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44rh1n's "The Fellowship of the Ring" Extended Edition Color Restoration (Released) — Page 8

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44rh1n said:
So the CGI is technically upscaled 2K (scanned from film though), and everything else is true 4K. It’s a very thorough remaster, from what I’ve read.

I realize this is quite subjective, but how well do you think the effects hold up?

You’re just looking at the HD version and not the 4k, but I’ve read a lot of people expressing concerns about how effects heavy shots would age once the refreshed live action material was set alongside it.

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dranore said:

44rh1n said:
So the CGI is technically upscaled 2K (scanned from film though), and everything else is true 4K. It’s a very thorough remaster, from what I’ve read.

I realize this is quite subjective, but how well do you think the effects hold up?

You’re just looking at the HD version and not the 4k, but I’ve read a lot of people expressing concerns about how effects heavy shots would age once the refreshed live action material was set alongside it.

From what I’ve seen so far (and I haven’t watched the full film yet – waiting on the 4K to do that), it looks very good. The CGI appears more detailed than previous Blu-ray releases. I wouldn’t be surprised if a good amount of the 2K CGI was re-composited onto the 4K scanned negative (not re-rendered in 4K or anything like that, but just re-composited in 4K). Can’t verify that though, of course. One of my go-to shots to judge CGI is the CGI helicopter shot at about 1:50:09, and in this release it looked very good. Also the troll sequence at 2:15:00 and the Balrog sequence at 2:25:00 look quite detailed. It’s still very much 2000s-era CGI, though. Nothing will change that. But it looks good!

But again, my opinions could change once I’m able to pixel-peep on a higher bitrate source. Right now I’ve only been able to look at the iTunes version on my LG OLED while sitting on my couch, and it initially looks quite good. But I’m much more interested in watching the actual 4K HDR version, or even a 1080p SDR Blu-ray (if that releases, which hopefully it will). I’m afraid these first impressions I’ve been giving are a bit premature.

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44rh1n said:

Overall, most of the daylight exteriors look VERY close to the original release, though! It looks SO GOOD! I can’t verify this, but I would almost bet money that Peter Doyle returned to do this new color grade. It definitely looks like his handiwork!

You should have made that bet! Initial review is up at TheDigitalBits (spoiler: he likes it), and indeed, Doyle did the re-grade. Lots of good technical info and sounds like the 4K HDR on BD is going to be nothing short of spectacular.

https://thedigitalbits.com/item/lord-of-the-rings-trilogy-2020-4k-uhd

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Nick66 is gonna have to change his avatar 😉

Seriously, everything looks pretty delightful to me so far. It’s not the same as the DVD, but I never needed or expected it to be identical to the DVD. I just needed it to be good, and it is!

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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Ha Ha! True about the avatar. Hmmmmm…

Yeah, it’s not the same grade as the DVD, or even theatrical blu-ray, but those probably aren’t exactly true to the original theatrical version either (if anyone can remember what that looks like). Like you said, it just needed to be good, and it sounds like it’s great. Honestly, it’s a relief.

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Damn. Look at those bitrates.

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44rh1n said:

CatBus said:

Speaking of your avatar, for those who haven’t already seen this:

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=18347156&postcount=5884

Top: Theatrical Blu
Middle: Extended Blu
Bottom: UHD

The tonemapping on that UHD still doesn’t look accurate to me. (It at least shows off the lack of the green tint though!)

Well, I think it’s a photo of a display. There could be a whole lot of weirdness added through that alone (auto-white-balance, etc). But yes, the lack of green (even compared to theatrical) is the reason for showing it off.

Project Threepio (Star Wars OOT subtitles)

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I finally had a chance look at the 4K HDR version, and it looks amazing! My comments above remain the same — it doesn’t look exactly like the original release, but it’s very much in the spirit of the original release. I have some reservations, but overall it looks really good, and seeing this film in HDR is a really cool experience. It’s super visceral! And of course, now that there’s no awful green pollution throughout the entire film, it’s finally watchable again!

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I also finally got a look at it. I still prefer the theatrical colors when looking at it side by side but on its own, it looks great. The only thing that bothers me is that to my taste, they went a little over board with dnr. It’s really good state-of-the-art dnr, so it didn’t really remove any detail but it looks a bit clinical and digital.

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Harmy said:

I also finally got a look at it. I still prefer the theatrical colors when looking at it side by side but on its own, it looks great. The only thing that bothers me is that to my taste, they went a little over board with dnr. It’s really good state-of-the-art dnr, so it didn’t really remove any detail but it looks a bit clinical and digital.

I agree, I still prefer the original color from the theatrical/extended DVD. But I have to admit the HDR is really nice.

Also, I actually noticed that there’s some really nice grain throughout the film, although it’s very fine, subtle grain. You’re right that they’ve definitely applied some DNR, (and more than I would have liked). But I’m grateful they didn’t try to scrub out the grain completely, because there’s still a light amount of it that’s present in the film.

The DNR does feel a bit more prominent on VFX shots, though. But that may just be a resolution thing.

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Also I think it’s hilarious that the LOTR Fanclub credits are still 480p, haha. Not that it matters. But they clearly just pulled them from the SD DVD master. There are SO many names in those credits that I bet whoever was in charge of typing them up was like, “NOPE” Haha.

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Yeah, there is grain in some shots and then the next one will be completely grainless. Also, in some scenes, there’s grain in the background but none on people’s faces. Also, most of the time, the grain that is there appears to be the same in all channels, which makes it look more like added digital noise and less like film grain.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think it looks pretty fantastic and it probably will become my go to way to watching the movie but it just could have been better 😁

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For me the only good thing of the entire remastered box is the really beautiful color regrade.

