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Harmy's Despecialized Editions of the Original Star Wars Trilogy

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G

Gvaz

Banned
Anth0ny said:
There is of course more compression (which in this case is more prominent and noticeable in a still picture) but in terms of detail, there isn't really much of a difference, so I'd agree that it looks less good than the BD but I wouldn't say it looks bad compared to it.

And if a different picture was chosen, like those in post 240, there would probably be almost no difference at all (except that mine would have better colour ;-D ).
Click to expand...

Yeah the first thing I noticed is there was some major compression going on and the coloring was warmer, it's not a huge difference, but...

And yeah it will be more obvious as a still than in motion.

Also my image is probably upscaled as well because that shot is not from the blu-rays.

I'd take a few more from my source but my hard drive is being a butt, sorry :(
 
M

mattp

Member
anyone who can't get the jdownloader to work just PM me, i made a torrent but i'm too lazy to check here for people asking for it haha
 
M

mattp

Member
they're just h.264 mpeg video so you shouldn't even need to reencode them. just put them in a different container
 
D

Dead Man

Member
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
It's the ehtical thing to do if one was to hypothetically own one of Harmys Special Edition.
Click to expand...
I don't really feel the need to add a fourth box set to my collection to justify a fan edit.
 
J

JB1981

Member
mattp said:
they're just h.264 mpeg video so you shouldn't even need to reencode them. just put them in a different container
Click to expand...
What does that mean, put them in a different container ??
 
J

JB1981

Member
alr1ghtstart said:
You should be able to just open the iso (with winrar) and extract the stream.
Click to expand...
I am able to play with VLC. Should I just be a me to stream to PS3 without doing much else? Sorry for stupid questions, plus right now I'm in class!
 
NekoFever

NekoFever

Member
JB1981 said:
what are mac users using to burn to dvd-9? i can't use imgburn?
Click to expand...
I used Burn. Either use the Copy pane to burn the ISO or drop the two folders into the Data one and set the file system to UDF. I did it both ways and they play perfectly on my Blu-ray player.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
JB1981 said:
I am able to play with VLC. Should I just be a me to stream to PS3 without doing much else? Sorry for stupid questions, plus right now I'm in class!
Click to expand...

I would think, yes. I don't use my PS3 to stream so I can't really be sure. There will be an M2TS file inside BDMV\STREAM. Just extract that and play.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
JB1981 said:
What does that mean, put them in a different container ??
Click to expand...

Containers are just "wrappers" you put your media in. AVI is a container, MP4 is a container, MKV is a container. You dump your audio, video, subtitles in them and it bundles them all together. They are not video codecs. Xvid, h.264, mpeg-2 are all video codec.

MKVtoolnix is the best program to make MKV files.
 
E

EmCeeGramr

Member
Snaku said:
It's sad commentary that after 14 years these despecializations are even necessary. Does Lucas really intend to go to the grave having never given the original OT a proper digital release? What a sad old douche.
Click to expand...
“There will only be one. And it won't be what I would call the "rough cut", it'll be the "final cut". The other one will be some sort of interesting artifact that people will look at and say, "There was an earlier draft of this." The same thing happens with plays and earlier drafts of books. In essence, films never get finished, they get abandoned. At some point, you're dragged off the picture kicking and screaming while somebody says, "Okay, it's done." That isn't really the way it should work. Occasionally, [you can] go back and get your cut of the video out there, which I did on both American Graffiti and THX 1138; that's the place where it will live forever. So what ends up being important in my mind is what the DVD version is going to look like, because that's what everybody is going to remember. The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won't last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you'll be able to project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality. I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's to go back and reinvent a movie.”

George Lucas, "An Expanded Universe", American Cinematographer magazine, February 1997.
 
M

Madrical

Banned
As someone who watched the videos to death as a kid but hadn't seen them until I bought the bluray the other day, what am I missing here? I watched A New Hope, and while the addition of CGI sucks ass, is there anything else that 'ruins' the film for someone who isn't a die-hard fan?

I hated CGI Jabba, really not looking forward to watching him more in the sequel, even though he was one of my favourites as a kid.
 
