Deloreanhunter12

Hey Dre, great work as always and the upscaling looks fantastic. Though I know you’re busy juggling your new custom tool and part 2 as well as other projects, I had an idea that I thought maybe beneficial for this restoration. Just so the 4k official release doesn’t go fully to waste, why not use it as a reference for chrominance detail similar to 44rh1n’s use of the dvd for his restoration. You wouldn’t have to do much reframing since it is the same scan source and while all the other details for the 4k are dnr’d to high heaven, shadows seem to be retained pretty well with detail. The infamous shot of Bilbo searching for the ring in Baggin seems to be a great example of this being retained as opposed to the bluray. Just a thought and not sure how applicable it would be depending on the scenes (especially moria, could be a long shot), but curious if it would help with any details in the realm of shadows!

Dang, this is incredible work Dre! Can’t wait to see progress on this. Would this new algorithm be able to handle HDR sources pre tone mapping? The previous one seemed to do fine when switching rec709 colors (put in a hdr container) to a rec 2020 source, just wondering if this would be able to work to create luts that are 12bit or 10bit friendly.

Hi 44rh1n, thank you for your helpful thread on HDR mastering in SDR. I had a question related to importing dolby vision metadata. I recently found a way to transfer a dolby vision rpu into xml and import it into resolve. The goal is to apply a dolby vision grade onto 3D footage (prores 4444 3840x1080). So far, I found a method to trick resolve into applying the metadata (isolating both eyes in a 3840x2160, then changing the timeline resolution to 7680x2160 after successful application), however I’m not quite sure how I will go about exporting this. The other question I have is Should keep the footage exclusively to rec 709, export at HLG to have the best of both worlds, or to just stick with a normal HDR export. Any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated 😃

Hey y’all, have some updates.

I did a V1 pass with just the normal rife interpolation and removing end frame manually, but the results were inconsistent to say the least. Majority of the results were good, but they need more cleanup. So I started from scratch for V2 and doing a complete manual cleanup of the original 3D bluray source. I have yet to find the means on fusion to convert the 4K footage, so I’m just going to upscale the 1080p to 4K.

There lies some other issues with the 4k as it is different color timing altogether (ie flashback scenes now all have a sepia tone filter to indicate their date) and some of the 4k footage is a bit too soft when converted to 4444 prores, possibly done in service of removing digital sharpness to make the 4k image comparable to the Lord of the Rings remaster.

This time around, I worked with 4 variations of interpolation, 96 and 120fps with and without motion blur, from both speed warp and rife.

Here are the first ten minutes with this new method. Keep in mind, plenty of work to be done for frame work and I am still working out the kinks on finding a balance between sharpness and retaining detail for the upscale.

Other than that, let me know what you think and I hope you enjoy!

https://youtu.be/v3pA7M9Sa3A

Thanks for the feedback! I was also surprised at how much detail you were able to retain with just the butterfly wings flapping, there were some test runs for The Hobbit (specifically the barrel sequence) were that look didn’t fully come together on my end, so very well done! I do want to clarify some of my statements based off your response.

Then you can skip depth maps, etc. Sure, the extrapolate side will have lower quality, but when viewed in 3D the difference should smooth out.

I did test this out (with Gemini Man) and unfortunately, the result is a depth mess. Since the frame rates aren’t fully synced, there are constant moments where frames don’t line up. The process for using a depth map would cause less headaches for preservation purposes and there won’t be any sync issues. Not to mention that with a few tweeks in davinci resolve’s node tree, you can get a depth map applied seamlessly to the original source. Sure, it’s not the native image they used, but the process is used in every other Hollywood 3D conversion, it would be barely noticed. The only issue is finding a way to get a depth map from the original 3D bluray.

I always figured a HFR 2D release could be created (if you had a HFR source) by doing a double telecine to 60 fps and then decombing it. I suppose the same idea might hold for a 3D version.

That probably would work, however I am not familiar with the process of decombing, how would that look?

I’m assuming you’ll keep the frame rate at the 59.94 that the UHD BD uses so you don’t have to re-encode the audio.

Initially for the Ang Lee HFR films, that is the plan. But I do want to motion interpolate later in the process to bring the image back to 120fps. He made a big stink about that format, so I want to try to give peeps the opportunity to experience it, regardless if it seems unnecessary.

