Doctor M

AFAIK the people that do this have specific versions of smart devices like Roku or Chromecast attached to splitters that ignore the copy protection and then pass the HDMI signal to a hardware HD recorder. Even then, at best, they are recording the decompressed signal that is re-encoded on capture.

It likely isn’t cheap, isn’t easy, won’t get you fully lossless recordings, and possibly outside of site rules to discuss in detail.

Wow. I watched the color corrected version of Half Blood Prince tonight. I brightened the picture on my edit, but this came out much better. Of course that’s not always good… those Inferi are going to give me nightmares.

(Finally) watched the first of these tonight, Prisoner of Azkaban.

A few thoughts:
Great picture quality and a completely professional editing job.

I’m pretty sure the BD doesn’t have a stereo track and IIRC the deleted scenes are stereo, so I can completely understand why JJPotter went with a full downmix instead of trying to upmix the extra scenes.
I just don’t love the audio. I felt like I was moving the volume up and down a lot, and even through a DPLII tuner, I don’t recall hearing anything behind me. Maybe if I pushed it through two speakers it would have sounded better.
I think I’m going to sync some English subtitles in the future though.

I was ready to say something about the Whomping Willow catching the same bird twice with the deleted scene addition, but I recall a conversation with ADM, who said that officially that’s how they edited it. So if it’s wrong, it’s at least wrong officially.

Overal, I love it and I’m ready to toss ADM’s old DVD.

Edit: Wow, I completely forgot to mention the extra extra scenes. The Knight Bus spin was fun, but Sirius breaking into Griffindor Tower was so well done you wouldn’t know the scene was incomplete. ❤️ having that back in the movie.

Edit 2: Goblet of Fire - My opinion is the same. I did switch my AVR to 2-channel output and the volume was fine. The tracks don’t upmix well.

@Freddy2 - Wow, I never bothered with the official extended cuts because I just assumed they were as seen on TV.
Something to definitely look into.

Thanks, yes, I see that he didn’t put Harmy in the name of the torrent so it didn’t turn up on my initial search.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the work flow was Harmy’s Lossless source, re-encoded to 20-ish gb MKV file (when it became v2.7) and then re-encoded to a more compatible BD format?

You did not use a lossless master?

Is this the same release as the one on MySpleen with subtitles added or the one NJVC described in the comments?
There NJVC said:
“Hi all, I created this bluray. I’m currently working on a new version which will have a better video quality (thanks to Towne32 providing me with the lossless source file), hopefully DTS audio, and subtitles. I will also be working on a dual layer 50GB version with many extras added.”

I remember the Harry/Dudley shaking hands scene had some massive green screens. I’ll have to see if I can find which of your links has that scene.

Edit: Technically, SORCERER’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets have official extended cuts, but they definitely were not done very professionally. I think it was most likely someone at ABC not Warner.

Chamber of Secrets had obviously recycled shots, wrong music cues and various other issues. I’ve been sticking staunchly to my extended DVD only because all I see are the seams when I watch the retail version.

I can’t recall anything in ‘Stone’ that smacked me in the face (of course I didn’t spend hours dissecting all the scenes either), but even just going over the official version and dubbing in ‘Philosopher’ wouldn’t be awful.

JJPotter, if you wanted to add those to your impressive collection here, there is a reasonable argument to be made for the effort.

JJPotter: Have you had the opportunity to see my extended version of Half-Blood Prince?

There were some real challenges that left me traumatized. Chief among them was the quality of the delete scenes (on DVD, the BD was better), matching the color timing, and adding back the Harry/Hermione discussion of the Marauder’s Map.

The last item reveals a ridiculous piece of business where they split a scene in half and tried to treat it as two scenes. (Details of changes are in the first post: http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Harry-Potter-and-the-Half-Blood-Prince-Extended-and-Enhanced-by-Doctor-M/id/12793 ) PM me if you are interested in seeing it.

Anyway, I love that you took on some of the green screened deleted scenes. I assume you did that for Deathly Hallows as well?

When final full versions are available I would love to see these as well.

I just noticed in the first post… what are “ropey special effects”?
I’m assuming it uses macrame.

It does provide little incentive for companies to spend the money on preserving or restoring old films.

Which brings us back to my post: If you circumvent a copy protection scheme like CSS or AACS you are in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Period.

