a decent BD player, or via a broadcast output card to your television. Everything else is pretty much a crapshoot when it comes to colour.

Dek Rollins said:

Poita, I think the donation thing is actually a very good way to tell who cares enough, but I also want to point out the other side of that. I actually want to donate to this, as I grew up watching the theatrical version on VHS, but I’m that outlier case that maybe can’t donate to something I really want to see happen. I’m a highschool senior currently without a job. I have no income and no money whatsoever. I donated ten bucks to the THX scan out of my Mom’s pocket, haha. I could do that for this as well, but that’s only going to happen if she’s feeling generous enough.

I just wanted to say that there is genuine interest even from those who don’t have the money to donate. I actually think this film is terrible, but I still enjoy watching the version that I grew up watching every single day on my CRT television, and having the complete widescreen theatrical cut from 35mm would probably be the most enjoyable way to rewatch it now. I also want to respect you and your time and money input, so of course there are more important films to get to, but I thought I should voice my interest in this. I’ll see what I can do about donating a bit.

Heya Dek,
No one is under any obligation to put anything towards any project, and there are certainly more important things out there to donate to. The THX donation is certainly appreciated by everyone working on it.
Please don’t feel under any obligation to donate to this project.
Generally though, I feel that if someone is passionate about a project getting done, nearly anyone could find $2 if they have the means to have internet access, a device to watch a digital file on, and time to hang out on forums etc.
I remember being 8 years old so and mowing nearly every lawn in our street, and washing neighbours cars to buy 8mm film stock to make short films on a wind up film camera (an old revere8) that I received from my Grandfather when he passed away.
I was really passionate about making films, and it was the only means I had to do so. I sold some of my action figures to other kids at school (not my Star Wars ones, I needed those for the films!) and once I scraped together the $30 or so required of 1979 money, I’d go buy my film, shoot the few minutes of it that you got for that money and would then post it off to Kodak and wait a few weeks for it to return to me in the post.
Once it came back, I’d breathlessly open the envelope, run inside and watch my (awful) creation, and then start finding ways to afford the next one.
One time the film came back blank, something went wrong with processing and I’d blown my dough, but another 3 months later I afforded another reel and made another short film.
However I would never have lifted a finger to get money to buy a chocolate bar, or somtehing like a radio control car, which my brother would have done nearly anyhting short of selling a kidney to get. (It took him six months to save up to get a Tamiya Hornet)
I thought RC cars were cool, but I never would have expended much energy, or sacrificed much to get one. I kinda wanted one, but I wasn’t passionate about it.

If one is passionate about something they really want, finding a dollar or two can usually be done, my 4 year old daughter gets a dollar a week pocket money if she cleans her room and makes her bed anbd waters the vege garden (her weekly chores) and she is currently saving up for a toy she wants really badly that costs $6. The 6 weeks feels interminably long to her, but she is now four weeks in and is excited that it is only 14 more sleeps.

That is kind of what I was waffling on about when I said it is an easy measure for me as to whether it is worth investing the large amounts of time into a project for me, if a solid amount of others are passionate about a film, willing to make a very small sacrifice for it to be preserved, then it feels worth it to me to go ahead with it.
If there aren’t a bunch of people passionate about the film, then it makes more sense to me to find one that people are really keen to have done.

I’ve been overwhelmed at times at the amount of work, sacrifice and support that strangers put into seeing films preserved both here and on other forums. Every one of you has my eternal respect and it warms my heart in these often selfish and divisive times to see people come together from all walks of life to share their love of film with each other. Amazing things have been achieved, if it wasn’t for everyone here, a laserdisc would still be the only way to watch the original Star Wars films for example.

Anyway, thanks again for the donation to THX, there will be news on that front soon 😃

Honestly, ever dollar helps, and it doubles as an easy gauge as to whether people really want a project, or if they would just ‘like’ to see it.
That really goes for anyone’s projects, a buck or two or five is always appreciated, as much for the sentiment as for the offset of costs. A lot of people who work on these various projects put hundreds or even thousands of hours of their free time into making them happen, call in favours, take risks and spend more of their own money than is even vaguely sensible.
When you see people chip in anything to help, it really, well, helps. There have been many times sitting alone at 3am that you feel like giving up, looking at an A/B roll of frame #114003 for glitches you may have missed, or logging a missing frame, and then you get a ping with a message that someone in another timezone on the other side of the planet has donated five bucks, and an accompanying message that the movie held a special place in their life for their own special reasons, and you get a second wind - it keeps you going, and reminds you of your own passion for this stuff, and you keep plugging away it.

