"The Matrix recolor day" is almost finished, and I've made a lot of tests... we all know that the BD colors are wrong, and DVD colors are better... but are they "right"? After I spent all the night trying to reach the closest colors to DVD, I realize that in many scenes they are wrong too (IMHO), in particular, the "off the matrix" scenes were way too dark and blue/violet, while often "in the matrix" faces were too "sunburnt", and sometimes still yet a bit greenish...
Then, I thought to give a chance to an old script I made during the color correction of my SW:ANH (SET ruLes); at that time, it worked not so well, but now I have fixed it; what this script make is trying to match two clips and extract the right colors. I think the results you can see below are difficult to replicate using another tecnique with only one color correction setting for the whole movie... obviously, this is far from perfection, but a good compromise, retaining the most "character" of the DVD colors, while correcting the worst scenes. It worked in 99% of the scenes, and failed only when a super bright scene is present (like in the scene where Morpheus explains to Neo what is the Matrix)... if this method - called ChromaRite, just to remeber it when I will use it again - is, well, "right" enough, I will start "The Matrix" preservation project, using it for the whole movie, apart the 1% when it doesn't work - there I'll use the DVD uspcaled or another color correction script.
At the contrary, if you don't like it, I could always use the ColourMatch method; I refined it in the morning, and now in more than 90% of the scenes, colors are almost exactly the same of the DVD, while the other 10% are close enough. I have not posted ColourMatch screenshots here, as I personally think ChromaRite method is better, but it's up to you. Choose your pill... (^^,)
I've made a sample clip - inside, there are some seconds from the DVD, upscaled, where ChromaRite failed - the eventual project video quality will be the same.
Sample Clip (40sec. 14Mbps, 69.4MB): http://www.sendspace.com/file/l8uvt5
Waiting for your comments as usual.