MonkeyLizard10

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Papai2013 said:

This entire drama was so fruitless and sour. These are passion projects that take enormous amounts of money to buy the prints and then enormous amounts of time and more funds to restore. Nobody here has an assembly line where they can churn out products ready to consumed at the drop of a hat. Most of us work underpaid jobs, have numerous personal, family-related issues, health issues, etc. The biggest issue is time. The fact that such projects are at all happening is a miracle. To act like a crybaby because one has helped fund a project is unwarranted. People who have no patience and are unable to trust others should just do it on their own and not cry or rant here, or anywhere. Peace!

+1

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Yeah that would be amazing to get. Sadly I can’t afford it now, sure would be a heck of a keeper. And I don’t think I could even front it (buy, scan, resell) at the moment either unless some crazy instant fund raising happened here. But yeah that sure is a print.

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May have a wide gamut color SDR in HDR wrapper version soon.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the release of ROTJ here is a near 1.0, say 0.94 beta, of the Return Of The Jedi SE Trailer ‘D’ Scope. This is for UHD (3840x2160) resolution, SDR, sRGB/REC709 standard gamut color palette, HEVC(h.265) very high bitrate (quick hardware encoded) with lossless PCM 2.0 48kHz optical sourced from the print and lossless PCM 5.1 44kHz Cinema DTS sourced from the proper Cinema DTS trailers file (link good for one week, file size about 2GB) of a Return Of The Jedi SE Trailer ‘D’ Scope print:

https://www.transfernow.net/dl/20230710lqabiN3j/fMZJnnfa

DeathlySin said:

Scans don’t just magically happen, they take a lot of time and effort.

Yeah this stuff can really take a LOT, and I mean a LOTTTTTTTTTTTT of time. Especially if you want to match 35mm colors, then it can take just more hours than you can even fathom put in over months. Or if something is magenta faded. Or has tons of bad scratches and dirt. Even in the easiest cases and without taking much care for color it still takes quite a while, that simple case takes a long time and trickier or more carefully color matched ones take super extra time longer on top. People can easily put in like ten or even tens of thousands of dollars of man hours into getting these projects done. And nobody gets paid (the funding just covers the cost of the scan and storage, just the raw basic costs and even then, in reality usually not all the actual behind the scenes basic costs are ever really fully covered so most people directly lose money on every project even when funding goals are hit and the best case scenario of breaking exactly even I don’t think actually happens much of the time), they have real jobs or school and other stuff going on. Even getting things to a scanner and back and getting a scan itself can take quite a while (in the case of this project, I don’t know what they are doing for color timing and whether they are going all in to match the 35mm or not or whether it is easier on the scanner they are using to do that, etc. but I know they are using a new custom scanner, apparently quite advanced, but that has apparently had some issues with breakdowns and had a lot of down time which I think has been one of the things most delaying their project here and there isn’t much they can do about that sort of delay but wait for the film to manage to all get scanned by the scanner).

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Hal 9000 said:

Fascinating. Who would have thought that a film print would be such a uniquely valuable thing for AOTC?

Yeah, it is interesting. Whether it is just an artifact of how print film picks up those colors or intended and then later lost by getting stuck in early REC709 work flow post theatrical release there do seem to be colors that get chopped off by standard gamut for AOTC.

Here are some more examples of how it extends beyond standard gamut where I compare the 35mm left in wide gamut (ProPhotoRGB in this case) and then compare with the same frame converted down to standard sRGB gamut (same color palette as REC709 although different gamma tonal curve in the standard, but the latter part is not relevant here):

Here are some demos that show the differences between how AOTC looks when you have wide gamut color palette available vs. when it is restricted to sRGB/REC709 color palette (of course you need to use fully color-managed browser/viewer and have a wide gamut display set to wide gamut display mode with proper display profile installed in order to see the differences, and in some cases, to even see the WG labelled images properly at all). For each pair SG is first and WG is second (should be obvious on a properly set up wide gamut display):

I may have made an interesting finding. I’m getting a weird feeling that the official releases for the prequels accidentally got locked into sourcing from a standard gamut REC709 source at some point.

I’ve read that sometimes home releases were given a slight magenta push to try to counter the apparent yellow-green push that apparently the average consumer CRT TV had back in the day. I wonder if that is why the DVD for AOTC got a bit of magenta on some scenes. And then I wonder if they have not stuck with the HD master made for the DVD as the starting point ever since? Or some early master work done in REC709 as the basis (back then with no consumer wide gamut home formats around). And thus even the blu-ray ending up still with a magenta tint? And then even the UHD.

But the really new thing, the more shocking thing than just some home releases having some different tint or grading (which I think is very common), but I have a weird feeling that someone forgot to realize that at some point the main masters for the prequels got handled in REC709’s limited gamut colors and so when presented on the UHD… they still seem to clip away stunningly rich colors to REC709 even though UHD has full REC2020 gamut capability (although it is often aimed more at P3 a bit smaller wide gamut).

