rockin

I really like the latest regrade. It really shows how red/orange the blu-ray was in parts.

STENDEC said:

I've done some more extensive testing with the tool over the past couple of weeks, regrading the opening scene of the first Matrix film Blu-ray to match the PAL DVD. I know spoRv attempted this a while back, but comparing his to mine revealed that DrDre's tool is far more accurate.

First 6 minutes of the film here:

https://mega.nz/#!ExoRjKTb!w1IvRE74YUfyVd_YjnaMT6903w-9A-wlFCK8pwIkjyA

This was a shot-by-shot regrade too. There are some problems with crushed whites, which the tool doesn't handle well as we know, but overall is looks almost exactly like the DVD.

Just a couple of things I thought I'd mention with regards to the tool itself as well. Firstly, it'd be good to have an Abort button somewhere. At the moment if you make a mistake and want to cancel the calculation or conversion, you have to use task manager to shut the program down and then reopen it.

Secondly, I don't know if this is just on my PC, but there were a number of occasions where I'd be building a correction model, and then for no apparent reason the tool would just stop calculating mid-way. The progress bar would hang and my CPU usage would drop to idle. If I recropped the images and tried again it would usually work but not always.

In any case, as I said before it's an awesome program.

That looks brilliant. I am still shocked at how good the results are from this tool.

That's a really great idea. I just got myself a Intel i7 six-core beast with hyper-threading (12 threads), so could definitely make use of the processing power!

I hate add criticism, because you are doing such wonderful work, but to me the latest regrade looks like it is losing some detail in certain things. I can't really tell whether it is something to do with the gamma or not, or again just my eyes. 

STENDEC said:

Just wanted to add my thanks to DrDre for this tool. It works amazingly well! I've been trying it with a few different films and it does an awesome job.

In particular, I tried regrading the parking garage scene from the recent Terminator Blu-ray, which has some of the worst teal-shifting I've seen in a while. I matched it to my PAL DVD copy of the film from 2005. Here are the results (which took a couple of days to render!):

https://mega.nz/#!dl5zlRAT!Jn1tJj5d1dmsAh_ORHnSLgbzh_XHcdzb5MDaYbkKXj4

I only matched it to one shot though, so the colours aren't 100% accurate across the whole scene. Still, it looks WAAAAAY better than what MGM put out on the Blu-ray.

Looking forward to version 1.3+. If we can start using LUT files from this program in Premiere or After Effects, that's going to be amazing.

 That looks really great. I bet it will look even better in a higher video bitrate. 

I have been trying the tool with the Superman 2 theatrical blu-ray, to try and match Superman 2 to the DVD, and seemed to work pretty well for the most part. The tool crashed a lot for me on windows 7 pro though, so I'm gonna try it on windows 8.1 pro to see if there is a difference.

Wow, that certainly is a big project timeline in Sony Vegas. I would like to know how you managed to avoid any crashes with that many tracks in your timeline and still keep your sanity.

Ok, cool.

It looks good. I can't tell if it's my monitor, but the video looks a little dark.

Looks magnificent - fantastic work!

Wow - I had no idea they were beige. This certainly brings a whole different perspective to the colours.

I can't fault what you've done with the regrade, because I personally didn't find the blu-ray or the wowow perfect. What you have done is balance it out a whole lot more than the other two, and for that alone, to me, looks a big upgrade.

Would it be possible to see a small clip with the regrade in motion?

Everything in the regrade looks absolutely fantastic - the best of both the WOWOW and Blu-ray. 

I like the latest regrade the best.

DrDre said:

FrankT said:

Which would you say has the better colour?

 I think I generally prefer the WOWOW, because the bluray is very orange, but in this scene the blury is looking pretty good.

 I think this looks fantastic. Your results are truly outstanding. I don't think the future of film preservations has ever looked so good! 

jedimasterobiwan said:

kk650 said:

@jedimasterobiwan: I'm not taking requests at this time but I'll keep ghostbusters and ghostbusters 2 in mind for the future when i've got less on my plate and consider taking them up as projects. I can promise no more than that.

 thanks if you consider color correcting the back to the future dcp and fixing the dirt and scratches in as well that would be great if not i understand whole hearty or if someone else is doing just that then never mind.

Have you watched the blu-ray?

I really like the corrected colours to be honest. What did you use to do this? 

The amount of work that's gone into this is insane when you consider what he has had to build and re-shoot. 

