A marvelous effort. You have given us a precious gift and we eagerly await the competition of the trilogy. Those of us who have tried our hand at editing and experienced how time consuming it can be will wait with the necessary patience.
The competition of the trilogy.
hedonistic voice: Let the games begin…!
If I might make one suggestion. Whether you decide to GOUT sync or not, if you want credit for your work it might be best to do as Harmy did on his releases and put your credit at the end of the film. I suggest this since anyone who would want to mix in their preference of the plethora of audio and subtitle options out there to your footage would either have to offset or modify everything they add or, more likely, do as the current 720p GOUT synced copy on the spleen did and remove your credit at the beginning of the film. I added hairy_hen’s DTS-HD MA 5.1 track quite simply to that 720p GOUT synced version, and the result was glorious, even despite the occasional missing frame placeholders, and is about how I think I would preserve and distribute this with respect to your final version; it would be regrettable having to do so without credit to you.
Can’t wait!!!
Around here with that attitude, it is best to prepare for disappointment, haha.
At the end of the training remote session with Luke talking to Ben, what are the green ovals in the top right with white scribbled lines for?, in the last sentance or so before you cut to the Death Star board room
I think those are just reel change markers. It’s something we no longer see in digital projection, or on home video, but would definitely be present in 1977. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_mark for more info.
Hope that helps. 😃
Also, if you’re up for watching “Fight Club”, in it there is a very notable explanation of cue marks and reel changes (and some uncouth things projectionists could have had leeway to do, if they chose).
So, we should not expect GOUT sync for the 1.1 MKV? Are at least the found 85 frames of the missing 111 frames going to be inserted?
If Chouonsoku is the same person I’m thinking of from a very quality oriented encoding site, then I’d also suggest paying extra consideration to what he (she?) has to say.
Edit: Chouonsoku has since added a profile pic, definitely the same person I’m thinking of.
The sky is not supposed to be blue, but “greyish”
Color correction discussions are often quite entertaining.
HEY MAN I’M LOOKING OUT MY WINDOW AT THE SKY RIGHT NOW AND THAT SHIT IS BLUE
You able to see both suns from your window, or do you have to wander outside at dusk to see that?
One thing I’ve been concerned about for a while is that you often mentioned AVCHD, should we take it that you’re trying to burn the ~7GB AVCHD versions of all the films? (since you mention jedi 1.0, you’re obviously doing this for at least one of the three) Since you went through the expense of getting a full-on Blu-ray burner and you’re not sure whether your player supports AVCHD (not all do), then it would be best to now focus on getting the full quality MKVs for SW and Empire (and wait for Harmy to put out his v2.0 of Jedi), and then use TSMuxer (as often discussed here) to make playable Blu-ray ISOs you can burn to recordable single layer Blu-ray discs. This method should yield the best compatibility and also give you the best image and sound.
I have tried to read through some of this thread, but I don’t understand much about this topic. My situation is this:
I have the MKV files for the first 2 movies on my computer. My computer has an HDMI out slot. I play one of the files in VLC on my computer, plug an hdmi cable into a receiver, which puts my computer screen on my tv. When the movie is played, it looks and sounds surprisingly good on my tv (surprising because I didn’t know how else to play these files on my tv, but noticed my old desktop does in fact have an hdmi slot).
So I am wondering if my method is not the preferred one, if peoples’ computers just don’t have hdmi slots, or if there’s some better way of doing this process?
And also, does anyone know off hand what the optimal settings would be in VLC and/or my receiver for playing this? On my test run I believe I switched the sound on VLC to 5.1, and my receiver to 7 channel audio. (btw this is not my receiver and tv, and I know little about this stuff).
As it seems I’ve been championing, outputting straight to your TV/receiver through HDMI is a great method until nicely polished BD versions are available. If you want to get the most out of this kind of setup, though, you’ll want to look into how to “passthrough” HD audio to the receiver. I’m not sure how adept VLC is at that, versus just decoding the audio itself, so I’d recommend looking up (I’m assuming you’re on Windows, here) how to do passthrough audio with players like MPC-HC and Kodi. At the very least for Kodi I know you have to change some settings in Windows to use WASAPI rather than directsound to properly passthrough the full HD audio track, rather than core DTS, or worse decoding locally. http://kodi.wiki/view/Windows_audio
Your argument is well rounded.
I call ring-bearer!
You cants just takeses such a precious position…
WRONG RING
Who made you Lord of the Ring?
I obviously called it first.
Exactly the sort of circular logic I would expect from a ring enthusiast.
I call ring-bearer!
You cants just takeses such a precious position…
WRONG RING
Who made you Lord of the Ring?
I call ring-bearer!
You cants just takeses such a precious position…
I meant to question doing everything but just playing the files straight from a computer in their original form if all you want to do is watch them. Going to extremes to burn discs when you don’t have the equipment to create or view the discs or spending hours of frustration trying to make something play on hardware not intended to play files like these, and God knows what cost to quality, is what I question if other options are not also considered first.
