I think setting black to the darkest point is the best bet for most scenes. While it might appear a little harsh at times, it’s no doubt better than raising the blacks only to add back no information.
Handbrake seemed to do the trick. Should suffice for now, I’ll see if these “lossless” settings really are that.
Is there any particular software you recommend?
Just tried it. Tried demuxing, remuxing to .ts, and remuxing .m2ts with tsMuxer. Interestingly enough, tsMuxer reads the file as being 23.976. Adobe Media Encoder and After Effects both won’t accept any of the files. A message appears saying the file is either damaged or unsupported. I’ve tried with a few different rips of VC1 video so I don’t think the file damaged or corrupt.
Looks good! It’s worth noting the screener doesn’t have a consistent luminance throughout frame though. The left always appears a little too dark and the right a little too bright, which may be why adding in the total difference looked too bright.
Excellent! The smearing definitely is reduced, and I agree the color change is slight enough to get away with. I have no technical know-how in writing programs or scripts, so this is very much appreciated.
One note though, I’ve noticed most of the shots have different luminance from the screener, which is affecting the saturation of the colors. Look at the chap on the right’s face and the back wall, both are too dark and saturated in the merged version compared to the screener. Would there be any way to adjust this with the program given the crushed values of the Blu-Ray?
Thanks for sharing Ronster!
I did a drive by of a lot of the filming locations while going through Chicago, and ultimately would like to visit all the filming locations for the movie. Sad to hear that Earls Court has been knocked down. I’d have to loved to visit that piece of cinema history.
I’m trying to rip a Blu-Ray and transcode it to an edit file for use on my Mac. The video is encoded with VC1 at a frame rate of 23.972 (not 23.976, which I found odd).
I’ve tried making an MKV and extracting the VC1 track, dual-booting into windows and encoding from there to a quicktime (using TMPGEnc, for which my trial period has now expired). However, there appear to be many duplicated frames throughout the video.
I’ve also tried to skip transcoding and just edit from the demuxed VC1 track on Windows. However, Adobe CC doesn’t seem to like the rate of 23.972 and everything just shows up either all black or all green.
So what’s the best way to go about transcoding and editing the video?
Now the problem is Blurg is gone, Spleen mostly won’t allow such stuff. So, even if you finish, how and where do you plan to share your work? It’s like how Rufus Scrimgeour says in Deathly Hallows Part 1 “These are dark times, there is no denying.”
Hmm, these are Dark Knights indeed. I don’t have a Spleen nor have ever used trackers (this being my first foray into fan edits), so my knowledge here is limited. I’ll be sure to research other options as the project continues. Would be a pity to finish this only to wait to find a way of distribution.
Are you referring to the Trilogy Bonus Disc? I recently purchased this myself, but have not yet gotten around to the Bonus disc…
Yes, these are the shots included on the Special Edition bonus disk.
I’ve been watching back my project in Premiere and I’m noticing some duplicated frames throughout. These all appear to be problems with the Blu-Ray rip. As I said, I’m a self-proclaimed newbie at this. Luckily for the IMAX bonus disk I was able to do a simple rewrap and not have to transcode anything.
If anyone knows the best way to go about ripping a Blu-Ray, I’ll be taking this over to the Technical Discussions and How To’s so that this thread stays on more project specific details. I just wanted to keep all of you updated as to how it’s getting along.
Bought the Special Edition a few hours ago. It looks like it’s same scan used for the Blu-Ray without the matte. The colors are still way off from the screener and the dynamic range is crushed compared to the BB disk. There also seem to be a couple of IMAX shots that aren’t on the disk. Mostly establishing shots (Wayne Enterprises, Fox getting off the copter, the Batsignal going off). At least that I didn’t notice in the five minutes I’ve had with it yet.
The shots for Rises are superb. If it turns out to be quick and easy, I may go ahead and add those shots to the movie for a true IMAX version.
