44rh1n

Also, I think Premiere itself might be part of the artifact problem you’ve been having. Turns out Premiere sequences default to 8bit.

1. My LUT applied in Resolve (how it’s supposed to look):

2. My LUT applied in Premiere, default sequence settings:

So you have to go into Sequence Settings, and check the “Maximum Bit Depth” checkbox in order for it to display in 10bit. Then the artifacts should disappear.

3. My LUT applied in Premiere with Maximum Bit Depth checked:

And when you export, you have to check the “Maximum Bit Depth” checkbox in the export window as well. Pretty strange IMO. Not sure why Premiere requires so many extra steps.

Harmy said:

I just noticed 44rh1n already provided some LUTs in his post, so I’ll try those.

Now that I have the Star Wars UHD Blu-ray in my hands, I’ve been able to create a new LUT tailored specifically for the film. (The previous two LUTs were simply technical transforms from Rec2020 to Rec709, whereas this new one is a technical transform with some creative adjustments specific for the film’s grade).

Mainly, I got rid of the magenta tint, and adjusted the curve so it’s not so dim. I think it looks really nice, and captures the essence of Star Wars. You’re welcome to use it as a starting point if you’d like.

It’s available in the same folder as the other two, here. It’s the one called “Rec2020ToRec709_CSTCreativeSW.cube.” I’ve also included the .drx file, which is the custom node tree I made in Resolve to create this LUT, so you can tweak it to your own liking if preferred.

oohteedee said:

Harmy said:

Just a hypothetical - if one used a LUT on an adjustment layer above everything and then graded everything so that it looks good with the LUT and then exported a 10bit file without the LUT, could this be used as HDR output?

Even then without an HDR monitor you don’t know how it’s going to look until it’s fully rendered and viewed in HDR on your TV.

Really you need to do your adjustments in HDR with a proper monitor for it to work well.

Exactly.

Theoretically, you “can,” but it certainly wouldn’t produce a great result. Monitoring in HDR is a must if you want to master in HDR.

Harmy said:

OK, I see 😃

That workflow is a great way to future-proof your work though! If you used that workflow (doing all the grading underneath the LUT), then your entire grade would be preserved within that flat, logrithmic color space, which could then be used to create an HDR output in the future with minimal effort (after reference-caliber HDR monitors come down in price).

Harmy said:

Just a hypothetical - if one used a LUT on an adjustment layer above everything and then graded everything so that it looks good with the LUT and then exported a 10bit file without the LUT, could this be used as HDR output?

Theoretically, yes, as long as the export is flagged as HDR. This can be done in Resolve under the color management settings.

However, when producing HDR content, in order for it to be worthwhile, it needs to be created using an actual HDR monitor. Otherwise the film could end up looking fine in SDR, but then looks totally different than intended in HDR. (You’d basically be doing an HDR grade blindly).

While decent SDR monitors for content creation are relatively cheap these days, monitors for HDR content creation are still very expensive - like the Sony X300 or the FSI XM310X. Although some prosumer displays are starting to get pretty good - like the ASUS ProArt PA32UCX and the Apple Pro Display XDR. (Still expensive though).

NOTE: This guide has now been updated with additional information regarding converting to ProRes inside of FFmpeg rather than Resolve, to cater to users who don’t have the paid version of Resolve. Thanks for everyone who has contributed in this comment section!

oohteedee said:

In the screenshots you posted I don’t see where you select 10bit. How do you know it’s being processed as 10bit?
It could still be processing it as 8bit but then saving it in a 10bit ProRes file. It would only be 8bit info but in a 10bit wrapper.

That’s why I prefer command line because you have complete control of the workflow.

If it outputs a ffmpeg log file you can confirm its workflow with that.

That’s super smart. And you may be right. I’m fairly certain that doing it this way in Hybrid preserves the 10bit during the entire process though. If it didn’t, then I’d be seeing the artifacting that Harmy was seeing when he did the conversion in Media Encoder, as well as the artifacting seen in MPV. But the Hybrid conversion is totally clean. The input file is 10bit, the output file is 10bit, and there’s no artifacting at all. So I’m pretty positive it stayed as 10bit the whole time. But you’re right, knowing that for certain is definitely great. I might have to read up on how to do the command line. But for now, Hybrid gets the job done for me. (Especially with my original workflow of rewrapping to MP4 and then doing the ProRes conversion in Resolve. That definitely preserves the 10bit). 🙂

On the Jobs tab what does the progress percentage show? For me, even with a powerful computer it takes several hours to complete the entire conversion from HEVC to ProRes. Sometimes it might show that one task is finished, but the progress as a whole hasn’t totally finished.

oohteedee said:

Try the command I posted instead of using hybrid. It works.

