The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers - 4K Dremastered (Released!)

This thread is dedicated to a 4K upscale and AI remastering of the 2009 theatrical bluray release of TTT. While I generally like the new HDR color grade of the official 4K release, the excessive DNR has scrubbed away a lot of detail. So, this here is my attempt at creating a 4K version of TTT (and the other two films) that does have the clarity, detail and fine layer of grain we come to expect from a 4K release. I chose to use the 2009 bluray, because it has the theatrical color grade, and it doesn’t suffer from black crush like the extended bluray release.

Also available: The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring - 4K-Dremastered & The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the Kings - 4K-Dremastered

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Fellowship-of-the-Ring-4K-Dremastered-Released/id/99018#1504015

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Return-of-the-King-4K-Dremastered-Released/id/100445

Here are a number of screencaps from TTT 4K Dremastered:

The official 4K release of TTT has some of the worst DNR in the trilogy. Here’s an example:

Here’s how the same shot looks for 4K Dremastered, where the colors have been matched to the official release for this comparison:

The color grading of the official 4K release is also very different from the original. Here’s the same shot of 4K Dremastered with the original colors:

Wow this is incredible this looks like what the 4k blu rays could have looked like and it’s sad again a fan does what studio should have and could have done. does this fanfix keep detail like the top of Gandalf’s staff and make the scene on the bridge look proper again?

Fullmetaled said:

Wow this is incredible this looks like what the 4k blu rays could have looked like and it’s sad again a fan does what studio should have and could have done. does this fanfix keep detail like the top of Gandalf’s staff and make the scene on the bridge look proper again?

The staff scene is in TROTK, but yes that detail should be preserved, and even enhanced when it will be released.

DrDre said:

Fullmetaled said:

Wow this is incredible this looks like what the 4k blu rays could have looked like and it’s sad again a fan does what studio should have and could have done. does this fanfix keep detail like the top of Gandalf’s staff and make the scene on the bridge look proper again?

The staff scene is in TROTK, but yes that detail should be preserved, and even enhanced when it will be released.

Awesome is it just the lord of the rings extended edition trilogy you are doing or are you doing the hobbit trilogy too? It’s funny how the official release smeared the stone work it looks out of focus.

Fullmetaled said:

DrDre said:

Fullmetaled said:

Wow this is incredible this looks like what the 4k blu rays could have looked like and it’s sad again a fan does what studio should have and could have done. does this fanfix keep detail like the top of Gandalf’s staff and make the scene on the bridge look proper again?

The staff scene is in TROTK, but yes that detail should be preserved, and even enhanced when it will be released.

Awesome is it just the lord of the rings extended edition trilogy you are doing or are you doing the hobbit trilogy too? It’s funny how the official release smeared the stone work it looks out of focus.

I haven’t made up my mind about The Hobbit Trilogy. So, maybe?

Hal 9000 said:

Nice! Don’t suppose you’d also release it in 1080p, to just get the color work.

The colors are unaltered, but a 1080p version is in the works.

Are you going to add your own hdr grade to the lotr extended cut trilogy?

Fullmetaled said:

Are you going to add your own hdr grade to the lotr extended cut trilogy?

No, I’m happy with the theatrical colors.

DrDre said:

Fullmetaled said:

Are you going to add your own hdr grade to the lotr extended cut trilogy?

No, I’m happy with the theatrical colors.

So you won’t take the theatrical colors and enhance with hdr?

Fullmetaled said:

DrDre said:

Fullmetaled said:

Are you going to add your own hdr grade to the lotr extended cut trilogy?

No, I’m happy with the theatrical colors.

So you won’t take the theatrical colors and enhance with hdr?

I don’t have the expertise, and since the source is 8 bit color depth, there’s not enough color depth to work with for an HDR color grade.

Theatrical or Extended cut?

Theatrical. The extended editions suffer from blackcrush and loss of detail in the highlights due to flattening of the exposure curve.

Will you do the Extended Cuts one day?

Not sure. The extended cuts have a lot of issues on bluray.

