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http://i56.tinypic.com/jjlgzk.jpg
Looks pretty good to me!
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Puggo Strikes Back! (Released) — Page 14
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thorr said:
http://i56.tinypic.com/jjlgzk.jpg
Looks pretty good to me!
Wait sorry, out of curiosity, who did that color correction?
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thorr said:
Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
There's no way normal color could be restored to PG, it would be like asking Adywan to polish a turd (especially reel 2).
You might be surprised. I know I was when I first saw what he did with his HD Special Edition of Episode IV. If the color is really bad on PG and one setting won't fix everything satisfactorily, maybe different rules can be applied (do whatever it takes to fix the color to make it look the best it can).
If you still need convincing about what is possible, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJ9fy1qSFI
;-)
OMG! LOL! ROFL! Awesome. I'm totally gonna use that the next time someone says: "You can't polish a turd." "Well, in fact, you can!" LOL
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And now, seriously, I see where Puggo is coming from. Of course it would be possible to do a better colour correction but it would have to be tedious work that would involve frame by frame rotoscoping.
And although Adywan proved time and time again that he could totally do it, could you really dump that on him, hasn't he got enough to worry about with his own projects and personal problems - having him help find one setting by reel is one thing but having him spend a seriously long time doing tedious frame by frame CC is something else.
Like the video shows - you can in fact polish a turd but it's a long, hard and tedious work and you have to ask yourselves, with the purpose of this project being to replicate the gritty feeling of watching an old 16mm film, would such an undertaking really be worth it?
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It could be long and tedious... but, actually a section by section, color correction could suffice. For example, all the Tantive IV scenes, all the Reel 1 Tattooine scenes, all the Reel 2 Tattooine scenes, etc... Though, it would only be a best estimate, the color corrector would have to use his own judgment, and the colors may end up not being accurate. Maybe the simplest thing to do is push the contrast up just a tad bit, making a slightly crisper image. Still perhaps it would probably be inconsiderate to give to Adywan...
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I say don't get to carried away, because it is what it is, and at least for me, that is what I love about these releases Puggo, PLEASE do NOT get to carried away color correcting and such, then at least for me, it will definitely lose its appeal, I mean very minor color correcting is cool, but the rawness is what makes these editions so sweet.
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The Aluminum Falcon said:
Wait sorry, out of curiosity, who did that color correction?
The top pic was just an upscale from the raw capture on Puggo's website (no color correction). The bottom pic was from the PG. I think tinypic slightly modifies the colors (which is very annoying).
In general I agree that an extensive color restoration is too much to ask and takes away from what this project is, and it may be that there is a magic formula that works for the whole reel capture, so maybe just send one reel to see how it goes, like with PSB.
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The difference between PSB and PG, is that the prints of SW were seriously faded and the print of ESB is not. So, with ESB, it is reasonable to strive for the most accurate color transfer. With SW, I was trying to get a decent color balance with an appropriate amount of red removed. So if I were to ask Adywan to color correct PG (which I don't intend to do), it would be an entirely different kind of job. It's not just a question of finding the right white balance, because the original colors no longer are present on the filmstock, as they are for ESB.
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I've made a little restoration-test with the sample Puggo posted:
http://www.mediafire.com/?djagvlxb5bwgix5
I've used AviSynth with DeScratch (to remove some of the long vertical scratches), DeSpot (for bigger specks of dust and dirt - which ultimately still produced some artifacts, which might be removed in another step of fixing those areas up with the unfiltered video), "MC_Spuds" for grain removal, as well as LimitedSharpenFaster for a little, well, sharpening. Then I color corrected the whole thing (each of the 7 scenes with separate settings) in Adobe After Effects.
Besides painting out any of the artifacts produce by DeSpot, another step could be to use DeSpot at stronger settings to remove bigger dirt and hairs, although this would require manually masking this one, as it produces a lot of artifacts in other areas of the frames (and also removes some stuff which is supposed to stay).
Some screenshots:
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Wow! That looks incredible. Are there any shots we can compare especially to Adywan's color correction included in the preview? I 'd almost say yours looks perfect.
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Totally awesome! So looking forward to the possibilities of this transfer. Wow!
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Wow! There's more potential to this project than I (and maybe even Puggo himself) thought. With a proper treatment, this may end up beating the hell out of GOUT.
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Harmy said:
Wow! There's more potential to this project than I (and maybe even Puggo himself) thought. With a proper treatment, this may end up beating the hell out of GOUT.
Yes indeed... especially since ESB seems to be the worst GOUT with horrid noise reduction. Looking forward to the possibilities of restorations that could be made from this project...
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^Let's not get hasty AF, people tend to get annoyed when constant requests occur - I know from experience, as I used to be that guy. More on-topic, however, I must say that I hope Puggo considers working with Laserschwert. His work seems highly impressive, although perhaps a little less denoising would be appropriate.
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Puggo, I just noticed, there seems to be a slight chroma shift in your transfer.
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My bad... I meant it more in jest.. but still... I do seem to be a bit request-y. Edited the comment out.
Still, Laserschwert's work does indeed look impressive. This ought to be a very different beast than the (already cool) Puggo Grande.
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I must say that I am very impressed, and I am torn. Processing definitely has its place, but once it is done, it can't be undone. I feel it would probably be best to have Puggo release as planned in the best possible "original" format and then allow the community to tweak it from there. That way we have both options.
