The "original" TR47 release is in fact Cowclops v1.0 and TR47 can even confirm that. The first one actually wasn't a collaboration at all, he just snagged a copy from me and then spread it around the internet. The second time, I was in college and flat-ass-broke but he coughed up the money for a better LD player and I had a better capture setup so I did that "anamorphic" (really just cropped and resized) V2 version. The first one was hilariously done by hooking the s-video out of a laserdisc player into a sony TR7000 digital8 camcorder, but the second version was done via uncompressed capture to a PCI card. Making LDs look good without technology that would come much later (or just, actual copies of the film to scan) was a brutal task and the best you could really do at the time was minimize the loss of quality in the conversion rather than "actually improve it."
Thanks for the clarification Cowclops! The naming scheme for that bootleg was hard for me to determine seeing that all the threads and NFO files were authored by TR47, but other users always associated it with you. Very glad to see you here!
The sad thing about the 97 laserdisc release was that we were SO CLOSE to having the trilogy in its close to original form WITH 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.
@@alexjohnward Sonic Ring explosions and the crappy additional CG deleted scenes that were pointless. I do however have a soft spot for the sonic rings and wish it ended there.
For me the ultimate preservation of the franchise is Star Wars 4K77, 4K80, and 4K83. It’s also amazing that they went back to improve their original scan of 4K77 once it became possible. Those guys have probably put in more work than anybody else in the effort.
@@Defensive_Wounds despecialized version is a multiple LD/DVD/BR/etc source cuts made in the movie. The SW 4K77, 4K80 & 4K83 are 4k scans of the actual SW reels, provided by fans of the project. They go directly to the source to get the movie, one thing that George Lucas never wanted to do. This is why the 4KXX project is the best way to watch star wars. It is a true restoration of the original film, just like it was presented in the theaters when they first came out.
Was the first person to purchase Laserdisc products in Northern Arizona in 1978. Was on the 'zone one' list for product mailing from Ken Cranes Laserdisc. Still have first pressing of Star Wars which still runs clean. The problematic 'turning the disc over' thing was our food and toilets break. Main reason this system was moved past is they couldn't attach anti-piracy to it so one can print out perfect copies in several different formats. Clarity recorded to VHS was superior for visual and sound. Local video store sold firs release of Hunt For Red October $120.00 in stereo while my Laserdisc copy in surround sound was $31.98. First series of DVDs were from Laserdisc masters. The sound system in the home was better than the theaters up the road. We are well versed in this system and continue to build on and enjoy it.
@@brazil-y2y "The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978."
One my officers in my Guild bought a Laser Disc Player a couple years ago from the 80s and INSIDE IT was a laser disc of The Empire Strikes Back with the behind the scenes and original deleted scenes. I cant get him to sell it to me.
I had a friend that was an assistant colorist in Hollywood working with the colorist that worked on the original transfer of Raiders of the Lost Ark for VHS. They weren't happy with the old transfers that were given to them for the DVD. My buddy borrowed my bootleg DVD that was a transfer off of LaserDisc and his colleague showed it to the powers that be. I don't know if Spielberg was in the room, but that convinced Paramount to do a new transfer.
As a kid, I’ll never forget when my father brought home a bootleg copy of Star Wars back in the early 80’s. Later he got a laser disk player and had it there too. I don’t know what happened to those copies.
Yeah. Wouldn't it be crazy if an AI didn't know what it was doing and emphasized the narration in such a way that some viewers thought the sentence ended right there?
The original cut of Star Wars won the Academy Award for "Best Film Editing" in 1977. Who edited that film? Marcia Lou Lucas, George's ex-wife. Some fans will dispute that this comprises any role in George's refusal to release the original cut of Star Wars, but I simply cannot discount that it plays some part. After all, she won the award, and George erased that cut from history.
Great video 👍. I have the despescialised versions of 'Star Wars' and 'Empire'....and it is literally the only way I can watch Star Wars, at all. I find the Special Editions to be irritating....they completely messed with the rhythm of the movies. The only redeeming factor, to me, was the digital matt backdrops in Bespin. But thank God for the Star Wars preservation community ❤️
I have often, when seeing Jabba added to ANH, wanted to find that exact scene on the DVD, and scratch just those bits off, gone forever. I usually just turn it off at that point. Until the despecialized editions… My 28 year old son said “dad, now it makes sense, I see why you all fell in love with it back then”.
I've always said I mostly prefer the Special Editions, though this is about overall effects. Interesting you mentioned the "rhythm" being messed up. That's something I wasn't aware of, something you probably can't appreciate in TH-cam shot comparison videos. Makes me want to reconsider the originals.
ET is a bad example because the Special Edition in 2002 is suppressed. You can only get the original in HD. You have to get the 20th Anniversary cut on DVD. I find it incredible Spielberg does not understand leaving the choice up to the viewer. As in how he released 3 cuts of Close Encounters.
The ET special edition was heavily criticised, which I never thought it deserved. Spielberg didn't fundamentally change things like Lucas, he just gave it a few tweaks and additions that weren't bad.
One of the Close Encounters cuts, the 'Special Edition', only exists because he was pressured into shooting new footage for the TV presentation. If that hadn't happened, he might have never bothered with the other director's cut. Personally I like the original cut partly because it has the scene of Roy at work and makes it clear he's not just 'childish, aimless and ineffective' like the other versions make him look. He didn't need to seem totally worthless as a person and it only makes his breakdown less-meaningful.
@@jamescarter3196 I never know this. I've only seen a cut where he just seems nihilistic and annoying with the times. I'll find that cut and rewatch it.
When Jedi came out I was in high school and had a class mate who said he could get me a pirate take pirate tape of Jedi in beta video for 50 dollars I was amazed it must of been taken from the film it had the black bars top and bottom so it was the full screen very high quality I still have it I never asked him how he got it I was just happy I have it just weeks after Jedi was released in theaters
By 1988 when he spoke before Congress, Lucas had already made alterations to Star Wars. The original theatrical cut was different from the Laser Disc, which was different from the TV premiere edition, which was different from the original VHS, which was different from...
If George stood by his version so much, then allow the theatrical edits to exist for comparison. Ridley didn't try to bury the 1982 cut of Blade Runner.
CORRECTIONS: - At 2:25, I mistakenly claim that the lost pieces of Metropolis were found on a 16mm reduction print decaying in a “Peruvian Cave.” While these pieces weren’t found in a literal cave, they were found in a Argentinian archive with abysmal storage conditions. They likely would’ve survived longer in an actual cave than the archive they were found in. - In my conclusion, I reference a forum post discussing the use of Dual-Layer discs for fan preservations. While writing to Dual Layer discs did become commonplace in 2004, I’m sure that there were forum posts out there discouraging the practice (early on, consumer writing to Dual-Layer discs was expensive and often resulted in burn errors). Unfortunately, I cannot actually find the posts I referenced anymore. Consider this little addendum apocryphal story telling. I realized this near the end of my editing process, but decided to leave it in, as its final message still stands true.
Metropolis wasn't found in Perú, it was in Argentina. Someone had imported a full length German cut and embedded Spanish intertitles and written inserts (letters, signs). This copy was then placed on storage. Years later, since the copy was in nitrate film (a fire risk) it was decided to copy it to 16 mm and dispose of the original (which was, in fact, pretty beat up).
Original Trilogy forum user here. (I think my original reply got deleted so I'll try this again.) My recollection of the dual layer debate from back then had to do with 1) dual layer burners and blank dual layer discs being significantly more expensive and less reliable at the time, and 2) the release of projects was done via file sharing rather than selling of discs, so the end user was required to provide their own hardware for disc burning. It wouldn't make much sense to release a dual layer DVD file that hardly anyone could burn themselves. Eventually, new projects started being released in both singe layer and dual layer formats to appease everyone. Also, selling of any projects was strictly prohibited on the OT forum and anyone caught doing it was banned. This is why you usually only saw those DVDs being sold by third parties rather than the original project authors.
I am fortunate enough to have the first CAV multi-laserdisc release (only 30 minutes max per side) of the original trilogy. Original versions of the films (no "A New Hope" on Star Wars, for example) and they are still pretty watchable. Never tried to sell it, though I am told it is pretty valuable.
The 2006 limited edition dvds contain the original theatrical cuts as extra content. They’re a poorer scan than the special editions but at least they’re not the special editions.
I have the dvd edition with the disc two theatrical cut. I found them by chance, and soon after that they were stripped off shelves and replaced with copies minus that feature
Lucas never appeared to understand what made Star Wars great and the more control/less collaboration he had, including Return of the Jedi, the worse the movies got.
