DrDre

Synnöve said:

Too much black crush in many of the regrades, and you need to remember to lower the color saturation if you’re going to change the contrast so drastically.

As was explained in the first post, the purpose of this regrade is to replicate the original theatrical color timing. The reference is an unfaded 35mm print:

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/RELEASED-Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-35mm-LPP-Theatrical-Experience-v10/id/51021

An algorithm is used to match these colors, including contrast and saturation, as closely as possible. This algorithm was developed specifically to replicate the color timing of a color reference. One advantage of this method, is that it avoids endless discussions on how a film should look, since what one person finds appealing, another finds appalling. As such, there will be no manual adjustments, as it is not the purpose of this regrade to improve on the theatrical color timing, as is established by the print. Prints tend to be more contrasty than the home video transfers we’re used to, but this is the way the creators originally intended the film to be seen on the big screen (within the confines of HD video). If this color timing is not to your liking, there will be a separate thread for regrading the original trilogy, to match the color timing of the 2003 DVD release.

With regards to early home video releases, I found a clip from a VHS version a couple of months ago, that doesn’t have a red shift for the bar fight scene and, aside from being low contrast, is consistent with the 35mm LPP. I can’t find the clip anymore, but here are two screenshots:

litemakr said:

The major differences between DVD and wowow are in exposure. The DVD has almost perfect exposure, nothing is blown out or uneven and shadow detail is good (even though several scenes were brightened, probably at the print stage). The color is also more balanced overall (not surprising since it uses a 2nd generation timed print for the scan). However they are similar and I think that is simply because the restoration shown on wowow was intended to recreate the theatrical version timing.

I am curious as to the red cast in the bar. It is definitely not there in the 35mm print but does seem to be in every home video version to some extent. It’s also not there in the footage shown in the 1981 Making of documentary. I wonder if they re-timed that scene for the 1983 theatrical re-release? Maybe they did and that timing was used in successive video transfers.

I will make a separate thread for a comparison between the WOWOW, the DVD, and the 35mm. This way we can get a good sense of the differences between these three versions. This will also allow me to do some tests, to see how much detail can be pulled from the WOWOW. It’s interesting to note, that I have the PAL versions of the DVD, which should provide a better color reproduction.

Also, here’s a little update on the 35mm LPP regrade. The opening shot is a bit of a challenge, as there actually is some subtle color variation within the shot for the WOWOW, so I’m currently doing a frame by frame regrade. It’s also an incredibly long shot of roughly a 1000 frames.

I wouldn’t say the WOWOW and DVD color timing are considerably different. I was actually toying with the idea of also doing a DVD regrade, but when I compared the WOWOW and bluray releases for the other two films to their DVD counterparts, the colors for the new masters seemed a fairly accurate reproduction of the DVD color timing, although admittedly there are differences. The DVD has a little bit more contrast in general. Also, I believe the DVD might have less DNR. I could make a separate thread to show some comparisons, and some test regrades, if there is an interest in such a regrade?

Here’s one comparison between the WOWOW and the DVD:

WOWOW:

DVD:

Interestingly, the DVD has a more pronounced red cast in the bar fight scene, than the WOWOW.

WOWOW:

DVD:

BobaJett said:

Ive been following this thread and really enjoy what Im seeing being done for this restore. It took me a while to figure out what the WOWOW meant. What exactly was it? I know it is a Japanese broadcast company, or something, but what does the acronym stand for? Also, the WOWOW was sourced from what?

The WOWOW is an HDTV broadcast of Raiders of the Lost Ark from the Japanese pay television satalite channel WOWOW:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOWOW
The way I understand it, it is the Lowrey’s original restoration of the film based on a scan of the negative, and color timed to closely match their earlier restoration done for the 2003 DVD, that was also meant to be released along with the other two films in the trilogy, that they also restored around the same time. For some reason Steven Spielberg wasn’t satisfied with the result, and the restoration was redone, with a more modern orange and teal color timing, which was released on bluray.

poita said:

The only thing you can do in this isntance is add a little noise to the image. This stops the stepped-gradient effect happening when you start adjusting things. The noise can then mostly be removed afterwards.
It isn’t perfect, but can stop colour banding from occuring when manipulating 8 bit files.

This was my first solution in the tool as well. Currently, I’m using a different approach, where a smoothing parameter is used to decide the smoothness of the gradient. This reduces stair stepping and similar artifacts.

I suppose there is no right or wrong. There is such a thing as the original color timing, as was present on the original interpositive. That color timing can be found with some variation introduced by the printing process on unfaded 70mm, 35mm, and 16mm prints, although contrast will vary, depending on the generation of the print.

