TServo2049

The 1080i HDTV version of the 1999 transfer showed up on rutracker, IIRC.

And yes, that original transfer was pretty dull-looking, wasn't it? A lot of video transfers from the era came from low-contrast interpositive elements and had the gamma cranked to read better on CRT, but Ghostbusters looked so drab and yellow-brown. I remember getting the remastered VHS in the 90s (the Family Collection one) and being blown away by how much better the color was.

I recall a story about Ivan Reitman seeing one of the video transfers and being appalled at how bad it made the special effects look - the garbage mattes and partially transparent exposures and other stuff were clear as day. (Actually, I kind of feel that the original GB transfer shares a lot of the same issues of the original transfer of The Empire Strikes Back, which was also done in 1985. Contrast is too low, everything looks too yellow, effects tricks that were invisible or near-invisible in theaters are painfully obvious.)

I'd be more interested in the theatrical color timing. Even the 2014 Blu-ray is different from the 70mm blowup print I saw in 2010 (which was from 1984, but was LPP so it wasn't faded)

I know there's some guy in the UK who has a 16mm print, he posted it on YouTube.

A print from 1991 should still retain all its color in 2015. Maybe the "purple" could be due to being a Fuji print? I know Fuji low-fade stock has a slight purple cast, much like how Kodak LPP has a slight yellow cast.

I don't want this thread to go off on another tangent, the projects are already done, so I assume color discussions don't really belong here anymore?

Where did you get that?

OK, I read your thread on FanRes, didn't realize you already knew about the 2 cuts, aspect ratios, etc. So you already have a version that could sync up with the cinema DTS; we can shift the topic back towards DTS.

As I asked on FanRes, is there any lead on Twister? That is one of those movies like Jurassic Park and ID4 that was a benchmark for digital sound...

Another one: Speed. Wasn't sure if that had DTS in theaters, it's not on the posters, but I found a Los Angeles Times article from 1994 that mentions that it would be going out in both Dolby Digital and DTS.

So you know for a fact that the German BD also has the home video cut?

And the web DL you refer to is the Vudu version that's 1.78:1, right? I know the German BD was opened up to 1.78, but I don't actually know if the Vudu version is opened or just cropped..

A warning about Battlefield Earth: The film was slightly recut for video/DVD, with a couple bits added in and a couple bits cut out (including a hilariously bad scene where John Travolta drops a human off a cliff to settle an argument with Forrest Whitaker about whether "man-animals" can fly; it has one of the worst digital green-screen composites I've seen). If IMDB is correct, there was also at least one bit of dialogue where the home video cut used a different take than the theatrical.

So to do a DTS sync, you would need the theatrical cut. I know it has appeared in full-frame on standard-definition pay cable - I caught an airing on one of the Starz channels a few years back, that's where I saw Terl throwing the guy off the cliff. But whether there's a widescreen/HD version of the theatrical cut out there, I couldn't tell you. I don't know which cut was used for the German Blu-ray. The film is also on Vudu, not sure which cut is there either. And there may be some older HDTV rip out there that could have the theatrical cut (much like how films like 1941, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek VI were theatrical cuts on HDTV back when only extended cuts had been released on DVD). [The German BD and Vudu versions are opened up to 1.78:1, other HDTV versions might be too.]

Oh, didn't realize that.

Though for catalog titles like Starchaser, they're often at the mercy of what the owners already have - witness how they were forced to release an old pan-and-scan transfer of Treasure of the Four Crowns. So unless MGM is willing to spend extra money to do a new 3D transfer, this will likely never happen...

Thirded, not because I like the movie, but because I know MGM/Fox will never release a Blu-ray, and even if they sublicense to someone like Shout Factory, it will almost certainly be 2D.

Well, the cement must not have stayed clear for very long - the PAL 35mm telecine bootleg of Empire that VideoCollector obtained a few years back had the same kind of yellowish cement gunk on at least one splice. And that was from a first-run UK theatrical print. (-1 made mention of having to crop out glue from the grind house transfer, I assume their prints are also first-run?)

I guess it was just something not meant to be noticed and usually cropped out in projection.

Also, I have read that A roll/B roll were printed from the negative by printing the A roll (with the slugs in between coming out as black), then printing the B roll onto the same film, exposing the B-roll shots on the black sections between the A roll shots. I can't find anything about interpositives being made in pieces and glued together.

If the negative was A/B, that would mean the yellow blobs are printed in, but that doesn't make sense. For one thing, it would mean the cement was actually light bluish-gray, which seems odd. More importantly, it wouldn't explain why different sources made at different times have different marks. They wouldn't be ungluing and regluing the negative multiple times, if the splices are printed in from negative then only the shots which were replacements would have different splice marks. The more I think about it, the more confused I get...

