Could the 4K and open matte be combined to make the ‘best’ possible version available?
Not really. Thunderbean converted the framerate from the scanned 24fps to 23.976fps, and the color in the print is way too saturated and brightness limited to compare it to the 4K.
This is some awesome work Sambarker04, i’m still in awe at the Toy Story reconstruction, i’m thrilled you will include the open matte scan as a bonus, i love the open matte format.
Thanks. ☺️
Actually, I’ll stick to the 4K footage. Don’t worry. I’ll still include the open matte scan as a bonus.
Hold on, open matte? Thought the film was hard matted going off the pan and scan VHS’ and such.
You think so?
UPDATE (13/10/2025): Good news, Greg Z happens to have the open matte scan, so I’m using that for this preservation.
So, while I was waiting for my Nightmare project to complete, I felt like I needed something to make this more like definitive. If you didn’t know, the 35mm scan was done by Steve Stanchfield and included on his “untitled” BDs, though sources I can find stated that it was Thunderbean, so I don’t know if Steve himself was part of the company, and since the reported 720p version I found claimed it was open matte, it doesn’t seem to be, and since the 1080p encode I have had a frame rate conversion unlike the 4K HDR version, and since the 1080p version showed more detail than the 4K, I felt like I need to find anyone who happens to own the untitled BD to PM me the original open matte scan so I can preserve it and use it for my project, and for anyone who was dying to see it like me. As an added bonus, I felt like I also wanted to find others too since it has been talked about in Blu-ray.com’s forums such as an open matte scan of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, since even though screenshots of it exist, a remux of it hasn’t surfaced online to my knowledge. Though, thankfully, Robin Hood did have its open matte version preserved, which is cool. If any of you happen to find other movies that got an open matte 35mm BD release by Thunderbean, let me know. 😉
UPDATE (12/10/25): So for fun, I decided to add extras into this preservation because why not. The extras will contain my lossless captures of the bonus content from the Deluxe CAV release, since it contains content missing since the Special Edition DVD, my LaserDisc preservations of two of Burton’s shorts he did for Disney, since Disney unfortunately didn’t remaster them into HD and in best visual and audible quality, as well as exclusive ones, such as Danny Elfman’s demos from the extremely limited Danny Elfman and Tim Burton Music Box, the 2006 re-release of the soundtrack’s Best Buy-exclusive second disc, the Jill Jacobs workprint, a read-along of the original poem from an odd CD I found on eBay, promos for the Russian television premiere (featuring music from The Incredibles…for some reason) and a Russian dubbing featurette. There will be more in the future, so stay tuned.
The 1080p 35mm scan has a AVC bitrate of 25mbps FWIW.
Thanks. I’ve been told the errors weren’t the case as well. In fact, I just received the version.
Unrelated topic but are there ither Disney 35mm scans you ar also working on like oliver and company, rescuers down under, little emrmaid (1989 original 35mm), pocahontas, hunchback of notre dame, hercules and tarzan ?
I don’t have copies of those movies, so I wouldn’t do it.
I loved the Roger Rabbit shorts, and it’s really nice that I was able to own a sample copy of the compilation on LaserDisc due to how rare it was, with Disney recalling copies of it due to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it inappropriate gag the animators slipped in on “Trail Mix-Up”, and because I wanted to know what the original Dolby Stereo mixes sound like and what the original filmed master of said short looks like, since the DVD and Blu-ray have those shorts remixed to 5.1 twice, and with said short, it was digitally sourced due to it being animated using the CAPS system.
The entire disc has been preserved in lossless quality, so you won’t have to worry about blurry chroma and bitrate artifacts.
And of course, PM me if you want this preservation.
UPDATE (09/10/2025): Got the Greek DVD. It’s pretty much the same as the 1999 PAL releases, so I’m good to go.
UPDATE (07/10/2025): Finally got the Japanese BD. And yes, it is identical to the US release, including the American warning screens and the D-BOX data which was missing in the UK BD, despite being mentioned. Though the Japanese tracks are odd in this one. I can tell when I looked at the Japanese Dolby TrueHD track on Audacity that Disney lost the original uncompressed audio of the Japanese dub, so they just take the 5.1 Dolby Digital track from the JP Collector’s Edition DVD, replace the LFE channel with the one from the 2008 mix, and call it a day, so it looks like I have to wait until I grabbed the 2002 JP DVD to see if the LFE channel was just a change by Disney themselves for the JP dub on the BD.