Yeah, even as a young 20 something watching the clips in the "behind the scenes" he comes across as a doofus, and everyone else is laughing nervously and does exactly what he says. Lucas: "Ok. Add an alien here who is all surprised and says, "what the?!" Like that." Staff: nervously laughs, "yeah yeah, that'll be great!" *Adds exactly that* Me in the theatre: "um.... Ok? Is this a kids cartoon?" Then you see his original vision for Yoda, being a Mexican jumping bean with a tiny lightsaber, and you really understand he has nothing to do with any of the parts of Star Wars that were good, and he is as unfairly praised.
@@bluedistortions exact creating the thing, writing Empire and ghost directing it. Ever think that maybe it is as dumb to call him completely clueless as it is to call him a genius? It's usually somewhere in the middle.
@@bluedistortions people make mistakes. but at least he had the humility to see some of his. he wanted c3po to sound like a car salesman until anthony daniels took on the role.
You all do realize the original theatrical versions were indeed released on DVD in 2004, albeit using the same master used for the laserdisc. Despecialized or the 4k scans are the way to go.
Correct, they have a bonus disc and on the back it says it’s the 4:3 laser disc wide screen. Best to watch it on a crt tv or flat screen with a zoom feature
The original film will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027. I can see no better way to celebrate this than a theatrical re-release of the same print that was shown back then, exactly as it was seen by audiences at the time. No CGI or post production tinkering for subsequent versions (beyond the sound mix) and with the original text crawl without mention of Episode IV etc. Lucas many not approve but I think there is a big enough demand for this to make it worthwhile for Lucasfilm. Show it as it was shown originally so people can relive their memories. Let's go retro and release some 35mm and 70mm film prints for those theatres that still have projectors. To quote James Earl Jones character of Terence Mann from the movie Field of Dreams "People will come, from all around, and they won't know why". And I think recreating 1977 all over again for the 50th anniversary would be well received, from the oldies reliving their youth and the youngsters wanting to see it out of curiosity.
When I was nine years old I saw Star Wars in the theater. It said "Episode IV". I recall that specifically because it confused me right from the start. I understood Roman numerals, but couldn't understand why it said this was episode 4. I put that thought at the back of my mind and enjoyed the heck out of the rest of the movie.
I hope the Harmy's Despecialized Edition gets brought up at some point in these videos. I don't have and don't care for 4K, so the Harmy version is fine with me.
We had a pioneer laser disc, it would work for 3 or four weeks then go back for repair for 5 to 6 weeks, rinse and repeat 3 times and then we got a refund.
You must have just got a lemon. I have 2 pioneer laser disc players, the newest was built in 1999, both play perfectly with an occasional hiccup and both have less problems than any of the DVD players that I ever had.
I had a vision that Star Wars would become huge with stories about the Mandalorians (we only knew them as bounty hunters back then) -- a girl in Mandalorian armor, and after the nostalgia wore off or original fans died, it would be remade. I wasn't upset for the reasons George did it. I was *not expecting him to do it* ten or twelve years later.
You know that knight from Indiana Jones and the last crusade? You know, the one that is still alive after thousands of years in the cave. That's how old I felt when he said, "not many people know what a laser disc is" 😂
Glad I still have my Laserdiscs and two working players. Eff the special editions. I still don't own the Blu-Rays. Lucas HAD to stipulate that the original versions would never be released before he sold to Disney. Disney would make a mint if they did a complete restoration and released them.
I am an original 1977 fan, and I just prefer what was presented when I was that innocent wide eyed 9-year-old kid. I don't have many happy memories growing up, but I was so excited when my parents said they were taking me to see it. I had the VHS tapes as soon as they came out and watched them over-and-over, and I needed to replace them because they wore out just before the SE came out and buried the theatrical version. I later bought a LD player so that I could get the Definitive LD set, along with some other movies that never made it to DVD, the Godfather Saga edition and at the time Let It Be and Paul McCartney Rock Show and a few others. I ended up finding the Dr Gonzo OT set and I love it and still prefer it over the official DVDs or the SE that I occasionally watch to remind myself of what was changed!
I still have my Definitive Collection on Laserdisc, and did my own DVD transfer back in 2000. It wasn't the bit rate limitations of MPEG2 video that was the issue for me, I could maximize encodes fairly well, but it was the lack of a component output on my LD player. S-video was no substitute for component.
3:42 The quote by George Lucas has an asterisk next to it... "I changed my films because they weren't complete. They weren't the way I had envisioned them." Just sayin'... I haven't watched the whole video yet. 😃
As SG10 says, without Laserdisc there wouldn't have been CD, CD ROM or DVD. About a decade ago the BBC put it the Domesday book contents online and it worked great. There were even pictures of inside my local supermarket. Then they transferred the project to The National Archives who somehow managed to break it and took it offline.
Good video, but your understanding of the LD format is missing a bit of info It's more than marginally better for pq, by far it's close to twice the "resolution" Most people using LD in the late 80s and 90s when pioneer ran the format 90% + of players had auto side change
I appreciate your insight! However, I have to respectfully disagree. Both VHS and Laserdisc were viewed on SD television sets, and in the US at least, those only displayed 480 lines of resolution. Even when these discs are digitally captured, they are usually done so in 720x480. This is also the standard resolution for VHS capture. I will concede that their image stability is indeed better than VHS, and they don’t succumb to the same types of artifacts as they age. However because of how letterboxed Laserdiscs don’t utilize the full resolution of the screen (even if it is around twice the resolution of a VHS), most of that goes unused. I didn't know that some players had auto-side change! Do you know how this mechanism works?
@@SG10FilmArchive i believe they had a laser head on both sides of the disk and from what i remember there was still a break if not a pause while it changed sides
There’s some misunderstanding here of just what exactly resolution refers to. NTSC had 480 visible scan lines, but that isn’t what we are talking about when we talk about the resolution capabilities of various formats. Those 480 scan lines did not change between all the various formats, so they all had the same vertical resolution. When you see “lines of resolution” being talked about it has nothing to do with these scan lines. It has to do with the video bandwidth available in the various formats differing quite a bit, and this is what determines the resolution in the other direction, horizontal resolution. All had 480 lines top to bottom. That’s fixed and is not changeable. Where they differ is in the resolution left to right. Here are examples of typical lines of resolution for some media types: VHS 240 Cable/broadcast TV 330 S-VHS 420 Laserdisc 425 These figures are taken from a 1:1 horizontal:vertical region, so they have to be multiplied by 1.33 (4:3 aspect ratio of TVs then) in order to get the number of pixels for the whole screen width. So: VHS 320x480 Cable/broadcast TV 440x480 S-VHS 560x480 Laserdisc 567x480 Each step had a higher frequency carrier and more available video bandwidth, so they gave a higher resolution picture than the last. I remember paying a crazy amount of money for an S-VHS VCR in the early ‘90s so I could record TV shows without any noticeable loss in quality. Was very nice at the time. Hehe. When DVD came along at 720x480 it was a fair step up again, but one of the huge advantages was the lack of having to deal with the noise of an analog storage medium. This made its image rock solid in comparison. Laserdisc wasn’t super noisy, but the other formats sure were, and the complete lack of noise in digital storage was a big win. Although the image accuracy variability then shifted from carrier noise to compression artifacts, it was easier to deal with that by using more bits than it was to reduce analog noise as much as possible.
I actually know/knew “Dr. Gonzo,” and was present when the laser discs from Japan were copied. The resulting DVDs were sold on eBay. Lucas Film sent several cease and desist letters to “Dr. Gonzo,” which ended the very limited production of the Gonzo bootlegs, but not before the cat was out of the bag. It’s crazy that this story is actually known. I guess it was a bigger deal than I thought.
The only theory that has ever made any sense to me why George Lucas made so many changes is his attitude towards his ex-wife, Marcia. She was the editor on the originals. He was EXTREMELY bitter about her divorcing him, bitterness that remains to this day. He hates the existence of the product of her editing. It also may be the case that altering the films cuts her out of any money coming to her from them. For this reason, it's apparent to me that an official release of the originals will never happen as long as George Lucas is alive. It's up to the fans.
I have a rather large collection of these laserdisc rips that I obtained myself in the 2000s. They have been stored since about 2010. I should compile a list.
Do you have the extended Dead Poets Society? My LD player died before I could rip that one and I shrugged thinking, this will be out on dvd any day now. Ah hahaha was I dum.
I happen to be the happy owner of a Pioneer Laser Disk/Karaoke system as well as the original laser disk of A New Hope. The only version I care to see.