Do you think the glue is positive, or printed in? I'm not sure because of the little white fringes, that suggests it could be inverted. But then the actual cement residue would have a slight blue color, which doesn't really make sense. The stuff starts out clear, and I've read stories of old cement turning yellow or brown in the bottle, so I'd assume that like many adhesive compounds, it would likely yellow as it dries?

Please re-check the ISR SWE, specifically the shot of Luke turning the lightsaber back on after putting on the helmet. Russ' capture of the '91 UK LBX VHS seems to lack them, but it's also dark, fuzzy, and compressed, so I can't tell whether the splotches are truly not there, or if it's just too obscure, like with the glue marks we thought weren't there but actually were.

Nothing, sorry that I contributed to derailment.

It's also on Amazon.de: http://www.amazon.de/Terminator-1-Arnold-Schwarzenegger/dp/B00004RYC8

If you're in another country and have an Amazon account, you can still get it as long if one of the sellers ships to your country.

And there are some clips on YouTube recorded off a TV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XKD2OW0a8o

Notice at the end that there's no Harlan Ellison acknowledgment, and Donna Smith's credit scrolls up at the head of the credit roll after the last shot fades out, instead of fading in over the last shot. I think these are the original theatrical end credits...

The blue/teal mix does fit in well with the general trend of color timing (and particularly night-scene blue-boosting) in 80s films I've seen in 35mm. Streets of Fire, Lethal Weapon and Evil Dead II, they all had nighttime/dark scenes that looked sort of like that in the prints I saw.

Obviously, the color wouldn't have looked as washed-out when actually seeing a print projected in a theater. That pasty, blown-out look does seem to have been a common problem with telecine transfers of high-contrast sources timed and intended for theatrical projection (as opposed to low-contrast interpositives).

Holy crap, I think that German version might be a straight transfer of a theatrically-timed source. It seems to match up quite well with the colors I've seen in the 35mm trailers I've seen projected, as well as the Derann 8mm excerpt that's on YouTube. Still has the trademark Cameron blues, but it's more of a mix of blue and teal than the pure blue of the other older DVD/BD transfers. And it has that blown-out, overly contrasty look that seems to be a hallmark of older (and particularly non-major-studio/non-North American) video transfers of high-contrast sources.

For all people get down on the new "teal and orange" Blu-ray transfer, but I am wondering if it's less pure revisionism and more an exaggerated/bastardized version of the theatrical timing. This is why I think a Derann print should be sought out, it could be a very good reference for what the photochemical print timing looked like.

Terminator 1 and Aliens were not shot in Super-35. They were shot mostly hard-matted (1.33 Academy, with a roughly 1.66-1.85 matte box in front of the camera lens). If you watch the trailers in 35mm unmatted, some shots are full 4:3, and some have black bars. The bars might even change size from shot to shot. There may also be FX animation that spills over into the black areas.

So from all I understand, full-frame home releases of those two were cropped to get a garbage-free 4:3 image. If you still want them, there were full-frame laserdiscs - I think the best-quality ones would be the first Image LD of Terminator (not the original Thorn-EMI-HBO, which may have been time compressed?) and the early 90s Fox Video release of Aliens (not the original CBS/Fox one)

For Terminator, look for the one with the poster art in front of a big picture of laserdisc - the standard Image cover art style of that era. For Aliens, look for the one with an all-black cover, no blue stripe at the bottom with the Fox logo.

To get true "open-matte" versions of Terminator and Aliens (with the in-camera black bars, and open matting for whatever scenes weren't hard-matted) you'd need a print. I know Derann sold full Super 8 versions of both (they also sold T2 - it was the regular scope version, and was apparently in mono, but it could be a good color reference.)

There is not a 1:1 matchup between transfers and sound mixes. The original non-time-compressed NTSC transfer from 1982 was, on various releases, synched with the 1977 Dolby Stereo mix in analog, the 1985 remix in digital, and the 1977 mix in digital.

As you said, the soundtracks come from tape, not from film.

Oh wow, a rare example where the Technidisc/GOUT source has the dirtier splice. I think that may be the biggest glob of cement I've seen thus far.

Another thing I've been thinking about: The weird liquid damage on reel 3 of the JSC source. The ITV version seems to be missing it, as does the 1991 UK widescreen VHS. The ITV version could have come from a source that was made off the IP before whatever it was got spilled on it. Whether it was 35mm or 16mm, I'd think there would be a cropped flat master of the entire film that would have already existed, and maybe it predated whatever happened?

