GOUT, Automated Theatrical Colouring, and a Reference Guide — Page 2

I do want to go on the record now and say this though up front, the V3's will not have any of this done, they are what they are, I am just talking about doing this on a separate project and use the lossless avi as the source, but this would be nice to do as a team.

Yeah, the images I posted weren't supposed to be definitive or anything, they are just a rough example to give you an approximate effect and get a sense of the palette and details. It's more to demonstrate that just by using automated player settings you can recover the colours to their original form. The biggest problem though will be noise, because when you start boosting colours like this, even if you don't go as far as I took them, you still get noise in some scenes, or even just in specific shots.

ChainsawAsh said:

One of these days (possibly with DJ's V3, actually) I'm seriously considering loading each film into Avid or FCP's Color and color correcting them shot by shot, maybe even doing some scratch & dirt cleanup while I'm at it. 

 Yeah, but at the same time one reason I feel doing a sort of "one light" printing like I have done is good is because it gets rid of the guesswork. Part of the problem I feel is that people tend to colour films they way they would like them to look, or feel they ought to look, instead of the way they should actually be, because sometimes shots need to have some objectionable elements in them in order to be "correct" but people make the mistake of assuming they were ideal looking, or looked more like a particular version we are familiar with. Because the problem with the GOUT is not really a shot-by-shot thing, its an overall problem caused by a print-wide desaturation and a print-wide red shift. So you basically have to work backwards from that, but it would be a set variable condition and not a shot-to-shot thing, so it's really a matter of finding that golden setting that is the perfect opposite of the desaturation and red shift levels. I can see treating the odd shot for video defects, because some shots might need less saturation due to video noise. Adywan is a good example where he really put a lot of work into tweaking each shot to "fix" it using a number of different colour balance controls depending on the shot--but while the completed shot look great, it didn't quite look like it did theatrically. For instance I think I remember he had to do this for one of the shots in Luke's Hoth recovery ("scruffy looking nerfherder" scene) in order to get it white, but if you look at the shot I posted of it, it has a lot of beige in it, with some red and green mixed lighting in the frame. A lot of shots are like that. In the raw GOUT they just look neutral though, once you get the colours back you see how much variation there is in the frame.

Every shot in the GOUT has been affected in the same manner and in the same way as far as any of us can tell (the exception being the binary sunset scene, which was recoloured), so for the most part the same correction setting should be used for the whole film. That would be my take on it. Maybe this wouldn't work as well in practice.

I really think you're on to something here, zombie84.  Last night I flipped through the GOUT dvd approximately recreating your settings on my tv (didn't use VLC because I was tired of looking at the computer screen, lol).  Jacked up the saturation around 10 notches and shifted away from red around 5, and it became similar to what you posted, except that I didn't go as far because the lobster skin tones were getting really ugly in places.  But it was rather startling and exciting to see the dull GOUT image start to resemble a crude version of those Technicolor screenshots.  Very, very interesting.

I've always hated the look of the 2004 transfer, but it's interesting to know that the blue Death Star isn't quite as wrong as it instinctively seems.  One of the problems is that the colour is often wildly inconsistent, far exceeding any variation seen in the original version . . . and now, I think I understand why that is.  I'd have to go back and look at the '04 again to be sure, but as I recall the Death Star colouring is pretty much the exact same hue in every shot.  It's entirely possible, even probable, that one of their aims in its timing was to get the overall look of the set to be the same everywhere--but in so doing, all the rest of the colours shift by different amounts along with it, which is why is changes so much according to the camera angle.  Of course, this doesn't come close to explaining a lot of the other image problems, but I think it's a significant part of the problem.  Too much digital manipulation overcompensating for perceived 'flaws' in the cinematography that were never really problems to begin with.

I think a good way to go might be to try to recreate the original colours from the GOUT as a reference, and then once that's settled upon, correct the '04 footage to resemble it as closely as possible, so that the higher resolution image can be used for most of the movie.  More work, but in the end it might be worth it . . .

The GOUT softness will still be there.  I don't know if that is a deal breaker, though.  

Today I flipped through the 2004 dvd and found that in many cases, the colouring is actually not nearly as bad as I had previously thought it to be.  There's still a huge amount of problems, but it's probably not beyond salvage if timed to a proper reference.