There's a particular bootleg outfit I like that specializes in old film series. Last year, I got a box from them focusing on one of the NBC Mystery Movie series that is NOT yet had an official release in the US-- "MADIGAN". The TV movies are taken from a French release (in English language, with the opening credits superimposed with English text). But the earlier theatrical film, crazy enough, the disc, while in the widescreen format, had BLACK BARS around ALL 4 sides. The guy who runs the company apologized, and said as soon as he gets a chance to redo the disc, he'd be sending me a freebie (which he's done in a few other cases). I may just go after an official release of the feature film in the meantime. It's nice to know that all 4 sides thing is not a unique occurrance.
You can find just about anything. This video showed a clip form Disney's Song of The South that has been buried for many years. I just recently downloaded a beautiful and complete copy!
@@indiana2096 It's very silly to bury that movie too. It's in a time period we presently don't like, but there's not a lot of objectionable material in the movie. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah is from that movie and that was practically Disney's theme song when I was a kid. I really cannot understand modern thinking that if the PAST doesn't conform to the standards of today that it must be DESTROYED. Why not just tell kids "oh it's an old movie about an even older time period"?
Great video and fascinating flashback to the days of Laserdisc. However, unless you mentioned it and I missed it, Fox did in fact re-release the original theatrical versions of the original "SW" trilogy on DVD. They did this back in 2004 as an added bonus disc to their "Special Edition" DVD releases. I know this because I own them. When announced that they were available, I made a special trip to Costco on my lunch hour to be sure and buy them all ASAP before they sold out. In fact, when the later sequel trilogy came out all of my neighbors asked me if they could borrow them to show their kids the original versions before taking them to the theater to see the sequels. That said, there is still a weird omission even on the 1977 film. There was a moment when Han and Chewbacca are being chased by a group of storm troopers through the halls of the Death Star. One of the pursuers says, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" but Han and Chewie make it through the closing doors just in time and so the gaggle of Storm Troopers now have to say "Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!" Having seen the original in theaters about 12 times back in 1977 and again in 1978, this is a vivid memory. But even in the DVD theatrical version, you only have the second half of that exchange without the "Close the blast doors!" first part, thus losing the humor of the scene. Very strange. Finally, as an aside, in addition to the changes to "ET", back in 1980 Spielberg and Columbia Pictures also released the "Special Edition" of "Close Encounters" which has the pointless, tacked-on, trip inside the UFO "mother ship" which added nothing to the film and ruined the mystery of the original version. Fortunately the DVD release of that film also has the 1977 original version. But again, thanks for the great video, it was very interesting and entertaining.
I know the DVD’s you’re talking about! Those are the 2006 GOUT DVDs. I do plan on talking about them in the future, but it’s important to note that those DVDs are just official Laserdisc transfers from the 1993 master. I have them as well :) Also, I believe that sound discrepancy comes from the fact that the 1982 stereo mix was used on those bonus discs instead of one the 1977 mixes.
@@SG10FilmArchive A good start to your series of preserving the original versions. I hope in your upcoming parts you will cover the various sound mixes that have changed over the years, particularly the mono mix with Aunt Beru's re-done lines and un-distorted X-Wing chatter (as all of us kids from the late 70s/early 80s experienced from the storybook LP), as well as the 1993 THX mix that went way over the top with sound effects such as shattered glass when shooting up the monitoring devices during the detention block raid. Another topic I hope you'll cover is the recently recovered 35mm print that has been digitally scanned and released by various groups with different amounts of tinkering (e.g. digital cleanup and colour-correction). Keep up the good work!
I don’t think anyone could’ve imagined in the mid 2000s that there would be ways of archiving actual analog signals in a digital carrier in the future. Some within the archiving have started making literal rips of direct analog streams from mostly LaserDiscs.
Re-cutting can work fine using existing material. Creating new material with modern methods and inserting it into an older film can be as jarring as inserting a color sequence into a b+w movie. And some people think it strange and weird that I look for these discrepancies. It's one of my favourite movies. I've seen rhem many times. It stands out like a sore thumb. And even when I can't see an actual difference... it's a feeling... it feels off... dfferent somehow... And I cant say what it is. First time I saw 4K77 I just let out a sigh. For the first time in a long time I was just watching the movie. Not wondering "is there something wrong with the screen settings?". When I first got Smokie and the Bandit on DVD I immediately noticed something. The sounds. They were different. This was not EQ-ing or some processing thing. For the new surround mix some of the original sounds had been replaced. And the original mono mix was not included. And don't some with a space limitation crap. For a mono track 128 kbps is plenty. The space reguired for 1,5 hour at that bitrate is apx. 90 MB. Fortunately the latest Blu-Ray releases include it at last.
I remember getting a bootleg video tape back in the dial-up era, but Laserdiscs? Man, I'd live to get into film preservation. Any suggestions on how to make that happen?
I would recommend joining the forums over at www.theStarWarsTrilogy.com. It's an excellent resource and that's how I got started! You could also check out FanRestore.
As amazing as this is (still watching it), I really wish people wouldn't throw the word 'remaster' around so much when they are actually referring specifically to revisionism. George Lucas himself has done this for years and as a result, it has created so much confusion among the general public who don't actually know what remastering means. Yes, The Star Wars films have been remastered, numerous times, but they have also had a whole lot of other crap done to them that had nothing at all to do with the process of remastering, which is just to clean up and optimize the picture and sound quality to look and sound it's best. Things like altering special effects and re-editing are a totally separate thing that is done on top of the remastering process. You can remaster something and not change a single thing about it's content. THAT is what the term actually should mean but many people use it in reference to other revisionist practices. The 2002 cut of E.T., for example, is not simply a remaster, but rather an entirely different version of the film altogether. A director's cut, if you will, even though it wasn't marketed as that. The current Blu-ray of E.T. in it's 1982 theatrical cut is an actual remaster. They took the original elements, created a digital master of those elements and brought the film's presentation to an extremely high level of quality without meddling with the film's content. Virtually every film ever made has been remastered to some degree whenever it is released on a new format. They often have to create a new video master for films that hadn't previously received an HD or 4K scan for home video.
@@walleytvhd259 I think I have that. The box makes a big deal of how bad Laserdisc was and how great the latest DVD release is. It wouldn't surprise me if they created the bonus disc version by plugging a Laserdisc composite output into a $20 USB capture device.
I always found the 2004 first edition of the original trilogy, yes the special editions looked really good. The later release with the fourth special features disc looked like a step back from the three disc set with silver lettering on the casing. Anyone else ever notice that?
I think you are backwards, the 2004 set was a 4-disc box, the 3-disc set came out later. In 2006 they were rereleased with the "bonus" theatrical version in 2-disc sets, I have the Best Buy steel box with all 3 films. I believe a 3-disc set was rereleased in 2008 or later with a 3-disc set of the prequel trilogy and a "complete" set on Blu-ray.
"Luke I am your father" I miss that. Would be nice if Star Wars restoration fans could find a way to hop dimensions and restore the line before it was vandelized by the MandAla Effect.
There was another option for transferrance to 4:3. It is a goofy option, but it was used in the 70s when I was a kid, to bring movies to TV. I do not know if the method has a name, but all they did was compress it. Everyone and everything in the movie became thin and long...but everything fit on the square screen.
I have yet to find any version of it which retains the scene where Vader loses control of his ship and doesn't regain control. I believe the 'regain control' shots were added to a re-release somewhere between '78-81 but they weren't in the original prints I saw or the people I've asked who saw it when it was new.
I remember seeing him get control back when I saw it for the first time in May '77 with my dad (at a drive-in,) and thinking an in-flight collision like that shouldn't have resulted in Vader's ship flying *away* from the Death Star from inside a trench, when hit from high and behind. I also remember an interview with George where he said, "We had to let him get away..." And he was already talking about a sequel, so it made sense that this was always planned. At least to me.
I only like Star Wars and the 4K77 no dnr Theatrical version sits proudly on my top shelf with other masterpiece's like The Seventh Seal and A L I E N. I'm forever in debt to those wonderful dudes that made this possible. 🙏👊
Ok. I have a VHS bootleg copy that my father did back in the 1980's that I found. I haven't played it in a bcr since 2004 to show my kids the non special edition of Episode IV: A New Hope. Or as my dad labeled it AT the time. STAR WARS. I have no idea if it still plays.
Probably before all of your time's there were many BBS's all about Star Wars and even some about preservation. Being more a Hardware person I didn't explore it much; because I knew about the resolution factor; unless you have got the original 35mm(?) you're struggling. And that's why those bootlegs exist! Trying to download those files at 300, 600 or even 1200bps was... LOL Needless to say did you have enough storage?!? A complicating factor was that before Empire there was one announced 'clean up by Lucas' - small blip on the news and one 'talk show' before Empire came out. As a matter of fact when I saw "Star Wars" (1977) at the theaters UA 70 or UA 150 on Saturday May 28th; there was only one scene where you can or I detected artifacting around one Star Destroyer; less than 0.3 seconds but I saw it and confirmed it the next day as well as the next weekend. During the transition to 'higher speed' internet (above 2400 or 3600bps) a lot of these BBS's were either taken down (unknown reasoning 'legal'/'owner' donno) and not many transitioned to web pages or forums as we know them today. Even back then there were 'dark BBS's' that you could join and obtain these 'cut up' copies but you had to know someone to even login to those sites and that precluded most from entering them at all.
