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As promised, here you are the comparison clip: https://vimeo.com/202423916

I first need to upgrade my connection - apart my desktop computer…
But I’m going to prepare a test clip right now, stay tuned!

Disclaimer: I do not endorse privacy, so if you will obtain this workprint somehow, you should buy the DVD or BD of the movie when it will be released!

OK, let’s talk about this HQ workprint: first of all, don’t expect a great quality here… not near DVD, so, when I talk about “quality” here, it’s all relative.

Video is 720/30p, around 2.50:1 AR, encoded in AVC at around 3mbps; audio is AC3 stereo, and includes four different languages (English, Italian, Russian, Spanish); there are also English subtitles.

Video quality, as mentioned before, is quite low, when compared to proper releases; image is really dark, and often a lot of details are lost in the shadows (in particular during Eadu scenes); but during light scenes, like the ones on Skarik, often, at the contrary, is quite good! Don’t expect HD quality here, even if it’s indeed a 720p, but it’s better than SD, of course. There are quite a lot of blended frames, noticeable in particular during fast movements, while when movement is not that fast, video flows smoothly. Color wise, it seems spot on, but, you know, kinda difficult to compare it with the projected movie by memory…

Image is cropped on the bottom, probably due to the fact a counter, a copyright notice, or both, appeared there; I had preferred to see them, along with some more image, but maybe it(they) was so obstrusive that it was preferred to crop the whole part. Along with that part, thought, burned subs and planet names were gone, too, so they was placed in the lower black bar; I’m pretty sure there are one or two instanced not present in the theatrical version, but again, my memory is faulty!

Audio quality is pretty low as well; English seems the best track. Subtitles, at the contrary, are perfect, I think they are a verbatim copy of the dialogs.

So, why it’s called HQ, when it’s really LQ, after all? Well, in comparison to all the screeners that floating around, it is indeed superior to all of them! I’ll write not about audio, because all have bad ones, so they are comparable, if not the same. No subtitles available elsewhere.

Video size and details: workprint is 720p, while all the screeners are 480p; effective image of the workprint is 1280x476, where screeners are usually 720x304 (one is 720x288), and the cropped ones are 704x400; the latter lacks both left and right sides. Of course, with an higher resolution, more details are preserved, and the grain present is welcome, and would help in perceiving better details.

Aspect ratio and distortion: even if the workprint is cropped on the bottom, its image is not distorted as every other ones; it is correct, can’t say perfect, but I did some comparison with the released official clip and, albeit its image size is smaller, when resized it matches pretty well - far from perfection, but the screeners are horrible in this field… almost all suffers of bad distortions, stretches, rotations, due to the placement of the camera I suppose; all of this often is not even noticeable if you don’t know what to look for, but, once compared to the workprint, you can’t live with those distortions anymore!

Colors and contrast: some screeners shows a bit better contrast, so it’s possible that some details in the shadows are visible. But, apart this, that you could notice just in the quite dark scenes, while in the darkest ones all is swallowed by the blacks, in the other aspect workprint excels; very good colors and right contrast (for the upper levels, of course). Screeners suffers all, more or less, of contrast boosts, crushed blacks, clipped whites, some out of focus shots, deleted logos placed in the middle of the screen (that lasts few seconds), and other nice things like those. None of these are present in the workprint.

Flickering and blended frames: there is some residual flickering in the workprint, still a lot less than what is present in the screeners; the blended fields are common for every one of them.

All in all, it could be a valid reference to get, useful to compare it with the DVD/BD when they will be released, to discover eventual differences in the cut, added CGI and other mods, color grading, sound mix etc.

Comparison: top cropped screener, middle uncropped screener, bottom HQ workprint

As you can see, top screener has both the sides heavily cropped, but retain a lot more image on bottom while lose a bit on top; colors are completely off, white clipping, bad contrast, but at least distorsion are not that bad. This screener should be the worst around.

Middle screener has more image on bottom, but a bit less on the top and right side; this have better colors than the cropped one, but contrast is just a little better; distortion is heavy. Probably it is the best uncropped screeners around.

Comparison one: cropped screener Vs HQ workprint
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197342

Comparison two: uncropped screener Vs HQ workprint
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197341

Time to… resurrect (pun intended) this thread!

I captured the DTS LD (that “seems” to be different from the THX AC3 one), and compared it to BD.

Conclusions: LD has richer, punchy colors, with golden skin tones, while BD has duller ones, but natural skin tones; LD has more contrast, a bit more details in the shadows, a slightly increased sharpness. LD has more image on both sides, but less on the bottom, and also misses a single frame; this, along with the fact the image, even if correctly resized, doesn’t match with the BD due to some image aberrations (stretch and rotation) should mean they used completely different masters.

