Turisu

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

if someone is curious about next projects, take a look at this test clip (43MB): http://www.sendspace.com/file/qdecpb

what is about? Surprise! Just download it, and post your opinions here if it should be done or not - to me, color differences are not exagerated, but still important enough to think to release it.

Forgot to add my comment on this. I like the LD colours. In the scene with the doctor Arnie's shirts look green in the BD but grey in the LD so there is definitely a difference.

Also the skin tone on the boobs closeup looks better on the LD IMO. :D

You're right, some of the 3D colours do look very dark and muddy. That shot from the amber mine almost looks sepia!

I agree that it's hard to accept that it ever looked this way theatrically. The film stills do have a more brown look but not to the extent of the 3D BD. But if those aren't the theatrical colours then I have no idea why they went with such a radical change. Surely you wouldn't want to deliberately darken a film for 3D considering that 3D glasses already make it appear darker?

The LD colours may well be a happy medium. How does the T-Rex attack on the jeep look in the LD? The 2D BD has an overwhelming blue cast to it whereas the 3D BD has more natural colours.

Ok, images should be fixed now. Do you happen to have a capture from your LD preservation of the second shot with Grant and Sattler? I'm curious to see how the colours compare to the others.

Here are some JP shots I found on the net. The first shot is the 3D BD, second is the Italian laserdisc, third is the 2D BD:

Obviously this doesn't help to determine which is the most theatrically accurate but the 2D BD colours are clearly the worst of the three, having an odd blue and magenta cast and generally being colder looking than the other two.

The only theatrical source I can find are these stills from an open matte print: http://imgur.com/a/wtWIB#10

Here's a comparison: (top: 3D BD, middle: film print, bottom: 2D BD)

I couldn't find a laserdisc shot from this scene but you can see that the reds and blues in the 3D BD are closer to the film print than the colours of the 2D BD.

Anyway, sorry to hog the thread. The point is; I'd love a recolored BD of Jurassic Park. :D

Chewtobacca said:

Andrea, could you post some comparisons of the LD and the 35th Anniversary BD?  The LD screenshot posted above looks similar but not the same, and I'm not convinced.

 

The colours are definitely stronger in the LD timing. But colours and levels were often pumped up for home video releases (hence the overly bright sky). For what it's worth, Dean Cundey had this to say about past home video releases of Halloween and the 35th Anniversary BD:

"Dean Cundey: I was approached actually; John had looked at this new version and thought it looked really good, but suggested that I go in to oversee some final work on it so that fans would finally have the version they deserve. See, a lot of the previous editions were made from a print or a previous digital version and the people working on those versions were just doing what they thought was right. When you have a Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox though, that just doesn’t translate; things get skewed.

So I was very impressed by the fact that, for this release, they used the original camera material because they wanted to make this the definitive version. For me, it’s the most accurate portrayal of how John and I wanted Halloween to be seen. Most fans have never seen Halloween the right way either between all the TV, VHS and DVD versions over the years so this Blu-ray is really something special."

Source: http://dailydead.com/exclusive-dean-cundey-reflects-halloween-career-talks-new-transfer/

I only really mention this for the sake of clarity. As has already been pointed out, this project isn't about restoring the original theatrical look, it's about recreating the look of the 1999 DVD which some people prefer.

It's true that the 2D BD isn't perfect. There's definitely some EE but nothing nearly as distracting as the DNR from the 3D release, making it the best HD source available. By far the worst thing about the 2D BD are the colours. To be honest, even the LD colours would be a huge improvement but my understanding of the intention behind the 3D BD was to recreate the warmer almost brown look of the original theatrical print.

I seem to recall some open-matte film stills were posted here not long ago. I'll have to have a look and compare.

I know you've already done a [ruLes] release of Jurassic Park but would you ever consider doing a [spoRv] release retiming the colours of the old 2D Bluray to match the more theatrically accurate colours of the 3D Bluray since the 3D release is DNR'd all to hell?

The laserdisc has the same colour timing as the old VHS releases which is similar to the 35th Anniversary BD. Here's a shot from Criterion's website:

As far as I know, the only release with the digitally altered colours is the 1999 THX DVD.

On that second shot with Michael behind the hedge, I don't think it's possible to match the DVD colours with regrading alone. The leaves on the trees to the right of the shot have been separately (digitally) recoloured to bright orange. No matter what changes you make to the overall timing, those trees will always be green unless you can somehow isolate and recolour them the way Criterion did.

For the sake of clarification; those DVD shots are not the original theatrical colours as implied by the first post. Those are the digitally "enhanced" colours from the THX remaster. By all accounts available (including Dean Cundey) the 35th anniversary BD has the most theatrically accurate colours of any home video release.

I appreciate that your project is trying to restore the revisionist colours for those who prefer that look but to refer to it as the original colour grading is just incorrect.

