Star Wars OT in Hi Def: Hubba hubba!

[Jedilaw]

HBO just did another hi-def broadcast of all six SW films. I watched Jedi the other night, and all I can say is: damn, that's gorgeous! I've not watched any HD-DVDs, so I can't compare their quality to the quality of what I was seeing in this hi-def digital cable presentation, but to my layman's eyes it looked like all LFL would have to do in order to release a 30th-anniversary uber-HD set would be to place these transfers onto HD-DVDs.

The funny thing is, these scans of the OT (SE versions, not theatrical) were not the absolute best that the OT can ever look, because they were not done using a full 4k process. Don't take my word for it, check out this interview with John Lowry, owner of Lowry Digital, the company that did the DVD transfers for the OT:

Originally Posted by John Lowry

John Lowry designed his first image-processing system to clean up the live TV pictures from the Apollo 16 and 17 lunar landings. He went on to develop a technique for restoring films by using computers rather than the conventional hardware that was used throughout the industry. With his associate Ian Caven, he restored North by Northwest for Warner Bros. and then Gone with the Wind, Now Voyager, and Citizen Kane. Since then, Lowry Digital has grown to a staff of 60 and has been involved with many major restorations, including the entire James Bond catalog. This year, Lowry finished two projects for George Lucas: THX 1138, his first film from 197, and the Star Wars Trilogy.

Did George Lucas actually let you borrow the original camera negatives of his Star Wars films to do your high-resolution scan for the restoration?
No. We sent one of our 6-terabyte servers up to Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael , California, where they loaded it with full RGB [red, green, and blue] data without having to go through the component output that tape masters would demand. We processed those images, cleaned them up, and sent them back in little packages of discs. The net result was that we never lost a bit in the process of moving all the data back and forth, and we were able to work on full high-definition-bandwidth imagery. It was an unusual approach, but we got some pretty stunning results.

So the Star Wars films were processed at high-def, but not at the 4K level — four times high-def resolution — that you've been using for some other films?
At high-def, yes.

Why was that?
The challenge with these films is the amount of special effects in them. Our concern was whether the effects were done to true 4K standards.Whenever anyone lit up a lightsaber, it was done with an optical effect, and all of the opticals at the time were done on film — there were no digital effects. So every time you go to a lightsaber scene, bang, you drop two generations of film. It gets grainier and, as it's going through an optical printer, you have different characteristics in terms of contrast. And those are things we have to match up with the scenes immediately before and after. It took a lot of effort to match precisely the granularity, the contrast, and the sharpness. They flow very nicely now and, frankly, in the original movies, there was a distinct change. We were able to eliminate that change, and to me that's a very strong contribution to the storytelling process — removing something that prevents an audience from being drawn in.

But the high-def digital material was fine for the standard-resolution DVD release?
Yes. My guess, knowing George, is that maybe he'll be back when they do the HD-DVD.

I find it interesting that Lowry considers the existing scans good enough for standard DVD, but not for HD. From the HD version of Jedi that I watched, it looks ready for Hi Def "prime time" to me. But, again, I'm no hi-def expert, I'm just a layperson who knows these films really well. Believe me, there is a hell of a lot more detail in the HD version of Jedi. It's mind-boggling to think that this transfer wasn't done at the highest resolution available. Hard to imagine even more details becoming visible.

In fact, at "standard" HD resolution, and not having been scanned at 4k, you can already see a lot more vfx artifacts than are visible on regular DVD. Note, I do not say flaws. For 1983, Jedi was absolutely cutting edge. Any artifacts visible now are simply because the tech has moved forward, not because Jedi has flawed vfx. And it's pretty subtle stuff, like some of the travelling mattes for the space ships, the compositing of the speeder bikes in the Endor chase, etc. The resolution of home presentation has finally managed to catch up to and exceed...1983.

[JeffrySG]

^that first link seems like it's broken or it's been changed.... just fyi

Very interesting info though!

[Jedilaw]

Hmmm, sorry about that. The link is corrected now.

[NanoGator]

Um yeah we had enough of this debate last time. Sorry.