Macs Do Star Wars Dirty Work

bfl writes "The BBC is running a story about Lowry Digital Images and how they used 600 dual G5s and 400 TB of storage space to clean the dirt off of the old Star Wars reels, and upgrade the resolution to get them ready for their DVD release."

Comments

Thats like, how many dvds now ?

[ThomasFlip]

Is it me or does it seem like they this cash cow is never going to run out.

Re:Thats like, how many dvds now ?

[GerbilSocks]

There's only a finite number of old films. Of those old films, most are either shoddy or have been long forgotten. Only a very small number of movies are beloved enough that studios are willing to cost out the restoration work.

Most films shot now are digitized, or shot digitally in the first place.

Re:Thats like, how many dvds now ?

[magarity]

Only a very small number of movies are beloved enough that studios are willing to cost out the restoration work.

A bulk of this cost is the initial hardware outlay and creating software to do the work. Once these 600 Macs are done with SW IV-VI, it should be fairly easy and cost effective to crank plenty of other old movies through.

movie dirt

[mothis2]

While it is true that filters can be applied, why bother when you can just keep them clean instead?

Explains generation gap?

[Hao Wu]

This may be why Star Wars was so popular when if first came out, but when little kids and others watched it many years later in re-release or on video they were somewhat less impressed by the lesser quality film they were watching.

Or... "Gee it was more fun the first time when I was 10!" Well, that's because it actually was a better-looking film.

Re:Macintosh = The Industries Retarded Son

[Anonymous Coward]

It's unlikely that a PC can match the speed of a G5 if the altivec engine is used extensively. Apple provides the cheapest hardware for vector intensive tasks.

By the way, I am a vector programmer.

600 G5s and the lightsabers were broken.

[Guspaz]

Seriously, if you're going to devote that kind of hardware to a restoration, why can't you be bothered to pay a guy to airbrush the lightsabers in rather than use the blurred crap that was the result of the cleanup? The lightsabers (in order to look good onscreen) need a white core with a coloured edge. The DVD version blurred them so much the white core is entirely gone and they're just coloured smudges all the way through.

Not just the graphics explaining the gap!

[Fantastic Lad]

This may be why Star Wars was so popular when if first came out, but when little kids and others watched it many years later in re-release or on video they were somewhat less impressed by the lesser quality film they were watching.

Or... "Gee it was more fun the first time when I was 10!" Well, that's because it actually was a better-looking film.

The original versions of the films also didn't have the new editing, new scenes, new shots, all of which greatly diminished the pacing and believability of the film.

There's a reason they give Oscars out for editing. --It really doesn't take much to ruin an otherwise good work. A single nail standing up on a water slide can make the whole ride a lot less enjoyable. And the re-release versions of Star Wars had a whole hardware store's worth of junk added!

Every three minutes while watching that thing, I felt, at best that I was having to deliberately overlook stupidity, (like those new digital droids floating around Mos Eisley which it was clear from the actors' body language, were not really there and thus created a discordant effect), to my feeling like I was being stabbed when Luke Screamed while falling down the throat of Cloud City.

So yeah, if I was a kid today watching those lousy re-release versions of Star Wars, I'd also think my elders were doddery and out-dated for raving about them; that they needed a patronizing pat on the head and a, "There, there, old timer; I'm sure they seemed like nice films in your day."

The wide-screen, color and sound restored, but otherwise un-adultered LD copies from the mid nineties are the best versions available of the original trilogy. --There are yet to be any pirate copies of those ripped to DVD floating around, but there damned-well ought to be!

Some of you out there have the capability to create these. DO IT. Star Wars is a vital part of our culture, and what Lucas is doing to erase it is as insidious as any 'terrorism'. --If Phantom Menace hadn't sucked, there is a good chance we could have avoided being in Iraq today.

-FL

Re:Bloody Godamn Propaganda!!

[Ohreally_factor]

I'm just wondering why they needed that much CPU power.

A dust spec is on one frame. Therefore it's not on frames before nor after. Therefore, some mpeggish variation should detect a massive change, and erase it, filling in the middle chunk mpeggishly.

At 70 MB a frame, we're well beyond your typical "mpeggish" resolutions. I'm not even sure why you bring up MPEG any way, as they're working uncompressed. Doing any sort of cleaning on MPEG files would be. . . just. . . .retarded.

Hardly computationally intensive, compared to what one computer can do. Maybe it's needed for all the disc storage space.

Of course you could do this with just one computer, if you were very very patient. The idea is that this is being done as a business, and clients expect results within certain time constraints, known as deadlines.

Furthermore, it is computationally intensive. Did you even RTFA?

And lastly, what the heck is "Impiuos"? is this a new line of cars from South Korea?

Seriously. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

(And please pardon the abrasiveness of my previous response. I was chiding myself seconds after hitting the 'submit' button.)

Here's what I mean. . .

There are very few instances in our culture when nearly everybody is focusing on a single event with such openness and enthusiasm as when Phantom Menace was nearing release.

During a time like that, it is possible, (it has happened before), to put across messages which everybody will hear at the same time, and react to by possibly adjusting their behavior at the same time. The mass consciousness of the entire industrialized world had turned the static way down, and was listening.

The messages in Star Wars are important and several. . .

1) The idea of Big Government being evil. The good guys in Star Wars were, very literally, the 'terrorists'.

2) The Phantom Menace was a story about how a democratic government can quickly be manipulated into fascism. --The means by which it was done in the Phantom Menace were nearly identical to how it was done through 9-11. --That is, a deliberately manufactured attack was used to create an emotional reaction among elected officials so that dangerous measures could be quickly pushed through and voted into power; measures which later caused the downfall of democratic government. (This is what happened with 9-11, patriot act). Had the story been properly told, it could have done its job in alerting the populace to the possibility and dangers of such manipulations.

But this didn't happen. Lucas dropped the ball. I suspect, given the stakes today, he was possibly influenced; there was a time twenty years ago when he understood and indeed created many of the rules he broke in making the Phantom Menace.

There were several other layers as well which could have created positive effects on our populace but did not. --The films could have reinforced standards of moral behavior, (through the actions of the Jedi). Instead we now have American soldiers, (kids in their twenties), acting like savages, performing torture on other humans.

Myths and Stories are perhaps the most powerful way to teach behavior to a culture. Star Wars was one of the pillars of our society, but it has been corrupted.

-FL