Color matching and prediction: color correction tool v1.3 released! — Page 7

towne32 said:

Hmm, definitely some weird magenta artifacts going on around the horizon. 

Where'd the other shot go? :)

 The magenta artifacts were indeed another cropping issue, here's the correct result:

Here's a frame with Han Solo and Chewie in the Cantina.

Before:

After:

...and another one of Obi-Wan aboard the Deathstar. 

Before:

After:

Here's a funny experiment. I took the frame of the Tantive IV soldier, and regraded the bluray to each of the home video releases over the years: 1997 SE, GOUT/1993 LD, and JSC. Also shown is the Technicolor IB print. The differences are huge.

Bluray/2004 DVD:

1997 SE:

GOUT/1993 LD:

JSC:

Tech IB:

Here's a frame that looks massively different on the Tech IB, than on the bluray.

Before:

After:

Another set of comparisons between the various home video releases, and the Tech IB:

Bluray/2004 DVD:

1997 SE:

GOUT/1993 LD:

JSC:

Tech IB:

The X-wing explosions in the Death Star run had their color changed dramatically in the blu-ray. I believe some (but not all?) were recomposited. How do these look with your technique? Does something that's as dynamic frame-by-frame as an explosion need exact frame reference matching? 

edit: On that note, I'd like to see if it can change back the glow of the sparks after Han shoots at Vader and company.

JawsTDS said:

That Tech IB match looks amazing. I would love to see the Blu-ray matched to that, even with the changes. Would you ever consider releasing the Blu-ray rips matched to these sources for the basis for other projects?

That's certainly a nice idea, but it would be a 6 month endeavour to color correct the bluray, and some scenes are impossible to correct without separating the elements. I'm afraid with the projects I've got lined up, it won't happen any time soon. I will be sharing the user interface I've created for color correcting, so maybe someone else would like to do it?

towne32 said:

The X-wing explosions in the Death Star run had their color changed dramatically in the blu-ray. I believe some (but not all?) were recomposited. How do these look with your technique? Does something that's as dynamic frame-by-frame as an explosion need exact frame reference matching? 

edit: On that note, I'd like to see if it can change back the glow of the sparks after Han shoots at Vader and company.

Some scenes are really difficult, because the bluray simply does not have the color depth to do a proper correction. Crushed blacks are only part of the problem. Any RGB channel that has been pushed to it's limits (0 or 255) is impossible to properly correct. 

Here another interesting experiment. First I calibrated a color adjustment model on this frame:

Then I predicted how these frames from the Jabba scene would look with Tech IB colors:

This is the result:

Hah! Very cool. I was hoping you'd try that one.

edit: The results remind me of Harmy's 97: http://postimg.org/gallery/cfmct944/

towne32 said:

Hah! Very cool. I was hoping you'd try that one.

edit: The results remind me of Harmy's 97: http://postimg.org/gallery/cfmct944/

Yes, it's really close. 

Bluray:

Harmy's 1997 SE:

Bluray matched to Tech IB:

John Doom said:

Do you think it would be possible to match teamnegative's work to Legacy's color timing, once more frames will be available?

Certainly, if enough screenshots are available that should not be a problem, but I think -1 have their own references, that will be used to color time the preservation.

DrDre said:

JawsTDS said:

That Tech IB match looks amazing. I would love to see the Blu-ray matched to that, even with the changes. Would you ever consider releasing the Blu-ray rips matched to these sources for the basis for other projects?

That's certainly a nice idea, but it would be a 6 month endeavour to color correct the bluray, and some scenes are impossible to correct without separating the elements. I'm afraid with the projects I've got lined up, it won't happen any time soon. I will be sharing the user interface I've created for color correcting, so maybe someone else would like to do it?

I was hoping for the same thing JawsTDS, but i'm sure many will make use of this great tool so that something like that will happen.

Here's how it works out for another Mos Eisley sequence. First I calibrated the color correction model on this frame:

Then I predicted how these frames would look with Tech IB colors:

Here's the result:

It's crazy how much more seemless all the CG elements become with better color timing. I could probably stomach the SE with colors like that.

I agree for the most part. Jabba's crappy bumpmapped texture shines a little less and he looks a little more natural. 

Not a surprise; I feel like 90s CGI looked a lot less sore-thumb-y when timed for theatrical projection than it did on any official video transfers. Yes, people did still complain when CGI looked fake or rubbery (Spider-Man is a good example), but the different timing, higher contrast and overall "look" of 35mm theatrical printing seemed to hide the fact that CGI/digital composite stuff was rendered at a lower resolution and dynamic range than the live-action (at least before digital intermediate). In a lot of (low contrast, IP-sourced) video transfers of such movies, I've always felt like the dynamic range seems to take a hit when it switches from "pure" photochemically-timed live action to anything involving CGI or digital compositing; you suddenly get flattened off-white highlights and flattened grayish shadows.

For example, I remember noticing the duller contrast in every CGI shot when I saw the 2013 re-release of Jurassic Park (even projected in 2D), but in the 35mm preservation, the shots with CG look so much less jarring in comparison to the adjacent shots (and mind you, that is a movie where I've always held up the quality of the CGI, even though I've only seen it on video).

I also remember noticing as far back as 1999 that the direct-digital DVD transfer of A Bug's Life looked brighter, and that the textures looked more "plastic", than I remembered from the theater. (I remember thinking the characters almost looked like claymation at times - Tuck and Roll's surface textures combined with their designs kept making me think of the Chevron cars.) Of course, Pixar's texturing caught up, but I swear that these technical imperfections never occurred to me in the theater, even though I quickly picked up on them watching a DVD on a regular CRT only about a year later. On the other hand, the 35mm-sourced trailers in the extras seemed darker and more like what I remembered from the theater (again, I was thinking this in 2000, not just in 2015).

Does any of this make any sense to anyone, or am I just nuts?

Another nice property of the color matching algorithm, is that it does not require the reference to have the same quality as the source. Although it's not Star Wars, I thought it was nice to share this comparison. There has been a lot of debate about the color timing of the Raiders of the Lost Ark bluray, and some prefer the HDTV broadcast known as the WOWOW. Here's an example of color correcting the bluray using a screenshot of a 16 mm print of Raiders of the Lost Ark, that has most of it's colors intact.

Bluray:

WOWOW:

16 mm reference:

Bluray matched to 16 mm reference:

An interesting aspect of this color match, is that Indy has a more natural skin tone in the color corrected frame, than in either the bluray or the WOWOW.