Doctor M

MattMahdi said:

AntcuFaalb said:

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

 Love to see that unaltered.

 The 45th Anniversary DVD is still quite good.  The sparse nature of the animation in this film doesn't allow for a huge benefit to HD.

My recommended HD version of Sword in the Stone is still the delogoed 720p HDTV DD5.1 x264-Don version.  It has the 5.1 audio track, but it's not an offensive mix by any stretch.

There were a half dozen posts on TehParadox although none seem to have good links anymore.  You could probably ask for some fresh links, google around, or try to get an account at HDBits.

@nirbateman - Where did you get a BD of the BatB WiP?  I thought that didn't exist.

A sort of rule of thumb, if you are looking for HD versions, anything dating from the Little Mermaid and newer, the official versions are the best you'll find (for what that's worth), and anything older you'd want to look for HDTV versions on the newsgroups or torrents sites.

HDTV broadcasts typically aren't "restored" which is where Disney has been going wrong.
That said, I haven't come across an old iTunes or HDTV rip of Jungle Book.

You could try BD-Rebuilder.  If it's compliant it can build a BD, if it isn't it can re-encode.

Taolar said:

Oldfan said:

Was this DVD ever uploaded to usenet?

 I found a copy of the two DVDs, and will be uploading to piratebay soon.

 (Mildly contained glee.)

There is no official U.S. release of Aladdin on BD.  I have seen screenshots of a Euro release and it looks pretty much identical to the Platinum Edition (except of course HD and with AR changes (some more cropping in some places, less in others)).

http://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?s=576da8101a32b32c59a4fa0a9001358f&p=7264327&postcount=197

Coming from CAPS they probably just redumped the IMAX digital image to BD.  I really don't expect there to be much difference.  I doubt we'll see a return to the theatrical version, and unless they decide to go 3D I don't think we'll see any additional changes.

The Jungle Book diamond edition has a February 11 release date.  I'll research that when the reviews come out.  Being xerography era, I don't expect it to look very good, but you never know.

Some small updates to the list.

Acceptable Alternative Cinderella was slightly reworded to make clear that the ink lines are damaged in the newest releases.  I've completely dismissed other releases for their very existence.  Cinderella get a pass in this case only because there are no other digital versions available.  (A bit like Snow White.)

The Great Mouse Detective has further explanation why the newest release ISN'T an acceptable alternative for the very same reason (although possibly worse in this case because xerography produced animations seem to take more damage from the process).  Do you guys think the slightly corrected AR and original title card are a reasonable trade off to this?

Pocahontas now has an explanation regarding the reinstatement of "If I Never Knew You".  I don't consider it a shoe horned in addition like "Human Again" or "Morning Report", but a reinserted deleted scene.  I recommend watching the film with it and since the DVD has seamless branching there is no reason not to own that version unless you know you'll never want to watch it.

I disagree.  Many of the xerography animated films end up with bits cut off that don't look like they should have been when theatrically matted.

That could be just another example of Disney being slap dash in their home video releases, or the animators figured they had the whole page and used it.

FYI, the HDTV version floating around is less compressed looking than the iTunes version.

timdiggerm said:

Reconstructed workprint is the better title.

Now, I've never actually seen The Dark Crystal (it's on my to-watch list), so I only got 20 minutes into this but do the DVD extras include:

• All the skeksis scenes without English-dialogue?
• Difficult to see, fuzzy, black-and-white bits?
• Warbly, VHS audio at times?

cause this does.

 It's been a while since I've sat through the extras, but it does have at least some of that.  IIRC the extras are pretty expansive.

I'll give this a look, but timdiggerm, if you've never seen the Dark Crystal, I would definitely say watch the theatrical version first.

The official home video releases contains a lot of deleted and pre-final audio scenes.

I'm not saying he just cut that all together, but if someone did, it might pass for a workprint.

I haven't watched and compared this to the DVD bonus features so I can't be sure.  It's also the reason I haven't bothered to watch it yet.

I have no reason to say it isn't legit, but it is not uncommon for fan editors to take liberties in their enthusiasm to recreate a better version than before.

Besides, he insists on calling it a Director's cut, but there is no evidence that Henson and Oz would have edited the original version let alone the version on YouTube.  He would have been more accurate in calling it a reconstructed workprint.

To be clear, that's not really the work print.  Details seem sketchy, but the version on YouTube is a reconstruction using mostly digital media sources.

No knowing how accurate it really is.

I was pondering updating the Pocahontas recommendation.

Although the 'Special Edition' has an added song (via seamless branching), unlike previous instances of DVD added songs, this appears to actually be a true deleted scene removed late from the film.

Having now seen it in the movie, I thought it really was an improvement.  Technically not theatrical but should it be recommended over the Blu-ray?

Not exactly how this forum works, Garrik.

