Star Wars (1977) original Blu ray. Crappier than ever.

Are you saying the blu-Ray screen capture pic is fake or that the cc was altered on the release from how you corrected it?

 

Ok, so restoring Jason Wingreen's Boba Fett voice and Vader's "Bring my shuttle" line is worse than Lucas's tinkering, huh? Fair enough.

 

Here are screen caps from the entire movie. That shot looks the same here as do the surrounding shots. It's possible it came from here: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977) - Star Wars Screencaps.com

I've put the 2004 DVD on hold at the library and will get the '11 blu-ray back from my cousin. I have to see for myself and will contact the site if what they are displaying isn't accurate.

 

I dunno about "worse", but Adywan did a lot of revisions that smooth out the original film as compared to the other originals and even the prequels. Here's a list of changes from the DVD version of Revisited from a few years back:

ANH:R Change List

It's a bizarre mix of "fix what George broke on the special editions" and "here's other stuff George forgot to fix on the special editions". It looks like a lot of fun, but definitely not what you want if you're looking for an attempt to recreate the original films.

 

I'm saying that screen cap is bullspit. It does not reflect what I remember doing, and it doesn't remember what I've seen on subsequent viewings of the movie. The trash compactor scene is the only one that I think was too dark, but that was a creative call out of my hands.

There's a thousand ways to grab a frame off a Blu-ray, and some of them will change the picture going out. Issues like color space, gamma space, Data vs. Full Data levels, and so on, plus the issue of people who have an agenda to promote. All I want is the truth; just give me some truth, now.

 

I think in this case if the grab is inaccurate, it was an honest mistake because the pic looks the same as on the site which captured pics from the entire movies and appears to simply be a site providing grabs. It wasn’t changed or different on the restoration site so they didn’t change it for their posting but it’s possible there was an issue with the original grab.

That’s what I’m looking to confirm myself. Whether the grab is accurate to what is on the disc(s). If it is then it would seem your cc was altered before release. If the grab is not accurate then I will bring it up to the restoration site as I believe they would want to be accurate. I’m going to do the caps in vlc.

 

It's not true, because I have the Blu-ray. What you see on the Blu-ray is what we did, without alteration, and it's what the director wanted. Again: the dark still-frame is fake news. Reposting false information causes far more harm than good, and it also undermines the case you're trying to make.

 

I'm not trying to make a case. I have no expectations of what I'll find when I checkout the discs for myself. I've seen numerous frame comparisons online showing the '04/'11 to be quite darker and much cooler in various scenes vs all other releases. I just assumed the grabs to be accurate. But now I'm wondering if all the various comparisons floating around have been pulling the grabs from that one site with the grabs from the entire movie which you're saying aren't accurate. I like to confirm for myself from the discs and will post showing the colors to be better on the disc than those grabs, if that's the case.

Btw, when you quoted my post with the screen grab, the only words you included above it were not mine as I pointed out in my full post. I was not making those claims.

 

I took some screenshots of my own and I compared them to the image coming out of my Blu-ray player. All on the same display. It's possible that VLC has a slightly lower gamma output than the Blu-ray player but it doesn't seem to be anywhere near as dramatic as Vidiot's "memory screenshot" suggests.
I even adjusted the gamma up in VLC and took another screenshot for comparison.
I don't think anyone is out to deceive anyone or push an agenda.

It could also come down to the display you are seeing it on. I had a look on a 55inch Sony UHD TV and it looks brighter than it does on my laptop display, and on my external display which is just a 41inch flat panel, the unaltered screenshot looks similar to how the adjusted gamma version looks on my 15inch retina display.

 

Thank you for checking this. Just to be clear- is that first one your unaltered grab and the second one is your gamma shifted one?

Happy New Year everyone!

 

Yeah, the second one is the gamma shifted one.

 

CraigBic's grab looks just like the one on the other sites so I think there's a real good chance my grab will look the same. I'll be interested to see if there is any difference between the '04 DVD vs '11 BR, though. I will also compare to how it looks on my TV.

 

Here's what the 04SE/11SE looks like on my display:



Here's what the 19SE looks like on the same display:

 

That is fantastic! Excellently executed. Very impressive work.

