Project #4K77 — Page 2

Blackout said:

Here’s my shot at a color correction:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188180
I like that. The pink tint is gone.

JEdit: Sorry, I was looking at it on my phone. If the 2 images are labelled correctly, then yours is even pinker than mine…

I also took a shot at it:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188194

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188195

I used Virtualdub to view the video since VLC lacked the proper codec. It doesn’t play smoothly, but still looks superb.

Williarob said:

Blackout said:

Here’s my shot at a color correction:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188180

I like that. The pink tint is gone.

JEdit: Sorry, I was looking at it on my phone. If the 2 images are labelled correctly, then yours is even pinker than mine…

Is this more up your alley?
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188196

Blackout said:

Williarob said:

Blackout said:

Here’s my shot at a color correction:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188180

I like that. The pink tint is gone.

JEdit: Sorry, I was looking at it on my phone. If the 2 images are labelled correctly, then yours is even pinker than mine…

Is this more up your alley?
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188196

Yes, that’s better. His face isn’t so red.

Even less red?
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188200

Swazzy said:

I also took a shot at it:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188194

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188195

Maybe pull back a bit on the contrast and see what you get.

I don’t know how much crowd-sourced help you’d like to have… but it would be cool if there’s a way for contributors to be able to easily access each shot at any completed stage of restoration. For example:

raw scan only
raw scan + Dr Dre color restoration
color restoration + stabilization
stabilization + rough dirt pass
rough dirt pass + fine dirt pass
fine dirt pass + final scene-to-scene color correction
etc. etc.

One-shot-at-a-time lossless downloads would prevent a whole movie from running wild on the internet, and restoration enthusiasts could learn and sharpen their skills on easily-manageable chunks. The obvious downside is the massive duplication of material when successive passes are rendered and uploaded. Some work, though, could be XML-only corrections that the end user renders on their own workstation. This would help alleviate duplicate fully-rendered version-after-versioned footage from accumulating on the project server.

See for yourself:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188207

The Blu-ray is sourced from a higher quality print, but has of course been encoded to less than 2k quality. However, it has been sharpened, which leads to the illusion of greater detail.

The 4K scan shows levels of detail that approach that of the Blu-ray, if not surpass it in some cases. However there are also areas where there appears to be less detail than in the Blu-ray, though this may only be an illusion caused by sharpening.

The color is really what separates these two scans in my opinion. Try as I might, I often can’t recover the subtle greens of the Tantive walls in my project, nor can I recover the yellow hues specific to C-3PO, which is why I may need to use other sources to achieve these gradients. The 4K scan has none of these color issues, at least in this shot.

This sounds like an awesome project! Are you going (Han) solo on this, Willarob, or are others helping?

I am impressed by the screenshot comparison from up above. The blu-ray does SEEM sharper but it could just be artificial sharpening.

Also, take a look at 3pO’s exposed stomach area. Much more detail in the 4k than the bluray.

camroncamera said:

I don’t know how much crowd-sourced help you’d like to have… but it would be cool if there’s a way for contributors to be able to easily access each shot at any completed stage of restoration. For example:

raw scan only
raw scan + Dr Dre color restoration
color restoration + stabilization
stabilization + rough dirt pass
rough dirt pass + fine dirt pass
fine dirt pass + final scene-to-scene color correction
etc. etc.

One-shot-at-a-time lossless downloads would prevent a whole movie from running wild on the internet, and restoration enthusiasts could learn and sharpen their skills on easily-manageable chunks. The obvious downside is the massive duplication of material when successive passes are rendered and uploaded. Some work, though, could be XML-only corrections that the end user renders on their own workstation. This would help alleviate duplicate fully-rendered version-after-versioned footage from accumulating on the project server.

I think there is just too much data. Each source frame is about 100 MB, so I don’t typically keep copies of each step. Also a lot of the process is scripted, using custom JSX Javascripts that I wrote for Photoshop and After Effects. I’ll put together a video to demonstrate the full process.

Mavimao said:

This sounds like an awesome project! Are you going (Han) solo on this, Willarob, or are others helping?

I am impressed by the screenshot comparison from up above. The blu-ray does SEEM sharper but it could just be artificial sharpening.

Also, take a look at 3pO’s exposed stomach area. Much more detail in the 4k than the bluray.

Dr. Dre is helping with the colors, but I’m running solo on the cleanup at the moment, mainly because of the staggering amount of data involved. Even if I was to copy all of the data for a single reel onto Hard Disks and ship them out, you need a beast of a machine to process it, or it really is a case of click, wait 10 seconds, click, and believe me - that gets old real fast. A basic cleanup on a single frame typically takes between 1 and 5 minutes depending on how thorough, but on a slower PC it can take nearly an hour. Which is why I abandoned the 4k idea quickly the last time I tried it.

Beber said:

That looks very promising. Will you render this at true 4K or will it be UHD? I’m asking this because if this project ends up looking that great as it starts, I will seriously consider renting a theater in Paris for a private screening, and a true 4K DCP would be better for projection purposes.

I’ll probably render it at full 4k, though it will probably look better at UHD resolution (and fantastic at 1080p). As I said, I don’t have a 4K monitor, so most of my work is done at 1080p. Whenever I zoom in to 100% I see a heck of a lot more dirt that could be cleaned, as well as flaws in the image caused by the cleanup process - more on that later.

Are there any plans to color correct the uncleaned scans and put out a grindhouse release at at least 1080p?

Blackout said:

Are there any plans to color correct the uncleaned scans and put out a grindhouse release at at least 1080p?

At this point, even just color correcting a whole reel is a huge undertaking. Assembling a full cut of the film from dozens of Hard drives and GOUT syncing it would also be a lot of work, requiring additional disk space that I just don’t have at the moment.

Let’s wait and see how Mike Verta’s pitch at Disney goes (if he ever gets in the building to deliver it). If he succeeds, then this whole project becomes unnecessary. At that point, a grindhouse version would be the way to go. In the meantime I can assemble the Grindhouse version in parallel to the cleaned up version which will be considerably easier.

For those of you wanting a closer look at the difference between the Denoised and non-denoised version:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188230

I know some of you will hate the DNR, while others will prefer it, which is why I figured I should make two versions…

Jedit: By the way, the DNR is calibrated on a shot by shot basis, rather than just applying it to the whole film with one setting. As we all know, some scenes are much grainier than others!

This looks gorgeous! And by the way, I love grain 😉