Raiders of the Lost Ark HDTV 35mm LPP regrade — Page 6

CatBus said:

Wazzles said:

CatBus said:

I know this is probably a long shot, but any chance of pulling the snake reflection, rolling rock bar out of the LPP scan? i.e. to replace onscreen content that’s simply not present in the HDTV version?

I don’t think he wants to get into any roto or clean up, so he’s just using the WOWOW and BD.

I figured that was likely the case, but I was tempted to ask because it would be so great.

That would be beyond the scope of the project, but maybe someone else would like to take on this challenge?

To take a break from the bar scene discussion, here’s a regrade for a completely different shot.

35mm LPP:

WOWOW:

WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

Looks great, Dre. Loving the LPP colour and contrast here. Wonderful!

That above screencap looks gorgeous, wow. Great work!

Now, if only you could do something magical like that for Star Trek III later down the road. I’d be willing to put the SKY HD TV cap up on Spleen for a limited time to see a preservation like this one.

These digging shots are difficult to regrade, because color, brightness, and contrast varies somewhat across the frame, but we’re getting there…

35mm LPP:

WOWOW:

WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

Hitler is a nut on the subject also on the 35mm LPP! This is another example, where the LPP colors and brightness are slightly different, on the left side of the frame, compared to the right side.

35mm LPP:

WOWOW:

WOWOW matched to 35mm:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

Artifacting in what sense? Both the 35mm and the WOWOW are pretty noisy for this frame, and there’s a lot of color noise too. The foreground noise has been increased somewhat, while the background noise has decreased. I could use the bluray for this shot, which has much less noise, but also somewhat less detail.

WOWOW matched to 35mm:

Bluray matched to 35mm:

Contrast issue top left corner.

That now will give you the variance as the 35mm does not exhibit this problem. It’s shot’s like this that give you the answers to the problems. Although I only adjusted the brightness and contrast yellow starts to creep in.

Popped the top

Ronster said:

Contrast issue top left corner.

That now will give you the variance as the 35mm does not exhibit this problem. It’s shot’s like this that give you the answers to the problems. Although I only adjusted the brightness and contrast yellow starts to creep in.

I have to agree with bkev. The staining is in both the 35mm and the WOWOW, but more so in the 35mm due to the higher contrast. I think the regrade shows that as well. I made a slight adjustment to remove artifacts visible for the first regrade, which includes some of the yellow staining you mentioned, but it comes out looking pretty similar:

It’s a shadow… But I like the color and I know you are trying to match 2 different transfers as the same color.

All I am saying is, it is giving you a clue what that is meant to look like. And weather you want to pay any attention to small little things like that. It will give you more information about what the film is “Meant to look like”

weather the 35mm looks like that or not is another matter. All I am saying is it’s a clue. No problems with what you are doing, and I am far from an expert but that for me is a indicator.

It’s a key to a door.

Ronster said:

It’s a shadow… But I like the color and I know you are trying to match 2 different transfers as the same color.

All I am saying is, it is giving you a clue what that is meant to look like. And weather you want to pay any attention to small little things like that. It will give you more information about what the film is “Meant to look like”

weather the 35mm looks like that or not is another matter. All I am saying is it’s a clue. No problems with what you are doing, and I am far from an expert but that for me is a indicator.

It’s a key to a door.

Well, there’s two things. I did notice some artifacts in the first regrade, that were fixed in the second regrade, including some yellow artifacts.

Some of the yellow staining appears to me to be color noise, which is present in the print and to a lesser degree for the WOWOW. It is therefore more than likely the staining is present on the negative as well, and therefore as “ugly” as it may be, it is actually supposed to be there.

In either case, the project objective is to match this particular print. However, if I’m misunderstanding your point, please let me know.

Not really misunderstanding but Would all prints have the yellow noise then?

Or just the particular 35mm print? Or Is it 2 different transfers from the same print?

Ronster said:

Not really misunderstanding but Would all prints have the yellow noise then?

Or just the particular 35mm print? Or Is it 2 different transfers from the same print?

I think it would be present in all prints. You can see the same yellow noise for the DVD, which is based on a scan of an interpositive:

The WOWOW suffers less from the color noise, so a color noise filter may have been applied.

I think I know what might (?) be happening although your color match program is very very good. It is sampling the dark grain in the shadow and throwing off the sample in a sense.

Making the regrade slightly darker in the dark areas. As the 35mm has lot’s of dark speckles in the white. This is obviously sampled and throwing it off. As the WOWWOW HDTV version has no dark grain speckles.

Ronster said:

I think I know what might (?) be happening although your color match program is very very good. It is sampling the dark grain in the shadow and throwing off the sample in a sense.