 

It's quite a hefty amount of work indeed. The canyon matte where Artoo roams down has been replaced now and instead, you can see the inclusion of the twin sunset. I believe Adywan is going to find a way to reinsert the Tarkin shot as the Death Star gets destroyed too along with possible removal of the Battle of the Heroes theme during Vader and Obi-Wan's final duel.

Also digging seeing the 3 moons in shot as Artoo is being brought into the Jawa Sandcrawler too.

 

IMO, the '19 looks much better. But although the faces are brightened up to a reasonable level (I also prefer the color balance), there really isn't any further dark detail revealed vs the '04/'11. And we know there is more there. I wonder if the scan was dark or if maybe the '19 sourced from the previous color correction rather than starting over.

 

We only worked at 2K, so I would strongly suspect they rescanned the film elements to 4K, then precisely matched the home video color decisions that George agonized on from October of 2003 to April of 2004. As I've often said, this is the only Star Wars release in history that Lucas himself actually approved in terms of color.

 

Ok that makes sense these would be different scans if the ‘04/‘11 were 2k. But it doesn’t look like they were trying to match the colors as they are quite different. They share the same dark detail darkness but although are different.

 

This is definitely not the case (left 2004, right 2019):



Gone are the greenish highlights seen on C-3PO, and the heavily oversaturated blues on the panels of R2-D2, that dominated the 2004/2011 version. Gone are the blue shadows, and blue, and magenta colors that appear in many frames, where they are not supposed to. For example look at the blue seen on the Sandcrawler, or the magenta on Obi-Wan's sleeve. None of these issues appear on the 1977, and 1997 prints I have seen, so these were introduced in the 2004 mastering of the films. Comparing the 2004, and 2019 color grading to theatrical prints, it becomes clear, that unlike the 2004/2011 colors, the new color grading is very consistent with the theatrical colors, particulary the 1997 theatrical release.

I shared this before, I believe, but here's a review of the 2004 DVD release by cinematographer and Star Wars fan Jay Holben for the American Cinematographer:

American Cinematographer: DVD Playback

Here an excerpt:

"When I began watching Star Wars, from the moment I saw C-3PO and R2-D2 on the blockade-runner I knew something was amiss; something didn’t feel right. I kept watching with an odd, unbalanced feeling in my stomach, and it wasn’t until the story cut to Tatooine that I realized the cause: this was not the Star Wars I knew. A new color pass has been done, and the soft (nearly flashed), pastel color palette created by Gilbert Taylor, BSC has been replaced by very sharp, high-contrast, super-saturated imagery. The blues were nearly popping off my screen, and the blacks were so crushed that in certain scenes — especially those that take place in the Sandcrawler — the image was losing significant detail. The over-saturated blues have also washed out a lot of sky detail and appear to have negated some ND grads that appeared in the original photography.

Taylor’s photography on Star Wars was part of what made it unique — the picture didn’t have the sharp, high-contrast, snappy look of most fantasy films. Like John Barry’s inspired production design, which looks aged and worn, Taylor’s desaturated palette and use of nets created a muted, somewhat tattered look that helped ground the story in reality. With this new transfer, that look has been completely destroyed. The new color timing does, however, make Star Wars more closely resemble the other five films in the series, especially the latter ones shot by David Tattersall, BSC. Nevertheless, this change was jolting."

The 2019 color grading the soft (nearly flashed), pastel color palette, of the Tatooine sequences, as created by Gilbert Taylor has been restored.

 

It's interesting to note, that I did a regrade a while ago for one of the shots above, based on some 35mm print references during a debate in this thread on whether the 2004/2011 versions are faithful to the look of the theatrical releases:



Comparing my rough estimate with the 2019 release, it seems, I wasn't far off for this shot.

 

The 2004/2011 version is an abomination. No idea how anybody could have said, "OK, we'll release this."

 

Aside from the differences in color correction, I don't see any noticeable uptick in image quality on the 4K transfers... guess @Vidiot was right about how much resolution could be gleaned from 1976-era film stock.

 

If the new transfers are so good, then why all of the comparisons and complaining? I know the answer. It's STAR WARS, and the "fans" will NEVER be satisfied.

 

This is also not the case. There is a lot more detail in the new master. For example the ridges on the Tantive IV door is invisible on the 2004 master, likely due to a combination of lower resolution, and aggressive DNR, yet for the 2019 4K version:

 

To show the huge improvement in image/color quality of the new master.