Thanks to Hot Noodles for putting this video together!
Category Archives: Original Trilogy
Star Wars Deleted Scenes Restoration Test
While 4K80 was encoding, I spent a few hours on Sunday experimenting with the Tosche Station Deleted Scenes from the Bluray. This is just a quick test, in which I ran the shots through Viva Pro, and then did some 4 hours of manual painting and cloning in Diamant Dustbuster+, before tackling a few additional frames in Photoshop, and then adding some film grain in After Effects to hide some of the flaws (mostly the temporal smoothing).
This is the perfect sample footage to play with if you ever want to learn how to restore film digitally – it has everything. There are tears, splices, big and small scratches, loads of dirt, it needs stabilization because of all the film jumps… I threw everything I had at it to get it this clean.
4K80 Is Finally Done!
Hello Star Wars fans,
I wanted to take a moment to talk about project 4K, why 4K80 took so much longer than the other two, and where we go from here.
As you’ll know if you’ve been following these projects for a while, Team Negative One has been working on restoring the Star Wars Trilogy from 35mm film since around 2011. Before I joined the team in 2012, the team had already obtained some Empire Strikes Back reels, eventually enough to make up a more or less complete print, but these reels had Vinegar Syndrome, were very unevenly faded and blotchy, and while the “Renegade Grindhouse” release of The Empire Strikes Back was an historical moment, it’s real value was as a proof of concept. If we could find better prints, and upgrade our equipment, perhaps we could really do something great.
16mm Revenge of the Jedi Teaser Trailer
From my own collection. Even scanned this one myself.
So you want to Watch Star Wars
Casual viewers of Star Wars are probably not aware of most of the changes made to the film since it’s release in 1977, but there have been a lot! Fans (like myself) have been working for years not only to keep track of these changes but also to preserve each and every version, with the original Oscar winning 1977 version being the main priority.
Every few years, technology improves a little, and Star Wars gets an upgrade: VHS, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray and no doubt a 4K bluray will be next. The last official release of the 1977 version was in 2006 on DVD, but it used a laserdisc master tape so it’s not as sharp as most DVDs.
Return of the Force
I recently picked up a copy of the now out of print 1996 Book Industrial Light and Magic – Into the Digital Realm, by Mark Cotta Vaz. The book was published in November of 1996, just two months before Star Wars’ triumphant return to the big screen with the 20th anniversary 1997 Special Editions.
The majority of the book explores the Special Effects work of ILM between 1977 and the date of publication, describing in detail the old analog processes such as optical printing, matte paintings and stop motion, and the gradual introduction of digital effects as they pioneered the new technology. It’s quite fascinating and well worth the $6 or so you’ll pay on Amazon for a copy today if you’re interested in this sort of thing.
Adywan’s ESB revisited released
Almost a decade in the making, this new fan edit of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back features all new CGI and practical effects built around painstakingly hand crafted miniatures, Adywan’s new take on Empire Strikes back is the Extra Special Edition Lucas wishes he could have made. We’d argue that it’s worth watching for the color correction alone! Revisited is just packed with new effects. We don’t want to spoil it for you, but check out the sample frame in this comparison with the official Bluray:
16mm Star Wars Trailer in HD
“This may all be happening right now” in a galaxy far, far away. I see reels just like this one show up on eBay pretty regularly, and they are almost always way over priced – usually at least $100. Luckily for me, I was able to borrow one and had it scanned by Q-Branch. Like most film from that era, it is very faded, making it look pink:
Using DrDre’s color balancing tool I was able to restore some of the colors:
Star Wars Galaxy Magazine Issue 1, 1994
By 1985, Star Wars was over. The toys and comics were no longer being sold, the original trilogy had come to an end and Lucas was so burned out from the experience (and devastated both emotionally and financially by his divorce from Marcia) that he had no desire to rush into creating the prequel trilogy he had come up with as part of the back story for The Empire Strikes Back.
The late 1980s were a dark time for Star Wars fans, but then in 1991 Timothy Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire, an instant best seller which seemed to remind the world (including Lucas) that Star Wars was still loved by a great many people. Suddenly, Star Wars was back, lots more books, magazines, computer games, VHS and laserdisc reissues would follow.
