towne32

Harmy has seen SSE I am sure. His goal is to represent the technicolor version, while SSE is a color corrected version of essentially an Eastman print with fairly minimal fade.

While some sequences in the SSE look stunning, color wise, others could use a ton of work. But the release itself can’t be used as a pure color reference.

Ideally, we may get to see mike verta’s corrected frames some day, which would make for a lovely reference.

Molly said:

Might be a good jumping-off point for Harmy-style reconstructions.

(Perhaps ideally, it could be in the form of the means to rebuild it out of the BD M2TS files, that way no Lucasfilm material changes hands. </DAFT>)

Harmy discussed a similar idea for if Disney ever releases the OOT. Could have a NLE like Resolve, as it’s free now, with all of the LUTs applied across it as necessary. Just need the LUT batch and the m2ts files straight from the disc if doing this for something like Dre’s goal described here.

They never got around to releasing upscaled versions of the sequels (97 or original).

Those guys don’t use this site or myspleen anymore. They seem to be much more interested in horror films than Star Wars now.

Their OOT upscale was great for its time, but there are so many options at this point that I’m not sure they need to carry on with GOUT based projects, though DJ’s gout-based V3 was among the best at one point. But it would indeed be nice to see the rest of the 1997 set. It’s the best presentation of the actual version.

DrDre said:

Yup, it will be untouched 2011/2004. I think I might actually use Schormann’s HDTV transfer, as I can’t stand Vader’s noooooo in ROTJ.

Yeah. It would get rid of R2’s rocks and some other things as well. Or you can drop in Schorman’s when needed, or just use his audio, since the BD picture quality is better. The 2004 ANH audio channels are a bit messed up, though, and fixed in 2011.

Cool. So it’ll be essentially untouched 2011/2004 except for color?

I honestly think this could get me to sit down and watch the SE trilogy. I’ll still cringe at Jabba or fast forward through Jedi Rocks, but the bulk of the films will look fantastic, color wise, if you keep this up.

Looks perfect.

joefavs said:

I actually cribbed my settings from a guy on another forum with the same model TV as me who had his professionally set up. I use the temperature presets for quick adjustments, but I’ve got the 10 point white balance and all that set up.

The shots I were referring to were all in the first third of so of the film. The officer Vader speaks with on the Tantive IV, and some of Luke’s early indoor scenes. It was nothing major, just this weird dull green tinge on the hair in certain shots, like when a sloth has algae in its fur. Like I said though, a quick adjustment and it ceased to be an issue.

I’m actually halfway through watching it beginning to end right now. This is without a doubt going to be my preferred version until 3.0.

Thanks for the kind words. Sounds like your TV is probably set up well enough for most viewing. Might not be ideal for something as touchy as this, but oh well. I have definitely had abysmal luck copying people’s settings for identical sets.

The shots you’re discussing are straight from Harmy’s 1997SE, and I believe the skin tones are at least a bit redder than 2.5. Everything was close enough that I didn’t want to risk upsetting the balance of the white halls of the set. Though I did adjust the middle sequence of the soldiers being taken hostage and Vader’s choke scene (which were greener than the rest).

joefavs said:

Burned this to a disc this morning and looked at a few scenes on my TV. Just a minor quibble: I had the warmth set to a neutral level on my screen (largely to compensate for the yellow in Harmy’s version), and at those settings fair hair tended to look a little greenish, most obviously Luke’s and some of the grey-haired imperial officers. Bumping the warmth up a little bit did the trick, but I thought that might be something you’d want to know.

Thanks for viewing! It’s hard to really assess the feedback much without knowing what scenes or shots, specifically, are in question, as there are big differences between Tatooine, DS, Yavin, etc. But as I may have said in this thread, a lot of the Death Star interiors are straight from Harmy’s 1997 and they can be greenish at times. Too much for some people’s tastes. But the bottom line is that this color adjustment is not perfection. Over-adjusting is risky and can create more problems than it solves, making other elements in the shot look unnatural. The film went through multiple rounds of color correction already (you_too, and I don’t know if Harmy’s various corrections were compounded onto each other). Combine that with my mediocre abilities and there are limits to what can be done. And once you start tweaking one shot in a scene, you end up adjusting everything else surrounding it. Sometimes that works out well, sometimes not.

But regardless, it’s a bit hard to know what to make of feedback. If a TV is being set to ‘warm’ ‘neutral’ ‘cool’ type settings instead of calibrated properly (or semi-properly in my own case), it can make a huge difference. From the sets I’ve calibrated, the neutral setting has always been very warm or cool and not actually neutral (and the actual warm/cool settings were ridiculous). I definitely see why you would set it a certain way for something like Harmy’s 2.5. The same setting for mine might break things that weren’t broken before. And I think a lot of the color is rather intense in nature, so pushing it just a little further with weird TV settings might make it look way too unnatural. I think the material is probably a bit more delicate in that sense compared to other videos. Thanks again for taking a look. 😃

Starwarsnewsnet.com (previously starwars7news) is reporting the EW article as well. Hilariously, their image for the article is the gross dark recolored version of the final scene in the film, as used in 2004/2011.

Are you searching for TNH? I’m not sure what that stands for, but I do believe the silver screen edition is on usenet.

Darth Lucas said:

I finished downloading and I gotta say. WOW. This looks great. I actually kind of prefer your Mos Eisley grading to my own. I may actually just use this as my main source to build off of for my Blu-Ray instead of Harmy’s regualr 2.5. Really spectacular color work here towne32.

Wow, thanks DL!