Usually once a film is released it belongs to the studio. It’s no longer the your baby. Lucas made sure he got all rights to Star Wars. If he wants to revise his movie then let him! Tolkien also revised The Hobbit when he started writing Lord of the Rings and I don’t see anyone complaining.
Clearly, the original 1977 Star Wars is the most authentic Star Wars and should be available in pristine high-res quality. Nevertheless, the Star Wars "purists" are fighting a losing battle. Most of the changes Lucas made were improvements. Most viewers want to see Palpatine in the role of the Emperor, not some nobody is a cheesy rubber mask. Many want to watch the CGI prequels and then carry on to the first trilogy with the visual continuity the added CGI provides. For most viewers, the special editions have all the charm of the 70s originals, but without the limitations. And, as 1977 fades further into the past, those who need to see Star Wars as they originally saw it become fewer and fewer, while those in love with the improved versions grow larger in numbers. I applaud the amazing efforts to restore the originals in the best quality possible; I would love to own them on 4K disks. But I don't think they will ever replace the special edition versions.
I think if Lucas had just stuck to "improving" shots that existed in the original trilogy, then the fans would have adopted the SE. For instance, the CG X-Wing battle at the end of Star Wars is objectively better than the original sequence. Likewise, as you mention, putting Ian McDiarmad into ESB makes sense. Where the SE falls apart is where he tries to recontextualize scenes or (worse) starts inserting new (redundant) scenes that drag the pacing of the films down. For example, the Jabba scene in Star Wars SE makes no sense if you also keep the Greedo scene. You can have one scene or the other, but not both, as both scenes are covering the same ground. This is basic editing.
Lots of those changes fundamentally ruin the pacing of the film. That entire Jabba sequence in ANH is redundant of the prior scene and ruins the Falcon reveal later. Jedi Rocks is SO clearly a '90s pop song and the CGI is far more distracting than old puppets. Vader yelling "no" makes a pivotal moment laughable. The colour grading is also far more muted and dull. It's all subjective and you can prefer the special editions all you'd like, but declaring them as outright improvements across the board is weird. The Final Cut fan edits are a great middle ground when I want "Special Edition" star wars. Check them out!
What about the dated 90s CGI that's up in front of your face. Think of mos eisley in new hope, the film would look less dated without the added cgi aliens/animals. You can tell this is all a farce because they dont update the special editions with modern cgi. Why stop now? Carry on updating if they believe it's better.
@@joseparcenary4706 lucas had to make some rather extreme changes to legally justify selling them as different films from the OT which was required to avoid doling loyalties to his ex-wife.
@@joseparcenary4706They could have refilmed with models ? And the Jabba scene was cool, and Han addresses the Greddo scene when talking to Jabba. He renegotiate’s a deal with him too.
Many people do have a problem with fan preservations, restorations and alterations. They often argue that those processes are unethical as well as illegal because it goes against the will of their owners and creators by not obtaining proper permissions. To me, my response is that it is no different to car enthusiasts. Some prefer to restore a car because a particular model was only sold for a short while before it was replaced by a newer one with upgraded features. Sure, there are some who may argue the upgraded model may be better than the old. Yet others would argue that the original model was revolutionary and had more of a unique character about it before the upgrades. To me, as long as the car enthusiast doesn't start selling and competing against the car manufacturer, that originally produced the car - what is the problem?
5:24 - my DVDs have the theatrical version on them...they are 4:3 ratio and look like shet, but they are there! I love the upscaled 'despecialised' versions of the original trilogy that many fans contributed towards! THAT is the ultimate version of the original trilogy that will prolly never be released in such a high quality, Sadly, I only have Episode IV in this quality (4K) despecialised, to look like the original theatrical version of the first SW film but everything looks crisp and no CGI spliced into it!
Star Wars was a facsimile of the original with the 77 rollup and starfield spliced onto the 1993 video master with the 1993 audio mix. The original has never been on home video in over 40 years. If you've seen the actual theatrical its a fan scan like something from team negative one. or A bootleg vhs telecine. Or puggo grande.
I've gotten a hold of the 4K77/80/83 fan edits and for me, personally I can't even play them back because the files are like 50GB and using weird codecs. My machines and smart TV can't handle the data rate. It took days to download them also and I have a gigabit connection. So, I remain disappointed I guess. Eventually I'll re-encode them myself at a lower KBPS. Ultimately I do hold out hope that one day....maybe on the 75th anniversary or something they'll finally give us the original theatrical films in 4K.
The "original" TR47 release is in fact Cowclops v1.0 and TR47 can even confirm that. The first one actually wasn't a collaboration at all, he just snagged a copy from me and then spread it around the internet. The second time, I was in college and flat-ass-broke but he coughed up the money for a better LD player and I had a better capture setup so I did that "anamorphic" (really just cropped and resized) V2 version.
The first one was hilariously done by hooking the s-video out of a laserdisc player into a sony TR7000 digital8 camcorder, but the second version was done via uncompressed capture to a PCI card.
Making LDs look good without technology that would come much later (or just, actual copies of the film to scan) was a brutal task and the best you could really do at the time was minimize the loss of quality in the conversion rather than "actually improve it."
Thanks for the clarification Cowclops! The naming scheme for that bootleg was hard for me to determine seeing that all the threads and NFO files were authored by TR47, but other users always associated it with you. Very glad to see you here!
You can't win, George. If you strike down the Theatrical Cut, fans will come together to make it more prevalent than you could possibly imagine.
its like poetry... it rhymes.
@@JUSLOFIAT-STs? Vistas? We can minimize the effects of it?
I have too many LaserDiscs & VHS of it.
The sad thing about the 97 laserdisc release was that we were SO CLOSE to having the trilogy in its close to original form WITH 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.
what was wrong with the laserdiscs?
@@alexjohnward Sonic Ring explosions and the crappy additional CG deleted scenes that were pointless. I do however have a soft spot for the sonic rings and wish it ended there.
For me the ultimate preservation of the franchise is Star Wars 4K77, 4K80, and 4K83. It’s also amazing that they went back to improve their original scan of 4K77 once it became possible. Those guys have probably put in more work than anybody else in the effort.
This is the best way to watch Star Wars these days. Truly amazing work. It's like rediscovering the movies all over again.
What about the Despecialised versions fans did of various media sources??
@@Defensive_Wounds despecialized version is a multiple LD/DVD/BR/etc source cuts made in the movie. The SW 4K77, 4K80 & 4K83 are 4k scans of the actual SW reels, provided by fans of the project. They go directly to the source to get the movie, one thing that George Lucas never wanted to do. This is why the 4KXX project is the best way to watch star wars. It is a true restoration of the original film, just like it was presented in the theaters when they first came out.
I was floored when I first saw 4K77... The colors were as I remembered seeing them way back in '77!
Yep. And their version is better than any original version due to the scanning of multiple prints that filled in the missing information.
George....that's what "state of the art" means. It was the pinnacle of what was possible in 1977.
Was the first person to purchase Laserdisc products in Northern Arizona in 1978. Was on the 'zone one' list for product mailing from Ken Cranes Laserdisc. Still have first pressing of Star Wars which still runs clean. The problematic 'turning the disc over' thing was our food and toilets break. Main reason this system was moved past is they couldn't attach anti-piracy to it so one can print out perfect copies in several different formats. Clarity recorded to VHS was superior for visual and sound. Local video store sold firs release of Hunt For Red October $120.00 in stereo while my Laserdisc copy in surround sound was $31.98. First series of DVDs were from Laserdisc masters. The sound system in the home was better than the theaters up the road. We are well versed in this system and continue to build on and enjoy it.
In 1978, how has nobody questioned your error.
@@brazil-y2y "The LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium, initially licensed, sold and marketed as MCA DiscoVision (also known simply as "DiscoVision") in the United States in 1978."
@@brazil-y2yWhat error?
One my officers in my Guild bought a Laser Disc Player a couple years ago from the 80s and INSIDE IT was a laser disc of The Empire Strikes Back with the behind the scenes and original deleted scenes. I cant get him to sell it to me.
@@brazil-y2y 1978 is the first year laserdisc was commercially available.
