towne32

Well, I think you’ll see from more recent posts that the open/shared aspect is for annotation. But yes, that’s a very difficult thing to do without adjacent frames (a starfield would be impossible).

And certainly for actual cleaning you need surrounding frames. PFclean’s spacial predictions are surprisingly clever, but the real power comes from temporal patching. Plus, as I’m sure you know, having the entire shot allows you apply other tools like deflicker, etc.

I think you got something in your eye.

(congrats! or, alternatively, see a doctor)

I should be clear that the shot is completely unchanged from DeEd 2.5. Some of the color in the scene almost always looks really weird (mostly Owen’s face), but Harmy’s is one of the better versions of it in my opinion and the majority of the scene looks pretty natural. So I left it instead of making it worse. 😃

I think you chose one of the less problematic shots from that scene, relatively speaking.

Jackpumpkinhead said:

hope your reply made you feel better about your life.

Good enough that I’ve written it into my will that Frink can finish whatever post I am writing if I happen to die before pressing post.

Frink, if I haven’t written anything just press post and Markdown Syntax can be my epitaph.

amatin said:

ROTJ V 2.5

All the new shots in the Rancor pit from the Workprint totally don’t match. They are all much darker and much more green. Could they be taken from the HDTV broadcast? My memory is that fix was not done in 1997, but in 2004. Best would be a custom matte done along the edges of the Rancor just to return the hard matte line. As it stands they are totally jarring. (Although I will admit this is one of two fixes George did which I was happy about. The other was when Obi Wan’s lightsaber lost its glow being pointed towards camera in ANH).

This has been discussed a bit already. I forget which thread it was in, though.

The HDTV broadcast is the 2004 edition.

When Harmy sent us all the preview edition of 2.0, it was synchronized to puggo’s 16mm print which, along with the 35mm print, made it pretty clear that the Rancor scene was dark and blue on film. He did all that could be done to match it to the blu-ray shots that were included, but there are definitely limitations on shots like that. I agree with you that it’s not perfect, but it is a lot better than the previous revision. And looking at the original film, the consistency wasn’t 100% then either. But perhaps 3.0 could use 35mm for every single shot within the pit and some additional corrections can be made. Or maybe, as you say, the matte lines could be rotoscoped.

Ah, okay. So this is going to be for more major/unique forms of damage rather than standard emulsion scratches/dirt? For the latter, it would be helpful to use the tool to point out particles (from explosions, etc) and other artifacts that should not be cleaned. i.e., overall, features that one could be likely to miss.

Hagdorm said:

I’m very curious to see what the scene with Jabba will look like after your regrade. I like the concept of the scene, even if the execution is horrible with that CGI Jabba looking like he was (quite literally) pasted in. I doubt a color correction will make him look better, but it can’t hurt the scene at least. I’m really looking forward to your completed project!

I think Dre might have played around with that scene a little when he first got his tool working. It ended up looking somewhat like Harmy’s 97SE grading.

Sounds like a very good plan. Is there intention to do this kind of annotation for only the raw scan, or for intermediate stages of dirt cleaning?

request the raw frame and the few around it from me, and work on doing the hard work that PFClean simply can’t handle.

Glue frames are a big perpetrator here. The glue itself is often not a big issue, unless there is major movement in that part of the frame. But it frequently throws the color and focus off for the shot and induces warping.

Rask40 said:

Mavimao said:

schorman13 said:

I’d like to help as well.

Haha! The funny thing is, I immediately thought of this shot when I made my first reply. Thank ypu for gif-ifying it!

I was going to reply with “Oh, sure! With those things runnin’ around? You can count me out!”
But I couldn’t find the gif 😃

No but seriously, I think these kind of cleanups should be left to those semi professionals (Harmy and others) who know what they’re doing. Otherwise the end result could be junk.

The semi professionals are in charge of this endeavor. I don’t think they’ll put anyone in a role that runs the risk of junk output.

Doesn’t look unpleasant or anything, but I’ve never seen it look so ‘sunsetty’ in that shot before. 😃 Very pink sky.

Alright, this stuff is uploaded. Thanks again for the support. Enjoy!

Thanks to Catbus and all others involved with the audio mixes, for supplying the most up to date dub tracks. And of course for Project Threepio. MKV format releases have a fixed Castilian audio track as well as Russian, Ukranian, Thai, and Navajo dubs (in addition to the tracks in 2.5)

I agree that none of those three shots look like they’re perfect or finished. The third one in particular needs a bit of work. But they don’t ‘look like piss’, and I think you’re just hoping for home video era more vibrant colors in these scenes.

