As of December 2015, the Despecialized Edition of Star Wars was remastered at version 2.5, ESB saw major improvements in v2.0, and a workprint (rough draft) of v2.0 for ROTJ was released mere weeks before Star Wars: The Force Awakens hit theaters. This is the infamous DESPECIALIZED Star Wars Trilogy on 3 home brewed, printed BD25 discs, with custom cover art - the cover shows 1080p but the films are in fact 720p. (Star Wars (1977) – Despecialized Edition v2.7) Using the Force to learn the ways of video editing as he went upon his journey, he taught himself the necessary skills to undo this grievous wrong. Soon other Jedi Knights were drawn to his cause, for it was righteous and true. Star Wars Trilogy Despecialized Edition. 45,462 likes 58 talking about this. Harmy's Despecialized Edition is a reconstruction of the theatrical versions of the STAR WARS Trilogy.
- Star Wars Despecialized Edition Blu Ray
- Star Wars Despecialized Blu-ray
- Star Wars Despecialized Blu-ray
The real Star Wars--the original film, with all its imperfections visible for all to see--is finally here.
In April 2011, a dedicated Star Wars fan named Harmy released a landmark film edit called the Star Wars Despecialized Edition. Where most fan edits seek to build new stories out of existing footage or 'fix' films by cutting out unpopular scenes (like the majority of Attack of the Clones, for example), the Despecialized Edition did something novel. It tried to make Star Wars Star Wars again. No CG Jabba, no touched up special effects. Han Solo guns down Greedo without the blink of an eye.
It's not so much a fan edit as a fan preservation. Harmy went on to give The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi the same treatment, cobbling together footage from HDTV rips and upscaled DVD and laserdisc footage. Fans rallied around the Despecialized editions around the time Star Wars was released on Blu-ray with even more unnecessary changes.
Amazing as it was, the Despecialized Edition wasn't perfect, and Harmy spent another year working on a huge 2.0 release. This time he had the Blu-rays as a source, and he based an extensive color correction of the entire film off a very special fade-free technicolor print. He made countless changes to restore every element of the film to the way it was seen 35 years ago. The result: Despecialized Edition Remastered looks even better. Better than version 1.0. Better than Blu-ray.
A thread on the Star Wars Original Trilogy forums chronicles Harmy's progress throughout the preservation project. Like all their fan edits, this one is meant to be viewed by people who already paid for and own a copy of Star Wars in some form--this is not meant for public sale or distribution. Flexible pavement design software, free download.
Want to know more about the Despecialized Editions? I did an interview with Harmy about the 1.0 version last year. Read on for a detailed look at the history of the project.
Behind the Scenes of Harmy's Star Wars 'Despecialized Edition' originally published on Screened.com September 22, 2011
There are pieces of Star Wars that will forever be ingrained in my mind. 20th Century Fox's opening fanfare can only herald the beginning of John Williams' iconic score. The sorrow and power of Binary Sunset in A New Hope and of Han Solo and the Princess in The Empire Strikes Back will stay with me forever. But somehow, one of my strongest memories of Star Wars was never in the films at all; it's from the trailer attached to the 1995 VHS re-release of the original trilogy. Even if they were never uttered in the films themselves, these words had a gravity to them. They felt like Star Wars.
For those who remember. For those who will never forget. And for a whole new generation who will experience it for the very first time..
The 1995 release, unchanged but for the remastered THX audio, was dubbed 'The Original Star Wars trilogy on video..one last time.' That was true enough--Special Edition followed two years later, and those who will never forget the original trilogy have fallen into a cycle of disappointment and dismay with every subsequent re-release. There are countless justifications for hating the Special Editions, from shoddy coloring mistakes to unnecessary CG alien additions, but one towers above the rest. The original Star Wars is a cultural landmark worthy of preservation--along with films like Birth of a Nation, Metropolis, and Citizen Kane, Star Wars had an incalculable impact on the language of film, and Han Solo stepping on CG Jabba's tail had nothing to do with it.
George Lucas has, perhaps, lost sight of that fact. His fans haven't. While most of us can't do more than complain, one member of the Original Trilogy Star Wars forum has gone above and beyond to restore Star Wars to its original (imperfect) form. Harmy, a 23 year-old student living in the Czech Republic, has spent most of 2011 working on his own Despecialized Editions of the original trilogy--ironically restoring the vision Lucas wandered from in the past 15 years.
