You're welcome guys, and sorry if I ruin some movie magic for some others. So what about the pole for the boulder on the BD? I completely forgot to check that on my viewing, it was reported to be gone on the Imax screenings.

I've got no knowledge about the different scans made in the past, I keep seeing Laser Pacific and Lowry masters often mentioned, but why is it that the wowow (said to be laser pacific) match the Lowry 2003 DVD to 100% in terms of content then?

The other HDTV version (said to be Lowry based) contain the mysterious additional CGI matte shot not seen in the DVD, someone care to explain these matters for me.

To me all three have the same timing, they differ yes, but I wouldn't call them completely different timings. The fact that they all contain these subtle digital tweaks, doesn't that tell us something.

I have to say that for what it's worth msycamore is correct in that it's much more obvious in motion. It stood out to me when I saw a theatrical screening a number of years ago. In those stills, I can't see it at all!

Chewtobacca said:

To me all three have the same timing, they differ yes, but I wouldn't call them completely different timings.

Obviously, this is subjective, but I can see a substantive difference between the Laser Pacific transfer and previous releases in terms of color.  It's not huge, but I would say it counts as a different timing.

The AF is the one to ask about the different transfers though.

Oh yes, absolutely they differ, the "Laser Pacific transfer" is warmer and have much better skintones than the DVD, even subtle differences in hues makes a huge difference. Still, it doesn't look like a complete new timing to me, more like a much better representation of it but I may be wrong.

Check my comparisons on the last page for example, that is the same timing to me even though the untweaked shots are a much better representation, not as big a difference as the DVD vs. HDTV perhaps. (quite ironic the bonus feature material look better than the main feature) Differences in tints shouldn't imo be confused with a whole new timing done, there could be lots of reasons for why these encodings look like they do.

Personally I'm not 100% satisfied with any of these transfers but I favor the wowow version with my TV settings on warm.

And who is AF?

Laser Pacific did the new master also! 

Actually there are conflicting reports, Spielberg said imax did it themselves and he did not supervise it but liked how it looked in imax format

There's a lot of guesswork from me of course but the main reason I suggested that the colors on the Wowow-HDTV transfer might be merely an adjustment rather than a completely new timing, is the digital tweaks they contain.

jero32, I understand that the main discussion here is the timing on the previous transfers vs. BD but what I wanted to understand in all of this was the source for these previous transfers, I now understand from what I've read about it that they are indeed separate scans and that the BD is now the third scan, probably old news to most of you... everything is clear to me now. ;)

Also, I should mention that there is one other shot where you get a quick glimpse of the boulder-pole which I didn't post, that makes it three altered shots of the iconic scene, in case anyone wondered. Someone mentioned it was Lowry that was behind these tweaks, no way.

Dvdmike: I apologize for using the word 'rant' and rest assured I wasn't criticizing you for your preference as to which version of Raiders you prefer. 

I should have worded myself better, but I was trying to explain that what is on the o-neg is not color corrected. A film will have its colors tweaked in post and those colors are represented on what is called an IP - which stands for intermediate print and is about a generation or two away from the o-neg. They make a negative from the IP and this is how release prints are made. 

Nowadays, bluray transfers are almost always going to the o-neg, but when they do this, they have to completely redo the timing on the film. Some posthouses might look at an IP or theatrical print to get an idea for how a film originally looked (like Harmy's despecialized), or then some might go completely crazy and try to make it look more modern. 

So I was criticizing the fact that you were comparing the timing of a film - in this case Raiders of the lost ark- to it's real life counterparts. Like the fact that you saw the real stained glass windows somewhere or that the nazi flags never had the same hue in real life as on the bluray. This is a flawed arguement because color timists - even in the days of antiquidated optical filters - have been tweaking the colors in order to compensate for subtle changes in lighting between shots or wishing to create a certain mood. 

I'm not here to argue that the bluray or any other transfer is more faithful to the original screening, because I honestly don't know. I just wanted to explain that you can't use a real life prop or location to determine the original colors of a film's theatrical release. 

rockin said:

http://www.xylonhd.com/home/2012/9/16/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-comparison-pix.html

Anyone seen this?

Seems like a good comparison of all the different sources.

Sure shows off the WOWOW source, almost always clearly the best image, distinctly different from DVD/H.264 on the one end (too blue) and Blu-ray (too gold) on the other.  Now I've seen enough to say even though Blu-ray beats DVD/H.264 (discolored in a preferable manner), WOWOW is the way to go (not very discolored at all).  And now I'm sad I don't have the WOWOW version :(

EDIT: If only there were a way to do a gold tint transplant, we could fix the Blu-rays for Raiders and Do the Right Thing simultaneously.

rockin said:

http://www.xylonhd.com/home/2012/9/16/raiders-of-the-lost-ark-comparison-pix.html

Anyone seen this?

Seems like a good comparison of all the different sources.

Xylon does good work, shame the trolls scared him off AVS.

This new 4k state of the art scan revels no more (in some cases less) detail than the old ones, either it was not done well or they are pulling our leg that it was new and not just reframed and recoloured.

Mavimao said:

Dvdmike: I apologize for using the word 'rant' and rest assured I wasn't criticizing you for your preference as to which version of Raiders you prefer. 

I should have worded myself better, but I was trying to explain that what is on the o-neg is not color corrected. A film will have its colors tweaked in post and those colors are represented on what is called an IP - which stands for intermediate print and is about a generation or two away from the o-neg. They make a negative from the IP and this is how release prints are made. 

