'Raiders of the Lost Ark' - bluray and colour timing changes (Released) — Page 5

Current WOWOW can be delogoed nicely... I think that was less so of old WOWOW but I've done it (e.g., my encode of the Holic movie and the sub of the first episode of the live-action series I encoded).

That might be worth doing in some cases, for some films?

msycamore said:

Ok, I managed to get a friend of mine to send me pics of the tweaks, he thinks I'm a total crazy son of a bitch. ;)

 

Well of the Souls - not the best pics and these are actually much easier to spot in motion as there's lightning (thunder), fire and movements that reveals reflections in these shots, but I marked the most obvious mark in the glass that was removed, if you look close enough you'll see additional scratches and marks that was removed below and to the right of the snake where Fords face earlier passes in the shot.

same mark removed in this shot...

 

Well, I looked at the scene in the extras on the BD and the most obvious reflection of the cobra seems to be this:

Especially in movement, since you can see it moves along with the cobra.

Got the WOWOW in English off Usenet... it's around 7 gigs in 720p.  I think I like the first part better in WOWOW because the jungle should be green not gold.  Then after that point I like the Blu-ray better.  Oh well.  I saw Raiders about 20 times in the theater when I was a kid and I couldn't tell you what's right or wrong, but the Blu-ray seems to look like what I remember after the South America sequence... kinda like Harmy's re-coloring of Star Wars back to '70s style the Raiders blu seems to harken back to that type of visual warmth.

The problem with that is, how do you select which scenes to use from which source? I for one (having only seen screenshots from the WOWOW mind you) prefer the BD in a vast majority of scenes.

I prefer the Blu-ray in the vast majority of scenes as well, but the WOWOW does have its strengths... especially in the jungle and when they lift the ark out of its tomb... the golden glow is just right on the WOWOW during that sequence.  Also, that last shot in the warehouse (matte painting) has the shadows a little more correct in the WOWOW.  The Blu-ray brightens that warehouse up a little too much and it loses some of its mystery.  Faces do lean towards the red hue in the WOWOW though and that's one area where the Blu-ray definitely trumps WOWOW.  They both have pros and cons but I'm glad I grabbed the WOWOW.  If anyone is curious, just do a free 5 day no risk trial with usenet.net and the only other thing you need is SABnzbd.  There's a simple tutorial on YT that answers all your questions.  Simple, fast and I had no problems at all.

Okay, personal reflection and mea culpa time.  I never liked the DVD colors (too blue) and also was dubious of the Blu-ray colors (too gold), although I thought they looked good in spite of my doubts about their authenticity.  Upon seeing the WOWOW screencaps, I was sold that those represented the real deal.

I'd downloaded custom Blu-ray cover art with the correct movie title, and I'd even edited the "scenes from the film" on the back cover so that they matched the WOWOW colors.  Yeah, I was that kinda anal about it, but I love this movie.

I was all set to start a new project where I'd apply HDTV colors to the Blu-ray, splice in the old, darker, opening without the clipped sky detail, and even try to put back the snake reflection from Laserdisc, what the hell.

I browsed those 35mm stills posted elsewhere and thought, "Well, that shows that the gold tint on the Blu-rays was at least partially justified, but look at that sunset, that's still not right.  Maybe I can figure out if there's a happy medium."  So I spent some time in Photoshop doing some color correcting, and... er, well, now I'm convinced even the sunset is probably much closer to correct on the Blu-rays than on WOWOW.  I've done a U-turn and now think the golden hues of the Blu-ray are actually the result of a careful restoration, not a deliberate alteration.

There's still plenty of deliberate alterations on the Blu-ray.  The overly-brightened opening, the missing snake refection, and so on.  But the colors?  Not so much, I'm now convinced.  And I'm afraid I just can't justify doing a whole preservation project to undo such fairly inconsequential things.  So sorry to all, and thanks in particular to Harmy for providing those 35mm stills.  They may have taken a really long time to do it, but they changed at least one mind.

CatBus: I agree. The BD is likely the most accurate preservation of RotLA to date; color-wise, that is.

Most people conveniently forget the impact that the bulb has on the colors during projection: gold-colored bulb => gold tint. A proper film preservation must take this into account.

The 35mm stills also sold me on the BD colour timing being the closest to theatrically accurate.

Jetrell Fo said:

Is the WOWWOW version available anywhere for one to get and see for themselves?

:)

Search NZB.cc for "c-rotla-jp". I'm pretty sure that's the WOWOW version.

Some channel showed the BD version which i don't own and it was so orange that is was horrible.

Glad i don't own it.

skyjedi2005 said:

Some channel showed the BD version which i don't own and it was so orange that is was horrible.

Glad i don't own it.

Is your TV calibrated?

Jetrell Fo said:

Apparently it's no longer available......

"Post 40331125 does not exist" is the message I get.

:(

Try nzbclub.com! :-)

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

...and?

Since when were the colors of a film required to reflect reality?

stretch009 said:

dvdmike said:

Orange flags......

What does this mean?  Please be kind.

I think he's referring to the red Nazi flags looking orange on the BD.