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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."
378 Terabytes Of Star Wars on 600 G5s
Movie dirt is a special kind of "noise" in images, from a statistical point of view. Thus special filters can be applied.
Apple has it on their own web site here.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
just imagine: ;)
they have 180 000 frames
1 frame = 70 MB
use your calc folks
The MACS made Greedo shoot first!
Most people don't realize, much of the primary CG work done on the Star Wars films are done on Macs. But ILM signed contracts with SGI which prohibits them from acknowledging the contribution of any system other than SGI. Inside ILM, this contractual obligation is known as "the Jedi Clause." So the contribution of Macs and Mac users to these films go largely unrecognized.
Most films shot now are digitized, or shot digitally in the first place.
"Hey, you know what would be cool?"
"What's that?"
"These G5s are pretty cool...we should make a beowulf cluster of them!"
"Well, we're obscenely rich, so..."
"Yipee!"
Or... "Gee it was more fun the first time when I was 10!" Well, that's because it actually was a better-looking film.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I love Apple and I love the spirit of competittion, I have been a Mac user much of my life. But why are Macs always treated like the retarded child of the computer industry? Look at the guy pictured in the article; he's smiling, he's so proud 'THEY DID IT!'
It seems like any time the Mac platform does something that is remotely interesting people rejoice and it is plastered everywhere. Would this story be on the front page if PCs were used? I doubt it, even if they were running Linux.
It's just like this weird thing where anything, even commonplace events get blown out of porportion just because Macs were used, as if the entire platform blows and it's amazing anything gets done, which is not the case. Maybe it is just the Mac user hubris as pictured above, but it comes across as this weird feeling I mentioned earlier. Touting that the macs 'can do!' things PCs do all the time makes them seem inferior and retarded, like they need the positive reinforcement.
Check them out on the previous slashdot articles for ESB and ANH. You can compare the improvements in the image quality. It's amazing how much improvement can be made and detail added in.
Amazon has a list made up by Chuck Kahn of movies that have been cleaned up by Lowry.
l is t-browse/-/1X2DZ42QS8OVB/103-1368633-4717431
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/
I've picked up THX1138, Once upon a time in the west, North by Northwest, The Ghoul and of course Star Wars.
The results are INCREDIBLE. Except for some obvious dubbing with sound, Once upon a time in the west looks like it was filmed yesterday. So does THX1138!
I've tried finding the Lowry Digital Web site. But INCREDIBLY it seems like they don't have one! Seems strange. You would think they would have a web site telling people the films they have done so people might go out and buy them.
If somebody knows it....PLEASE post it!
And here I would just have used some photo-wash. At least, that's what you use when you develop film :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm sure they had to handle the originals for duplication and remastering along the way, I'm pretty sure they would have thought to take precautions handling the film. They're not stupid.
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.
I'm very glad to hear that this technique of using the data in several frames of footage really does exist today. However, where can I get my paws on it? I've at many times wished for higher quality in various clips I've DLed, and found myself annoyed at knowing that in the sum of the data of a scene the information is there, but I can't access it. With whatever they're running at LDI, I could access it.
Also, imagine if you will what you could learn by running this on the footage of the JFK assassination? Or all those UFO sightings? This could be the conspiracy buff's dream. =)
All rites reversed 2010
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.
This just in, story released about re-release of Star Wars has been re-released for /.'ers to re-read.
Can't you realize that redoing the same posts over and over again is easily recognized by frequent readers of this news repository. Comments often respect that the editors are only human, but such a repeat of a mistake makes most redears reluctantly repeat the same jokes that they made the last time this was reposted.
My apologies....really!
The real litigious bastards...
Firstly, the sound effects made Star Wars an innovative film,(ironic that sound doesn't really travel through space) Many theaters upgraded their sound systems specifically for Star Wars. Secondly, many features of Star Wars quickly became standard in filmaking. The films the newer generation sees are all derivative. Its like listening to Robert Johnson after growing up with Led Zepplin. I respect the blues, but its not so much fun to listen to, sorta like going in a nearly empty basement of an old house.
Node 23543: "What's the sickest thing you've done for cash?"
Node 25685: "I once had to render a goat hobbit monkey sex video...I was depressed for a year!"
Node 65423: "I had to do pitch correction on three hours of Britney Spears audio! I still find myself waking up and crying like a baby..."
Node 27928: "Once, I had to work on a Lucas proje..."
All of the other nodes: "Say no more! You poor bastard!"
Unidentified node : "You whore!"
...here he is!
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
Most films shot now are digitized, or shot digitally in the first place.
