Like many, I was unhappy with a lot the changes that were made for the Special Editions and most recently the 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.
For this latest V3 release of The Empire Strikes Back Semi-Specialised Edition I decided to use the most recent 2020 blu-ray release of The Empire Strikes Back as my main source because I feel that it has far more natural colours than the previous blu-ray and all the Vader lightsaber colour inconsistencies have been corrected.
Also included in this release is a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 upmix upmix of Belbucus's fantastic Star Wars '95 PCM two channel audio track and the Cinema DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track created to fit this Semi-Specialised Edition. The video bitrate has also been boosted compared to previous versions to better fit the 23GB space available on a writable bd-25 disc. All edits/changes have been kept exactly the same as the previous releases. Enjoy!
Thank you CapableMetal for syncing the Cinema DTS 5.1 tracks split by reels to the '97 release and then providing me with them, I couldn't have created these Cinema DTS MA 5.1 tracks without them! Chapter timings from the blu ray have also been included in this release.
Below is a brief summary of the changes made to this film:
Star Wars:
The Empire Strikes Back:
Audio changes:
The emperor's original dialogue from the theatrical release has been restored
The original voice of Boba Fett from the theatrical release has been restored
Luke's line 'you're lucky you don't taste so good' after R2D2 gets spat out has been restored
Darth Vader's line 'Bring me my shuttle' has been restored
New lossless pcm audio track created to fit this semi-specialised edition, based off Belbucus's excellent 1993 Empire Strikes Back PCM audio mix
Video Changes:
The original emperor from the theatrical release has been returned (my thanks goes to Adywan for the original emperor footage taken from his Empire Strikes Back colour corrected 'purist' edition)
All extra shots of Darth Vader going back to the Executor and the arrival on the star destroyer that were not in the theatrical release have been removed so they do not interupt the escape of the millenium falcon
Lightsabers are 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 for this release:
Regraded 1:
Regraded 2:
Regraded 3:
Regraded 4:
Regraded 5:
Regraded 6:
Regraded 7:
Regraded 8:
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 : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 21.0 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 30.0 Mb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 804 pixels
Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : PCM
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 2 h 5 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 32.000 FPS (1500 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 1.35 GiB (6%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile : MA / Core
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 2 h 5 min
Bit rate mode : Variable / Constant
Bit rate : 1 713 kb/s / 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossless / Lossy
Stream size : 1.50 GiB (7%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Audio #3
ID : 4
Format : DTS
Format/Info : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile : MA / Core
Mode : 16
Format settings, Endianness : Big
Codec ID : A_DTS
Duration : 2 h 6 min
Bit rate mode : Variable / Constant
Bit rate : 2 376 kb/s / 1 509 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 93.750 FPS (512 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossless / Lossy
Stream size : 2.10 GiB (9%)
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No