Will this have the commentary with Selick, Burton, and Elfman from the DVD/Blu-ray?
I’ll think about it.
I haven’t seen this movie except on DVD and blu. The bluray mix is indeed a bit gimmicky with voices moving across channels. Does the stereo mix have a lot of oomph? I remember being quite impressed by the sound mix of other Touchstone films at this time (Rocketeer and Sister Act.)
Also can you say why the commentary is in 3 channel?
Firstly, yeah, there is oomph in the Dolby Stereo (and the 1997 5.1 mix) mix. And also, the reason the commentary is 3.0 is because it is isolated with the film audio.
Since Halloween and Christmas are nearby, as well as since I’m of what I did to Toy Story, I decided to do another of my favourites that unfortunately gets butchered by Disney with every new re-release…well you know what it is.
Back when the film was originally released, it was going to be a pioneering moment in Disney’s animation techniques, according to the company’s favourite nutball, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the 1992 sneak preview. But then the test screening came where the children got traumatised that Disney decided to release the film under the Touchstone label to prevent further trauma. I do honestly see why though, since the film’s extremely macabre tone didn’t fit well with the style of films released by the mouse house, especially with hearing “When You Wish Upon a Star” with current versions of the film when Disney decided to finally release the film under their original label since the 3D re-release. In fact, I’m honestly not a fan of the master used for the 2008 Blu-ray and later the UHD release, not only because it brought back the Disney credit from the re-release, but also its new 7.1 remix, mainly because of noticeable changes when compared to the original Dolby Stereo (and later the identical 1997 5.1 remix) mixes, such as how it did The Simpsons Movie thing where it starts out mono in the opening narration, up to when we enter Halloween Town it goes full 7.1, parts of vocals where it has a chorus effect (e.g. from The One Hiding Under Your Bed), and strangely (if you listen closely) the vocals can be heard all over the speakers, instead of the front and center speakers. I do understand this was done so that Disney can show off that Blu-ray can go “up to 7.1 surround sound” in their advertising, but I think how it was remixed felt uncomfortable for me. Though I did enjoy the remaster in both the BD and UHD releases, despite the changed opening credits having a strange zoom-in effect, which obviously was originally done for the 3D version, but I don’t know if the team that updated the film felt like the effect felt comfortable too when it came time for the BD. Though, I think the UHD was way better because of its authentic HDR from the original negatives.
So I decided to make this preservation for fun, and this time, the main source would be 4K HDR instead of 1080p. Yes, I am aware of the 4K HDR 35mm scan where it shows more image and it is the original theatrical version, but I’m not a fan of it, though, due to the bitrate being very crappy, and the amount of nits seem to be very limited when compared to the official 4K remaster.
Video sources for this preservation:
Audio tracks that will be included:
…and more to come!
Every subtitles and captions from every DVD and LD release I can get access will be included as well.
Good idea!
However, the Pixar end logo wasn’t a change made just for home media releases. I once saw eBay caps of a 35mm reels set (someone was asking $10k USD for, ridiculous you say) and one of the sellers pics had a shot from the Wall-E variant and then the MPAA G rating card. I also recall another eBay CA listing for a Spanish localized/dubbed 35mm print and that had the Pixar variant along with a scratchy BVI up front.
It sounds like the films director originally wanted to use this variant since the teaser had it, but some memos were ignored by higher ups and did not make the cut on premiere, but got added to later prints when new filmouts were made.
Interesting.
WALL-E happens to be one of Pixar’s films where it would be altered for its home media release alongside Ratatouille, Cars 2 and Incredibles 2. The only difference that was reported was the closing Pixar logo, where originally, the logo plays out normal, whereas on home media releases, a special variant originally made for the film’s second teaser trailer where WALL-E replaces Luxo Jr.'s bulb was included. Though I am here to prove that it does exist.
So a long time ago, I saw a video of a clean rip of Pixar’s 25th Anniversary variant that was only shown on theatrical prints of Cars 2 and the guy who uploaded it stated he got this from the screener Blu-ray of that film, it does make me wonder, what if Ratatouille and WALL-E had their theatrical versions included on their screeners too? So I decided to buy both of them to make sure, though only WALL-E wins the guess, since Ratatouille’s screener uses the home video version.
