towne32

Becas said:

Great, and somehow this isn’t deemed important enough to be anounced before people start downloading. Now I have a mixed bag of sets… what is the best aproach now to solve this.

Harmy made a post before he even did it. And he left the original files up even after the links were updated. If you had copied the entire set of links down or stuck with jdownloader you could have grabbed them all. If they’re still saved in your jdownloader links maybe you can still do that.

It’s amazing how this problem is everyone’s fault but yours.

Becas said:

“People here, unlike facebook, are generally very courteous.”

Yes, it shows… by everyone just ignoring my need of help post, and keeping on with the colour discussion…

However, some posts, like this one in quotes, are quite rude.

If no one answered your post, it’s because they don’t know the answer. Or perhaps they didn’t care for the doomsdaying ‘all for nothing’ at the end.

I would certainly guess, however, that multiple broken connections and a CRC fail at the end suggest a corrupt file. It’s the whole point of a CRC after all, so yes, corruption is likely. Hopefully you can determine which parts are corrupt and re-download those only. Maybe someone can post the individual CRCs for you.

Another possibility is that Harmy did indeed upload a new set of rars at one point. If you took multiple days to download it, you may have gotten some from one set and some from another? Or your jdownloader links were not matched to your firefox ones.

I think you’re right about constructive feedback. People here, unlike facebook, are generally very courteous.

And I think the fact that the complaints are so extremely minor (and, IMO, 90% dismissed by Harmy’s gallery), shows just how close to perfection this turned out.

But there are indeed people on spleen and facebook who are imagining that the contrast is ‘ruined’ throughout the whole film. Harmy pretty much shut that idea down with his gallery, and it is more likely that some of those people don’t understand what the 35mm shots are, or how incredible it is to have them in as good a state as this.

This isn’t really the correct place to post about technical downloading issues. But it sounds like your client is not allowed. Some trackers ban clients that are used to cheat the system (probably things that block uploads, auto leech, lie about stats, or just generally old clients).

In response to the general question: myspleen’s unfortunate decision isn’t going to affect what projects exist and are worked on. It’s only going to affect how they get distributed.

dogdoctor said:
I did want to ask you - if you said that most of the scenes that caught my eye due to blacks/contrast were the 35 mm LLP - what is the technical reasoning behind using that as a source?

Huh?

It’s the only source in existence that is the original film in high definition. Maybe I’m not understanding the question.

Harmy said:

Another thing I’ve already heard from several people is that the droid torture scene now has a blue tint.
That’s just not true - I think it now has very nice natural colors with a hint of blue from the lighting, where the old version had a strong sepia tint. This should really put it into perspective:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161419/picture:0
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/161419/picture:1

Look at that and tell me if v2.5 has a blue tint 😉

Definitely not a blue tint. There are blues in the highlights (and I think they are that way in the original, perhaps even in the GOUT, though I may be thinking of the 97SE). But your comparisons make it clear that it’s nothing like the Blu-ray.

I think people are often just on alert for blue coloring in the OT after what happened to the films in 2004.

Colson said:

REPORT-ROTJ-v2.5 - At the screen wipe at 4:57, there appears to be a weird glitch in the audio where it skips (for lack of a better word) momentarily. This appears to be present on all the audio tracks, so it may be native to the film. It’s present on 83 and 93 mixes.

Harmy doesn’t work on audio. But if it’s present in all those mixes, it’s probably real.

In case you want to look at them, here are my own hand adjusted shots for the version I’m working on (well, done with essentially):

http://imgur.com/a/adIa1

Many other shots were upgraded by Harmy himself for his 1997 release. As you know, he did not change his goal in replicating the IB Tech print for both 2.5 and 97SE. However, he did refine his technique and the levels are often better. Some of these will be extremely modest changes, others are larger:

http://imgur.com/a/CPcka

Pretty good. I’m especially impressed with number 3, it’s not an easy shot to color correct. How does it look for the first half before the grey guy wipe begins (i.e., the 35mm footage). I could never match both before the grey guy and after the way I wanted at the same time. Ideally, I’d have to make a matte trace behind him.

I think #5 needs a little work. I think you’ve made good friends with the desaturation tool, but it might go too far in that case.

Yeah. I see everyone complaining about jdownloader2 (Harmy’s facebook page is littered with those complaints), but mine is perfectly clean and runs optimally. I wondered if perhaps a new company is distributing it, or if this is just people failing Internet 101. i.e., pay attention to what boxes are clicked on install, don’t download from shady sites that throw the program in their on wrapper, etc.

Sounds good. Have finished my own color adjustment of the film and would definitely like to compare.

Don’t forget to remove the extra frame before the Battle of Yavin to bring it back to GOUT sync. 😃

Mavimao said:

FYI, there are no technicolor prints of Jedi (just the original Star Wars is so lucky). A kodak low fade print was scanned and referenced.

I said LPP, I’m not sure if someone else was confused or not about this point. As great as Technicolor is, when done properly, I would much rather that a SW77 LPP existed than a Jedi IB Tech. 😃

Edit: Nevermind, someone posted before me and I didn’t see it as it was on the previous page. 😄

Tom220 said:

Hey Harmy, first of all thanks for all the work you have done to preserve these films. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.

