Oldfan

Is this currently only on the spleen on has it been released elsewhere? Is it on Usenet by any chance?

Thanks a ton! Looking forward to this one for sure.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I used a lagarith "intermediate" version, to speed up the process, but x264 had some problems with few frames; so, now I'm encoding using directly the avisynth script; the problem is, it will take about 26 hours just for the 1st pass, and probably the same for the second pass... well, hope it will be ready before May...

Well worth the wait. Thanks for caring about it enough to do what you have to for it to come out right.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

As both HDTV versions are pixel perfect, what I did is to color grading the one with no logo in the image, then I took the "patch" (rectangular) from it and overlaid it to the residual logo of the other one; simple, eh?

The final encoding is on its way right now; if all will go well (touching wood) the final release will be today or tomorrow!

Wow, you can do that? Just take a "chunk" of the video and drop it into the other video seamlessly? That's amazing!

Awesome! How will you be able to (mostly) remove the logo? Do you just crop it out or is there some method to remove it? I've seen a method used once that sort-of removes station logos but honestly I didn't think it looked great - you could still see a "smudged" area where the logo was, and in that case, I would have actually just preferred the station ID logo. I'm used to seeing those all the time on tv anyways so I'd find that less annoying than seeing a "weird" area of the screen where the logo was. Of course maybe you're using another method, so I'm curious how it will be achieved.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

...and, again, with ALL the 40 minutes re-inserted, the original Walter Hill movie could have been a very good sci-fi movie!

What about the two discs idea? One with movie only (ASAP) and the other with reduced quality but open matte, plus extra, later?

Yeah, definitely a nice idea. We would have the film right away and the extras to look forward to a bit later. I like the idea of 2 discs also. It would make a great film for the weekend (or whenever you get it out of course)!

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

According to The Seattle Times:

The official press kit claims that it's R-rated and runs 125 minutes, but the movie that appeared at matinees yesterday is PG-13 and it runs about 85 minutes.

and to The Guardian:

...journalists at a Digital Domain press junket in February 1999 were shown almost 40 minutes of what one viewer describes as "absolutely cutting edge, moving-camera effects shots".

We have good evidences here, but AFAIK no home video releases contains this footage; if it still exists nowadays, it should be into the MGM vault...

Side note: as lately I found an open matte version of the movie sourced from HDTV but with an annoying logo, I'd like to fix it and release it too; because it will take some time to do it, I thought to release the movie alone - it could be ready in two or three days, and then later an extra disc, with the open matte version, deleted scenes, trailers+teasers, two soundtracks, image gallery and the special extra "thing" I'm working on.

What do you all think about this?

I'd be happy to see the stand-alone open-matte version. Honestly I could live with the logo with the open-matte version if there's no way around it.

Very cool, and thanks for the update! I'm looking forward to it. The extras sound great too! I thought the deleted scenes on the DVD were quite interesting actually. Shame this film didn't do better. But if you watch the trailer it's no wonder. What a strange trailer they made for this film.

Any news on how this is coming along? Just curious if there are any new developments.

I've always liked this film. I saw it in the theatre when it was released briefly. I'm glad to see you're doing this one - very exciting!

Molly said:

yoda1138 said:

Wow! I finally remembered my login details after several years away!

Been stopping by now and again to read some of the progress of Ady's edit. But I just read the latest topic ideas of inserting "Luke" into Palpatines speech.

Not sure if it was discussed, but wondering why Lukes name is to be inserted? As to me this doesn't make sense.

Palpatine to my knowledge does not know Lukes name at this point. But "young Skywalker" is a reference to him "feeling" with the force that the offspring of Anakin is on the scene, aka young skywalker.  Infact, as far as we've seen in the movies, even Vader should not know Lukes name seeing as he wasn't present at the birth or upbringing of Luke. Only way I can see Vader finding out Lukes name in Empire, is perhapse word of mouth of the hero of the battle of Yavin. .. Which in turn i suppose Palpatine could have heard it too.