I originally uploaded the closing logos of this, and now just thinking about it, why not I preserve the whole version here? Especially since there aren’t any watermarks in this screener anyway. So I decided to do an ISO rip of the screener, and along with it, do an MKV remux for ease of access. And just for fun, I did a 1080p reconstruction, just for anyone who didn’t like the closing Pixar logo variant that was added on home media releases. I should mention that the reconstruction includes the Presto short as well, just to add more to the theatrical experience, and especially since the short is already on the original Disney Blu-ray release anyway.
The MKV remux originally had the DD 5.1 audio with the EX flag added since it strangely doesn’t have it, but it doesn’t seem to work for me, though I did everything I can to make sure it detects the EX flag when using exme.exe, so I decided to leave it there just in case.
Sources from the reconstruction:
For the audio included in this reconstruction:
…and for the subs (also found in the remux):
As always, make sure to PM me if you want this preservation.
So recently, I bought two bootleg VCDs for this one and Shrek to see if they contain their extremely rare cam rips of them. Turns out I was right on this one, and because I was so amazed I found this one, I decided to preserve this one here, one with the raw VCD rips and a re-encode merging both discs together, cropping it to mask out the Chinese subtitles, stretching it to closely match the original Blu-ray master, and panning the audio channels to make sure it sounds comfortable enough. NV Encoder unfortunately doesn’t support pixel aspect ratio, so I had to do it manually on MKVToolNix.
Even though the covers were meant to be for the CD jewel case, it came in a CD-styled DVD case, pretty much akin to what you would find on those authentic Indian VCDs from Excel Home Media.
So yeah, seeing Ice Age on 35mm is something cool to see for me ever since I first saw the film as a child, mainly because I was curious as to why the 20th Century Fox logo and the end credits were presented on film, while the whole film is digitally sourced. I mean, it does prove that, just like Shrek, this film was originally mastered in 35mm when it was released theatrically, until the home media release where it would be digitally sourced. I mean, Titan A.E. did have a digital screening of the movie at SuperComm 2000 before the film’s premiere, even though that was weird considering that Titan was originally mastered in film, and because there are no details I know about a digital screening of Ice Age before and during its theatrical run, I can tell why they did that due to the massive box office failure of Titan.
I should also mention there are missing parts in the VCD which I didn’t realise until now. I mean, it’s a bootleg, I can tell you guys wanted to see it just to see what the original 35mm version of the film was like.
Of course, PM me to access it if you want to see it, and obviously, if you paid this movie to Disney (obviously its 2025, not 2002).
UPDATE (07/09/25):
UPDATE (07/09/2025): And with that…
Like I said, anyone who asks me for PM before this new release will automatically have the links to the new version.
Not an update, but I would like to give something bizarre relating to this and my digital theatrical reconstruction. I had a dream a few days ago where I found out the seiyus in the Japanese dub of the commentary in the credits of the JP deluxe LD, bizarrely in English. Sucks though since before that dream I went to the credits on the actual Japanese deluxe release, and they were bizarrely uncredited, since they showed the same credits in English from the US deluxe release, even leaving the original commentary credits, which is very confusing since the rest were translated into Japanese, and the original commentary is unavailable on that release as well.
UPDATE (05/09/2025): Okay, so originally I did all of the noticeable blockier moments to patch myself since no one seems to note them and I’ve managed to patch all I can spot and find, until someone finally posted on the doc with the help from ChatGPT. Curious, I followed the timestamps, and yeah, there’s even more! Took me 3 and a half hours to finally patch what I can find, since ChatGPT can be mostly wrong as what AIs do. After also checking to make sure there are no slipups, this means that this patching is fully complete without any errors.