T

thelatestmodel

Junior, please.
EmCeeGramr said:
“There will only be one. And it won't be what I would call the "rough cut", it'll be the "final cut". The other one will be some sort of interesting artifact that people will look at and say, "There was an earlier draft of this." The same thing happens with plays and earlier drafts of books. In essence, films never get finished, they get abandoned. At some point, you're dragged off the picture kicking and screaming while somebody says, "Okay, it's done." That isn't really the way it should work. Occasionally, [you can] go back and get your cut of the video out there, which I did on both American Graffiti and THX 1138; that's the place where it will live forever. So what ends up being important in my mind is what the DVD version is going to look like, because that's what everybody is going to remember. The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won't last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you'll be able to project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality. I think it's the director's prerogative, not the studio's to go back and reinvent a movie.”

George Lucas, "An Expanded Universe", American Cinematographer magazine, February 1997.
Click to expand...

Bahahahaha. It's funny that people actually used to think like this before the internet.

Lucas can continue to tinker with Star Wars all he likes. 30 or 40 years from now, these fan edits will still be remembered as the definitive versions. They're absolutely stunning.
 
M

mattp

Member
Madrical said:
As someone who watched the videos to death as a kid but hadn't seen them until I bought the bluray the other day, what am I missing here? I watched A New Hope, and while the addition of CGI sucks ass, is there anything else that 'ruins' the film for someone who isn't a die-hard fan?

I hated CGI Jabba, really not looking forward to watching him more in the sequel, even though he was one of my favourites as a kid.
Click to expand...
it's not so much individual things as it is all of them as a whole constantly being pushed in your face and you notice it like "oh, theres some new, badly done, cg. womp" and it takes you out of the movie

there's a few specific scenes though. the greedo shooting, noooo at the end of jedi etc
 
V

Van Owen

Banned
JB1981 said:
I am able to play with VLC. Should I just be a me to stream to PS3 without doing much else? Sorry for stupid questions, plus right now I'm in class!
Click to expand...
You can stream to PS3 without doing anything.
 
A

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
Madrical said:
As someone who watched the videos to death as a kid but hadn't seen them until I bought the bluray the other day, what am I missing here? I watched A New Hope, and while the addition of CGI sucks ass, is there anything else that 'ruins' the film for someone who isn't a die-hard fan?

I hated CGI Jabba, really not looking forward to watching him more in the sequel, even though he was one of my favourites as a kid.
Click to expand...
http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-one.html
 
M

MBison

Member
Can someone link to hi-res versions of the covers? The same ones some of you hate (the closeups of Vader, Fett, Stormtrooper)

thanks!
 
NekoFever

NekoFever

Member
EmCeeGramr said:
"A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you'll be able to project it on a 20' by 40' screen with perfect quality."
Click to expand...
Ahahahahaha!
 
J

JB1981

Member
Van Owen said:
You can stream to PS3 without doing anything.
Click to expand...

hey man.. so i am able to stream but i am having trouble gettin ROTJ to work. ANH and ESB both have blue folders in my download directory. I go into folder, see BDMV and I select stream and the the MDST whatever file is there and it plays. After downloading ROTJ I don't get this. Is this because I have not extracted the file from the .rar?

currently copying ANH over to PS3. Will probably take about an hour but I am getting hiccups with the stream. I should probably upgrade my router.
 
G

Gary Whitta

Member
Madrical said:
As someone who watched the videos to death as a kid but hadn't seen them until I bought the bluray the other day, what am I missing here? I watched A New Hope, and while the addition of CGI sucks ass, is there anything else that 'ruins' the film for someone who isn't a die-hard fan?

I hated CGI Jabba, really not looking forward to watching him more in the sequel, even though he was one of my favourites as a kid.
Click to expand...
The Han/Greedo and Han/Jabba confrontations are the most egregious changes in ANH. All the rest is just silly CG frippery that doesn't need to exist, feels kinda out of place with the look of the rest of the movie but isn't particularly offensive otherwise. But the awesomeness of the Han/Greedo scene, a key character-establishing moment for one of the major characters in the trilogy, is hugely diminished (not to mentioned rendered utterly absurd) in the new version. As for the Jabba scene, it's a note-for-note recreation of the scene we just saw with Greedo, and it blows the reveal of Jabba in ROTJ, oh and CG Jabba looks like shit, so the original versions without this pointless addition are preferable.

