Restoration, Preservation, Fan Edit - definitions

I'm into this forum for two years now, and still not got a complete, final, ultimate definitions of what Restorations, Preservations, Fan Edits (and so on) are, according to everyone... I tried to write down them here, based on what I have understood in this time, what are my personal thought, what other members think about them, and also on the FAQ of this forum and fanedits.com.

Obviously someone will agree with some or all definition completely, someone will agree partially, and others will strongly disagree... and it's the meaning of this thread: trying to find a common thought about WHAT precisely we are doing here!

These definitions will be useful to set guidelines for all of us, and will help future fans who would like to start their own projects. Let's decide the definitions together first, then we would set rules to follow for each category.

INITIAL DEFINITIONS

1) Fan Preservation

A fan-made release of a film version that has never had a full retail BROAD digital release*. These are sourced from analog formats such as VHS, laserdisc, or film, but sometimes they can be from captured TV broadcasts (both analog and digital) or NICHE digital releases**.

2) Fan Restoration

Attempts to restore a film version, that had a full retail DIGITAL release, to be as closest as possible to its original theatrical release, using best sources available. This may include video taken from commercial releases, or TV broadcasts, and may consist of one or several of the following works: color regrading, frames/scenes replacing, aspect ratio correction, removal of scratches, tears, spots and dust, sounds/dialogs replacing/correction, entire soundtracks replacing etc. It could include restoring director's cut where the BROAD digital release* will include only the extended edition.

3) Fan Reconstruction

The most meticolous kind of restoration; it attempts to restore a film version closest to its original theatrical release, using various video sources, applying every kind of restoration work, and more, to obtain the best restoration ever possible. For example, where a restoration will use a one-for-all technique for the whole movie, the reconstruction will use the best technique for each scene or eventually single frames.

4) Fan Extended Edition

It adds additional scenes where they fitting, to have a new extended edition not available on BROAD digital release*. If the additions require a few movie alterations for plot reasons, it still counts as an extended edition, for example if an alternate ending replaces the original one.

5) Fan reMux

A multiplexing of video and/or audio and/or subtitles taken from analog and/or digital releases, to obtain the best version possible; this involves NO restoration at all, just a selection of the best/correct/alternative audio/video/subtitles streams from different sources.

6) Fan Edit

A fan-made alternative version for an existing film, made by the insertion, deletion or re-ordering of scenes within the film, or taken from different films, or a fusion of different films/TV episodes in a coherent version.

7) Workprints and Bootlegs

Low quality cams/telecines/VHS captures of alternative workprint versions or lost theatrical cuts.

 * BROAD digital release = DVD, BD, digital download
** NICHE digital release = VCD, HD-DVD, D-VHS, UMD...

to make things cleaner, just write AGREE for each or all definitions you think are right; if you partially agree, just quote the definition(s) (or part of) you think are not right, and write down your correction; if you completely disagree, just write the whole definition(s) as you think are right.

Also, if other definitions exists, please post them here too.

1) Agree

But perhaps it should also cover where there has been a digital release, but it has been botched.

I think you're going to run into a few problems here.

Even if you get agreement from a few people here, there's just no way to enforce consistency or get anyone to buy into these definitions.  People can't even agree about the name of that movie that came out in 1977 ("It's A New Hope!" "No, it's Star Wars"), let alone more arcane technical definitions.  Every definition here potentially overlaps multiple terms.

Even assuming we allow for great flexibility, these terms are hierarchical.  Some are subsets of others.  Some are distinct.  Some are partially overlapping and partially distinct.

Anyway, here are my personal definitions not based on anything authoritative other than lurking around here for a while and seeing the sort of things that go on here:

Fan Preservation can be used to describe ANY attempt to preserve a particular version of a film for posterity.  It can include unaltered preservations of a single rare release, it can be a remux of different releases, it can be a reconstruction of an original version from multiple sources... it could even be a reconstruction of a particular modified-for-television broadcast version of a film.  It could just be transferring an old VHS bootleg to DVD.

Fan Restoration is a subset of the above.  It's an attempt to restore a particular version of the film that is otherwise unavailable, in a way that involves a lot of processing to bring out qualities that weren't present in the unaltered source material.  Project Blu would qualify as a single-source fan restoration, the Despecialized Editions would be multi-source.

