I had a thought about the “patches” for location text etc. In those instances where it is very difficult to get a seamless match (the submarine establishing shot for instance), maybe you could do a split across the entire frame, which would be less noticeable than a “blob” in the middle? Failing that, substituting the entire shot with one from the MonstersHD source may be the least distracting option.
These are both strategies I’ve been considering. I’ve gone ahead and replaced the entire submarine shot, since that one’s got no fine detail to speak of and wouldn’t really suffer for the lower resolution.
The “split across the frame” method is something I’ve been considering for the establishing shot of the bridge on the fishing boat at the beginning - The problem with that shot is that I can reasonably match the grey of the boat, or the red painted stripe that passes through the patched area, but seemingly not both at once.
If there are any other egregious patches, I’d love the feedback. I’m going to be re-doing all of them anyway, since I’m actually color-correcting the Japanese source a little bit this time, so it would be nice to know which ones to really look out for.