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Info Wanted: Calling all Color Correctors: Can this source yield a different set of results to Gout? — Page 5

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Re, the luminance issue: I don't think the issue is with the capture. Many video transfers in the 80s had boosted gamma (and possibly lower contrast). I'm not sure why - was it because of the lower dynamic range of analog video? Was it so they'd read better on analog CRTs?

Whatever the reason, that's just how the 80s video transfers of the Star Wars trilogy looked. It's how I remember them on my old VHS tapes - way too bright. Look at the TIE fighter attack, and how blatantly obvious the garbage mattes are.

Seeing the THX transfers for the first time in the 90s, they came off to me as a marked improvement over my old versions, and I think the fact that gamma/contrast wasn't pushed up played a significant part in my initial impressions.

I like your gamma adjustment. The '82 transfer always came off to me as muted and desaturated, but there is actually plenty of color in there, it was just washed out when the gamma was increased.

And to clarify, this is the image frank says is the "original":

I don't think he was the person who originally captured it.

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@ Spaced Ranger, what I'm primarily interested in is seeing if theres a way to undo the red-infused colour mix of the widescreen versions, back to less uncontaminated colours like on the 82 laserdisc. You_Too and Dark_Jedi are already working on this but are using one overall correction setting. What I was interested in was whether there was a more automated systematic way to use earlier information (for example from the 82 laserdisc) and import that over/apply that to a widescreen version. G-Force has written a script to do colour matching, which AntcuFaalb used to do something along these lines = http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/New-colormatching-script/post/616355/#TopicPost616355. What I'm trying to garner in this thread is how much it is possible to undo mixed up colours (if red shift is the result of missing blue and green information- can this be added/painted back in using an earlier source to gauge the right levels?)

Heres a Gout still, followed by the 82 which I think looks much more like the natural world (albeit limited), and lastly a 70mm still which I guess itself must be faded somewhat. Can you tell just by looking at the whats here and based on your damn impressive correction on the THX 1138 project, what can reasonably be acheived. Is this actually a workable idea?

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=ejikxe&s=6

 

 

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=2ppld7k&s=6 http://www.jedi1.net/images/1600/ANH-C-3PO-03272-1600.jpg

 

 

 

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TServo2049 said:

 

And to clarify, this is the image frank says is the "original":

 

I don't think he was the person who originally captured it.

Yep that is the original vlc snap from Starkillers 82 preservation.

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Thanks for the capture clarifications.

frank678 said:

... if theres a way to undo the red-infused colour mix of the widescreen versions, back to less uncontaminated colours like on the 82 laserdisc. ... (if red shift is the result of missing blue and green information- can this be added/painted back in using an earlier source to gauge the right levels?)


                 GOUT                                             '82 LD                                    70mm

I can't say any of these "graded" versions strikes me as being "right", but, if you wanted less "red" in GOUT, for example, adjust the red channel gamma downward (I used 0.8 to emphasize the effect):

If, instead, you had added more "green" & "blue" (gamma upward), you'd get the same color result but with a lightened picture.

If you like the '82 LD color in the GOUT, that is an easy adjustment, too -- a decrease in the red gamma and a greater decrease in the blue:

This way, you should be able to regrade the entire movie to your liking with a minimum of effort.

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Spaced Ranger said:

As you can see, one can do anything to the curve (with enough control points) to do anything to a picture or to parts of a picture. Dangerous territory. :)

Thanks I havnt got my head round histogram adjustment yet but I have been playing with gradiation curve filter (along with film color filter) in virtualdub, to improve on a very red shifted VHS source, I have not been trying to push it to meet a reference on this but just try to get the skintones more back into the realistic range. Sometimes this just looks like going from red to a more palatable orange:

original https://vimeo.com/62410166

filters https://vimeo.com/62332689

 

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Histogram adjustments do take some learning, mostly by seeing what-does-what. That's why it's best to experiment in a paint program because you see the graphs and the result-overlays and the eye-dropper values -- which all help develop intuitive operation. And it's probably better to stay with the controls-histogram than adjusting graph-points directly.

Your clips show you're on the track. Normally with that green-tinge, I'd say to gamma-down the GREEN channel. But if you're putting points on the graph, you must slide down each point in proportion to what a gamma curve would do (tedious and prone to errors).

Trying to see how easy it would be using the 2006 DVD release as a target, I discovered my standard easy-approach wasn't doing the job -- get one color right and other colors go wrong. I'd say this is Lucas Film's doing things like selective-area tinkering. That makes for more complex work.

So, I used the 2006 DVD only as a guide and adjusted the luminance first to match the range (does wonders for the picture) ...



and then corrected the saturation and hue for matching skin colors (ignoring what happens to other colors) ...

and that's it. The results actually look quite good across dissimilar shots. You can probably use this one setting for the entire movie (if such adjustments are readily available in VirtualDub):

                  VHS CAPTURE                                  ADJUSTMENT                                        2006 DVD

Interesting to note that those other colors look quite natural against GL's post-production/release ceaseless tinkering to change the environment. *sigh* :)

BTW, if you can do that GREEN channel gamma, this would be your result (and better than my attempt, I might add):

                                VHS FILTERED                                                       + GREEN GAMMA=0.87

 

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frank678 said:

This is trying out the idea of taking a snapshot of a still in vlc, then changing the settings and taking a second snapshot, then merging the two together. The idea behind it is to increase the range/depth of a single image by adding additional information to it. Using the 82 LD which does not have a lot of image depth it does seem to work to a degree, the only problem was it added too much darkness where I just was aiming for just adding depth. I wonder has anyone here ever tried merging moving images (i.e. clips/or the whole films) with slightly different settings (i am unable to try this out).  

