Doctor M

zeropc said:

someone made a comparison of the itunes movie store version (1080p at 1.33:1) vs the blu-ray.
please note that the itunes version has been resized for a closer comparison.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/33385

Is that legit?  It makes the blu-ray look like somebody used temporal noise reduction, an edge enhancer and pushed it out the door.  It's doesn't look like real HD at all.

nirbateman said:

I have the Snow White DVD which has a restoration featurette that touches on the 1993 restoration.

If anyone's interested, I'll post it to the group.

It would certainly clear things up if you could.

I've never found ColourLike to do anything good for a movie.

It's good on a frame by frame basis, but even for as little as a scene it fails to produce good results.

The problem is the references it uses are for whole clips, not individual frames.

If you could get it to check the a single frame, adjust the colors and then move to the next frame and start again, it'd probably be useful.

Excellent thread at HTF.  Blew my mind.  Some thoughts and questions to the group:

Most of the complaints leveled against Alice seems to be about the Blu-ray.  Is it safe to assume that the prior 2 DVDs (Masterpiece & Un-aniversary) are actually good?  Stephen Worth seems to make mention of them in comparing to how awful the BD is.  Should I remove the Gold Edition as the Purist recommendation and make it DVD MP/UA for all?

This quote troubles me:

I went to a special VIP screening of El Grupo and Saludos Amigos at the Cinemateque at the Egyptian last year, and Both films were projected off of bluray disks. The transfer of Saludos Amigos was not a straight transfer off of the original elements. It was a recreation version that hasn't been released yet.

In the guide I said the best version and only uncensored "Saludos Amigos" was the one bundled with "Walt & El Grupo".  This quote suggests that it is an altered version even if Goofy has his cigarette.

Anyone have that version of SA that can compare it?  Do we need to use it as a reference to do another restoration project?

Edit: My current thoughts, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Fantasia: The Pastoral is described as being over saturated but otherwise good.  I can't see changing my recommendation based on that segment (since I call the DVD the 'acceptable alternative'.)

Pinocchio: Mentioned that some BDs are missing a couple lines of dialog.  I have no other details about that.  Since I would never recommend that BD, I don't see it worth mentioning.

Bambi: Platinum edition may be the fleas/crawling fur edition.  I can find no references to it except in that thread (and it doesn't name the Platinum Edition).
The thing is the BD exhibits that modern restoration look of characters divorced from the lighting of their background.  I can't see changing the recommendation unless someone can clarify this.

Peter Pan:  Has me baffled.  In the thread they talk about the butchering of Tinkerbell's glow on the BD.  I just can't get my opinion straight on the rest of the releases.
I still have no idea what is going on in the '91 Laserdisc... looks pretty interesting though.  For detail it seems unmatched.
The '99 Limited Edition DVD is really soft and is on the cool side
The '02 Special Edition is also too cool, is the sharpest release, some artifacts... and I swear is over 'cleaned' which should in theory be unlikely in '02.  Tinkerbell's glow seems muted and that shouldn't have happened.
The '07 Platinum Edition is surprisingly soft, dull/dingy looking and overly warm.
The '13 Diamond Edition has a better balance of warm vs cold, but is definitely a reanimation is out of the question.

I can't say which versions I recommend for PP any more.

And what is up with ImageShack?  They seem to be culling images lately.  I keeping bumping up against removed images.  Jerks.

Huh?

It's 'Melody Time' at MySpleen.  Smoke 'em if you got 'em. :-)

Ooh, and while I'm asking, it was mentioned that for Alice in Wonderland there was "digital recreation of analog effects, like Alice's reflection in the stream".

Any links to discussion of that?

Also was the digital effects done as of the Diamond Edition (with the DVD releases being less altered)?

I'm wondering if something has happened to Disney's master.

Typically the Diamond releases have been new restorations separate from the Platinum (which was done using older tech).  Maybe they don't have anything to work with(?)

Melody Time will probably be gtg this weekend.

A question: I know the Platinum Edition restoration of Cinderella is terrible, but when I've gone hunting for Platinum vs Diamond comparison discussion or screenshots I come up empty.

Is the BD transfer just as badly damaged?  Did anything improve or get worse?  Anyone have links for comparison screenhots?

Just a heads up, when we cut that non-anamorphic, DD2.0 release of the theatrical version in the U.S., the U.K. release was anamorphic with DD5.1.

There's probably PAL speed up, but a PAL to NTSC conversion of this disc would probably work quite well.

Edit: Scratch that:

Alternatively, there appears to be an English R2 version of the film that is single-sided dual-layered, in PAL with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. So what is the catch? The British version features the almost requisite BBFC cuts, removing 29 seconds from the movie.

While I did a passable job with Make Mine Music's menus (to hide all the missing audio and subtitle selections), Melody Time seems impossible to work with.

What are the feelings here about just disabling unused buttons?  Otherwise I'll need to create new menus from scratch.