Personally, I trust poita’s judgement in these matters above most others for two reasons:

1. He’s a professional, with much knowledge on the medium and experience working with film
2. He has access to more original prints, than most of us will see in a lifetime. The best estimate of the original color timing will always be an average of a multitude of original prints

Williarob said:

peter_pan said:

DrDre said:

peter_pan said:

In practise you would use at least a 16-bit color image, which would prevent stair stepping, unless it is part of the original 35mm frame.

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean when you say “stair stepping”?

When you perform a color correction at a low color depth, the colors from one pixel to the next may resemble a step function, rather than a smooth transition.

Right, got you.
Can’t you have your time line set to a higher depth so that there is head space for the addition of the colour space?

I don’t think that would work in this case: If you take a frame from the blu-ray for example, which is 8-bit color, and you bring that into your After Effects timeline and set the color depth to 16 bit, it won’t magically double the number of colors in the image you imported.

The way I interpreted Dre’s comments was that the images he was working with were 8-bit color, and this is why the example images are not so good as they might be if he had 16-bit versions of the same images to play with.

Exactly! 😃

peter_pan said:

DrDre said:

peter_pan said:

In practise you would use at least a 16-bit color image, which would prevent stair stepping, unless it is part of the original 35mm frame.

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean when you say “stair stepping”?

When you perform a color correction at a low color depth, the colors from one pixel to the next may resemble a step function, rather than a smooth transition.

Right, got you.
Can’t you have your time line set to a higher depth so that there is head space for the addition of the colour space?

What do you mean exactly? Could you elaborate?

peter_pan said:

In practise you would use at least a 16-bit color image, which would prevent stair stepping, unless it is part of the original 35mm frame.

Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean when you say “stair stepping”?

When you perform a color correction at a low color depth, the colors from one pixel to the next may resemble a step function, rather than a smooth transition.

Spaced Ranger said:

DrDre said:

The debugged color matching tool v1.2 offers much improved color matching capabilities. It’s more accurate, more stable, and much faster.

Just a little late catching up here, but … whoa, that’s an awesome demonstration!

• Will you incorporate any algorithm to prevent the originally flattened RGB from “stair-stepping” on expansion (looking like acne pot-marks especially on skin colors)?

[EDIT: Actually, most of what finally shows is on the source (ouch, I’ve seen those R-G-B splits!). Only, it is stronger once the RGB spectrums are normalized. That would require pre-processing, which is probably outside of the scope of a color-match project.]

• Since you’re working in RGB, would this work even on a film faded nearly flat where R≈G≈B (ww1234’s 2001:ASO project scan comes to mind)?

In this case the color match was done using an 8-bit color image. In practise you would use at least a 16-bit color image, which would prevent stair stepping, unless it is part of the original 35mm frame. It’s also interesting to note, that this print has sufficient amounts of color noise.

poita said:

The blue is meant to be there, the sky is quite blue in those shots, which makes the smoke etc. also quite blue.
The original prints do have a lot of blue in the Hoth scenes, not as much as the BD release, but still quite a lot more than the home releases, which appear to have been ‘auto balanced’ when the telecine was done, removing a lot of colour from the snow scenes, probably working on the assumption that snow should always be white.

Interesting! Could you share the raw frame for this shot? I would like to try another little experiment…

I did a little experiment, matching the colors of the last frame to Harmy’s Despecialized 2.0, and while the colors might not necessarily be accurate to an original 1981 print, it does get rid of that nasty blue noise, whilst retaining the 35mm detail:

Harmy’s Despecialized 2.0:

Poita work in progress:

Poita matched to Harmy’s Despecialized 2.0:

The bar scene is another great example of the horrible effects of DNR applied to the bluray. Here is a comparison, this time using the raw WOWOW footage.

35mm LPP:

Bluray:

WOWOW:

WOWOW regraded:

litemakr said:

Dek Rollins said:

I have a question: why do some scenes have this blue-violet flicker over the image?

Is that part of the print, or is that from the scan? Just curious.

That is part of the print. There is some kind of damage to the second half of reel 2 from the bar gunfight to the middle of the Cario sequence. It could have happened when the print was made at the lab, or the reel could have had something spilled on it. The plan is to replace that entire section if and when we are able to scan a second print.

It should actually be possible to correct the blue-violet flicker with the color matching algorithm using neighbouring frames:

clutchins said:

DrDre said:

litemakr said:

DrDre said:

smack said:

@DrDre: Looks awesome. Do you have a release date already? What about the audio tracks? I hope i could get it on myspleen 😉

Thanks! There’s no release date yet. It’s a shot by shot regrade, which is why it is very time consuming. I currently estimate it will take several months to complete, so hopefully it will be released before the end of this year. Since, the final release will be synced to the bluray, all the bluray audio tracks will be there at least. However, since the initial release will be as a mkv file, followed later by a bluray version, any number of audio tracks can be added.

