Doctor M

I'm very sad.  I just watched Snow White tonight with the DVD release that corresponds to the Diamond Edition, and I'm not sure what I think of it.

The colors are good, the image is largely sharp, but all that cleaning up highlights the flaws.

Now I see colors that shift during shots, blurred and missing frames, unnatural motion, and stuff like this:

All these years I watched inferior(?) versions with lots of grain that helped cover the short comings... and tonight it was all I saw.  It distracted me from the movie.

I was actually forced to turn up my TV's dejudder and motion smoothing just to make the animation less nausea inducing.

Is this really the best version of Snow White or was the Diamond restoration just abusive of the material?

I'm trying to decide if I need to get the Platinum Edition for comparison.  As far as I know there's nothing older than that.

Has anyone else had a similar experience with this?

Oops.

I realized my previous question wasn't concise.  I meant to ask if there was a difference between the 2001 Platinum Edition of Snow White and the 2009 release.

I had assumed the 2009 Diamond edition was BD only, but evidently there is a DVD 2-disc Limited Edition non-Diamond release that came out at the same time.

Reviews of the '09 release are generally good, but I think I saw some people complaining the colors were over bright (that would be a shocker.) :-\

Edit: Answering my own question.

Platinum:

Diamond:

According to DVDizzy.com (formerly UltimateDisney.com):

The transfer features a more subdued color scheme that fits with reports of the filmmakers not wanting this to be too colorful as they weren't sure how long the human eye can sustain watching animation.

Has anyone done a preservation of the Pinocchio laserdisc then?

As far as Snow White, I guess were stuck until someone undertakes a color correction project.

I was just getting ready to straighten out my Disney collection in earnest and realized we really need a database keeping track of the films.

Anyone want to take this on and start either a new thread or at least a post here that we keep up to date with best versions?

And my question:
From my searching of this thread, is it correct that both the 2001 DVD and Diamond BD of Snow White are considered fairly accurate (and similar to each other)?

Also, I think most people agree the 1999 DVD of Pinocchio is the better of the releases?

Btw, this is interesting: Pinocchio (R1 Old vs. Platinum vs. Blu-ray) http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews44/pinocchio_blu-ray.htm

Is there cover art for this?

poita said:

BTW, does anyone have the Disney Singalong Songs Laserdisc that has the SOTS clip on it?

 

The Singalongs are on the 2nd disc of the Bre'r Preservation Edition if you want it that way.

Edit: I've always liked the way the fft3dfilter/fft3dgpu filters work for denoising.  Very tweakable.

bkev said:

Nope.  That was fixed even as far back as the first Blu-Ray, but I believe the DVD issue theatrical cut did have those mistakes.  You're referring to how the castle's spruced up, ie mirrors are no longer shattered etc. yeah?

I can't recall all the changes, but didn't they have a bit of the spruced castle and then have add sounds of the Beast wrecking the castle so later scenes could be dingy?

I honestly can't keep track of all the Dune edits any longer.

I have the Fanfiltration, which I assumed would be the last one I'd ever need... and then I saw the Third Stage, which has some nice improvements.

So now the Alternative Edition Redux is the one I should be watching?  I'm starting to have real trouble keeping track on the differences.

Actually that's only the left eye of a long lost 3D version.

Why would you specifically use ww12345's to match colors to?

I believe he modified them during the conversion to NTSC.
Mentor's untouched release is probably a more accurate source.

Btw, saw the screenshots and hope you find some color in there besides red.

Funny thing is, I predict any BD release to be open matte since Cameron has a tradition of reformatting to fill TV screens.

HDBits has several versions.  I see they have a 1080i DVB/mpg2 version from some newsgroup (not many details, not even AR) @ 15gb and a 1080p x264 version (possibly DTheater sourced with a downmixed audio track).

They also have a standalone rip of the original full bitrate DTS/DTheater audio track.

The rest are 720p (including an open matte one).  Funny thing is I don't see the version that I originally got there which was the open matte 720p with the DTheater 1510kbps track.

The point being, I'm not sure there is a 1080i/p version that's open matte.

