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towne32

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Join date
3-May-2014
Last activity
26-May-2025
Posts
3,564

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Post
#765653
Topic
Info Wanted: What are the best 1997 Special Edition preservations?
Time

I think the two best raw versions are the TB and GKar. Team Blu has said that the TB (no relation) ANH version is better and that the GKar is over-sharpened, if memory serves. I haven't watched either, but I recently compared those two versions of RoTJ, and the GKar looked distinctly better. Clearer image and less damage/artifacts. 

Harmy's version is good, but of course it uses the same color timing as his De2.5 which is not based on the '97 SE. If you like that timing, then it's win/win. The Team Blu version looks really nice.

Post
#765604
Topic
Harmy's RETURN OF THE JEDI Despecialized Edition HD - V3.1
Time

kg123 said:

Bro the pirate bay has been taken down in several countries. So it is understandable if someone is begging for his or her invites

 Dear bro,

There are mirrors of tpb. There are plenty of other public trackers. And there are ways to get on any of these sites even if you're in a country that blocks trackers. (it is not clear if my bro is discussing the ISP blocks or actual website takedowns).

Sincerely,

Bro.

Post
#765561
Topic
Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released)
Time

Isohunt has been around for ages. Having said that, any and all of those public trackers lease ad space out to companies that simply use the space to make fake download buttons which can result in trojans, etc.

Use adblock if you're going to use such sites. And even if you're not, use adblock if you're going to use the world wide web.

Post
#765453
Topic
Help: looking for Prequel Theatrical Versions
Time

pittrek said:

towne32 said:

hundsdorfex said:

I know there are a lot of differences between the original trilogy dvd release and the theatrical release.

But, that same issue happens to the prequels to?

If yes, were can i get those versions?

 There are laserdisc/DVD bootleg and TV rips of TPM.

I think the only available AoTC theatrical versions are recorded from theaters.

Not aware of any 'Sith' theatrical versions. But as far as I know, there are only three changes. They're ridiculously insignificant, which makes it even stranger that they were made:

1. When the clones repel down towards the Grevious/Obiwan battle, voices are added. (changed for Blu-ray, not on DVD/HDTV)

2. They added rust/growth to the top of the Wookie huts. (changed on Blu-ray, not on DVD/HDTV).

3. They (probably accidentally) removed a wipe on Mustafar for the DVD. Reinstated it on Blu-ray. 

 This is interesting. I always thought the theatrical cut of "Sith" can be achieved by combining the video from the Bluray and the audio from the NTSC DVD. Do you have any pictures or more detail about the changed Wookie huts?

 The best way to do that would be to use Schorman's HDTV version probably, for the hut.

It's during order 66, I think. It's a shot that pans downwards towards a trooper getting the order message. Yoda is in the background. Extra rust and barnacles have been added on the blu-ray.

So, why on earth did this change? I feel like it must have been something in the rendering pipeline that mistakenly didn't get added to a previous release or something. 

edit: https://youtu.be/IiCn0O4aF_8?t=51s depicts the change.

Given how trivial these things are, I think it would probably be ideal to get a cam/telesync to review before anyone actually bothers to render a theatrical "cut" of the film. There's got to be other small changes. 

Post
#765438
Topic
Help: looking for Prequel Theatrical Versions
Time

hundsdorfex said:

towne32 said:

It's not terrible. That exact release (Centropy) is actually how I first saw that film, hah.

The color is pretty bad, very blue. But the camera is on a tripod so the image doesn't shake around, and the audio is recorded directly via a line in rather than microphone in the theater.

darth_ender said:

While this site's DoubleOFive has a pretty comprehensive list of every change, no matter how significant to the OT, a great site with nice visuals and descriptions covering the biggest changes can be found here:

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

 It's a very good list. Missing a few things, though, including two of the Episode III changes I listed.

 In this case, i'll check it out...

Thanks everybody, for all the help and directions :)

 Just keep your expectations low. It's mostly just useful to see what the differences are.

I think in order to make an actual despecialized version of Episode II (if anyone cared), it would require decent quality versions of Anakin's Robo Wedding Hand, and the strangely deleted speeder. So, probably impossible.

III would only take a few seconds to make a theatrical edit but I doubt anyone would care. It would be nice if any of the 'scene' cams/telesyncs from its original release were still available on the net, to see if there are any other changes that haven't been noticed. 

Post
#765422
Topic
Help: looking for Prequel Theatrical Versions
Time

It's not terrible. That exact release (Centropy) is actually how I first saw that film, hah.

The color is pretty bad, very blue. But the camera is on a tripod so the image doesn't shake around, and the audio is recorded directly via a line in rather than microphone in the theater.

darth_ender said:

While this site's DoubleOFive has a pretty comprehensive list of every change, no matter how significant to the OT, a great site with nice visuals and descriptions covering the biggest changes can be found here:

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

 It's a very good list. Missing a few things, though, including two of the Episode III changes I listed.

Post
#765388
Topic
Help: looking for Prequel Theatrical Versions
Time

hundsdorfex said:

I know there are a lot of differences between the original trilogy dvd release and the theatrical release.