Please consider including the the LD and DVD tracks. Those are original mixes (or at least very close to original). The Blu-ray track is a remix and not really in the spirit of what you are doing.

Certainly, do you have these available by any chance?

Schorman uploaded the laserdisc audio to the spleen for all three Indiana Jones films.

Perfect, thanks!

litemakr said:

DrDre said:

smack said:

@DrDre: Looks awesome. Do you have a release date already? What about the audio tracks? I hope i could get it on myspleen 😉

Thanks! There’s no release date yet. It’s a shot by shot regrade, which is why it is very time consuming. I currently estimate it will take several months to complete, so hopefully it will be released before the end of this year. Since, the final release will be synced to the bluray, all the bluray audio tracks will be there at least. However, since the initial release will be as a mkv file, followed later by a bluray version, any number of audio tracks can be added.

Please consider including the the LD and DVD tracks. Those are original mixes (or at least very close to original). The Blu-ray track is a remix and not really in the spirit of what you are doing.

Certainly, do you have these available by any chance?

Ronster said:

I just want to say a couple of things, I am liking the adjustment but…

1. The re-grade on the opening credits on my screen looks a bit hard to read. But the WOW WOW is much easier to read. Do you think that perhaps that 35mm scan has pushed it a bit too bright?

It’s just I don’t think they would make the opening credits difficult to read?

2. The Regrade on the bar shot, although the red tint is mostly gone you have a magenta remnant left in the image, I would also say it’s still a bit too red saturated. I assume it’s still early days on that but something is not right here in the bar. That is a black leather jacket Marion is wearing?

Thanks for your input! I’m going with litemakr’s judgement on this. He balanced the colors to match the projected print. It’s not my intent to improve on the original theatrical color timing. The color matching algorithm will hopefully ensure, that color differences with the print will be minimal, but the first version will be the WOWOW with the print colors and contrast.

In case of the bar scene, the current regrade would look something like this:

35mm LPP:

WOWOW:

WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

You should also consider how difficult it is to approach the look of the print for this scene, taking into account the limited color depth, aggravated by the color crush due to the red shift, and the massive differences in colors, brightness, and contrast.

This weekend I will post a sample video of the famous opening shot of Raiders. It should a nice teaser for the eventual regrade.

Edit: there’s been a little delay, because I’m working on a longer video sample.

theMaestro said:

Ahhh okay, interesting. So the 16mm prints were sourced from 35mm prints back in 1980. And now they’re used as color references. I guess this means that 16mm prints don’t have much color fading? Or, if they do, then it’s predictable and easily correctable by an algorithm?

Since the year 1982 there’s been a dramatic improvement of the stability of prints. So, while 16mm prints created after 1981 were sourced from notoriously unstable 35mm prints, these 35mm prints were still in good shape at the time, and as such their colors were preserved through the much more stable post-1981 16mm prints. So, once you have a 16mm scan with accurate colors, you can match the faded 35mm print to the 16mm in an HDR color space using the color matching tool, followed by a gamma correction, to bring the contrast back to 35mm levels.

Hi NeverarGreat,

Just wondering what the current status is of your regrade? I’ve moved away from regrading Star Wars, as your version looks awesome and about as good as any bluray based regrade will ever look, so I’m now regrading Raiders of the Lost Ark to match the theatrical color timing, based on litemakr’s LPP preservation.

poita said:

Work in progress.

Looking great poita!

theMaestro said:

For color correcting Empire, what is the most accurate reference available? The 2004/2011 versions had a blue tint while we know that the GOUT was also not accurate. So how exactly does a theatrical restoration/reconstruction approach this challenge of having accurate colors for Empire?

I believe there are quite a few 16mm prints, that have excellent colors. These prints are generally sourced from their 35mm counterpart, and thus have the original color timing, albeit a bit more contrasty, because they’re another generation apart from the original color timed interpositive.

The debugged color matching tool v1.2 offers much improved color matching capabilities. It’s more accurate, more stable, and much faster. Here’s an example for a red faded 35mm frame from The Empire Strikes Back shared by poita a while ago. The reference is an image of a number of home video versions of the same frame. In this case the frame has been matched to the 2004 DVD colors.

Red faded 35mm frame:

Reference:

Red faded 35mm frame matched to reference:

TheDarkestKnight said:

Just tried the debugged version. Looks like the artifacts are gone. Thanks DrDre, this tool is quite possibly the greatest thing since microwavable bacon.

Hahaha, excellent! Thanks!