Star Wars movies too dark!?!?

[Smokey]

My friend loaned me his (recently released) Star Wars movie collection (1 thru 6), and they seem to be slightly too dark. Have to pump up the brightness way up on TV to see details in dark scenes.

DVD contain THX calibration chapter where one can adjust contrast, brightness, color ,etc.. for optimum picture. For brightness calibration, a picture is shown on TV with THX logo, and one have to adjust brightness until the a [THX] shadow appear behind THX logo.

I had to max. out brightness control to see the shadow (any lower and shadow disappeared). So calibration confirmed that picture is too dark.

And couple of reviews on Amazon mentioned it also :rolleyes:

[topspeed]

Geez Smokeless, it is shot in space after all! It's s'posed to be dark!

Seriously tho, I didn't notice anything wrong with the picture quality. In fact, I'd consider Ep 3 to be reference worthy. Ep 1 and 2 were beautiful as well, but the movies themselves sucked so bad I can't consider them as references :p. Sound quality otoh, was screwy as hell on Ep 4 (A New Hope).

How's the battle with nicotine going, anyway?

[noddin0ff]

Just a thought, my dvd player has some image adjustment options that affect the picture before it goes out to the TV. I didn't realize this when I first set it up. I was wondering why I had to push the adjustment on my TV more than I felt I should. Setting the DVD to a more neutral out put and everything was fine.

[caniac]

Yeah, what he said.

Make sure your DVD player isn't set to "cinema" mode, or whatever other presets it may have.

[Woochifer]

I only noticed that with Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. Even though they seemed a bit dark, the color saturation and detail on the picture I thought looked great. Empire and the prequels seemed fine to me. The video quality on the prequels especially I thought was stellar. If you have to bump up the brightness on all six movies, you might need to recheck the calibration settings on your TV. I would not trust the THX Optimode tests, since they don't provide a color filter for accurate level matching. (And geez Smoke, you've been on here long enough -- still haven't bought yourself a DVE, Avia, or S&V disc yet?) A burned out tube will require that you bump the brightness way too high to see the details on dark backgrounds.

[Smokey]

Thanks guys for comments.

The darkness seem to be particular to these movies. I have other DVDs, and darkness don’t seem to be so severe on them (as to max out brightens). Even before using THX calibration menu, noticed that brightness have to be pumped up for dark scenes to be visible.

As noddinoff and caniac mentioned, some DVD player have internal picture (IRE) adjustments to compensate for this, but sorry to say my DVD player doesn’t. So have to rely on TV’s controls. But other than this issue, picture quality is truly stellar and a visual feast. Second episode seem to have the best picture transfer, and the best of prequels in term of story line and visual effects.

I hope this issue is only particular to Star Wars episodes (which are THX certified), and not to all THX certified movies. And to Wooch, sorry to say that don’t have any calibration discs :(


How's the battle with nicotine going, anyway?

Not too good. The Force is not with me in this battle :mad:

[caniac]

Well, I haven't had any issues picture-wise with my Star Wars set.

I also haven't had any issues with the sound either (some reviews I saw said that the first trilogy had a bunch of errors in the audio mix).

Maybe you just got a disc from a bad production run or something?

[Woochifer]

I also haven't had any issues with the sound either (some reviews I saw said that the first trilogy had a bunch of errors in the audio mix).

Oh you most certainly do actually! (Unless they fixed this issue with the new movie-only trilogy set) Listen carefully to the surround channels in Star Wars, and you'll notice that the music in the surrounds is flipped to the wrong channels! This is a big-time error, and should have been flagged at any number of different points during the mixing, mastering, and encoding stage. To date, Lucasfilm has admitted no wrongdoing and actually had the nerve to cite "creative decisions" as the reason for the music getting flipped around in the surrounds. Others have pointed out sound quality issues during certain passages, but I can forgive those kinds of problems because we're dealing with a 28-year old movie with deteriorating sound elements. But, something as rudimentary as keeping LEFT and RIGHT straight is an aggregious oversight.