If people commit, that is fine as long as I am fairly sure it is coming.
It is more about people genuinely wanting it, if someone chucks in say $5, or even two bucks, I can take that as genuine interest in preserving a film.
I figure if it isn’t worth $2 to someone, then they probably aren’t all that genuinely keen on seeing it preserved, and my time would be better expended on a title that has more people keen on having it preserved.
There are so many films out there that have no ‘original’ home release, so prioritising is important. I’ve found you can pick almost any title and people will be “yeah, It’s really important”, but there isn’t an easy way to tell if people are genuinely passionate about preserving a particular title, or if they just want to add almost anything to their collection.
A couple of dollars is a pretty low bar, but it is one way (imperfect as it is) of deciding if it really means something to people, or if it doesn’t really.

In this case, I don’t like the film all that much, but I know it is of historical importance and that it is important to others. It is hard for me to sink the time and money into a film I don’t have a passion for, but the opportunity came up, and if people are keen, I’m happy to go for it.

Hope that makes sense.

Obviously if it doesn’t go ahead, any donations will be returned.

The ISOs are fine, it will help me sync up and look for missing frames etc.
Thanks for the heads up.

Hi all, thanks for the interest. So far ZigZig has donated, so a very big thanks there.

I have a small window of opportunity for this, if there isn’t enough interest, I’ll have to let it pass, so if you are interested, now is the time to come forward.
It will cost me around $2500 to scan this, plus hard drives and freight, I can foot a fair chunk of that if there is enough genuine interest out there, but if there isn’t, I’d rather focus on a different title that people want more, as personally this film isn’t on my own wishlist, this is purely service to the Star Wars community for me.
If there is another forum where there might be more TPM fans, let me know, if people really want this film preserved, then I am all for it.

Also if anyone has the DTS discs, drop me a line.

I’ll be back on this once I get some scanning out of the way, my apologies everyone for the delays.

Don’t know if they are better, but they also work with the scanner.

Very much needed the total cost to me will be in the arena of five grand, so every bit anyone can chip in certainly helps.

Okay, I’m going ahead with Scanning the 1997 ANH SE from 35mm.

All donations welcome to help cover freight, HDDs and cleaning, I’m covering the actual scanning costs.

Time-wise, this will be relatively quick, should have the scan completed in about 9 weeks time, if I can get the funding together.
Once that is done I will get onto the other two films, and then go back to working on the Original Trilogy.

It’s not a matter of preferring seagate, it is what the Scanner will work with, it only functions with a few models.

The Seagate 8TB Skyhawk, Ironwolf and Ironwolf Pro all work, as do the 10TB models of those.
e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-SkyHawk-Surveillance-Hard-Drive/dp/B01LXF9W9C/

I’ve had seagate, toshiba, Western Digital and Hitachi all fail with various models over the years, it seems more model specific than manufacturer specific when it comes to failures.

Only certain models will work, preferred is the Seagate Skyhawk 8TB internal.

I’d be starting with ANH.

I have the option of scanning the 35mm version of TPM if there is any interest.

Thanks everyone, my arm is still out of action, but I am getting some work done by proxy.
I’ll be starting a new thread soon, but I am wondering if there is any interest in getting the SE trilogy scanned properly. I have the opportunity to do so on professional equipment (triple flashed, damage matte, 6K), and am wondering if there is any demand?

Hi guys, I had some surgery a little while back, it didn’t go great, and I’ve lost use of one of my arms from the shoulder down.

I’m awaiting an appointment with another surgeon to see what might be able to be done. I don’t want to get it into it much here, but I am considerably slowed down by this.

I will be offline for a bit longer.

I’m not sure if any current monitor can benefit from it.
I haven’t looked at the 21:9 monitors, but even if there was one that could potentially take advantage, what would you play it back with?

The only situation I think it could work would be a 4K projector with a scope lens attached.

Fang Zei said:

I just see it as an inevitability when plenty of other, less-popular movies are preserved alongside their revisions.

Just yesterday I was reading the breakdown for Kino Lorber’s blu-ray of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and it literally felt like I was reading the first post of a thread in our fan restoration forum.

You mean the one Kino isn’t getting right?