Anyway, if any Mac users out there were to mount the downloaded ISOs of Harmy's un-fucked editions using Disk Utility and then convert with AppleTV2 settings in Handbrake then stream to their AppleTV I imagine they'd be pretty happy with the results.
 
J

JB1981

Member
I copied ANH to my PS3. It took several hours but the quality is AMAZING. I am so impressed and so happy right now. Harmy you are the bomb!
 
G

Gary Whitta

Member
Harmy chimes in on Google+ for anyone expecting new versions based on the new BD masters:

Yeah, my computer couldn't handle 1080p in After Effects (it is hellishly slow on 720p already) and it would mean redoing every single shot from scratch and from the comparisons I've seen between the Blu-Rays and the highest quality HDTV captures, the difference is so small (being the same resolution from the same master) that it wouldn't be worth it.
Click to expand...

He adds, just in general:

Actually most of the despecializations are visible when you know about them and are looking for them but if you showed it to someone who's never seen SW or is just a casual viewer and they were watching it for the story, I'm quite confident that in 99% of cases they wouldn't notice anything at all. And a big part of why I wanted to make an edit like this was exactly that - being able to introduce new people to SW without having to decide whether to show them a butchered version in high quality or an original version from an mpeg2 encoded 1993 LD master - I think I actually first got the idea when I was showing SW to my exGF who's never seen it before and had to face that problem. I ended up showing her the GOUT but I wasn't very happy about it.
Click to expand...

Hopefully Lucas finally does the right thing and gives us REAL, OFFICIAL 1080p restorations of the originals before we're all fucking dead. I'm not holding my breath though.
 
U

Utako

Banned
Just watched the despecialized A New Hope last night. It was the first time I saw Han Shoot Only in over a decade. Weeee!

Gary Whitta said:
Hopefully Lucas finally does the right thing and gives us REAL, OFFICIAL 1080p restorations of the originals before we're all fucking dead. I'm not holding my breath though.
Click to expand...
I hope you're younger than George Lucas, because I have a (bad) feeling that it isn't happening until after he's been in the grave for a while.

I would really rather someone officially take the reigns from Lucas, release The Original Trilogy Ultimate Edition (additional remastering; fan-conscious cut), and put out an equally-classic 7-9 trilogy.

sigh.
 
J

JB1981

Member
The despecializations are not noticeable at all. The IQ is absolutely fantastic. I am not missing the blu rays at all. I still might buy the PT separately on blu, though.
 
S

ShaneB

Member
Seeing the blu-rays at the store the other day, and wanted to give in buy it, but made the smart choice and will be avoiding that mess.

Will be checking these out asap to get my ultimate star wars fix!

Thanks Harmy!
 
G

Gary Whitta

Member
These really look stunning, even blown up big. Amazing rich colors and pristine sharp image quality. Great work. Puts my 2004 DVD copies to shame. Creating multiple backups!
 
J

JB1981

Member
Mission fucking accomplished. All 3 in the bag, now just have to figure out how to burn them and back them up. This has been an education for me lol
 
E

equap

Banned
ShaneB said:
Seeing the blu-rays at the store the other day, and wanted to give in buy it, but made the smart choice and will be avoiding that mess.

Will be checking these out asap to get my ultimate star wars fix!

Thanks Harmy!
Click to expand...
save your money for lotr extended, if you like that. or something else.
 
G

Gary Whitta

Member
It's not a big deal at all but it looks like Harmy had to go to a non-HD source for the end credits as I imagine the HDTV sources usually cut away to commercial rather than run the credits in their entirety.

Also, Harmy is HARDCORE, his Star Wars doesn't even have A NEW HOPE in the opening crawl. That's super-OG!
 
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