One of those new magazines from the 1990s was Star Wars Galaxy, the first issue of which came out in the Fall of 1994. On Page 6 the big inside news from Lucasfilm was that the “Star Wars Special Edition is a ‘Go'”:
For months the buzz inside, and outside, Hollywood has been that George Lucas is secretly at work on an expanded version of the original Star Wars. As the first issue of Star Wars Galaxy Magazine goes to press, Lucasfilm Ltd. has confirmed that indeed the Star Wars Special Edition is under way. It is scheduled for a theatrical release in 1997 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the film’s debut.
The advent of digital imaging technology as pioneered by Industrial Light & Magic—Lucasfilm’s special effects division that was employed in such recent films as Jurassic Park, The Mask and Forrest Gump—will enable George to produce the version he originally intended but which could not be completed using the technologies available to him in the mid-1970s.
Most of the enhancements featured in the Special Edition will involve Mos Eisley, offering a never-before-seen articulation of background creatures who inhabit that “wretched hive of scum and villainy” (as Obi-Wan described Tatooine’s spaceport city to Luke in Star Wars). Also look for a scene in which Han confronts Jabba the Hutt—filmed in 1976 but not included in the original film. Topping things off will be a new sound mix that takes advantage of today’s digital sound formats. Theatrical distribution of the Special Edition will be handled by the original distributor of Star Wars, Twentieth Century-Fox.
Following the Special Edition in 1997, Lucasfilm plans to release the first of the all-new Star Wars trilogy movies in 1998. Watch for more details on these late-breaking developments in future issues of Star Wars Galaxy Magazine.
How to “GOUT Sync” Star Wars
Gout?
First of all, you may be wondering “what the hell is he talking about?!” Well, the “GOUT” is what fans affectionately call the 2006 Bonus DVDs of the original Star Wars Trilogy. It is short for ‘George’s Original Unaltered Trilogy’.
Why would you want to “GOUT Sync” a version of Star Wars?
Over the years, fans have created many fan edits of the original Star Wars films – some are already based on the 2006 Bonus DVDs, but many others are from VHS tapes, laserdiscs, Super 8 films, 16mm films, 35mm films, and the official Blu-rays. By matching each source, frame to frame with the American NTSC GOUT Bonus DVDs, fans can take advantage of the many official and fan created audio mixes, commentary, language and subtitle tracks. It also means that if there is a problem with the transfer, all you have to do is point to the GOUT frame number and everyone can be sure that they are talking about the same frame.
So, you just pop in the DVD and you are ready to synchronizing, frame by frame?
Unfortunately, it is a little more complicated than that. The American DVDs have “3:2 pulldown” to conform the frame rate from the original 23.976 fps to the NTSC standard which is 29.97 fps. I believe the European PAL discs are just sped up to 25 fps but I know that the PAL version of Return of the Jedi, for example, has 2 extra frames in one scene and is missing a frame in another when compared to the NTSC version of the same film… So preparing PAL references can be slightly more complex. Since I only have the NTSC versions, I shall focus on those for now.
How to Create a GOUT Reference to Synchronize To
The process for each (NTSC) film is the same, but for this example I will use Star Wars. The first thing you need to do is rip the DVD to your Hard Drive. You will need at least 15 GB of hard disk space, and a free tool like DVD Decrypter, or DVD Fab Decrypter. Using this ripping software, open the disc, make sure to copy “full disc” and specify the destination on your HDD. After ripping is finished, you need to demux the DVD-streams. For this you can use PgcDemux.
Open the original Video_TS folder of you ripped GOUT-DVD and choose “VTS_03_0.IFO”. Select “by PGC”, select “demux video stream”, “demux all audio streams”, “demux all subpic streams” and “create CellTimes.txt”. Deselect “create logfile”, and deselect “create a PGC VOB”. Specify the output folder – perhaps a new folder, called “demuxed”. Then hit “process”.
While you are waiting for that, Install Avisynth. Just grab the latest version. The 32bit version is recommended, even if you have a 64-bit version of Windows, simply because there are more plugins for it. You will also want to download and extract Virtualdub.
After processing is done you need to open DGIndex. Like Virtualdub, this little app comes in a zipped folder and in this folder you will find a file called “DGDecode.dll”. You will need to copy this .dll into your Avisynth plugins directory – typically C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth\plugins.