Doing the whole movie can take 8 or more hours depending on how fast your machine is.

Or do this! I’m a GUI man myself, but command line can be more robust if you know how to use it, and it looks like oohteedee definitely knows how!

oohteedee said:

It’s important that force 10bit when you do it. The default with ffmpeg is 8bit. That could be the issue you are having.

I bet that was it! Once I finished mine through FFmpeg, it looked perfect.

oohteedee said:

I never work direct with an x264 or x265 because it’s always very sluggish and it’ll often show the wrong frame when scrubbing back and forth. In ProRes every frame is a key frame so the frame displayed is always accurate.

I couldn’t agree more with this statement!

Harmy said:

Yeah. I converted it to ProRes and I’m getting the same artifacts there. Though I did the conversion in Adobe Media Encoder, so that might be the problem.

Alright Harmy! I think I’ve figred it out! My ProRes 4444 sample conversion just finished, so I threw it into Resolve and it looks great! No artifacts anymore (at least, nowhere near the same as the previous stills). My suspicion is that MPV with its on-the-fly tonemapping, as well as Media Encoder, aren’t processing it in the highest quality possible. Because the slow ProRes 4444 conversion done in FFmpeg looks amazing.

1. Flat HDR

2. Tonemapping Applied

3. Tonemapping & 200% Saturation

4. Quick Custom Grade

Or here is a link to the images as TIFFs, instead of the compressed JPG versions above.

As far as creating the ProRes file in FFmpeg goes, here are the settings I used:

Harmy said:

Hmm, I’m seeing those same artifacts in the screenshot you posted.

Shoot, you’re right. I didn’t notice them at first glance, but once you add saturation they become very noticeable. Hmmm. Now I’m really curious how oohteedee treated his footage…

What happens if you play your MKV remux in MPV? https://mpv.io

When I play the tonemapped MKV of the full UHD Remux, it looks pretty good too.

https://i.imgur.com/jCOi7uA.jpg

I finally have a Star Wars 4K HDR copy now, so I’ll stress-test it on my end as soon as I get the chance, to see how it holds up. But from just glancing at oohteedee’s D+77 (sourced from the 4K HDR), his doesn’t have the artifacting. So there might be something in the workflow chain causing the artifacting to happen on your end.

https://i.imgur.com/o02DAv2.jpg

Have you tried converting to ProRes before applying any color adjustments? ProRes, for me, fixes loads of issues. I think because it’s a codec intended for intermmediate work (color grading, editing, etc.)

Harmy said:

I was wondering if you guys could help me out with the HDR stuff - I’m working in Premiere and I don’t have DaVinci studio.
I remuxed the mkv to mp4, as per the guide and when I import that into Premiere, I do get the flat-looking image but when I try to make any adjustments to it, it brings out some really awful color-artifacts.

In my guide I say to rewrap the mkv to mp4 in FFmpeg and then transcode to ProRes in Resolve Studio. But then oohteedee suggested that you can simply transcode straight to ProRes with FFmpeg and skip the mp4 step altogether. So that’s what I’d recommend, since it doesn’t require Resolve Studio! Then you’ll be able to pull the ProRes file into the free version of Resolve (or any other software). Working in ProRes will take up more storage space than the MP4, but it will run much faster and efficiently on your computer.

Dwalin said:

44rh1n said:

Luckily The Two Towers and The Return of the King aren’t affected, and the official Blu-rays of those films both look amazing.

Yet the editions of The Two Towers differ.

My extended Blu-rays of The Two Towers and The Return of the King perfectly match the original extended DVD releases. Maybe there’s an issue with other regions? But my US copies of both those films are perfect.

ChainsawAsh said:

FOTR wasn’t a complete DI, which is part of why the EE BR is so different compared to TTT and ROTK (which were complete DI’s). So at least some film would need to be scanned again for FOTR.

Shoot, you’re right. I had forgotten about that, but now that you mention it I’m recalling the color grading featurette from the Appendices, where I believe they said only about 70% went through digital intermediate. Well, however they source the inevitable 4K release, I just want it to look nice and be true to the original release’s grade.

Chewielewis said:

44rh1n said:
I’ve been wondering about this myself. Since LOTR is so VFX heavy, redoing visual effects in 4K is probably out of the realm of possibility. Honestly, I just hope it’s sourced from the original 2K DI, and upscaled. No monkey business, no green tint, no DNR, no artificial sharpening, no scanning of a print — just the original file that got rendered out as the master, before it got printed back onto film. That would be the best source IMO.