I wanted to get a start on preserving 3D HFR formats, due to the recent success of Avatar The Way of Water. While yes, the format has garnered polarized reactions, I am of the belief that we should still have access to what the filmmakers originally released in theaters, very much like the case of the theatrical cuts of Star Wars. The two films I intended on focusing the restoration on is Gemini Man at 4K 3D 120fps and The Hobbit trilogy (extended of course) with 4K 3D 48fps.

Considering MVC encodes only can output 24fps with not the highest bit rate, I was thinking that it would be easier to output a full SBS encode. The crux of my idea is this, my main goal right now is to get Gemini Man back to 120fps 3D as it is one of two native HFR sources out there with the 4K release. What I was thinking is that if you can create a depth map just from the Bluray 3D version, you could apply it to the 4K version and create a new second image in the process. From there, you would be able to double the frame rate in whichever preferred motion interpolation software, reel to reel. Now the main question is, which software could be able to generate depth maps from a Bluray 3D source? The second question is which motion interpolation software works best to increase frame rate?

Thanks for reading and any thoughts or suggestions would be much appreciated

Last night, I was lucky enough to catch a 35mm screening at the academy museum. They made the new print directly from their original preserved negative. Let me tell you, it looked like it came out yesterday and the image was so clear. I felt like I could reach out my hand to touch Harrison Ford’s beautiful face! But the color was incredible, and your print is definitely the closest to what I watched last night. Now, if memory serves me, there was some warmth, but only a nudge as the movie looked really well white balanced. It was just the right amount, so if anyone wants to get a more theatrical color grade, it’s this print you released with a touch of warmth and a bit less of a pink tint. (Also, sidenote, the skintones where some of the best I’ve ever seen. It was the healthiest middle ground of saturation and color for Indy’s face, even while they were in Egypt!)

Williarob said:

I usually listen to soundtracks while I work. Right now I’m listening to the Lord of the Rings Soundtrack.

Reel 6 is remarkably clean and complete, so it’s going much more quickly than I had anticipated, based on the other reels.

When I’ve had enough I walk away. On the days where I don’t feel like working on it at all I just don’t. Luckily it’s not my day job so I don’t have that “get it done or you’ll lose your job” pressure. There are also plenty of other things to work on, for example the 16mm SPFX doc, or 4K77 2.0, or even just other aspects of 4K80, such as sourcing the missing frames: Inserts from other prints must be color matched and cleaned and aligned, all of which takes time, but also provides a change, however small that helps keeps things moving but also breaks the monotony.

For anyone who has never worked on a film or animation, frame by frame, working for hours at a time it’s probably difficult to imagine how long it all takes, and how disappointing it can be to count up your frames for the day, whether it’s a dozen or 300 or 1000, and converting that into real time, only to realize that your “wahoo!” moment of “1000 frames!” equates to just 41 seconds of a 2 hour movie. It also means that you end up spending weeks and weeks looking at the stark whiteness of Hoth, or the dunes of Tatooine, or the forests of Endor. That moment when the action shifts to another set can be so refreshing that you can keep going for another hour!

The progress wheels help me a lot. Not only do they keep you informed of my (slow) progress, but it’s psychologically helpful to me - like crossing things to do from a list. It helps me see that there is an end, and every time I can move the wheels I can see I’m getting closer to it. 1% of a reel is about 12 seconds of film or 288 frames, so if I clean less than that in a session, I can’t move the wheels. I like moving the wheels, even by only 1%, so that gives me a goal to hit every time.

Don’t stress about it too much. At the end of the day (and I’m just speaking for myself), it would be nice to have it done asap, but that’s just not realistic. You have done an outstanding job (honest to god rivaling quite a few criterion restorations imo) with the other two 4k editions and I can’t wait to see what you’ve done with restoring Empire. Take as much time as you need, definetly don’t feel obligated to rush. We’ve waited decades for this, we can wait a bit longer 😃

So I’m running into some trouble with Davinci resolve in terms of lut creations. It was working fine with premiere pro when the file decided to stop using the lut right and now all the colors are washed out. Any solution to this? Also I may have found a way to get around the large files sizes on the studio version by using H.265 removing data burn in and marking the clip as REC. 709

Ah gotcha. Thank so much for all your help with this. I want my Hobbit fanedit to be at its best shape so this really helps. Sorry for all the questions, but I do have one last one. Would an HDR passthrough capture card suffice for viewing HDR or would I have to go for one of the Blackmagic devices? I don’t really use resolve that often and primarily use Premiere Pro CC for my basic color needs.