Open DGIndex.exe, hit “File”, “Open” and browse for the m2v file in the demuxed folder that you created earlier. A window pops up, hit “OK”. IMPORTANT: If you use the NTSC-DVD for your encoding, hit “Video”, “Field Operation”, and select “Force Film”. If you use the PAL-DVD as source, change nothing here.
Now hit “file” and “save project”. Specify a project name (e.g. ANH) and specify the destination. To make things easier, you should save this “ANH.d2v” file in the same folder as you found the .m2v file you just opened. When that is done, you need to create an AVISynth script. Simply right click in your Demuxed folder, and choose New -> AviSynth Script and give it a name, e.g. ANH.avs. Open this script in any text editor and paste in this information:
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth\plugins\DGDecode.dll")
MPEG2Source("ANH.d2v").AssumeFPS(24000,1001).showframenumber(x=20,y=20).ShowSMPTE()
Now save the file, open Virtualdub, and either drag your script onto it or use File -> Open and browse to the file and open it. If all went according to plan, you should see the video in Vitualdub and the Star Wars title card should appear on frame 689. If it appears on any other frame, you have done something wrong – probably you forgot to set the field operation to Force Film in DGindex, so go back and try that step again. Once you have your gout reference, you need to add your other Star Wars source to your script and begin synchronization. The process will be the same for the NTSC versions of Empire and Jedi, though the Star Wars title card appears a frame earlier in Empire, on 688.
To synchronize the European PAL versions of the GOUT DVDs to the NTSC versions, you must also delete (and in the case of Jedi duplicate) some frames:
For the PAL Version of Star Wars, use:
Mpeg2Source("ANH.d2v")
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
DeleteFrame(144053).showframenumber(x=20,y=20).ShowSMPTE()
Note: The Star Wars title card of Star Wars appears on frame 689
For the PAL Version of The Empire Strikes Back, use:
Mpeg2Source("ESB.d2v")
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
DeleteFrame(150204,150205).showframenumber(x=20,y=20).ShowSMPTE()
Note: The Star Wars title card of ESB appears on frame 688
For the PAL Version of Return of the Jedi, use:
Mpeg2Source("ROTJ.d2v")
AssumeFPS(24000,1001)
DuplicateFrame(141781)
DeleteFrame(68664,68665).showframenumber(x=20,y=20).ShowSMPTE()
Note: The Star Wars title card of Jedi appears on frame 689
How to GOUT Sync Star Wars from another Source
In this video, I am using a GOUT reference file I made earlier (and saved as an AVI) to synchronize a film reel to the GOUT. There are probably many other ways to do this, but I find this to be the quickest, easiest, and most frame accurate way to do it.
I didn’t record the whole thing, because I assumed it would be a wee bit repetitive and boring to watch, but it only took about 20 minutes to sync the whole reel. Here is my final script:
Black = blankclip(width=848, height=360, fps=23.976, color=$000000, length=250).killAudio().ConvertToYV12()
tech = avisource("Reel2.avi").AssumeFPS(23.976).ConvertToYV12().showFrameNumber()
Gout = AviSource("StarWarsNTSCGoutSyncReference.avi").AssumeFPS(23.976).trim(27823,55748).Lanczos4Resize(848,320)
techA = Black.trim(0,64) + tech.trim(0,817)
techB = Black.trim(0,4) + tech.trim(818,929)
techC = Black.trim(0,16) + tech.trim(930,1187)
techD = Black.trim(0,5) + tech.trim(1188,2971)
techE = Black.trim(0,5) + tech.trim(2972,7229)
techF = Black.trim(0,4) + tech.trim(7230,26970)
techG = Black.trim(0,4) + tech.trim(26971,27350)
techH = Black.trim(0,4) + tech.trim(27351,27618)
techI = Black.trim(0,3) + tech.trim(27619,0)
techFinal = techA + techB + techC + techD + techE + techF + techG + techH + techI
StackVertical(GOUT,techFinal)
# Missing Gout Frame Numbers
#
# 27823-27887
# 28706-28710
# 28823-28839
# 29098-29103
# 30888-30893
# 35152-35156
# 54898-54902
# 55283-55287
# 55556-55559
# 55730-55748
