Doctor M

Just rewatch the first 30 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-z0o26HD40

"In fact, Sleeping Beauty, was the second film in history to undergo this extensive computer restoration process."  (The first being the 1994 release of Snow White.)

Maybe not entirely... but 'extensive' is a troubling word.

Edit: I think the point they are making is the restoration was DONE for the 1994 release, not started in 1994.

@penguinofgreatness - Thanks, link fixed.

I've also been thinking about doing something using the 60th video with the 70th audio track.

The 60th is a mix of progressive and interlaced and every reel change needs a resync.

But first I'm looking in to trying to deepen the colors so they are less pastel and darken the night scenes.

HBP is available.  For the moment, PM me for more info.

Newbies and lurkers need not apply.

The Little Mermaid: Seriously, do yourselves a favor and look at this comparison of the laserdisc and DVD releases: http://www.mediafire.com/download/0eb1209t913t4mx/The_Little_Mermaid.htm

I've since back pedaled on a lot I've said about the Platinum Edition (except the censorship and awful remix thing).  The colors for each scene pretty well match at least one of the previous releases (most often the first LD).

I can't imagine that TLM was in such terrible condition that they had to restore it as far as something like Snow White or Pinocchio.  The fact is, the colors of the Platinum Edition are just not that wrong.  It seems the first DVD may have been the problem.

I'm pretty happy with my restored version, but I certainly wouldn't fault anyone who felt that a better preservation was needed.

Aladdin: ADM's fixed edition of this will be on the loose again.  Fear not.

Dumbo: Disney you make me sad!  I took these snaps tonight.

60th Anniversary Preservation vs Bit Top Edition vs 70th Anniversary Edition

OMG! They all suck!

(downloadable screenshot comparison available in first post)

My suggestions?

Snow White.  While the restorations are pretty, they are that freaky rotoscope thing which they supposedly did in 1994!?  No laserdiscs were made before then.  AFAIK there are no releases that pre-date it except maybe some VHS.

Dumbo is a head scratcher.  There have been 3 DVDs, none are right, but someone with some advanced color correction skills could probably fix the 60th anniversary release.

Cinderella was pretty much destroyed by the time it hit DVD.  The laserdisc isn't awful, it could just be better.

If the screenshots of the 1991 laserdisc of Peter Pan are to be believed, there are colors and detail in that film that have never been seen since.

Lady and the Tramp academy ratio... I just don't know how much interest there would be.

Beauty and the Beast... yeah, probably important.  The problem when you get this modern is that it would be best synced to the BD restored audio track, not whatever is on the film.

The Lion King suffered serious reanimation of scenes, possibly worse than BatB ever did.  Someone would need to do a LDrip for that otherwise.

Of course there is the question, what versions of Fantasia exist.

While Aladdin has been poked and prodded in the audio department, I've seen screenshots of the EU Blu-ray and it looks pretty much identical to the old DVD.

Wait so you are outputing from BDSup2Sub and then doing something to uncrop?  I must have missed that bit.

Soooo.  The rotoscope restoration method is even more dubious than previous tools applied to Disney's films.

The Sleeping Beauty featurette I linked made clear that the 2003 restoration was only the second time the process has ever been used.  The first being the 1994 Snow White.

As such, I have re-written three quarters of my guide (now v.2).  Most films prior to Pocahontas include a Purist and Acceptable Alternative recommendation.

From Pocahontas on Disney has provided direct digital copies of their films from their computers with no apparent liberties taken.

Purist selections are intended to be prior to the Disney's alterations and restorations.  Analog sources are recommended when necessary.

The Acceptable Alternatives may have minor changes or a greater/lesser degree of restoration, but are nice enough that you can probably over look the issues.  They are almost always a digital medium.  They are rarely blu-ray since Disney was even less respectful of the source material during those 'restorations'.

Feel free to tear into it again.  I'm sure I've missed a lot of VHS and Laserdisc suggestions.

I agree, autosizing is 100% the problem.  I've loaded subtitles int BDSup2Sub and output them supposedly unchanged... and it has the jitter.

Frankly, I'm not even sure it is a needed step, but there is definitely something wrong with the method used.

If you have an idea on how they can fix it, I urge you to go to the Doom9 thread where they're working on this and help them out.

I'd love to know what the heck Peter Pan is supposed to look like.  I think just about every home video release has been different with warm colors now being used.

These film preservations are an awesome idea, but all I can offer is encouragement.