The 1991 VHS is another matter. Due to the NTSC-to-PAL conversion and shrinking ratio, I am now convinced it is just a straight standards conversion of the original U.S. SWE master. I checked against the two examples of rounded corners you posted earlier in the thread, and those corners show up on the '91 UK VHS too.

Do you have a full preservation of the "ISR" SWE? It seems to have been shrugged off for years, under the assumption that it's redundant/inferior to the JSC. But now that it's clear it's not a straight port of the JSC transfer, it really needs to be compared against the JSC in full.

I have no idea. Guess I could ask over at AMPS.

Even weirder...so does that mean the revised-opticals version was re-cemented at the IP stage from A/B-roll? (And would this mean the "new" IP from 1985 or whenever would have different splice marks than "revised" prints from 1977-78? Would the IB prints have still different splices due to not coming from the same IP?)

Maybe we should look at the cropped nth-generation bootleg of the revised version mono print (if we can make anything out from it)...

Another question - do the printed-in white splice marks that show up on the original P&S home video transfer show up on transfers not from the same source, like the Technidisc? (Or is it too tightly cropped at the top?) And then there are a few printed-in BLACK splice marks - on AMPS, -1 posted a shot-by-shot breakdown spreadsheet that none did of the Spanish LPP, and he put down a note that seems to indicate that the repeated frame of Vader from the lightsaber duel has the same black line running across the top of both frames as you saw on the JSC...

When I watched the -1 preservation of the 1982 trailer, a big cement blob shows up during the cantina scene. I'll get a screenshot so you can compare it to other sources. (I didn't notice any other cuts that corresponded to shot changes from the complete film, but I'll look again when I get the screenshot.)

It's even more mysterious because unlike the post-1997 versions, the burn-free JSC/pre-'93 P&S/ITV corridor shot DOES have the optically-enhanced shaking. This means that the marks were NOT introduced when the fake camera shake optical was made.

I can envision two possible scenarios: Either there was a lab mishap on the negative some time after the JSC source was struck from the negative, or perhaps the IP was assembled after the opticals were done but BEFORE all of them were converted to IN and cut into the negative?

I thought many/most of the opticals were done on CRI so that they could skip a generation of degradation? So could the version in JSC have even been some kind of test positive before the final CRI version was conformed into the negative? Maybe this was in the last round of shots to be spliced into the neg, and the marks were introduced during the CRI process?

Was this some kind of test assembly with every finished shot, that was signed off on and the negative subsequently conformed to match with the "cleaner" cementing that we see on the 35mm bootlegs, Technidisc, GOUT, etc.? (Does Moth3r's bootleg show the same glue marks that DO appear in the Technidisc?)

Maybe they kept this version as some kind of backup? I notice that this version has only appeared in non-release-print contexts - home video releases, 4:3 16mm prints like the version broadcast on ITV, and curiously enough, the 1982 reissue trailer...

We will likely never know the answer to this one...

You said you had the ability to put the grain back in after you finished. Wouldn't putting the degrained image straight to film impose a brand new grain structure? I recall you said you would (digitally?) put back the original grain structure (or something close to it).

TylerDurden389 said:

I've also noticed a bit of "zoom" for the opening credits of The Terminator (still have that on vhs as well).

The Terminator was shot 1.33 with hard matting in-camera, so full-screen 4:3 releases are cropped. If you watch a 35mm print of the trailer open-matte, you will see the black bars of the physical matte box (attached to the camera lens) change size from shot to shot.

I've seen both trailers open-matte, there's stuff like the animated electricity spilling into the black bars, and the shot of Arnie in the police car has the small lens flare of the siren light just barely spilling over into the black area.

There'a a clip of a Derann Super 8 print on YouTube, it's a camcording but you can still see that the shots of Arnold are hard-matted, and the insert shots of his hand are open-matte. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpINxrNE8J4

Well, due to the multiple generations of copying, the image gets grainier, it gets less dense, whites and highlights get dulled, blacks turn kind of gray, the whole thing starts to look mushy. (I have seen a 35mm of Jedi where we're in the Emperor's throne room, the live-action footage looks grainy and black levels are kind of grayish...but the matted-in animated computer display on the wall looks perfectly dense and jet-black.)

The image degradation with generation loss is why ILM jumped onto VistaVision as a lower-cost alternative to 65mm. It's also why they used the later-infamous Color Reversal Intermediate for the VFX and opticals, so they could skip a generation and avoid additional loss. (Part of the reason so many of the effects in the first film were recomposited was not just to get rid of matte lines and such, but because the original negatives for those scenes were in such a dire state.)