But, that same issue happens to the prequels to?

If yes, were can i get those versions?

 There are laserdisc/DVD bootleg and TV rips of TPM.

I think the only available AoTC theatrical versions are recorded from theaters.

Not aware of any 'Sith' theatrical versions. But as far as I know, there are only three changes. They're ridiculously insignificant, which makes it even stranger that they were made:

1. When the clones repel down towards the Grevious/Obiwan battle, voices are added. (changed for Blu-ray, not on DVD/HDTV)

2. They added rust/growth to the top of the Wookie huts. (changed on Blu-ray, not on DVD/HDTV).

3. They (probably accidentally) removed a wipe on Mustafar for the DVD. Reinstated it on Blu-ray. 

Post
#765325
Topic
Star Wars: Rogue One - * Non Spoiler Discussion Thread *
Time

Handman said:

team_negative1 said:

Taking out the things that make Star Wars what it is, is self-defeating, and does not really serve any purpose.

Team Negative1

 Does the entire team share that sentiment? I'm confused who's talking here.

 Frink is working up the analysis based on how many times the enter key was pressed.

team_negative1 said:

Taking out the things that make Star Wars what it is, is self-defeating, and does not really serve any purpose.

Team Negative1

 Some of the purposes have already been described in this thread. There is an entire universe aside from the 2 living Jedi at that point in time. There is the tension and doom associated with the lack of the jedi. There is the struggle of people without the ability to run in a blurry line and levitate stuff. It could be interesting, even if it's not your cup(s)of tea.

Post
#765277
Topic
Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released)
Time

SteveE said:

Been trying to get these fine versions for ages and now my eldest kid is nearly 5 and beginning the first stages to watching films - and understanding them, I really and urgently need these films ASAP. So when I saw they were also available as torrents I was over the moon.

Always found JDownloader too fiddly and didnt really understand it so torrents it is...but could someone help me??? please????

The Torrents for all for all of them just says "finding peers" and not actually downloading anything :(

I am super desperate for these versions I really am. If anyone can upload the torrents of these fine films and fine versions, please, please, please upload them. 

Incidently, the versions I am downloading are as follows:

ANH - 17.8GB

ESB - 19.7GB

ROTJ - 7.87GB (Is this right?)

 Looks like you found the correct versions.

Do the sites you're downloading them from say there are peers? Specifically, seeders? If so, you might have an issue with your firewall. Try unblocking the port that your client says is being used. Failing that, try getting those same versions from another site. The most popular sites out there, that might rhyme with "lickbass", for instance, would have more people on the same torrent than a flybynight russian website.

Post
#765249
Topic
Harmy's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Despecialized Edition HD - V2.0 - MKV & AVCHD (Released)
Time

nickr said:

AntcuFaalb said:

nickr said:

Do people still use DVD/Bluray players do they? How quaint!

Yes, some still do; myself included.

Is your TV calibrated to sRGB then? Did you calibrate it relative to the input signal from the HTPC or did you calibrate it independently? Which probe do you use?

Are you feeding it from a playback unit (e.g., the Blackmagic Design UltraStudio Mini Monitor) or directly from your video card?

Video cards are damn unreliable when it comes to critical viewing on a calibrated setup.

I sure hope you're doing things right considering the amount of dick measuring you have going on in your post.

Sorry my post was meant to be light hearted. You have showed me how inadequate my setup is.

I am just so used to doing without silver discs, that I am surprised these days when people talk about them.

No offence intended.

None taken, I was kind of going the same direction as you. Especially as far as DVDs go. The only real use for DVDs that I have is SD television shows that will probably never get a better release. No use burning DVDs, as the DL ones are unreliable, and the equivalent hdd space is negligible. 

But, actually, I just bought a BR burner this year, thanks mostly to all the fantastic quality encodings from members of this site and similar groups. The 25-50gb files were quickly filling up my hdd space, and I figured I might as well store them (or their backup copies, in some cases) with nice cases on the shelf. I end up grabbing the better quality versions of things like Harmy's project (making this an on topic post ;) ) instead of settling for a 8 gb lower bitrate encoding.  

CatBus said:

Dang, that was your cue to trash-talk CRT's! Oh well, maybe next time.

 And that was *your* cue to trash-talk T-9 phones!

Post
#765243
Topic
Star Wars Episode III: Labyrinth Of Evil (Released)
Time

Jamould said:

Hey there,

Trying to burn this to a BD-R, using Mkvextract and tsMuxer.

For some reason, I'm running into problems, as the output ISO seems

to flash from the current screen, to the disclaimer at the beginning of

the film, often turning green in the process, as well as being mostly a

garbled up mess of squares

 Yes, this is a known problem.  There is an option in tsmuxer (it's one of the obvious boxes in tsmuxerGUI, but I don't have it in front of me, though I've mentioned it in one of these three threads) that sort of fixes this. I say sort of, because the problem was gone on the blu-ray players I tried, except for PS4 (PS3 was fine).

