Venny

TristAndShout64 said:

Hooray, OT is back up! I’ll be reaching out to donors sometime soon to get email addresses in case this happens again, but feel free to PM it to me if you’d like.

Anyways, I suppose it’s a perfect time for an update, as there’s a lot to discuss. Firstly, I want to share a bit about distribution of the final print, which will be done a bit differently now due to the recent Reddit leaks which caused a bit of a stir.

I won’t go too much into detail regarding my opinions on what happened, but I will say that I find openly sharing these scans on Reddit and other websites a bit irresponsible and a good way to get some person or another in trouble. To be clear, I don’t necessarily think we should gatekeep or disallow people from seeing scans; I think it should be up to whoever did the scan who they distribute the print to (not that there are any implied rights, but I see it as a simple courtesy thing), but at the very least I believe that it should be kept to private messages as opposed to just having a website with download links to full, copyrighted movies.

Knowing all this, I will be slightly tightening things as far as who will receive copies of the print. I’m in favor of letting more people see the final scan, but I’m just too fearful of getting in trouble after it gets posted online to be willing to send it to whoever messages me and asks. Perhaps that’s irrational to some capacity, but it’s just something I’m not comfortable with at this point.

The long-and-short of it this: all people who have donated WILL get a copy, as expected. Other people interested can receive a copy AT MY DISCRETION, but will be required to provide image proof that they own a copy of the film. I’ll be keeping things fairly limited, so don’t necessarily expect a response if you PM me asking for a copy.

If you do receive a copy of the scan, know that I’m trusting you not to share a copy with anyone else or post it online, and my willingness to do another project like this may be impacted if anyone does so. Also, I’d like to share that I plan on posting clips of the final scan on YouTube/Archive.org, as I do want to give everyone the opportunity to see it in some capacity.

My apologies if this leaves some people feeling disappointed, but it’s what I ultimately feel is the best course of action. I might find some way to get the scan out to more people in the future, but for now I’d like to keep things as lowkey as possible.

With that out of the way, Let’s discuss the scan itself! As far as funds go, we’re currently sitting at a little over $1400. I imagine this should be about as much as we need, so I’ve removed the donation link from the top post, but I may or may not intermittently accept a couple more (with proof of ownership of the film). I’ll be hard-capping us at around $1500, as I don’t think more than that will be necessary. Valeyard still has the print in Australia, and we’re hoping to get things moving sometime fairly soon, so stay tuned for further updates. I’ll send another OT-longer whenever I have more to share. Peace and love y’all! ✌🏻

~Tristan

The proof of ownership is a very good idea! Can’t wait to see more updates!

Trancelot said:

Venny said:

“No one owns anything that is shared here and this forum isn’t a place for piracy.”

What do you call sharing movies for which you don’t own the copyright, if not piracy?

“Please actually do research on this issue rather than simply accusing people of things such as claiming ownership of films.”

If they aren’t claiming ownership, then why are they mad they’re being shared. You can dance around and change words all you want, but it’s still technically piracy.

They are mad it’s being shared because it puts them at risk and they asked for it not to be shared. It’s their print or their scan. It’s not their movie, but like anyone deserving of respect, you shouldn’t do things without the person’s wishes first.

And like I said these threads are not about distributing films they are about scanning and preserving them. Distributing links does not happen in public forums and is actually against the rules of the forums. So again I ask you nicely to please do research before assuming this is a site for piracy

Trancelot said:

See No Evil said:

What’s the point in my spending evenings and weekends one after the next working on scans, sinking my own money to keep the project going, when you have all that going on?

Why do you do that? Are you doing it as a fun hobby for yourself, or are you doing it for your job? I’m sure the actual creators didn’t intend on you touching their work, but here you are claiming ownership of it. I just don’t understand being mad at someone sharing works they don’t own, when you’re doing it too. I get that you worked hard on your version, and that’s very cool, but you still don’t own that copyright. It’s not your IP to begin with.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I think both sides are being a little unreasonable about it all. OT and r/FanEdits are both channels where pirates share movies and series. How one group can act like they’re better than the other is beyond me.

No one owns anything that is shared here and this forum isn’t a place for piracy. Files from the scan are never a promise and people donate to preserve the films purely out of common interest. Most of the time the actual scans given are lower quality proxy files or encodes only to get an idea of what the print looks like and to be a bonus for helping on the project.