Overall the Extended Cut has problems with contrast. There are so many scenes where you can spot black crush or overblown highlights. Part 1 (The Fellowship of the Ring - Extended) has this horrible green tint. Part 2 (The Two Towers - Extended) has the green tint removed for the most part, but still pushes green a little bit more than the Theatrical Cut. Part 3 (The Return of the King - Extended) has basically the same color grading as the Theatrical Cut.

The main benefit of the Extended Cut:
It is the sharpest and more detailed release, with a better encoding and less DNR applied. There are still some DNR-scenes but they exist in all released versions.

The Theatrical Cut is also a mixed bag. Out of the older Blurays it has by far the best and most consistent color grading. But Part 1 (The Fellowship of the Ring) is a blurry mess, full of DNR. Part 2 and 3 look much sharper and almost reach the level of the extended cut (the difference might be due to the different encodings).

The 4k-Bluray-Version made huge changes to the color grading. Some people love it, others hate it. But for me it has the best color grading and contrasts of all releases. The main problem of course is with the overall usage of DNR.
Some scenes are filtered to death and look horrible and worse than on the older Bluray-Releases. All the scenes with CGI-Characters (Gollum, Fellbeasts of the Nazgul or the Mûmakil) look fake to me. In the older Blurays Peter Jackson decided to apply “Fake-Grain” onto these CGI-Elements to make them look more real and imperfect and it worked quiet well. For the 4k-Version they decided to remove this added Grain again. Now the CGI-Elements stick out like a sore thumb. The added Grain at least gave Gollum and Co some texture. The Rest of the movie looks okay, but I could not spot any noticeable upgrade in terms of sharpness and details.

I would say:
Using the Theatrical Cut is the best overall choice for an 4k-Remaster, even though the first movie had not much detail in it to take advantage of the upscaling.

I have similar feelings about the different releases. The 2009 bluray release is far from perfect, but it represents to closest representation of what was seen in the cinema in 2001-2003. Despite the obvious flaws in the transfer of FOTR, I am forgiving of them, because 1) at least we got an HD transfer of the theatrical version unlike for Star Wars, and 2) FOTR not having a DI meant they had to go back to the negative and do a brand new scan and digital color grade the film from scratch for a better quality release. I was disappointed by the extended cuts for FOTR and TTT. I really disliked the green tint in FOTR and the black crush kind of negated the increase in detail by going back to the negative. While the green cast was less of a problem in TTT, I couldn’t really get past Theoden’s green beard. With regards to the 4K release, I really liked the new HDR color grading, which while different in some ways it isn’t stylized like the extended blurays and still grounded in a sense of realism. The additional DNR is a huge let down. I wish Peter Jackson would have just given us the extended bluray masters with the new HDR color grading. That would have been awesome.

Any progress on this? 😃

It’s done. Send me a PM.

This is amazing! Are you planning to offer this as a fully authored BD/UHD BD with all available audio tracks (including the new Atmos tracks) that can be added to the original BD/UHD BD sets?

And obviously, I’d love to see versions of the EE! Please consider this despite all the additional issues they have.

Wuschel said:

This is amazing! Are you planning to offer this as a fully authored BD/UHD BD with all available audio tracks (including the new Atmos tracks) that can be added to the original BD/UHD BD sets?

The 1080p version was bluray compatable, but sadly that version has been lost due to a mistake in syncing the files. The UHD version is an mkv file. If someone wants to create an authored UHD BD from it, they’re welcome to it, as long as it’s not being commercially sold.

DrDre said:

The official 4K release of TTT has some of the worst DNR in the trilogy. Here’s an example:

Here’s how the same shot looks for 4K Dremastered, where the colors have been matched to the official release for this comparison:

The color grading of the official 4K release is also very different from the original. Here’s the same shot of 4K Dremastered with the original colors:

This is insane how much details were lost in 4K version…

Man the 4k version looks even worse than I remember. I can’t wait untill the EE’s are done (My preferred way to watch these films). Will probably take quite a while, but THIS is what LOTR should have looked like. Excellent work!