That being said, I look forward to seeing your results as always.

+1 for The Black Hole

Mitch said:

I have a 35 mm in the can of the THING and the color is very washed out after sitting in the cans

 

 

I don't mean to go off-topic but I just thought I'd ask; is there enough colour left in your 35mm print of The Thing to assist in the discussion as to whether the BD colours are theatrically accurate?

See this thread:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Thing-1982-spoRv-BD-25-RELEASED/topic/15723/page/6/

Apologies again for the off-topic response.

So is there a BD available in any country that has the extra scenes and the S-Mart ending? I'm not bothered about the "guy with the gun" line.

Hal 9000 said:

It's on the spleen, but not visible yet. I'm gonna let my torrent client seed overnight and see if the tracker sees it. 

Got it. Many thanks. :)

Any chance somebody who grabs this could upload it to MySpleen?

Where else did you find it to be out of sync after correcting the 120ms at 20:12?

As far as I can tell by looking at the waveforms, the corrected audio remains in sync with the fake mono track from the BD right up to the end. Of course there are occasional spots where a sound effect or some dialogue is just a few milliseconds out one way or the other between tracks, but that's expected with two completely different audio mixes.

NeonBible said:

That's really interesting. Still doesnt explain how others are not having sync issues. Is it worth comparing the fake mono track to DB's w64 file?

That's exactly what I did.

It's interesting about the side change if it really is in that spot. Could mean there might possibly be a sync issue with the original file after all. 120ms is a small amount and I would imagine not everyone would pick up on it, particularly if watching on a TV from a normal viewing distance.

Well I can confirm my sync issue has nothing to do with VLC. To figure out what's going on at my end once and for all I demuxed all the audio files and compared the waveforms from the LD track and the BD 'fake' mono track side-by-side.

The two tracks are in perfect sync up until 00:20:12 at which point the two tracks desync and the LD track is ahead by about 120ms. The weird thing is that this is right in the middle of a scene so I'm not sure what would account for that.

Anyway the solution for me was simply adding 120ms of empty background sound at this point and now everything is perfectly in sync throughout the whole movie. :)

NeonBible said:

Just wondering if you have also compared it to the 7.1 and fake mono mix tracks on the 35th BD? Because if I didn't perform the same tests with the other tracks I probably would not notice a delay.

The other tracks are both in sync for me. I also was able to confirm the issue by comparing to the existing audio tracks.

I'm also using VLC. I'll try with something else later and see if there's a difference.

NeonBible said:

Thanks Chewy.  I'll have to try that if it is a permanent change rather than just a timecode flag.

Now is +250ms the right delay I should be setting? I just pulled that number out the air and seems to work out ok.  But is there an exact science to getting the right sync? Is the only way to play them side by side and figure it out from there?

I just checked the mkv I made again. Yes +250 or perhaps +200 seems to sync things up again for me in the scenes I mentioned. Although with this delay, when I watch the scene where Laurie is sat in class and answers her teacher, lip sync appears to be off whereas it seems ok with no added delay.

For clarification; I'm not suggesting there's anything wrong with the audio track, clearly several people have it sync'd with no issues. Perhaps there's something amiss with the method I used: Convert w64 to wav using dBPoweramp, mux wav with video using mkvtoolnix.

Thanks for the LD audio.

After a quick check-through I have to agree that it isn't perfectly in sync with the 35th Anniversary BD in places. At the end when Loomis shoots Michael the shot sounds are definitely coming in before the muzzle flashes. Also when Loomis gives his "the devil's eyes" speech, the lip sync is noticeably off.

Still great to have the original audio preserved in this way though. :)

More insane is his choice of the word color-"corrected" to describe all that teal!

Cameron has been in my fruitloop category for a long while. Ever since the days when he was touting pan-and-scan over widescreen I've known he has no regard for preserving the theatrical look of his movies.

Matt_Stevens said:

 

I will say it again... Taking a currently released Blu-Ray and adding grain to it is just adding noise.

To state that adding grain is just adding noise may be technically correct but it's a gross over-simplification in terms of how added grain can create the appearance of more or enhanced detail.

A great example is this comparison shot from emanswfan's 70mm Filmized Concept project:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/39951

To simply dismiss the benefits of this kind of enhancement (carefully applied) is just foolish, particularly when trying to recreate the look of film in a source that has been DNR'd.

And yes, Cameron stated in an interview that all the grain had been completely scrubbed from the new Aliens master, so it's a reasonable assumption that the grain visible in the current BD has been added.

That looks more like the old Bluray than the THX DVD. The trees in your shot are still green, albeit a more orangey green, but definitely not bright radioactive orange like in the THX.

Personally I can't stand the THX DVD's digitally tweaked look. I'm just making the point that there was more than simple color regrading that went into making it look that way.