TServo2049

Hey, come now. The Dark Knight was nowhere as desaturated as Man of Steel. I just saw TDK in IMAX 70mm a few weeks ago, it did have a bleach-bypass look but it didn't have the pasty dishwater colors of MOS. Not by a long shot.

And TDK was shot on film and looks like it was actually photochemically timed. Nolan's color timing, as projected on film in a theater, is worlds away superior to MOS' color.

That said, you are right about MOS. Of all the classic superheroes, Superman NEEDS to have those primary colors. In some scenes his outfit looked almost black, that's how desaturated it got.

A friend pointed me to this: A 35mm print on eBay, starting at $26, auction ends tomorrow. Two bidders right now, but anybody wanna go for this?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PIXAR-CARTOON-KNICK-KNACK-35MM-PRINT-ORIGINAL-1989-VERSION-VG-COND-/201344727633?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2ee114ba51

Interesting. There were a couple editing changes to the remaster at Cameron's behest (continuity error corrections, I believe) so the sound mix could have been conceivably slightly altered or revised as well, just to correct sync errors. Or maybe it was revised in the past and that's the master they grabbed for the DVD.

I know the MGM mono is not "fake", because that was the way I always watched the movie on that DVD, and all the familiar sounds are there. When I first bought the disc in 2001, I tried to watch it in 5.1, and couldn't get through the future war prologue before thinking "the lasers are wrong, the arpeggio is missing from the music cue", switched to the mono and everything seemed to be as I remembered it.

Which R1 DVD had it not happen? The Image, or the MGM?

Will you be keeping it interlaced, in its native 60i? It just bugs me watching the show in progressive (like on Netflix). (I remember that I got a couple DVD-Rs many years back in a trade, and one of them had been deinterlaced by the encoder. It just looked wrong.)

Darn. Wish you could see the print I saw, but I don't think studios ship repertory prints overseas.

As I said, the Director's Cut is closest, but of course contrast was higher since it was a print, the colors on this 35mm seemed punchier (the green paneling on the turbolift actually had some saturation to it, the phasers and photon torpedoes had more saturation, etc.), and there was more orange/blue or orange/cyan in certain scenes (not orange/teal, and not the overcooled Blu-ray palette).

Now I just wish I could see a print, or even a new DCP, of Star Trek VI. The Blu-ray transfer was an atrocity, I'm so glad we don't see much of that horrible waxy degraining anymore. The push for 4K/UHD future-proofing seems to be leading to transfers that either aren't degrained, or are degrained less harshly, and then regrained to have a more "filmic" look. (Of course I prefer the former, but hey, either way stuff like STVI, Predator, Spartacus, etc. are going to look exponentially better when we get inevitable 4K remasters...)

Interesting. Have you ever seen a 35mm print?

Is the DCP from the same master as the Blu-Ray, or is this another case of a new 4K version debuting as a DCP long before it gets a home release?

"For a good time, call Allison Wonderland" is real. It's in every version, you don't even need freeze frame to see it.

What's not real is the alleged flash frame of a phone number (supposedly Eisner's) appeating underneath that message. It has been mentioned on the Internet, supposedly it was removed after the laserdisc, but nobody here has found it on the LD or any other version.

The graffiti is real, it was never removed, it's the phone number that's the myth.

Yeah, the highlights may be too green.

Also, if you want it to make like film, shouldn't the contrast be increased a bit? That is, a more photochemical-looking pushing of highlights and shadows - not the digital crush/blowout we complain about. Film prints do not have dulled highlights like your "after" pictures are showing.

But this is still great work, I agree about the gas giant planet now looking like a painting out of the OT.

Yeah, agreed, this should probably be moved to fan edits?

Looks like crap, the new color is 2004 SE-level painful on the eyes, but I agree with the IDEA. Someone just needs to do it correctly.

Right - Betty Boop's nipples were caught before any of the video releases.

The "For a good time" graffiti is in every version. It's the flash frame of Michael Eisner's phone number that isn't on any of them - because that never actually existed. (That's an urban legend going back to the days of Usenet.)

Mike, do you think there's a chance they would acquire your project just so they could bury it?

If you read the post, he is not looking to give all the tapes to the same person?

OK, I just got the 1080i Sky Director's Cut rip off Usenet. Out of both HDTV versions (the DC, and the theatrical cut which I only have in 720p) this is definitely the closer of the two to the 35mm print I saw last night. It has that kind of blue/orange or cyan/orange tendency in a lot of scenes, just like the print - though it is a bit brighter and less contrasty, probably owing to being from a low-contrast, early-generation element? But it definitely doesn't have the "neutral" more pinkish-red look of my HDTV theatrical cut (which I still theorize might have been what the original DVD was derived from - some transfers done for DVD seem to have been future-proofed by actually being transferred in HD and then downconverted, I know the 1999 Ghostbusters transfer also turned up in HD).

