And probably my final nit pick, in “The remastered version (v2.5) represented a significant improvement”, I think “represents” would work better than “represented”.
Also in
Technical Specifications:
CONTAINER: MKV
SIZE: 7.8 GB
VIDEO: 1280x720p H264 23.976 fps
AUDIO: (all Dolby Digital) Special thanks to hairy_hen, Schorman and CatBus
I think you meant CONTAINER: AVCHD (or ISO, or whatever is appropriate), as I think this is the AVCHD release you’re referring to here in this second post.
How about “ROTJ v2.5 is pretty much completely despecialized”; rather than “ROTJ v2.5 is despecialized pretty much completely”.
Hell, throw in more Jar-Jar and make previously disappearing ships last well into the next scene, even if it is a forest or underwater or somewhere you wouldn’t expect to see a spacecraft. Felt there was never enough TIE fighter involvement in the speeder bike chase, and George would probably agree.
Makes sense. Though I’d suggest showing them the film with Rifftrax commentary, it’ll go down easier (even if it’ll muddle the message a bit).
Sorry, Lucas–I don’t teach your special editions (but I am including Revenge of the Sith this semester, cuz Milton).
Milton the toast making robot?
Empire is getting the 2.5 bump as well, and they’ll all be on common numbering (unless SW gets a quick 2.6 edit, to match the quality of the other two).
Just to be clear, you DON’T want silence filled with Jar-Jar quotes, correct?
I think we’ll take that as a consensus.
No it wasn’t, along with some jam session music in the palace and the music played aboard the Sail Barge. The Baroque recital was released on the SE soundtrack for the first time, but that’s as far as it went, especially with that Jedi Rocks crap being introduced and released as a single.
And it went on to be one of the best selling singles of all time. Wait… I’m thinking of something else.
Yeah, I will definitely do some workprints for v3.0s - starting from scratch, there will be a large probability of errors.
We’ll see about v2.6 - if I did one, it would be just quickly splicing TN1’s shots in place of GOUT shots into the v2.5 lossless master and maybe fixing some of the more obvious color problems (it would probably end up looking somewhat like the Respecialized Edition).
Maybe consider replacing your animated Dewback by the cantina, you did a good job on it, but it does stick out a bit as not 100% authentic. That and the pink haze in the blue sky around some of your other fixes, like the Dewback mounted Stormtrooper.
Not to mention that by working on them at around the same time, it would be easier for him to keep the quality consistent (technique and source improvements over time is what led ESB and ROTJ to be better than SW V2.5 in the first place).
That’s a pretty promising distribution aspiration, I hope it works out that way without any hiccups (mostly trouble getting sources in a timely manner, I’d assume).
I was able to find the 720p 3GB torrent for this, along with STAR WARS and The Empire Strikes Back, but don’t know which version number it is. Does MySpleen have a BD25 1080p version? I’m about to look very soon.
There are no official releases of Harmy’s Despecialized that are 3GB.
It’s fine though. I found the BD25 of Harmy’s STAR WARS but there’s a couple errors regarding the menu for the commentaries. It’s Laserdisc, not Laserdisk. It’s Blu-ray disc, not Bluray.
Otherwise it’s fine.
I’ll grab the large size MKV for Return of the Jedi from The Spleen and make my own Blu-ray with it. Unless if Harmy has made a BD25 of it?
There are also no official BD25’s from Harmy yet. Only the large MKVs, the AVCHD DVD-9s, and some of the NTSC DVD5s are sanctioned by Harmy, everything you’ve gotten so far has been modified by third parties.
I was able to find the 720p 3GB torrent for this, along with STAR WARS and The Empire Strikes Back, but don’t know which version number it is. Does MySpleen have a BD25 1080p version? I’m about to look very soon.
There are no official releases of Harmy’s Despecialized that are 3GB.
Well, the Rancor scene is pretty much spot on now, much easier to make out what is going and all around fits more naturally with the rest of the film, can’t wait to see it fill the screen. Including puggo’s version at the beginning was a good call, it helped the subtitle timing make sense, and as I thought more about it, it IS the timing I remember from VHS, etc. Glad to see the subtitles back where they should be.
One big issue I have with the comparison print is that the GOUT was so small it was pretty much useless for a reference on what did or didn’t get fixed from the SE in general. At best it could be a reference for color grading, but the v2 WP would have been better shrunken into that spot instead, since it seems the v2 WP was mostly there JUST to show off the new colors (which go from subtle to striking in many places, but all around pretty natural, good job on that so far). There are some things I noticed this time I haven’t seen before and really would have liked to be able to make out from the GOUT, but it seems a 64" plasma is too small a screen to use for comparison.