Apart colors, all the rest is plain 2k Upscale + outlaw DNR + Sharpening fraud.

There are plenty of screens (capsaholic and BR forum) so atrocius i can’t believe someone had the courage to ok it.

There is someone with the idea of regrade from the TE bluray with the UHD as reference?

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tlen said:

For me the only good thing of the entire remastered box is the really beautiful color regrade.

Apart colors, all the rest is plain 2k Upscale + outlaw DNR + Sharpening fraud.

There are plenty of screens (capsaholic and BR forum) so atrocius i can’t believe someone had the courage to ok it.

There is someone with the idea of regrade from the TE bluray with the UHD as reference?

Sounds like you actually need to watch it in 4K HDR before landing on this opinion. Haha.

It’s not upscaled 2K, except for the VFX. Everything else is true 4K, scanned from the original negative. That’s also why it’s so clean. Sure, there’s some DNR, but nowhere near the amount of DNR in other film releases (cough cough James Cameron cough cough). And it doesn’t even come close to the amount of DNR on the original theatrical Blu-ray. Plus, LOTR always had digital sharpening. It’s part of how it has always looked. Sharpening is even talked about in the color grading BTS in the appendices from 2001.

The HDR looks really great on a true HDR display, like my LG OLED. I definitely recommend checking it out on a true HDR screen, preferably one with Dolby Vision support.

My only complaints so far are that the DNR could have been done a bit less, and the color grading could have been a bit more similar to the original DVD release (with the added HDR, of course). Some scenes are less warm from the original grading (Rivendell), while others are warmer than the original grading (flashbacks and Galdalf’s confrontation with Saruman). And skintone/midtones seem to be a bit more lifted overall in bright scenes than in the original grading. I also noticed some blues in Gandalf’s beard during his scene with Frodo at the beginning of the film, which looks like a stray qualifier of the sky. Kind of annoying. Reminds me of the stray power window that used to be in this exact same scene on the old green-tinted Blu-ray. But that’s me nitpicking! Without comparing it to the original grading, it’s quite good.

Granted, so far I’ve only looked at Fellowship. It’s a vast improvement from previous official HD releases. I still have to look at Two Towers and Return of the King, though.

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Have previewed the theatrical cut of Fellowship in 4K across a few different displays: an HDR TV set, a P3 capable iMac, and our BenQ projector (1080p). All three looks very good, and certainly filmic. There is certainly some DNR going on but I feel like it’s always been there, even when I projected it in 35mm.

Projecting it looks terrific after tweaking our SDR projector to handle the incoming image. I’m sure it could improve with some more work. That setup is using an Nvidia Shield with Kodi to the Benq.

I may have to grab the whole set now if this one is any preview of the rest of them. Fellowship to me was the most important because both Blu-ray releases were very flawed, while TTT and ROTK looked terrific. I’ve even sync’d the theatrical DTS of Fellowship to it. Well, it matches the sync I did with the Blu-ray almost perfectly. Looking forward to watching the whole thing!

EDIT: I forgot to mention…the bigger or closer you view this thing, the better it is. I can see why some reviewers weren’t happy. They’re likely sitting too far away to observe the grain as it is very very fine. On the iMac and the projector, you can see it clear as day. Not so much on the TV from across the room.

“Alright twinkle-toes, what’s your exit strategy?”

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Most people seem to be of the opinion that it is a definite upgrade from the regular blu-ray’s, despite the usage of DNR. Audio is being regarded as more ‘clear’ as well.
Best reason to upgrade is for the colours of course, although this screenshot from The Two Towers is too revisionistic in my opinion. I don’t know if this has been verified yet, but would be a shame if it truly looks like this in motion:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5242&d2=15008&s1=48969&s2=156548&i=8&l=0

That should just be blue.

Many other images are stunning though, especially on Fellowship, it seems 😃

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Two towers is full of that early 2000s push everything to blue or green style of digital color grading, and im not surprised that 20 years later they’ve decided not to recreate it. These regraded shots are arguably much better.

A shot like this is interesting

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&d1=5242&d2=15008&s1=48974&s2=156553&i=13&l=0

A lot of blue missing there

Other shots seem to keep the tone of the shot intact whist removing the blanket tint.

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=499&y=250&d1=15008&d2=5242&s1=156545&s2=48966&l=0&i=5&go=1

ROTK has a lot less big color washes. I havent had the chance to sit down and watch, im interested to see what their day to night grade looks in that scene where merry find pippin under the oiliphant. Looked terrible on Bluray. Also the horrendous shot of the gang meeting the pirate ships.

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Also a tonne of sharpening going on, not sure what it looks like in motion but a lot of these Composites have some heavy sharpening which im not too fond of. Soft details becoming hard details.

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Man, those revisionist color changes in The Two Towers do bother me… hmmm.

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I was looking in the blu-ray.com forum thread about the 4k release and came across this compare (link), which was a bit 😮 to me. Note that I’m not a possessor of these disks, haven’t watched anything in motion; this is just me pointing out stuff others put up, which may be quite “cherry picked” by one of the more frustrated persons there.

That said, I’ve never quite seen something that struck me as much in regards to cranked-up DNR doing damage (well, excluding the dress in Cinderella!) and in an image that’s ideally supposed to have a lot more resolution(/detail) than the BD…

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/8656

Luckily, people in that thread generally say the good of the 4k set outweighs the bad, sometimes by a huge margin for some, so this compare is surely more just a blip of excess DNR rather than an indication of the whole set being remotely like this.

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