I wasn't aware there was an HDTV version of the Theatrical Cut.  If so, what's wrong with it that it needs work?  (And where can I find it?)

Edit: Never mind.  Crap colors and no English audio would be plenty wrong.

The current laserdisc version is quite good.  It could probably have used some light denoising/sharpening, but it still has more detail than the DVD.

Unless someone has reels of Cinderella on film.

Actually, I found two that might be different releases (one in a bundle of several Disney films), but this one had full sized screenshots.  (You can check them out on RuTracker if you want.)

Yes, Molly.  If you just rip the video file, it is 29.97, but that can be true hard interlaced or it can be 'soft' interlaced, which is just 23.976 video with pulldown flags that tell hardware what to do with it on playback.

VirtualDubMod ignores the flags, indexing with DGIndex, or several other methods will show you that Make Mine Music is 100% film.

I'm afraid, monks19, that you need to do some research on the basics of DVD video.  tmpgenc & TsMuxer shouldn't even be involved.

Just a comment.  I got to see some samples of Russian(?) sourced DVDs for Cinderella that predate the Lowry restoration... and the Laserdisc rip is better.

Almost thought I had something interesting to talk about...

Subscribed!

Yeah the only DVD of the theatrical cut is pretty ugly and I find the extended version to be a let down.

There is another thread here somewhere about a theatrical cut preservation though.

What fps problem is there?  The R1 DVD is 23.976 progressive.  Unless you're talking about Martins/Coys.

I updated Wikipedia today since they didn't seem to have info about the changes to ATCJI.  It has me worried if there are other alterations that we haven't noticed.  (I actually double checked for cherub nudity alterations during one scene.)

Btw, can anyone clarify what has been altered on Melody Time?  Did they paint out Pecos Bill's cig for the whole segment?  Did they cut out the one verse with rolling a cigarette?  Are there any other changes?

I'm thinking of giving MT a similar treatment, although there is a PAL source to work from.  The thing is I don't know that I've ever scene the full movie... so I'm not sure how much I care to go to the effort.

Already pre-approved by an admin at MySpleen.  MMM is not a recent film by any stretch, and it has never been released in this form commercially.

Edit: MySpleen even has free leech right now.

Sounds cool ww12345.  Let us know how things are looking.  I'm curious to know if the Sleeping Beauty print has as much information left/right as the recent home video releases.

Btw, for those not reading the 'Vault...' thread, I have finished a restored Make Mine Music.  I'm still pondering MySpleen versus MF.  I'm open to opinions.

I wouldn't know where to start with a pdf version.  But yeah, both guides do need an update.

I was trying to talk the author of eac3to into adding dpl2 upmix to his program so it would all be one step and this guide would be pointless.

Other people weren't exactly clamoring for it so I wouldn't hold my breath.  It's a bit of a shame since eac3to pretty much can do everything else.

And a quick question to anyone looking for MMM.  I was going to do something like MF, but I do have permission to up this to MySpleen.

Opinions? Preferences?

For posterity I've put 30 seconds of raw rip for "All The Cats... " as a DVD_ROM extra.

Honestly, the original DVDs are really poor quality.  The R1 disc should absolutely have been a DVD9, it is riddled with mosquito noise and macroblocking.  The small difference in quality between my restored clip and the rest of the video is minor.

I'd say bank the VHS clip and wait/hope for a BD release and repaint in HD when available.  Of course you can feel free to do it in SD anyway if you want.

I can make the raw clip available separately if you want.  It's pretty small.

Can anyone tell me why they didn't censor this too?

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

I didn't know tmpgenc still existed.  The NTSC DVD isn't 29.97, it's 23.976 (with 'soft' pulldown flags).

I'd use VirtualDubMod (yeah that's pretty old too), load the .VOB file directly, trim it to the scene you want to edit, and then use "Save Image Sequence" to output all frames sequentially as lossless PNG (or similar) files.

You can then repaint and re-encode them back to 23.976 video using an AVS script and CCE SP or HC encoder (which is free but good).

If you mean the VHS source which is hard telecined, that requires an IVTC method.

I used:

#IVTC and align frames
TFM(pp=0)
trim(806,0)
firstdup=trim(0,-1) #duplicate first frame
lastdup=trim(334,334) #duplicate final frame
firstdup+trim(0,334)+lastdup #add extra frames to improve decimate pattern match to DVD
tdecimate(ovr="DecimateOverride.txt") #remove duplicate frames with override list

#Override file only contains:
#4 -
#148 -

Seriously, I would love to have this done properly, but I'm too impatient.  If you do succeed in recreating this scene from scratch I'll definitely watch it.  I'll be uploading the capped clip this weekend.

Edit: Btw, I've seen mentioned that the PAL version floating around is a DVD9 to DVD5 conversion.  I doubt it since the NTSC disc is a DVD5 as well (and nearly as badly overcompressed).