Info: Films re-color timed on video releases — Page 6

If you want to match on a frame by frame basis, you could use the function HistogramAdjust inside a ScriptClip.

HistogramAdjust only matches the luma, but with some clever use of UtoY and VToY you could use it to match all channels. (Similarly, I imagine a combination of ShowRed/Blue/Green and MergeRGB could be used to do the matching in RGB colourspace.)

My preferred color-matching method at this point in time is g-force's RGBMatch.

I'm still holding out for something better, but in my experience so far, RGBMatch gets you at least 80% of the way there if you do it shot-by-shot.

Using RGBMatch frame-by-frame results in too much flicker and color balance fluctuations. I managed to get ColourLike to work on a frame-by-frame basis using ScriptClip and it exhibits the same kind of flicker and fluctuations, unfortunately.

It's also worth mentioning that a 50% color-match tends to blend better than a 100% one.

By this, I mean: run recolored.Merge(original) after the shot-by-shot application of RGBMatch.

Also, ContraSharpen (not really a sharpener) can help if color-matching a shot results in blown-out whites.

Lastly, if you discover that you're color-matching a film that was only globally tinted and not recolored shot-by-shot (e.g., a Blu-ray with a simple global teal-and-orange tint), then You_Too's method definitely works best.

You_Too said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Doctor M: Using ColourLike with every=1 will generate one histogram for the entire clip it operates on. If you open the histogram in a text editor, you'll only see one set of histogram values. It does not balance the color on a frame-by-frame basis. It only samples and updates the histogram "every" number of times.

I took a peek at the source code recently (it's in C++) and verified that this is the case. It's stupid behavior, but that's how it works!

If you want it to work on a shot-by-shot (or frame-by-frame) basis, then you need to generate histograms for each shot, manually. An example:

myclip = AVISource(...)

clip_one = myclip.Trim(0, 23)

clip_two = myclip.Trim(24, 47)

clip_one.WriteHistogram("shot1.txt", every=1)

clip_two.WriteHistogram("shot2.txt", every=1)

clip_one.ColourLike("shot1.txt", "shot2.txt")

Is there any way for you to change the source code and somehow create a new version that would work frame by frame? Or does that code you posted actually work frame by frame? (Even if it's slow)

The code I posted does not work frame-by-frame. I wrote a function to do frame-by-frame ColourLike using ScriptClip, but it's at home.

I'll write another one up now (at work now; slow day) and PM it to you, but I won't be able to test it.

Can you test it? We can post the final result here.

Knightmessenger said:

god I am so sick of getting a green or bluish tint on movies. I hate it when they do that with new movies because honestly do you want your movie to look like an instagram photo? But it's even worse when they can't get a classic film right. Maybe they should just scan a theatrical print. It will look better than a dvd because it's in HD and is true to the theatrical experience.

Honestly, the fact that the star wars deleted scenes weren't remastered didn't bother me. I liked seeing the grain on them.

I'm the same way. I usually like the deleted untouched material over the "pristine" transfer.

I still think that the archival versions of Blade Runner are too blue or teal in some scenes (not as bad as the final cut) but I'm still holding onto my 1997 dvd as well. Also some of the footage in Dangerous Days doc looks different from any version on dvd. It should be noted Charles de Lazuirika did post online in a discussion about Blade Runner and said they attempted to preserve the original look of the films for the past versions.

Good move I did this too but the '97 DVD is terrible. The CAV LD is far better on all counts and doesn't have all that awful artifacting in addition to rendering color better. The sound mix in the original Dolby Stereo is better than the 5.1. As far as the archival versions go they do seem a bit on the cold side visually and not at all like the earlier video incarnations. All the 80's transfers of theatrical and International cuts are very warm with an almost golden shine to them. (Look at 5 minutes of the Criterion.)  The archival versions look like a cross between this and the Director's Cut LD which seems to be from a more accurate scan. I'm almost convinced the DC LD is the most accurate color source.

