That guy with no name

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

RM4747 said:

oojason said:

They are still leaking

I always found the “some guy randomly saw the videos in his YouTube recommendations” story a little fishy.

Seems more likely to me this was leaked by someone working on the restoration.

As the guy in question, I can confirm this is no true…

So how are things still leaking? lol

Wouldn’t they have immediately fixed the auto-uploader and made everything private when they were aware it had leaked?

Hard to believe someone working there isn’t involved if things are still leaking.

Well, you better believe it.

RM4747 said:

oojason said:

They are still leaking

I always found the “some guy randomly saw the videos in his YouTube recommendations” story a little fishy.

Seems more likely to me this was leaked by someone working on the restoration.

As the guy in question, I can confirm this is not true…

YAREL_RGP said:

That guy with no name said:

RM4747 said:

They also had the option of scanning the separation masters, which are pretty much pristine and don’t fade at all, but that’s more work/time/money and apparently the negatives were still salvageable.

They did scan the Separation Masters. And used them as a primary reference for color and fade correction.

They probably scanned the three separation masters in 4K since they were only interested in the color, planning to combine them later and use them as a reference for grading the OCN. But if they did that with the three masters, I think it would have been faster to scan the three separation masters in 8K, combine them, clean them up a bit, and release it. The separation masters together are a literal, identical copy of the OCN, without the extra grain, since they are black and white copies with finer grain, inked with ink. But all in all, what they are doing is incredible: restoring the original from the degraded OCN to the digital realm, this time in good condition, using miraculous techniques, effort, a large budget, and the most modern and refined techniques since the concept of a “digital master” existed for those restorations of classics. We’ve seen The Wizard of Oz, Lawrence of Arabia, and Blade Runner restored for preservation, respecting their legacy, and now it’s Star Wars’ turn.

But even still, they’re second-generation. Right?

RM4747 said:

They also had the option of scanning the separation masters, which are pretty much pristine and don’t fade at all, but that’s more work/time/money and apparently the negatives were still salvageable.

They did scan the Separation Masters. And used them as a primary reference for color and fade correction.

RM4747 said:

aGreatHumanBeing said:

Onne said:

I would love to see “Definitive Editions” where all the problematic changes are reversed. Obviously, this brings a problem : what to keep and what to reverse?

To make every fan happy, Disney must release this on the streaming service with a questionnaire that the viewer have to fill out before watching the movie:

Do you prefer
a) Han shoots first
b) Greedo shoots first

Do you prefer
a) Yub Nub
b) Victory celebration

…and 50 questions later the streaming will adjust the movie according to your input! 😄

Kathleen Kennedy reading this and banging her head on the desk 😆

“I think I’m ready to retire now…”

Me if I ever meet Kathleen Kennedy after this…
https://streamable.com/6gctjv

That guy with no name said:

Mavimao said:

Guys and gals, we did it.

Well, now that ALI has actually leaked this specific clip, then I guess I should update it…

Mavimao said:

Guys and gals, we did it.

Some Interested Observer said:

Broom Kid said:

It’ll come to streaming & UHD.

That would indeed be nice.

They spent millions of dollars on this and have hired like 300 people. Of course, they’re gonna milk it on home media lol!

Some Interested Observer said:

Do we have any info on how much work they plan to put into restoring the deleted scenes? Obviously there’s a few clips that indicate that they’ve done work on some of these, but could they be creating high quality versions of all of the known cut scenes? (And even some other unseen things, judging by the vimeo clips 🤔)

There was a doc that mentioned a few of the scenes they were working on. Mainly it’s the same stuff that’s available plus the original Jabba scene…

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

You got it!

So… is it option 1 or 2? lol

That we don’t know… There is evidence to support both options.

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

It’s not the special edition, and it won’t be both either. That part (which is what I was replying to), I do know and have proof to back up, which I can’t share because, for the millionth time, it’s sensitive.

So that leaves options:

1. Nothing, it’s only for internal preservation and won’t be released.

2. Only the original theatrical versions will be released.

Interesting choice, since that would leave the Special Editions on the old 2011-2012 4K scans at worse quality.

You got it!

You’d think they’d also use these new 6K scans as a base to update the Special Editions as well, and re-do the CGI at higher resolution, but maybe they’re just going to leave that alone entirely, since that was George’s project.

Why would that be expected? That would be a vast and herculean effort. Finding, recovering, transferring, and then re-rendering 30-year-old CGI renders? Not to mention, they would have to re-scan other pieces of film missing from the theatrical cuts. To give a little away (and I won’t go any further), the '97 film out inserts were not scanned for this. In fact, if the documents are to be believed (which, btw, is not a 100% sure thing), then those pieces of film are no longer part of the negatives…

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

Of course. You don’t, I haven’t asked the person running this thread to post it!