Ok now I have an HDR display, but windows is not allowing me to show HDR properly. The best I can do is turn on HDR effect on my display, but that’s the best I am able to do for now. Is there any way to figure out how to get HDR up and running? I have an LG 27ul600-w and the laptop I am running it off of is a Asus ux550ve

44rh1n said:
In order to export in HDR you need to do the color grade in HDR. Which I doubt you’re able to do accurately unless you have a very very very expensive reference monitor, like the Sony BVM-X300 or the FSI XM310K. Or an Apple Pro Display XDR, if you’re on the cheap end. 🙂

Unless you’ve made a fanedit without any regrading, in which case you can leave all of the original HDR grading.

Ooooof, well that blows

emanswfan said:

Here’s a shot with the heavy grain preset I made for a previous TPM clip, which is how I prefer it, though I understand many here don’t like that much grain as have previously discussed. Full clip tomorrow.

I made some more changes today that I think improve it, although less purist to a theatrical print from 2005. Mainly I messed around with the contrast and curves to remove the dated digital look and give it a more modern digital look before adjusting colors to be closer to the 5207 stock the sequels were shot on. Hopefully that comes across in this image.

Also still having issues tonemapping the HDR highlights down correctly, but it should be acceptable for a Beta.

Hey that looks awesome!!! What program are you using to get the film grain effect?

I have a question for HDR exporting. When you are using the lut in premiere and doing an edit, what settings should I use to make sure that the video is exporting as HDR properly and not exporting just a REC.709 color space from the lut?

Hi there!
I’m using premiere pro cc and I’m wondering what the best format for exporting would be so I’m not loosing any video quality with the 3D image? Should I export two files or would it just be more ethical to export one full sbs image?

Hey there, so a quick update. The edits are finished in a very rough form, however, since corona impacted the world and I have time to kill, I bought the 4k editions of The Hobbit and plan to edit them again with a 7.1 mix in premiere and export it out to a 5.1 mix. I’ll keep you all posted

SilverWook said:

Keep in mind this is the result of a lot of work on a very red faded print. The first and last reels (not shown here) need more done to them.

Ah, gotcha gotcha. Do you think if it wasn’t faded, it would look similar to the 4k bluray or would be more of a cooler temp? I’m curious if that restoration is more white balanced corrected or not.

SilverWook said:

I’m surprised at how warm the color temp for the film stock is overall! It’s like the Overlook is more inviting than ever before, creep tastic 😃

Nice! Going from this one:

Hmm, I think the skin tones like a tad bit undersaturated, but that’s not counting the variables of the lens flare from the lake and how low digital cinema cameras captured bit rate. Would they look more natural in a different shot, like the scene where Anakin says the infamous “Sand” quote, or about the same?

RogueLeader said:
This is just my own wishes, but I think it would’ve been interesting if they said that the dyad could’ve been a manifestation of that balance. And when Rey, one half of the dyad, died, imagine the spirit of Anakin appearing and bringing her back to life, finally having the power to save someone from death, and restoring the “balance”.

Sorry, I just read this and I think you have nailed it. This would have been a much more fitting end to the trilogy as well as the saga.

RogueLeader said:

Regardless of Lucas’ opinion on it, I like the idea of a prophecy being misinterpreted. The more I think about it though, I kind of wish bringing balance had less to do with destroying or killing someone, and more about saving or creating something. What if destroying the Sith wasn’t the prerequisite for bringing balance, but the Jedi just assumed that’s what bringing balance meant.

That’s exaclty what I thought. Even though Rian Johnson left a lot of fans and disney execs confused how they would conclude the saga / trilogy, I think just having a movie of Rey vs Kylo battling each other and coming to some realization that balance comes from an actual grey area, not some big good and evil. Not trying to say it should with everyone sing kumbaya, more that Rey creates a new order that teaches all aspects of the force, showing the good and bad in both ideals. Therefore making the prequels and original trilogies relevant with the sequel trilogy as well.