Making the the regrade slightly darker in the dark areas. As the 35mm has lot’s of dark speckles in the white. This is obviously sampled and throwing it off. As the WOWWOW HDTV version has no dark grain speckles.

It’s possible, but when I directly compare the regrade and the print, I personally don’t see that the dark areas are darker for the regrade. There’s also bright noise in the shadows on the print, so that should even things out in terms of the noise. What I did notice, is that there’s also a slight blue cast on the left side of the frame for the print.

Your regrade mildly adhusted.

The yellow I think is correct don’t fight it. Blue might be the problem. At the end of the day do what you like. I have no objections to the color. But this I think might be closer to what it is “Meant to look like” taking in to account the problem with the dark grain and how it’s smearing the wall blue. It might also mean this guy has a grey jacket too 😃

Just trying to be helpful. I am not asking you to change it.

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

This shot is part of an optical dissolve, so it is 5th or 6th generation on the LPP and 2nd or 3rd on the Wowow. So it is going to be grainy unless a lot of DNR is applied (like on the blu-ray). The same issue occurs with other dissolves in the film. Most notably the dissolve from Brody saying “an army which carries the ark is invincible” to the outside of Indy’s house.

Ronster said:

Your regrade mildly adhusted.

The yellow I think is correct don’t fight it. Blue might be the problem. At the end of the day do what you like. I have no objections to the color. But this I think might be closer to what it is “Meant to look like” taking in to account the problem with the dark grain and how it’s smearing the wall blue. It might also mean this guy has a grey jacket too 😃

Just trying to be helpful. I am not asking you to change it.

You went a little too far. The jacket is suppoed to be more of a slate gray and the shirt light blue.

DrDre said:

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

Artifacting in what sense? Both the 35mm and the WOWOW are pretty noisy for this frame, and there’s a lot of color noise too. The foreground noise has been increased somewhat, while the background noise has decreased. I could use the bluray for this shot, which has much less noise, but also somewhat less detail.

WOWOW matched to 35mm:

Bluray matched to 35mm:

It doesn’t look like grain to me, It looks pixelated. It doesn’t quite look like compression artifacts to me, but it also doesn’t look right.

Ronster said:

Your regrade mildly adhusted.

The yellow I think is correct don’t fight it. Blue might be the problem. At the end of the day do what you like. I have no objections to the color. But this I think might be closer to what it is “Meant to look like” taking in to account the problem with the dark grain and how it’s smearing the wall blue. It might also mean this guy has a grey jacket too 😃

Just trying to be helpful. I am not asking you to change it.

It’s fine 😉. As there’s blue in the walls for the entire scene, I believe at least some of the blue should be there, and I also agree with litemkr, that the jacket should have some blue also. As it is really difficult to objectively assess what colors should be there, and what colors shouldn’t, I will stick with this 35mm, until another 35mm shows otherwise.

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:

Wazzles said:

DrDre said:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:

There’s an awful lot of artifacting in this one. Is there some way top avoid that?

Artifacting in what sense? Both the 35mm and the WOWOW are pretty noisy for this frame, and there’s a lot of color noise too. The foreground noise has been increased somewhat, while the background noise has decreased. I could use the bluray for this shot, which has much less noise, but also somewhat less detail.

WOWOW matched to 35mm:

Bluray matched to 35mm:

It doesn’t look like grain to me, It looks pixelated. It doesn’t quite look like compression artifacts to me, but it also doesn’t look right.

It can be improved somewhat:

Some of it is grain, but there are also compression artifacts in the WOWOW, as it is more compressed than the bluray (for example the sky in the original WOWOW frame). Some of these are made less visible in the regrade, while others are made more visible. I think this regraded frame looks pretty descent, considering the increase in brightness. For example, the sky looks much better for the regrade. The only alternative is to use the bluray, but I’m not too keen on mixing WOWOW frames with bluray frames, as the difference between the two is quite jarring, so you either go all wow or all blu.

I would stop worrying about weather this print is the holy grail of all prints and just adjust for the muck all over it.

I think you should use the WOWWOW and simply get rid of the Hue’s in the pixels after the sampling.

You can not reverse the blown out Blu Ray but you can simply de-saturate any weird leftovers.

It’s still like night and day. I think you need to stop thinking “exactly” because the 35mm print is probably far from exact also.

So you what you will have is very much “in the spirit of the original theatrical presentation” and would still be a huge improvement over what is currently available. Don’t beat yourself up!

Ok so I cleared some of the hues out the WOWWOW regrade for this shot. Does it look massively different? Not really…it looks pretty much the same but I reduced all the magenta and yes there is a problem with Blue again. Looks better now. Looks pretty similar to the 35mm but without all the dark crap in it.

It’s not like bad to be slightly different. But to be massively different yeah that is and that is why you are doing it right? So don’t worry too much about being 100% accurate to a old print that is not exact anyway.