Like many, I was unhappy with a lot the changes that were made for the Special Editions and the 2011 blu-rays.
Harmy's Despecialised Editions are great for those that want to see the films exactly as they were when they were originally released theatrically, but some of the changes (especially the updating of special effects) actually make the films better IMHO, so I decided to make 'Semi-Specialised' editions of these films to remove what I considered the bad changes while keeping all the good changes/additions.
With this V3 release I have used the newest Star Wars blu-ray as my main video source because it has far more natural looking colours than the previous bluray that has very oversaturated colours, a strong blue tint applied throughout the whole film and the fleshtones have a very strong reddish magenta push that makes characters look permanently sunburnt.
Another change with this V3 release compared to V 2.5 is that Luke's lightsaber while he is training with Obi-Wan on the Millenium Falcon is now blue as it was in the original theatrical release of Star Wars.
I have also reduced of the brightness of the garbage compactor scene because I felt that it was a little bright on the newest Star Wars bluray and the added brightness IMHO robbed the scene of some of its atmosphere and menace.
I have made two changes to V2.5 compared to previous releases, I have replaced two specialised shots that I have always found distracting when watching previous versions of the Star Wars Semi-Specialised Edition.
The first shot is where the CG dino creature walks across the frame covering the whole screen as Luke and Ben are being stopped by Stormtroopers in Mos Eisley.
The second shot is a very silly over the top scene where Han is chasing the stormtroopers in the deathstar and in the Special Edition he comes round the corner and there are hundreds of CG stormtroopers in a docking bay waiting for him, while in the theatrical release it was just a dead end with the six stormtroopers he'd been chasing waiting for him, a very funny scene in the theatrical release that just looks very silly and fake in the Special Edition.
I used TeamNegative1's Silver Screen Screen Edition as my video source to reinsert these two scenes into this V2.5 (thank you so much TeamNegative1 for creating this wonderful release and sharing it with everybody). I also adjusted the colour grading of the two replaced shots to make them more seemlessly match the colour grading of the rest of V2.5 and also removed the more distracting spots and dirt that appeared here and there. Enjoy!
Below is a brief summary of the changes made to this film:
Star Wars:
Audio changes:
Original Krayt Dragon call restored
New lossless pcm audio track created to fit this semi-specialised edition, based off Belbucus's excellent 1993 Star Wars PCM audio mix
Video Changes:
Luke's lightsaber while he is training with Obi-Wan on the Millenium Falcon is now blue as it was in the original theatrical release of Star Wars
Silly CG droid and jawa antics when they enter Mos Eisley have been removed
Jabba scene removed
Han shoots Greedo first with no awful CG head dodging action
Lightsabers made more consistant so they are not constantly changing colour, Vader's lightsaber is now red all the time rather than turning pink.
Here are some screencaps release:
Regraded 1:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/yqssRbm/01regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 2:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/93WbP4t/02regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 3:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/c3mT4sh/03regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 4:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/hFSDT87/04regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 5:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/VprtwsH/05regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 6:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/m6k8Mkx/06regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 7:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/92LNb26/07regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 8:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/n0qcCdQ/08regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 9:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/wCmtb0M/09regraded.jpg[/img]
Regraded 10:
[img]https://i.ibb.co/nMYg7w5/10regraded.jpg[/img]
Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : [email protected] Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, RefFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 2 h 3 min Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 3 000 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 10 000 kb/s Width : 1 920 pixels Height : 804 pixels
Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Format profile : LC Codec ID : 40 Duration : 2 h 2 min Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 180 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 207 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 SPF) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 157 MiB (6%) Title : sw.aac Encoded date : UTC 2021-03-07 17:11:54 Tagged date : UTC 2021-03-07 17:12:06