Work on v2.0 has progressed quite well. So much so, in fact, that I’ve decided to share some more information sooner rather than later as I believe this may be wrapped up in a few months.
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v2.0 utilizes a MUCH superior source for the extra TV footage (I contacted a fellow fan who miraculously located an old recording, still stored in his DVR, from a PDTV USA broadcast). As this copy never got sent to a VHS tape, the quality of this source, while still 4:3 SD, is miles better than what I had to work with in v1.0. The audio is also clean, with no analog tape hiss.
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The only drawback to the new source is that there is a semi-transparent USA network watermark at bottom right of ALL of the footage. Correcting this issue is the most time-consuming part of v2.0. I’m tackling this by using a lesser-quality, logoless source, applying a feathered mask, and letting this source show through where the logo would be. The hardest part is that the lower quality copy was not detelecined properly, so it does not share the same duplicate / skipped frames as the USA source, which is forcing me to fix the mask on the TV footage frame-by-frame so the image doesn’t skip around inside of it.
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Both the USA and lower quality source are being color-corrected scene-by-scene using Dr. Dre’s color correction tool, and then by eye for fine tuning.
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Both TV sources have been upscaled using Topaz AI to squeeze every last drop of detail out of this.
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The USA audio track has been remixed into 5.1 using Audition to better match the surrounding HD footage. This process isn’t perfect, so there’s a bit of inherent flangy “digitalness” to the audio, but it’s still much, much better than v1.0, which collapsed into 2.0 stereo (and as it turns out, my original TV source was actually 2.0 mono and not true stereo at all) every time an additional scene occurred. This time, dialogue stays anchored in the center channel as it should, etc.
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I am maintaining the constant image height presentation just as with v1.0. I know that shifting aspect ratios really annoy some people, but there’s simply no better way to do this. The extended cut has only ever been seen in 4:3, and the only other options would be to:
a. Crop the entire film to 4:3, ruining the cinematography for 2.5 hours for the sake of 30 mins.
b. Blow up the 4:3 footage to fill the 2.39:1 frame left to right, resulting in even more severe cropping.
c. Recompose the entire film for 16:9, leaving both the Blu-ray and the TV scenes cropped.
d. Pillarbox (fill the screen height with) the TV footage, causing every TV scene to appear too large compared to the corresponding HD shots in the same scenes.
So I’m not going those routes. People will just have to deal with the image changing from 2.39:1 to (windowboxed) 4:3, with constant image height.
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The audio transitions on this version will be GREATLY improved over the prior version as well. Frankly, I have to throw myself on the sword for this one. I made v1.0 back in 2014, and I’ve learned a ton since then.
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I actually missed 3-4 (very) brief shots from the TV version on the prior version. I was much more thorough this time, and absolutely everything is here in v2.0.
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I’ll also be upgrading this version from 720p with LPCM 5.1 audio (again, I plead temporary insanity in 2014) to 1080p (at a much higher bitrate) with DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio.
Final running time is 169 mins. 27 secs. Side note: the reason for the running time differing from the 176-min. reported time are twofold: 1. The original two-night ABC airing contained a second credit sequence for night two, complete with a different opening credits sequence in Boston, etc. Obviously this has been excised (and does not exist on the USA source). Also - and I don’t know why this is, but - apparently all of the TV airings aired slightly slow (the pitch is incorrect compared to the Blu-ray and the film score - it is this way on all three sources I have in my possession), possibly to further pad air time. So that’s why we’re left with this running time. Anyway, this should be released on the spleen within a few months if all goes well.
