- Post
- #977409
- Topic
- Raiders of the Lost Ark HDTV 35mm LPP regrade
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/977409/action/topic#977409
- Time
I’m still looking for a good example with the stars. Do you have a frame number for the LPP litemaker?
I’m still looking for a good example with the stars. Do you have a frame number for the LPP litemaker?
Here’s a frame from the Cairo sequence.
35mm LPP:
WOWOW:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:
My only argument for using the BD as a source rather than the WOWOW is that the BD restores several original shots that remain digitally altered in the WOWOW. Such as the sea-plane matte painting and the red “travelling line” sequence (I’m sure there are other examples but these are the only two that come to mind).
Conversely, the lamp that Indy and Marion are tied to in the opening of the ark sequence was digitally illuminated in the BD whereas it should be off. Not sure whether the WOWOW has the lamp on or off.
Perhaps just a few replacement shots from the BD would be best overall.
The WOWOW has the lamp off. I suppose a few replacement shots from the bluray could be used. Does anyone have a list of the shots that were altered for the WOWOW, but not for the bluray?
Another shot altered in the BD is also from the opening of the ark. The close-up of the top of the pillar of fire in the clouds has stars behind it, but in the Blu-ray the stars are removed and it is just a dark sky background. This is a weird change, I wonder if the DNR or cleanup process identified the stars as specs of dirt and removed them?
The shot is correct in the Wowow.
I’m curious to see how that scene comes out overall in your regrade. There are several over exposed shots (which are much worse in the blu-ray).
I won’t be able to work on it before tomorrow, but it will be the next example.
Turisu said:
Conversely, the lamp that Indy and Marion are tied to in the opening of the ark sequence was digitally illuminated in the BD whereas it should be off. Not sure whether the WOWOW has the lamp on or off.Can I see some screenshots of this?
Also, how’s the matching tool do for the bar scene?
Here’s an example for the bar scene.
35mm LPP:
WOWOW:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:
In my opinion, the corrected black levels are too dark and makes the image look harsh. A middle ground between the screener and your corrected version might be the proper way.
The problem is, that the crushed blacks for the bluray don’t give you much latitude. Here’s another version, where the black levels were set in GIMP, using the darkest point in the frame:
Some of you noted, that if you use color matching tool to match the bluray to the screener, the skin tones don’t match, and there are undesired artifacts in the resulting frame.
I decided to have a look myself. First of all, when using the color matching tool, make sure that both images are cropped in the same way. Secondly, if artifacts appear try increasing the stabilization parameter. This usually also requires an increase for the number of color spaces needed to get a good color match. I did some experiments, and found that I get the best results, if I use 100 color spaces, and set the stabilization to 10.
Bluray:
Screener:
Bluray matched to screener:
Note, that the black crush of the bluray, and the off-set in the black levels of the screener results in some undesired noise in the dark areas. The solution is, to simply correct the black levels:
This way the screener color grading is still fully intact, and no fringing.
Here’s a comparison between the bluray and the regrade:
My only argument for using the BD as a source rather than the WOWOW is that the BD restores several original shots that remain digitally altered in the WOWOW. Such as the sea-plane matte painting and the red “travelling line” sequence (I’m sure there are other examples but these are the only two that come to mind).
Conversely, the lamp that Indy and Marion are tied to in the opening of the ark sequence was digitally illuminated in the BD whereas it should be off. Not sure whether the WOWOW has the lamp on or off.
Perhaps just a few replacement shots from the BD would be best overall.
The WOWOW has the lamp off. I suppose a few replacement shots from the bluray could be used. Does anyone have a list of the shots that were altered for the WOWOW, but not for the bluray?
I have implemented a simple algorithm to tackle the dark colors of the blu ray. It goes like this: Calculate the average red green and blue value of both the input and the target. Subtract the average input values from the target values. Add the differences to the red green and blue values of each pixel in the input. I used the result image of my previous post as the input and the screener image from your initial post as the target.
The first result was this: https://s31.postimg.org/81lhm6g89/adjustedoriginal.png
If you compare this with the original screener you can see that the result is to bright. If i just add half the difference I get this result: https://s32.postimg.org/7s3ffif8l/adjusted.png
This is already really close to the screener. But I think it makes sense to introduce a parameter value in order to control the difference to add.
The black levels seem to be a bit off in the last result, being too bright, as they are for the screener.
Here are two more regrades for the opening scenes of the film.
35mm LPP:
WOWOW:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:
35mm LPP:
WOWOW:
WOWOW matched to 35mm LPP:
amazing result. how would it look with 35mm colors if retained wowow’s less crushed blacks?