I watched most of Return of the Jedi last night and I couldn’t help but noticing an issue with the blacks. They look severely crushed in 2.5. I thought this might be due to the source material with the BluRay, but then I looked at version 1.0 and the blacks didn’t look as crushed there. In some scenes it’s more obvious than others, but this is a glaring issue to me and I surprised no one else has brought it up. I also felt as though the brightness level is set a little too low. Again, comparing it to 1.0 where the brightness level felt right. Fleshtones and overall colors are a bit too red for me personally, especially on the Endor scenes. Han looks like he’s spent three years on a tanning bed, not frozen in carbonite. I saw a print of Jedi about 4 years ago and I don’t remember it looking like this. Just wanted to share my thoughts.

1.0 looked a bit overly lightened, kind of bleached out.

But no, you’re not the first person to make this complaint. I think you are the second. I know you say you’ve seen a print, but part of the issue is that everyone who has seen multiple 35mm LPP scans can tell you that some parts really are quite dark. He includes so much of the 35mm footage, that I suspect he pushes it to as far as is reasonable, and then brings the BD footage to a matching level. Either way, aside from a couple Emperor shots, it should be at least as bright as the BD. I do wonder if the shot of the crossed sabers in front of his face might have been better with increased brightness, regardless if it makes his ‘slugs’ visible. But that’s my only contrast complaint.

As far as the red skin tones go, it is indeed quite variable. Those extremely bright shots are thanks to the 2004 mastering. As someone who has messed with the color of this film, the skin tones do turn bright red when you bring down the blues (generally, the film needs that done, though to a lesser degree than ANH. I’ve done it manually and with Neverar’s LUT, and it results in the way Harmy’s looks). The severity of the redness depends on the monitor and calibration, but I agree that a few shots looked more natural in 1.0.

solkap said:

REPORT-SW-v2.5
1:42:27
There is a noticable wobble on the lower left fusal thrust engine of the third X-wing to come into frame.

I searched this thread before posting, but it doesn’t look like anyone else has mentioned it.
I’m not sure if this is an artifact from 1977 or not.

I don’t have the film handy, but I assume this is the first shot of the fleet? I actually thought this was an error in Harmy’s composite too, but then I looked at other original sources (I think TN1’s video) and this is what the original composite did.

chyron8472 said:

Hmm… I notice that the 2.5 burned subtitles look… chunkier than the 1.0 do.

I guess I just got used to the 1.0 subtitles being cleaner. 😛

Well, the 1.0 looked more like something you’d make digitally, like the prequel subs. 2.5 looks more like the SW Greedo subs, and were apparently derived from the 35mm film.

Oh, I see! Thought perhaps the 2004(97?) was just color matched differently, but it does look like a recomp. And in 2011, I’ll bet the main goal was to completely remove that seam, and of course George was just like, ‘well why not make the damn thing 10x bigger as well’.

Haha, that’s actually why I was asking. They look like the elements are in the same positions. But maybe my eye isn’t good enough to tell the difference.

Awesome!

Harmy, what clued you in about the giant door shot being a recomp in 2004 (perhaps even 1997)? Looks pretty close to the original to me.

The 2011 change is one of the most mysterious. Perhaps there really was a reason that this shot in particular was changed? Like they had to recreate it in 2004 anyway, so they had the digital assets to just go around messing with it further? It’s always interesting seeing Mike Verta’s videos and learning that it’s quite likely that some of Lucas’s changes are due to o-neg damage rather than creative vision.

Edit: I wonder if some of your rancor shots in the gallery are 2.0 and not 2.5. The last few seem very dark compared to the adjustments you made for 2.5.

yoda-sama said:

If it is not Grindhouse sourced, but just a mucked with Harmy v2.0…

It is that exactly.

For a purely fan-restored film ESB, you’ll probably want the upcoming ‘sanitized’ TN1 release.

Well I don’t think he’ll ever be able to forget if you keep going at this rate.

Well, if we’re giving nitpicky reminders:

https://picasaweb.google.com/109609428403596349302/HarmySTheEmpireStrikesBackDespecializedEditionV20Changes#6044646111961669794
The turd on the ground needs to be rotoscoped back in. Never Forget 2016.

edit: Actually, for all I know you’re using 35mm for this shot.

CatBus said:

bishabosha said:

Wario64I said:

uloz.to too slow

I downloaded the 22GB version in 4 hours from uloz.to, average 2MB/s is that slow?

I averaged 0.00016Mbps. Apparently mileage varies, even especially on the Internet.

Is your internet speed really bad in general? If not, and you gave it multiple tries (of course), this must be your ISP throttling bandwidth from that site. My ISP lightly throttles bandwidth for Mega and other file lockers. If I turn on a VPN, the speed jumps up quite a bit.

Darth Mallwalker said:

towne32 said:

I believe it’s ac3 in this release. I’m just speculating, but yes, since it’s a Spanish print, and not GOUT synced, their film sourced audio would have needed to be re-synced, which is a bit of work.

Rhetorical question:
More work than de-sync’ing the GOUT audio to match their release (which didn’t match their print) ?

Regular answer ignoring rhetorical status:

Maybe. It depends on whether they have a synchronized video source with that audio to get everything matched up (as the non-Spanish film-sourced audio is not from the same print of course). If so, then it’s about equally difficult as the GOUT, depending on how much cleanup the audio needs. If not, it’s a lot more work.

2014 Never Forget. RIP In Peace.