If anyone would like to help me find the blocky moments from the 4K encode so I can patch them in this revival, go to this Google Doc and put those blocky moments in timestamps there. Good luck! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R1b5azr9_IixUU-OT_oglvAgvpx8Lu64IaZwL7cngSI/edit?tab=t.0
Not an update, but I decided to give you something interesting about the description change. You noticed that the Russian dub used is the “original 2004 version”, and that was because…well let me tell you. Remember when Funimation would redub Dragon Ball Z’s earlier episodes to match the characters’ voices from the Buu arc on the infamous Orange Box sets? Well, Disney did the exact same thing when they did a redub of the Russian dub of Toy Story 1 and 2 in 2009 for the 3D re-release to match the name change from Базз Светик (Buzz Light) to Базз Лайтер (I bet you know what that means) when they dubbed the third film to Russian. I can guess they did that to prevent the similarities with Bud Light (guess where Woody name called Buzz from?) after someone Russian at Disney Character Voices pointed out the obvious. So, as a result, the 2009 re-dub would have the actors come in and re-record lines that contain ‘Светик‘ to replace it with ‘Лайтер’, though Andy and Sid’s lines affected by it were re-recorded by different children, though Konstantin Yefimov (who came in to re-dub Ivan Chaban’s affected lines) did return as Andy as a child in the third film, so that’s interesting. So yeah, just a fun fact to anyone curious. 😉
Ngl everytime I spot another blocky moment I didn’t miss, I had to go through the entire editing and rendering process again, which, to be honest, is very jarring since the rendering takes a painstakingly long time, but hopefully there won’t be anymore noticeable blockier moments.
UPDATE (28/08/25): Turns out I missed one blocky moment so I had to redo the project and re-render it. Don’t worry. We’re almost there!
UPDATE (27/08/25): YKW, I decided to check the blockier moments myself. I went ahead and compared the 1080p version with the 4K version using FFBitrateViewer, and yeah, there’s more than a couple, so the blockier parts were patched using the 1080p version. Also, there’s missing frames will be patched using a new LD capture I made. As I’m posting this, I’ve already completed the 4K render and is still doing a 1080p render, just so I can use it for a review later. If the review was passed flawlessly, I’ll finally release it once I finally grabbed the French Anthologie set with the Egyptian Arabic dub (keep in mind that the Standard Arabic dubs were done after the Blu-ray release). The reason why I decided to do a review now is because I want to make sure there aren’t any slip ups in editing. This was to due to the latest version of VEGAS Pro struggling to handle the correct frames on a H.264 video, meaning that there will be chances of duplicate frames between the 1080p and 4K versions, in fact, my LD capture has interlace artifacts in it, though thankfully there aren’t any parts with the artifacts on the patches, so it won’t be noticeable.
Okay, I’ve checked everything to make sure it’s flawless. And plot twist…IT WAS!!! So once I finally complete my quest to find the dubs I can get access to, it will finally be released, so stay tuned.
UPDATE (27/08/25): YKW, I decided to check the blockier moments myself. I went ahead and compared the 1080p version with the 4K version using FFBitrateViewer, and yeah, there’s more than a couple, so the blockier parts were patched using the 1080p version. Also, there’s missing frames will be patched using a new LD capture I made. As I’m posting this, I’ve already completed the 4K render and is still doing a 1080p render, just so I can use it for a review later. If the review was passed flawlessly, I’ll finally release it once I finally grabbed the French Anthologie set with the Egyptian Arabic dub (keep in mind that the Standard Arabic dubs were done after the Blu-ray release). The reason why I decided to do a review now is because I want to make sure there aren’t any slip ups in editing. This was to due to the latest version of VEGAS Pro struggling to handle the correct frames on a H.264 video, meaning that there will be chances of duplicate frames between the 1080p and 4K versions, in fact, my LD capture has interlace artifacts in it, though thankfully there aren’t any parts with the artifacts on the patches, so it won’t be noticeable.
Actually, rather than wait, maybe you guys can help me find moments where the film gets blocky too. I highly recommend you compare the 1080p and 4K versions together so you can see the difference in change of bitrate, hence the blockiness. It’s also easier for me to start working once I arrive back home on Tuesday.
From what I read the 4K is a “completely botched encoding” and the 1080p is way better. Knowing that I don’t know why you would want to use the 4K at all.
Though 4K was known to be a double of 1080p, so hopefully anyone might barely tell the difference.
