Star Wars DVD Bonus Disc Conspiracy Discussion Thread.

[darth_myeek]

This will probably be my "contrails" moment, but I wondered if others notice it too. I've noticed my crawl and hell even the entire bonus disc print wags. You may ask yourself "wags", whatever does DM mean by "wags"?

Ok take a piece of painter's tape and stick it to your television screen vertically. Then hit play and watch any vertical line optically shift to the left and to the right. Just a few millimeters almost like someone is wiggling the projector back and forth. It looks as if my print shifts througout the entire film. I first noticed it on the crawl several months ago. Now I cannot not notice it e v e r y w h e r e in my copy. It really makes me think it's another layer of screwing with the uber-fan.


Ok let me have it!:lol
1.) Does your print wag?
2.) Is this an old topic?
3.) Is this just how all ANH copies are?
4.) Or do I need to change my meds?

Mike

 

[micdavis]

The wagging happens with film. In particular older lower budget films. And Star Wars is that.

Certainly not a conspiracy.

 

[darth_myeek]

The wagging happens with film. In particular older lower budget films. And Star Wars is that.

Certainly not a conspiracy.

Ok so kinda like watching a log on a fire.

 

[micdavis]

A lot of credits do it if you look closely in earlier movies. And that crawl is just a tilted credits roll.

(and SOOOOOOOO over done now)

 

[HAL9000]

It's a bunch of holes fighting to cling to a bunch of pins whilst gravity gets involved!

 

[the_batdemon]

The wagging happens with film. In particular older lower budget films. And Star Wars is that.

Certainly not a conspiracy.

I would have thought they cleared that up with the digital restorations.

 

[micdavis]

He is referring to the Bonus DVD of STAR WARS.

Not that A NEW HOPE thing.

 

[Dpp1978]

It's called gate weave.

It's caused by tiny lateral movements of the film going through either the camera or projector/scanner.

Modern scanners use pin registration to eliminate it and it can be digitally corrected after the fact.

No conspiracy, just an artefact of analogue technology.

 

[Larry Young]

I heard the score in my head as I read this thread. Obviously, John Williams has damaged me.

 

[OldKen]

Guys, the bonus disc of the original theatrical versions is NOT an analogue to digital thing.... Its an analogue to digital then upconverted from horrible bit rate and FPS thing.

It was nothing more than the laserdisc prints. And When is the last time you watched a Laserdisc on a modern TV?

I'll wait...



You haven't.

If you did you would see this "wagging" throughout every movie.

A good friend of mine and I were at her parents house a year or so ago and they still had a LD player and the OT. (why? I don't know!) I wanted to see what SW looked like and noticed this "wagging" on the opening crawl.

I put in Jaws... Looked the same.

Now your original VHS will warble a bit. And that def IS from what Mic and others are talking about. That IS there.

But what makes this so horrid in particular is a bit rate conversion problem. Not to mention less FPS. Which makes it even WORSE.

George and his henchman of childhood raping ass-assins said that the only version left of the originals was this craptacular LD version.

THAT is the only conspiracy.

They cleaned up all the scenes that have CGI and added them after the fact. They just don't want to invest the time and money to de-special edition it.

That is all there is to it in a nutshell kids!

 

[darth_myeek]

Thanks Ken.

I've actually fixed my problem with one of these laser disc compensating machines.

 

[micdavis]

You haven't.

Wanna bet.

 

[Dpp1978]

I put on a laserdisc last week and a VHS tape about a month ago. Both on a recently calibrated 1080p HDTV.

The artefact noticed in the original post has nothing to do with analogue to digital conversion, upconversion, data rates or frame rates. It has everything to do with how the laserdisc master was captured to video.

Until recently most home video releases were captured on a telecine. That is basically a film projector synced up to a video camera. Any film projector design potentially allows an amount of lateral motion in the film print. This is called gate weave and the better engineered the film transport is the smaller the amount of gate weave will be. This will be exacerbated if there is any wear to the print's sprocket holes. High end film scanners eliminate it by having pin registration which locks each frame in perfect alignment before capturing the frame. Until recently it wasn't cost effective to use these high end machines to source video releases.

This relatively tiny motion is amplified when blown up, and is especially noticeable on high contrast images with little or no lateral motion like titles. The amount it is amplified is proportionate to the size of the screen, so on a bigger screen it is more noticeable.

It is irrelevant if the master is put on a laserdisc or a DVD, or if the TV it is shown on is a modern flat panel or an ancient CRT screen, the waggle will be there.

The reason it shows up on many laserdiscs, like the copy of Jaws written about above, is that all video masters used a similar mastering process at the time. Even some Blu-ray releases exhibit an amount of gate weave if they are sourced from an older film scan.

 

[Jeyl]

George and his henchman of childhood raping ass-assins said that the only version left of the originals was this craptacular LD version. THAT is the only conspiracy.

They cleaned up all the scenes that have CGI and added them after the fact. They just don't want to invest the time and money to de-special edition it.

That is all there is to it in a nutshell kids!

I don't think there's any need to de-"Special Edition" it at all really.

Nonetheless (and thankfully), we know for a FACT that beautiful dye transfer prints of the original versions of the films still exist in private hands, and that additional copies are preserved in a number of film archives around the world. What's more, Lucas would have been foolhardy if he didn't keep the original interpositives carefully stored in a climate-controlled vault for preservation's sake. Come on... of course he did. No one is THAT stupid that they'd just trash all the original elements of the films that made them rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

If good quality original elements don't exist, where did Lucasfilm get that footage of the 1977 opening crawl that was used in Empire of Dreams? And how could it have been presented in anamorphic widescreen on DVD unless a new anamorphic transfer of the footage was done or was already available? So why then can't anamorphic transfers of the films be done now for the new DVDs? It makes no sense whatsoever. In any case, neither the man himself nor senior Lucasfilm executives are willing to admit that they exist, because as Lucas has said many times in the past, "They no longer exist." So what we get are excuses and bogus claims: "We returned to the Lucasfilm Archives to search exhaustively for source material that could be presented on DVD." Right. Guess they didn't look too hard. Give us two days here at The Bits and we'll make some calls. We'll find you good quality source materials outside of the Lucasfilm Archives that could be presented in high quality on DVD... and in anamorphic widescreen too. All it takes is the money and the will to get it done right the first time.

 

[Gphalen]

@ Darth Myeek I don't know about contrail moments. However I will allow this "Ok take a piece of painter's tape and stick it to your television screen vertically" to be known as your tinfoil hat moment

lol