But, this scene indicates that this "new Enemy" is new news to Palpy. And it is after this scene that Vader mentions Lukes name, though his info likely comes from any one of the captured gang on Bespin. (who knows what was said at that table with Vader/han Leia etc..)

Anyways, just puttin that out there. peace out! ;-)

Keep in mind that until 2004, Palp's line was "we have a new enemy...Luke Skywalker."

This is true, but yoda1138 made an interesting point - there's really no reason why the emperor should know Luke's name at that point. So since this is a fanedit, and not a preservation, if it turns out Ady can't find a suitable audio clip to use, and it ends up just being "young Skywalker", I don't think it's a big deal. It might even be an improvement, taking yoda1138's comment into consideration.

Turisu said:

Again, I implore you not to touch the grain or at least make an alternate version of your release with the grain intact.

Yeah, I gotta agree about leaving the grain intact. Grain doesn't bother me in the least. I've been enjoying some great 70's films lately on blu-ray, and those older films have a very distinct look to them, often owing a lot of that look to the type of film used, and the grain visible throughout the film. Nothing bothers me more with a blu-ray release than when they apply DNR and scrub the grain away, along with a good amount of detail. In fact, I skipped out on Weird Science on Blu-ray because they DNR'd it to death. So yeah, I think the grain is vital to the look of these films and shows. If some episodes are grainier than others, then that's likely how they were shot - perhaps different film stock was used at times.

Bladez636 said:

Oldfan said:

I am very interested in this project. I imported the UK DVD set a couple years ago as I live in the US, and I would love to see what you end up doing with this. I think it was an amazing production and deserves more attention. Those comparison shots look amazing. The French DVD set looks far better from what I've seen in your comparison video. Shame they didn't include an English audio track.

A suggestion - please go gently with the grain removal. Removing too much grain will remove much of the fine detail, as the grain holds the detail. I always prefer grain and detail as opposed to a cleaned and "waxy" look.

Is this the French remastered edition your clips come from?:

http://www.amazon.fr/Bomber-Int%C3%A9grale-r%C3%A9%C3%A9dition-Go-Nagai/dp/B004618D3U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390135357&sr=8-1&keywords=x-bomber

Because there seems to be another edition but I think the remastered edition is the one I linked to above. Here's the other release:

http://www.amazon.fr/San-Ku-Ka%C3%AF-Int%C3%A9grale-Collector/dp/B002DPQ3JM/ref=pd_sim_d_3

 

I don't really plan to go overboard, but given that I'm not 100% videophile I'm unsure I quite know what going overboard on that is. Most episodes have a rather small amount of grain, but there are a couple where the grain is overwhelming --- mainly on Episode 7 where I think it is almost distracting how grainy it is. I'm investing in a grain removal plug-in for Adobe Premiere that keeps the detail pretty well, at least compared to the built in ones that blur the hell out of it, removing the details.

The top one I have, the bottom one---I'm pretty sure you posted the wrong link there because I'm unsure what that is... But I'm sure I know which one you're talking of, and I'm fairly certain there is no difference in quality between the two.

The reason I can give for there being no English track is because the intro/outro is different for each dub of "Star Fleet" -- The French version also lacks the cliffhanger previews for the next episodes.

Oldfan said:

Turisu said:

I'm also very interested in this. But please, please keep the grain.

 

I gotta agree. The grain really should be left alone honestly. The grain is what contains the detail. I hate when studios use excessive DNR and ruin their blu-ray releases. It happens all the time. Thankfully, some studios know enough to leave the grain intact.

Question to Bladez636: Will you be retaining the DVD quality of these episodes? Will they be in DVD format or smaller compressed files? Of course this is your project but personally I always prefer going for the highest quality possible. When working from DVD it's always best to keep the project at DVD quality rather than compressing to avi or other file types.

I plan on rendering them in MPEG format so yeah. I work from a Mac so putting them on avi format wouldn't really work anyhow.

Nope, that 2nd link is the one I intended to post. That's whay I posted it - I'm confused as to what that is, as I haven't seen that one listed before.