 

original 82 ld:

 

settings changed:

 

the above two merged:

 

The following stills are the end results only (all using the same settings - i.e. this is meant to be a one step/automated process which either improves on the original in one 'fix' or not.

 

 

http://i50.tinypic.com/ajl4jp.jpg

 

http://i47.tinypic.com/8yc74n.jpg

 

the sky has a much more vivid blue in it than I remember seeing in the 2006 dvd. I think these are two instances where the older transfer had some benefit of being from a less faded print than what they had to work with when doing the THX mastering in 1993. And while the THX color correction did restore a lot of the movie to how it should have looked without being faded and featured still very good black and white points, these scenes look more colorful than I ever remember seeing them.

                                            Middle: ADJUSTMENT             Right: 2006 DVD

 

The middle shot here is another example of getting much closer to how the film should look on video without being damaged by fading. At least that's what I think. I've never seen the sky look as blue as it does in the middle shot but somehow, it just looks right to me. So this might be another shot that the THX color correction couldn't get quite right.

Seems like the outdoor Tatooine footage either faded the most or was the hardest to color correct to undo fading. But we have better color correction technology on home PC's than THX mastering did back in 1993.

Honestly my reaction to seeing some of these shots is like "when did Tatooine ever have such a blue sky?"

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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@Knightmessenger = I posted some more shots from the 1982 PAL VHS on post 71 here :

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Best-official-color-source/post/604660/#TopicPost604660 , to show how much blue was hanging around in this print (although this blue is probably distorted by how pink shifted/candy-coloured + over brightened + whatever else) and you can see the sandscrawler scene in motion in the middle of this clip https://vimeo.com/62410166 (my REMIX of the balances= https://vimeo.com/62332689)

I'd love to have a program with a function like this where you could just match colours from one frame to another like in the video AntcuFaalb posted, just to see what new balances could be got from individual scenes.

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/New-colormatching-script/post/624554/#TopicPost624554

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if people are using early vhs releases as a color reference, wouldn't it make sense to get a Betamax tape transfer?


I assume the corresponding video releases would be the same, other than the much less fuzzy picture Betamax had.

http://youtu.be/CT6UlAvKz88

this was a promotional video I found posted, to highlight why Betamax was better. (of course, on televisions of that era, the quality difference would not be as easy to discern like it is now)

Is this fairly close to the actual difference? Because in the promo video, Beta looks like it could compete with laserdisc quality. I'd be interested to see a vhs vs Beta comparison of Star Wars simply because seeing so many screenshots of that movie, I know what to look for.

 

Here's another sample that's apparently from a Betamax tape.

http://youtu.be/G0FyGeaC_mI

Again, it doesn't have the fuzzyness or tape deterioration that you see with a lot of old video uploads on youtube.

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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I had thought of this of getting an old PAL betamax tape and sending it away to get it transferred. But I suspect if they are from the same master betamax would only give a slight improvement to whats going to show up on tape format. However it would be good to see a comparison just for interest, I saw a betamax rip of Eraserhead on demonoid when it was still alive and it was surprisingly good (but hard to judge properly as it was black and white).

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There was also V2000 tapes of the first star wars release, saw one on ebay. 

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Your first video is about Super Beta which is not the same thing.

Had no idea Star Wars was released on Betamax. Only PAL?

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This thread is pretty embarrassing to me when I read back on it now because of all the rubbish I wrote on it (though I've deleted a lot of it).

I revived the thread because I wanted to share some new rubbish: a quick experiement of "correcting" the PAL 1982 VHS by filming directly from the tv screen with a camera phone (i know, i know) and then changing the levels.

I wanted to post the results because they are kind of what I was aiming at all along with the thread of getting some unique results from an old alternative source, and these are the first results I've got that I could actually live with.

->

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O.k. scratch the above correction - I reckon I can get the shirts bluer

http://i60.tinypic.com/152nj80.jpg

http://i58.tinypic.com/29dzo5e.jpg

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The above clip was done using althor1138's 1982 LD preservation. The same with this next one although this has got more processing and some sharpening. The balances on the very first shot of 3P0 and R2D2 seem underwhelming to me on home video releases, loads of others are as well but this sticks in my mind as its one of the first things in the movie. I came across a new film cell reference so was able to adjust it to that, and cut out the guess work. So this is my ballpark approximation of (at least) how gold 3P0 should appear at the start

https://vimeo.com/89794404

http://we.tl/d7rnyjGA2G

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frank678 said:

This is my favourite correction of an old source to date:

https://vimeo.com/89749265

http://we.tl/x0kT5XUMny

Brightness and saturation look really good there. One thing I noticed was the blues look a bit too bright, especially in the shadows. I like the grainy nature of this, no sharpening required IMO.

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Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)

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NeverarGreat said:

Brightness and saturation look really good there. One thing I noticed was the blues look a bit too bright, especially in the shadows. I like the grainy nature of this, no sharpening required IMO.

Yes I tried to tone the blues down a bit but it kept throwing off the skintones, which I was trying to get as close as I could to the Technicolor screening still/a film cell still. I got more correct/real balances overall but somehow theres something more exciting to getting just the skintone lifelike, even if its within a bit of a blue haze if that makes sense. 

Like I did this still to match a film cell, and although its not a correct balance overall - the skintone just carries it somehow (for me):

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/67574

I agree about the sharpening I only added it to the 3P0 clip because it seems to help push the reflective gold effect. The downside is it makes it look artificial. 

Add: Another scene https://vimeo.com/95509608

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/133193