I had a friend that was an assistant colorist in Hollywood working with the colorist that worked on the original transfer of Raiders of the Lost Ark for VHS. They weren't happy with the old transfers that were given to them for the DVD. My buddy borrowed my bootleg DVD that was a transfer off of LaserDisc and his colleague showed it to the powers that be. I don't know if Spielberg was in the room, but that convinced Paramount to do a new transfer.
As a kid, I’ll never forget when my father brought home a bootleg copy of Star Wars back in the early 80’s. Later he got a laser disk player and had it there too. I don’t know what happened to those copies.
I just read somewhere that laserdiscs are breaking down due to age, something about the glue falling apart on them.
@@LisaAnn777if they aren't stored in a warm dry climate they will probably get laser rot.
"Lucas never saw the final cut of his film..."
Wouldn't it be crazy if he just never watched it? Was just like "Welp I'm done with that!"
4:20
That's not what he said.
I think that's what he said after the first drafts of the PT. 😆
@@agfagaevartthat’s why he says “wouldn’t it be crazy if” IF!!! IF!!!
Joaquin Pheonix
Yeah. Wouldn't it be crazy if an AI didn't know what it was doing and emphasized the narration in such a way that some viewers thought the sentence ended right there?
The original cut of Star Wars won the Academy Award for "Best Film Editing" in 1977. Who edited that film? Marcia Lou Lucas, George's ex-wife. Some fans will dispute that this comprises any role in George's refusal to release the original cut of Star Wars, but I simply cannot discount that it plays some part. After all, she won the award, and George erased that cut from history.
She got too much credit for editing. It was the japanese guy (cant remember his name) who did most of it.
Great video 👍. I have the despescialised versions of 'Star Wars' and 'Empire'....and it is literally the only way I can watch Star Wars, at all. I find the Special Editions to be irritating....they completely messed with the rhythm of the movies. The only redeeming factor, to me, was the digital matt backdrops in Bespin. But thank God for the Star Wars preservation community ❤️
I have often, when seeing Jabba added to ANH, wanted to find that exact scene on the DVD, and scratch just those bits off, gone forever. I usually just turn it off at that point.
Until the despecialized editions… My 28 year old son said “dad, now it makes sense, I see why you all fell in love with it back then”.
I've always said I mostly prefer the Special Editions, though this is about overall effects. Interesting you mentioned the "rhythm" being messed up. That's something I wasn't aware of, something you probably can't appreciate in TH-cam shot comparison videos. Makes me want to reconsider the originals.
Just get a VCR.
A someone who was involved in the community at the time, this brings back a lot of memories. Great video and can't wait to see more.
ET is a bad example because the Special Edition in 2002 is suppressed. You can only get the original in HD. You have to get the 20th Anniversary cut on DVD. I find it incredible Spielberg does not understand leaving the choice up to the viewer. As in how he released 3 cuts of Close Encounters.
The ET special edition was heavily criticised, which I never thought it deserved. Spielberg didn't fundamentally change things like Lucas, he just gave it a few tweaks and additions that weren't bad.
One of the Close Encounters cuts, the 'Special Edition', only exists because he was pressured into shooting new footage for the TV presentation. If that hadn't happened, he might have never bothered with the other director's cut. Personally I like the original cut partly because it has the scene of Roy at work and makes it clear he's not just 'childish, aimless and ineffective' like the other versions make him look. He didn't need to seem totally worthless as a person and it only makes his breakdown less-meaningful.
@@jamescarter3196 I never know this. I've only seen a cut where he just seems nihilistic and annoying with the times. I'll find that cut and rewatch it.
When Jedi came out I was in high school and had a class mate who said he could get me a pirate take pirate tape of Jedi in beta video for 50 dollars I was amazed it must of been taken from the film it had the black bars top and bottom so it was the full screen very high quality I still have it I never asked him how he got it I was just happy I have it just weeks after Jedi was released in theaters
Copy it and post it online somewhere for the preservers.
By 1988 when he spoke before Congress, Lucas had already made alterations to Star Wars. The original theatrical cut was different from the Laser Disc, which was different from the TV premiere edition, which was different from the original VHS, which was different from...
I only wish they would have kept the original version of Star Wars trilogy in blu ray, digital, and Disney + content.
You should check out Project 4K77 at www.theStarWarsTrilogy.com :)
If George stood by his version so much, then allow the theatrical edits to exist for comparison. Ridley didn't try to bury the 1982 cut of Blade Runner.
😂People still subscribe to D+ lol😆
@@matthewpaul6904Interesting, gr8 point
Check out 4K77, 4K80 and 4K83….
CORRECTIONS:
- At 2:25, I mistakenly claim that the lost pieces of Metropolis were found on a 16mm reduction print decaying in a “Peruvian Cave.” While these pieces weren’t found in a literal cave, they were found in a Argentinian archive with abysmal storage conditions. They likely would’ve survived longer in an actual cave than the archive they were found in.
- In my conclusion, I reference a forum post discussing the use of Dual-Layer discs for fan preservations. While writing to Dual Layer discs did become commonplace in 2004, I’m sure that there were forum posts out there discouraging the practice (early on, consumer writing to Dual-Layer discs was expensive and often resulted in burn errors). Unfortunately, I cannot actually find the posts I referenced anymore. Consider this little addendum apocryphal story telling. I realized this near the end of my editing process, but decided to leave it in, as its final message still stands true.
Awesome video I can't wait for part 2.
Metropolis wasn't found in Perú, it was in Argentina.
Someone had imported a full length German cut and embedded Spanish intertitles and written inserts (letters, signs). This copy was then placed on storage. Years later, since the copy was in nitrate film (a fire risk) it was decided to copy it to 16 mm and dispose of the original (which was, in fact, pretty beat up).
Original Trilogy forum user here. (I think my original reply got deleted so I'll try this again.) My recollection of the dual layer debate from back then had to do with 1) dual layer burners and blank dual layer discs being significantly more expensive and less reliable at the time, and 2) the release of projects was done via file sharing rather than selling of discs, so the end user was required to provide their own hardware for disc burning. It wouldn't make much sense to release a dual layer DVD file that hardly anyone could burn themselves. Eventually, new projects started being released in both singe layer and dual layer formats to appease everyone. Also, selling of any projects was strictly prohibited on the OT forum and anyone caught doing it was banned. This is why you usually only saw those DVDs being sold by third parties rather than the original project authors.
Metropolis isn't a complete movie it's only about 99% complete because it's still missing 2 scenes that will likely never be recovered.
@@Yubl10 , like how the King Kong Spider pit sequence is lost. I keep hoping someday a dupe will be discovered.
I have the original VHS and laserdisc releases besides all the dvd releases....my wife thinks I'm nuts. But she has watched them just as often as I.
Very well documented video, can't wait for Part 2!
Bootlegging pretty much saved everything in history.
Bootlegging is really like pirating to sell.
Fan preservation is... preservation.
4K77 have done amazing work.
I am fortunate enough to have the first CAV multi-laserdisc release (only 30 minutes max per side) of the original trilogy. Original versions of the films (no "A New Hope" on Star Wars, for example) and they are still pretty watchable. Never tried to sell it, though I am told it is pretty valuable.
Thanks for this documentary! I had no idea about most of it. I also love that you included the Pauline verse at the end. That is a verse to live by!
Thanks for documenting this history, it's great to see all the efforts for the sake of preservation.
The 2006 limited edition dvds contain the original theatrical cuts as extra content. They’re a poorer scan than the special editions but at least they’re not the special editions.
I have the dvd edition with the disc two theatrical cut. I found them by chance, and soon after that they were stripped off shelves and replaced with copies minus that feature
Lucas never appeared to understand what made Star Wars great and the more control/less collaboration he had, including Return of the Jedi, the worse the movies got.
I'd actually like to see Marquand's cut of ROTJ that Rinzler viewed to write the making of book.
Yeah, even as a young 20 something watching the clips in the "behind the scenes" he comes across as a doofus, and everyone else is laughing nervously and does exactly what he says.
Lucas: "Ok. Add an alien here who is all surprised and says, "what the?!" Like that."
Staff: nervously laughs, "yeah yeah, that'll be great!" *Adds exactly that*
Me in the theatre: "um.... Ok? Is this a kids cartoon?"
Then you see his original vision for Yoda, being a Mexican jumping bean with a tiny lightsaber, and you really understand he has nothing to do with any of the parts of Star Wars that were good, and he is as unfairly praised.
@@bluedistortions exact creating the thing, writing Empire and ghost directing it.
Ever think that maybe it is as dumb to call him completely clueless as it is to call him a genius? It's usually somewhere in the middle.
@@bluedistortions
people make mistakes. but at least he had the humility to see some of his.
he wanted c3po to sound like a car salesman until anthony daniels took on the role.