Fan Reconstruction is a subset of the above, and it's the multi-source version.

Fan Extended Edition is a subset of Fan Edits, where the primary goal of the project is to add material to the film.

Fan Remux is a subset of Fan Edits that overlaps Fan Preservation (if the goal of the remux is to preserve a particular version), but can also include making unique new versions.

Fan Edit overlaps Fan Preservations and Fan Restorations, and is a superset of Fan Reconstructions, Fan Extended Editions, and Fan Remuxes.  Basically it only means the fan did some editing to the sources.  It does not imply what the purpose of that editing was.  It could have been to make a home video release like the theatrical version, it could be made to shorten or lengthen the film, it may have been only audio editing, but it wasn't a simple VHS-to-DVD transfer, for example.

Workprints and Bootlegs should be separated out.  Workprints are film elements from the official process that produced the film that didn't make it into the film itself, while bootlegs are unofficial audio or video recordings of a particular "performance" of the film.  In-theatre tape recordings, VHS tapes of TV broadcasts, etc.

poita said:

1) Agree

But perhaps it should also cover where there has been a digital release, but it has been botched.

I think it could be safely included in 2) Fan Restoration

CatBus said:

Even assuming we allow for great flexibility, these terms are hierarchical.  Some are subsets of others.  Some are distinct.  Some are partially overlapping and partially distinct.

You are right, technically speaking, ALL these definitions could be defined as fan restoration of some sort, but I think we need to separate them in branches, for several reasons... well, as my first language is not english, I'll use the definitions from wiktionary.com.

Fan Preservation can be used to describe ANY attempt to preserve a particular version of a film for posterity.  It can include unaltered preservations of a single rare release, it can be a remux of different releases, it can be a reconstruction of an original version from multiple sources... it could even be a reconstruction of a particular modified-for-television broadcast version of a film.  It could just be transferring an old VHS bootleg to DVD.

1) Preservation: The act of preserving; care to preserve; act of keeping from destruction, decay or any ill.

to me, it does not involve ANY restoration at all! I mean, if a house should be destroyed because an highway will pass there, and I make a petition to safe it because has historical value, and then the highway will be made 1 mile away from it, I preserved the house, but I did not restored anything...

video wise, if I capture a movie that is ony on laserdisc but never released on digital format, then I put it on DVD or BD "as is" (or with a simple IVTC), touching only the audio from 44.1KHz to 48KHz, I think this could simply be called a preservation, and not a restoration. If I touch video or audio, like upscaling, degraining, remixing audio etc. this qualify as a restoration, or restored preservation - maybe in this case we could fit in a overlapping definition.

Fan Restoration is a subset of the above.  It's an attempt to restore a particular version of the film that is otherwise unavailable, in a way that involves a lot of processing to bring out qualities that weren't present in the unaltered source material.  Project Blu would qualify as a single-source fan restoration, the Despecialized Editions would be multi-source.

2) Restoration: the process of bringing an object back to its original state; the process of restoring something.

I make an example using my last project: "The Thing" BD has DNR in comparison to HD-DVD (that was not on the original print), and, to me and many other forum members, has wrong color grading. If we presume the LD has the correct color grading (or, at least, most correct), and I use the LD as color reference, restoring the movie using the HD-DVD video (with less DNR) and LD for colors, counts as a restoration. The fact that I used several soundtracks from LD, DVD, BD doesn't mean this is a "mere" remux - to me, it IS a restoration.

Fan Reconstruction is a subset of the above, and it's the multi-source version.

3) Reconstruction: A thing that has been reconstructed or restored to an earlier state.

following this definition, could Harmy's work be defined as reconstruction or restoration? Maybe we should use a new definition, "Recreation".

Fan Extended Edition is a subset of Fan Edits, where the primary goal of the project is to add material to the film.

Here we basically agree. I could also point that there is NO restoration at all in the main movie, while the extended scenes could be restored to be closest to the main feature.

Fan Remux is a subset of Fan Edits that overlaps Fan Preservation (if the goal of the remux is to preserve a particular version), but can also include making unique new versions.

5) Multiplex: (computing) To combine several signals into a single signal

If I choose the best video, audio and subtitles from several sources, I don't preserve any sources at all, just do a new version.