Fred33 said:

Hi everybody,

I noticed you are talking about the "Director's Cut" of Caligula.

You will find this recent interview with Tinto Brass interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbEUwNROrMQ

Thanks for that link. This interview is very interesting, especially the part where Tinto Brass ackkowledges that if he were given the opportunity to go back and re-cut the film properly to meet his vision, he would do it. I would be very interested if that ever happened. Weirder things have happened, but I'd be pretty surprised if this ever actually came to pass.

By the way, anybody interested in the film should download the interviewer's book on the film, "Caligula - Reconstruction, analysis, and it's place in Tinto Brass' oevre". It's a whopping 107 page book on the film in it's various edits, and though I have not yet read it, seems like a very in-depth analysis of the film. The web address for his book is given on the youtube interview, and the pdf is available free for download.

VideoPhonic said:

Looks great but video sticks/glitches from from after the main titles until around 8 minutes in. Anyone else having this problem?

I had no issues but I played the files from my external media player. I didn't burn it to disc.

Laserschwert said:

I'd happily take just all the raw files at their best quality. Chances are, my TV can play them all straight from an USB drive.

I agree with this. I'd just drop the raw files in my external media player and play them from there.

I'm surprised to hear about the playback issues people are having. Personally, I don't have a blu-ray burner, so I don't burn these onto discs. I just copy the entire folder over to my external media player and play it from there - my media player even supports blu-ray disc menus, as long as they aren't Java menus.

This played perfectly fine for me in my media player. The menus all functioned perfectly and the film played through without issue. It may be that my media player is more tolerant of compatibility problems than some blu-ray players are. I know my media player has very wide media support, so that may be why it played perfectly.

I thought the menu looked very professional, and this is by far the best I've ever seen this look. The official blu-ray is far, far too dark for me to enjoy.

For anyone who just wants to rip the movie itself to mkv with no menus, and not lose any quality, I highly recommend MakeMKV. It's free while it's in beta, but don't let the word beta scare you - it's wonderful software that works flawlessly and easily, and it's been in beta for a long time now - just load up the blu-ray folder and select the titles you want to rip - you can keep whatever audio tracks and subtitle tracks you like, and it rips to lossless .mkv with no quality loss of audio or video.

I noticed on Amazon.fr there are 2 versions of this series on DVD:

http://www.amazon.fr/Bomber-Int%C3%A9grale-r%C3%A9%C3%A9dition-Go-Nagai/dp/B004618D3U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390398650&sr=8-1&keywords=bomber+x

http://www.amazon.fr/Bomber-Int%C3%A9grale-collector-Go-Nagai/dp/B002DVA05O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1390398650&sr=8-2&keywords=bomber+x

The Intégrale réédition is from 2010 and the other version is from 2009. Are they the same quality? The 2009 version says remastered but the 2010 version doesn't mention it so I'm confused.

Turisu said:

I'm also very interested in this. But please, please keep the grain.

I gotta agree. The grain really should be left alone honestly. The grain is what contains the detail. I hate when studios use excessive DNR and ruin their blu-ray releases. It happens all the time. Thankfully, some studios know enough to leave the grain intact.

Question to Bladez636: Will you be retaining the DVD quality of these episodes? Will they be in DVD format or smaller compressed files? Of course this is your project but personally I always prefer going for the highest quality possible. When working from DVD it's always best to keep the project at DVD quality rather than compressing to avi or other file types.

I am very interested in this project. I imported the UK DVD set a couple years ago as I live in the US, and I would love to see what you end up doing with this. I think it was an amazing production and deserves more attention. Those comparison shots look amazing. The French DVD set looks far better from what I've seen in your comparison video. Shame they didn't include an English audio track.

A suggestion - please go gently with the grain removal. Removing too much grain will remove much of the fine detail, as the grain holds the detail. I always prefer grain and detail as opposed to a cleaned and "waxy" look.

