I think CGI Yoda is an acceptable change, the puppet has a very hard expression, they softened Yoda´s face to match eps 2 and 3.

Hopefully Luke's green saber on the Falcon is fixed, too.)

The older films of Episode IV, V and VI required special care and attention. Already, for the 2004 release, the movies underwent significant digital restoration to have them align with George Lucas' vision of the six Star Wars movies being a single, seamless presentation. However, that is not to say that that work done for the 2004 release was simply ported over to Blu-ray.

"It went through three phases of QC (quality control) processes," describes Diane Caliva, Production Manager for Media Operations at ILM. "In addition to Lucasfilm reviewing, there were outside companies hired as well. The first was Blu-focus/THX QCing our masters. Then it went through Deluxe and their QC process. And at last was the emulation phase, by the Deluxe team . We would get 'kickback notes', and then Dorne and our team we would assess the shots, and go in and clean up the files."

The copious QC notes would identify subtle defects in the picture and sound. Most of the work done on Episodes IV, V and VI are subtle restorative touches -- the correction of blemishes and warping on the image, dirt removal from old transfers and such. Side-effects of the optical compositing process -- like the gray "garbage matte" boxes that occasionally surround the TIE fighters of Episode IV, for example, were reviewed on a case-by-case basis. And, like Episode I, there would be a few surprises that had remained hidden in the movies for decades.

A longstanding picture error that occurs during the TIE fighter attack on the Millennium Falcon was finally fixed. Right before Han nails the last TIE fighter dogging his ship, his laser blasts zap into the empty spaces between the TIE's wings. But as the TIE flies toward camera, nearly a third of the frame has been left black and empty. "It has always been missing," says Huebler. "Looking at it, what I think we were seeing was an image that had been flopped way back at the time, and you were seeing off into the soundtrack area [of the frame]. Because it was star-fields on black, it was subtle enough that it didn't catch people's eye. That one was kind of fun to do: we tracked in a star-field to match, and extended the laser-fire so it didn't get chopped off."

There are a handful of such technical shot corrections in addition to the cleanups throughout the films. For The Empire Strikes Back, there was less work required, but one nitpicky error has been addressed. The very edge of frame makes it evident that the wampa arm that attacks Luke is mounted on a puppeteer's arm. This has been corrected.

"Some of the issues come from these movies being finished for film and projected for film, and that's how people saw them. A lot of things that look a little different on HD or DVD are really the nature of how video treats color space," explains Huebler. A dramatic example of this came up in the 2004 DVD release, with the dimming of the lightsaber cores throughout the trilogy, even to the point where Luke's lightsaber aboard the Millennium Falcon shifted from blue to green in Episode IV.

"We're trying to get back to the intention of the original film experience," says Huebler. "That's really what's going on with the lightsabers. You want that hot white core, and it was just right for film, but on video, that was dampened."

Issues such as these have been corrected, most notably in Return of the Jedi, when Luke and Vader's lightsabers cross in front of the Emperor's face. With the blades dimmed, the hand-animated nature of the lightsabers became too apparent, and the sabers failed to register properly at their intersection point.

Revisiting the lightsabers in Return of the Jedi gave ILM the opportunity to fix a longstanding visual defect from the 1983 release. During the filming of Jedi, there was something unsatisfactory about the final close-ups of the Emperor -- something objectionable about the way Ian McDiarmid's makeup looked or the light played on the side of his hood. So, George Lucas opted to "fix it in post," a risky move in the pre-digital days. A hand-animated shadow was drawn during all of the Emperor's close-up, an odd black blob that danced on the edge of his cowl.

In the theatrical release, the light of the darkened theater experience did not make these blobs look too apparent, but the eventual home video release of Episode VI made them very obvious. Home televisions couldn't be calibrated as finely to hide these animated shadows, and many viewers who watched and rewatched Return of the Jedi on VHS or DVD couldn't help but notice what came to be nicknamed in the fan community "the Emperor's slugs." These visual defects have been eliminated with a digital shadow that better matches the surrounding frame.

"When you're reviewing shots as they were meant to be in a theater in real-time, you don't see these things," says Caliva. "But now that people have Blu-ray and they can go frame-by-frame, you see more issues."

