DVD Verdict

[Sandman]

Happened to run across a review of the new Star Wars Trilogy DVD, and then started reading others.

It looks like a useful resource.

http://www.dvdverdict.com/index.php

[Skuzzy]

I do not care for what GL did to the release.  I created my own from my two laser disc releases.

Used the original and replaced the sound track of it (Dolby Pro Logic) with the one from the SE release (5.1 Digital), touched up the black levels and fixed some visible effects errors and am a happy camper.

[Sandman]

http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/starwarstrilogy.php

[Skuzzy]

Pretty much echoes my gripes.  I hand massaged each frame to get the black levels back.

My goal was to keep it true to the original while correcting some of the blatant errors.  Like no star field in the opening sequence behind Leia's ship when it explodes.  Oddly, it is one of the original scenes that had good black levels.

[midnight Target]

My lord Skuzzy! Next thing you'll do is colorize "Grapes of Wrath"!!

[Chairboy]

Originally posted by Skuzzy
Used the original and replaced the sound track of it (Dolby Pro Logic) with the one from the SE release (5.1 Digital), touched up the black levels and fixed some visible effects errors and am a happy camper.

How did you synch the sound?  I'd think the extra scenes (like Jabba in ANH) would mess it up.  Same with the sounds of Greedo firing first, etc.  Then there's the baffling change in Empire where Vader tells Luke to join him or die, then Luke lets go and falls.  In the SE, they added a scream as he fell, making the viewer wonder if he actually chose death over the darkside or just...  slipped.

[Skuzzy]

The nice thing about the SE version is most everything was added, making it easy to remove for melding in with the original.

I did not use the DVD versions at all.  Only the two original LD versions.

I used a Bryston 5.1 preamp decoder to get the 5.1 digital recorded into Adobe Premier 1.5 from my Pioneer CLD97 LD player (creating 6 discrete channels of sound).  I used Premier to correct the black levels and the missing star field in the opening scene.

Syncing the sound was simple enough.  I retained the original sound in Premier and matched it to the newly added sound track, then removed the original sound once that was all synced.

Once I was happy with that, I used Adobe Encore 1.5 to burn the DVD and mix the sound back into DD 5.1 (it can encode DD, but cannot decode it).

[Skuzzy]

Originally posted by midnight Target
My lord Skuzzy! Next thing you'll do is colorize "Grapes of Wrath"!!

Actually MT, I have spent some time un-colorizing a couple of films.  Frank Capra films should have never been colorized.

[Charon]

This reviewer is ****ing high.

There's a scene in Return of the Jedi that gives me chills every time I see it. It's really small, a throwaway almost. I don't even think about it except when I see it (or when I'm writing a review, but that's another matter). It's during the forest battle when the Bantha poodoo really hits the fan. Two furry little Ewoks are desperately running away from the AT-ST walkers. A cannon blast knocks them to the ground. One gets up and shakes his companion, trying to revive him. It's pointless. He's dead, and his companion softly cries over his fallen comrade.

That small moment demonstrates all that is right with Return of the Jedi. Sure, it's easy to knock it for starting Lucas's trend toward kiddie-fying the Star Wars films, but there's an undercurrent of love that you don't find in just any sci-fi film. The love of friends. Romantic love. Familial love. Love of freedom. There's also notes of melancholy as that love is lost—the little Ewok who dies next to his friend, the redemption of Anakin Skywalker (and reunion with his son) just moments before his death. But that's life, even in a galaxy far, far away. You live, you love, you lose. It gives Return of the Jedi some depth and meaning that I never really noticed until now, nearing thirty years old, watching the film for the millionth time, yet for the first time since it was in the theaters for the 1997 special edition release.

The only good Ewok is a dead Ewok.


Charon

[Skuzzy]

Hehe Charon.  Dunt hold back,..tell us how you really feel.

[Chairboy]

In the new edition, I think all blasters have been replaced with flashlights.

[Nilsen]

How long did this take you skuzzy?

[lasersailor184]

LMAO Chairboy.


When is ET due out with all those Cellphone toting government agents...

[Skuzzy]

Originally posted by GScholz
Skuzzy, what sort of lossless compression do you use, or do you just use sequential bitmaps? I've been using Huffyuv, but I'm not sure if that's the best codec for storing raw footage for editing.

Sounds like you have a nice setup there.

YUV is the most accurate, instead of RGB.  I used YUV for all the editing work.  The HuffYUV is a good utility.  Premier has its own YUV codec and it works really well (I think they licensed it from Pinnacle).

I captured (Premier) to AVI from the LD using the S-VHS port connected to a Canopus DVC300 (?) unit which fed the firewire.
Premier allows each frame to be edited.  It uses the Photoshop CS engine for editing the frames individually.

It's a big hobby of mine GS.  I use a Audigy 2 ZS Platinum for all the sound captures.  Very nice card.
==

Nilsen, I am not sure how long it took to get it all done.  I did not track it.  A few weeks in the evenings and weekends (sporatically) is about how long.
Premier has tools to expedite changes.  You can group frames and do masked changes to color, which I used for a lot of the black level work (space stuff made it easy and Lucas used a shade of blue that was easy to mask without effecting other parts of the image).
Fixing the light saber fight between Obe and Darth was another matter.  Each frame needed to be hand touched up.
==

Next step is to convert it to HDTV, when that is all finalized.  I hope to make use of some of the overscan for adding more image to the screen at that time.

[Dune]

Ewoks are like uber-gophers.  They can talk, but still should be trapped for the bounty on their tails.