Why not?

And why not just answer the question?

I don’t need to see proof. No need to post anything sensitive.

It’s a really simple question that you can answer: What are they planning to do with it?

I never said I knew what they were gonna do with it, though I do have a good idea what. Just what it is.

That’s the part of your original post I quoted and replied to:

You said: “Whether it’s a new Special Edition, or the theatrical versions, or both, no one seems to know yet.”

It’s not the special edition, and it won’t be both either. That part (which is what I was replying to), I do know and have proof to back up, which I can’t share because, for the millionth time, it’s sensitive.

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

We do know, though, that’s the whole point.

I didn’t see it anywhere, but I haven’t read all 15 pages of this thread.

Of course. You don’t, I haven’t asked the person running this thread to post it! Because it’s sensitive information. Everything posted here was supplied by the other members of the conversation and me, through me.

I’m gonna end this conversation here, I don’t have the time to go in circles with you.

RM4747 said:

Broom Kid said:

So what I’m reading is, you paid him to find out behind the scenes info.

He doesn’t know anything more than what you could have got here for free months ago. So what you paid for was embellishment and bad conjecture - and about four separate reminders that he’s got “contacts.” I’m not mad you posted it here. I’m not mad, period. I thought it was a good opportunity to point out what he was actually doing. Think of it as an object lesson in media literacy

Nobody is forcing you to keep vouching for and defending that position. You don’t have to keep doing so, and by doing so, force yourself into making contradictory statements with every quote. You’re just choosing to do it.

None of this is hostile. I can see why it’d be frustrating to someone who wants to keep doing something despite it not going the way they’d like, but that frustration is also a choice.

My point was only that he confirmed it with his sources at Lucasfilm that they are in fact remastering it, and do plan to release something in 2027. Whether it’s a new Special Edition, or the theatrical versions, or both, no one seems to know yet.

We do know, though, that’s the whole point. We haven’t released the physical proof that confirms this, as it’s incredibly sensitive. But instead of understanding, you’re just claiming that we’re making this up and don’t have anything that hasn’t already leaked, which is nowhere near the case. Here’s a question: Who do you think is supplying the images/docs that are on this forum?

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

Feel free to share. No one believes you have any information without proof.

Why would I need to share if there are no more secrets, duh!

You don’t have any. I didn’t think so.

Ok then. You weren’t invited to that conversation in the first place, so in your small-town world, I, in fact, don’t have anything… I’m glad you’re content!

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

Feel free to share. No one believes you have any information without proof.

Why would I need to share if there are no more secrets, duh!

RM4747 said:

That guy with no name said:

PM me on the other forum for a discussion… (just you, not anyone else).

It’s already been leaked everywhere, there are no more secrets.

digitalfreaknyc said:

That guy with no name said:

RM4747 said:

Broom Kid said:
this restoration (which began YEARS AGO)

Do we know when it began? I thought I saw somewhere it was 2022, but all of the leaked clips I’ve seen have a 2025 copyright date on them.

The films were scanned in '22, restoration began this year or '24.

Interesting. Is that in the data files?

Yes. From what we can tell, there were three main scans.

1. 6K cintel scans either done in '22 or before (not used in this restoration anymore)
2. 6K Cinelab HDR scan (for most of the three films)
3. 8K Lasergraphics 3-flash HDR scan (done for selective shots/scenes, mostly Effects shots)

There also appeared to be a photochemical (physical) restoration between scans 2 and 3. But that’s a long, deep web I won’t get into publicly. PM me on the other forum for a discussion… (just you, not anyone else).

RM4747 said:

Broom Kid said:
this restoration (which began YEARS AGO)

Do we know when it began? I thought I saw somewhere it was 2022, but all of the leaked clips I’ve seen have a 2025 copyright date on them.

The films were scanned in '22, restoration began this year or '24.

lurker77 said:

oojason said:

a streamable video clip of the above scene: https://streamable.com/c1rk80

^ the ‘clapperboard text’ info at the start of the clip makes for some intriguing reading!
 