But yeah its practically impossible for this to happen. Consider the hardware and software the vfx pipeline was built on is long decommissioned. An enormous amount of effort for a very minimal upgrade in fidelity.

Yeah, I agree that there’s pretty much no chance they’ll remaster the VFX in 4K. It will almost certainly be an upscale. But I’m ok with that. A lot of people give the 4K UHD upscales of 2K films a lot of flak, but in my opinion (when done correctly) they are still a massive improvement over the 1080p Blu-rays. People fail to understand that, while 2K 2048x1152 seems like it’s not much higher of a resolution than 1920x1080, it’s actually about 300,000 more pixels. So I’d rather see those pixels preserved in an upscale than removed in a downsampled BD.

FrankB said:

May I ask from where the information comes (it was finished digitally as a 2K DI)?
By the way: Thanks for your work, 44rh1n!

Fellowship of the Ring was one of the first films to go through a DI (digital intermediate) process. And back then, pretty much all films were done in 2K. It wasn’t until 2004 with Spider-Man 2 that a film had a 4K DI – and even then, it was super rare to finish a film in 4K. Even nowadays, probably half the major films are still mastered in 2K. We have a ton more being delivered in 4K now, which is awesome, but there’s still quite a lot done in good’ol 2K.

Harmy said:

I’m wondering what the UHD LOTR will be sourced from. While it was shot on 35mm,it was finished digitally as a 2K DI,so going back to film would mean redoing the entire post production and believe me, it would not be as simple as rerendering CGI in 4K - even if they still had all the assets and project files, which is ridiculously unlikely, CGI is rendered in layers, so the compositing would have to be redone as well - basically it would take pretty much the full cost of doing post production on a very high budget movie,so more than likely, they will go to the original 2K DIs, upscale them and give them an HDR grade.

I’ve been wondering about this myself. Since LOTR is so VFX heavy, redoing visual effects in 4K is probably out of the realm of possibility. Honestly, I just hope it’s sourced from the original 2K DI, and upscaled. No monkey business, no green tint, no DNR, no artificial sharpening, no scanning of a print — just the original file that got rendered out as the master, before it got printed back onto film. That would be the best source IMO.

Then again, Warner may be trying to capitalize off of the new Amazon series, so maybe they will release it later and do a full 4K remaster. It’s hard to say. That would be a very Peter Jackson-y thing to do.

All I want is for the film to look exactly like it looks on the EE DVD, but at the highest resolution and bitrate available.

Nick66 said:

44rh1n said:

Maybe I’ll go revisit some select scenes for a newer release, but I’m holding out hope that the new official 4K version coming this June will finally be a good version.

Are you sure about this? I think this was just a rumour, and that we’d have heard something by now if this was coming next month. My guess is that they’ll wait until the 20th anniversary of FOTR next year to put this out.

It has not been confirmed by Warner Bros. yet, so yes, it’s still a rumor. But the site that first reported about it has been reliable with their information in the past. Although, the world is kind of shut down, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets delayed. Fingers crossed though! Hoping it comes out soon.

Danfun128 said:

This might have already been answered, but what exactly are power windows? It seems impossible to find the definition in this context on google.

Power windows are custom shapes drawn during the color grade to brighten or darken specifics areas a frame. They’re used for brightening faces, relighting scenes, focusing on specific areas of a frame, doing selective sharpening, etc. Every modern movie has thousands of them. And most modern restorations of old films have them too.

Some of us on this forum believe a pure restoration shouldn’t have power windows. Others see them as non-issues, because if an official theatrical restoration were released by Disney, it would certainly have them.

Just two different points of view, both worth discussing. I’m of the view that it’s good to have both — a proper preservation and a modern restoration.

Here is a great overview of power windows: https://youtu.be/pbvLZavPDvw

And if you’re interested in seeing power windows in practice on a real Oscar-winning film, feel free to check out this demo from Steven J. Scott. He graded The Revenant, Birdman, Gravity, Roma, Children of Men, as well as most of the highest profile Marvel Studios films including Avengers Endgame. This is him breaking down a few scenes from The Revenant. The demonstration begins at about 17:35. https://youtu.be/85lVPc0eAM0

Harmy said:

Thanks. I’ll check it out!