All these clues may lead to think that the master used for the DTS LD is indeed a silver retention processed print (more info on previous posts). Last thing: BD has the infamous magenta blanket applied all over it, even on the Fox logo; just look at fire, explosions, light flashes, reflections on water etc.

Comparison screenshots: top DTS LD, bottom BD:

Yep, I like the latest regrade as well!

LexX said:
For example, here’s Tarkin in the conference room:

Edit: Just to make it clear, I’m not saying it should look exactly like this since I don’t think any of the scans have been color corrected at all. But it gives you good idea as the colors for SW are still great compared to TESB and ROTJ scans.

Well, this is my 2015ReGrade attempt (top HDTV, bottom HDTV regraded):

The nickname means “dry (or dried?) trout”… definitely out of water (since a long time, probably!) 😄

trotasecca, your nickname is pure genious! 😄

Sorry, but the project is offline since a long time, and I have not on my hard disk anymore… I guess there are better projects around, so try PM thxita - he did a great job!

So, at the end, it is possible to apply the LUT to the GOUT using Avisynth? And, if so, how?

I thought also that the regraded GOUT could be used as color reference to regrade BD - a bit convoluted, I must admit, but it should work (in theory)!

DrDre, I like colors very much! I’d prefer it less dark, to retain more details in the shadow, but this is just my opinion.

I wonder if this LUT could be applied somehow using AviSynth. Also, could it be used to regrade BD as well (in the corresponding scene/shots, of course)?

A lot of time is passed since the release of this project; meanwhile, I refined the colourmatch script, found some new alternatives, and I’m quite sure that, if I will do a new version, it will have a lot less artefacts than the old one - still not sure if I can avoid them all, though, but a workaround is always possible.

Mind that it will NOT be released immediately, but, as for the moment I have it not in my todo list, I could always add it, if someone could be interested in an eventual V2.0, of course.

Papai, thanks for the cell image; of course, few cell frames, with no info how they are taken, could not be used as reference; however, I made a brief comparison, and the film, with increased saturation, is much closer to regraded than untouched BD; as I think at least one version should be well made, color wise, and it * could * be the DVD, I’m taking the DVD color grading to be the * right * one for this movie, at least until a proper film scan will surface, that will confirm or deny this.

Even if memory could not be taken as proof, I’ll be happy to hear opinions from someone who actually watched the movie in the theater, to know which version is closer.

Forgot to post here, too, but I found that few problematic shots were not that close to the DVD; a second pass (regrade the regraded, with a different filter) solved the problem; even if the majority of the scenes were almost perfect, I decided to re-encode the whole film, instead of replacing just those shots; at the end, result is way better for those shots, and a bit closer for the others; I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to do better, unless one would regrade (or correct the automatic regrade) the whole movie scene by scene, shot by shot… and it will NOT happen! 😄

Here you are some examples from those shots: from top to bottom, DVD, new regrade, old regrade, BD

The grass… in this shot, the almost burnt-by-the-sun grass color is not rendered well; still, the new regrade is a bit closer; house, sky, sea, trees colors are good, though.

With this, the new grading is way better than the old one; face color is right now, and the wall is green and much closer to the DVD.

Even if it seems minor here, the difference is noticeable; faces are more blue and Anderton’s skirt is more teal (hence similar to DVD) than blue.

“Only” ten hours left for the latest regrade lossless encoding!

Yep, I should set the brightness lower…

Time to change movie… EP5, top HDTV, bottom 2017ReGrade 2:

Two shots in the desert, top WOWOW, bottom 2017ReGrade 2:

Pretty happy with the result.

It can seem so; but it’s just due to the fact DVD is upscaled (with its grain, of course); the comparison, at the contrary, is downscaled, so BD grain (that is fine) is not noticeable; but I can assure you it’s there… the BD image is very detailed and crisp, with the right amount of grain.

Color wise, I like your result very much; still, a bit too bright, maybe…

Probably is not that the top image has a bit more green, is the fact that the bottom one (WOWOW) has not enough! 😄

DrDre said:

Thanks! They look to be the same.

I don’t think so; they are REALLY close (much more than any previous release), still, not exactly the same; EP5 and EP6 are not almost the same, but they are identical, color wise. Again, don’t know if it’s a transfer error, or they changed the colors intentionally, but they are different, albeit slightly.

Top StarWars.com, bottom WOWOW:

Comparisons:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/198359
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/198360

Final lossless encoding is ended; later, I’ll check a lossy encoded test version to detect eventual problems.

Jackpumpkinhead has kindly provided the custom crawl #1; I’ll post it on Vimeo ASAP.

Of course, it’s great, as usual! Thanks a lot, Jack!!!

If you point me to some screenshots (with links) I would make some comparison.

I made several comparison between WOWOW and BD, and EP4 WOWOW has a slightly different color grading; * probably * it’s the same of the 2015 web download, but this needs a confirmation; EP5 and EP6 have the same colors.