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It's exciting to see people experimenting with the captures. I am happy to give a copy of the raw transfer to anyone who wants to play with it. I made that offer for the PG, and I make the same offer with the PSB. Remember, though, that the raw transfer isn't yet complete - there are dropouts still to patch and I want to get a decent baseline white balance from Adywan done.
Regarding the stills, remember that they are just stills. The hard part is getting the moving version to not contain artifacts in the process. I actually spent quite a bit of time experimenting with limitedsharpenfaster, descratch and despot myself, and while I liked many of the results, I didn't like that they occasionally produced artifacts, or removed some detail, along the way. Notice, for example, that in stills #2 and #5, the number of stars in the starfield that have been removed.
Actually, some people might prefer such a version since it would be cleaner, sharper, and thus probably easier on the eyes. I just want to ensure that my release is as true to the original 16mm film as I can.
After I get a single decent transfer of all three reels complete, synched with the optical sound track, I'll be happy to let others play with them. Whether I end up prefering it over mine or vice versa isn't important, because again I have no problem with multiple versions emerging. In fact, it was always my intent for these captures to lead to multiple releases.
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You rock! That's all I have to say. :-)
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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Regarding the stills, remember that they are just stills. The hard part is getting the moving version to not contain artifacts in the process. I actually spent quite a bit of time experimenting with limitedsharpenfaster, descratch and despot myself, and while I liked many of the results, I didn't like that they occasionally produced artifacts, or removed some detail, along the way. Notice, for example, that in stills #2 and #5, the number of stars in the starfield that have been removed.
Although you're wrong about the stills #3 to #5 (I didn't use DeSpot on those shots, as it DID in fact kill most of the stars), you're absolutely right about the moving version being not THAT clean. Of course I've picked the best stills to show the quality that can be achieved with careful filtering.
Still, ultimately there would be a lot of manual masking and painting to remove all artifacts and more of the bigger dirt spots. Also the test now shows the image in letterbox format, which of course looks a bit sharper... doing this anamorphically will cause it to be more blurry in the end. Noise removal might be a bit strong as well, as there's practically no moving film-grain left, and I guess that isn't desirable either. Color-correction though was a breeze... there was no manual masking necessary, just straight forward full-frame corrections (although I didn't use any other transfers as color guides here, and only corrected by eye).
But before anybody regards this one as a replacement of the GOUT you should keep in mind that it's heavily cropped and missing a lot of image information on all edges, so doing a full clean up of this might not even be worth it in the end... after all the charme of the gritty film look might be this transfer's strongest qualities, so some careful color correction and a bit less filtering than what I did might be the way to go.
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Actually, I was referring to stills #2 and #5, and I still claim that some of the stars have been lost. There are faint stars that are present in the original and missing from the processed versions. It not so much the importance of those stars, but that it would be reasonable to assume that other detail has been lost as well, however minor. That said, your color correction and contrast looks very nice.
One of the things I intend to be very careful about, is how much contrast adjustment I do. I love the look of the blacks/whites in these samples, but if that's what gave rise to the loss of stars, then I have some serious decisions to make.
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I'm going to ask a stupid question but it's been bugging me for awhile and google hasn't helped much.
What exactly is the source of these 16mm prints used for the PG and PSB. Are these official prints released by Lucasfilm meant to be played on 16mm projectors or are these copies made by other people who got their hands on official 35mm prints.
I'm inclined to believe the latter due to my doubt that Lucasfilm would release an official copy of the film with the subtitles half cut off as they are during the Greedo scene.
If I remember correctly, I believe this same type of duplicated print was used to restore a missing 25 minutes to Metropolis though that print was in substantially poorer quality than these.
Just want to get my facts straight.
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It's not a stupid question at all. Most 16mm prints are "reductions" from 35mm. I strongly suspect that all 16mm prints of the OT are reductions. But I don't know that for sure. That said, I think they were released by Lucasfilm, and not pirated. But I have no way of even knowing that, for certain.
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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
It's not a stupid question at all. Most 16mm prints are "reductions" from 35mm. I strongly suspect that all 16mm prints of the OT are reductions. But I don't know that for sure. That said, I think they were released by Lucasfilm, and not pirated. But I have no way of even knowing that, for certain.
So because the 16mm frame isn't exactly the same dimension at the 35mm, the tops and bottoms get cut off slightly?
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Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:
Actually, I was referring to stills #2 and #5, and I still claim that some of the stars have been lost. There are faint stars that are present in the original and missing from the processed versions. It not so much the importance of those stars, but that it would be reasonable to assume that other detail has been lost as well, however minor. That said, your color correction and contrast looks very nice.
One of the things I intend to be very careful about, is how much contrast adjustment I do. I love the look of the blacks/whites in these samples, but if that's what gave rise to the loss of stars, then I have some serious decisions to make.
You're right about #2 (that one got DeSpotted) but here's a brightened up shot #5:
I was very careful during my color correction to not crush the blacks (or burn the whites, respectively), so I'm pretty sure it's all there (I'd even say that because of the contrast correction the stars are more pronounced now). To me it's always okay to have some grain left in the darks, plus that way even fainter details won't get swallowed. I don't know on what kind of "equipment" everybody is looking at these screenshots, but I've noticed that a lot of people tend to have their screens set way too dark...