From what you say, it sounds like ColourLike is just buggy.  Has anyone informed the author that it doesn't actually perform like his instructions say?

Although re-reading the details thinking about what you've said, it could be intentional.  It could be assumed to average together every single frame (with every=1) or every 3rd frame (with every=3).  That blows...

Although it is not recommended, it might be possible to force it to do what we want by incorporating WriteHistorgram and ColourLike into the same script.

Some sort of For...do loop that counts off each frame, trims one frame at a time, generates a histogram for source and destination clips, applies colourlike to that frame, and then increments.

Theoretically possible, probably crazy slow to make work.

Oh, I finally caved and bought the LOTR EE Blu-Rays, because I got them for half price and I must say I'm a bit disappointed even with the other two, especially TTT, which has loads of DVNRed shots (it doesn't seem to be applied globally but quite a few shots do have DVNR smearing) and the same goes for ROTK, only it seems to be much fewer shots there. And of course the colors of FOTR, while in other respects it's the best master of the three, are a total crapfest.

Those pictures above don't even show it enough; look at this shit:

And I must say, I seriously don't like that they darkened it - it is much less pleasing to watch for that reason as well as the colors.

For doing ColourLike frame-by-frame, try this:

function ColourLikeFrameByFrame(clip c1, clip c2)
{ # Color-matches c1 to c2, frame by frame.
  # Assumes c1 and c2 are the same length and are
  # both compatible with ColourLike.
  global c1 = c1
  global c2 = c2
  return c1.ScriptClip("""
    ca = c1.Trim(current_frame, -1)
    cb = c2.Trim(current_frame, -1)
    ca.WriteHistogram("hist1.txt", 1)
    cb.WriteHistogram("hist2.txt", 1)
    ca.ColourLike("hist1.txt", "hist2.txt")
    """)
}

Also, a warning wrt using ColourLike frame-by-frame.

If your target source has crushed blacks and blown-out whites, then these will show up after using ColourLike and it will be nasty.

I suggest using recolored.Merge(original) to reduce the impact of the recoloring by 50%. You can, of course, adjust the percentage to something less than 50%, but be careful.

Every single last copy of Hard Boiled and The Killer has different color timing on each release. Even when the exact same master is used.

The color timing on GF I and II was indeed a huge difference especially in daylight scenes on GF I. But that was done from extensive research by Robert Harris, all the original materials they could get their hands on and by working with the Prince of Darkness himself Gordon Willis.

Brilliant restoration job on both films, in fact some of the best done in the past few years....And of course no worked on the mono tracks. Go figure.

North By Northwest has different timing on every release I've seen. The new version looks far more like film than the Lowry DVD snafu that was downright pinkish throughout, but still doesn't exactly sway me 100%. (It was an 8K scan however) The old Criterion issue used a show print and looks like what a print would have on release.

I just bought the Fight Club on BD and the colors seem pretty great but the picture seems to suffer from artificial over-sharpening.

It think I will actually do a shot by shot CC on FOTR after I'm done with the SW DeEd BD. I did some tests and in some scenes, like the whole prolog for example, the colors of the FOTR BD are so different that it's nearly impossible to adjust them to look like the DVD without introducing ugly artifacts, so in those cases I'd put the chroma from the DVD over the luma of the BD - I already tried this out and it works pretty well but the framing is different, so even that approach requires shot to shot adjustments.

I also figured out a way to adjust the settings in MPC with ffdshow for when I watch the FOTR BD on my laptop, that doesn't bring it anywhere near the DVD colors but gets rid of the green tint and makes the colors more natural and makes the BD look much better.

Right click > Filters > ffdshow video decoder > properties

A window pops up and there I check the picture properties box and set:

Luminance gain:133

Luminance offset: 1

Gamma correction: 1.00 (off)

RGB gamma correction: 1.00 (off), 0.93, 0.97.

Hue: 0 (off)

Saturation: 64 (off) (one could decrease the saturation a bit depending on preference)

Colorize strength: 0

At the top, you can click Only right half and you can see the difference nicely in split screen.