Nowadays, bluray transfers are almost always going to the o-neg, but when they do this, they have to completely redo the timing on the film. Some posthouses might look at an IP or theatrical print to get an idea for how a film originally looked (like Harmy's despecialized), or then some might go completely crazy and try to make it look more modern. 

So I was criticizing the fact that you were comparing the timing of a film - in this case Raiders of the lost ark- to it's real life counterparts. Like the fact that you saw the real stained glass windows somewhere or that the nazi flags never had the same hue in real life as on the bluray. This is a flawed arguement because color timists - even in the days of antiquidated optical filters - have been tweaking the colors in order to compensate for subtle changes in lighting between shots or wishing to create a certain mood. 

I'm not here to argue that the bluray or any other transfer is more faithful to the original screening, because I honestly don't know. I just wanted to explain that you can't use a real life prop or location to determine the original colors of a film's theatrical release. 

No problem, I get what you are saying, but two mastering houses scanned the OCN and they came back with the same result independently, that cannot be just a coincidence  

djchaseb said:

Too many red faces for my liking in the wowow.  

That can happen in the desert conditions, so I always looked at it as white people with 80's sun damage care regimes 

dvdmike said:

...but two mastering houses scanned the OCN and they came back with the same result independently, that cannot be just a coincidence  

Sounds like they either kept the colors as they were on the OCN or they both used the same color reference given to them by the studio, who wished it to have the same color timing as the other two. Either way, the fact that the colors are more natural, doesn't mean they are more correct. Just like the colors on the FOTR EE BD are more realistic in some scenes - sure there's a green tint over the whole thing, which is not exactly realistic, but scenes like the council of Elrond and the whole Rivendell sequence were originally intentionally timed to very unrealistically warm tones, which gave it its otherworldly nice-place feeling and in the new coloring these scenes were timed much colder, which gives it a much much more realistic color palette, yet it's completely wrong as it destroys the original atmosphere.

And the argument that the teal and yellow tones are some new sort of coloring is not quite accurate either, but this simply brings me to post this link, as it was already argued to death there, which is why I stayed away from this debate here, but I just couldn't do it any longer :-) It's quite ok for you to prefer the DVD and HDTV color palette of Raiders but you keep making it sound like it's also the correct one and I strongly disagree.

I just think there is a lot of proof it is correct, and the fact that Doom and Crusade look the same is more than coincidence, also that Raiders now looks like the much later skull and the awful new Jurassic park add up to a change of mind on the look of the movie.

I do not believe I am right in the slightest, I said before that I feel the look is between the two, but I do prefer the look and the detail in the Wowow transfer.

Also yes, teal of course existed before 2003 but there is no way films like Aliens, Top Gun, or Blade Runner used the colour that is now on their BD releases on day one (or at very least the 70mm blow ups I saw of all  three)

I am also going to walk away from the topic as people are perceiving a militant tone in my text that is just not there in my head.

dark_jedi said:

So what is it most prefer? is it the wowow coloring or BD? I still have all these HD streams backed up on an external, I was just looking them over a few weeks ago lol.

Heck, I'm still hoping to get a set of the Wowow versions ...... LOL

I just downloaded the raw WOWOW rip of ROTLA from Usenet. It's Japanese-language dubbed and only has Japanese subtitles when English subtitles are on the screen, as far as I can tell. Here's an example: http://imageshack.us/a/img541/204/sample1tn.png

Here's a rough sample of some frames from the rip:

Here's the MediaInfo dump from Media Player classic:

General

ID                             : 16432 (0x4030)

Complete name                  : C:\Documents and Settings\Anthony\Desktop\Usenet\c rotla jp\c-rotla-jp\c-rotla-jp.ts

Format                         : MPEG-TS

File size                      : 17.2 GiB

Duration                       : 1h 55mn

Overall bit rate mode          : Variable

Overall bit rate               : 21.4 Mbps

Video

ID                             : 17 (0x11)

Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)

Format                         : MPEG Video

Format version                 : Version 2

Format profile                 : Main@High

Format settings, BVOP          : Yes

Format settings, Matrix        : Custom

Format settings, GOP           : M=3, N=12

Codec ID                       : 2

Duration                       : 1h 55mn

Bit rate mode                  : Variable

Bit rate                       : 20.0 Mbps

Maximum bit rate               : 24.0 Mbps

Width                          : 1 920 pixels

Height                         : 1 080 pixels

Display aspect ratio           : 16:9

Frame rate                     : 23.976 fps

Color space                    : YUV

Chroma subsampling             : 4:2:0

Bit depth                      : 8 bits

Scan type                      : Progressive

Scan order                     : 2:3 Pulldown

Compression mode               : Lossy

Bits/(Pixel*Frame)             : 0.402

Stream size                    : 16.1 GiB (94%)

Color primaries                : BT.709

Transfer characteristics       : BT.709

Matrix coefficients            : BT.709

Audio

ID                             : 20 (0x14)

Menu ID                        : 1 (0x1)

Format                         : AAC

Format/Info                    : Advanced Audio Codec

Format version                 : Version 2

Format profile                 : LC

Muxing mode                    : ADTS

Codec ID                       : 15

Duration                       : 1h 55mn

Bit rate mode                  : Variable

Bit rate                       : 315 Kbps

Channel(s)                     : 6 channels

Channel positions              : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE

Sampling rate                  : 48.0 KHz

Compression mode               : Lossy

Delay relative to video        : -376ms

Stream size                    : 259 MiB (1%)

Anyone interested in a release?