ElectricTriangle

dvdmike said:

Ok got the video at 23.976 and the 5.1 track synced added the commentaries but cannot for the life of me get the mono to sync!

Getting closer! Thanks for the update.

TylerDurden389 said:

My main problem isn't with modern movies doing it, it's with the Hollywood re-visioning the old films and re-grading the blu-rays so that they look like modern movies.

I recently read an article that said that 70% of the silent movies are lost forever. I fear in another 30-50 years we'll be seeing another article saying that the original prints and negatives of old films are gone and we're stuck with every color movie from the 50s to the present all looking teal.

I hate this trend so much. Reading the "Movies with wrong color grading" thread depresses me.

TServo2049 said:

It's a much bigger issue than Disney, trust me. There are other parties who were pushing for the same thing, Disney just gets singled out because everyone knows Mickey Mouse.

I know. But Disney is big and easy to remember.

TylerDurden389 said:

I understand and completely agree. However, terms like "setting a tone" and more importantly, "Unique" are thrown out the window when EVERY....MOVIE....LOOKS....THE SAME.

Ah.  I'm with you for certain films, but I've always liked the look of Minority Report. Fits perfectly with that vision of the future. Bleak and washed out.

TServo2049 said:

The catch-22 is that if all these films were public domain, we wouldn't get these 4K original-negative restorations of them. The studios would still have the original materials, but would probably be unwilling to loan them out for some outside release that wouldn't make any money for them.

Culturally significant old PD films do sometimes get great restorations, but also keep in mind that films whose copyrights lapsed in the States, like Metropolis and the British Hitchcock films, always looked like absolute shit until we got restorations bankrolled by the German or British rights-holders.

It's certainly a double-edged sword, but the modern near-perpetuity copyrights at least keep them secured under the control of deep-pocketed entities that can fund restorations.

It's not the studio who is to blame in this case - it's the director, and that has nothing to do with copyright, and everything to do with how prominent directors are given control to tweak their earlier works due to their high regard in the industry and the film culture.

You're probably right. I just resent Disney killing the public domain so they can own a mouse.

StarThoughts said:

CatBus said:

I know Criterion is often contractually obligated to use the video the studio provides them, but sheesh… sometimes you should just say no thanks and work on that Criterion Blu-ray of Cabin Boy instead.

I believe that it’s Twilight Time that has to release what they get; Criterion tend to produce unique masters. The Thief color revision is (groan) an intentional Michael Mann choice, and was probably a prerequisite for his participation. It’s annoying that this keeps happening.

Oldfan said:

TylerDurden389 said:

Waitaminute, the blu-ray of minority report removed the color push and goes for a more natural color palette? This shocks me because I am so used to the opposite with old movies on blu-ray at this point.

 Yeah, for once, they did just the opposite, and made the color timing more natural for the blu-ray. That's a switch, huh? Personally, this is how I prefer it - I always prefer natural skin tones and colors. I hate when director's add all kinds of crazy color tints to films. So even though I'm not too interested in this particular project, I will say that as usual the colormatch work being done here is amazing! In this case I prefer the blu-ray colors though.

 Why? Not trying to be mean, just curious. The bleach bypass and unnatural colors make the film look unique and noir like. They help establish the tone of the film (and the bluray colors are not even close to natural, just different.) Lots of films, even old ones, use color grading extensively.

kk650 said:

Joel said:

On my monitor here, there's too much green in the second shots, and WAY too much green in the the third.

RE: the screen caps above, still too much green IMO. At least on my monitor.

Thanks for the feedback Joel! :)

I agree that the second and third shots have too much green in the fleshtones. On my professionally colour calibrated monitor though the first shots have a little too much red in the fleshtones IMHO, like all the first screencaps I posted. I think i'll be going with something between the first and second shots.

I'll be posting a preview video very soon so hopefully you and others here can give their thoughts on how it looks in motion.

