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The Terminator (1984) DEFINITIVE REGRADE + Laserdisc Mono/Dolby Atmos [Released]

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 (Edited)

The Terminator '84

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Greetings!

I’ve been working on a T1 regrade this past year. It was supposed to be released before the 4K UHD came out but the project got put on hold due to personal health issues. The new 4K isn’t the worst thing in the world like I was expecting (it ain’t no True Lies) but it still has many problems. The mono audio included also unfortunately isn’t the greatest and neither is the old 5.1.
I highly recommended watching Damn Fool Idealistic Crusader’s YouTube review link here of the 4K for a purist’s perspective and his video on the history of the home video releases of the film. That being said I believe the best source is still the ‘13/15 Blu-ray imo.

There have been a few regrades posted here throughout the years but I wanted to go in depth a little bit more, and also wanted to make sure the encoding and bitrate/file size matched the Blu-ray for maximum quality. I ripped the transfer from the disc and made sure to export/transcode appropriately after color correcting. Special thanks to kk650 for inspiring this project with his past releases.

This transfer is ripped from the 2015 MGM Blu-ray (which is the same as the 2013 release). I used the 2006 MGM Blu-ray, 1997 Image DVD and some 35mm stills I found online for references, although my intention was NOT to match them exactly. My goal was to make the color grade look overall more natural but with a resemblance of past releases. I also wanted to make sure to keep the exposure levels the same as BD source so there would be no black crush or overexposure. I tried my best to shift the color tones only. It is not 100% perfect but it is also incredibly difficult to make minute (extremely small) adjustments within DaVinci Resolve without going too far one way or the other. I went back and forth on hundreds of different variations of color grades until I finally settled on one that I felt looked the most balanced.

Since this comparison (flagged nsfw I think because of Arnold’s chest lmao) shows there’s been so many different looking color grades across the home video history of the film, I found it appropriate to just fine tune to my personal preference. I may continue doing improvements and updates, and further adjust certain scenes if enough people are interested. But for now I think it’s time to release this little bastard, I’ve been working on it for too long.

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MORE SCREENSHOTS HERE

Special thanks to Stamper for providing the 1991 laserdisc domestic mono mix. It is included here for purists as an uncompressed PCM.

There was a 2.1 mix created by kk650, lazyzod and dmuk which combined a laserdisc mono with the .1 LFE of the 5.1 track, using Sony Vegas for encoding. I decided to recreate one myself using DTS-Master Audio Encoder to ensure the best quality. I took the 2.0 mono and encoded it with the .1 LFE of the DTS-HD 5.1. I also attached the Orion logo intro to the beginning, as that is absent from the laserdisc mono (21 secs). This will be the default track on this release as I believe this is the definitive mono experience.

The two main 5.1 tracks, the international mono mix from the 2001 MGM SE DVD, as well as the new Dolby Atmos track have been added for a complete audio experience. All tracks are precisely synced to the 2015 US Blu-ray release. All tracks except for the laserdisc tracks were ripped by me straight from the source.

I do not make compressed versions. This will be a full size release only.

MEDIA INFO:

VIDEO:

AVC/H.264
33.0 Mb/s, 1920*1080, at 23.976 FPS, (High@L4.1 / 4 Ref Frames), 24.7 GiB
source: 2015 MGM Remastered Blu-ray

AUDIO:

ENG Dolby Atmos TrueHD
(3,075-4,752 kb/s 24 bits 48.0 kHz, 2.30 GiB)
source: 2024 Warner Bros. 4K UHD Blu-ray

ENG DTS-HD Master Audio 2.1 Mono + LFE (default)
(2,169 kb/s 24 bits 48.0 kHz, 1.62 GiB)
source: 1991 LaserDisc/2015 Blu-ray - created by uhdfan93

ENG DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 Surround
(4,119 kb/s 24 bits 48.0 kHz, 3.08 GiB)
source: 2015 MGM Remastered Blu-ray

ENG PCM 5.1 Surround EX
(4,608 kb/s 16 bits 48.0 kHz, 3.45 GiB)
source: 2006 MGM Blu-ray

ENG PCM 2.0 Mono (original 1.0 also included)
(1,441.2 kb/s 16 bits 44.1 kHz, 1.06 GiB)
source: 1991 Image LaserDisc - captured by Stamper

ENG Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (International Mix)
(192 kb/s 48.0 kHz, 147 MiB)
source: 2001 MGM Special Edition DVD

*Subtitles also included

Total size: 37.0 GiB

*NOTE: I recommend NOT using VLC player if watching on a PC. For some reason a couple of the audio tracks sound compressed and muffled on VLC. Not sure why, not sure if it’s only my version. I recommend using MPV Player.

Special thanks to Kreep for valuable feedback.

PM for link! 😃

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Nice work, looks really good. Those bluray editions have a greenish tint I always found ugly and is especially noticeable in the scenes in the police station.

I would very much like a link.

How would you say your grade differs from kk650’s regrade from years ago?

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illuvatar said:

Nice work, looks really good. Those bluray editions have a greenish tint I always found ugly and is especially noticeable in the scenes in the police station.

I would very much like a link.

How would you say your grade differs from kk650’s regrade from years ago?

Honestly it’s similar in some aspects, but the blues/reds differ slightly. Also when comparing side by side I found his to be a little darker overall. I wanted to match the exposure of the BD, which was actually hard because different colors have different brightness values. Also the kk650 one has a low bitrate, another reason why I wanted to do my own. His is pretty darn good tho, it was my inspiration overall.

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Excellent work! It lives up to its name, this is about as ‘definitive’ as it gets - solid color, healthy bitrate and practically every audio option. Thanks!

Nice job with the custom 2.1 mix. The LFE seems to be synced correctly with the action. The previous 2.1 edit was slightly off since the mono sound and the remix had different timing.

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I watched this tonight, and it looked awesome. Great work on the color regrade and thank you for including the revised 2.1 audio which sounded excellent!

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This sounds amazing, could you please send a PM?