No problem! It seems a little strange at first because you actually add sharpening before you’re able to soften those edges. But once you play around with it a bit I think you’ll understand it. It takes a bit of dialing in. And it’s really easy to take things too far, so just be careful and be sure to use it tastefully. I’ve found that if I bring the Blur Radius all the way down to 0 (basically sharpening it 100%), and then adjusting the Mix to bout 44-45, then that’s where it starts to clean up those oversharpened edges really nicely.

Harmy said:

Could you tell me a bit more about the method you used to minimize the over-sharpening? The Star Wars UHD could certainly benefit from that too.

Yeah, sure thing! So in DaVinci Resolve, there’s an effect called “Mist,” which is available as part of the Blur/Sharpen palette. Essentially, what it does is blur the edges of a shot without blurring it globally. So if you dial in the right settings, it essentially can blur the areas of a shot that have been oversharpened / given the “edge enhancement” treatment. This video does a pretty good job overviewing the entire Blur/Sharpen palette, and she starts going over the “Mist” section at about 3:46 - https://youtu.be/YQTGk3K6pCM. And here’s another video that does a pretty good job explaining the Blur/Sharpen palette too. He goes over the “Mist” section at about 4:18 - https://youtu.be/MQN-yg7Qhdg. Hope that helps!

Stotchy said:

I’ve been converting to prores in FFMpeg and can confirm that it works really well. No color shift that I have seen.

Nice. That’s great to hear!

Harmy said:

This makes me so happy - I was going to do this in the same way - use theatrical Blu-Ray and only fill in EE shots from the EE BD with EE DVD chroma overlayed - I even started working on it but never could find the time to finish it, so I’m really glad someone has done this and even went above and beyond.

The only thing I probably would have done differently would be to replace some of the worst looking scenes in the theatrical with CCd EE - the theatrical BD looks really nice 95% of the time but there are a couple of scenes where the DNR was applied much heavier than the rest (off the top of my head, it was the scenes where Gandalf talks to Bilbo and then Frodo inside Bag End and then Gandalf’s confrontation with Saruman). Since they are theatrical scenes, the theatrical BDs chroma could be overlayed for those instead of the DVD. Might be something to think about for the next version. But even as it is now, it’s far better than anything we have from official sources 😃

Thanks for the kind words, Harmy! And I 100% agree about those scenes from the theatrical BD. Yes, you’re absolutely correct about Gandalf’s first discussion with Bilbo at the beginning of the film, as well as the fight with Saruman. Those are indeed some of the worst looking scenes in the theatrical BD. I had actually started working on the Sarumon scene for a bit, but got pretty burnt out because of how many cuts there are in that scene. So I decided to just go ahead and put out the v1.0 release with the theatrical footage. The framing of the theatrical BD is also quite different from the extended BD, so overlaying the chroma results in the shots needing a bit of cropping – so I was ultimately only satisfied with doing a full regrade on those scenes. So I decided it was too much work for the time being.

Maybe I’ll go revisit some select scenes for a newer release, but I’m holding out hope that the new official 4K version coming this June will finally be a good version. If it ends up sucking though, then I think I’ll for sure put out a v2.0 release polishing up some of those worst theatrical scenes, and adding some additional languages that some kind forum users have sent me. Oddly, the theatrical version of the film that’s on Netflix doesn’t suffer from DNR that’s on the BD release, and all those problem scenes actually look great; however, I’ve never been able to find a WEB-DL that’s high enough bitrate to be useful in my restoration. The version that streams at full quality on Netflix looks great, but all the WEB-DLs are too compressed. Any thoughts for how to source from a streaming site?

There are also a handful of other small problems I’d like to address eventually, such as the Elvish subtitles that are positioned slightly differently in the theatrical BD vs. the extended BD (now you’ll never unsee it). In this v1.0 release I figured those were non-issues, but I’d like them fixed eventually.

Thanks for your thoughts!

oohteedee said:

I do it a bit different.
After ripping and remuxing to a mkv, I use ffmpeg to convert the x265 .mkv to ProRes4444.
In Resolve I’ll then typically use a tonemapping LUT I created with DisplayCAL or another tonemapping LUT.
And finally still in Resolve I’ll do my final grade/edit.

Nice! That sounds like it would work really well too. Similar ideas. I like the idea of skipping a step and just going straight to ProRes in FFmpeg; however, I haven’t done that myself because FFmpeg’s ProRes implementation is unlicensed, and I’ve actually noticed a slight color shift with it. Maybe the issues have been fixed since I played around with it a couple of years back, and if so that would be awesome. That’s also a great way to get it into ProRes if you’re on Windows! Great thinking!

Harmy said:

Found it on the spleen - excellent!

Hope you enjoy! 🙂