Very nice script, Moth3r. I'm working on decensoring the Baby Herman "goosing" near the beginning, the Betty Boop nip-slip, and the Jessica Rabbit panty flash. Those are the only changes I've found so far. If anyone finds any other differences between the version, I'll be happy to add them to the list.
Even more bizarre are the films that were shot partially open matte and partially hard matte. That must have made things difficult for the whoever was in charge of creating a pan-scan version.
At work, I have a lot of processes that have to be developed and then automated and figured I might be able to offer some advice on automation based on personal experience.
My basic rule is to start out with a manual process and automate as you get the process working. When you try to build in all the automation before you even start, one little flaw in the design can sometimes cause a big disaster and it's a lot harder to figure out what is causing the problem.
In this scenario, is there a way to advance the projector manually and does the camera have a remote or cable that will let you take the photo manually without having to press a button on the camera itself and potentially cause it to shake? If so, start by building a setup that lets you manually advance the frame and then manually take the photo. After that, start looking for single steps you can take to automate. Is there a way to make the projector automatically advance one frame after you take each photo? If this works, then you can look at ways to make the camera take another photo after the frame advances or take photos at the right speed to catch each frame.
This is just my two cents. Hopefully, it will help.
Personally, a high-quality .mkv file that included all the FLAC lossless audio tracks and subtitles buttoned up in one file would be fine with me, but I can understand why some people would want a Blu-Ray image.
That's the plan. I'll be recreating the uncensored frames individually and then replacing the censored frames with them.
Sony Blu-print and Sonic Scenarist are both used heavily in the industry, so if you are looking to learn how to use software that might look good on a resume, those would be the best choices. Sonic's software is powerful but overly complicated, so a lot of studios tend to use Sony Blu-Print.
I've started working on converting the BD video to something I can work with and I will be using the french version to restore the segments of the frames that were censored.
I got to watch Aliens in 70mm for a special screening. From everything I read, that one along with the original Terminator film were hard-matted. The 70mm print looked so much better than the Laserdisc release that was, at the time, the only way to get the extended version of the film but it had black matte bars along the edges since there wasn't enough picture information to take up the full 70mm film frame.
Will the 1985 LD mix be on version 2.5?
It sounds like they included the wrong disc from the 2-disc vista series DVD release. Maybe they will offer a replacement disc or something.
Also, the Best Buy stores around here have the blu ray for $24. Hmm...
Personally, I prefer to use Avg Bitrate with 2-pass encoding on most of the encodes that I do for media devices. I adjust the bitrate based on the video content and the intended viewing device.
On a side note, you can read the movie script here:
http://sfy.ru/?script=who_framed_roger_rabbit
You can see some of the things that were planned but were changed or removed during filming.
As far as restoring the censored frames, yeah they aren't crucial but I still want to do it as a project, if only to get some video editing practice. The Baby Herman middle finger is pretty obvious if you're looking for it since it lasts for several frames. If you know they're there, the other frames do become visible. 24-25 fps is not fast enough to fully hide a single frame gag from most people.
Tobar: I've never found any evidence of that scene. The only scene that was confirmed to have been used in the TV version was the pig-head scene, which was cut very late in the production.
I've done a few more comparisons and it seems there are some differences between the German HDTV version and the blu-ray version. In the Betty Boop nip-slip scene, there were two edited versions. The first edit, which appears on the German HDTV version, just added extra black to her dress to cover the nipples. The second edit, on the blu-ray and vista series DVD, added more black and reduced the cleavage line as well.
Also, during the scene where Jessica is thrown from the cab, there were two edited versions. The original version of the scene had three panty shots, one in each cut. The german version covers the first two shots but in the third shot, where Jessica bounces off the ground, the panties still show up briefly. In the blu-ray version this panty shot is covered up as well.
I'm going to try and create an uncensored version of the movie using the French HDTV, German HDTV, and blu-ray releases. The German version has additional picture information along the edges that was cropped off of the blu-ray version but it's got a lot of DNR, as well. If I can restore the film grain and get the colors to match up I can get something a little more complete.
