towne32

Are the alien subs burned in for these Sky HD caps?

Shalashaska said:

Does anyone have an NTSC copy of the Director’s Edition? Living in the PAL region myself, I would love if someone, anyone could share a VIDEO_TS or ISO of the film. It’s impossible to find anywhere, especially with seeders.

Why do you need the NTSC version if you’re in the PAL region? The PAL is on rutracker, and it should be higher resolution, right? Amazon and iTunes have digital versions for sale that you could probably go for. Not sure what the actual resolution and framerate are on the digital ones, though.

It’s possible that it wasn’t the raw file, and the uploader did something to it. I forget, and can’t check anymore since it’s deleted. 😃

This is the file that was previously on spleen? I remember seeing a pretty big difference, though I don’t remember what I clicked in VLC to change the setting you’re changing. I don’t have the file anymore since I’m happy with the new BD.

Shalashaska said:

I’ve even considered putting them up for a limited time on MySpleen, but I’ve never tried uploading anything on there.

Well, II was up under the condition that it be removed when the proper BD is released and verified to be decent (and it was). It might be worth a shot to ask about putting the others up under the same conditions. However, the situation is different in that II had a release date in 2 months while the others would be up indefinitely. Also, the admin of myspleen has stepped down, so I don’t know how that will affect anything. I don’t know if he was on the more liberal or conservative side of recent decisions to purge the site of “iffy” feature film uploads.

Shalashaska said:

towne32 said:

Thanks for posting that. I’m going to grab some of them today I think.

Do they all have the color space issue the version of II that was posted to Spleen has?

edit: Oh, I see you’ve posted a sample image. For III at least, it looks like the answer is no. Black levels look black, etc.

I kept switching between 0-255 and 16-235, and I didn’t notice any difference at all. I was using MPC-HC, so either my eyes are misleading, I’m doing something wrong, or there really is no difference.

Great. Did you happen to grab the Khan Director’s Cut? The difference should be clear as day with that one.

Yep, found Insurrection due to it being uploaded by the same user as some of the others. It is indeed the oldest upload, so people should maybe grab it first. Not sure if that’s how it works or if they’ll all be deleted in one huge batch for that chunk of time.

Are you sure you got “stin.dts” with that file name? I don’t see it, perhaps it is gone already? The TNG era ones do seem to have been posted first.

Thanks for posting that. I’m going to grab some of them today I think.

Do they all have the color space issue the version of II that was posted to Spleen has?

edit: Oh, I see you’ve posted a sample image. For III at least, it looks like the answer is no. Black levels look black, etc.

Yes, it sounds like the burner. The issues with the discs are likely due to the write errors you had, the quality of the RE/R media, or both. I would throw out any discs that had write errors. Or at least “verify” them with IMGburn.

The same ISO just on different discs is resulting in image smearing on just one disc? Are you playing it back with the same player?

If everything else in your setup is the same, I would say that either there are actual read errors due to the poorer quality of one of the discs (though I don’t think I would describe that as smearing), or perhaps you’re just now noticing it on the second one under more scrutiny?

I’ve burned everything except for the De-2.0 ESB main disc and no issues burning or playing back anything.

SnooPac said:

Check this thread for Blu-ray versions of despecialized.

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Despecialized-Editions-Custom-Bluray-Set/id/49995

Yep. Those are the way to go.

But you can also just use your MKVs and tsmuxerGUI to get it into a blu-ray ISO. In fact, that’s exactly how we would’ve answered the question a few months ago, before those great new discs. 😃

Handman said:

towne32 said:

fmalover said:

Really looking forward to the restoration of the TESB, which IMO is the one with the worst transfer on blu-ray.

In what way? The changes are garbage and the color is not ideal (not as bad as ANH, though). Hopefully the next transfer will be better with regards to sharpening and noise reduction. But how is ESB anywhere remotely near the bottom of the list with all the atrocious blu-ray jobs out there. Just curious.

I think he might have meant it was the worst of the Star Wars movies, not of all movies.

Oh, yeah. Oops. I completely misread the sentence as ‘one of the worst transfers on blu-ray’.

Though I’m still curious. I thought people found it to be better than ANH, if even just because the negatives of the latter are in worse shape. RoTJ has a huge section of the movie that’s out of focus. Phantom Menace has one transfer that’s soft, very grainy, and sometimes overly cropped. And another that’s overly DNRed (and the other two films are digital only, obviously).

fmalover said:

Really looking forward to the restoration of the TESB, which IMO is the one with the worst transfer on blu-ray.

In what way? The changes are garbage and the color is not ideal (not as bad as ANH, though). Hopefully the next transfer will be better with regards to sharpening and noise reduction. But how is ESB anywhere remotely near the bottom of the list with all the atrocious blu-ray jobs out there. Just curious.

Change gallery

Fang Zei said:

I hadn’t considered the pirated game discs factor. That would at least make sense, but if playing bd-r movies is yet another thing* the ps4 does that the xbone doesn’t, I’ll continue weighing my options.

The One S had piqued my interest because of the 4k UHD blu-ray factor. I’ve been wanting to get a streaming device for my downstairs tv currently not connected to anything except a “dumb” blu-ray player from eight years ago. I’d prefer to get a device that’s capable of downloading newer apps but also plays discs (yes, I know, “you’ve already got a blu-ray player, just get a roku,” but I want to “vote with my wallet” in favor of physical media while I’ve still got the option. It kills me that my highly educated cousins got a roku but never bothered upgrading to blu-ray).