Post
#765237
Topic
Star Wars ANH Bluray Semi-Despecialized & CC (JASWFP) V1 DONE (Released)
Time

newguy said:

Stotchy said:

 Cool! Thanks.

What source will you be using to remove the CGI rocks from in front of R2?

As said above, the 1080p HDTV version.

Harmy said:

I have no problem with anyone using my stuff as a source for their projects, so feel free to use anything you may want.


And yes, I did the CC shot-by-shot based on a scan of an I.B. Technicolor print, which had a lot of color inconsistency and I must admit that if I was to do it over, I'd go for a bit more natural and consistent color-palette, much like what you're doing here.

 Thanks, so far I've only used the speeder scene from mos eisley and the censored blaster impact (were is this sourced from btw? The detail is on par with the bluray). Having a hard time to match the mos eisley scene with my version though, I wish I could get my hands on a non manipulated clip of this scene. Is the source for that from Team Negative1?

 I'd love a version of that Eisley scene without the color changes. Harmy got it to match his surrounding shots nicely. But it seems some parts have gone too far in one direction (sort of yellow?) and can't really be manipulated in the opposite direction as best as I can tell. In Harmy's making of video the version prior to the change would be really nice for other projects. Then again, it could be my display or an issue with the original scan.

It is indeed Team Negative sourced. But perhaps it's LaserSchwert's version you'd be after? (see https://youtu.be/dHfLX_TMduY?t=7m25s ). Team Negative will probably eventually have an even better version out.

Post
#765184
Topic
Harmy's RETURN OF THE JEDI Despecialized Edition HD - V3.1
Time

BlueCardinal said:

Discostu said:

Harmy said:

That is not what the BD looks like. But if there were scenes looking like that, I would simply add some grain.

While this would make the picture look more natural at first glance, it doesn't bring back the image detail that was lost in the DNR process. I know that there are some cases in the trilogy where you added digital grain but I don't really see a real benefit in this. It's just adding something artificial to the image instead of bringing back the original grain and the image details that were removed with it.

I think it's more of a last resort to remove the plastic-looking surfaces caused by DNR, especially in skin. The goal is always to preserve as much of the original detail as possible, but there's only so much you can do when it has been scrubbed and smeared away by DNR.

 Right. I think everyone knows that adding grain doesn't bring back anything that was lost. But sometimes grain for the purpose of distraction is the best bet. Particularly when it looks that awful.

Post
#765182
Topic
Star Wars Battlefront
Time

I shot first said:

John Doom said:

I shot first said:

While I probably will play this one, I totally agree with you. I'm sure there won't be much story in this game though (if any) because it's basically just an online multiplayer shooter. And who knows, we might get more backstory for the battle in Ep 7 than the game will even show.  

Battlefront 2 had a short but interesting singleplayer campaign, though. My hope is that they will at least make a similar campaign to connect the OT to the new movies, like from the Battle of Endor to wherever TFA's grand finale will take place. I'm not expecting too much, though.

 no dice.  (DICE... get it?)  Anyway, looks like there's no campaign. Just Missions with or without co-op (your choice). Whatever that means.  

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/17/star-wars-celebration-battlefront-does-not-have-a-campaign

 Doesn't that just mean the same as BF II campaigns but without the silly FMV scenes? I was a bit concerned at first, but for this type of game I guess it's not really important. They're still fairly disconnected battles. It's the lack of full space battles that's more of a bummer. I'm sure they'll have an addon for $39.99 next year to remedy that.

But what I really want is a newfangled Rogue Squadron type game, anyway.

Post
#765171
Topic
Star Wars GOUT in HD using super resolution algorithm (* unfinished project *)
Time

Zyrother said:

I tend to agree on the color correction as well. Environment color looks nicer, but skin tones get the lobster effect going, and blacks seem to get crushed.

Plus, I think most people tend to agree that the GOUT has the best color palette in regards to the original elements. It manages to retain that very distinct 70s feel.

 I would be surprised if most people here agree on anything, let alone that. :P Personally, I'm happy with and/or used to the GOUT color.

I think the lesson I've learned about color correcting this film is that there is no adjustment setting that will work perfectly for every scene/shot. 

Post
#765158
Topic
Star Wars GOUT in HD using super resolution algorithm (* unfinished project *)
Time

While it's a nice idea, and some of those (like Mos Eisley) look much better, color correcting can be a slippery slope, and a rabbit hole from which you may never emerge. :P I think some of the shots look way too saturated, like the soldier's face on the Tantive. Vader's outfit has also lost all of its detail. It might be a better idea to leave the color alone.

If you don't get help from the pros regarding the subtitles, and have adobe premiere, I can help you get them working. Pretty happy with the results I've had.

Post
#765137
Topic
Harmy's STAR WARS Despecialized Edition HD - V2.7 - MKV (Released)
Time

Molly said:

Well, they're absolutely, 100% illegal - it's just that a lot of us either don't give, or consider there to be a pressing reason that we think is more important than silly things like copyright laws. :P

 Yep. So in a sense, he's "sure of the legality".

No use risking getting this, or any other, site shut down just for the sake of enabling people who can't google things themselves.