I'm ready for the BD release whenever it comes out! I have a BD-R burner in my PC... just sayin'.
I don't think Who Framed Roger Rabbit was presented in scope. It looks like the film had a hard matte on it, instead. I'm curious to see what actual frames look like for the live-action segments, though. In many cases, animated films were animated at full-frame and matted later. In some cases, the prints have a mix of hard-matte and open-matte sequences since the mattes won't be visible on-screen.
If the price stayed low, getting the film print wouldn't be an issue here. Scanning the frames would be a problem on my end, though.
Well, the film print would be one way of confirming you have the original theatrical presentation. I lack the equipment to transfer something like that to a digital format, though.
I decided to do some tests to see if it would be possible to undo the edits in the blu-ray version using the french version. Since most of the edits are a single frame or only a handful of frames, it might be possible.
Here's a test I did to remove the censorship on the Betty Boop scene since it was only one frame.
On the Darkwing Duck LD (#50), does the Darkly Dawns The Duck episode have the original opening and extra footage that was later cut from the syndicated TV and DVD releases? If so, I would love to see that one preserved.
I'm not sure why the character was altered, to be honest. Maybe they didn't want it to actually be Oswald, or maybe it's actually some other obscure character that happens to look like an ear-less Oswald. He also has yellow pants instead of the blue pants that are associated with Oswald.
The French version is basically the same aspect ratio as the HDTV and Blu-Ray versions but it has more information cropped off the edges and the color is different. The uncensored frames could be extracted, sized down, and used to create an overlay or underlay to remove the censorship but the color would need to be corrected. I seem to recall something about a script that would do color matching. Does anyone have a link to it?
Awesome find on the Starlog article, SilverWook. I wonder if they actually completed the footage of Baby Herman stuffing the bills in the girl's bra or if it was just a completed frame from a partially completed version of the scene.
edit: I think an ear-less Oswald the Rabbit can be seen walking out of the Maroon Cartoon studios during the scene when Eddie Valiant is leaving to catch a trolley. It looks like the ears were removed prior to the theatrical release, though.
edit#2: The German HDTV rip appears to have a lot more DNR than the french version or the full-resolution screencaps I've found of the blu-ray. The blu-ray seems to have a lot of grain.
I have the FLAC, as well, in case you need it.
I don't know what channel showed the German HDTV version. I don't see any watermarks or logos to identify the channel. It was probably a subscriber service. It's possible they used a Non-German HDTV rip and just synched the German dub to it since the opening and titles and closing credits are in English with no German subtitles but I haven't seen another 1080p HDTV source other than the French version and the video for the German version is obviously different from the French version.
So much for the hope of one more full season. I just hope the remaining episodes will at least provide SOME closure to the series, even if they don't lead right into ep III.
Harmy said:
@Space Kaijuu: I managed to improve that whole shot quite a bit but there is still some inevitable blurriness around the Dewback.
Awesome. The bluriness on the dewback didn't really bother me since it was supposed to be off in the distance, anyway. For some strange reason, that guy talking to the stormtrooper just stood out because his lower half was sharp but his upper half was blurry and yet the stormtrooper he was talking to looked fine. I don't know why such a minor detail stood out so much when I was watching the scene.
Ah, that would explain the movies I've seen where the widescreen version had more picture information on the sides but the full-frame version had more information at the top and bottom.
I remember all the problems with the Titanic film print from working at a theater that had it when I worked there. For some reason, they used a really cheap film stock that wasn't intended for the longer movies. As the movie got closer to the end the film would start to buckle in on itself and eventually get tangled in the "brain" unit on the projector until the film broke and the movie got interrupted. We had to have someone stand at the film platter and physically push the film back into place as it unwound for the last 45-60 minutes of the movie. It was such a pain.
We had the film tangle and break about halfway through the credits once and all these old ladies came out complaining that they didn't get to hear the end of that Celine Dion song and demanding a refund.