Info Wanted: Color Matching? - most accurate pre-97 ANH home video release?

I know everything is somewhat off, but what’s the most accurate pre-97 ANH home video release to use for color matching?

I’d like to take my ColourLike experiments a little further tonight.

You_Too said:

You mean like matching the colors of the 97 SE with an older version?

Like you say, no home video release seems to match the original nicely, but from the versions I've seen, I think msycamore's SWE technidisc looks pretty good with it's colors.

The problem with the Technidisc SWE is that the colors are inconsistent due to a post-processing issue (msycamore's working on correcting this ATM).

Is this 1982 Video Rental Library VHS close to the original? I find the 1982 LD to be too bright.

AntcuFaalb said:

I know everything is somewhat off, but what's the most accurate pre-97 ANH home video release to use for color matching?

I'd like to take my ColourLike experiments a little further tonight.

All of them, both '82 NTSC transfers, GOUT and Technidisc have their own little color quirks but if I had to choose one of them I would say GOUT for its overall consistency in timing. Sometimes the GOUT is correct where the Technidisc is way off and vice versa but overall I have to say GOUT even though I prefer the Technidisc transfer for various reasons. Just to give you an example on how the timing on various releases can vary, this shot appear just before the X-wing armada sequence:

Technidisc

GOUT

'97 SE

2004 DVD

The green hues on the GOUT and the '97 SE is how it should appear, differences like this is quite common between releases, you need to be a detective to track down what's right, sometimes on a shot-by-shot basis.

AntcuFaalb said:

The problem with the Technidisc SWE is that the colors are inconsistent due to a post-processing issue (msycamore's working on correcting this ATM).

I have a pretty good grasp on what color oddities there is in the Technidisc but I actually intend to preserve them, just correct my own mistakes with the first upload and maybe remove the red tint. Chewtobacca wanted me to make a hybrid of some sort where I would correct all the issues and splice in the original crawl etc. but that have to wait as I'm working on other things at the moment.

g-force said:

it sounded to me like the colors/brightness/contrast issues were on the original, and may have been compounded by his settings, but not DUE to his post-processing.

Yes, you are correct about that.

msycamore said:

g-force said:

it sounded to me like the colors/brightness/contrast issues were on the original, and may have been compounded by his settings, but not DUE to his post-processing.

Yes, you are correct about that.

I'm sorry, as I didn't mean to imply that you did anything wrong. I misunderstood the reason(s) for the issues(s) involved. I should have read your thread more carefully...

g-force said:

AntcuFaalb said:

You_Too said:

You mean like matching the colors of the 97 SE with an older version?

Like you say, no home video release seems to match the original nicely, but from the versions I've seen, I think msycamore's SWE technidisc looks pretty good with it's colors.

The problem with the Technidisc SWE is that the colors are inconsistent due to a post-processing issue (msycamore's working on correcting this ATM).

Is this 1982 Video Rental Library VHS close to the original? I find the 1982 LD to be too bright.

 You might want to check with msycamore, but it sounded to me like the colors/brightness/contrast issues were on the original, and may have been compounded by his settings, but not DUE to his post-processing.

BTW, AntcuFaalb, looking forward to seeing the final results of the various projects you are working on! Keep up the good work.

-G

See my reply to msycamore. I need to seriously improve my reading comprehension.

Anyway, thanks for the encouragement! I'm going to do my best to bring each project to a completed state.

frank678 said:

I was curious if you had had chance to try using the colormatch thingy for a whole scene from just one still yet? That way you could mix and match sources or even use one of the 70mm scans frames/screening photos/ production stills/other source etc etc.

Also whether you've compared your 1992 FS set with a 1982 vhs preservation, they are understood to be all from the same master between those years but it might be possible one version has a slight edge. Maybe once you've captured your vhs releases you could experiment with them via colormatch?  

 

Unfortunately, the ColourLike filter, even when applied on a frame-by-frame basis using ScriptClip, does a poor job at histogram matching.

I'm looking into histogram matching plugins for ImageJ. If I can't find anything that works well, then I may have to settle on the commercial program PureImage NR for color matching.

AntcuFaalb said:

Unfortunately, the ColourLike filter, even when applied on a frame-by-frame basis using ScriptClip, does a poor job at histogram matching.

I'm looking into histogram matching plugins for ImageJ. If I can't find anything that works well, then I may have to settle on the commercial program PureImage NR for color matching.

pureimage might work well for the occasional image,

but for automating, or doing several scenes. it is very

clunky, and overall not worth it. 

tried it here:

----------------

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/topic/9430/

more threads here:

------------------------

 http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Colour-matching-for-fan-edits/topic/7257/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Auto-correction-from-SE-colours-to-GOUT-colours/topic/6732/

you need to use professional filters and plugins in

premiere, avid, or other pro video editting software.

later

-1

negative1 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

Unfortunately, the ColourLike filter, even when applied on a frame-by-frame basis using ScriptClip, does a poor job at histogram matching.

I'm looking into histogram matching plugins for ImageJ. If I can't find anything that works well, then I may have to settle on the commercial program PureImage NR for color matching.

pureimage might work well for the occasional image,

but for automating, or doing several scenes. it is very

clunky, and overall not worth it. 

tried it here:

----------------

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Methods-for-colour-matching-colour-grading/topic/9430/

 

more threads here:

------------------------

 http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Colour-matching-for-fan-edits/topic/7257/

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Auto-correction-from-SE-colours-to-GOUT-colours/topic/6732/

 

you need to use professional filters and plugins in

premiere, avid, or other pro video editting software.

 

later

-1

I think I might just end up programming a histogram matching algorithm in C for AviSynth.

Thanks for the links!

DISCLAIMER:  I know very little about what I'm about to say :).

I was thinking about this and I'm wondering if better results could be had by cropping the frames to 2 wide rows of horizontal or vertical lines of pixels and then running Colourlike on each row and then pasting them back together to make the entire image.

It should keep the filter from applying values to the entire image and limit it to a certain area.  I'd imagine both images would have to be aligned fairly well. 

Maybe something like the line below could be used instead of Colourlike.

ScriptClip(clip1,"ColorYUV(off_y(averageluma(clip2)-averageluma(clip1)),off_u(averagechromau(clip2)-averagechromau(clip1)),off_v(averagechromav(clip2)-averagechromav(clip1)))")

I'm not sure if it's any faster or more accurate but I've had some good results with it before.

Edit:  After playing around with this idea for a little bit I now realize it was probably a stupid idea.