Is this the French remastered edition your clips come from?:

http://www.amazon.fr/Bomber-Int%C3%A9grale-r%C3%A9%C3%A9dition-Go-Nagai/dp/B004618D3U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390135357&sr=8-1&keywords=x-bomber

Because there seems to be another edition but I think the remastered edition is the one I linked to above. Here's the other release:

http://www.amazon.fr/San-Ku-Ka%C3%AF-Int%C3%A9grale-Collector/dp/B002DPQ3JM/ref=pd_sim_d_3

TylerDurden389 said:

Waitaminute, the blu-ray of minority report removed the color push and goes for a more natural color palette? This shocks me because I am so used to the opposite with old movies on blu-ray at this point.

 Yeah, for once, they did just the opposite, and made the color timing more natural for the blu-ray. That's a switch, huh? Personally, this is how I prefer it - I always prefer natural skin tones and colors. I hate when director's add all kinds of crazy color tints to films. So even though I'm not too interested in this particular project, I will say that as usual the colormatch work being done here is amazing! In this case I prefer the blu-ray colors though.

borisanddoris said:

This was released at one point.  I've got it.  It's wonderful.  

The mono track is just terrific too.  Made the film much more authentic, scary, and enjoyable.

I should say it's not without faults: the person who did this did add their own credit to the titles and credits in a way I find a bit obtrusive.  

They did restore the red WB logo too...which is a HUGE plus in my book.

This fanedit was actually discussed over on blu-ray.com, and the general consensus was that this fanedit was terrible. I took a look at it myself, and I agree, It is sickly green, and like many others, I have a hard time believing that those were the original colors. It is highly questionable in my opinion. And the compression was awful on the mkv. He also slapped his name all over the edit - a very poor idea to feed his ego. I deleted it after just jumping around a bit.

The majority on blu-ray.com feel that the new blue color timing is terrible on the blu-ray, and I agree. I just don't think that green is any better. I currently own the digibook blu-ray, and while I hate the blu-ray coloring, I think the green is even worse. This needs proper color timing desperately. I was hoping the recent re-release might correct it, but it's the same exact print.

Also, I hate the cgi-enhanced jump-cut at the end that they use on the alleged "theatrical" version. That shot shot be restored to the rough jump-cut as it was originally. The original logo at the beginning would be nice too. I hate it when they feel the need to use their new logo instead of the original logo seen in theatres.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I have a new entry for future projects:

MINORITY REPORT

BD has a different color grading in comparison to DVD and HDTV - avsforum

also, look at this screenshot comparison: in the HDTV version, should those reflections on the computer screen be there, or they are only MPEG2 noise?

I have both DVD and BD, but didn't find (yet) the exact frame...

Does it worth a preservation?

 I've been loving what you've been doing with your color grading. I just watched "The Thing" last weekend and it looked wonderful - better than I've ever seen it look.

But personally, after looking at those comparison shots, I feel that this time, the blu-ray, for once, has better color. The DVD and broadcast versions look very unnatural - the teal/greenish look that they usually add to so many blu-ray catalog films. For once, they actually improved the color on the blu-ray. I have no idea which is "correct", but after reading about the blu-ray transfer, it seems that Steven Spielberg worked closely during the transfer. To me I like the results much better than the DVD colors.

It's a great film, so I would say yes it would have been worth it if they actually harmed the film on blu-ray. But this time I think they did an excellent job and the colors look terrific to me. There are so many others that look awful on blu-ray thanks to poor color timing choices, I just think the effort would be better served on a title that really needs it.

Unfortunately there still seems to be no HD version of the itunes commentary available anywhere. I received the 3D blu-ray for Christmas and like everybody I'm frustrated that we didn't get the commentary or other extras. It's nice that BillyBoy has been sharing his custom DVDs, but really I have the 3D blu-ray because I wanted the highest quality available, and it's not ideal to watch a highly-compressed DVD on a 46" screen. It's very frustrating because I like those types of extras too. They really screwed the fans with this one.

Was this DVD ever uploaded to usenet?