The reasons I say this are:
I just compared some scenes of AOTC 35mm side by side with AOTC UHD/BD/DVD and ALL of the home discs, not just the DVD/BD which would have to clip, but even the UHD which does support wide gamut colors, seem to show the same muted aquas/turquoise/deep cyan/deep intense green-blue (like of the blue girl, a Pantoran maybe?, in the early scene in Palpatine’s Senate office or the laser field along the floor of Padme’s bedroom near the start or the aqua rectangular the probe droid opens up in the force field on her bedroom window when it drops those poisonous creatures in or or some lighting on Coruscant cityscape or some of the heads up display items on Obi-wan’s ship, etc.) and even the intro title “A long time ago…” all look relatively similar on all home formats but then are often wildly more intensely saturated (or even a different shade of color that does not even exist in REC709) on the 35mm print and then if you digitize a frame of the print and mess around until it looks the same as the 35mm side by side on a calibrated wide gamut monitor and then convert the frame to standard sRGB/REC709 gamut all those colors in those scenes suddenly become muted in exactly the same way as they look on all the home formats.

Also interesting is that looking at the “A long time ago…” intro on say the ROTJ UHD it does have at least some of the intense weird slightly turquoise blue as scene on the AOTC 35mm print intro and the OT were fresh scans seemingly treated in wide gamut workflow.

So it almost seems like a mistake was made at some point and maybe the prequels official post-theatrical working masters got locked into limited gamut REC709 colors at some point! Either that or somehow the transfer from digital master to film simply boosted some of those shades wildly and the original 35mm prints never looked like the digital masers or the theatrical digital versions. I sort of feel like it might be more likely that they simply ended up bogging their modified working master into REC709 at some point and got stuck with that limited palette (and didn’t try to bring it back by hand at some later point once wide gamut home formats and digital P3+ projection came out), at the least for AOTC, but perhaps for 1 and 3 as well (since a quick glance at those also showed the “A long time ago…” looking a pale, muted blue on the UHDs).

Anyway, for whatever reason, I see some really wildly intense blues/aquas in some scenes on the 35mm print, stunning colors, that are simply not there on any home version (not that DVD or BD would be capable of showing them but not even on the UHD which is). So it seems to be a lot more than just a bit of a magenta tint or teal tint. It is interesting since AOTC was said to be shot on a camera that only did limited gamut REC709, but it would seem that they boosted up some colors that film can handle well intensely (stuff in blue-green intense range) in post, either that or somehow the transfer to film just made those colors go wild naturally.

It is also wild how completely absolutely different the color and saturation of “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” looks on the AOTC 35mm print than on any home release. And that Pantoran(?) shown in the post above.

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One interesting update is that, Reel 1 at the least, has many scenes that have a color palette extending beyond REC709 standard gamut colors. I know that there had been speculation that the title having been shot on REC709 digital cameras might not feature any wide gamut colors, but it clearly does. In fact, it is has been breaking the REC709 boundary more than a much of the stuff I’ve had scanned so far. Even the intro text “A long time ago…” actually is in a color way beyond standard REC709 gamut.

In fact, it goes so wide gamut color for some aquas/turquoise type colors that the scanner used seems to be color blind to those colors so it is going to need manual correction for some scenes. Luckily some other scenes where it goes past the scanner machine’s gamut can just be assigned a new calibration that goes wild with saturation and such to push them into the proper wide gamut colors since they don’t have any other similar colors that need to stay tame. But it will require a bit of a mess of special calibrations for this scene and that scene and some where manual adjusting with masks will need to be done. So a bit unfortunate pain that is also slowing the project down.

But it is also cool in that there will be some pretty wild colors that don’t show up at all on DVD or blu-ray (didn’t get to look yet whether the UHD has them intense, even if so, they will likely be too magenta pushed anyway).

fallinlight said:

Hi @MonkeyLizard10,

I hope you are well. I wanted to say thank you for starting this project, Jurassic Park is my favourite film of all time and I’ve been seeking a better version of the film closer to the theatrical release, that does it the justice it deserves for a while. Your work so far looks great.

How do I donate? Is there a minimum donation amount? What will happen to the project and release of the film to donors if you do not meet your target funding?

Hi @Papai2013,

I hope you are well. It has been educational reading your posts regarding film prints and the filmic process, thank you.

Kind regards,

fallinlight

Hi,
thanks!

sent you a PM

ben_uk said:

Quick Q if I may? Will you be offering a 1:85.1 masked version of JP in the correct theatrical framing? Thanks

Yes, both open matte and theatrical 1.85:1.

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Working on a specific color calibration for this feature alone as it seems to need a slightly different tweak than most of the other stuff scanned.

A few samples comparing 35mm to the DVD, BD, HDTV broadcast.