I've watched the open matte version and it felt a bit less theatrical. (I've got it in 720p with the DTheater DTS track.)

OAR is still important even where 16x9 TVs are involved.  Cinematography is an art.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/the-rumor-mill/true-lies-abyss-2014-x-files-twin-peaks

Just sayin'...

It is my understand that Disney is fantastic with preservation... we just don't get to see THOSE transfers.

They archive high resolution scans and then modify them for home video release depending on what the flavor of the days is.

As far as Beauty and the Beast, haven't all versions been altered since the IMAX release in order to make room for Human Again?  (Even when you watch the version without the song.)

I thought I was the only one hoping for a better version of the theatrical cut.

The whole devil worship plotline is awful.

It actually looks like you can see a bit of Herman's arm through her leg.  Weird.

Yes, yes, all these years later and I finally watched this.

For all it's flaws (as a cut, not as a preservation), it's actually really good.  I enjoyed it more than the last time I watched the theatrical version.

Anyway, I wanted to throw a thanks FanFiltration's way and confirm that this is still floating around before I delete it from my drive.

It doesn't look like a spot on the film... but it really doesn't look much like anything else either.

Sat through most of the full version today.

Definitely no transporter accident.  It doesn't even make sense in context of the technology (receiver pad isn't needed if there is a sending pad (is it?)).  Seems pointless (but DOES explain the reason for no science officer).

Cut all the times anyone says "External view," to see what's going on outside of the ship they are talking to on subspace.  What the?  Where is the camera guy standing?  Awful awful plot device.

Just show the external view, don't pretend that people see it on their view screen.  At the briefing I recommend that the screen be replaced by static when they cut back to the scene, not the empty space where the ship was.

From what you say, it sounds like ColourLike is just buggy.  Has anyone informed the author that it doesn't actually perform like his instructions say?

Although re-reading the details thinking about what you've said, it could be intentional.  It could be assumed to average together every single frame (with every=1) or every 3rd frame (with every=3).  That blows...

Although it is not recommended, it might be possible to force it to do what we want by incorporating WriteHistorgram and ColourLike into the same script.

Some sort of For...do loop that counts off each frame, trims one frame at a time, generates a histogram for source and destination clips, applies colourlike to that frame, and then increments.

Theoretically possible, probably crazy slow to make work.

About ColourLike:

WriteHistogram(clip, string outputFile, int every = 1)

'Every' lets you set every how many frames it samples the colors.  1 means every frame.  So yes, it balances the color on a frame by frame basis.

I see no mention of a setting to find an average historgram for the whole film... and why would you want to?

The problem is, in my tests, ColourLike just doesn't work particularly well.

Most recently I attempted to use it to recolor the Matrix BD with the original DVD as the source color palette.  It did next to nothing.  I got better results mixing the BD luma with the DVD chroma (obviously not ideal).

Has anyone actually had good results with Colourlike?  (Never heard of RGBmatch before.)

TheDigitalBits had an interesting article a little while back regarding color changes made for the 3D version of Top Gun which has a shift towards orange. ( http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/the-3rd-dimension/update-on-top-gun-3d )

The important bit is this:

Many colorists, especially when mastering for video have been trained to hate the color red because of the bleeding issues with NTSC televisions.  As such, they instinctively avoided it, which is one of the reasons why “the film has never looked this way before.”  The last master for Top Gun was run at least 7 years ago, and in that time we’ve jumped several generations of technology in terms of digital color timing tools.  In 1986, everything was chemical – you did the best you could to get the colors you wanted.  Today, you can turn everything any color of the rainbow you desire.

It makes me wonder how many of the changes we perceive is more because of our familiarity with old home video masters and not the theatrical colors.

I can agree with that logic.

Most sources say a 4k scan is 100% of the detail of a full size print.  I'd think a 16mm has half that.

Well the first post in the thread will be 4 years old come June...

My computer is carved out of stone, and while I can't play back 1080p smoothly, I can edit and encode it... as long as I'm patient.

I don't think there is a minimum for working with it, just real time playback.