I did some tests, but didn’t really like the results. So, I will stick with the current contrast levels, as that is how it looked on the big screen.
Thanks for the positive feedback y’all!
Why exactly aren’t you using the Blu-ray as a basis to be regraded? It should have better image and compression quality than the broadcast, doesn’t it?
As it turns out the WOWOW broadcast is more detailed, despite it’s pedigree. The bluray is notably softer, and suffers from severely blown out highlights in some scenes, for example.
Looks great. What about the cobra scene? Will you keep it as it is presented on the WOWOW broadcast or will you clean up, restore the LPP shots to put the glass between Indy and the cobra back in, so we can see the reflections and fingerprints as we should?
The first release will be as presented on the WOWOW, as “despecializing” is not my strong suit, and luckily the changes for Raiders are fairly minimal, compared to Star Wars.
I will think about it. The testing phase has been useful thusfar, for getting rid of bugs in the software. I’m also not that enthousiastic about releasing a tool, before fully understanding the possibilities and limitations myself. Releasing the tool “as-is” could result in me becoming a full time help desk, which is not something I’m really looking forward to.
Now that the excellent Raiders of the Lost Ark 35mm LPP Theatrical Experience has been released, it is the perfect moment to restart the Raiders of the Lost Ark regrade thread, only this time using the WOWOW HDTV broadcast as a basis. This will be a shot by shot regrade of that broadcast, using the 35mm LPP as a reference:
This way viewers will be able to see the film with the original theatrical color timing, but in pristine broadcast quality.
The regrade will be done, using the color matching tool I’ve developed, to ensure the colors are as close to the 35mm reference as is humanly possible:
Here’s a first example frame:
35 mm LPP:
Bluray:
WOWOW HDTV broadcast:
WOWOW regraded to match the 35mm LPP:
A special thanks to litemakr, and all those who contributed, for providing us with such an excellent source of reference!
I was really looking forward to the automatic tool with no references. I know it isn’t always perfect but from what you have shown, I was very excited about its capabilities. There are many orange and teal and other things I wanted to try it on. Are you still planning to release it? I have tried using the color matching tool and it can be awesome, but takes a lot of time and effort to get it right. Thanks!
These new developments are closely related to williarob (and poita) testing the tool. Working with the color restoration/balancing tool is in some ways more of a challenge than the color matching tool, for which the procedure is generally pretty straightforward. I’m still planning to release it, but it may be a little while, before it happens.
Anywhere between a few seconds and a few minutes. You really have to do this on a shot by shot basis, for an accurate match to the reference.
Well, thanks to williarob I’ve awoken from my slumber. For a while now I’ve been trying to find a way to salvage the colors of what would appear to be unsalvageable prints. I’ve come up with a procedure, that actually combines both the color restoration, and color matching approaches. This does imply, that you need some kind of reference, but here goes.
I took some example frames that team -1 posted a while ago, to show that it is possible to retrieve a full range of colors from a severely faded film print. You will note, that there are some artifacts in the restored frames. These are due to compression, and lack of color depth (8 bit). Here are two frames from the -1 LPP, that will serve as references:
Here are the same frames, but for a print that has almost gone monochrome:
Here are the results after color balancing, and subsequent matching to the references:
Those look fantastic! Keep going!
Hello there,
There are exciting things happening behind the scenes under the Team Blu banner, that I can’t divulge at the moment. At the same time I’ve been taking it a little easier, after a period of intense development. Recently a much faster version of the color matching tool was released, and poita and Williarob are testing the color balancing/restoration tool. To be continued…
Does this mean that you are no longer working on recoloring the bluray?
I’m still working on it, although not much for a little while. I suppose I will pick it up again at some point, although with all the new developments surrounding Team Blu, I will have to prioritize.
Those do look very nice, especially considering the extend of the fading in those shots. Thanks for showing these examples! 😃
Hello there,
There are exciting things happening behind the scenes under the Team Blu banner, that I can’t divulge at the moment. At the same time I’ve been taking it a little easier, after a period of intense development. Recently a much faster version of the color matching tool was released, and poita and Williarob are testing the color balancing/restoration tool. To be continued…
No, a model should be built within 30 seconds for the default settings.
I will have to check whether MATLAB supports reading and writing TARGA images.
As it happens, I have done. See my recent PM. 😄
But I’m convinced that something is wrong on my end…
You have a PM as well 😉. I experienced no problems using the frames you sent me.