The Aluminum Falcon

CSchmidlapp said:

I gather they are decoded to seperate wav's for each reel and I would just need to sync up to the Blu rays or best Picture source available, with a DTS - HD master audio encode at the end for the final preservation?

For Matrix 1, the best source is a torrent someone uploaded in RuTracker in March based off of an old HDTV capture. It therefore has unaltered color timing. It is open matte but could be cropped if necessary. I find when you do that though it comes out to be a bit zoomboxed (missing image on the top, bottom, left, and right).

Would be interested in getting the English DTS track in-sync with the BD Version Longue video. Please shoot me a PM if/when it gets uploaded to sendspace. This is great. I'm glad there's so much interest in this movie.

captain, an HD scan of what is presumably a 35mm print of The US Theatrical Cut from HDTV is already available on RuTracker. Using the LD should be unnecessary.

Furthermore, DisgruntledFan has already made a hybrid using a higher quality HDTV rip/capture than the one on RuTracker; he/she just hasn't had the opportunity to re-torrent it (as it was taken down from myspleen). He also apparently has a higher quality HD version of the HDTV rip/capture without the BD video, just with the logo removed.

Excellent! Looks great.

Which Reservoir Dogs BD has the best AV quality? The US release has MPEG-2 encoding unfortunately. I know the French has AVC, the German has VC-1, and the Japanese has AVC. Now, I can't get the JPN, but between the French and the German, which is superior? The French is rumored to have some DNR.

Looks like the only considerable difference is the lack of a Canal logo. The non-OAR doesn't bother me too much though: 1:85 and 1:78 make no considerable difference to me. Anyone thinking of using it as the basis of a preservation project—with the LD audio (that was kindly ripped by Jonno), perhaps?

They used to have non-DNR HD versions on Demonoid long ago. Never saw them being seeded; otherwise, I would have grabbed them. Hopefully some one on the forum has them...

Was there ever HDTV airings of the old SE Bond masters? Perhaps uploaded to some newsgroups long ago; for comparison's sake, there are pre-2006 HDTV versions of Blade Runner and the Matrix available— surely, at least, one of the Bond films could/would have aired. Obviously it wouldn't be the best quality if it were an old LD-era scan as we theorize, but it would be a long way from and better than the SE DVDs, suffering from poor SD compression and edge enhancement.

Be interesting seeing a preservation of Muse LDs. Anyone on the forum have a player? The Jurassic Park one would probably look like this except with a higher level of detail. It be interesting seeing HD transfers circa the late 90s, with substantially different color timing and contrast sensibilities. Terminator 2, Back to the Future, etc.

Just saw this edit, and it's pretty fantastic, so congratulations there. I've never watched the full movie proper before hand and this was a great first watch. John Woo's first American film seems to be his most Hong-Kong influenced. The other American ones seem like a hodge-podge of Hong Kong stylistically and American cheese. The soundtrack of this edit was good, wherever you made changes: it was seamless and better yet, much appreciated. The slow motion was nice; was all of it in the theatrical edit? A very nicely done edit technically, with not much visible edits. The only complaint I have (more like a little peeve) is that a bit more color correction could have been done to avoid overly reddish-skin hues. A slight shift to green would have been nice. The video quality is good though for an SD to HD upconversion.

Has anyone compared the Canal+ version with the WOWOW-based one on the newsgroups? If the quality is substantially better, will anyone share with us non-newsgroup users? Don't get me wrong, the rip that DVDMike share is already excellent, but if there's something better...

Cool. Definitely will keep my eye on this thread then. Haven't watched this film all the way through in a long while...

Matt, your Hard Boiled disc looks absolutely amazing. The video quality is pretty spectacular for an HK film of this era, the subtitles are pretty good, and the audio is just wonderfully clear. I can imagine Criterion (if they were ever to get the rights again) releasing something very similar, complete with identical contrast/brightness corrections (that go a long way btw) so good job on that too.

The contrast still looks a bit blown out; but your tweaks have gone a long way in helping it. I'd definitely be interested in the final product of this. BD25 perhaps?

Oh what a blast from the past! I used to have one of those...don't remember what happened to it. Like other people have been saying, it's a PDA: simple, quaint, and ultimately useless with the advent of smart phones.

See the comparison link I posted above. The Italian release isn't the best IIRC, with heavy DVNR. The French and Japaneese are far more worthwhile.

I'd personally be willing to seed a full custom BD of Hard Boiled with that beautiful color-corrected image if Matt_Stevens was willing to upload it. I first saw the movie on the Criterion DVD. The difference, judging by the screeencaps, looks stunning.

Unfortunately, that Suspiria BD is the UK version, which has heavily blown out contrast though, by all accounts, good to excellent audio (a remix coming close to matching the LD). I may want to mention tha both the Japaneese and French BDs don't have remarkable audio (mono for the French!).