It doesn’t matter who does or doesn’t hold a copyright. If MoMa creates a 1080p restoration and another studio thinks they can just dump that to a disc and resell it without being given an unprotected version from MoMa, they will end up in court.

towne32 said:

Soupdrinker0 said:

monks19 said:

Soupdrinker0 said:

SmoothHat said:

Colson said:

SmoothHat said:

So nobody has the Song of the South 35mm 1080p Version anymore?

There’s a great copy on the spleen.

I can’t find it there! I’m logged in but i can’t find it!

Check the PM I sent you bud 😃

Hi. I’ll be interested to get a copy of this scan myself if anyone here has it. Don’t hesitate to PM me please.

Thanks

I didn’t PM him a link to a copy, I was told the person in charge of the scan didn’t want it shared & I always respect the wishes of those in charge when it comes to film scans. I figured he was most likely bullshitting about being a member and I asked a ? to get confirmation.

Is this the scan from the person who likes to charge money for that and Pinocchio, or a different person altogether (I know there are several)? That particular person loses their vote on the share-ability of the product, in my opinion, because they sell it for profit. And they often just collect the money and don’t send it. Better to share it far and wide to prevent him from ripping more people off.

My apologies and retraction if it’s about an honest scanner/sharer.

Honestly, I don’t know. He did tell me he was trying to get people together to pay for a professional transfer from LD of Fantasia with Deems Taylor. He goes by the name Class316 if that helps.

GoboFraggle1983 said:
Just curious, who exactly sent you that Japanese laserdisc edition? Does he have any more Disney Japanese laserdisc editions?

A MySpleen user, I don’t know if (s)he is even on OT. I asked about Fantasia, and I was told there is already a restored Pastoral version on MySpleen, but no Deems.

I didn’t ask about anything else. What are you looking for?

With an eye towards a v2 of Make Mine Music, a friendly 'Spleener sent me a clip of the ‘nudity’ in Make Mine Music from the Japanese laserdisc.

OMG, the colors. What the heck happened there? They are so far apart I have no idea which is correct.

And so so much dirt. (Although I think I’d hit a v2 with a de-halo filter.)
I’ll consider working on this if anyone has solid suggestions, but I’m not sure there is anything worth pulling from the source.

I can’t believe I got an analog TV/VHS source looking that good. (Btw, the VHS has colors about halfway between these two. I’ll add snaps of that if anyone is interested.

Easier to answer than you think.
In order to copy the disc you must defeat a digital copy protection scheme. That is a crime by itself regardless of the movie’s copyright status.

Edit: Nm.

ForestGWolfy said:

skyjedi2005 said:

Almost no difference in the picture framing or aspect ratio there.

Except for there being a slight more picture information on top in some of the full framed laserdisc captures.

Is jungle book supposed to be full frame or 16:9 ?

And why do some of the widescreen shots have like maybe 2% more image on the sides while chopping off the top.

FULLFRAME

Both.
“During the Xerography era from 1961 to 1981 the original aspect ratio of Disney’s animated features is unclear. The films were animated at 1.33:1 with TV broadcast in mind but matted to widescreen for theatrical release. Most early DVD releases of these films are unmatted 1.33:1 but some newer ones are being re-matted wide (about 1.75:1). These films are denoted with “OAR?”.”

If you are doing a few simple cuts, you could try to remux the blu-ray as an MKV file and use MKV Cutter (https://www.videohelp.com/software/MKV-Cutter) and then re-author back to Blu-ray.

Wow. The reviews of SoM have been so flattering and I saw no one mentioning that obvious yellow tint.

What in the world were they thinking? Excellent work.

Was that scene by scene adjustment or just a simple adjustment applied to the whole film?

The funny thing is that Imdb calls the original release mono. As far as a surround channel being missing or not is unclear. There may have been one, but it certainly isn’t on the DVD. Compared to what most Disney Enhanced mixes sound like, the 3.0 is still preferable.

From DVDizzy.com:
The final soundtrack is one that purists would likely flock to - it’s a Dolby Digital 3.0 Surround intended to replicate the original theatrical presentation via faithful restoration. But in fully equipped theaters, Lady utilized a composite magnetic stereophonic sound process that would have boasted four discrete channels. This track only offers three distinct channels of sound - in the front right, left, and center speakers, with nothing at all emanating from the rear channels. That would seem to defeat the purpose of including this track at all, without the monaural rear channel that would have accompanied the CinemaScope exhibition (fueling the movie house’s side and rear speakers), this does not recreate the theatrical experience. One assumes that the mix employed for this has not been manipulated in ways that “Disney Enhanced Home Theater” entails, but I had trouble discerning much difference. In any event, if you don’t have a home theater and/or don’t care for remix jobs, this serves the viewer fine. But it would have made more sense to include a 4-channel stereo soundtrack or even the 5.1 remix that graced the Limited Issue disc. Nonetheless, I have a feeling that the majority of viewers will be content with the default 5.1 remix and may not know or care what Lady offered in 1955.

