Thanks! You're absolutely right. Try this one instead, and let me know what you think: http://www.mediafire.com/?dqme62ikis8qbmq
I will update the post above with the new link.
Ok, here is a one second clip with my new process (both 1920x818 and 2560x1090 versions). I finally got it where I want it. I built my new rig today and made this very short clip. It was relatively painless, and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY easier than before. Let me know what you think and I will finally reveal my process.
Like my previous clip, this is best viewed in Windows Media Player because for whatever reason, VLC has higher brightness levels. Wish someone could tell me why. I suggest to loop it since it is so short. This is immediately before the final Death Star blowing up scene that I released before. I might decide to go back and redo that last scene, but not until I am all done with the rest of the trailer.
Hi althor1138. Congrats and very exciting! I think I saw that on ebay. I am using a relatively low cost diy approach and have put in a lot of man hours working out my process, and it is a mixture of different things put together to make it work the best way. My mom is in town right now and further progress is on hold for a week or two. I started working on a rig that will hopefully make things go much faster. As I mentioned previously, I am trying to hold off on revealing my exact method until my next clip is released and I get a bit of feedback on it, and then I will explain why I have been kind of tight lipped about it, and will explain my whole process. I should hopefully have some time to get it worked on and maybe released during the weekend of October 15 if not starting a little before during the evenings after work. Most likely it will be just a few more seconds of video. Hopefully after that I can fly through the rest and release the whole thing (but as mentioned I will reveal my method before that, and maybe that will allow others to help me make it even better). I am anxious to share my method and almost did a few times, but I am still chomping at the bit. Now you placed even more pressure on me, lol.
One thing I have noticed that I am wondering about with my last clip is the color levels are wrong when using VLC, but are correct with Windows Media Player. I am not sure why and the best settings to use that will work with anything. If anyone has any suggestions, that would help a lot. My only thought at this point is 16-235 vs 0-255 for the color range (I used 0-255 with the original images before making a movie out of them), or RGB vs YUV or whatever.
Let me know when you get your 35mm clip and be very careful with it because it is very easy to scratch it.
good one!
Almost there...
Stay on target...stay on target!
Wrong movie! ;-) My brain is fried at the moment so I can't come up with a fitting quote from Episode V.
Great news! Thanks for the update.
Edit: This is a bit of a stretch but "The third reel... is away. Yeahhhhh!"
Great! Thanks a lot for the feedback.
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
I've completed the sound sync of reel 1. There are two glitches that I'll need to fix: (1) it's missing the roll-off right at the start, and (2) a couple of words where Han's voice inexplicably drops about 2 octaves. I expect to be able to fix those with the backup print after I finish prepping the other two reels.
Next up, reel 2.
Keep up the great work. Can't wait to see it!
TK-949 said:
Wait a second, that was the original explosion, not the SE one. Cool.
Thanks! I thought I might as well start with the best part of the trailer! Not to mention I am doing the whole thing in reverse so it was quite convenient. :-)
Harmy said:
That looks great, only it seems to me that the whites are a little overblown and the gate-weave is quite big, maybe it would be good to run the final result through some process similar to GForce's script?
Thanks a lot for the feedback. The last thing I did before rushing out the door to catch my flight was do the levels adjustment. It is possible that I adjusted the whites a little too far, but I tried to push it to the edge without clipping. The blacks are the same way. I will look at it more closely when I have actual time when I get home and make sure nothing is clipped. In general, I really like the current look but I don't want any clipping.
Regarding the gate-weave, if you look at the DVD version of that scene, it also moves around a little bit. I think it is inherent in that scene. Let's see how future scenes come out. I would be very interested to see if a script could also be used to help stablize it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Harmy said:
So are you going to tell us more about you process? I'm really interested!
