Star Wars re-remastered to high quality 1977 version!

Star Wars re-remastered to high quality 1977... by debunkerbuster

by Tracey Jaquith

Star Wars re - remastered!

Here's the problem:
- you love Star Wars
- you like high quality restored video and audio
- you are a purist and didn't like the added computer graphics (CG) junk to the 2004 DVD box set version
- you want the cleaned up video and audio, but without the baggage of those changes!
(See the changes in the film side-by-side in HD (about 15 minutes, no sound))

Some examples:
You've probably heard that in the Greedo vs. Han showdown, it was edited to make "Greedo shoot first".
But did you know *Greedo never shot*?! 8-)
All shots of the Jawa sandcrawler in full-view were changed.
Many dogfight or other model scenes were completely remade in CG.
There are even some subtle, "um wtf, george?" moments

If you are like me, and have the 2004 DVD box set version (or the 2 version limited edition DVD release with 1977 and 2004 versions) *and* have the 1977 version of the film DVD -- then this is for you! (The 1977 DVD version was dingy colors, poor quality (non-anamorphic) encoding, and stereo basic dingy sound -- it seemed a bit of a eff you to the fans. Why not release it an anamorphic DVD *at least*, if not the same start point (cleaned audio and video from the celluloid film) that the 2004 remaster began with?)

I took the two DVDs and merged them.

I managed to do so without altering/recompressing a single remastered video frame! (I just removed if it was an added scene like Jabba the Hut; or replaced with 1977 version of video when the 2004 switched the video (for example, landspeeding into Mos Eisley spaceport were all sorts of changes). (I used a great tool "avidemux" for frame-level MPEG2/VOB editing and made all my cuts with regard to I, B, and P frames to make sure all frame sequences were left pristine).

I was able to keep the 5.1 Dolby Digital (AC-3) audio soundtrack intact!

There are about 36 scene removals or replacements.

This item shows comparison of the two films next to each other to get a sense of the changes and "fixes". High Quality / HD version.

You can see the list of changes here.

If you have both DVDs, you can follow my steps and re-cut the same version of the film.
That's right, for only $16 and some setup/configuration, you can make this same nearly ideal 1977 version of the film in the highest quality video and audio, too!
You need some A/V tools but all of them can be found on linux, windoze, or mac. (I did all this on my Mac).
See my maker script here. All the files I used as well as the edit lists can be found in this item's dir. The edited DVD is created via one script that runs on the command line. So you need:
to have command line shell/terminal (add cygwin to windows; use existing terminal for mac; use existing terminal shell for linux for the 5.1 channel surround sound, just slightly harder to setup: "aften" and "audio_combine" (instructions in "README.txt").

Think I'm crazy/obsessed? This version is huge improvement to the 1977 DVD release, being faithful to the 1977 version in theatres. I spent a week moonlighting on this project; ILM/Lucas spent reportedly $10M for the remaster and changes.