Spaced Ranger

Thanks for this thread! I must read more of these projects to discover which DVDs to keep when I upgrade to the Blu-ray downgrades. Seriously.

I gave it a (not-so-)quick correction attempt -- that last 10% is a killer. It's still probably 5% off, but from the Blu-ray screencap:

add these RGB corrections (in a single pass):

histogram     low   gamma   high   mid-tones
RED               0       1.6        255    -10
GREEN           0       1.5        255    -12
BLUE             0       1.5        255    -15

for this result:

which improves (according to taste) on the HDTV's strong contrast and hot skin-tones:

Thanks mikeaz123! Looking forward to that.

mikeaz123 said:

If there's any thing you want me to check and possibly take a pic of, let me know.

Well, actually, if you can make a best-you-can-color-accurate snapshot during the Deathstar conference room scene, preferably with fleshtone faces (too bad for Darth Vader), at about 36 minutes into the movie (11 minutes into reel 2?), that would be great ... and should stir the pot some, here, at Original Trilogy!  :D

In the THX 1138 thread, I eye-balled the best middle-ground setting for a "missing scene" (with noticeable fade fluctuation). However, that single setting, used for the entire capture, produced a good result:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/post/589864/#TopicPost589864
and that (color correction) was good enough for the project. So a single setting could get things going.

Regarding reference material, care should be taken to use only that which can survive from the actual work. Packaged production cels are probably it, and the cels alone (not the backgrounds, which are later added for the sale). If dye based original prints are available, that would be a 2nd source. Beyond that, I don't know if anything is trustworthy. Many parts throughout the movie use similar locales -- light areas, dark areas, indoors, outdoors, toondoors. A variety of different-scenes references is key. Whatever is not available, a good guess then could be made from previous settings.

My suggested list of things to do (and probably to be done in the order shown) after reviewing the previously posted sample clips:

? capture
? de-spot (random debris)
? de-scratch (continuous debris)
? de-noise (grain)
? shot luminance stabilize
? frame motion stabilize
? sharpen (non-haloing)
? color correction
? mask/resize/frame (HD, DVD)

(Of course, working on RGB elements is my assumed best-way-to-work.) I don't necessarily know how well this can be done with what's out there. Depending what is used, these steps may be shuffled around. Avisynth has allot of filters and I've seen some that claim to do all of these. Here is their definitive list:
Avisynth Wiki - Internal filters
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Internal_filters
Avisynth Wiki - External filters
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/External_filters
If you're using other software, see if it covers these steps.

For example, from the short clips, I tried a de-spotting filter called Spot Remover. I tested it with it's author's recommended settings but it's cryptic and I have no clue what's going on. Anyway, when it works, it works well:

Problem is, it doesn't work this well all the time (it's a toss of a coin). Maybe the every-fourth-frame-duplication is tricking it.

Also, I forgot to mention more about the VirtualDub plug-in, which was used for the THX 1138 color correction.  Gradation Curves (v.1.46b) by BBugBunny, A.K.A. Alexander Nagiller, is easy to use, has interactive adjustment just like in a paint program, but is more flexible. It's good:

:)

"NO-O-O-o-o-o-o-o-o!"

(Oh, wait, that's the other Lucas film.)

"Take four red capsules. In ten minutes take two more."

I knew it ... I KNEW IT!  There never were green Deathstar interiors!!

WHO is responsible for this outrage?!?

                                            "I am your green daddy!"

A nice web collection and the best kind - cels! Add my find (above) to it. If you keep track of the sources, too, let me know and I'll find the link (again) for that one. If I come across others, I'll submit them to you. (eBay should be a good source of material, too.)

I added (the above) "normalization" adjustment sample -- a fully spread out luminance on each RGB element -- to simulate that scanning the film this way might give more quality when color correcting. I don't know if the scan machine allows for separate range settings on each RGB-element flash. If not, this would require 3 separate passes with each pass-setting weighted for the selected RGB element of that pass. Ultimately, these would be separated out and recombined with their complimentary RGB elements for the finished scan. It also would require an initial pass for making a full-film min-max-luminance histogram of the RGB elements to adjust for those RGB-element-settings. Naturally, it's more work for the scan process.

