'Raiders of the Lost Ark' - bluray and colour timing changes (Released) — Page 2

I also concur that the 35mm scans look remarkably like the BD, with the teal shift being slightly revisionist however.

Celluloid and digital video  color space are totally different things though, so was the BD an attempt with modern digital technology to try and mimic the  original Eastman color release print?

Hard to say did they use the IP as reference. How faded were the obviously not first gen sources.

Same problem James Bond and Star Wars had go back to the OCN and lose the intended color timing, get an image too pristine and never intended for the theatrical movie going experience of the era.

FWIW, I'm throwing my hat into the ring on the side of the Blu-ray is certainly too yellow/gold, but I also find the DVD is too blue (haven't seen the HDTV aside from screencaps).  I find the yellow/gold tint to be a preferable choice of two discolorations, but I'm under no illusions that it's accurate.

IMO we simply have to have a better source (16mm or whatnot) to be certain.  My wild-ass guess would place the colors between DVD and Blu-ray, but closer to DVD.  That seems counterintuitive, but I think a little shift in the blue direction can seem more wrong than a big shift in the yellow direction, which is why, to me, the DVD is closer to accurate but I still prefer the Blu.  Does that make sense?

dvdmike said:

Somewhere in between may be the perfect mix.

I do not have photoshop on this machine, anyone want to make a hybrid shot?

If the images were better aligned, we could just take one image and put the other image over it as a semitransparent layer.  Adjusting the opacity would then tell us how close to make it to which source (assuming we could find a range that looked good that we could more-or-less agree on!).  Then we could try to figure out how to reach that target using only one of the sources and some adjustments.

The flag shot is badly misaligned and the sunset shot doesn't have any neutrals or skintones for even attempting to gauge "correct".  IIRC there's another shot someone posted in the AVS forums with Indy and Sallah at lunch that would be a good gauge (and it also showcases the DVD blue problem).  Having that shot and the flag shot aligned better may be useful, but I'm crap at such things.  The sunset shot is likely to remain subjective, but I suppose we could run it through the process as a sanity check.

EDIT: Presumably we'd have to use adjusted WOWOW for the brightened opening even if we used adjusted Blu for everything else, to undo the loss of detail on the Blu.  And then there's the matter of doing some sort of crazy Laserdisc upscaling for the erased effects scenes.

I love the RotLA BD release colortiming.

With that being said, it would be nice to have the option to choose between the warmer (yellow) and cooler looks.

Here's a question: What does RotLA look like on LD?

AntcuFaalb said:

Here's a question: What does RotLA look like on LD?

Depends which one you choose to watch, the '90's LD is very close to the DVD's whereas the '80's video transfers are warmer and imo closer to the original. I actually find the brightness and contrast levels on the BD to be off in several instances. Spielberg has also admitted to deliberately have tweaked the opening jungle sequences to be a tad brighter than they were originally.

You asked in the Terminator thread about the changes I mentioned, I can unfortunately not provide any comparisons until the end of the week when I get home, maybe someone else beats me to it but like I said in that thread, the Wowow-HDTV version contain all the same subtle tweaks the 2003 DVD introduced;

A pole connected to the giant boulder for the guide track was removed in two shots, for those who don't have access to the original and don't know what I'm talking about, check the left part of the boulder, it's visible in the original trailers as well. (It was this one along with the matte shot I referred to in the other thread that I assumed they had restored on the BD, I've actually forgotten to check if this is still gone in the BD, I now believe it is after talking to a friend of mine.) :(

The Pan American Clipper - matte shot was tweaked, see the water reflections, particularly under the front of the plane - restored on the BD.

Snake reflection and plexiglas marks removed in the Well of the Souls.

I suspect there could be more of these subtle tweaks, never done an extensive comparison between versions and no documentation is out there as far as I know.

I'm afraid that as it became so easy to do these little tweaks (anyone with a home computer and pretty cheap software can do stuff like this in a few minutes) and therefore cheap, we're unfortunately going to see more and more of them in various movies.