Doctor M

@RU.08 - The yellowing near the lines look to me like rainbow artifacts.

The source is laserdisc, so you are talking NTSC hard interlaced, which makes it a real possibility.

There are some pretty good de-rainbow filters out there.  I think the last one I used was ChubbyRain2, but Bifrost is well liked.

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/External_filters#Rainbow_.26_Dot_Crawl_Removal

I do recall that derainbowing must be performed before deinterlacing though.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

For example, what if Disney in person had the chance to choose to release his animated features with or without grain?

That's quite easy to answer.  Disney would have CHOSEN grain-free movies, but then he would have altered his animation process to account for it.

The fact is that cell animated features have been optimized during production to look appropriate on film stock.  It's the same reason why sampling the colors on cells is the WRONG way for Disney to color time new digital releases.

I like grain, but to me adding grain to processed video is just as much a travesty as completely scrubbing existing grain.  It's just artificial and the damage has already been done and you're obscuring more image detail.
If it's not there, it's not there.

Laserdiscs and most SD releases tend to be scrubbed to some degree to look good on home video.

In fact many companies used the same amount of scrubbing on their first HD releases (HD DVD and BD) as they used for DVD and those releases were dreadful.

It's an unfortunate fact of SD sources.

titanic, can you tell me what you mean about the background looking flat?

Comparing the frames, while I'm not sure I like it completely grain free, I'm not sure I see any other differences.

Maybe it's the upscaler I'm not digging (which wouldn't show in that comparison) since the ends of lines in the animation look suspiciously like the 'licked candy stick' appearance Disney's own restorations create.

On another note... the raw rip is _only_ 35gb?  Wait, that's standard definition isn't it.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

An important, philosophical question: do the grain should be preserved in animation?

I mean, grain was part of live action films since the beginning (even if today's digital camera do not have it, but this should be discussed in another thread), and movie as medium cannot exist without grain... animation, on the other hand, was not "born" with grain, but grain was a "forced" consequence of animation transferred on film... so, to me, grain should not be part of animation; do you agree?

A very good question.

(Okay, I was just going to leave it there.)

My only opinion on the matter is we have no sources without grain to work with.  As such, any grain removal will damage detail or cause artifacts.  That I don't like.

@Spaced Ranger - That's the first I've heard of a DVD release with Deems Taylor.  I'll update the first page, but has anyone here actually seen the 'outside the U.S.' release?

I'm making some updates to the guide.

I'm hoping to better sort out the subtitle section, switch to the use of eac3to, and some other updates/fixes.

Any requests/suggestions?

To be fair, although they are usually similar, Aladdin has not had a U.S. release on BD yet.  We can only hope it comes out better.

I always have mixed emotions about HDTV/webdl versions.

It's fine if the movie doesn't exist with that transfer or in a digital format, but on the whole it rarely looks much better than a good DVD.  The over-compression needed for broadcast tends to scrub the detail you SHOULD be gaining from HD.

Most of the time they use the same bitrate, and in the case of HDTV the same mpeg2 codec.  That'll never look much better than a properly encoded DVD.

I liked the SitS old HDTV version, but at didn't find it to have a LOT of detail above the DVD.  It does have the edge though.

Was 20k Leagues damaged by restoration?  I hadn't heard that.

Is the Aladdin HDTV prior to the Imax/Lowry changes?

I assume Black Cauldron is likely to be pretty similar to the DVD because there hasn't been a restoration IIRC.

Never seen an Aristocats HDTV version.  There have been a lot of bad versions of that film.

AntcuFaalb said:

Has anyone taken a look at the Japanese Peter Pan LD from 1985?

 That would be pre-Lowry.  It SHOULD be close to the 1991 Laserdisc/1990 VHS releases, but you never know.

I'm not familiar with Audacity.  I do most of my audio editing in Sound Forge.

Dealer's choice.  If you ripped it from an analog source you might want to try merging the channels at 50% volume.  It can do some nice noise removal.

Thanks.  Apparently I missed a couple weeks worth of posts on this thread.

Anyone got the password for the the usenet version?

Was 'Always' in need of preservation?  Is there a thread for that project here? I cannot find details.

DanishDVDfreak said:

Doctor M said:

So is this on the usenets as well, or just 'spleen?

 Its on usenet too:

http://www.binsearch.info/browse.php?bg=alt.binaries.starwars

Look for the post from april 30th, and may 3rd by "Someone"

 Thanks.  I thought I saw something about it being there, but could not find it.

So is this on the usenets as well, or just 'spleen?

AKA banding.  I've never heard it call false contouring before.

Um, is that really on the BD?

Megatron said:

long time follower and a bit confused as to who I ask to get an invite to Myspleen or the other place to download this.

??

 Wait, did I miss a post?  When did this get released and is it torrent only?

I think both Elmo Oxygen and OmegaMattman were talking about being willing.

OM's color matched hybrid version sounds like just what we want.  You up for that?

That said, EO has some nicely authored discs.  Wouldn't mind seeing that.

With regard to the aspect ratio differences, it appears that both versions may have been 2.20:1.  So that really shouldn't be much of an issue.  I was concerned there would need to be cropping of the DVD source.  Of course the LD will need to be upscaled to anamorphic wide.

I'd like to be able to do more with this than cheer on from the sidelines, but once you are getting into color matching, I'm just not really equipped to do that so it looks professional.

Eek.  Almost missed this update on TDB:

According to Robert, all versions of The Alamo are currently endangered. The film’s original 65mm elements are essentially gone, both for the 202-minute roadshow version and the 167-minute cut down version. The roadshow version could possibly still be salvaged in a half-decent home video version, but it's no longer possible to restore it to anything remotely like original quality. Sadly, the same is also true of the 167-minute version created by UA, because the original negatives can no longer be printed to anything viewable. According to Robert: “All that remains [of The Alamo] are old 35mm dupes, which do not represent the film as a large format epic, and even those elements are less than stellar.”

Never noticed that.  So when you say composite you mean to use the DVD footage when available and laserdisc footage for the extra scenes?

I'm okay with that.  You might want to contact Dark_Jedi and see if he can give some pointers on getting the most out of upscaling the laserdisc.

OmegaMattman said:

I have the roadshow LD and am hoping to make a capture in the next month or so.  Unfortunately, I've been stuck in an extended stay motel for the past few weeks, so life is on hold.  I'm hoping to color match it to the DVD and make a composite.  Same with "Hawaii" once I get the chance.

 Wouldn't the aspect ratios be completely different between the roadshow and theatrical cuts?

Thanks.  I'll take a look.

EO, I wanted to look for your posts on MySpleen, but can't find them.  You apparently can't search by user name, only ID.  What is your id# there?

In light of a recent article on The Digital Bits: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/052814_1330 it appears that MGM is willing to let the roadshow version of ‘The Alamo’ degrade to nothing.

That said, there WAS a laserdisc release of this cut of the film and it absolutely should be preserved by fans if the studio won’t.

Does anyone have this laserdisc and want to take on the project?  We unfortunately sold off our copy long ago.

If nothing else, but a bee in MGM’s bonnet as suggested at the end of the linked article.