To be clear, I’m a big fan of media I can hold in my hand, not ethereal bits floating around God knows where. If the DeEd project ever settles on versions and especially has an official BD structure with menus and everything, I’m all over burning it and archiving it unaltered. There’s every reason to burn these to disc if that’s something you’re into. Personally, while the DeEd versions are in flux, I’ve found it best for me to stay up to date by playing the files directly, rather than burning works in progress and wasting BD media as they update. As things stand now with the project, unless there are specific playback requirements (consistency across different hardware, gifts to people, playing it at random locations/events), I don’t see burning discs as the best first option. We’ll get there before long, but I just don’t see it that way yet.
I didn’t mean to come off as blasting the idea of writable/archival media in general.
I don’t see how a Blu-ray player connected over HDMI to a TV is supposed to look dramatically different than a PC hooked up the exact same way, I think your calibration comment is moot in this instance.
If your TV is calibrated for rec.709 for your Blu-ray player, but it isn’t calibrated for RGB for your PC, then it very much will look different, and the Blu-ray will be better. Since most calibrators only calibrate for rec.709 anyway, it’s very non-moot.
I’m not saying the point is not a good one in general, but I’m pretty sure the guy who can’t settle on one option to play the DeEd and can’t format a USB drive isn’t going to have a screen that’s already specially calibrated for one HDMI source over another. I meant it is moot to him, and even bringing it up could confuse him further.
And since my original general rant has now ended up laser focused on Joey, we should really focus on figuring out what he’s wanting. Is he wanting this just for personal use, or to share with friends/family, is he seeing buying a burner and/or player or formatting a USB drive (have we even figured out what he was trying to plug it into?) as his only hope to watch it on a TV? Does he have a computer he can use temporarily (or permanently), if he JUST wants to watch the movies? Does he want a pretty BD case? …Is his TV professionally calibrated?
All this talk of calibration or the ways you guys might like to archive stuff or make boxes, etc. is not coming from anything he’s said, but what you like to do. Let’s get his actual requirements first, and then see if any of our preferences fit his needs before we push anything else on him.
I have all of these options at my disposal. First of all, any streaming option that downsamples the video is straight out of the question.
As my PS3 is hacked to play MKVs and use NTFS drives, that is the most straight forward way to play them and often what I do. For things that I intend to keep as long as possible, I burn to BD-R to put on the shelf and keep as a physical backup to whatever HDD(s) it may be on. It also allows for portability so I can easily bring it to a friend’s house, or make a 1:1 copy to give to a friend in some cases.
I didn’t say anything about downsampling, the whole point of using a computer is to avoid that, even the FireTV Stick option I stated to sideload Kodi, which plays the file straight, not downsampled like Plex or something along those lines would do.
And it is great that you have a hacked PS3 as your straight forward way to play files, but you do realize that this is very much the equivalent of having a PC dedicated to being a straight forward way to play files… It is the exact same point I was making, just with a slightly different hardware choice.
I only included burning discs in that rant for the times when the convoluted methods people choose involve buying hardware (for burning, playback or–strangely–both). I’m not even against Joey getting a good Blu-ray burner, he should, but he doesn’t sound like he knows what he wants. He sounds like he’s on the fence between burning discs, buying a Blu-ray player with a USB port (seemingly in addition to burning discs), and figuring out how to format a USB drive. He has said nothing I can remember about gifting copies of the DeEd to friends/family or having desire to make a display box for discs. The one concrete bit of information he does offer up is that he has plenty of extra HDMI inputs. I’d say he’s a good candidate for considering just hooking up a computer to his TV and being done with it, unless he does want to do some of those disc-specific uses you mention.
I don’t see how a Blu-ray player connected over HDMI to a TV is supposed to look dramatically different than a PC hooked up the exact same way, I think your calibration comment is moot in this instance.
I ask the world again, how is jumping through all these hoops to burn/play discs (if you have to buy the burners or players) or trying to force the files into things that don’t really want to play them (like smart TVs/Blu-ray players/cable boxes or PS3/4/XBOXes, etc.), considered easier or better than just hooking a computer up to your TV or, better yet, A/V receiver and playing the files unaltered?
Any number of cheap options exist, from hooking up a laptop you already have, buying a super cheap NUC or LIVA, or even grabbing a really inexpensive FireTV Stick and sideloading Kodi…
Arguably the best way to get MPC-HC and the necessary codecs would be to install CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack… which is actually a filter pack, but they couldn’t pass up that acronym), which will take care of both. VLC uses its own internalized codecs, so it is more standalone. Kodi (a very nice media center program, formerly called XBMC) also does a great job, though best used on a computer you use often for media (it has a whole graphical interface) (oh, and you don’t have to depend on installing extra codecs with this option, either). Between those (and really, you should try them all) you should NEVER have to open that horrid Windows Media Player ever again, nor should you.