Please actually do research on this issue rather than simply accusing people of things such as claiming ownership of films. If you look at any project funded on these forums many people donate more than is ever required for helping these projects. Some donate 10 and some donate 70+. If people were simply coming here to buy encodes I’m sure everyone would be paying the lowest amount possible, but no people donate more because they want these scans to happen. They want these films preserved before they rot. That’s the goal. Not equating a fake value on video files like most of the people on the fanedits subreddit are doing by saying people here are “hoarders”

People justifying leaking scans don’t care about preservation. They don’t care about more of these scans happening and continuing to happen. They only care about the video file that comes from them. I like releasing the things I scan publically if I can, but there are obvious cases where it can’t happen because of multiple factors that SeeNoEvil listed.

That Reddit and the people leaking downloads are just a bunch of losers who want to steal the credit and the effort that people here and on other forums like StarWarsTrilogy put into making things like this a reality for small dopamine hits seeing people click upvotes. If whoever scanned what they leaked got into serious legal trouble they wouldn’t care and continue stealing and uploading

lakamosque said:

“Video unavailable
This video contains content from Lasso Group, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds”
Guess I’m gonna have to use a VPN?

Sadly yes. The movie was blocked thanks to a company called Lasso Group so many countries outside the US will not be able to watch it.

https://youtu.be/iAaabmic2pw
YouTube Premiere will begin on July 13th at 3 PM EST. I suggest setting a reminder if you want to see it live!

https://youtu.be/octCLWQqf1A
A little trailer 😉

You could just do a color grade of the Web source

This project has been put on hold indefinitely. I have found a 16mm print of the movie I am scanning which is open matte and has the same benefits as the LaserDisc. Will give more details hopefully sometime soon

I was looking at the clips on YouTube and it looks like you did some very strange degraining in post and added a frozen grain filter on top. What was the reasoning for doing this? It looks very smeary.

There is going to be an official Blu-Ray release from Warner Archive that has new 4K transfers of the shorts sometime this year. Most prints of the Superman shorts are really bad duped 16mm prints or 8mm home movies

I would love to help out if you are still accepting donations. Also will you be giving out encodes for those that pitch in?

SeeNoEvil is set to scan a 35mm print of Robocop in 5K later this year so no need for that

Moviegoer said:

Project Back open if anyone is interested. Received the Film today 6 reels. Heavy stuff.

If you live in the US PLEASE send this to someone like https://twitter.com/kinekovideo. They use a 6.5K ScanStation and the quality is out of this world. The scanner in the UK suggested is also a good option if you live in the UK. I really advise against scanning with the Gugusse Roller or any of those homemade scanners as they do not do proper high dynamic range scans and are not stable for a feature film and might damage your print. Kineko Video has a very good reputation and will take care of the materials you send.

Jedi122 said:

Just so everyone knows, I am the person previously known as Bridger12. I got myself a new computer, and I completely forgot my log-in information, and the cookies didn’t save. So I had to start a different account, with a new username. Anyway, how is the work coming along, Venny? I feel like I really need to update Jerry soon.

Not to sound rude, but you really don’t need to update Jerry for me. I have his email and will give him updates when they are ready. If you want updates on the project I will post them here you don’t need to ask me. This project has shifted a lot since it initially started so it’s not moving as fast as it was before this is gonna take time (lots of time) and it’s not something I really intend to put all of my time into since I have work and college. When things are ready they will be ready the movie isn’t going anywhere

Ok so small update:
Because of something out of our control the BLT scans are no longer on Google Drive. We will find an alternative (possibly FTP or torrent) but for now, no downloads are available. I will keep everyone updated on when I can get them back up, but rest assured the files are safe on an LTO Tape and I have them backed up on my own hard drive so they will not be lost anytime soon.

chaoscharza said:

Venny said:

I’ve been getting a lot of PMs about people wanting access to the folder. If you didn’t already have access before from donating I’m not going to give access unless it’s someone working on the project directly. I will not be handing out downloads for many reasons so please don’t ask. If you have donated and can’t access the folder for some reason I will make sure to fix that, but please do not clutter my DMs with download requests if you haven’t contributed anything to the project

Personally, I DM’d because it was mentioned in your post from a week ago, but even then I noted I’d be able to wait until the public release.

That said, I might have misread your post. I found out about this when googling on a whim; wasn’t expecting to actually discover that someone was able to scan/restore a print!

Take your time, Venny. I can wait.