There are still differences, though. For example, we see Spock's torpedo blast out of the Enterprise, both HDTV versions show the trail as a pale yellow, while the 35mm print had the torpedo trail as a saturated golden yellow-orange. (On the preview clip of the 35mm scan of III, that shot in the prologue shows the same saturated color to the effect; that's one of the reasons I say the colors seemed to basically match between the 35mm of II, and the prologue on the 35mm scan of III.)

Actually, I saw a 35mm of TWOK last night, and the color is not exactly like the HDTV master (or at least the theatrical cut copy I have). Nowhere near as cool as the Blu-ray, to be sure, but the HDTV (or again, at least the theatrical cut copy I have) seems too neutral and too pink, if that makes any sense. The print I had kind of had the blue/teal/orange thing going without looking digitally tweaked or overly cool. It still looked familiar enough to me, I didn't think "wow, this looks different from the transfers I've seen", I thought "wow, this really does look very much like the pre-Blu transfers."

The Enterprise bridge walls always looked a kind of olive-umber, a bit green and a little brown. And I know that the decorative panels in the turbolift were more saturated olive-green than the non-Blu HD copy I have. The uniforms sometimes had a little bit of orange in them, tending more toward burnt sienna/burnt umber than the scarlet red they take on in the pre-Blu HD transfers I've seen. (Though it depended on how much each shot tended toward orange, I know other shots had a more maroon red with less orange.) The blue lights on some of the bridge consoles sometimes looked distinctly cyan-teal, and the main room of Regula One often had a blue/orange thing going. And I distinctly noticed that the medical bay scene (Preston's death) had kind of a golden yellow tinge going on. I hope I'm not going too far into color theory, I'm not sure if I'm good enough at explaining it.

Actually, if anybody has seen the preview of the 35mm scan of Star Trek III, the coloring of the clips of the ending of II in the prologue look very close to how those same scenes looked on the print of II I just saw. I kept thinking back to the blue/orange look of that 35mm scan of III (the Blu of II has its own blue/orange dichotomy at times, but not the same kind as the print in any way). Even though this print of II must have been struck fairly recently, it still looked like an 80s movie.

(Has anybody else here seen II in 35mm and can recall the colors they noticed?)

But I do need to check out the 1080i Director's Cut rip - if it's Sky, I guess it's the source of the other 720p MKV I used to have? (A couple years ago, I replaced it with the theatrical-cut 720p copy I have now, for reasons I don't remember. Maybe I thought I only needed one? I honestly had not realized my previous copy wasn't also the theatrical, maybe I assumed it was a separate downconvert of the same source?)

I haven't yet downloaded the 1080 copy of STII, but my 720p MKV HDTV rip is the theatrical cut, not the Director's. Mine has the Dolby Digital "raindrops" trailer at the front.

The NFO says source was Star.Trek.2.-.The.Wrath.of.Khan.(1080i.AC3.5.1).ts -  any idea what that one was, or if it's still out there?

dlbsyst, is this a raw 1080i copy, or a 720p MKV? I have the speed-adjusted 24fps MKV versions, which I torrented a couple years ago. I would love to get my hands on 1080 versions.

Does it also have Jock with an American accent? The actor was American, but the standard mix has him with an almost British-sounding accent (like with Aunt Beru, it was probably ADR by the actual actor but doing a different accent)

The HD source transfer for that original DVD seems to have been used to make the old HDTV version that used to show up on HDNet and Sky. There is a 720p MKV out there, but the raw 1080i rips seem lost to the ages...

skoal said:

TServo, can you rip your Jaws for comparison?

I do not have a laserdisc player, nor any laserdiscs of Jaws. To be honest, I don't own the film in any format. Sorry about that...

As to whether you can hear Brody say "bitch", I saw a beautiful 35mm repertory print last summer, with the mono mix and without any digital cleanup or color regrading. I swear I just heard "Smile, you son of a *BANG!*" But I could be wrong...

If any of us do have the laserdiscs, can they check how audible "bitch" is on theirs?

I think the 1989 Japanese P&S LD needs to be checked. It has digital sound, it could well have a PCM version of the same mix heard on the U.S. analog P&S disc.

Do you mean the Signature Collection LD, not DVD? I thought the Signature Collection LD PCM for The Thing was already preserved, bit-perfect, for the spoRv project? It's listed on the first post. I feel like if it had the music replaced, it would have been brought up during the making of spoRv, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to check.

And actually, I was referring to Jaws. My question was whether the first widescreen LD of Jaws from 1992 (also the first LD to have PCM) had the music replacement or not.

(EDIT: I checked LDDB, the notes say "Top left of the jacket states: Home Video Version, Some Music Rescored." So I guess the Signature is the way to go for a PCM mono preservation. Though it would be interesting to compare the two in all other aspects...)

OK, so I guess the 1992 LD and the Signature Collection will need to be compared.

Same thing happened with The Thing, many home releases prior to the Signature Collection LD removed Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" due to the difficulty of licensing certain songs for home video at the time. (Which reminds me, I hope that eventually someone does a reconstruction of the theatrical soundtrack for National Lampoon's Vacation that restores "I'm So Excited" to the Ferrari scenes. I saw a 35mm print last year, that's the first time I ever saw it with the song intact without it being the network TV edit.)