Maybe once we get this branching thing working, you can just send me your crawl and I can export it with matching settings to my own version so we can tinker with that. I think for my own ANH branching attempt, I will just use the 1997SE footage. I like your flyover better since it has the better lasers and all, but I think I want to go with the crawl text that has less gateweave and matches the 2.5 SW crawl in that sense.

joefavs said:

I’m partial to the Blu-ray track with the archival interviews, myself. I never get over how neat it is whenever Alec Guinness chimes in. I also tend to be more interested in broader stories about production than any sort of scene-by-scene analysis, though, so it depends which way you skew.

Since I’ve recently had to watch through the film a bunch for some test renders, I used the commentaries to help not get sick of the movie, and the archival stuff takes the cake. You never get a lull in conversation. And the geek commentator on one of the other ones sometimes drifts way too far into obscurity.

But whenever George is on the mic it’s as dreadful as ever. Every single thing he says is some justification of how he always thought this or that. When Tarkin tells Vader to knock it off, George has to explain it away. Some of the other people discuss SE changes as well, but they simply state that it’s a CG replacement shot done many years later. George even finds time to defend his point about how colorizing cartoons is unforgivable, but CG ships are not.

One of my favorite parts, though, was the discussion (I forget who was speaking, not George) about how Vader’s survival was one of the very last changes made to the original version. And how they built those shots showing his ship straighten out, using footage that was not originally shot with that intent. I hadn’t heard of this and am actually quite surprised it didn’t get excised from the commentary.

Smithers said:

towne32 said:

Smithers said:

Do you plan on releasing AVCHD versions and/or MKV versions of this?

This is an MKV. Hadn’t thought about AVCHD, but I could do it.

Oh ok I thought it was BD25, anyway that would definitely be awesome!

It’s sized to work well as a BD25, but it’s in MKV format (smaller download, and probably more people want MKV than BDMV). Would need to figure out bitrate settings for AVCHD and look into what audio tracks Harmy includes in those, and see if I have those.

One issue is that, as Harmy said, the grain won’t do well with lower bitrate in this re-encode. For a BD sized render, it had the advantage of the fact that Harmy’s video stream was only 13Gb, leaving me options for a somewhat high bitrate encode. I think his AVCHD probably push the DVD9 boundary a little harder.

You probably need to update the plugins then. Jdownloader works by having scripts that allow it to navigate all of these file sharing websites and essentially click all the stuff you don’t want to bother to click, so it needs pretty constant updates. Mine usually updates when I close the program, but you might have it switched off in your settings.

Smithers said:

Do you plan on releasing AVCHD versions and/or MKV versions of this?

This is an MKV. Hadn’t thought about AVCHD, but I could do it.

It’s a very minor thing that was noted in Harmy’s thread a long while back. After Han and Luke part ways at Yavin, there’s a shot of an R2 unit being loaded into an X-wing with a guy waving it. There’s extra footage there in the SE and Harmy had an extra frame, making it technically out of GOUT sync by a frame from there on.

It’s not something that matters in reality. I just mentioned it because people sometimes care (many remuxed ESB to fix a similar single frame sync ‘issue’), but the main reason was that in my screenshot comparisons it made the images off by one frame, which is especially noticeable with lasers. But I actually ended up offsetting it to match in the final comparisons, so the note is really not important.

clutchins said:

They said the only exception for movies is Star Wars, but I doubt they’d let the unaltered 2011 Blu-ray stay up.

Right. It’s surely the one and only exception for Star Wars.

They are cracking down on films in general right now, so I do not think they will allow a blu-ray rip of something currently being sold, even if it’s repackaged. But I could be wrong.

I’m guessing the Holiday Special?

Are you transcoding the 2004/2011 versions at all, or leaving them at full bitrate?

Also, I suspect the 2011 editions are going to need to be blu-torrents releases?

Dreamaster said:

OHHHH… so ready to download this…

totalmackerel said:

The comparison gallery is looking excellent. Can’t wait to watch it!

Well then…

New Galleries:

Color based on Respecialized 97: http://imgur.com/a/iPRRN

Adjusted manually: http://imgur.com/a/2JwDy

Be sure to click to see all images at the bottom. 😃

You can use anything you want of course. Please let me know if there’s anything specific that I can send you lossless versions of, since I really don’t think it can take another lossy re-encode. 😃

I will say that the one thing in my version that people have said hasn’t quite fulfilled their recolorization hopes is the Death Star interiors. They’re certainly ‘improved’ (in that they are closer to meeting my goal), but they are still quite colorful. As Mike Verta has said, the film and the sets do vary in color. And when they stray green, it tends to set off people’s ‘you missed a green shot’ radar. It’s impossible for me to tease apart what should be green, vs. what is getting the green treatment that Tatooine got. And anyway, my amateur skills are probably not enough to get everything consistent in some shots without messing with the skin tones, which are way more important.

Generally, I think the Death Star interiors show off the Technicolor process wheras Mos Eisley shows some weakness. So, I rather like the vibrant look. But I will say that I reduced the vibrancy of the blue exterior Death Star shots a bit, and made the color in the far shots of the approach more consistent.

Will have a more complete gallery up in just a few minutes.

Thanks again for all the feedback.

That link should be offline actually. It wasn’t an ideal encode and I deleted it to make room for the (hopefully) final version.

TV’s Frink said:

Though I can’t believe I made that typo (and no one mentioned it).

I know, right? You need commas if you want to say, “Let us, our heroes, escape the Death Star”

TV’s Frink said:
Let’s our heroes escape the Death Star? WHAT HAVE I DONE?

                                TARKIN
                     Are they away?

                                 VADER
                     They have just made the jump into 
                     hyperspace.

                                 TARKIN
                     You're sure the homing beacon is 
                     secure aboard their ship? I'm taking 
                     an awful risk, Vader. This had better 
                     work.
                                
                     [Zoom in to VADER's face]

                                 VADER
                     WHAT HAVE I DONE?