A “secondary” 8K scan for certain (or just one) shots is peculiar. It’s considered pointless for 35mm. Perhaps they’re counting pixels across the width of a VVLA frame? Or they had to do a recombine from stems or sep masters and the extra res was helpful? (The “3F” could point to this)

“3f” refers to the lasergraphics director’s 3-flash HDR scanner.

bpmination said:

You didn’t have comment the way you did. All I wanted to do is bring up what I saw from the video. I’m sorry I didn’t search through this post for those images you mentioned. It’s my fault, I admit. But I had posted in a different area which had no such photos, and I was directed to this thread for discussion of the topic of the video. You are rude and insulting for no reason. I DID mention that YouTube’s compression could be the reason for loss of detail, if you’d read my post more carefully, rather than quickly deciding to insult me. I guess you you were in a rush to prove you’re the smartest guy in the room, though. You could’ve simply stated the issues you had without being insulting. I reported your behavior, for whatever it’s worth, but I hope you got whatever pleasure you were seeking from being dismissive and pompous.

So many people get this way around these various releases and this topic, its oh so tiring at this point. See that same kind of attitude on other social media sites, everyone jumping to prove how right they are. At this point I’m checking out of even reading these discussions and will wait for this official announcement that will be coming. Much like half life 3, I am sure its right around the corner.

I’m pretty sure being a smartypants overly righteous a-hole (like me) is better than spreading misinformation…

bloop said:

That guy with no name said:

bloop said:

I posted over in the OT section before I knew about the discussion going on in this thread. I figured I’d repost what I wrote there:

bloop said:

Hey, long time lurker. I just registered because I never had much to post about. I saw the supposed “leaked restoration footage” on youtube and wanted to share some observations and thoughts. Here’s the link to the footage:

[[NOTE: Since I’m a new member, I can’t post website links yet, so I had to add spaces in between the . and the com in these links. I know it’s a pain, but if you want to go to the links, you’ll have to copy and paste them without the spaces.]]

youtube. com/watch?v=4Z6TpkT-6AY

I grabbed a few frames and did a comparison on another website forum, so I’m reusing those pics here. I’m comparing the “leaked restoration footage” with the Star.Wars.4K77.2160p.UHD.No-DNR.35mm.x265-v1.4 version:

therpf. com/forums/attachments/leaked-20th-century-fox-logo-png.1992607/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-00-05-858-jpg.1992590/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-blurry-png.1992608/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-185-jpg.1992592/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-clear-png.1992609/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-193-jpg.1992593/

Now, I realize the YouTube converts and compresses video when you upload, so there might be some detail loss, but I grabbed screens from the 4K version, so it should be pretty good, at least for the points I make.

So, I don’t think the restoration looks all that good. Here’s my issues, which you can see in the above pic links:

• The “restoration” footage looks like they used way too much noise reduction, to the point to where most of the film grain has been lost. Losing grain means losing detail, and you can see it in my examples. The 20th Century Fox production logo animation is almost free of grain and looks to be digitally sharpened. They left in the hair on the top of the frame, which I could understand leaving, since you can see the hair in other footage of the 20th logo (I found it on a 16mm clip online and in 4k80). But the fact that they scrubbed the rest of the grain and details away along with the blemishes but left the hair seems odd. Maybe they aren’t done, but it seems almost like they just used AI or an automated filter to “clean” the frames, but the hair is big enough and remains constant throughout the opening that the AI/filter assumed it was supposed to be there. The cloud background and light beams from the spotlights especially look too free of detail. The whole thing just looks very flat, very “CG.”
  In the droid pics on the Tantive IV, the walls especially have been scrubbed of grain and detail, with missing panel lines and barely visible panels. I used a blurry shot and a clear one so you can see how much detail the blurry 4K77 screenshot still has in comparison. You can see the loss of detail in the droids as well.

• The colors are too saturated, not representative of the original theatrical release of the film. Also, the 20th logo background is practically purple, and the walls of the Tantive IV should have a slight brownish tint, as in the 4K77 version. Instead, the colors are too blue. The walls in the “restoration” look more like a low saturation gray tone. I’ve seen lots of posts on color grading over in the Star Wars Restoration subforum here, with posts by user Dr. Dre being especially researched on getting colors more accurate to the original, theatrical release, so I’m pretty confident that these “restoration” colors are NOT accurate.

• The footage has been cropped - see that C-3PO’s head is significantly cut off in the “restoration” footage, and R2’s lower panels are cut off at the bottom of the frame. I don’t see any reason for cropping that much, unless the film was in such bad shape along the edges that they had to crop the damage out, which I doubt, because 4K77 has no cropping. You’d expect an official restoration would use the highest quality sources, better than what Team Negative 1 had to work with. I can only think of one other reason to crop, and that’s if they applied too much digital sharpening, so that the frames look as if they have double lines around the edges.