Here's a comparison of all the different BDs:https://sites.google.com/site/suspiria1977bluraycomparison/

(Kudos and Credits to whoever actually made it).

Unfortunately, a good portion of the above release is upconverted then heavily filtered from the old Anchor Bay DVD in order to have completely accurate colors. I commend the effort, but the end result is not alltogether enjoyable. Speaking of which, the original Anchor Bay DVD seems to be the best source to reference colors AFAIK.

The DVD with lossless PCM is I believe Matt Steven's version. He's recently been active around the forums, so, dark_jedi, you can ask him yourself whether his audio is BitPerfect or captured. Honestly, I'd be interested to know; never got a chance to ask myself.

The best BD sources for Suspiria, video-wise, are the French BD and the Japanesse BD. For the first two thirds, the French BD has the best video quality, color-wise, being the only transfer not to be overtly pink; unfortunately, the contrast seems slightly hotter than the Japaneese BD, whose main issue is being 29.97 (but it IVTCs easily). The Japaneese BD is the best for the final scenes: when (mild spoilers, I guess) witnessing the coven talking about Susy and meeting Helena Markos.

Anyway, hope this information helps. I love these movies. Would really want to see a project come to fruition.

valinkrai said:

Anyone know of a list that has the best of each Doctor? I really want to get a better idea of Classic Who, but its been so hit or miss.

Top Five for each:

1st Doctor: 5) An Unearthly Child (first episode only, rest are basically a different story) 4) The Edge of Destruction 3) The Daleks 2) The Dalek Invasion of Earth 1) The War Machines 

2nd Doctor: 5) The Power of the Daleks (reconstruction) 4) The Tomb of the Cybermen 3) The Invasion 2) The Evil of the Daleks (reconstruction) 1) The War Games

3rd Doctor: 5) Terror of the Autons, 4) Death to the Daleks, 3) Spearhead from Space 2) Inferno 1) The Silurians

4th Doctor: 5) The Robots of Death 4) The Brain of Morbius 3) Logopolis 2) City of Death 1) Genesis of the Daleks

5th Doctor: 5) The Five Doctors 4) Resurrection of the Daleks 3) Mawdryn Undead 2) Planet of Fire 1) The Caves of Androzani

6th Doctor: The Two Doctors (not much else from this era holds up)

7th Doctor: 5) Survival 4) Silver Nemesis 3) Battlefield 2) Dragonfire 1) Remembrance of the Daleks

8th Doctor: The TV Movie

---I know you asked for Classic Who, but might as well point out---

9th Doctor: 5) Rose 4) Boom Town 3) Bad Wolf/ The Parting of Ways 2) Dalek 1) The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances

10th Doctor: 5) The Christmas Invasion 4) Human Nature/ The Family of Blood 3) Army of Ghosts/ Doomsday 2) The Girl in the Fireplace 1) Blink

11th Doctor: 5) Amy's Choice 4) Vincent and the Doctor 3) The Lodger 2) The Eleventh Hour 1) The Girl who Waited

Intriguing. Never knew that the BD timing was so greatly off... Though it's not particularly surprising. Hope this project comes to fruition.

FWIW, as far as ROTLA, there's also a 20GB version on RuTracker using the same HDTV master dvdmike, speaks of. I downloaded it awhile ago, and it's really high quality.

For the Terminator shots, I really like the color-corrected timing that dark_jedi and You_Too have done. The teal cast is removed; however, it looks more accurate than the old transfer, which itself never seemed entirely accurate color-wise.

Thanks for the info.

captainsolo said:

The restoration had to make some different color moves because the layers were either gone or quickly going. They had to spend enormous amounts of time to color grade and match period decor to boot.

The new BD uses the old 2005 struck master with some tweaking.

Unfortunately, this was all handled with analog technology for the Harris-Katz restoration, and the color balance is far from the same as originally.

Actually though, the BD is from a new scan of the negative, digitally color corrected. It's arguably even more flawed than the previous 1996 restoration, color-wise. (Robert Harris attests to this.) The 2005 master would have looked terrible on BD though, for lack of detail in the scan.

dark_jedi, those caps look excellent. I'm glad you're undertaking this project. The Terminator movies really should look better than they do on BD.

Most of them look fantastic, all better than the cyan-shifted BD. However, for what it's worth, the pink feels a bit too strong to me on: the cap of Reese and Sarah in the motel room (though this might just be an effect of the fluorescents), and the final shot of Sarah (whites seem to be just a tad pink). However, these are just my opinions; I don't pretend to be a bonafide technical expert on the film, so feel free to disregard.

That being said, what program do you use for color-correcting, out of curiosity? Apologies if it's been stated before; I'm just planning on color-correcting a little something of my own.