Lucas bankrolled the whole thing. Try saying No and who's to say that NO is correct? So dumb
You all do realize the original theatrical versions were indeed released on DVD in 2004, albeit using the same master used for the laserdisc.
Despecialized or the 4k scans are the way to go.
Correct, they have a bonus disc and on the back it says it’s the 4:3 laser disc wide screen. Best to watch it on a crt tv or flat screen with a zoom feature
Fantastic, thank you. Well done. Looking forward to part 2.
Star Wars really is the real-life saga of a once creative and good individual who turns to evil for power and money isn't it.
Not really ,no
Question mark 😂
The original film will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2027. I can see no better way to celebrate this than a theatrical re-release of the same print that was shown back then, exactly as it was seen by audiences at the time. No CGI or post production tinkering for subsequent versions (beyond the sound mix) and with the original text crawl without mention of Episode IV etc. Lucas many not approve but I think there is a big enough demand for this to make it worthwhile for Lucasfilm. Show it as it was shown originally so people can relive their memories. Let's go retro and release some 35mm and 70mm film prints for those theatres that still have projectors. To quote James Earl Jones character of Terence Mann from the movie Field of Dreams "People will come, from all around, and they won't know why". And I think recreating 1977 all over again for the 50th anniversary would be well received, from the oldies reliving their youth and the youngsters wanting to see it out of curiosity.
I doubt it would happen but this would be a great way to celebrate the anniversary.
My brother and I would love this, the original is the only Star Wars film we have not seen together!
Yeah... that's never gonna happend
When I was nine years old I saw Star Wars in the theater. It said "Episode IV". I recall that specifically because it confused me right from the start. I understood Roman numerals, but couldn't understand why it said this was episode 4. I put that thought at the back of my mind and enjoyed the heck out of the rest of the movie.
Patiently waiting for the next part! Keep up the good work.
I hope the Harmy's Despecialized Edition gets brought up at some point in these videos. I don't have and don't care for 4K, so the Harmy version is fine with me.
@8:22 Heh. I was the third, anonymous member of the X0 Project.
Yeah and I was one of the 300 who held the Hot Gates against the Persians.
We had a pioneer laser disc, it would work for 3 or four weeks then go back for repair for 5 to 6 weeks, rinse and repeat 3 times and then we got a refund.
I have a Pioneer Laserdisc player that I bought in 1991. Still works. Never had an issue
You must have just got a lemon. I have 2 pioneer laser disc players, the newest was built in 1999, both play perfectly with an occasional hiccup and both have less problems than any of the DVD players that I ever had.
I have a pioneer that doubles as a karaoke CD player with mic inputs and key adjustments still works great
I had a vision that Star Wars would become huge with stories about the Mandalorians (we only knew them as bounty hunters back then) -- a girl in Mandalorian armor, and after the nostalgia wore off or original fans died, it would be remade. I wasn't upset for the reasons George did it. I was *not expecting him to do it* ten or twelve years later.
Excellent video, looking forward to more! I could watch this all day.
You know that knight from Indiana Jones and the last crusade? You know, the one that is still alive after thousands of years in the cave. That's how old I felt when he said, "not many people know what a laser disc is" 😂
The narrator sounds like Egon from The Real Ghostbusters, and I enjoyed it. 👍
Glad I still have my Laserdiscs and two working players. Eff the special editions. I still don't own the Blu-Rays. Lucas HAD to stipulate that the original versions would never be released before he sold to Disney. Disney would make a mint if they did a complete restoration and released them.
I am an original 1977 fan, and I just prefer what was presented when I was that innocent wide eyed 9-year-old kid. I don't have many happy memories growing up, but I was so excited when my parents said they were taking me to see it. I had the VHS tapes as soon as they came out and watched them over-and-over, and I needed to replace them because they wore out just before the SE came out and buried the theatrical version. I later bought a LD player so that I could get the Definitive LD set, along with some other movies that never made it to DVD, the Godfather Saga edition and at the time Let It Be and Paul McCartney Rock Show and a few others.
I ended up finding the Dr Gonzo OT set and I love it and still prefer it over the official DVDs or the SE that I occasionally watch to remind myself of what was changed!
I still remember the original theatrical release of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi. I miss them!!
I was always a Harmy fan. Still have his Despecialized versions on my PC.
Its so amazing that we even have Vader narrating this video!
I still have my Definitive Collection on Laserdisc, and did my own DVD transfer back in 2000. It wasn't the bit rate limitations of MPEG2 video that was the issue for me, I could maximize encodes fairly well, but it was the lack of a component output on my LD player. S-video was no substitute for component.
Quality production! Especially for a smaller channel.
3:42 The quote by George Lucas has an asterisk next to it...
"I changed my films because they weren't complete. They weren't the way I had envisioned them."
Just sayin'... I haven't watched the whole video yet. 😃
Han shot. Greedo had his chance. Holding someone at gunpoint is grounds for being shot. 😜
I def had VHS that was more wide cut then the DVDs… so were those bootleg? I can only imagine how much those are worth now….
Amazing video. Keep up the great work.
BBC announced that Laserdisc was the future with their updated Domesday Book on Laserdisc a few years before CDs and DVDs.
I recently discovered this DomesDay thing even before watching this video. So fascinating to discover a lost utopian ideal.
As SG10 says, without Laserdisc there wouldn't have been CD, CD ROM or DVD.
About a decade ago the BBC put it the Domesday book contents online and it worked great. There were even pictures of inside my local supermarket. Then they transferred the project to The National Archives who somehow managed to break it and took it offline.
Good video, but your understanding of the LD format is missing a bit of info
It's more than marginally better for pq, by far it's close to twice the "resolution"
Most people using LD in the late 80s and 90s when pioneer ran the format 90% + of players had auto side change
I appreciate your insight! However, I have to respectfully disagree. Both VHS and Laserdisc were viewed on SD television sets, and in the US at least, those only displayed 480 lines of resolution. Even when these discs are digitally captured, they are usually done so in 720x480. This is also the standard resolution for VHS capture. I will concede that their image stability is indeed better than VHS, and they don’t succumb to the same types of artifacts as they age. However because of how letterboxed Laserdiscs don’t utilize the full resolution of the screen (even if it is around twice the resolution of a VHS), most of that goes unused.
I didn't know that some players had auto-side change! Do you know how this mechanism works?
@@SG10FilmArchive mike is correct. The displays were 480 but not the signals sent to them. LD had 420 while VHS only 240.
Understood! I stand corrected.
@@SG10FilmArchive i believe they had a laser head on both sides of the disk and from what i remember there was still a break if not a pause while it changed sides
There’s some misunderstanding here of just what exactly resolution refers to. NTSC had 480 visible scan lines, but that isn’t what we are talking about when we talk about the resolution capabilities of various formats. Those 480 scan lines did not change between all the various formats, so they all had the same vertical resolution. When you see “lines of resolution” being talked about it has nothing to do with these scan lines. It has to do with the video bandwidth available in the various formats differing quite a bit, and this is what determines the resolution in the other direction, horizontal resolution. All had 480 lines top to bottom. That’s fixed and is not changeable. Where they differ is in the resolution left to right. Here are examples of typical lines of resolution for some media types:
VHS 240
Cable/broadcast TV 330
S-VHS 420
Laserdisc 425
These figures are taken from a 1:1 horizontal:vertical region, so they have to be multiplied by 1.33 (4:3 aspect ratio of TVs then) in order to get the number of pixels for the whole screen width. So:
VHS 320x480
Cable/broadcast TV 440x480
S-VHS 560x480
Laserdisc 567x480
Each step had a higher frequency carrier and more available video bandwidth, so they gave a higher resolution picture than the last. I remember paying a crazy amount of money for an S-VHS VCR in the early ‘90s so I could record TV shows without any noticeable loss in quality. Was very nice at the time. Hehe. When DVD came along at 720x480 it was a fair step up again, but one of the huge advantages was the lack of having to deal with the noise of an analog storage medium. This made its image rock solid in comparison. Laserdisc wasn’t super noisy, but the other formats sure were, and the complete lack of noise in digital storage was a big win. Although the image accuracy variability then shifted from carrier noise to compression artifacts, it was easier to deal with that by using more bits than it was to reduce analog noise as much as possible.
I actually know/knew “Dr. Gonzo,” and was present when the laser discs from Japan were copied. The resulting DVDs were sold on eBay. Lucas Film sent several cease and desist letters to “Dr. Gonzo,” which ended the very limited production of the Gonzo bootlegs, but not before the cat was out of the bag. It’s crazy that this story is actually known. I guess it was a bigger deal than I thought.
I still have a VHS tape with a theater-bootleg of Empire Strikes Back on it.