All in all, it just looks bad for a supposed “restoration.” If this is an official restoration, sanctioned by Disney, maybe this isn’t representative of the finished product, but I don’t think that digitally removing detail and messing up the colors and cropping are things that a competent video editor should do, especially with a high profile project like this. Or maybe someone at Disney directed them to do it this way, I don’t know. It just seems like sloppy work. It bugs me that so many people are gushing about this “restoration” in the comments on YouTube. I realize most people don’t have the same eye for detail and knowledge about the way the film originally looked, or they just don’t care and want everything overly-smoothed, over-saturated and overly sharpened.

I’m just glad I have the Team Negative 1 editions.

Firstly, the leaked shots have by far the most detail and grain ever seen in any official/non-official release. What you’re describing is compression, as these videos were posted on YouTube. We have sourced HQ captures of these videos, which tell a different story. All the screenshots in this thread (which you’ve hilariously been willfully ignorant of) are sourced from those captures, and if you actually look at them (with your eyes), you’ll see plenty of original grain and detail.

Secondly, the color is unbelievably accurate. Dr Dre himself has proclaimed them the best he’d ever seen and is even basing his next 4K77 color grade on them. Btw, the tantive walls are not brown FYI…

Thirdly, the cropping of these leaks has been identified as temporary, as these videos are for quality control, but many shots (especially from ROTJ) have had wider cropping than any other official release. Again, you would know this if you actually looked at the comparisons posted here instead of watching. A compressed YouTube video consisting of re-uploaded videos that were already compressed…

This plethora of “thoughts” is ridiculously brutish, uneducated, and downright wrong.

Here’s a video uploaded by Harmy himself to further educate you on the subject you are clearly horribly ignorant of.
https 😕/youtu.be/J29_AcURtyc?si=leBXOdD1H5qKeGWF

Good luck, my troubled friend.

I reported your behavior, for whatever it’s worth,

😂

EDIT: Seriously, though, I apologize if you felt I insulted you. I’m glad you’ve been enlightened though…

bloop said:

I posted over in the OT section before I knew about the discussion going on in this thread. I figured I’d repost what I wrote there:

bloop said:

Hey, long time lurker. I just registered because I never had much to post about. I saw the supposed “leaked restoration footage” on youtube and wanted to share some observations and thoughts. Here’s the link to the footage:

[[NOTE: Since I’m a new member, I can’t post website links yet, so I had to add spaces in between the . and the com in these links. I know it’s a pain, but if you want to go to the links, you’ll have to copy and paste them without the spaces.]]

youtube. com/watch?v=4Z6TpkT-6AY

I grabbed a few frames and did a comparison on another website forum, so I’m reusing those pics here. I’m comparing the “leaked restoration footage” with the Star.Wars.4K77.2160p.UHD.No-DNR.35mm.x265-v1.4 version:

therpf. com/forums/attachments/leaked-20th-century-fox-logo-png.1992607/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-00-05-858-jpg.1992590/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-blurry-png.1992608/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-185-jpg.1992592/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/tantive-iv-clear-png.1992609/
therpf. com/forums/attachments/05-star-wars-4k77-2160p-uhd-no-dnr-35mm-x265-v1-4-mkv_snapshot_00-02-35-193-jpg.1992593/

Now, I realize the YouTube converts and compresses video when you upload, so there might be some detail loss, but I grabbed screens from the 4K version, so it should be pretty good, at least for the points I make.

So, I don’t think the restoration looks all that good. Here’s my issues, which you can see in the above pic links:

• The “restoration” footage looks like they used way too much noise reduction, to the point to where most of the film grain has been lost. Losing grain means losing detail, and you can see it in my examples. The 20th Century Fox production logo animation is almost free of grain and looks to be digitally sharpened. They left in the hair on the top of the frame, which I could understand leaving, since you can see the hair in other footage of the 20th logo (I found it on a 16mm clip online and in 4k80). But the fact that they scrubbed the rest of the grain and details away along with the blemishes but left the hair seems odd. Maybe they aren’t done, but it seems almost like they just used AI or an automated filter to “clean” the frames, but the hair is big enough and remains constant throughout the opening that the AI/filter assumed it was supposed to be there. The cloud background and light beams from the spotlights especially look too free of detail. The whole thing just looks very flat, very “CG.”
  In the droid pics on the Tantive IV, the walls especially have been scrubbed of grain and detail, with missing panel lines and barely visible panels. I used a blurry shot and a clear one so you can see how much detail the blurry 4K77 screenshot still has in comparison. You can see the loss of detail in the droids as well.