"There is a lot of what ends up being 'invisible' fixes," agrees Huebler. "That's the goal: when it's invisible that you don't notice that something glitched or there was a mistake. That could be very challenging to get to, as each one has its own creative decisions."

Kinect Star Wars & Ltd Edition Console Delayed
You better rewrite that shopping list for Santa Claus

Written by DavieMarshall today at 16:08

Please don't shoot the messenger folks, but yes you have read that title and strap-line correctly. The long awaited Kinect Star Wars and that lovely looking Star Wars themed Xbox 360 has suffered a delay at Microsoft's jurisdiction.

Originally planned to be released in time for 'holiday 2011', Microsoft have balked on that date and have pushed both of these items back into an, as yet unspecified, date in 2012. Speaking to OXM a Microsoft spokesperson gave the following statement:

Microsoft and LucasArts have elected to move the launch of Kinect Star Wars beyond holiday 2011 to ensure the full potential of this title is realized. This move applies to both the Kinect Star Wars stand-alone game and the Kinect Star Wars Limited Edition Console. We will communicate additional timing information at a later date.


An absolute blow and a major disappointment for many, it is suggested/rumoured that extra time is needed to fine-tune the title, specifically addressing issues with lagging and flaky controls. More news on the new release date as it becomes available.

http://www.trueachievements.com/newsitem.aspx?newsitemid=5154

Send that arguement straight to Jeremy Bulloch or even Sebastian Shaw.   

Regarding the Original Trilogy films, I don't think it's quite accurate to say that these are simply the 2004 DVD masters recycled for Blu-ray. These films are NOT the 2004 versions. It would be more accurate to say that these are new 2011 Blu-ray versions. Let me be clear what I mean by that: It's accurate to say that these are probably built from the same negative scans that were done for the 2004 DVD release, at whatever resolution those were produced. (Note that I'm working to determine the exact resolution of the original digital masters of all the films - the resolution at which the restoration work for Blu-ray was done, and from which the final Blu-rays were mastered.) But I can tell you from first hand observation that many fixes and improvements have been made to these films.

On the audio front, you will be very pleased to know that most of the audio complaints fans had about these films on DVD - about particularly Episode IV - have been addressed and fixed for Blu-ray. For example, many of you will recall that in the 2004 Episode IV DVD release, the music in the rear channels of the 5.1 mix was often reversed. (Credit to Bits reader Neil S. Bulk who first brought that issue to our attention back in 2004.) You should all be very be pleased to know that that's no longer the case. Finally... fixed!

The Supervising Sound Editor on the Blu-rays for Skywalker Sound, Matthew Wood, gave us a pretty detailed demonstration of the new 6.1 DTS-HD MA uncompressed audio mixes on these Blu-rays. (For those wondering why 6.1 and not 7.1, Matt said that 6.1 was chosen because it builds nicely on the 5.1 EX mixing work that was done for the Prequel films.) The first scene he showed us was the beginning of the assault on the Death Star at the end of Episode IV. Now, I suspect he showed us this scene for exactly the thing I noticed immediately upon previewing it. Some of you may recall that on the 2004 DVD, when the X-Wings begin their dive down to the Death Star, the familiar John Williams trumpet fanfare was buried in the mix so you could barely hear it. No longer! The trumpets ring true in the Blu-ray mix loud and clear. When I heard this, I couldn't help thrusting my arms up in the air in a bit of happy relief. I then turned to Matt, who as it happens was standing right next to me, and saw him give a little smile and nod - he knew exactly what I was reacting to. When I leaned over to thank him for fixing it, his simple reply made me smile as well: "Trust me, I read the blogs too..."

Matt and his team have been very careful to ensure that these new 6.1 DTS-HD MA uncompressed audio mixes reproduce in exacting detail the sonic experience of these films we all know and remember, albeit with the added quality and clarity that the latest lossless mastering technology can provide. Matt reported that the 6.1 mixing process for Episodes V, IV and the Prequels was relatively straightforward, because all of the original audio stems and elements were readily available and were well catalogued. For Episode IV, however, "getting it exactly right" required a rather extensive forensic effort, as this material just wasn't cataloged with future surround remixes in mind. In many cases, Matt and his team went back to original analog tape recordings made in 1976 to get the best quality of all the required elements. As a result, it's fair to say that the surround mix for Episode IV was almost completely rebuilt from scratch, with Matt comparing his work to the original print master to ensure its creative accuracy. And at every step of the way, director George Lucas and original sound supervisor Ben Burtt were consulted to ensure that the mix reproduced as closely as possible their original intent for the film's sonic experience. In fact, Matt says he played the film's reels many times for George, in 15-20 second chucks, to get his feedback.