@bkev - Unfortunately, that comment probably encompasses all restorations from Disney done in the last 12-13 years.  (Post-Lowry?)  I wouldn't think this method was used on any CAPS based or newer films.  (Those are messed with a whole different way).

It's a bit of a muddle.  Wikipedia claims Lowry restored Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid among others, but I believe Disney restored Little Mermaid themselves.  I think Lowry may have done some work on earlier releases of these films or (gasp) Wikipedia might be wrong.

This article put me on to it: http://colorfulanimationexpressions.blogspot.com/2008/06/thinking-about-digital-restoration-of.html

What bothers me most is the technique of separating the characters from the backgrounds in order to remove grain and lighting inconsistencies (see 2^nd disc of "Sleeping Beauty"). This results in a CG-compositing look that draws attention to the absolute rigor of the backgrounds. As the ever changing grain rightfully may be seen as a flaw inherent to the medium, it nevertheless helped to keep the image alive. Without the grain, the characters' color areas are even flatter looking and the movie seems to freeze whenever a cel is held for several frames (quite often in "Dalmatians"). This ultimately draws our attention to the artificiality of the animation instead of letting us engage with the story.

Googling around, I found the 2003 Sleeping Beauty bonus mentioned above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-z0o26HD40

Apparently they went through this AGAIN in 2008 for a 4k transfer.

Molly is bang on.  They are now reanimating these cartoons (I don't even want to use the word "films" anymore).

I'm trying to decide what to do about this guide now.  Some minor clean up is one thing, even the occasional odd color choice (since older transfers have probably discolored worse), but when you remove all signs that these films were painted on cells and photographed to film, then what are they?

Dumbo: Ah, BD versus Big Top Edition DVD: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews50/dumbo_blu-ray.htm

Grumble, I hate all 3 releases.  I'm prepared to recommend none.

Edit: Okay, confirmation about Disney rotoscoping out characters, adjusting separately, freezing the background and recompositing.

The blu-rays may look beautiful and represent a version of the film, but they are divorced from film as a medium.  They are the movies as if they were made today.

In the next update I will remove pretty much all Diamond Editions (and most BD's of early films).

DVD subtitles can be built as either one track for all formats or 2 separate merged tracks where one is automatically activated for WS and the other LBX.

The thing is, if you are using a program like BDSup2Sub you are working with a specific version. 

In other words when you rip the tracks from a DVD the tracks rip separately and need to be resize and/or retimed separately.

Seriously, I will dig into this more next week.  This is a terrible weekend for me.

I'm also thinking of making another important change: converting the guide to use Eac3to.  It's a lot more direct for a lot of the audio conversions and is fairly mature.

Except for audio tracks where you need SoundTouch, it's can do everything else including DTS conversions and slowdown in one step.

I don't know if this has been linked before, but here is a great analysis and insightful explanation of the 'restoration' of Dumbo for the 60th and 70th Anniversary: http://colorfulanimationexpressions.blogspot.com/2010/05/dumbo-for-our-times.html

In light of it, I'm currently leaning towards the in-between "Big Top Edition" release.  It might lack a bit of vibrancy you'd expect, but it just might be the least messed with.  I'm having trouble making that firm, since I can find few comparison screenshots.

Also, not certain yet, and this is a crazy weekend for me so I'm doing as little as possible right now, but I'm seriously considering removing any Diamond Edition recommendations for films older than 15-20 years.  Disney seems determined to make all their films look no older.

That'll roll back the Bambi recommendation :

Platinum:

Diamond:

I don't know if what we see there is aging, film artifacts or brush strokes, but I do know I see lines disappearing.  The Diamond looks better in theory, but the more we learn about the Diamond series, the less benefit of doubt I'm giving them.

I'll probably back off the Alice in Wonderland Diamond recommendation as well.

Finally, knowing a bit more about things, I'm thinking of reinstating my Little Mermaid preservation as first choice.  (The Dumbo article above does mention that early DVDs had the contrast pushed.  Between that, the test screenshot I made above, and poita's vblur comment, I have to think the Platinum isn't as awful as we first thought.  We'll have to wait for the Diamond edition to have something to really despise.

Comments?  Dissension?  Those in favor?

Btw, it appears for the moment Cinderella non-Lowry has a seed.

I still have it and will update the guide in a few days.  Honestly I was just overly optimistic that the BDSup2Sub issue wasn't that common or that they'd just fix the darn thing.

