THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 35

Yes, the reason for it being white is that it's either on the print or the IP. It appears black when it's on the IN or camera negative. I also thinks it's just a hair and not actual print damage.

captainsolo said:

The more you do to a LD cap, honestly the worse off the image will be. I did some similar things on some basic LD conversions and the end result looked horrible, especially when scaled to 16x9. I don't really think there's much you can do with filters applied to the source without compromising the image.

Yes, when it comes to this particular transfer I definitely agree with you, all filtering always have some drawbacks. Just nice to hear your thoughts on it. :)

captainsolo said:

This I'm fine with. The white mark now looks like print damage but I really didn't notice it before. It would be nice to see it fixed, but I don't think there's really a feasible way to do so.

If it's handled with care I absolutely think so, I'll most likely attempt it on the PAL transfer when I get it with its better framing and less of the hair. I could also make available a straight transfer of the LD just as it is, I'll see what can be done first.

This is probably one of the more unusual magazines to cover THX when it came out.

Not safe for work!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ADAM-FILM-Sexploitation-THX-1138-Lucas-PERFORMANCE-/390334494435?pt=Magazines&hash=item5ae1bfb6e3

PAL Laserdisc on Ebay, only the second one I can remember seeing...

http://cgi.ebay.com/THX-1138-GEORGE-LUCAS-rare-sealed-laserdisc-/360383639132?pt=UK_DVD_Film_TV_OtherFormats_GL&hash=item53e889ee5c

Got the PAL-LD captures from Jaitea today! :) They look excellent from what I've seen so far, will post some comparisons for you soon...

Here's a comparison with the fine transfer Jaitea provided, this will be a much better alternative than splicing in DVD footage. I'll see if I can apply some sharpening without introducing halos, Jaitea was kind to make more than one capture, so the results can be very nice. :)

US

UK

US

UK

US

UK

US

UK

US

UK

I am almost tempted to make separate releases of the PAL LD and US LD with their different pros and cons but I think I will be happy with a combination. The framing/cropping is much better in the PAL transfer only in this part of the movie, the roles are reversed in the rest of the film where the NTSC is much better. Now, I will finally try to get rid of that thing I have as my avatar. ;)

Do you think it's a different transfer of the same print? Coily might actually have been there since the print was made...

Not sure about how these things work, do they just crop/frame the same telecine differently for the PAL regions? I actually don't know when the framing takes place in the process. It looks to be the same telecine session, same dirt marks and everything. I guess Coily was probably on the print or IP.

The framing is zoomed in, losing picture information on all sides on the PAL LD except when Coily appears, then the PAL suddenly have even more info than the NTSC, so it's damn nice we have it to work with. Even if I'm not able to get rid of it, it will be much less distracting as half of him is gone already with this transfer. :)

They probably sent over the video master and that was re-cropped to 2.35:1 for the PAL release. From my knowledge this is typically what would happen. It's usually minor differences like this and is most likely the case since the two are so similar. Since the mark/hair is in the same places I'd definitely bet that it's the same video master. The thing still is why it's so blocky. Because of this I first thought it was damage.

Why would they recrop? Seems like a lot of extra work on a non anamorphic image where it wouldn't even be visible on most consumer television sets of the day.

I never even saw Coily on my old Sony CRT.

Maybe they did it because they noticed how badly affected some of the scenes were because of the bad cropping that was made in this part of the film and not for the dirt, the PAL transfer basically show the same amount of picture information to the right of the frame as the NTSC frames I posted when taking the overscan of a CRT-TV into consideration. But they also recropped the rest of the film which doesn't make any sense if that was the main reason, maybe to get rid of the "light-artifact" seen throughout the film.

Wish I knew more about telecine processes of the era. Probably lost to time and new technology now.

I stumbled across this on Ebay...

http://cgi.ebay.com/16MM-Film-SCI-FI-HORROR-MOVIE-TRAILER-CLIP-REEL-/220817192307?pt=US_Film&hash=item3369baf573

Could be a THX tv spot? Ten seconds seems really short though...

Odd, I don't know how 10 second clips could be a preview.

Well, wouldn't they have to recrop anyway due to PAL having a larger frame size than NTSC?

captainsolo said:

Odd, I don't know how 10 second clips could be a preview. 

Probably a TV-spot like Silver suggested.

captainsolo said:

Well, wouldn't they have to recrop anyway due to PAL having a larger frame size than NTSC?

Yeah you're probably right, I guess so.

Have some computer problem at the moment, need to re-install everything before I can try out AfterEffects.

Yes, I'm definitely going to try LimitedSharpen on this, have used it before with nice results, great filter. Thanks for the advice anyway. :)

I took a little break from this to keep me from going insane after the manual IVTC process, there was a lot of changes in the pattern. I basically saw this film playing out in my head as soon as I closed my eyes. ;)  But I will jump back in soon and finish this bad boy.

By all means, take a break. It's not like anybody is watching you decrease productivity. ;)

:)

I finally got AfterEffects installed on my computer, now I'll see if my shitty computer can handle it...

Did we already discuss the existence of an official Italian VHS before?

http://www.missingvideo.com/luomo-che-fugg-dal-futuro-7434

Yes, I linked to that tape earlier in the thread, I wouldn't call the price of 12 euro for an old VHS tape outrageous, I actually think the price is kinda low, you often paid the double back in the day and much more for some obscure rarities. I guess it depends on how much you desire this version. Heck I may pick it up myself just for the extended footage it contains.