• The colors are too saturated, not representative of the original theatrical release of the film. Also, the 20th logo background is practically purple, and the walls of the Tantive IV should have a slight brownish tint, as in the 4K77 version. Instead, the colors are too blue. The walls in the “restoration” look more like a low saturation gray tone. I’ve seen lots of posts on color grading over in the Star Wars Restoration subforum here, with posts by user Dr. Dre being especially researched on getting colors more accurate to the original, theatrical release, so I’m pretty confident that these “restoration” colors are NOT accurate.

• The footage has been cropped - see that C-3PO’s head is significantly cut off in the “restoration” footage, and R2’s lower panels are cut off at the bottom of the frame. I don’t see any reason for cropping that much, unless the film was in such bad shape along the edges that they had to crop the damage out, which I doubt, because 4K77 has no cropping. You’d expect an official restoration would use the highest quality sources, better than what Team Negative 1 had to work with. I can only think of one other reason to crop, and that’s if they applied too much digital sharpening, so that the frames look as if they have double lines around the edges.

All in all, it just looks bad for a supposed “restoration.” If this is an official restoration, sanctioned by Disney, maybe this isn’t representative of the finished product, but I don’t think that digitally removing detail and messing up the colors and cropping are things that a competent video editor should do, especially with a high profile project like this. Or maybe someone at Disney directed them to do it this way, I don’t know. It just seems like sloppy work. It bugs me that so many people are gushing about this “restoration” in the comments on YouTube. I realize most people don’t have the same eye for detail and knowledge about the way the film originally looked, or they just don’t care and want everything overly-smoothed, over-saturated and overly sharpened.

I’m just glad I have the Team Negative 1 editions.

Firstly, the leaked shots have by far the most detail and grain ever seen in any official/non-official release. What you’re describing is compression, as these videos were posted on YouTube. We have sourced HQ captures of these videos, which tell a different story. All the screenshots in this thread (which you’ve hilariously been willfully ignorant of) are sourced from those captures, and if you actually look at them (with your eyes), you’ll see plenty of original grain and detail.

Secondly, the color is unbelievably accurate. Dr Dre himself has proclaimed them the best he’d ever seen and is even basing his next 4K77 color grade on them. Btw, the tantive walls are not brown FYI…

Thirdly, the cropping of these leaks has been identified as temporary, as these videos are for quality control, but many shots (especially from ROTJ) have had wider cropping than any other official release. Again, you would know this if you actually looked at the comparisons posted here instead of watching. A compressed YouTube video consisting of re-uploaded videos that were already compressed…

This plethora of “thoughts” is ridiculously brutish, uneducated, and downright wrong.

Here’s a video uploaded by Harmy himself to further educate you on the subject you are clearly horribly ignorant of.
https://youtu.be/J29_AcURtyc?si=leBXOdD1H5qKeGWF

Good luck, my troubled friend.

Mocata said:

CHEWBAKAspelledwrong said:

JadedSkywalker said:

I’m really curious as to where they will get the original colors from 1977, 1980 and 1983 and to know they are accurate.

What references do they have. I’m somewhat skeptical because Lowry messed them up twice.

I don’t think Lowry “messed them up”. The DVDs and BDs almost certainly looked as George wanted them.

He just really loves magenta.

Which is odd, considering he oversaw and approved the gorgeous 1997 SE color grade lol…

YAREL_RGP said:

That guy with no name said:

YAREL_RGP said:

That guy with no name said:

YAREL_RGP said:

Detail: ALI…

 
Detail: UHD…

Well, it’s important to note that this shot was digitized in 2K in 1997 to add the rope holding Han, so the UHD not only includes that shot with a clearly lower resolution, but also suffers from excessive DNR for the 3D conversion, which caused the image to lose detail.

Yeah, the point of the comparison is that this isn’t sourced from the UHD. Or you’re right, it would also have quality loss. Also good to note that the 97 filmouts also had fake digital grain added on top to disguise the new CG! So yeah, doubly worse…

I don’t know why you say “digital fake grain was added.” This shot was scanned, digitized, had CGI added, and was reprinted. If there’s supposedly more grain, it’s because of the reprinting. Although, back then, films had very fine grain, so no detail was lost when reprinting a film a second time. In the case of the enhanced shots in Star Wars, they look “worse” because they were rendered in 2K.

No, they had fake grain added onto them aswell… even in '97.
https://youtu.be/RMzif1D0nyA

Well, I think it refers more to the completely computer-generated shots, like the CGI shots of the Battle of Yavin, the CGI arrival on Bespin, among others, but the existing shots that were altered already had grain, and when reprinting, the natural grain of the new film did its thing.

I’m sorry, why are we making assumptions here? In the full video he says this was done to both new and “changed” shots. There are many original shots that appear to have had more grain in them in the SE evidenced by the need of more aggressive DNR…