I’ve got a sony smart blu-ray player for the upstairs tv that is hooked up to a cable box. It’s limited in its app assortment but it’s got the big ones (netflix, amazon, hulu, youtube, vimeo, vudu), but it doesn’t have hbo go or cbs all access, which I’ll apparently need in order to watch the new Star Trek show come January.

Adding further complication to all of this is the fact that Comcast doesn’t support hbo go on the ps3/4 but does on the xbox. To my knowledge, the app isn’t even available on any of the other UHD players on the market so far.

As far as the bd-r issue goes, I’m assuming the xbox one at least supports avchd discs. Or am I jumping to a conclusion there also? I guess I’ve still got the blu-ray players for these kind of things, and something to continue justifying the “dumb” player sitting around, but it really shouldn’t be too much to ask that these newer devices continue to do everything the older ones did, especially when it’s for stupid copy-protection reasons.

*like bitstreaming, not that I see myself getting an atmos/dts:x setup in the near future, but still.

I think it does support AVCHD. If UHD BD is a big concern for you, you could consider waiting for the PS4 Neo, which will support that and 4K output.

wildlava said:

So are you saying that all of the Luke/Ben shots, from when Luke meets Ben to the shots inside his hut, are from 97SE? Or are you talking about a shorter part of that.

Yes. 28:25 to 38:42. Minus shots that needed to be despecialized.

The part that looks “different” to me from the rest is just from approximately the C3PO arm to the end of that scene right before the exterior of the hut (i.e. 00:31:45 to 00:32:13). The part from 00:30:11 (and before that as well) to 00:31:45 looks like 2.5 in terms of sharpness.

Yes. That part looks different to me in that it looks sharp in 2.5.

So you mean 2.5 when you say Harmy’s take, right?

No, I mean in his 97 respecialized (which is what I used, because 2.5 got too yellow for my taste at the end and I couldn’t find a way to undo it).

Looking at it a bit more closely (and remembering things better), the surrounding shots are actually all from his 97 release, too. But the sequence in question just happens to be unmodified from his 97 version. So, there shouldn’t really be a difference in sharpness that needs to be corrected for those specific shots. Which also partially answers your other question. The Blu-ray could be used, but I thought Harmy’s take on it looked good. Going to the BD, I would need to match it to the earlier shots from the Ben+Luke scene, which I slightly modified from Harmy’s.

I glanced at the blu-ray, without doing a proper comparison or loading it into editing software, and it doesn’t have the super sharp (almost grainier) look of 2.5. But again, I’m not sure why or how 2.5 is that way. If there’s an issue with the 97 edit, it’s either specific to those few shots or you’re only noticing it there. An enormous chunk of 2.7 uses the 97 edit, more than just a shot here or there. Seems more likely to be something notable about 2.5.

And looking at the project file again (without the sources loaded) I think that arm shot is 100% untouched from Harmy’s 97 respecialized.

Edit: I’m happy that just looking at the time codes wasn’t enough for me to know what shot it was, and I actually had to load up the file! Also, not knowing the exact settings employed on each shot off the top of my head means the road to recovery is real. Maybe someday I will be able to watch/enjoy this film again. 😉

This shot? http://i.imgur.com/HNimLm8.jpg I think I used harmy’s 97SE for the rest of that scene, starting from that shot. The 2.5 color correction had been pushed so far that there was nothing left (at least for someone with my skillset) to work with, especially in the final shot of the scene. Some of those shots, to me, look super sharpened in 2.5, but it may just be something about the color correction? There’s nothing particularly bad looking about that arm shot, but you have to keep in mind that it’s the same shot that pans over to the characters, which in turn needs to match the other (same) shots of those characters as much as possible. It’s a pain in the ass to color correct shots that are actually two shots, as such. A huge example is Han getting up from Greedo’s table, walking up to the bar, and the Death Star shot that it wipes to.

Anyway, I don’t think there should be anything wrong with the shot. But I don’t know the specifics about the 97SE there. If something was done that would reduce the picture quality or soften the image, or if the encoding was somehow less quality (but I doubt it). I had the lossless files for that as well, so re-encoding shouldn’t have been the issue.

For other shots: If it’s a 35mm shot. Yeah, it’ll probably be softer. It’s sharpened to a degree, but there’s a point where it starts to look bad. It’s better than super-sharpened GOUT.

For the werewolf: Yeah, Harmy used the GOUT for that. This was before we had super resolution techniques and, more importantly, a good 35mm source.

Leia’s hand: No idea. Maybe color correction related, but different from the werewolf.

Nope, an intentional “feature”.

captainsolo said:

For a complete ST newbie, is there a suggested release for the original movie series?

As far as I can tell the old DVD/HDTV caps in comparisons look far more natural. Best of all is the new Khan remaster which as far as I can tell seems as if were done competently for a change. (Still no original audio. Grr.)

I think you’ve got the idea already. HDTV versions, with the new BD release now working nicely for II theatrical/directors versions.

I would definitely be interested in the HDTV caps of 1 and 3-6 if anyone manages to get them. I’m a bit hesitant to start up a usenet account just to check if they’re accessible given that it seems unlikely and some of you kind folks are already looking into it.

rainbow battle kid said:

has anyone successfully played these on a ps4? any issues?

Yeah, they play perfectly fine.

Xbox One doesn’t read BD-R. Muxed as an MKV it should work if the audio track is compatible (I don’t have an Xbox One, but that’s my understanding).

Yes, it could be due to a glitch reading the h264. Re-encoding as lossless or pro res could help. Just so you know, the m2ts from the blu-ray should be able to be imported directly into Premiere without remuxing. The few times I’ve had issues like what you’re describing, closing and restarting Premiere did the trick.