The reason for doing this is that when the spectrum is digitally expanded during computer color correction, it leaves gaps or steps in the resulting spectrum. That's a built-in digital anomaly. Film, on the other hand, is analog and capturing from it is always continuous. If the luminance range is max'ed in transfer, it effectively pre-expands the spectrum in continuous analog -- no gapping. There could be no expansion during digital color correction (because it's already max'ed) and compression (the only remaining operation during digital color correction) doesn't leave gaps. Hence, a better final product.

NOTE: Throughout, these are my best-approach suggestions; obviously, use those that you like, if any.  ;)

BTW, I should've noted that the above "targeted color correction" was a reference-approach example of how matching even only 2 colors positively affects the entire picture (although not enough for an accurate color correction).  Sorry for the scare.

Of course, your suggested cel (here cropped to remove distractions) is the superior choice for a film-scan-to-reference-colors test:

This time, I used CURVES, which requires getting RGB values for same  areas of source and target:

                   scan R:G:B          cel R:G:B
cheek         128 119 122  ->  140 102  79
mouth        152 159 157  ->  191 155 124
nose           122   60   67  -> 169  64  45
fur                85   43   47  ->  104  68  47
rope           116   57   49  ->  169  93  38
shirt           145 135 140  ->  179 122 112
teeth/eyes 156 168 161  ->  186 171 151

The numbers are manually entered into the curve graph with this result:

It looks nicely matched, but closer inspection shows broken-up and mis-colored areas. This is because of spikes in the spectrum to attain particular colors that are near different colors. Any slight variation in the color causes it to (wrongly) pick up the too-close-neighbor coloring. This means that point-to-point CURVES is too precarious to do the job in this manner. However, CURVES remains good to show the curves that could then be smoothly approximated in CURVES with curve-controls (the VirtualDub plug-in, for example) or in HISTOGRAM (this paint program):

The result is a very good approximation (some inevitable close-colors) but with a smooth color spectrum (no break-ups or wrong color pick-ups):

Scanned items should have a scale included right next to each one. Something like this would be perfect:

Any correction then would be performed to match the scan to the actual scale.

I hope your scans are like this one (Song Of The South production cel with Walt Disney signature):

BTW, if I take the present raw scan:

normalize the RGB spectrums (expand to 0-255):

and match only 2 face colors (mouth & cheek) to the above production cel:

we'd have a targeted color correction.  :)

The problem is in the paint program's generated curve. Whether this is an operational bug or a wrong type of curve, I'm stuck with how they've implemented it -- acceptable for any off-the-cuff proof of concept. HISTOGRAM is an easy way to work, with it's few but critical controls, that instantaneously gives picture/graph feedback. It's great for a quick work-up (and gives one the feel of what's being done).

Note that, in this case, the curve should be a steeper on the high end, to allow highlights without overly washing out lesser bright areas. Shifting the mid-tones slightly upwards will also brighten the scene without losing saturation. (I could probably get it closer with some more tweaking, but I'm assuming you're wanting less by-eye and more by-references.)

When working on the THX 1138 "missing scene", I was looking for an Avisynth plugin to do the HISTOGRAM adjustments on the clip. Instead I found a VirtualDub CURVES plugin that could easily approximate the graphs generated from a test screenshot:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/post/589761/#TopicPost589761
With such a plug-in, one can attain pinpoint control over the resultant graph by specifying actual points for the graph. Of course, you will use whatever works best in your workflow.

I'm thinking, as a first step, the capture should be confirmed not to have crushed blacks or blown-out whites in each of the RGB elements (the combined luminance may distort this determination) across the entire film. Run a program/plug-in to produce a full-movie histogram. From that, I would recommend a second-pass capture, adjusted to fill up the full spectrum, without new crushes or blow-outs, of course. Run the program/plug-in again to verify.