I wish I’d known to this extent about Dan Perri’s work on the Star Wars titles before I met him a few months back, all I could think to talk about was that I thought he designed the logo used in the poster (which I do also like) while they had him signing pictures of the title crawl (though, still offensively the '81 EpIV ANH version), he insisted he’d worked on the theatrical logo… Now I understand what he meant. Oh well, too late now to have a better conversation, but I can only imagine what I’d have asked him about the process instead…
From additional research I’ve done, the rest of the prequels were shot in 16/9 1080p using spherical lenses and then hard cropped to 2.35.
Technically speaking, those films WOULD have additional information on the top and bottom. Although where one could find a copy…
The more you know…
Let’s just go a step further here and cover all the bases. If you buy a Blu-ray burner you can write both to Blu-ray writable discs and to DVD writable discs. With a Blu-ray burner you can do anything you want, up to burning a working Blu-ray (single layer BD25 disc) from the full quality MKV (once you convert with TsMuxerGUI).
If you want to go cheaper on your drive purchase and just burn the DVD versions, you can get just a DVD burner. With this you can burn the AVCHD versions to a DVD9 (these are double layer DVDs, which are more expensive than single layer “DVD5”, but often comparable to or cheaper than BDR discs), these can be played in MOST Blu-ray players, but not in any standard DVD players.
If you want to burn a disc that you can play in any player, be it Blu-ray player or just a DVD player, then you’d want to jump down in quality all the way to the standard definition NTSC DVD5 version. It will play in anything because it is just a normal single layer DVD, no Blu-ray formatting of any kind and appropriately reduced quality. Not the best looking or sounding by a long shot, but it will work in anything.
Alternatively, if you skip disc burning and just want to play the files off a USB drive, just make sure it isn’t formatted to FAT32, or it will go over the file size limit.
Actually, I think The Phantom Menace was shot in 35mm, while framed for 2.35:1 and only ever presented in that fashion (and the only Prequel to even be shot on film), it may be the lone standout Star Wars film to have been matted and therefore have more picture to offer. You’ll never see that happen, and frankly who wants to see any more of TPM, but the material may exist out there somewhere.
Just to be clear, it is a rare circumstance where those black bars are hiding anything, and on the cases where they are, the covered footage usually was not intended to be seen and would be less polished than the portion originally framed for (especially in SFX heavy films, as there’s little reason to perfect effects in parts of an image not intended to be seen). Take 4:3 “Fullscreen” video (or “Fullframe” older films), on a modern TV you see black bars on the side, you can’t believe there is video they’re hiding on the sides (well, except for movies that WERE widescreen and then cropped in the CRT era to “fit your TV”), in that same way there’s not likely something hidden in black bars at the top and bottom of an extra wide video presentation.
Harmy said:
Yeah, I didn’t realize it, but as soon as CatBus mentioned the possibility, I remembered Jedi was the last one done of the v1.0s and I probably just used the same logos I already had from SW or ESB.
Actually, ESB v2.0 also uses the same logos as SW v2.0, which were taken from a 35mm print of SW, so if ESB also had the logos slightly different, those are also not perfectly accurate in v2.0 - this will of course be remedied in v2.5, now that we have complete 35mm versions of ESB thanks to TN1.If I remember correctly, you also used the Fox logo from Alien.
You’re not wrong, but he’s talking about different logos, namely the green Lucasfilm LTD text and then the “A Long Long Time Ago…”
One thing was the colors - not so much the color choices (even though there I will also want to make some changes, since it became apparent that the scans I used as reference, while still pretty close, were not 100% accurate to what the print actually looks like) but rather color errors, like whites being green, and these color artifacts on people’s faces and stuff like that. But mainly most of the GOUT sourced stuff just stands out to me and I should be able to get some 35mm scans soon and finally get it to the same level as what ESB and ROTJ v2.5 will be with pretty much no standard definition sources used.
By whites being green, do you possibly mean the occasional green tinting in the background while Luke is cleaning R2? That has been driving me crazy, I can’t help but notice it every time now.
No, actually, v2.5 has always been my original vision - until v3.0 comes out, then that will have always been my original vision 😄
I watched “From Star Wars to Jedi” for the first time in a long while yesterday, and it is unbelievable how many times George put his foot in his future mouth throughout it. He shot so many holes in his Original Vision claims… The only thing he has been consistent about was not liking how the Cantina turned out, everything else he has since completely done the opposite of; from comments about the importance of pacing and the mistakes other filmmakers make of showing off scenery over telling a story (PT implications, all the way), to admitting it was best he didn’t finish the Jabba scene in original Star Wars as it gave him the chance to completely reimagine the design of Jabba. Overall, it was a strangely fun watch with the knowledge we have now.