The only theory that has ever made any sense to me why George Lucas made so many changes is his attitude towards his ex-wife, Marcia. She was the editor on the originals. He was EXTREMELY bitter about her divorcing him, bitterness that remains to this day. He hates the existence of the product of her editing. It also may be the case that altering the films cuts her out of any money coming to her from them. For this reason, it's apparent to me that an official release of the originals will never happen as long as George Lucas is alive. It's up to the fans.
I have a rather large collection of these laserdisc rips that I obtained myself in the 2000s. They have been stored since about 2010. I should compile a list.
Do you have the extended Dead Poets Society? My LD player died before I could rip that one and I shrugged thinking, this will be out on dvd any day now. Ah hahaha was I dum.
Cowclops LD->DVD rips standing by!
I happen to be the happy owner of a Pioneer Laser Disk/Karaoke system as well as the original laser disk of A New Hope. The only version I care to see.
There's a particular bootleg outfit I like that specializes in old film series. Last year, I got a box from them focusing on one of the NBC Mystery Movie series that is NOT yet had an official release in the US-- "MADIGAN". The TV movies are taken from a French release (in English language, with the opening credits superimposed with English text). But the earlier theatrical film, crazy enough, the disc, while in the widescreen format, had BLACK BARS around ALL 4 sides. The guy who runs the company apologized, and said as soon as he gets a chance to redo the disc, he'd be sending me a freebie (which he's done in a few other cases). I may just go after an official release of the feature film in the meantime. It's nice to know that all 4 sides thing is not a unique occurrance.
Wow there’s a whole community and world of bootleg preservationists I had no clue about
You can find just about anything. This video showed a clip form Disney's Song of The South that has been buried for many years. I just recently downloaded a beautiful and complete copy!
@@indiana2096 It's very silly to bury that movie too. It's in a time period we presently don't like, but there's not a lot of objectionable material in the movie. Zip-a-dee-doo-dah is from that movie and that was practically Disney's theme song when I was a kid.
I really cannot understand modern thinking that if the PAST doesn't conform to the standards of today that it must be DESTROYED.
Why not just tell kids "oh it's an old movie about an even older time period"?
Great video and fascinating flashback to the days of Laserdisc. However, unless you mentioned it and I missed it, Fox did in fact re-release the original theatrical versions of the original "SW" trilogy on DVD. They did this back in 2004 as an added bonus disc to their "Special Edition" DVD releases. I know this because I own them. When announced that they were available, I made a special trip to Costco on my lunch hour to be sure and buy them all ASAP before they sold out. In fact, when the later sequel trilogy came out all of my neighbors asked me if they could borrow them to show their kids the original versions before taking them to the theater to see the sequels.
That said, there is still a weird omission even on the 1977 film. There was a moment when Han and Chewbacca are being chased by a group of storm troopers through the halls of the Death Star. One of the pursuers says, "Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!" but Han and Chewie make it through the closing doors just in time and so the gaggle of Storm Troopers now have to say "Open the blast doors! Open the blast doors!" Having seen the original in theaters about 12 times back in 1977 and again in 1978, this is a vivid memory. But even in the DVD theatrical version, you only have the second half of that exchange without the "Close the blast doors!" first part, thus losing the humor of the scene. Very strange.
Finally, as an aside, in addition to the changes to "ET", back in 1980 Spielberg and Columbia Pictures also released the "Special Edition" of "Close Encounters" which has the pointless, tacked-on, trip inside the UFO "mother ship" which added nothing to the film and ruined the mystery of the original version. Fortunately the DVD release of that film also has the 1977 original version.
But again, thanks for the great video, it was very interesting and entertaining.
I know the DVD’s you’re talking about! Those are the 2006 GOUT DVDs. I do plan on talking about them in the future, but it’s important to note that those DVDs are just official Laserdisc transfers from the 1993 master. I have them as well :) Also, I believe that sound discrepancy comes from the fact that the 1982 stereo mix was used on those bonus discs instead of one the 1977 mixes.
@@SG10FilmArchive A good start to your series of preserving the original versions. I hope in your upcoming parts you will cover the various sound mixes that have changed over the years, particularly the mono mix with Aunt Beru's re-done lines and un-distorted X-Wing chatter (as all of us kids from the late 70s/early 80s experienced from the storybook LP), as well as the 1993 THX mix that went way over the top with sound effects such as shattered glass when shooting up the monitoring devices during the detention block raid.
Another topic I hope you'll cover is the recently recovered 35mm print that has been digitally scanned and released by various groups with different amounts of tinkering (e.g. digital cleanup and colour-correction).
Keep up the good work!
@@SG10FilmArchive Thanks for clarification. Again, great video. One Q: what is "GOUT"? Other than the painful affliction, that is.
Sure thing! GOUT stands for "George's Original Unaltered Trilogy". It was the acronym given to the bonus DVDs by the fans.
I've actually already made a video discussing the differences between the 1977 stereo and mono mix :)
Beautiful story! ❤😢🎞😊
0:50 my high school library had a copy of the Luke Starkiller early treatment, just like that depicted at 0:50.
the despecialized edition is prob my fave way to see the og
I don’t think anyone could’ve imagined in the mid 2000s that there would be ways of archiving actual analog signals in a digital carrier in the future. Some within the archiving have started making literal rips of direct analog streams from mostly LaserDiscs.
Hell yeah I remember them days
Seems such a long time ago.... ;)
dont forget the fanedit community with people like "adywan" remastering blurays to more like the OG releases
I love the edits, they improved the prequel trilogy!
I have both VHS sets from the 90s… it’s a shame about the overall situation.
Re-cutting can work fine using existing material. Creating new material with modern methods and inserting it into an older film can be as jarring as inserting a color sequence into a b+w movie.
And some people think it strange and weird that I look for these discrepancies. It's one of my favourite movies. I've seen rhem many times. It stands out like a sore thumb.
And even when I can't see an actual difference... it's a feeling... it feels off... dfferent somehow... And I cant say what it is. First time I saw 4K77 I just let out a sigh. For the first time in a long time I was just watching the movie. Not wondering "is there something wrong with the screen settings?".
When I first got Smokie and the Bandit on DVD I immediately noticed something. The sounds. They were different. This was not EQ-ing or some processing thing. For the new surround mix some of the original sounds had been replaced. And the original mono mix was not included. And don't some with a space limitation crap. For a mono track 128 kbps is plenty. The space reguired for 1,5 hour at that bitrate is apx. 90 MB.
Fortunately the latest Blu-Ray releases include it at last.
I remember getting a bootleg video tape back in the dial-up era, but Laserdiscs? Man, I'd live to get into film preservation. Any suggestions on how to make that happen?
I would recommend joining the forums over at www.theStarWarsTrilogy.com. It's an excellent resource and that's how I got started! You could also check out FanRestore.
Disney Star Wars is just bad fanfiction to me it's things like this that keep me involved in all things Lucas Star Wars.
Disney has also wrecked Star Wars books as well!
3:10 "a sort of gentlemans napkin, if you will".
I have several LaserDisc captures / hardware upscale examples on my channel.
20 year member of MySpleen 😁
Heroes!
the preservers are
As amazing as this is (still watching it), I really wish people wouldn't throw the word 'remaster' around so much when they are actually referring specifically to revisionism. George Lucas himself has done this for years and as a result, it has created so much confusion among the general public who don't actually know what remastering means.
Yes, The Star Wars films have been remastered, numerous times, but they have also had a whole lot of other crap done to them that had nothing at all to do with the process of remastering, which is just to clean up and optimize the picture and sound quality to look and sound it's best. Things like altering special effects and re-editing are a totally separate thing that is done on top of the remastering process. You can remaster something and not change a single thing about it's content. THAT is what the term actually should mean but many people use it in reference to other revisionist practices. The 2002 cut of E.T., for example, is not simply a remaster, but rather an entirely different version of the film altogether. A director's cut, if you will, even though it wasn't marketed as that. The current Blu-ray of E.T. in it's 1982 theatrical cut is an actual remaster. They took the original elements, created a digital master of those elements and brought the film's presentation to an extremely high level of quality without meddling with the film's content.
Virtually every film ever made has been remastered to some degree whenever it is released on a new format. They often have to create a new video master for films that hadn't previously received an HD or 4K scan for home video.
The 2006 release of the trilogy contain the theatrical cut on the bonus disc . That's how managed to get them.
while true those versions are at a lower video quality of 320p. Lucas never put a better version of the original out.
@@walleytvhd259 I think I have that. The box makes a big deal of how bad Laserdisc was and how great the latest DVD release is. It wouldn't surprise me if they created the bonus disc version by plugging a Laserdisc composite output into a $20 USB capture device.