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

MY FAULT, MY FAULT!!! Sorry, with all these screenshot comparisons, I exchanged images by mistake... so, what I presumed contrast problem in the 4K BD, is indeed in the pre-4K BD... apologies to everyone...

Hey no problem - you don't really need to apologise.

Always happy to see what you can come up with.

I've never owned Heat on laserdisc, but I would imagine this would be better than the DVD if you were to preserve the original audio. Not only for the bits that were cut from the blu-ray, but also potentially for better dynamic range than the blu-ray as dvdmike pointed out. 

I know the DVD is pretty close to the LD audio according to early reviews, but I've never had a chance to compare to really know for sure.

That comparison really demonstrates the differences - thanks for that.

I wasn't aware of how similar the screener was to the prologue. 

Thinking about it more, I guess it would make sense that the screener could be closest to what I saw in 35mm more than anything else. 

TServo2049 said:

I decided I'd actually try to comb the Internet to see if there is any footage still lurking on YouTube from camrips or screeners or anything prior to the official home release that would have been taken off of a 35mm source. And miraculously, there are still summer/fall 2008 postings of clips from the WB screener disc that survive on YT.

Here's what I've found so far; I will add more as I find them.

Joker's pencil trick

Joker and Two-Face in the hospital

The interrogation scene

The truck flip

Longer version of the hospital scene

"Why so serious?"

Joker gets his phone call (I think this one's actually from a camrip)

The ending (Contrast with this clip, which also predates the official release date of the DVD, but looks to be from a leaked copy of it? No "Property of Warner Bros.", the frames don't smear, and the colors look different.)

Joker crashes the party

 The DVD screeners had the same colour timing as the official DVD and Blu-ray. Camrips from 35mm would be probably the best, along side comparisons with the 35mm film cells, trailers and prologue. 

ElectricTriangle said:

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

Let's say that BD 4K has the "right" color grading, but it has also contrast problems, while the BD pre-4K has the right contrast, but not the color grading... well, as the contrast problems could not be completely solved, we could just regrade the BD pre-4K using the BD 4K as color reference...

 No. The 4k has the best contrast of all the released discs. The pre-4k blu-ray is the one with contrast problems (the frequently blown out whites are clearly wrong). In the comparison shot you posted, you can clearly see that both faces and the smoke are overexposed in the pre-4k blu-ray. In another comparison shot from page 3 of this thread you can see that the pre-4k bluray looks atrocious with ridiculous blooming whites, while the 4k remaster has natural contrast that preserves detail.

The 4k blu-ray is the best home media release of the film. The only reason this thread got restarted is that jedimasterobiwan thinks the 1999 DVD is somehow more accurate.... or something..... I don't really understand how he thinks.

Yeah that was what I was trying to say - the pre-4K BD and 2005 DVD have the contrast overexposed, and the 4K BD has the contrast right but the colours are slightly too saturated in parts. The 1999 DVD on the other hand is more balanced contrast wise but a bit too pink and muddy in places - although I can't tell if the muddiness is the way the film is supposed to look and then was boosted in the subsequent releases to appear more brighter and vivid.

The 4K BD is near perfect for me, but I can understand why some people might feel it doesn't look right still.

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

It seems that the pre-4K BD color grading is similar to old DVD (and maybe HDTV):

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/21921/picture:0

 Yes, the old pre-4K BD is probably sourced from the same master as the 2005 DVD. However the 1999 DVD uses a different source from both the pre-4K BD and 2005 DVD - you can see this if you compare the contrast differences. The HDTV in on the other hand is sourced from the same source from the 1999 DVD transfer, but there have been other HDTV sources which are sourced from the 2005 master as well - really depends on which HDTV version you have.

The 4K BD is a happy compromise of the 1999 and 2005 in my opinion, but for those of us who are used to a more muddy transfer over the years such as the 1999 DVD, the 4K BD seems a little bit too 'vibrant' in parts.

Wow, very nice.

TServo2049 said:

OK, I just saw an IMAX print screening of TDK, and the colors do look in line with the more "green" images. Maybe not as green/yellow, but certainly not as pink/red as the Blu-ray. Either blue/teal with some green, or yellow/orange/brown, in line with how I remember the film looking in 35mm in 2008.

 Yep, that's what I remember too. I think they wanted a more neutral colour with the blu-ray, but they went OTT with the pink/red in the colour balance.