It might not have been in line with the other movies or could come off as cheesy, but it could work if JJ or Rian (or a new competent director entirely) actually collaborated with Lawrence Kasdan, possibly George.

Broom Kid said:

“Rey, I have to tell you something!”
“What were you going to tell me?”
“I’ll tell you later”
“Hey, what were you going to tell Rey”
“I’m not going to tell you, I’m going to tell her.”
“Oh no, I felt Rey die. I didn’t get to tell her!”
“OH LOOK, REY IS ALIVE. ISN’T THAT NICE. GUESS I’LL NEVER TELL HER WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY THAT WAS LITERALLY SO IMPORTANT IT’S BASICALLY THE ONLY PLOT THREAD I HAVE IN THIS MOVIE”

Canto Bight reads like Upton Sinclair compared to that.

This is too hecking accurate

My Ranking

1. Empire Strikes Back, 9/10
2. Force Awakens, 9/10
3. Star Wars, 8/10
4. Last Jedi, 8/10
5. Return of the Jedi, 7/10
6. Solo, 6/10
7. Rise of Skywalker, 5.5/10
8. Rogue One, 5/10
9. Phantom Menace, 5/10
10. Revenge of the Sith, 2/10
11. Clone Wars, 2/10
12. The Holiday Special, 1/10
13. Attack of the Clones, 1/10

Lots of these movies are based on the emotional highs as a fan I got from the films. I definitely think that Last Jedi while extremely flawed had some excellent payoffs and an ending I thought was one of the best. Phantom Menace was more digestible and felt more well-paced on my most recent watch, while the other prequel films were nothing but pain. Oddly, I started to enjoy Jake Lloyd’s performance more, just thinking about how George didn’t know what he was doing directing child actors. Rise of Skywalker was eh, one or two emotional highs, but poor pay off for a lot of factors. It screams underdeveloped. One of my screenwriting pals said Last Jedi felt like it needed a rewrite and it would be fine. Rise felt like it needed a finished draft and it would be slightly adequate.

Revenge of the Sith is a meme movie at this point. Clone Wars Movie (love the show) is butt ugly to look at and the story feels like an extended Rebel’s fluff episode for babies than a more grounded episode of Clone Wars. I have fun watching The Holiday Special since it is just a horrible mess that is an overwhelming cringe-fest to the senses. Attack of the Clone is nothing but pure pain to me. I’d rather have my nails pulled out than watch one more moment of those stupid love scenes or any of the atrocious writing and plot that go absolutely nowhere. I’d say that as much as people say that Phantom Menace should be skipped for marathons, I think this one has nothing in it whatsoever. At least you got to see where Anakin came from in Phantom Menace instead of just faffing around for two and a half hours with no discernable end-goal.

Got out of it and I’m kinda mixed. I am a JJ Abrams fan admitedly, but there so much that was so clearly rushed. It felt like he was blue balling with moments of tension, leaving me feeling nothing for the final battle scene. It’s like he watched Return of The King and said “YES that but Star Wars” and it just didn’t work. Stuff with the skywalker family I liked. Stuff with Rey (whom I adore as a character up until this film) was kinda bad. It felt like JJ was trying to jerk off the fans with her story and it just shows. I wasn’t a big fan of Endgame for similar reasons as TROS, but at least Endgame was a clean narrative that new where it was going, even it wasn’t presented that well in my opinion. Disney in general can fuck off at this point as well since they are just baiting the fans for all the franchises at this point. I liked the last five minutes of the film and maybe the scene of Ben’s memory of Han. The implacations where enough for me to say it was the one subtle thing they actually did well. Rey and Kylo’s kiss was fucking cringe, it just didn’t feel earned and their relationship never struck me as remotly romatic or sexual (curious if you all agree or disagree with this, love to hear your thoughts). Overall, it was big eh for me. Right there with Rogue One and Solo for too much fan service and not really thinking beyond the limits of the previous movies. 5.5/10

Oh would you look at that, I’m having a heart attack because of how beautiful those frames look now. Excellent work Dr. Dre!!!

One small thing, does Bespin’s hallway color lean more on red from your sources?