Anyway, the first method is kind of a quick and dirty fix by retiming and repositioning the subtitles.  It doesn't resize them and if there is positional information it can make a mess of things.

The other way actually involves using a program to batch resize every subpicture and then you rebuild it into a new .sup.

Neither was a great answer... I should go see if I can get the guy working on the program to look at it again.

poita said:

On old transfers of cartoons, it was pretty common paractice to do a vblur on them as part of the transfer to thicken up the lines to stop them 'thrumming' which was a line ending up on only one of the TV scanlines. Due to TV being interlaced the cartoon lines would appear to jiggle or blink in and out, so various blur methods to thicken the lines up was pretty common.

That seems to clarify things a bunch.  Similarly I'm thinking the trend towards duller whites is because most modern TVs are LCDs set to some uncalibrated bright mode.

Depends on which year the Pinocchio box set is from.  The 1987 CAV Laserdisc/1985 VHS is a different master than the 1993 LD (which is the master used for the first DVD).

The original author dropped it, someone else has picked it up.  The last version I tested still juttered.

I don't know if it's my brand of DVD players or not, but I've seen it on old 4x3 CRT TVs and large screen HDTVs.

I keep hoping for a fix, I'll probably just have to reinstate the manual method for that portion of the guide.

I think I played with Twixtor.  Had to use an old version because my computer sucks.  It was not satisfactory or speedy.

@_,,,^..^,,,: What was censored in The Fox and the Hound?

I would think DNR is applied to the the source.  I don't believe mpeg2 compression can cause ghosting.

Wow, old thread.

Your solution seem easy and similar to what the AfterEffects plugin does (can't remember the name of it), but without the ability to ramp up and down the speed.

I've sort of give up on what I was going to apply this to, but it's good to know for future info.

Any thoughts on syncing the new Cinderella to a more modern audio track, Molly?

@nirbateman: I PM a link to the DLC.  FanEdit.info already provides a simple site that keeps .dlc, .torrent and .nzb links.   They might accept preservations.

For BatB:  I just checked again, yeah, audacity re-encodes lossy formats.  It probably wasn't the right tool for the job.  I'd love it for the video track, but I'd probably just resync the audio again and reauthor to DVD if I had it.  I'm thinking it should be redone if you could.

@all: At the moment I'm considering re-instating my Little Mermaid preservation as first choice after seeing what a contrast adjustment did.  Those lines no longer seem messed with to me from the restoration, just a difference in the transfer.  Thoughts?

After looking at Bambi, Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland: I'm hoping for some more input.

I'm leaning towards recommending the Dumbo Big Top Edition, which while flawed, just seems more right than the 70th Anniversary, but that's just my gut. 

If Alice is truly as digitally altered as stated, the Masterpiece and Un-Anniversary editions have a lot of color and detail and make a good replacement.

For Bambi I did some more review combing and found mention that 'imperfections' have been sparingly cleaned, but this may be brushstrokes or original blemishes in the cells or film they removed.  The previous edition is still pretty good without the changes, but there seems to be no solid answer.

I guess what I'm saying is that if anyone has seen these Blu-rays, has read anyone else besides Mr. Worth(?) commenting on them, or just has an opinion, please help settle this.

@nirbateman:  Did you re-encode the video or did you mux the mpeg2 into an MKV container?

Is Audacity lossless when working with AC3 tracks or does it re-encode the entire track when you make the edit?  I've heard people claim it losslessly can edit mp3's and that's been proven to be false.  Womble's programs are still about the only ones I know that lets you edit AC3 (nearly) losslessly.

As far as sharing... that's a good question.  I've been testing the waters of using MediaFire, WinRar'ing into <200mb pieces, and putting the links in a .dlc file (encrypted links readable with jdownloader).  Dunno if that's good bad or whatever though.  (Is this comment still within site rules?)

I want to float something regarding the 'thinning' of lines.

I've just spend a LOT of time comparing screenshots and reading discussions and I'm starting to suspect the fat lines we are used to is wrong.

Older transfers that have these thicker lines also lack a LOT of fine detail (check out the comparison of the Gold Alice in Wonderland.  Almost half the image is gone.)

Now I'm not saying this is true for all transfers.  Cinderella is overscrubbed, period.  The Platinum Peter Pan is crazy soft to the point that fine detail previously present is absent.  There are other offenders as well.

What I AM saying is I think the people making the old transfers for home video didn't necessarily have pristine prints and they were probably aware of the limitations of the medium they were going to.