Most films are not shot digitally, very very few films are shot digitally. Most films are still shot on film.
I wouldn't say older films are forgotten, not at all. Almost all of the studios (the big ones at least) started sending the old, original reels to the massive underground storage facility that I believe is run by Iron Mountain. Here they are kept in controlled temps and dust free.
R(k)
It turns out that a huge part of the film restoration/cleanup work is done using programs from MTI Right now huge film libraries are undergoing scanning and cleanup using MTI's products in preparation for high-def DVD release (once the standards get, uhm, standardized)
These MTI workstations might have highest software/hardware cost ratio of any widely deployed system. The hardware costs are a couple of thousand dollars, and the software is well over $50,000 per system. But, they get the job done like nothing else, and it is my experience that studios demand that particular software for their restoration.
It's not a completely automatic process by any means. The software can do a lot on its own, but it does require an artist to painstakingly review and correct the things that the software misses, or to guide the software to a correct solution.
A friend of mine who is building a large restoration facility would love to have a Linux solution, but unfortunately none exists at this point.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Can someone elaborate on how shot noise applies to optical systems, specifically, cinematography? Since the original source material is conventional 'analog' film, at what point is the noise introduced? How is it introduced?
Well, it's all explained in the article. And you've got half the answer yourself. But I'll try to explain further...
(Yes I realize that film is not a pure analog format; the resolution being limited by the grain size of the emulsion - but at the same time, it's not what we consider digital.)
Film grain itself is a noise component. Film grains are nothing more than crystals sensitive to a particular light wavelength. In commonly used 35mm film stocks, there are three layers of emulsion - one red, one green, one blue. Think of the grains as "pixels", although they're somewhat randomly distributed, they're not all of a uniform size, and they're not all uniformly sensitive to light. The end result is that the minute differences between adjacent grains makes them easily discernible on a theatrical-size screen, and somewhat visible on a large TV set. They appear as noise.
Optical effects also involve compositing several layers of film on top of each other. According to the article, the light saber scenes were the worst. I'd imagine at that time, shooting a light saber duel probably involved three layers of film; the master shot and one optical shot for each light saber. Obviously this triples your noise and also softens the image. It can also introduce color casts because the light is being altered through each layer of film.
As films age, chemical reactions also cause color shifts in the grains. This can lead to even more noise.
Films also get just plain dirty over time. The Star Wars negatives have been handled a lot, so they're probably dirtier than most. 35mm not being very big, when you blow it up onto a theater screen or even a TV set, a small layer of dust or tiny particles of dirt will add a lot of crud to the image.
The software they used to clean up these films apparently works by comparing each frame of film to the frame before and the frame after, to see what's picture information and what's noise (random noise will be easy for a computer to pick out, because it will not match at all from one frame to the next). It should have no problem removing both film grain and dirt, as well as other types of noise.
I'd imagine they must have manually isolated each individual edit in the film to reduce errors, but this wouldn't have been that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. There's probably only maybe a couple thousand cuts per film (assuming a high average of 5-10 cuts per minute), so it wouldn't take more than a couple days for one person to do this.
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
to fix all the bad acting in the films... that seems like it would be a worthwhile investment for film restoration.
What Lucas did was to abandon the laws of physics in favor of entertaining the audience. True that sound won't travel through empty or very sparse space, but you could STILL have interesting sound effects. Every time something blows up, as the shock-wave passes the viewer you would expect to hear *something* in real life.
Now, yes it's much more interesting to hear the explosion as it happens, even though in real life you'd certainly have to deal with the shock-wave carried sound or (assuming space in this far-off galaxy is full of air) a huge delay between the time you see the explosion and the time it takes for the sound of that explosion to reach you.
The physics of movies has, i fear, spoiled the expectations of all future space travelers. Sound in outer space? Blasters? Deflector shields? And my biggest peeve: 2-D shock waves (a la praxis)? That's some FUNKY distribution of mass there.
Although the sharpness and lack of scratches/dirt is great, the color quality is pretty awful in the restored DVDs. The saturation is way too high; for example, sometimes it looks like ObiWan is wearing lipstick, the desert sand often looks bright orange, and C3P0 looks like he was painted with a flourescent marker or something. In the Millennium Falcon scene when Luke is training lightsaber, his lightsaber is bright green for some reason - even though it was originally pale blue.
If not for the wonky color, I might be able to stomach the Lucas changes; as it is, I much prefer watching my bootleg DVDs based on the pre-special edition Laser Disks, which are basically perfect except for slightly lower sharpness than it could be.