The one thing that really stands out to me that I would have liked to compare (no time code, I don’t have it in front of me) was the shadow Leia (in disguise) casts on the wall after she sneaks across the throne room, just before approaching the Han-sicle (wall Han-ger…?). It is a shaky, but well defined shadow, which looks a lot like it was done in post, I just wonder if it is original to the theatrical version or an effect added in the SE.
I think it does just the core file, as well.
I’m a child of the 80’s/90’s, and while I agree that “Episode IV: A New Hope” is how I was introduced to “Star Wars” and how I experienced it until 2006, I’ve really grown to like, and prefer, the purity of the original theatrical crawl. Knowing now that my nostalgia for it was the product of some of the earliest tinkering on the film and an early precursor to the SE changes, now just pisses me off when I remember back on it. I’ve taken to referring to the film just as “Star Wars”, and educating people on the non-existence of “Episode IV: A New Hope” when they perpetuate the misconception.
I can see wanting to have it available, it really is a part of the film’s history, even though it is more than just a subtitle, but the reworking of the arrangement of all the following text and it also messes up music cues during the sequence. It would be good to have it available, even though I don’t think I’ll be going back to it, as it’ll just irk me anymore.
Also, I’m pretty sure Harmy said he’s okay with someone doing it, he just doesn’t intend to do it himself.
I’d be interested in LPCM results as well. Also, the DTS core would probably still be better than the old AC3 mix, was that something which was tried in this process?
I don’t have a problem with you working on your project, I was just trying to make sure AVCHD video isn’t being passed off as a Blu-ray, which would confuse someone trying to get the best quality available of Harmy’s work. And I was negative on the lossy audio on a Blu-ray since I think a Blu-ray player is probably more likely to be hooked up to sound systems that can take advantage of higher quality audio tracks, than most computer setups, and people probably expect that from a Blu-ray disc. Insurmountable problems with the audio tracks makes using the AC3 tracks an acceptable, or at least understandable, alternative; where I got concerned is when you stated you “ended up using the AVCHD”, AVCHD as a term represents a video encoding technology, not audio (though it can contain audio in its BD compliant structure), so it wasn’t clear, to me, what you meant you’d used as sources.
If I have this straight, you started out wanting to do everything with AVCHD video and the AC3 audio that was included with it, you figured out the MKV’s video was far better, you tried a number of methods that tried to reencode the video [it didn’t read too clearly after that if you found a way to keep it from reencoding, if you ended up using reencoded video, or if you went back to AVCHD video], and your last problem was the DTS-HD MA tracks were messing everything up and the AC3 tracks ended up working for you.
Okay, that makes more sense.
I finished the BD .iso of SW Despecialized 2.5 with menus. I was not able to make the DTS-MA files work. I ended up using the AVCHD. It still looks and sounds great. This, I think, will be a good stop-gap for anyone that wants to watch a blu-ray with menus prior to the release of the 1080p 3.0 releases that are supposed to have all the bells and whistles. I have uploaded a multipart .rar to mega. I need to know what the proper place to post the links is.
If I get a positive response to this setup, I’ll go ahead and modify the project for TESB and ROTJ.
First, I don’t think burning a Blu-ray without available lossless audio tracks is the most attractive proposition. What really confuses me, though, is when you say you used the AVCHD, do you mean that you used the AC3 audio from the AVCHD and used the Blu-ray worthy/ready v2.5 MKV’s video, or did you make a “Blu-ray” from purely AVCHD sources? If the latter, I don’t see how that is any sort of acceptable “stop-gap” alternative to a full-quality DeEd without menus. If you want to tout it as an AVCHD release with menus, that’s one thing, but calling it a Blu-ray with menus will only cause confusion. Besides, I’ve already seen a menu’d v2.5 BD with a subset of audio/subtitle tracks on the spleen already, not to mention there’s plenty of talk on this thread about a forthcoming BD menu for v2.5 which does not omit any tracks.
If I read what you said wrong, enlighten me, and also please detail what your version does include.
You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Just a quick clarification on that (sorry this is not a bug report, harmy), the noticeable typos in ESB credits aren’t just because they were created from scratch, but because harmy accidentally put into the final v2.0 an older version of the credits that did not include a swath of findings that had already been reported, corrected and rendered. There are a lot of known problems in the credits because of that, but with all the film scans he’s been getting, it likely makes putting any more effort into the rendered credits (released version or error corrected) a moot point.
So, is there any chance of getting links to the comparison WP?
Thanks, Harmy, I’ll give it the ol’ college try first chance I get.