With new changes in the Blu-ray releases stirring up rage and Vader Noooos across the Internet, Harmy's work has suddenly exploded in popularity. Fed up with CG insertions but desperate for a better picture than the letterboxed Laserdisc rips included on the 2004 DVDs? Harmy's Despecialized Editions are the closest you're going to get.
And here's the crazy part: Harmy didn't spend seven months undoing Lucas' damage with state-of-the-art editing software or a beastly octo-core desktop workstation. As he explained to me in an email interview, he works with the humble tools available to him: an old laptop, outdated Adobe After Effects, and consumer-grade editing software. Why? Because the original films deserve to be preserved.
'I used to have a copy of a copy of an old VHS (the original version) which I watched so much as a kid that I totally wore it out,' Harmy wrote. 'Actually in the case of TESB and ROTJ I saw the Special Editions first and it took a lot of effort to find the original versions on VHS here in the Czech Republic. And it was one of the awesomest STAR WARS moments for me when I finally got to watch the original versions of these films (though it also made me pretty angry when I realized that some of the Special FX shots I was admiring so much were actually recomposited and thus lost much of their historical value).'
Harmy originally got the idea to 'despecialize' Star Wars when he found out an old girlfriend had never seen the movies. He wanted to show her the original, rather than the Special Edition, and ended up settling for the Laserdisc rip on the 2004 DVDs (often referred to as GOUT, or George's Original Unaltered Theatrical versions).
Long before starting the Despecialized project in 2011, Harmy had tried splicing the GOUT DVD footage into a 720p rip of Empire using Windows Movie Maker. The results weren't pretty, but he came back to the idea three years later and started work on a Partly Despecialized Edition of the trilogy, removing the most egregious SE changes. Those edits eventually rolled into the full Despecialized Editions he worked on this year, beginning with The Empire Strikes Back in February and ending with Return of the Jedi in August.
In addition to cutting out Special Edition scenes, Harmy color corrected each film--which involved matching up all of his disparate source videos--to mimic the original versions as closely as possible. Working with an HDTV rip as a base, he upscaled content from the GOUT DVDs, created custom mattes to hide Special Edition changes, and used extensive rotoscoping to piece the changes together.
Just a few of his most impressive edits are scattered throughout this article--hundreds more are compiled in a Picasa gallery here.
Uttaran hindi serial story till now. Even with Star Wars finally out on Blu-ray, Harmy doesn't plan to start the projects from scratch.
'I also decided against using the Blu-Rays as a source for the new versions, as I’d still have to work in 720p and from the comparisons I've seen between the Blu-Rays and the highest quality HDTV captures, the difference is so small (being the same resolution from the same master) that it wouldn't be worth it,' he explained.
But the Despecialized project isn't over and done with just yet.
'I’m working on a new version of SW with some glitches fixed, some shots re-despecialized and some additional changes (for example I’m currently working on restoring the original lightsabers in the Ben vs. Vader duel or the original hologram of Leia, both of which were recomposited in the SE and given a very different look in the process),' Harmy wrote. 'Then I’m going to do some further tweaks to ESB (some more changes were recently discovered and added to Doubleofive’s comprehensive SE change lists: SW, ESB, ROTJ, Blu-Ray).'
Harmy's initiative--and the passion of the Original Trilogy forum crowd, who kept him going through the more tedious editing moments--are rare examples of Internet dissatisfaction leading to something genuinely amazing and productive. The Save Star Wars website is a fascinating resource for changes made to the series over the years, and its story about a 2010 screening of a one-of-a-kind Technicolor imbibition dye-transfer print sparks a tiny hope that one day a 4K or 6K scan of the original film will digitally preserve Star Wars for decades to come. It may be a forlorn hope, considering the time investment and equipment (nevermind the legal issues) involved in digitizing the film.
Until the day Lucasfilm or a very rich, very bold fan scans that Technicolor film, the Star Wars community subsists on edits like Harmy's, put together with the Special Edition and GOUT DVDs and HDTV rips from satellite broadcasts. If you're interested in diving into the deep, deep world of Star Wars fan edits, Harmy's Despecialized editions are easy to find with a little Googling. Most editors aren't nearly as exacting--or as subtle, anyway--and instead focus on having fun with Star Wars instead of preserving it.
Star Wars Despecialized Edition Blu Ray
Harmy's own Star Wars Trilogy: The Very Special Edition, available in 12 parts on Youtube, mashes up real footage with Star Wars parodies from the obvious (Blue Harvest and Robot Chicken) to the obscure (random Youtube parodies). One edit removes excess Ewoks from Return of the Jedi. Another cuts the prequel trilogy down into a four hour affair, lopping off about 40 percent of its original runtime. And, of course, there's the famous Phantom Edit, which pushes Jar Jar into a small supporting role and excises about 20 minutes of the film.