 2nd or 3rd one looks best. Star Wars seems to have greenish skin tones in the technicolor prints, so I'd lean on the side of green. The sample shots look good. Some of the shots look too dark, but that's one of the many, many flaws of the 2004 master. Maybe try brightening the highlights a little?

I must have done something wrong with the remote when I watched. I have no complaints then.

dvdmike said:

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Movies that deserve a restoration:

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Big Trouble In Little China
• The Fog
• Minority Report - just doing a [spoRv] project right now
• Mission: Impossible

Movies with few differences between the DVD and BD editions (sometimes are barely noticeable, other times limited only to some scenes):

• The Day After Tomorrow
• Daylight
• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
• The Fifth Element
• Gladiator
• Godzilla
• Hellboy
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Stargate
• Titanic
• Waterworld

 Was BTILC changed a lot? I just got the new Arrow release 

It has a less warm look compared to the DVD, and it's dimmer. I don't really know what the colors should look like. However, it looks leagues better then the dvd in terms of detail. My complaint is it only has remixed audio.

Colormatch works wonders. Do we know why are the colors on the bluray are screwed up?

Jay said:

In addition, clear your cookies after you request the new password, but before you login. There might be some lingering session weirdness going on.

 Thanks very much. No matter what I try, the reset password does not work and the site tells me that "The password you entered doesn't match our records." Interestingly enough, I reset my password with the ElectricTriangle account and that worked fine. I will likely just end up using this account.

Crapple said:

Also does the 97 have digital smearing

 Yes.

Buster D said:

Can the techniques you use for adding grain be used in real-time when viewing a Blu-ray on a PC?  There's a lot of discs out there that would probably be more pleasing to watch if their damn DNR was mostly hidden.

 VLC and MPC-HC (with addons) can both add grain in real-time. This goes a long way toward making DNR'ed stuff look slightly more watchable. Hides macro-blocking too.

Moth3r said:

Possibly found the answer in the main thread:

hairy_hen said:

I guess I never did actually mention it here, having only talked about it sporadically in other threads, but there is indeed a new version of the 70mm mix out there.  The changes from the previous revision are minimal, with the main improvement coming from having used the Dolby Media Decoder application to upmix the laserdisc audio into five channels with Prologic II, which results in greater channel separation and consequently a more believable sound field. 

I'm guessing the audio on ROTJ has not yet been updated with this improved channel separation?

 That's correct. Only Star Wars has that.

I would recommend listening with Hairy Hen's excellent restoration. The 2004 mix is frankly terrible. It's severely lacking in treble sound, with a low droning bass noise, and a muffled compressed sound. There is no dynamic range except for when the sound effects are cranked up for selected shots, often drowning out the music. In comparison, the 70mm has lots of dynamic range.

Here's a comparison of the two mixes:

http://www.mediafire.com/?avv1d8izol8hy3t

Rebelscum said:

I'm comparing the 2.5 MKV with the sound on my 2004 DVD's... and the MKV is just missing too much surround information... like for example all the panning from the back speakers to the front speakers when ships zoom away or from the screen... I get none of those effects. 

Also for example the scene at the beginning when we first see C-3PO and R2 onboad the Tantive IV... on my DVD's you can clearly hear the background explosions on the rear speakers... but on the MKV that separation is lost and the explosions are heard in the front speakers. 

And also you can hear much more of the music spill out into the rear speakers on the DVD's... on the 2.5 MKV things are silent most of the time. I can also hear the dialogue in the rear speakers. Strange. And when I switch right back to another movie on the WD TD Live it all sound perfect.  

 This is all correct. The 5.1 on Despecialized is a recreation of the original 70mm track (done fantastically by Hairy-Hen), which would be mixed very differently from the 2004 dvd.

The dialogue spills into the rears ocasonally because it's an upmix from a stereo track.

I tried to reset my password. Now I can’t access my account (All the reset passwords would not let me log in). It may be that there is a problem with the password reset system.