UPDATE (06/10/25): Finally got the original Dolby Surround LD. Turns out there’s no need for a patch. This was due to the fact that we get more audio from it than the Deluxe LD, and also due to the side transition being identical to the reel transition from 2 to 3, hence the cut in the latter release.
I did also get the original 1999 UK DVD and the 2002 German Special Edition DVD as a bonus. I’m also expected to get the Japanese Blu-ray tomorrow as I am posting this. The reason I want this is due to languages and subtitles being identical to the US release, only with the addition of a Japanese track and subtitles.
I’ll say rn that if no one is able to find the original BD of the open matte scan by the time I complete everything I need for the preservation, I’ll still use the official 4K master for it, especially since this is the same scenario as with the Disney logo on my theatrical reconstruction of Toy Story, where it’s a temporary case for using AI upscaled footage.
UPDATE (04/10/2025): Okay, plan B, rather than just use Disney’s official 4K remaster, I’ll use the original 1080p Thunderbean scan, mostly because of more detail in the image and how it looks really cool to me. I do have proof about the AI upscale of the scan here just to let you know.
So yeah, apologies to anyone who wanted to see it in 4K.
For this new source, I’ll use the 1998 Japanese DVD master for the grading since, from what I can guess, it is the same transfer used on the LaserDiscs, which is why it’s non-anamorphic, especially since the scan is way too saturated and bright. The JP DVD will be used for patching the missing frames.
Actually, I need to find a remux of it, since I don’t know if the 1080p file I got and the reported 720p file had their frame rates to 23.976, since the 35mm scan of the 1969 re-release of Peter Pan has it in 24fps. In case you want to know, here’s the MediaInfo of the 1080p version.
General
Unique ID : 305061685722160848457308697892272960038 (0xE580BE58C0A43A32BBD40CCA675B7226)
Complete name : C:\Users\Sam\Videos\The Nightmare Before Christmas.1993.35mm.1080p.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 10.2 GiB
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 19.2 Mb/s
Frame rate : 23.976 FPS
Encoded date : 2023-11-28 00:14:55 UTC
Writing application : mkvmerge 68.0.0 ('The Curtain') 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.4.2 + libmatroska v1.6.4
Video
ID : 1
ID in the original source medium : 4113 (0x1011)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Format settings, Slice count : 4 slices per frame
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 17.4 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 29.0 Mb/s
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Active width : 1 777 pixels
Active height : 1 069 pixels
Active display aspect ratio : 5:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.350
Stream size : 9.26 GiB (91%)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Original source medium : Blu-ray
Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 256 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 139 MiB (1%)
Title : MVO Карусель
Language : Russian
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Dialog Normalization : -31 dB
dialnorm_Average : -31 dB
dialnorm_Minimum : -31 dB
dialnorm_Maximum : -31 dB
Audio #2
ID : 3
ID in the original source medium : 4352 (0x1100)
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : A_PCM/INT/LIT
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 30.000 FPS (1600 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 837 MiB (8%)
Title : Original
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
Original source medium : Blu-ray
Menu
00:00:00.000 : en:Chapter 01
00:04:07.205 : en:Chapter 02
00:11:06.832 : en:Chapter 03
00:13:50.120 : en:Chapter 04
00:17:36.513 : en:Chapter 05
00:24:14.661 : en:Chapter 06
00:32:07.467 : en:Chapter 07
00:40:33.722 : en:Chapter 08
00:47:41.149 : en:Chapter 09
00:54:43.113 : en:Chapter 10
00:59:37.282 : en:Chapter 11
01:05:01.105 : en:Chapter 12
01:08:36.946 : en:Chapter 13
and here for the 720p version
General
Unique ID : 64375619929596748989707303955415704265 (0x306E4B1CFD3CBC32D43046B6D79C22C9)
Complete name : The Nightmare Before Christmas 1993 Thunderbean Scan Open Matte 720p BluRay FLAC2.0 x264-R40.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 3.81 GiB
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 7 162 kb/s
Movie name : The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) [Thunderbean Scan Open Matte]
Encoded date : UTC 2022-05-20 16:53:25
Writing application : mkvmerge v67.0.0 ('Under Stars'[Image: wink.gif] 64-bit
Writing library : libebml v1.4.2 + libmatroska v1.6.4
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings : CABAC / 9 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 9 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Bit rate : 6 466 kb/s
Width : 1 224 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.700
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 (24000/1001) FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.306
Stream size : 3.44 GiB (90%)
Writing library : x264 core 164 r3094+49M 0246926 devel [(8 & 10)-bit@all X86_64]
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=9 / deblock=1:-3:-3 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=11 / psy=1 / fade_compensate=0.00 / psy_rd=1.15:0.05 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=24 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=0 / chroma_qp_offset=-3 / threads=22 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=0 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / fgo=0 / bframes=8 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=23 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=crf / mbtree=0 / crf=19.0000 / qcomp=0.70 / qpmin=10:10:10 / qpmax=51:51:51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:0.80 / aq-sensitivity=10.00 / aq-factor=1.00:1.00:1.00 / aq2=0 / aq3=0
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Audio
ID : 2
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Codec ID : A_FLAC
Duration : 1 h 16 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 694 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 10.417 FPS (4608 SPF)
Bit depth : 16 bits
Compression mode : Lossless
Stream size : 378 MiB (10%)
Writing library : Lavf58.45.100
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Though I did compare both the 1080p and 2160p versions here
and I can tell right off the bat there could be a chance I can get access to the original raw open matte scans somewhere. If anyone happens to have a Blu-ray of the open matte scan from Thunderbean’s official website, please PM me either an ISO rip or a remux using MakeMKV (recommended for BD remuxes).