Also, I suggest that all work be processed on the individual RGB elements (such as noise reduction, particle removal, etc.) -- you can continue to combine them for review as the project progresses. This way, adjacent elements will receive only the processing they require for fix-up. I demonstrated this approach in a Star Wars thread:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-OT-1997-Special-Edition-Blu-rays-Info-by-Team-Blu/post/630232/#TopicPost630232

One thing I discovered on the THX 1138 work was, with a faded print, fade is not consistent across any length of film. This means the print should be luminance stabilized, probably best done shot by shot (to RGB elements, of course).

Do you have a list of things to do? The order of doing them may affect the quality of the outcome.

SilverWook said:

I own nearly all of the editions mentioned.

Can you verify as per
DVDBeaver 2001: A Space Odyssey comparative review
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/2001.htm
"ORIGINAL WARNER VS MGM: The first unrestored release from Warner (not shown here) is identical to the MGM edition in every way except packaging."

that the MGM (1998) and Warner (1999) DVDs:

have this anamorphic main menu:

while only the Warner (2001) DVD:

has this cropped, fullscreen one:

?

In continuing to color correct by eye (not the best way to do it, BTW), I saw that the contrast was too great in the first, limited adjustment. When this happens, the picture loses it's color strength.

The double-cone representation of color (there are a variety of notations but we'll use HSL -- Hue Saturation Lightness) shows that colors changing lightness toward brightness or darkness automatically lose strength or saturation ("chroma" in this graphic):

By compressing more of the picture into the mid-range (while maintaining higher and lower lightness), it can become richer, more saturated.

The first color correction fixed only the low end and high end and raised brightness by gamma [picture on the left]. This time, the addition of midtones compression, while re-adjusting the other factors to maintain the total picture, allows for more richness [picture on the right]. Rule-of-thumb: when the skin-tones start looking better, you're going in the right direction:

These are the re-adjusted settings and how the original spectrum is affected [the red overlay]. Note the new midtone compress settings:

When doing such a process, mask-off extraneous elements of the capture so only the picture proper is "active" for both analysis and adjustment. Once the settings are established, remove the mask and apply the correction to entire frame.

This is about as far as one can go using a paint program's no-control-points curve in HISTOGRAM. To closely match a target picture, one must define the curves with greater flexibility using points in CURVES.

ww12345 said:

Here's a few updates. The pastoral ... 2/5 portion, with the '41 mix in the L channel and the '82 mix in the R channel, so people can see where I am.

Great updates! I was particularly intrigued by the left/right channel as an audio before/after (or 1941mix/1982mix).

As if you don't have enough to do already ... :) ... perhaps you might consider making that an alternative audio (with each as mono so the full orchestration comes through on each channel) for the final release. If so, you can then automatically link alternative subtitles for left/right channel info on screen (noting things like "in sync" or "missing part" or whatever is happening with each music track -- left & right positioned) with the audio menu choice (otherwise, those subtitles must be independently menu-selected).

Thanks -- glad to help!

BTW, is this eBay auction (6 days to go now, from a U.K. seller) for 35mm cell-strips any help as reference?
Disney's -Song of the south - 35mm Unmounted Film Cells
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Disneys-Song-of-the-south-35mm-Unmounted-Film-Cells-/130906644359

You mentioned you had assorted references and I was wondering if those were of this caliber.

And don't worry too much about any softness. Once it is cleaned of frame-to-frame debris, de-noised, and sharpened, it'll look on-par to any same-time-frame Disney film. Compare the final Fantasia (full resolution but cropped) against the raw Song Of The South (full resolution but cropped) and you'll see we're pretty close thus far:

Here's what you can expect with the true, "non-halo" sharpening of LimitedSharpen() [strength=200] in Avisynth (note that the noise/grain is being sharpened, too, since it hasn't been dealt with yet):

ww12345 said:

In all seriousness, what do people think of the scans so far?