The main issue, which makes its use the most difficult, is that the whole thing is so damn dark.  The crushed blacks and general darkness are much worse than I remembered, and as a result skin tones take on an 'ultra-tan' look, such a strong brown look that is not at all natural.  Reds are also hugely oversaturated in many cases--Chewie is starting to resemble Elmo half the time--and there is of course the blue cast on things that shouldn't have it, like the interior of the blockade runner and Vader and stormtrooper armour, and there are pink laser blasts and things like that.  Still, if there was some way of getting past that huge black crush, the rest of it could fall into place without too much difficulty, because it's often not as far off as it seems.

(But the '04 sound mix is still by far the worst problem with that dvd, surpassing any grievances with the image.  It's truly repulsive.)

I'm not a video expert, so I don't know how much more I can add, but this concept is rather exciting.  ;)

Here is a little something I have just been messing with, the V3 is the bottom video, the top, well you can see, been playin wit colors.

http://hotfile.com/dl/95139016/7a343a6/Comparison.rar.html

I have to admit, after messing with the colors like this it really shows how dul this really is, it really does look like it could use some color boost.

Another thought, wouldn't Luke have somewhat of a tan anyways living in the desert, and it would seem Han would to, but not Leia.

Wow. Just watched the GOUT on VLC with your settings, zombie 84. It's a revelation! I never knew Star Wars was supposed to be this vibrant. There is another thread related to Star Wars's color timing. Maybe there should be a thread merge...just a suggestion.

msycamore said:

I gave my latest encode of g-force's latest script a little color boost, I think his earlier ones had it, I don't know why he decided to remove it, as I think it improves the image.

the values on g-force latest script is:

########## black level/gamma, hue
Levels(10,1.08,255,0,255).Tweak(hue=-3)

and this is what I used:

########## black level/gamma, hue
Levels(10,1.08,255,0,255).Tweak(hue=-4,sat=1.3)

a quite subtle approach as I think the GOUT video cannot handle too much saturation before it starts to bleed, try it out, d_j and see if you like it. I will take a look at yours and see how it compares.

Unfortunately, there isn't that much you can do with the internal tweak function, positive values adjust the hue towards red and negative towards green, that's it.

That actually doesn't look to bad either, damn now I am wondering after seeing all this if I should re do the video 1 more time just to bring out some color, maybe if we come up with something that will work I will post in my thread and see what everyone wants, because after all this tweaking, the V3 video the way it is now, is pretty dull.

But that being said, I don't want to tweak just to tweak, like zombie said, we should try to get it as close to theatrical, and not adjust just because "we" think it is right, does that make sense?

dark_jedi said:

msycamore said:

I gave my latest encode of g-force's latest script a little color boost, I think his earlier ones had it, I don't know why he decided to remove it, as I think it improves the image.

the values on g-force latest script is:

########## black level/gamma, hue
Levels(10,1.08,255,0,255).Tweak(hue=-3)

and this is what I used:

########## black level/gamma, hue
Levels(10,1.08,255,0,255).Tweak(hue=-4,sat=1.3)

a quite subtle approach as I think the GOUT video cannot handle too much saturation before it starts to bleed, try it out, d_j and see if you like it. I will take a look at yours and see how it compares.

Unfortunately, there isn't that much you can do with the internal tweak function, positive values adjust the hue towards red and negative towards green, that's it.

That actually doesn't look to bad either, damn now I am wondering after seeing all this if I should re do the video 1 more time just to bring out some color, maybe if we come up with something that will work I will post in my thread and see what everyone wants, because after all this tweaking, the V3 video the way it is now, is pretty dull.

But that being said, I don't want to tweak just to tweak, like zombie said, we should try to get it as close to theatrical, and not adjust just because "we" think it is right, does that make sense?

Does this mean that you might end up doing a V4?

Christ, I'm just hoping for v3!  Let's ease up on the accelerator a little bit!  :)

It's not funny, it's sad :)

pittrek said:

It's not funny, it's sad :)

That's so true...and sad...

Are there photos maybe a publicity still or technical magazine article pic which can act as the goal for one or two of these shots?  I find myself wanting a reference so these before and afters gain some grounding.

none said:

Are there photos maybe a publicity still or technical magazine article pic which can act as the goal for one or two of these shots?  I find myself wanting a reference so these before and afters gain some grounding.

 

 Well the easiest way is that I tried to match screencaps to many of the Technicolour photograph shots. Aside from exposure problems which tend to wash out the colours a bit in some of the photographs, you can see that the colours are very close, identical in some instances.