I will, I will, promise. Sorry, I am not trying to be mysterious or anything. I am not quite ready to talk about it just yet. Let's just say it is a non-standard approach that I came up with, and I really want to make sure my process is successful and works well (hence asking for feedback). I am still thinking of some possible ways to improve it. I will work on a bit more of the trailer and release that and see how it works out. The last scene was very time consuming due to a lot of factors including starting over several times, and I am thinking that it will start going quite a bit faster now. I want to get a feel for how much effort this really is, make sure the community approves of the result, and then I will tell all. :-)
I also have another Star Wars project that I am working on in parallel and it is also very exciting for me (as well as a really cool potential third project if all goes well). I have no idea how long the second project will take, but I might do it in steps and release revisions of it with improvements each time.
negative1 said:
yeah, looks really good.
the video actually seems to be 1920x1088.
Thanks! I checked with MediaInfo and it shows 1920x1080, so I am not sure why you are seeing it as 1920x1088. Anyone else see this? Is it the MPEG2 or the MP4 version or both? By the way, does the MP4 version even work? I can't try it myself. I sort of feel like I did all this work and can't even enjoy it because my crappy Netbook doesn't do it justice with it's pathetic screen resolution and slow processor, so I have to rely on you guys to tell me how my clip turned out, LOL! Can't wait to go home and see how it looks! :-) I will also work on a 2560x1090 version and maybe complete the RotJ version.
Drewton said:
That's really fantastic quality.
Thanks! I am really glad you think so. I spent a lot of time on this and am glad it's finally paying off.
Here is a sample video. I had to travel for business and ran out of time today, but fortunately I got enough done to take it with me and finish it. I wanted to produce something before the Blu-ray's are out in case this was included as an extra. It is the last scene in the trailer, and I didn't work on making it into the fully restored Return of the Jedi scene due to time constraints. I will probably do this when I get back home. I had to finish this on my single-core 1.6GHz Netbook, which isn't exactly a great tool for working on HD video. I encoded it to mpeg2 because my Netbook can almost handle it. It is a little herky jerky, so I am hoping the clip is actually fine. I also encoded it to .mp4 for better quality, but I have no way to test the clip with this computer. For now they are 1920x1080p. Theoretically, they are blu-ray player compatible, but I didn't test this either. I did some extremely basic level adjustments (one adjustment at the low end, and one at the high end) and it really brought out the color. Enjoy and please give feedback.
MPEG 4 version:
http://www.mediafire.com/?vmahqq4dkgvpivj
MPEG2 version:
Just for curiosity, I pulled out my DVD copy of the trailer for comparison. Here is a high resolution comparison shot (be sure to look at it zoomed into the actual pixels, not fitting the whole thing on the screen).
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qt2kky
(DVD version on top)
Thanks, I edited the first post.
Yes, I coined the phrase "Ultra-HD" because I didn't know what else to call it. I plan to release in both 2560x1090 (2.35:1) and Blu-Ray compatible 1920x1080 with black bars.
Just an update... I looked into the new version of the Death Star explosion and it is heavily cropped compared to my version and the color is drastically different also (it looks almost like a cartoon). I am getting near to being ready to release the clip, and I would like to before the blu-ray's come out or on the same day (most likely it will be the weekend before). I am re-thinking how I might restore the complete original Death Star explosion clip. I will probably keep the star pattern from before it starts to fade and try to brighten up the fading portion until it starts to look bad, and maybe finish it with a GOUT upscale for the explosion part of the frame. I haven't checked the GOUT's cropping yet. There are only about 16-20 frames that gradually fade to black, and many of those should still be usable. After releasing the clip, I will be interested in hearing feedback about the quality before I work on the rest of this restoration. Also, if this will be included with the blu-ray extras, I won't really see the point in finishing it. Anyone know if it will be included? Does anyone know if the scenes before the explosion are unaltered?
Thanks guys.
In other possibly good news, I viewed the SE version of the Return of the Jedi Death Star explosion and it looks like it would fairly straight forward to take my version up to the point where it starts to fade, and then start the SE version from there and fix the rest. The front of the explosion ring goes past the camera, so the only thing to fix would be the back of the explosion ring which is nearly a horizontal line and could easily be edited out by replacing it with the star pattern that was there before the explosion.
I plan to release this portion as my first video sample. I may try to complete the scene myself and release that instead of the trailer fade version. I haven't decided yet. Should be fun!
Talking to myself... ;-)
I finally nailed down my process and I am happy with the results. I solved the softness issue and now the screenshots actually look like HD and the color is much better. Here are some samples. I am hoping to get a working video sample shortly.
