Help needed to remove hard-coded subtitles

Author: IcePrick
Date: 24-Apr-2015, 10:49 PM

Author: IcePrick
Time: 24-Apr-2015 10:49 PM
Post link

The movie Symbol has had only one Blu-ray release in Japan. Unfortunately, it has hard-coded subtitles on the non-Japanese speaking dialogue.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/eef4c1405709121

There is, however, a PAL DVD of this movie which doesn't have hard-coded subs.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/a69d63405709126

I would like to use the DVD to patch over the subtitles, keeping most of the BD resolution, but removing the subtitles.

http://www.imagebam.com/image/99527b405709132

Unfortunately, I don't know how to do this with video. Can someone give me some helpful information on how to do this?

Author: poita
Time: 12-May-2015 9:24 PM
Post link

The first step will be to colour match the two sources, there are many ways to do this, but I would use Nuke and work it via a script to get the sources as close as possible.

Once you have them colour matched, then you need to align them, you could use Elastix if you want it exact, or could use the warper in After Effects or similar to get it close.

Then it is a matter of blending the footage using some soft masks, you should be able to extract a mask for the subtitles as they will be a particular 'colour', and then create a soft blend of the PAL material into the Japanese footage.

Donations welcome: paypal.me/poit
bitcoin:13QDjXjt7w7BFiQc4Q7wpRGPtYKYchnm8x
Help get The Original Trilogy preserved!