Dangerous Minds - 1995 - 1080p BD-25 project (* unfinished project *)

So I’m trying to gauge whether there would be any interest for this amongst people on this forum. I love this movie and think it sucks that there has been no blu-ray release of this yet, however there is a very nice MPEG2 1080i HDTV copy of the movie floating around on the internet. After searching for it for a few months (as only the 720p rip from that 1080i source is available on public trackers) I finally found it on a private tracker that I have just recently joined. The source file has a video bitrate of 11000kbps so it’s not great, but a HUGE improvement over the SD DVD releases or even the 720p itunes WEB-DL which is only 720p and has a video bitrate of 3000kbps. The 1080i source file even has a little bit of grain (but not much)

Of course, it being an MPEG2, it suffers from occasional macroblocking and “chroma-bleed” for a frame or two at certain scene changes (but NOT all) but overall it’s a nice source and the best to work with to-date.

Since this is one of my favorite movies I am working on this project regardless and if there is interest I will release it for others to enjoy;o)

The work that has been done so far… Well, I de-interlaced the film and IVTC’ed it so it plays at the correct 23.976fps (source was 59.940fps interlaced). Then I decided to overlay it with REAL 35mm film grain and encoded the video using the AVC codec into a 1920x1080p @~27000kbps file. The result is very nice and now I’m on to syncing the audio tracks that I have collected for the movie and they are as folllows:

English 5.1 DD from the Region 1 DVD - synced
English 5.1 DTS-HDMA custom built using certain certain filters that I used to make the custom 5.1 DTS-HDMA LOTM audio track where I have restored some of the dynamic range and fidelity - synced
English 2.0 PCM from the NTSC Laserdisc - synced
German 5.1 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
French 5.1 DD from the 1080i French HDTV copy (same video source) - synced
Italian 2.0 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
Czech 2.0 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
Spanish 2.0 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
Polish 2.0 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
Hungarian 2.0 DD from the Region 2 DVD - synced to 23.976fps
Portuguese 2.0 DD from the Region 4 DVD - synced
Russian 2.0 DD from the Region 5 DVD - synced to 23.976fps

For now, I only have all of the English tracks synced and will be working on the others over the course of the next few days (it would be quicker if I could get away from my 5 and 2 year old daughters for a moment, LOL) I am also looking for subtitles in numerous languages that will have to be synced to this release as well. For now, I only have English subtitles.

I also want to include the two trailers for it and the third “RARE” trailer, ALL remastered into HD using actual footage from the 1080p encode that I made. This will be the first time that any of these trailers will have an HD edition and the first time they have been available widescreen;o)

I’m also going to include an HD remastered edition of Coolio’s “Gangsters Paradise” video and three or four (depending on what I can do with sources) live performances of the song by Coolio stretching from 1995 to 2009 where it’s interesting to see how this guy has aged over the years and the fact that L.V. (the big black guy singing the chorus) disappears from the live performances to be substituted by others.

I also have to make cover art and so on, so this will be available for release, hopefully, by the end of the month.

I will post comparison screenshots between the Region 1 DVD and my 1080p encode as well as 1080i source vs my 1080p encode within the next few days. So, I’m waiting to see what you people think of this project and take it from there;o) The next project on the list after this will be the 1983 film “DC Cab” starring Mr. T… but more about that in a couple of weeks;o)

Have you captured the Vudu encode?

@ Andrea - as always, thanx4the kind words... will post some screenshots soon;o)

@ digitalfreaknyc - no I have not captured that encode because according to the vudu site, on PC this title is ONLY available in SD(!) as you can see here:

I do own a PS3, so I could stream the HDX copy from there, but my computer is not powerful enough to capture 1080p in real-time without some lagging. Even if I had the ability, aren't the bitrates there pretty low, just like netflix captures?

love this film! any updates on this ?

So, since the last post, I have been working on various other projects that have a higher priority to me and this has been put on a "back-burner" for the moment.

The reason I haven't finished it yet, is because there are a few parts of the film (during fast motion, like the scene on the rollercoaster) where there is some nasty macro-blocking that makes the footage look worse than an upscaled DVD. I have since found a 1080p web-dl version, but the bitrate on it is kind of lacking and I would need to apply a lot of TLC to match the footage to the HDTV source. Can it be done? Sure. Will it be done? Yes, but after I finish work on other projects first. Honestly, I don't see myself finishing this until later in the year:(

Hi,

I have 720P HDTV rips of Superman II and III that I am looking to upgrade to 1080i. They were previously available on usenet but they are gone now. Any chance you could check the private tracker you are using and give me a shout if they have these movies? I'm looking to preserve the pre-bluray versions in the best quality, thanks.

Just my luck! =(

hehe anyway ill just wait for your work to be done! thank you

hey jerry, just saw that this movie has a 1080p version in itunes. how's the quality of that?

@ gensix - PM sent;) You might be surprised by it...

Pm replied ! =)

Vudu is always the best BY FAR. They have the highest bitrate AVC encodes. ITunes sucks

how about amazon's HD?

Amazon is only VC-1 IIRC, Vudu will be superior.