Even Itchy’s VR porn that he decided to enjoy in their living room wasn’t in that level of quality.
You may or may not be familiar with San Francisco designer Nick Acosta. But one thing is for sure: you’ve heard of the Star Wars Holiday Special. And, out of a genuine adoration for a special so notorious that George Lucas himself is said to have wised that every copy of it had been destroyed, Acosta has started a project to remaster it… in 4K at 60FPS.
As he states in the description of the video:
I have been remastering the Star Wars Holiday Special. It’s done using a combo of version shopping and software. There are a lot of bootleg versions floating around and some are worse than others. The main way to get more resolution is through a machine-learning program called Topaz Video Enhance AI. It analyzes it frame by frame. It is a LONG process so I cut the thing down into a modern-style trailer for it then upscaled that. I’ve long loved this weird thing. It’s so 70’s and goofy but it has the actors in their post-New Hope prime, it has the first appearance of Boba Fett and I still consider the whole thing canon. Hope you enjoy it, and if you don’t, be kind!
That said, the trailer is all that exists; as he explains elsewhere, it’s a fairly time-intensive process. Apparently, though, the response has been great enough that Acosta is moving on to work on the full Boba Fett animated segment (one of the parts of the special that everyone agrees to be pretty dang good, despite the surrounding material) next.
And, to be honest, the results he’s getting are remarkable. As he showed off in another, earlier tweet, it goes from “badly restored fresco of Jesus” to as sharp and clear as it was probably originally printed as, if not more so.
Also, hey, you’ll know for damn sure which actors showed up to work coked halfway out of their gourd (protip: it was the late 70’s, you do the math).
Source: BoingBoing
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