They look GREAT!  And you might want to add some numbers ... such as:

histogram     low   gamma  high
RED             8      1.1        160
GREEN         8      1.8        208
BLUE           6      1.5        204

;)

skyjedi2005 said:

There has been a recent revival in the Colorization Of films especially undertaken by Ray Harryhausen for the films he worked on.

Bravo, Ray Harryhausen! And about time to throw the torches & pitch-forks of anti-colorization-P.C. (political communism) back onto the trash-heap of the dark ages, where it belongs.

Really late for this party, but glad to see there's still some punch in the bowl.  :)

To answer a now very old question -- yes, you can inject a lower quality colorized source's color information into a higher quality B&W source ... easily and with excellent results! In this Walt Disney's Zorro proof of concept, I combined a YouTube colorized posting (320x240) with a cable-TV B&W capture (720x480) in a paint program using it's split channel & combine channel (HSL) functions:

Naturally, the YouTube was small, smeared, and blocky, which required fix-ups: JPEG Artifacts Removal (maximum); increasing the weak saturation; resizing and repositioning to match the B&W image. From this, the Hue and Saturation were HSL separated for use in the final recombination.

The broadcast was better, of course, but still needed improvement: Edge-Preserving Smooth for the broadcast "noise"; sharpening the slight picture softness; rebalancing the picture's brightness spectrum (from 20-240 to 0-255). From this, the Lightness was HSL separated for use in the final recombination.

The above How The West Was Won smilebox was a wrong simulation of Cinerama for a few reasons. First, they cropped the picture -- enough said on that. Second, the screen top/bottom curvature is a circle without it's proper flattened perspective. Third, there is no (or almost none) perspective-compressed picture on the far sides due to the screen curvature. Fourth, they didn't offer me the job to do it right.  :)

This is strange to visualize correctly, so I worked up a graphic to demonstrate the principle:

The picture is the original size source and the full area for the target curved-screen projection. The yellow 146° circle is the true width of the curved screen (ticked off in 10° increments, with the last 6° at the top). The green marker lines are the re-proportioned 3D screen to the 2D projection.

As clearly shown, the equidistant increments of the true screen translate into ever-greater-compressed horizontal picture on the target projection, toward the sides. The picture would first be proportionally resized larger to cover the width of the curvature (one can count the number of pixels per 10° across the top of the curve). Then it is horizontally resized into smaller widths of the target strips. (This demonstration shows only broad adjustment strips. The actual processing would be for resizing narrower strips for pixel-wide target strips.) That's for the horizontal.

The vertical is similarly approached with the resized height of each pixel-wide target strip to follow how much the circular screen is perspectively flattened (top and bottom need not be the same -- in fact, the bottom should be less and the top, more, to correspond to the best stadium-seat position).

AntcuFaalb said:

... DeFish with an fov of 84°.

Unfortunately, those are just as inaccurate as my proof-of-concept attempts further up. Lens correction is not the right approach. Getting a Cinerama screen look is a continuously variable perspective correction problem.

Properly done, the edges of the screen would become thinner and taller and the center of the screen would remain normal proportioned. It also means the widescreen picture would become more fullscreen-ish.

Automatic re-proportion would be great (a resize equation) but manual grid re-positioning (if there is such an Avisynth filter) should do as well, granted with one-shot grid-adjustment work.

And if I may be so bold to add ... the released Cinerama simulations are just that ... simulations and wrong.  :)

Can you see how in How The West Was Won?

captainsolo said:

The big issue is Smilebox; how to do it correctly, how to properly distort the image to create that sense of true depth, and also not infringe upon any rights because I'm pretty sure the process is copyrighted.

Smilebox is just a geometric distortion ... and simple math is not copyrightable (or patentable). So no need to worry on that angle.

To do such math, however, get a number from WidescreenMuseum's CINERAMA SPECIFICATION SHEET:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/cinerama_specs.htm
specifically, 146°, the slice of circular screen one would see as the theatre patron.