With AVC 4K should be four times the bitrate of 1080p.
I recall that the 4K version’s bitrate is 50mbps while the 1080p version is only 25mbps. Though in this project I was thinking of using HEVC as it was way better and hopefully doesn’t contain any blockiness when re-encoding it.
Actually, rather than wait, maybe you guys can help me find moments where the film gets blocky too. I highly recommend you compare the 1080p and 4K versions together so you can see the difference in change of bitrate, hence the blockiness. It’s also easier for me to start working once I arrive back home on Tuesday.
From what I read the 4K is a “completely botched encoding” and the 1080p is way better. Knowing that I don’t know why you would want to use the 4K at all.
There are only a couple moments I know where the bitrate goes from 50mbps to 192bps such as the Disney logo and when the Pizza Planet truck returns to its place. Though I do remember other unnoticeable parts with the bitrate changing to something like 10mbps like at 36:49-36:51 (though this is what I remember when I compared the two) so yeah, if no one is interested in doing it, that’s honestly fine. Though 4K was known to be a double of 1080p, so hopefully anyone might barely tell the difference.
Actually, rather than wait, maybe you guys can help me find moments where the film gets blocky too. I highly recommend you compare the 1080p and 4K versions together so you can see the difference in change of bitrate, hence the blockiness. It’s also easier for me to start working once I arrive back home on Tuesday.
UPDATE (21/08/25): I was thinking of maybe going through the blocky moments myself since I still haven’t got a word on a list yet, now I’m not being impatient and all, but I was just confused that I haven’t got a response yet. Though yeah, speaking of the guy, I would admit that I could just use the leaked sources since access to the raw sources is borderline impossible. In fact, I’m pretty sure I started to act like a broken record now, but since I’m in Rhodes now and will be back by late Tuesday night, there will be plenty of time for me to get responses before I get back and start working.
Ah okay
UPDATE (12/08/25): Honestly, I don’t know if I may want to cancel the project since I am honestly stuck, especially to pay respect to Tristan, but the raw scans are the only way to get the best quality possible since the 4K version’s bitrate is problematic. Though I do want to grab an update though since I’m not a fan of the LUT I did. Turns out I think there’s some color and luminance bleeding in there, and it seems every reel is of a different film stock, meaning the red fade is easily more distracting when using the same LUT based on reel 1, and since the color grading in my second attempt feels extremely hard for me, I felt like something who knows how to handle color grading very well to help me with it to match the LD and to also make sure there’s no noticeable color and luminance bleeding on it. I will PM the leaked print and my recorded LD footage for reference so you can message me the LUTs of all 5 reels so I can use them. Also, I was thinking that I want to merge the 1080p with the 4K footage to patch out parts that has a very low bitrate, though I was able to spot two, some parts of it are really confusing as it could be either from the 1080p version, or the 4K version. I just think this project can be too much for me, hence the drama and all, but honestly, I need to see if there will be any either fate or hope to it as time goes on, though I don’t know if there is a high chance it will be cancelled.
Okay, tbf, considering that people went off topic lately, it might just got harder for me. But you know, the big quote when you’re like this is “never give up”, right? So hopefully, it will be done. Though, of course, like I said, I’m still waiting for those blocky moments to be tracked so I can start finally working on this revival.
Someone is actually selling Cinema DTS discs of the film, though the first disc is of the domestic release, so it would be perfect to include it in this preservation too. (https://www.ebay.com/itm/374920289284)
UPDATE (18/08/2025): This one is late though, since I forgot to say this, but a few days ago, a now deleted user PM’d me on my DeviantArt account that the leaked scan was also available on X as well, and it is the crappy 4K encode, though people were thankfully only to point out 2 moments where the encode is blocky, but, just to make sure, I’m still waiting for my private friend to help me find other blocky moments too. I just want to let you guys know about that and to spread the word to never leak fan preservations to the public.
Also, like I said, anything said unrelated to this topic must be said through PM, NOT here. This was to furthur prevent any more drama. Thanks
Your discord friend who gave you permission to work on a scan that’s not theirs?
Well, we’re focusing on making a better version of the leaked scans. This is what I meant.