I noted some projects are using HDTV as main sources, so I guess if the various HDTV versions could be better than Blu-ray, quality wise… if so, which ones? There are so many around…
Yesterday I found two HDTV versions of EP IV in an old hdd, one is “NTSC” 29,97fps 1920x1080 MPEG2, the other is “PAL” 25fps 1920x1088 AVC; I cleaned them a bit, overlaid them to average noise, added a grain plate and tried to regrade the resulting mix using my PAL GOUT DVD as color reference. Sadly, the “PAL” version was corrupted, that’s why images are only from the first ten minutes or so…
Here you are the screenshots comparisons:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120368
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120371
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120373
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120377
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120382
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120383
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/120387
Also, I made a small clip (10mbps AVC, no sound, about 1 minute) just to watch the color grading in motion - it misses the denoising, but has the grain plate, even if at that bitrate I think it’s not clearly visible:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/kxujsy
Don’t know if this needs to be converted in a “real” project, because there are so many ready projects, plus many interesting ones in progress - and I’m sure that if I’ll start it, the day before the release Disney will announce its OUT version… but feedbacks are welcome and very useful, as the filters used here could be used also for other projects.
Thanks a lot to everyone!