Maybe you just got a disc from a bad production run or something?

Bad production runs with DVDs should not result in something that plays dark because it's not like analog sources that get replicated from masters that wear out.

[Smokey]

Listen carefully to the surround channels in Star Wars, and you'll notice that the music in the surrounds is flipped to the wrong channels! This is a big-time error, and should have been flagged at any number of different points during the mixing, mastering, and encoding stage.

I wonder if master audio tracks for triology Star Wars movies have surrounds track, or what we are hearing are phantom surround?

[Sir Terrence the Terrible]

I wonder if master audio tracks for triology Star Wars movies have surrounds track, or what we are hearing are phantom surround?

They have a surround track alright. Star Wars was released with three soundtracks. A 70mm six track, Dolby Stereo, and mono soundtracks. For the restoration in the early 90's, a new 5.1 mix was created to bring the sound of Star Wars into the 90's. The restored Star Wars soundtrack on film did not have the music reversed, so how it ended up that way on the DVD is anyones guess.

[Woochifer]

I wonder if master audio tracks for triology Star Wars movies have surrounds track, or what we are hearing are phantom surround?

It's absolutely not phantom surround! Like I said, give it a listen for yourself. It will be painfully obvious when you watch the opening crawl and hear the music in the surround channel reversed.

Lucasfilm did a lot of things right with the trilogy DVD release, but blew it with the soundtrack on Star Wars. They'd already done split surrounds on previous 5.1 Laserdisc releases, with the music in the correct channels on those soundtracks. But, for the DVD release they had to "revisit" the soundtrack yet again so that they could insert more sound effects (some of which I found excessive) and bump up the bass; and it was in that once-too-often tweaking that they f*k*d up. I thought the Special Edition soundtrack for Star Wars did the best job at preserving the sound of the original soundtrack while appropriately modernizing and cleaning up the audio. Sometimes, things are better left alone.

[Kam]

Sometimes, things are better left alone.

exactly. greedo didn't shoot first!!!!

[topspeed]

exactly. greedo didn't shoot first!!!!
This is one of the most heinous examples of re-editing I've encountered. It completely ruined the scene as well as the intention. Hello? Solo is a smuggler! He's supposed to shoot first and ask questions later!

The first time I saw that hack job, I literally exclaimed "What the f**k?!?"

[Kam]

This is one of the most heinous examples of re-editing I've encountered. It completely ruined the scene as well as the intention. Hello? Solo is a smuggler! He's supposed to shoot first and ask questions later!

The first time I saw that hack job, I literally exclaimed "What the f**k?!?"

i can live with the jabba scene, the extra dewbacks and other various monsters wandering around inthe background/foreground for no reason, the new explosions, the horrible song/dance number in jabba's lair, and christian hayden digitally put next to alec guinees and yoda at the end... that's allllll fine, i can deal with those changes as much as i dont think any of them added a single thing to the original trilogy, but i'll be damned if i'll ever accept greedo shooting first!!! completely changes the dynamic of a character.

who is solo? someone who shoots first, under the table, without revealing his intentions? wow, that's sure an interesting character to me! is that what 'really' happenned? Nope. he merely shot back in self defense. how utterly boring. :(

[GMichael]

i can live with the jabba scene, the extra dewbacks and other various monsters wandering around inthe background/foreground for no reason, the new explosions, the horrible song/dance number in jabba's lair, and christian hayden digitally put next to alec guinees and yoda at the end... that's allllll fine, i can deal with those changes as much as i dont think any of them added a single thing to the original trilogy, but i'll be damned if i'll ever accept greedo shooting first!!! completely changes the dynamic of a character.

who is solo? someone who shoots first, under the table, without revealing his intentions? wow, that's sure an interesting character to me! is that what 'really' happenned? Nope. he merely shot back in self defense. how utterly boring. :(

I agree. This was how you first met Solo. He was a badass. You weren't supposed to like him yet. First impression should be that he's a prick. Then you get to warm up to him later. Why change what was working so well?