I think those last two shots would look terrible with a saturation boost. But the final one does look like it has weird contrast (as it did on the blu-ray).

edit: and I agree about “The same corridor, the same light conditions, but it looks and feels quite different than the previous shot.”. However, I think the first corridor shot itself looks nice.

Can you post some details about your monitor calibration technique, pittrek?

Darth Lucas said:

However looking closely, there seems to be far too much green in the stormtrooper shot as well as the Owen and 3P0 shot. Look at artoo’s dome.

At least for the trooper shot, I think this must be due to the print scan (and potentially Dre having not removed it entirely from that, whether that is right or wrong). Harmy’s shot looks the same.

I wouldn’t call it ‘far’ too much. But it’s still noticeable whereas most of the other shots have had it adjusted out more so.

pittrek said:

I hate to be the one who spoils the fun, but I think the regraded pics you posted on the last 2 pages look absolutely horrible. The contrast is completely off, the Tatooine shots look like somebody pissed over them, they are desaturated, I’m sorry but the screenshots you posted on the first 4 pages looked great, but there’s something really wrong with the last ones.

Are you talking about the most recent versions of all of those shots? It sounds like you mostly dislike the desaturated look of the desert scenes rather than something having more recently gone awry in the color correction process.

How do you feel about any of the print scans of those scenes? About Harmy’s correction of them? About the idea that they might be substantially less saturated than they have looked in recent years? Do you have examples of how you prefer these scenes to look?

DrDre said:

Thanks! I’ve been mostly busy with correcting the print scans, such that the color is consistent. I will soon go back to the start to correct the rest of the Tantive IV shots, and will then, hopefully soon, be able to post a video sample.

Cool. I hope you share the corrected scans with Harmy and Neverar since they are working on regrading the BD for his 3.0. Or maybe they can use your work directly if they like it, I don’t really know where they’re at.

Yep. That’s a hell of a gallery right there. 😃

Do you think it would be feasible to complete a render up to the point you’re at now? It’s actually probably not a bad stopping point. About a quarter of the film done, and almost none of the previous sets will be reused.

Though, I am not sure if you are skipping some of the scenes (Sandcrawler interior, garage, dinner, sunset) or just not posting them yet.

Color looks much better. It’s still a bit contrasty, but that might be correct?

bromeo said:

Haha! I browsed through “teh place” for like 30min to find this but now I realized that it’s probably only on MySpleen at the moment?

Yeah. Someone else can ‘teh’ it if they want. But they should probably wait for the mkv, since that’s probably more what people are used to there.

That looks pretty nice! Could probably fool me into thinking it’s an excellent film scan. 😃

Edit: It might be nice if the first post collected the latest/greatest versions of each shot that you’ve done. It’s quite impressive looking at all of the optimized ones!

corre said:

someone post this on myspleen, but im interestedin a mkv version as well. with the iso/m2ts files i cant seem to make a mkv that works smooth.
towne32, when you have the time, please convert this to mkv.

thanks.

Two MKVs and one AVCHD should be up tonight.

(I don’t really have plans for an ANH AVCHD, since I think demand for it would be minimal).

dlvh said:

I think most of your edited images in recent posts, look good DrDre. However, I thought this one of Obi-Wan, looked like his cloak had a bit too much green in it, so I adjusted that, and I upped the saturation just a bit.

The original:

opinions?

I’m currently only on a semi-calibrated monitor. But I thought the cloak looked okay before and your change has brought some reds into the shadows and face that don’t look quite right.

In fact, given Dre’s previous comment about R2 (which I agree with), your calibration might be a bit on the cool side, masking some of these pink effects (and increasing the greens you’re seeing)?

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
Bluray regraded:

Obi Wan looks kind of scary here.

I agree about this shot. Something looks quite wrong, here. Is this the shot that contains the wipe, or the one before that? If it’s the wipe shot, it’s understandable that it might look a bit off, but hopefully it can be made to look better. And, since this is the SE, you don’t need to worry about the Hut shot looking somewhat unnatural as a result. The priority should be original footage of course.

The current iteration of most of the rest looks great. The desert shot of the droids has more of the unnatural colors removed. But I think the shot of Owen looks green and kind of strange still (but what do I know).

Coming along nicely!

Well, the BD release has limited audio tracks. So the MKV, with a couple removed for languages you don’t speak, will still have 2-3x more tracks.

ScruffyNerfHerder said:

I have an ongoing subscription to Photoshop CC, plus time, and a love of Star Wars; if I can help, I’d like to! 😃

Also, I agree that having access to an entire shot—not just individual frames—would be a good idea. It’s often far better to clone from the next/preceding frame than within a damaged frame.

Well, that is exactly what pfclean does. Though you can set it to make guesses based on only the current frame, if the adjacent ones don’t have useful information.