A question about the common width framing. While I agree a resolution of 1920*1400 would be ideal, would it work on a 16:9 screen? Wouldn’t the tv letterbox the left the right of the whole film?
Thanks for the info. Do the special edition scenes also have the original color timing?
Once I get my hands on the special edition I hope to use that for the IMAX scenes. Do the scenes in the special edition still have all the nasty EE and color timing of the Blu-ray? Right now I’m using the BB prologue simply because even if I corrected the Blu-Ray, it would have traces of EE and not as much dynamic range.
I’ve been traveling the past week so I’ve been doing more research than experimenting lately. I read a few other threads and projects that focused on color correction and came across ColourMatch. Could someone explain exactly what it is? My understanding is it’s an AviSynth script but I’m not sure and can’t find the script. I have no experience with the program and I’m running OS X, so what I can do with AviSynth is limited to say the least. I’m curious to see how ColourMatch would work with the screener. If ColourMatch works it might be the best option, especially for correcting IMAX scenes where screener chroma isn’t an option.
I plan on replacing all of the opening sequence with the one on the BB Blu-Ray since it has no baked EE. For the other IMAX scenes, I will look at both the screener and the additional shots on the BB Blu-Ray (if a matching shot is present) and decide which to match the Blu-Ray to. The screener and BB shots seem to be close, so I will might stick with BB for most shots since more information is present.
Lastly, would anyone be interested in a cropped version with the framing of the IMAX scenes matched to the screener?
Thanks for info, I’ll definitely check it out!
After I watched the BB intro I thought the same thing. I just haven’t shelled out for the Collector’s Edition yet.
Unfortunately, not much more reduction can be done without causing any nasty hazing. I might go back eventually though and reduce EE on a scene by scene basis, which should maximize the effect.
The images should hopefully be showing up now.
Papai2013, What exactly would be “better software”? For manual grade attempts I have been using DaVinci Resolve.
Nafroe, I did stumble across that thread a while back. I’m still keeping up with any progress being done there. I haven’t heard anything new since January though.
The Dark Knight is probably the ugliest and most poorly transferred film in my collection, which is a shame seeing as it is my all-time favorite movie. With that being said, I was wondering if anyone could help in restoring this film to better reflect the theatrical version. I plan to reduce the EE present on the disk as best I can and then go over and correct the colors of each scene.
So far I have reduced the EE on the Blu-Ray using AE.
Blu-Ray
Blu-Ray with EE Reduction
The next step is fixing the colors. For a reference I am using the screener DVD. However, I am not sure what method to use to fix the colors.
Using the luma from the Blu-Ray with the screener colors produces accurate results, but the matte on both is different and cropping would need to be done. Not to mention IMAX scenes and portions that are watermarked can’t be used.
Screener
Blu-Ray Luma with Screener Chroma
A manual grade seems to only fix one area (e.g. skin tones, sky, sidewalk) and leave the rest of the image even more inaccurate.
I have also tried Dr. Dre’s color correction tool. It seems to produce overly magenta skin tones and produce some ugly artifacts in the shadows and highlights.
Lastly, I am an infant in knowledge when it comes to this sort of technical work. I have never embarked on something like this before. Batman has always been an inspiration to me and the Dark Knight quickly became my favorite film of all time. I’m running on passion more than technical-know-how. That being said, any wisdom and guidance from those more experienced in this sort of thing is greatly appreciated. If you can help, wonderful, if not, thank you for simply taking the time to read this.
I am very interested in this project and have been trying to follow along myself. I love the movie but have hated the blu-ray due to edge enhancement and the color timing. As I tried to create the media to follow along I ran into a few problems. I am running a Mac but decided to bootcamp in order to import the VC1 files from the Blu-Ray, and editing them back on the OS X side. After exporting both the BB Prologue and Dark Knight video streams I noticed two major issues.
These issues have occurred independent of what codec was being used, UT QT and ProRes being the major ones I am testing.
Note that I am using Adobe Media Encoder as that is what is available to me cost free right now.