I always found the 2004 first edition of the original trilogy, yes the special editions looked really good. The later release with the fourth special features disc looked like a step back from the three disc set with silver lettering on the casing. Anyone else ever notice that?
I think you are backwards, the 2004 set was a 4-disc box, the 3-disc set came out later. In 2006 they were rereleased with the "bonus" theatrical version in 2-disc sets, I have the Best Buy steel box with all 3 films. I believe a 3-disc set was rereleased in 2008 or later with a 3-disc set of the prequel trilogy and a "complete" set on Blu-ray.
"Luke I am your father" I miss that. Would be nice if Star Wars restoration fans could find a way to hop dimensions and restore the line before it was vandelized by the MandAla Effect.
The Harmy Despecialized Editions, Adywan and Project 4K saved Star Wars.
I still have the originals on VHS!
I have them all, including the RCA CED releases and the VCD imports of the Special Edition and Episode I, I never seem to get rid of anything!
I think as a Star Wars fan ,the original trilogy would sell huge .why George Lucas isn't open to that idea only he knows .
Fantastic video
Excellent video!!
There was another option for transferrance to 4:3. It is a goofy option, but it was used in the 70s when I was a kid, to bring movies to TV.
I do not know if the method has a name, but all they did was compress it.
Everyone and everything in the movie became thin and long...but everything fit on the square screen.
Heh - I still have my discs that I bought in a HUGE mall in Penang. They are actually pretty good!
I have yet to find any version of it which retains the scene where Vader loses control of his ship and doesn't regain control. I believe the 'regain control' shots were added to a re-release somewhere between '78-81 but they weren't in the original prints I saw or the people I've asked who saw it when it was new.
I remember seeing him get control back when I saw it for the first time in May '77 with my dad (at a drive-in,) and thinking an in-flight collision like that shouldn't have resulted in Vader's ship flying *away* from the Death Star from inside a trench, when hit from high and behind. I also remember an interview with George where he said, "We had to let him get away..." And he was already talking about a sequel, so it made sense that this was always planned.
At least to me.
I only like Star Wars and the 4K77 no dnr Theatrical version sits proudly on my top shelf with other masterpiece's like The Seventh Seal and A L I E N.
I'm forever in debt to those wonderful dudes that made this possible. 🙏👊
Thank god for three versions of the same movies to get rid of blue-screen effects.,
I’d love the OG Star Wars cuts th come to 4k.
I bought Star Wars in vhs, dvd turn Blu-ray .
Sadly only game Blu Ray which never gave us the bearing
Ok. I have a VHS bootleg copy that my father did back in the 1980's that I found. I haven't played it in a bcr since 2004 to show my kids the non special edition of Episode IV: A New Hope. Or as my dad labeled it AT the time.
STAR WARS.
I have no idea if it still plays.
Would love to see a version with all deleted scenes included
With Lucas out of the picture, they should release the original cuts again, they would make bank I’m sure, if they are worried.
My first encounter with this was the Despecialized project
Probably before all of your time's there were many BBS's all about Star Wars and even some about preservation. Being more a Hardware person I didn't explore it much; because I knew about the resolution factor; unless you have got the original 35mm(?) you're struggling. And that's why those bootlegs exist! Trying to download those files at 300, 600 or even 1200bps was... LOL Needless to say did you have enough storage?!? A complicating factor was that before Empire there was one announced 'clean up by Lucas' - small blip on the news and one 'talk show' before Empire came out. As a matter of fact when I saw "Star Wars" (1977) at the theaters UA 70 or UA 150 on Saturday May 28th; there was only one scene where you can or I detected artifacting around one Star Destroyer; less than 0.3 seconds but I saw it and confirmed it the next day as well as the next weekend. During the transition to 'higher speed' internet (above 2400 or 3600bps) a lot of these BBS's were either taken down (unknown reasoning 'legal'/'owner' donno) and not many transitioned to web pages or forums as we know them today. Even back then there were 'dark BBS's' that you could join and obtain these 'cut up' copies but you had to know someone to even login to those sites and that precluded most from entering them at all.
Usually once a film is released it belongs to the studio. It’s no longer the your baby.
Lucas made sure he got all rights to Star Wars. If he wants to revise his movie then let him!
Tolkien also revised The Hobbit when he started writing Lord of the Rings and I don’t see anyone complaining.
Tolkien actually specified in his will that Disney should never be sold the film rights. google it.
Clearly, the original 1977 Star Wars is the most authentic Star Wars and should be available in pristine high-res quality.
Nevertheless, the Star Wars "purists" are fighting a losing battle. Most of the changes Lucas made were improvements. Most viewers want to see Palpatine in the role of the Emperor, not some nobody is a cheesy rubber mask. Many want to watch the CGI prequels and then carry on to the first trilogy with the visual continuity the added CGI provides. For most viewers, the special editions have all the charm of the 70s originals, but without the limitations. And, as 1977 fades further into the past, those who need to see Star Wars as they originally saw it become fewer and fewer, while those in love with the improved versions grow larger in numbers.
I applaud the amazing efforts to restore the originals in the best quality possible; I would love to own them on 4K disks. But I don't think they will ever replace the special edition versions.
I think if Lucas had just stuck to "improving" shots that existed in the original trilogy, then the fans would have adopted the SE. For instance, the CG X-Wing battle at the end of Star Wars is objectively better than the original sequence. Likewise, as you mention, putting Ian McDiarmad into ESB makes sense.
Where the SE falls apart is where he tries to recontextualize scenes or (worse) starts inserting new (redundant) scenes that drag the pacing of the films down. For example, the Jabba scene in Star Wars SE makes no sense if you also keep the Greedo scene. You can have one scene or the other, but not both, as both scenes are covering the same ground. This is basic editing.
Lots of those changes fundamentally ruin the pacing of the film. That entire Jabba sequence in ANH is redundant of the prior scene and ruins the Falcon reveal later. Jedi Rocks is SO clearly a '90s pop song and the CGI is far more distracting than old puppets. Vader yelling "no" makes a pivotal moment laughable. The colour grading is also far more muted and dull.
It's all subjective and you can prefer the special editions all you'd like, but declaring them as outright improvements across the board is weird.
The Final Cut fan edits are a great middle ground when I want "Special Edition" star wars. Check them out!
What about the dated 90s CGI that's up in front of your face. Think of mos eisley in new hope, the film would look less dated without the added cgi aliens/animals. You can tell this is all a farce because they dont update the special editions with modern cgi. Why stop now? Carry on updating if they believe it's better.
@@joseparcenary4706 lucas had to make some rather extreme changes to legally justify selling them as different films from the OT which was required to avoid doling loyalties to his ex-wife.
@@joseparcenary4706They could have refilmed with models ?
And the Jabba scene was cool, and Han addresses the Greddo scene when talking to Jabba.
He renegotiate’s a deal with him too.
Many people do have a problem with fan preservations, restorations and alterations. They often argue that those processes are unethical as well as illegal because it goes against the will of their owners and creators by not obtaining proper permissions. To me, my response is that it is no different to car enthusiasts. Some prefer to restore a car because a particular model was only sold for a short while before it was replaced by a newer one with upgraded features. Sure, there are some who may argue the upgraded model may be better than the old. Yet others would argue that the original model was revolutionary and had more of a unique character about it before the upgrades. To me, as long as the car enthusiast doesn't start selling and competing against the car manufacturer, that originally produced the car - what is the problem?
I like the despecialized editions and 4K77 and 4K80 and 4K83 all amazing jobs of restoration by team negative one and by Harmy and others
You have an awesome voice. Great narration
So nice not to have the AI robot voices we get now.
5:24 - my DVDs have the theatrical version on them...they are 4:3 ratio and look like shet, but they are there! I love the upscaled 'despecialised' versions of the original trilogy that many fans contributed towards! THAT is the ultimate version of the original trilogy that will prolly never be released in such a high quality, Sadly, I only have Episode IV in this quality (4K) despecialised, to look like the original theatrical version of the first SW film but everything looks crisp and no CGI spliced into it!
I just made the same comment😊 they where on the 2006 release
Star Wars was a facsimile of the original with the 77 rollup and starfield spliced onto the 1993 video master with the 1993 audio mix. The original has never been on home video in over 40 years. If you've seen the actual theatrical its a fan scan like something from team negative one. or A bootleg vhs telecine. Or puggo grande.
I've gotten a hold of the 4K77/80/83 fan edits and for me, personally I can't even play them back because the files are like 50GB and using weird codecs. My machines and smart TV can't handle the data rate. It took days to download them also and I have a gigabit connection. So, I remain disappointed I guess. Eventually I'll re-encode them myself at a lower KBPS. Ultimately I do hold out hope that one day....maybe on the 75th anniversary or something they'll finally give us the original theatrical films in 4K.