The blue (Pantoran?) girl on the left is INSANELY hyper saturated on the actual 35mm, finally seeing what I recalled in the theater and what fell so flat on the DVD, BD and HDTV broadcasts (didn’t get to check yet whether the UHD with the wide gamut palette restored her colors or not).

However, this part at least, with the blue girl, is not the fault of altered color grading (although it still is a bit) but more that her colors are simply way beyond anything regular sRGB/REC709 standard gamut colors can show. I posted the 35mm in both sRGB and ProPhotoRGB wide gamut and you can see how the sRGB clips her saturation right back to the basic home versions.

Note that you can only see her proper colors if you are viewing on a wide gamut display set to wide gamut mode and with a proper display profile and FULLY color-managed viewer. Otherwise it will just look the same as the 35mm standard gamut version or completely incorrect one way or another.

It turns out the her colors seem to be too intense for the scanner used to be able to pickup so I had to manually adjust her colors (shows that it can be important to have the reference print in hand when dealing with scans, if I did not, then either she (as well as the “A Long Time Ago…” intro title, would be way undersaturated, either that or they would have been fine but then lots of more neautral and low saturated stuff would have picked up too strong of an aqua cast. No matter what I do I can’t get the calibration to produce the intense enough colors for her and that title without then making lots of other stuff too saturated. I think it means the scanner just could not see those colors or that the software in the scanner unfortunately remapped the raw data to a somewhat too small colorspace.

It turns out that the home versions are maybe so much tealified in some scenes as more that they were magentified actually. And then lack of wide gamut clipped a few colors badly like her and the “A Long Time Ago…” intro and, to a lesser extent, some other aqua/blu/cyan/teal/turquoise shades and to an even lesser extent a few dark reds and such, throughout. In this scene they seem to have made the Twilek a more wild and intense green though, at least compared to this particular 35mm print. Maybe to make up for lack of blue richness in the Pantoran??

AOTC comp:
35mm ProPhotoRGB wide gamut:

35mm sRGB:

BD REC709 Gamma 2.4:

DVD: REC709 Gamma 2.4:

HDTVD REC709 Gamma 2.4:

TonyWDA said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

Going back to the other topic of 5.1 audio, another option, although unfortunately not for a lot of movies, is to use the Cinema DTS audio. 1995 would be far enough back for this film to have one.

I’m almost certain that Toy Story never played anywhere with Cinema DTS audio in '95, but it did receive a DTS LaserDisc. If someone can arrange a bit-perfect capture of the soundtrack, it’d be a terrific addition to this project.

Hmm weird, the trailers for it had DTS!

TonyWDA said:

MonkeyLizard10 said:

true, BUT I’ve heard the whole near vs. far field mix thing is a good deal overblown and that a lot of it was pushed by a single mixing studio that apparently wanted to use the idea to prop up their finances and sort of talked all the studios into the ‘critical’ need for it. I’ve read that many say that a lot of the claims pushed to get the whole thing going, upon further examination, didn’t really pan out like they claimed and some say the whole thing caused more trouble and even worse home results in the end, although it seems there is still some arguing over who is correct.

Yeah, it’s quite the hot topic in audio engineering circles. In this context, having as many audio options as possible is always best when all is said and done. It’s less convenient to get the Dolby 5.1 on the print preserved, but a lot easier to get the analog stereo track digitized using AEO Light— especially if the raw scan resolution is well past 2K. That would only be necessary if the scanner couldn’t (or simply didn’t) capture the analog audio along with the image scan or the sound on the capture was too hissy; unfortunately, LaserGraphics ScanStation units are kind of notorious for that. But all things in due time; I’m sure TristAndShout64 will cross that bridge when he gets to it.

Interesting, I’d never heard of AEO Light before. I wonder if it will give better quality audio than the basic Scanstation optical reader. Too bad it doesn’t appear to directly support DNG so will have to maybe batch the track area to TIFF.

Going back to the other topic of 5.1 audio, another option, although unfortunately not for a lot of movies, is to use the Cinema DTS audio. 1995 would be far enough back for this film to have one.

Sadly, not that I know of. That open matte Falcon scene was amazing! I don’t know why didn’t make it a branching option on the disc (or at least a special feature). (there is that compressed capture of the partial 1.90:1 Xenon Digital IMAX open matte, but I’m not sure it is even full HD and it is a far cry from the full IMAX open matte, not the same at all)

I saw it in IMAX 6P Laser 3D, just mindblowing.

Most to all of the associated trailers will also feature Cinema DTS audio as well as the theatrical optical audio.

Audio in this project will be both theatrical optical audio and Cinema DTS (for most to all stuff more recent than 1992).

CourtlyHades296 said:

What about the DTS track for Lion King? It never saw a video release, and the LD only contains AC3.

I haven’t seen Cinema DTS for TLM (re-release) or TLK show up yet.