For example, that Little Mermaid picture.  What troubles me is about how perfectly matched up the two images are, even though the DVDs were drastically different.  The first is letterboxed 1.66:1 (with some distortion IIRC) and the other is 1.78:1 anamorphic.

So somewhere in there, somebody did resizing and stretching with some method we don't know just to get those images the same aspect ratio and size.

BUT, if you are transferring a not so great source to a non-anamorphic DVD for standard definition TV and probably sharing a master with a VHS release?  You'd probably boost the contrast so the image comes through and hit it with some sharpening or edge enhancement.

Quick and dirty test:

I don't want to say this gives a pass to all new Disney transfers, but the fact of the matter is with clean masters, DVD and/or HD only releases, and 7 years of changes in hardware and compression methods, you now have some breathing room for subtlety when you fine tune an image.

And yeah... that Dumbo image didn't show up when I first saw TServo2049's post.  Those new colors are just ugly.  But again, I'm troubled.  What's the source of the image on top?  The DVD bundled with the 70th anniversary release is supposed to be from the same master (isn't it?) The 60th Anniversary Edition is full of grain.  Is it the 2006 Big Top Edition maybe?  If so we have a winner.

The Aluminum Falcon - Snow White pre-restoration sounds interesting.  I'd love to see some screenshots for comparison.  I'm not sure what to make of it after reading Leonardo's response though.

For Pinocchio I wouldn't mind seeing some new screenshots of the '87 release.  If the ones I previously linked are accurate, it is extremely washed out and I suspect resaturation would make it look almost identical to the first Limited/Gold Edition DVD.

I did see someone post screenshots of the BD tweaking the colors and they were able to bring out the missing lighting depth.  I'm curious to see if someone with some good color correction skills will try to take it on.

Fantasia, yeah, I'm a bit vague on the LD's myself.  CAV is 'short play' (about a half hour per side).  Usually better quality as you'd expect.  I don't know if there were different masters for different discs.  ww12345 is probably the guy to ask about this.

Beauty and the Beast, I have heard from others that the 3D version converted to 2D is a better color palette (as such the guide has been updated to reflect this), but from the screenshots I've seen they look nothing like any version other version, even the LD.

Considering Disney has repainted this movie twice (for IMAX and the Diamond release), monkeyed with the outline thickness in the artwork, and I've seen indications they've moved objects around to improve the 3D presentation,  I have trouble recommending it even if the color was spot on.  In my mind it's no longer the same movie made by the original animators.

Aladdin - I had offered to revive ADM's release on the Vaultbreaker's thread and there was little interest at the time.  I'll see what I can do when I get some time.

TServo2049 - The Little Mermaid was a tough call.  I never noticed the thinner lines before, something I just called out BatB for doing.

That said, the original DVD is quite awful.  It's non-anamorphic, there are blurry and misaligned cells and some questionable colors there as well (which may be accurate).  It really looks like it was rushed out.

I actually pulled my DVD and couldn't believe those screenshots were right, but there's nothing untoward going on there.  That's a fair comparison.

My release always was a compromise for people who wanted improvement over the Limited Edition if they could handle the color changes.

The guide is updated to reflect line thinning and DAMN YOU I'VE NOW DEMOTED MY OWN PRESERVATION.  XD

I'm glad to see he explains some of the Peter Pan issues in that link.  Those missing paint strokes disappeared as far back as between '91 and '97.

Finally, is Bigshot/Mr. Worth really knowledgeable?  He blasts the restorations of Dumbo, Bambi and Alice In Wonderland and sounds tinfoil hat-y.  (And a lone voice).

If anyone can confirm this I'll gladly update the guide and demote the BD recommendation for those films as having digital modifications to effects and animation.

Mercifully he seemed to have no issue with the Snow White BD.

Should I assume that by limiting his complaints to BD that he has no issue with the prior DVD releases of those 3 films?  Otherwise I don't know what to recommend.

nirbateman - Beauty and the Beast:  I never called the Platinum DVD my first choice, only that it's the closest digital option to the theatrical version of the film.  The LD is still first place and HELL YES PLEASE SHARE YOUR RESYNCH!

I know the Beast's stutter has been restored on the Diamond track, but is the noise indicating the re-destruction of the castle removed as well?

Short of someone using the laserdisc to digitally color correct and restore the modified areas on the BD, your disc is probably going to be the final ideal release.