Fan Edit overlaps Fan Preservations and Fan Restorations, and is a superset of Fan Reconstructions, Fan Extended Editions, and Fan Remuxes.  Basically it only means the fan did some editing to the sources.  It does not imply what the purpose of that editing was.  It could have been to make a home video release like the theatrical version, it could be made to shorten or lengthen the film, it may have been only audio editing, but it wasn't a simple VHS-to-DVD transfer, for example.

We basically agree here, too.

Workprints and Bootlegs should be separated out.  Workprints are film elements from the official process that produced the film that didn't make it into the film itself, while bootlegs are unofficial audio or video recordings of a particular "performance" of the film.  In-theatre tape recordings, VHS tapes of TV broadcasts, etc.

I agree with you 100% on this definition; I think it's better to abandon the Bootleg definition as, streactly speaking, all our fan edits, preservations etc. ARE bootlegs...

CatBus, we could agree or disagree, but I like the fact that a discussion is started!

In the physical world, preservation sometimes involves modifying or restoring a piece to some extent, in order to prevent further decay. In the digital world, this is not quite as necessary, as usually we're transferring from physical media (VHS, etc) which could decay into bits. Great, except that transferring something to digital media does not really ensure preservation. Digital files are stored on physical media, usually HDDs, and physical media can decay, either from calamity or age. As such, the only way to truly ensure digital preservation is to ensure that the files will survive both disaster and time. The easiest way to do this is continuous distribution, so that the files are stored in many places, and are continually being stored in new places.

If your preservation isn't freely available, it's probably not very well preserved.

Yeah, I'm taking a lot of my cues for "preservation" from the physical art preservation and historical preservation world, where things do in fact get regularly restored because otherwise natural processes will slowly destroy them.  Even digital files may need restoration if they come from partially degraded analog sources.

timdiggerm said:

The easiest way to do this is continuous distribution, so that the files are stored in many places, and are continually being stored in new places.

If your preservation isn't freely available, it's probably not very well preserved.

Finally! I finally have someone who agrees with me that distribution is necessary for preservation.

dvdmike said:

It's like working a project in Nazi Germany!

In Soviet Russia, the terms define YOU!

AntcuFaalb said:

timdiggerm said:

The easiest way to do this is continuous distribution, so that the files are stored in many places, and are continually being stored in new places.

If your preservation isn't freely available, it's probably not very well preserved.

Finally! I finally have someone who agrees with me that distribution is necessary for preservation.

Unless, I admit, you have a very good and secure backup system.

But yeah, there are good reasons why even the Internet Archive, the paragon of digital preservation probably, hopes to someday have multiple locations.

Even if I agree with all of you about the fact that a preservation/restoration etc. should be propagated around the web to keep it alive, we are out of topic now...

I thought we need to distinguish between a mere preservation (capture from analog video, scan from movie, rip from niche digital video) and a preservation with some sort of restoration...

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1b) Fan Enhanced Preservation (provisional name)

The same as fan preservation, but with some sort of enhancement (noise reduction, conversion from letterbox to anamorphic) not as extensive as a restoration.

1c) Fan Restored Preservation (provisional name)

The same as fan preservation, but with extensive enhancement, the same level of a fan restoration - the only difference is the fact that the preservation has not a BROAD digital release (yet)

***

I think the reconstruction should be deleted, and instead a fan recreation could be considered a sub set of a restoration.

2b) Fan Recreation

The most meticolous kind of restoration; it attempts to restore a film version closest to its original theatrical release, using various video sources (also different from the film itself like trailers, documentaries, and even other films), applying every kind of restoration work, and more, to obtain the best restoration ever possible. For example, where a restoration will use a one-for-all technique for the whole movie, the reconstruction will use the best technique for each scene or eventually single frames.

3) (deleted)

***

I don't know if restored extended edition should have its own subcategory below extended edition, or could be considered as a subcategory of restoration.

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4b) Fan Restored Extended Edition (provisional name)

The same as fan extended edition, but the restoration is applied to the main features and extended scenes as well.

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It will be better to drop the word bootleg

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7) Workprints

Low quality cams/telecines/VHS captures of alternative workprint versions or lost theatrical cuts.