That's not to say that there aren't new little tweaks here and there, but rest assured they're very subtle. A few additional audio details were apparently "added" into the mix as well. I put added in quotes, because in many cases these elements - mostly very subtle background sound effects and voices - were recorded back in 1976-77 for the original film and were even used in the original audio mix, but because of the poor state of the art for movie soundtracks at the time, nobody's ever really heard these things before.

In the scenes Matt sampled for us, the clarity, resolution and staging of what heard was really quite impressive. I have to say, talking with Matt was enormously reassuring. He just clearly gets it. He knows these films, and he loves them as much as anyone. He knows all the complaints fans have had with the 2004 DVD release and he made sure to correct them - to get them right at long last.

Now, you'll recall that a little bit ago, I said these should probably be best considered new 2011 versions of these films, and not the 2004 DVD versions. All the fixes and corrections alone justify this in my opinion, but there's another reason too... and you can probably guess what it is: Once again, George has apparently added a few new "surprises" into these films. I don't know what they are and didn't get to see any of them on Friday, but I was assured that there will be "new things to notice" when we watch the films. I think we can safely assume that one of them will be the new all-digital Yoda in Episode I. Way back when Episode III was released on DVD, ILM digital effects supervisor Pablo Helman confirmed to me that the puppet Yoda in Episode I was replaced with a digital version to better match his appearance in Episodes II and III. In fact, the Episode III DVD extras includes a clip of the Episode I digital Yoda. However, this Blu-ray set is really the first opportunity we'll have to see it in full. What the other changes to these films may be, I have no idea, but I suspect there will be no lack of blog posts on this very subject within hours of the first discs becoming available to fans.

will Episodes IV, V and VI look as good as more recent films that have had state-of-the-art negative scans of 4, 6 or even 8K resolution? No, probably not. It will obviously be easier to say for sure when the final product is in hand in a few weeks, and we all have some time to really go over it and live with it a bit. In any case, this is one of those issues over which personal opinions are going to vary widely. The takeaway here is this: These films will look notably better than they ever have before at home, on any home format, and most (if not all) of the A/V issues that have driven fans crazy over the years - particularly about the 2004 DVD release - should be fixed on these Blu-rays.

Now then, let's move on to the extras. Is it really worth getting the Complete Saga set just to get the three extras discs? For me at least, the answer here is clear: Absolutely. Yes... I've now seen many of the Original Trilogy deleted scenes. No... I can't tell you much about them (believe me, that drives me as crazy as it does you). But I was pretty surprised by them and in a good way. What I can tell you is that they are substantial - at least for the Original Trilogy. This isn't just dribs and drabs stuff - it includes long sequences. And they're extremely cool. Frankly, for me this is the real draw of the entire BD release. As you've seen in some of the teaser clips Lucasfilm has released, they're not pristine, but most of them are in HD - at least the Original Trilogy clips. And trust me, they're well worth seeing. It's stuff some of you have wanted to see in good quality since 1977, along with a few things fans may not have known even existed.

I have to say, I'm very encouraged by what I've seen so far with regard to these Blu-rays, and by the answers I've gotten to the questions I've asked about them. Like many of you, the last few DVD releases of these films have always left me... wanting. It just always felt like they were rushed somehow, and that all too many little important quality details just were overlooked. But this Blu-ray set feels very different. Finally, it appears that these films may have gotten the attention they deserve on home video at long last - especially the Original Trilogy. In fact, I think this may be the first time since that 1994 Definitive Edition laserdisc box set that the films have been so carefully handled, and that so many of the fan irritant A/V problems have been properly addressed. So can I say that this Blu-ray box set represents the "ultimate" release of the films on disc, or that these films will look absolutely perfect? No. But I think it's now possible for me to believe that Lucasfilm may - just may - have finally done these films fairly proud on disc. We'll see.