The rest is the viewer's distance from the screen and vertical seat position (good Cinerama theaters have stadium seating).

If math isn't big on your resume, just eye-ball it with some imagination. As you would probably use Avisynth to process the video, the Doom 9 forum has a start of what to try:
How to curve distort an entire Cinerama DVD image (Convert Letterbox to Smilebox)?
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=141190
The suggested plug-ins ("perspective", "debarrel", and "grid") in that 2008 thread should produce the same result(s) as my paint-program proof-of-concept.

More information on HDMI splitters at the Speed Demos Archive forum:
https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/how_to_bypass_hdcp_for_use_with_blackmagic_intensity_ps3_owners_read_here.html

Like the Amazon reviews, some are finding models that once worked are not working in later shipments -- indicating different versions with less capabilities. However, someone in the last pages of the thread found that the Sewell splitter does work. It may be another good link ... at this point in time anyway.  :)

SilverWook said:

... Those links are timing out for me. :/

They expire? That's no fun at all! Who's in charge of this place?!

I neglected to mention that, in my case, my posted picture is still in the ImageShack account -- even though they changed that one link address, for whatever absurd reason. (If that's not your situation, sorry to have mentioned it. Didn't think it to be a hassle for you.)

Note: I updated my post's picture link to ImageShack's new link and it is showing once again.

ImageShack's "registration" requires a (fake) name and a (fake) e-mail address (use one like the on-the-fly http://www.mailinator.com/ ). That's it. They don't even send an e-mail "activation link" that some others use the e-mail address for.

A few more interesting things:

DVDBeaver has a review/comparison of 2001: A Space Odyssey with lots of picture comparisons. Among the releases are the MGM 1998 DVD (supposed to be mostly identical to the Warner 1999 DVD) and the Warner 2001 "remastered" DVD.
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview/2001.htm

The Digital Bits also has a comparative review of the three DVDs in question -- 1998, 1999, 2001 -- but it is not comprehensive.
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/site_archive/reviews/2001.html

The real question is ... which of these DVDs, if any, correspond to the Criterion CAV 3-disc Laserdisc set (1989) or the MGM CAV 3-disc 25th Anniversary Laserdisc set (1993), as regards coloring and detail, respectively.

And did you know that the recent PBS-aired TV special The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour, of untold ages ago, included out-takes from 2001 as background to one of their songs?
 
So alleges h2g2 - '2001: A Space Odyssey' - the Film
http://www.h2g2.com/approved_entry/A533413
under it's Did You Know...? section.

"Alleges" because if one thinks of the obstacles of Stanley Kubrick and copyright laws, it doesn't seem likely, even for The Beatles. (More likely is similar footage re-colored in kind.)

@ AntcuFaalb

I like your Panasonic DMR-ES10's 3D comb filter even better.  :)  It'd be great to see before/after comparisons from the laserdisc when you're set up for that.

@ SilverWook

I noticed back on page 53 one of my posted pictures is not coming through:
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/9015/cccacdehalosettingscomp.jpg

When I checked ImageShack, I discovered that they had altered the link:
http://imageshack.us/a/img820/9015/cccacdehalosettingscomp.jpg

Not all my links ... just this one ... so far. I'm almost afraid to go back in my posting history to see how many others were changed.  :O

Anyway, a few of your captures on page 2 are similarly not showing:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/1931/vlcsnap2010082520h15m44.png
http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/2207/vlcsnap2010082520h21m48.png
http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/9027/vlcsnap2010082520h34m10.png
Would you check those links and, if also altered, update them (or list the changed links here)?

Wow ... is that a game-changer for O.T. Forum laserdisc captures? It does look excellent.

I'm not up on my laserdisc capture issues, but the 2 captures must be different settings on the Faroudja VP100? (Have you gone into detail elsewhere on the forum?) Is there all-in-one solution (including just using software) that could eliminate the need for the second capture?