Since these films were animated at 1.66:1 they are probably just as cropped at 4x3 as they are to arrive at 1.77:1 on BD.  They just cropping from a different direction.

While I can't speak from haven't actually compared them, I would think that the Lion King's AC3 track is probably a blunt copy of the original theatrical mix.

Laserdiscs were a limited market enthusiast medium.  Studios rarely saw a need to spend the time remixing a track when the home theater systems they would play on could handle them fine.

The stereo track is probably just a downmix meant to handle TV speakers better.

Zuh?  What possible...  I mean, huh?

Maybe Leonard Maltin can start releasing tins of untouched Disney films as a series for collectors.

penguinofgreatness said:

Doctor M said:

Mickey's Christmas Carol wasn't listed because it wasn't a theatrical release.

It actually was.

Fair point but it's not a feature film.

That said, people still deserve to know what the best version is.

DVDizzy.com:

It's possible to have been exposed to this short on no fewer than four DVDs: first, edited into the 2001 direct-to-video Mickey's Magical Christmas: Snowed In at the House of Mouse, then in a more complete form on Disc 2 of the Walt Disney Treasures' 2004 tin Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Volume Two, and again in a comparable pair of holiday short compilations, 2005's Classic Holiday Stories (Volume 9 in the Classic Cartoon Favorites line) and 2009's self-titled entry as the seventh and final volume in the Walt Disney Animation Collection: Classic Short Films series. (If you'd like, feel free to also count the 2009 repackaging of Mickey's Magical Christmas.)

Since Disney has been doing the worst damage cleaning up their films for Blu-ray, I suspect any of the older releases should be good.

The WD Treasures is 1.66:1, the later DVDs are 1.33:1 open matte. (why is this font small?)

Mickey's Christmas Carol wasn't listed because it wasn't a theatrical release.

I have no idea what the best answer is for that one.

I'm having a hard time judging what is over filtering artifacts and what is actual animation.

Halo Clean 3 is definitely over scrubbed.  Halo Clean 2 produces jaggy edges.

I don't like them, but I'm afraid I'm out of advice.

Some more changes to the guide.  Rewording in Rescuers Down Under.  I've had a better look at the BD image and it is surprisingly nice.  There's film grain... which actually makes no sense since AFAIK it comes from the CAPS computer.  At least it isn't overscrubbed.

Downgraded ADM's Aladdin to Acceptable Alternative with the CAV LD as the first choice.  I wasn't aware of the extent of reanimation performed for an IMAX release that didn't happen.

Upgraded Lion King BD as the first Acceptable Alternative since it sports the same changes as the prior DVD but with much better image quality.

A question, has there ever been or is anyone working on a Lion King LD preservation?

Oh, and anyone who likes Beauty and the Beast should definitely be following _,,,^..^,,,_'s project.  The HD upscaling is detailed and quite impressive and the image is much cleaner than you would expect from an analog source.

DoomBot said:

i wonder what a grain plate applied to this would look like?

No.  Just, no.

@ _,,,^..^,,,_ (I will hereafter refer to you as 'Cat'.)  I still like the plain old analoclean.

I'm afraid sharpening will only enhance the ghosting and removing the ghosting has negative effects on the detail. 

I've never had good success with it, a dehalo filter might work on the ghosting though at the expense of sharpness.

I also agree with Chewtobacca.  If you could turn down the analoclean a bit, that might be good.

For some of these tests, screenshots from the avisynth script is fine for comparison.  You really don't have to re-encode a clip each time.

Finally, I do have concerns that there appears to be dot crawl that should be filtered before the resize.  You can see it in Lumiere's arms/small candles below.  (Some suggestions on how can be found here: http://www.aquilinestudios.org/avsfilters/dotcrawl.html)

Updated my last comments while you were responding... see Post 55.

I'm not sure why you would be using virtualdub with x264, it doesn't handle it well.

If you are using a good encoder like MeGUI, it automatically uses MKV.

As far as the sharpening, downloading the clips now, but what filter are you using?  I'm a fan of LimitedSharpenFaster.  It produces good results with little or no artifacts.

Edit: Um, I dunno.  I think the clips are getting worse, not better.  Comparing the deghosting scripts, the denoising scripts, the sharpening, etc.  I'm seeing more and more signs of overprocessing.

Deghosting is scrubbing fine detail that isn't ghosts.  Even the unsharpened 3b clip has some terrible banding (which might be a bitrate issue.  Hard to say without uncompressed screenshots).

The sharpening filter is plain awful and looks like some of the official Disney BDs.

IMHO, "test4-analoclean+magicup.avi" is still the best looking clip you've posted.  I can tolerate the ghosting after seeing what the filtering does.

My head almost exploded when I saw they even repainted the dwarf names on the beds in Italian.  Weird.

There's an Italian Bootleg VHS?  PM me please...

Grain is good (done right).

I'll look a bit later at the new clips, but I'm more worried that there is little comment on these clips besides myself.