For now, Harmy's edits represent the closest thing to George's Original Unaltered Theatrical we can watch in high definition. And with another round of editing on the way, the Despecialized edits will only be more faithful to the versions that drew moviegoers to theaters again and again and again--the versions we'll never forget.
RotJ was hit so hard by changes. You must log in or register to reply here. The 4K77 is the first scan that I feel is worthy. Oct 29, 1, Archived from the original on November 29, As of a few days ago, The Empire Strikes Back just went from v1.
Correct Vaders lightsaber appearing white 6. Which is why most prints, on Eastman or Fuji stock, are faded to a lovely pink hue. The legality of downloading Harmy’s Despecialized Edition is contentious. Why piece meal stuff together when you have a complete source? Sounds super crisp compared to what I’m used to. It’s really strong, almost blurs the picture to my eyes. Oct 25, 12, Star Wars fans can be the worst, but also the best.
Star Wars Despecialized Blu-ray
Oct 29, 1, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Replacing puppet monsters with CGI in Cantina 5. Unofficial Star Wars media. He was three when I started working and I showed it to him when he was five and he hxrmy it. Nathan Barry of Wired praised the films as “an absolute joy to watch”, while Gizmodo described them as “very, very good”. Some projectionists would defocus slightly on really grainy films.
Oct 27, 1, Inland Empire. Definitely gonna check out that 4K. Consequently, the films are only available via various BitTorrent trackers and through specialized rapid download programs using file sharing sites.
It’s a shame that it has to come to this, but I’m happy there’s some crazy fans out there.
Move over Harmy’s Despecialized Star Wars, it looks like we have a new contender! | ResetEra
How are the CG X-Wings a good thing? Dec 9, Fan creates ‘despecialized’ original trilogy”. Writing for Inverse, Sean Hutchinson placed it at number one on his list of the best Star Wars fan edits, and described it as “the perfect pre way to experience the saga”.
New falcon taking off scene ANH neutral changes 1. I have the actual lasers, but there are steps deslecialized puggo and 4k As a fan edit, Harmy’s Despecialized Edition cannot be legally bought or sold, and is “to be shared among legal owners of the officially available releases only”. Only a few Technicolor prints were made as the process was mostly discontinued in the early ’70s.
Archived from the original on May 5, Adding more gizmos to R2 when he gets shot by the Jawas 3. Share Your Thoughts Click to share your thoughts.
If so, you’re doing God’s work.
Move over Harmy’s Despecialized Star Wars, it looks like we have a new contender!
By ’83 low fade stock was available so Jedi prints are usually okay. Desprcialized 26, 3, The laziest way is to just search The Pirate Bay or Kickass Torrents to search and download the files using a torrent software.
Just use some common sense and google it.
The easiest way to download legit version of the Despecialized Editions would be to use the private torrent method, but if you don’t have a MySpleen account, it’s almost impossible to get.
Archived from the original on December 14, hxrmy People rated despecialised that highly? I personally didn’t notice all of the different sources when I watched them a few years ago. Updated versions have been created in the years that followed.
Oct 25, 2, The Watcn AwakensI highly recommend you watch these versions beforehand. Which version do you consider to be superior to the Despecialized version prior to 4K77? Oct 25, Melbourne, Australia. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
As of a few days ago, The Empire Strikes Back just went from despecialiezd. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
I remember Gareth mentioning watching a 4K version of A New Hope, but I never caught the tidbit about it being a new print. With no experience in professional film editing, he taught himself as he went, using programs such as Avisynth and Adobe After Effects. Plus he still uses the God awful BDs and the garbage Lowry masters as a source. New sandcrawler shots 2. Inone year after the project had begun, the first version of Harmy’s Despecialized Edition was published online.
Oct 25, 14, USA. Retrieved January 27, Sean Hutchinson of Inverse placed Harmy’s Despecialized Edition at number one on his list of the best Star Wars fan edits and called them “the perfect pre way to experience the saga”.
Very happy about this. If you plan on seeing Star Wars: Oct 29, It apparently has yet more changes. Despecialized gave us the OT in higher quality and Harmy kept making improvements to his projects over the years when new sources became available.
Yeah what’s up with the chromatic aberration on these? But they have a different look to standard prints.