When I cared about Hulu, I had good luck with GetFLV. You can demo the program for free to see if it works: http://www.vdigger.com/download.html

I’d be hesitant to argue about relative quality of cassette decks. I’d say get something pretty good, but don’t spent crazy money on one.

I know you’re looking for the best transfer possible, but the fact of the matter is that old cassettes are not great sources for quality audio. They were convenient and cheap, but you didn’t buy them for how good they sounded.

In mp3 terms you are talking about 128kbps quality. That’s commercial recordings. If your tape is non-Dolby it was probably home recorded, so that number is much lower. Maybe half.

Dolby Noise Reduction helped with one of cassette tapes’ biggest weakness: tape hiss. Roughly speaking DNR tapes added a volume boost to the frequencies where tape hiss is strongest. On playback the DNR would then cut the volume of those high frequencies and you’d perceive a better signal to noise ratio than you would have without it.

Pretty much all reasonably good cassette decks should have DNR built in and a button for turning it on or off. So if your tape wasn’t recorded with it, you won’t lose those high frequencies as long as you disable it.

The only problem is, the .MKV file may or may not be encoded to Blu-ray specifications. If it is not, some players may have problems with it.

If it is BD spec, you also need to swap more than an M2TS file. You must also replace the playlist, the CLIPINF and the back up version of those two files.

Found an interesting bit comparing Peter Pan releases up through the Platinum Edition on TheDigitalFix.com (I’m not sure I knew the PE had an original mono track though):

This 2-disc Platinum Edition marks the third time that Peter Pan has been released on DVD. The first, released in 1999 as part of the Limited Issue series, used the same master as the already available LaserDisc and was generally considered to be something of a disappointment. In 2002, it was re-released as a Special Edition, featuring an improved but rather harsh-looking transfer and a reasonable array of extras. As such, hopes were understandably high for this latest release.

Unfortunately, the new edition really is a bit of a mixed bag. While the rampant edge enhancement of the previous release is nowhere to be found, it seems that DTS Digital Images (formerly Lowry Digital), Disney’s regular partner in these ventures, have once again thrown artistic intent out of the window in an attempt to deliver an impossibly clean, “flawless” digital experience for the 21st century. By far the biggest problem is that the overall colour, brightness and contrast values of the image have been tweaked into oblivion. Tinker Bell was originally supposed to have an overexposed glow, which, on this release, has been dulled down severely, making the glow look more like a muddy shadow. Actually, “muddy” is the word of the day here: the colours are generally dull and sickly. The decidedly red Indians are now a gloomy shade of brown, more suited to something like Pocahontas than this altogether more colourful cartoon world, while Captain Hook now looks like he has liver damage. Everything is so murky that the hand-inked, cel-animated characters, who should be vibrant, threaten to disappear into the backgrounds. I’ve inspected the DVD on both a monitor and a calibrated TV: it just doesn’t look right.

Respected cel restoration expert Stephen Worth, and animation directors Oscar Grillo and Milton Gray, have all criticised this new restoration, while Chuck Pennington has provided visual evidence that each subsequent home video release of Peter Pan has taken its visuals further and further away from Walt Disney and co’s original intentions. I’ve never personally seen the film on an actual print, but I feel more inclined to trust the informed opinions of experts like Stephen Worth than the staff of DTS Digital Images, who have shown a cavalier attitude towards artistic intent several times in the past, perhaps most significantly with Bambi, which was so heavily noise reduced in an attempt to remove any semblance of the movie ever having come from film that the image smeared and warped during camera movements.

Luckily, the audio is of a much higher standard, and constitutes a definite improvement on that of the previous releases via the inclusion of the original mono audio track, which sounds as clear as can be expected, accounting for age. A souped-up 5.1 “Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix” is also provided, and while it certainly sounds considerably more expansive than its mono counterpart, purists will obviously want to give it a miss. French and Spanish 5.1 dubs are also provided, in addition to English subtitles for the film itself (but, unfortunately, not the extras).