No worries I wasn’t talking about your in particular I had a lot of people PMing me. Just wanted to put a message out there for everyone to make sure people knew

I’ve been getting a lot of PMs about people wanting access to the folder. If you didn’t already have access before from donating I’m not going to give access unless it’s someone working on the project directly. I will not be handing out downloads for many reasons so please don’t ask. If you have donated and can’t access the folder for some reason I will make sure to fix that, but please do not clutter my DMs with download requests if you haven’t contributed anything to the project

Encode is up in the Drive folder. Audio is separate, but I left a “Readme” txt that explains how to mux the audio with the video for those that don’t know how. Anyone who wants to contribute syncing foreign dubs I’d be willing to add any to the folder

Small update:
There was an error with the ProRes where Reel 1 was absent and was instead swapped out with Reel 2 so the same Reel plays twice. It is being fixed. A fixed encode is ready tho and should be up VERY soon. Sorry for all the delays!

m00nman said:

Venny said:

We wanted to limit how many people can download the raw ProRes file in order to make sure the Google Drive Transfer Quota doesn’t get capped out so for now it will be on a person by person basis so there isn’t too much traffic. I will be hosting the encode on my own Google Drive in order to help minimize traffic.

Not sure if this trick still works, but if they create a shortcut in their own drive, it generally considers it a new file and won’t contribute to the quota.

This trick does work the issue is the Drive when it hits a transfer quota you can’t download anything else from the Drive and there are a bunch of other scans that are being stored there. I can make mirrors for the encode just fine, but making mirrors for the ProRes will be very tricky so best to make it request only. Better that way since not many people will want the ProRes anyway other than people working on the project.

PeteOfDawn said:

Venny said:

BIG UPDATE 8/24/22:

A full ProRes encode of the scan including Analog LaserDisc audio from Greg Z is ready for download for donors! File size is about 190 GB rendered at 4K and a lower bitrate (possibly Blu-Ray compatible encode) will also be uploaded within the next few days. If you want access DM me!

Special thanks to Quazza for rendering the raw image sequence as ProRes, and helping me encode the final video sync ProRes files. This project wouldn’t be possible without his help! And thank you to everyone who helped support this project through donations and contributing to the project in general. Seeing this movie scanned was such a pipedream and is now a reality. Although I suppose he would want to remain anonymous huge thanks to the owner of the print for lending it free of charge to be scanned. Without him I wouldn’t have even known this film had prints out in the wild in the first place and I wouldn’t have had such a wonderful opportunity preserving it.

The project is not over of course. I plan on doing a full on restoration of the film with possible director’s guidance and help from members of Kineko Video for a public release. I don’t plan on keeping this scan private and I believe it deserves to be seen by everyone. I do apologize to those that can’t watch this right now and I hope you get to see it soon! I am willing to answer any questions regarding the project and I have a Twitter account where I post constant updates, screenshots, and information about the scan and the film.

It looks like the new file as well as the previous sync were removed from the folder. Is there a reason as to why this was done?

We wanted to limit how many people can download the raw ProRes file in order to make sure the Google Drive Transfer Quota doesn’t get capped out so for now it will be on a person by person basis so there isn’t too much traffic. I will be hosting the encode on my own Google Drive in order to help minimize traffic.

BIG UPDATE 8/24/22:

A full ProRes encode of the scan including Analog LaserDisc audio from Greg Z is ready for download for donors! File size is about 190 GB rendered at 4K and a lower bitrate (possibly Blu-Ray compatible encode) will also be uploaded within the next few days. If you want access DM me!

Special thanks to Quazza for rendering the raw image sequence as ProRes, and helping me encode the final video sync ProRes files. This project wouldn’t be possible without his help! And thank you to everyone who helped support this project through donations and contributing to the project in general. Seeing this movie scanned was such a pipedream and is now a reality. Although I suppose he would want to remain anonymous huge thanks to the owner of the print for lending it free of charge to be scanned. Without him I wouldn’t have even known this film had prints out in the wild in the first place and I wouldn’t have had such a wonderful opportunity preserving it.

The project is not over of course. I plan on doing a full on restoration of the film with possible director’s guidance and help from members of Kineko Video for a public release. I don’t plan on keeping this scan private and I believe it deserves to be seen by everyone. I do apologize to those that can’t watch this right now and I hope you get to see it soon! I am willing to answer any questions regarding the project and I have a Twitter account where I post constant updates, screenshots, and information about the scan and the film.

https://youtu.be/oxX32LBMjGw

New LaserDisc audio sync and video sync will also be made.