UPDATE (04/10/2025): Okay, plan B, rather than just use Disney’s official 4K remaster, I’ll use the original 1080p Thunderbean scan, mostly because of more detail in the image and how it looks really cool to me. I do have proof about the AI upscale of the scan here just to let you know.
So yeah, apologies to anyone who wanted to see it in 4K.
For this new source, I’ll use the 1998 Japanese DVD master for the grading since, from what I can guess, it is the same transfer used on the LaserDiscs, which is why it’s non-anamorphic, especially since the scan is way too saturated and bright. The JP DVD will be used for patching the missing frames.
I was wondering if the 35mm segments had to be slowed down to 23.976fps?
It already has.
by combining the CLV release with patches from the Deluxe CAV release.
I’m curious as to what needs to be patched?
Just a transition between sides 1 and 2. This is where the audio from side 2 on the Deluxe CAV release patches it.
Apologies for my ignorance, but what exactly are the visual differences between the official 4K release and the theatrical cut?
Nothing much, just the Disney logo, the opening titles and the closing logo. The rest is pretty much untouched. In fact, the 4K master is based on the 2008 BD master, which is why the logo say “Walt Disney Pictures” and not just “Disney”.
UPDATE (29/09/25): I decided to grab myself the original Dolby Surround CLV release since I thought it would make sense for the original theatrical mix to be complete just like what I did with Toy Story, by combining the CLV release with patches from the Deluxe CAV release.
I’ll use reel 2 as an example. The rest are fine but still has a bit a red fade.
I should have talk about a dream I had a couple nights ago based on this preservation. In it, A person PM’d me scolding me for the gamma I used, though I did tell the person to calm down because it was regraded to be as close as the LD was possible because of the red fade and low brightness. Though I have already been scolded because “the fade in the film is actually what it looks like.”, though a private Discord server I am at would agree that the scolding is pretty much ridiculous (no offense). Yes, I know the faded green in reel 2 during the night scenes is distracting, but this is the best I can do to make it accurate to the official grading of pre-2000 masters.
What red fade and low brightness are you referring to? Also, do you have an example of the faded green in reel 2?
The red fade and low brightness I was talking about was from the leaked print, while the faded green was from my revival.
I should have talk about a dream I had a couple nights ago based on this preservation. In it, A person PM’d me scolding me for the gamma I used, though I did tell the person to calm down because it was regraded to be as close as the LD was possible because of the red fade and low brightness. Though I have already been scolded because “the fade in the film is actually what it looks like.”, though a private Discord server I am at would agree that the scolding is pretty much ridiculous (no offense). Yes, I know the faded green in reel 2 during the night scenes is distracting, but this is the best I can do to make it accurate to the official grading of pre-2000 masters.
UPDATE (19/09/2025):
Included the horrendous DTS LD mix from the direct sources using delaycut, then merged using Audacity with the raw data. If anyone wants to listen to it, I’ll PM you the mka file so you can compare the problems yourself.
UPDATE (18/09/2025): Did you know this bootleg was authored using WinOnCD? This actually explains this screen appearing at the start of both discs.
Will this have the commentary with Selick, Burton, and Elfman from the DVD/Blu-ray?
I’ll think about it.