I think I made a big breakthrough tonight that will greatly improve the result and speed up my process tremendously. The bad news is I have to start over yet again. :-) If only there were 200 hours in a day...
A couple more screenshots (no manipulation). http://www.sendspace.com/file/xqs2fs
Round 2 is moving along (and after thinking about it, was totally necessary because I locked the settings so they wouldn't float around). I am pleased with the results overall, but I am thinking that I might want to apply a small amount of sharpening. Some slight softness is in the print (still not sure if it is because the objects are in motion), but sharpening seems to help. Here is a new capture without and with some sharpening (this is just a proof of concept):
http://www.sendspace.com/file/lhalm7
Edit: I tried downsampling the original to 1920 (HDTV resolution) and it seemed to make the difference with no sharpening. Probably the 1920x1080p version will look fine (included in the attachment above).
bkev - Which tapes? VHS 1997 SE's? It seems strange they would show that logo since it is not part of the movie, unless you mean on the cover art.
I have an even different one apparently. :-) The Star Wars logo has purple lettering under it in my version.
http://i52.tinypic.com/25f4zrl.png
I am learning a lot about my process and unfortunately I am going to have to start over to get the better picture quality. I kept my old files from my progress so far in case anything got damaged, I will at least have my first version. I was crushing the blacks which was losing some of the stars. Now I will just barely more than capture all the blacks and will adjust the brightness down a notch in post to get rid of a small amount of noise that it generates in the darkest areas. After experimenting with the settings, this gave the best result to capture all of the stars and not affect picture quality. The screenshot above is a rough example of what it will look like (tinypic likes to mess with the colors a bit). I will post more interesting pictures as I go along.
In case you haven't figured it out, I am starting at the end and working backwards. The logo is as far as I got so far, but I will be starting over again tonight.
captainsolo said:
Awesome. I love this trailer to death-especially the opening bit with the tiny TV screen and muted audio.
I love that part too especially because it applies to my release "if you have only seen it this way, you haven't seen it at all" in Ultra-HD! :-)
Harmy, thanks for sharing. I didn't realize it was on the DVD, and that's great because now I have a good source for the audio! Did you do any sharpening when you upscaled it to 720p?
The Aluminum Falcon:
The running time of the trailer is listed at 2:27, so it should be the 2.35:1 version of this trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwG9xyQmIE&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwG9xyQmIE&feature=related
Laserschwert:
Yes definitely I want to share details like that, but not quite yet. I want to at least get a working prototype video first to prove out my process. Hopefully I will have something soon. Regarding cleanup, I am using a squeezable dust blower on the film like this: http://www.canstockphoto.com/images-photos/dust.html#file_view.php?id=5580993 and a microfiber cloth when necessary to get the dust off. I may also manually fix with photo software any minor spots worth fixing that I missed and am too lazy to go back and find that exact frame later. For the most part, I am trying to get the best image up front though. As of now, I do not plan to do any color correction or other filters because it already looks pretty good. I may decide to play with the color later and see what I think. At least so far, it looks like the footage is just a bit blurry, but the film grain is sharp, so I am not sure if that is because the action is in motion or because it is an upscale or other reasons. Once I get a video working, I may know more.
Hi Everyone,
I am excited to announce that I am working on a new project to restore a 35 mm film trailer for the 1997 Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition. I am just at the beginning stages of the project, but I already have made some great progress.
I own a 30" monitor with a higher than HD resolution of 2560x1600 (WQHD) and my plan is to create a version of this trailer that uses as much of that resolution as possible while maintaining the film’s 2.35:1 aspect ratio. I will also create a standard HD version of 1920x1080p.
The trailer was brand new and unopened when I started with it, so it is in excellent condition.
Here is an original sample scan of the print:
http://i51.tinypic.com/ml3xfl.png
Details about my process are here: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Thorrs-35-mm-Star-Wars-Trilogy-SE-Trailer-WQHD-Restoration/post/547324/#TopicPost547324
Update 6/30/2012:
1920x1080 MP4: http://www.sendspace.com/file/4na6aw
You rock! That's all I have to say. :-)
