WXM

Was it kind of the fault of DResolve that you lost the file?

JJPotter said:

The new intro includes the Dudley Redemption scene with green screens replaced. To accomplish this, I used Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI to upscale the footage to 4K and to smooth out some of the pixelation from the low res footage. This allowed for better masking of the green screen in some parts as well as allowing me to crop some of the green screen areas out completely.

Good stuff, I say. 😃 Great work on “replacing” the green screen. My only comment would be that it (the Dudley Redemption scene) seems just a tad on the pink side (a switch from the greenish when we first see them all walking to the car); most noteably Harry’s face for the closer (first?) shot seems too toward magenta. Putting that mention aside, big thumbs up to your work on this!

I know that for some the intro will be way too long and the “flow” of it will have been broken by this addition. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, including whether to like this change or not.

The point of a fan edit project is for the editor to use whatever resources that are out there to create your vision of the film as it calls to you, make all the alterations that call to you. This opening is obviously where your heart and mind currently are with it, and it all feels well produced and seamless, so with those two check-boxes ticked, yeah, go for it, do this, it’s cool! Indeed, if people want an opening more like the theatrical or your previous version then those are already there.

I also added sound effects when Hermione does the Obliviate spell as her pictures are removed from the frames. Some minor color tweaking was also done.

Nicely done!

Intricate but very cool and smart! 😃

This might sound like a noob question, but since you have this down I want to see what you use… What is your preferred way to eliminate the double frames? And I assume that the quality differs between the two dupe frames, right? Is it always that the first (or always the second) of the dupes is poorer quality so you know which of the pair to drop?..or are they just of equal quality?

A little warning to everyone: don’t watch it streaming there on dropbox, or at least if you see big compression artifacts know that it’s NOT in the file. For me at least, downloading was the way to go.

Black Alert, really nice job. The effects shots look great! It’s hard to believe you got those out of NTSC!

CaveDoctor said:
It’s a misconception that they were lost.
If you look on youtube, there are several rerenders of visual FX from the series that somehow turned up despite being lost.
Some things had to be fixed, but the scenes weren’t lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKj-N5j0SBY&t=1s
The live action footage is upscaled to 4k for this one, but the VFX are all rerendered from original files, with replaced texture maps.

Wow, really cool (and a relief to hear)! Thanks for that info/link 😃

b5historyman said:

Since a friend of mine has a lot of actual original CGI assets he is currently working on a project reworking them to 1080p

I heard (on sci-fi-meshes I think) the originals were all lost by the studio that demanded to be the sole custodian of them. Were they found, or are there other things to the story…? Are his the assets of the old LightWave meshes/scenes or…?

Because those same-ish original LightWave scenes, it would almost be hilarious watching a modern system re-render out the same even at mere 1920x1080; I’d imagine shots that took a room of Amigas a week to render in the early '90s would be poured out in a mere minute or two on a (buffed-out) modern workstation. (Yeah, my sig gives away why I’m in this territory here 😃)

Cool your re-do gave you results you’re happier with. I love it when that happens with projects (instead of the redo work being in the end nothing but pure, grind redo).

“…then it’s finished. Yay!”

Double yay!

The (recent) 4k UHD of Mad Max by Kino Lorber might well have what you’re looking for 😃

dym2005 said:

Glad you like it!

Those cut slips are annoying. I hadn’t really considered trying to do anything about them as there are so many in each episode. Perhaps I’ll investigate when I do episode 7 later in the week.

Yeah, if there’s no automated way to do it with your software then you’d surely have to let that (little thing) go as you’re talking, what, well over a thousand instances over the whole series? 😮 For a restoration I did I had to smooth out only 40 or so of those and it was such a drag…but I noticed that another version released officially of the same film had those cut slips corrected beginning to end for the whole movie, and I figured they did not have someone go through and manually do that, had some automated way to do it, but if so perhaps it’s in software only big studios have? Or maybe they did just have someone go through every splice spot for their digital restoration? (Maybe some member reading who has actual knowledge on this subject will chime in)

Anyway, backing away from that tiny thing, once again great job. I still can’t believe I never heard of this show before seeing these two threads on OT here. What a mini trip it’s going to be to watch this (so far I love the red-head dude 😃).

dym2005 said:

Episode 6 comparison video now on my YouTube channel 😃

Personally I think it’s looking pretty sweet, but that’s just my opinion.

Not just your opinion; it’s indeed looking fantastic! 😃 (Do you happen to have software that can easily fix the cut-slips, as in correcting how the first frame after each cut is shifted a little [due I think to the cement splicing of the celluloid]? If not, no biggie.)

dym2005 said:

I’ll shut up now.

Don’t shut up! People may not be responding much, but I suspect a lot of people are reading, are interested 😃

CamSMurph said:

Here’s a quick comparison of the visual changes made to Parts 1 and 2
Password: lumos

The color and general effect of your brightness and contrast are awesome! 😃 But in the final shot of your three examples in that video (from March 20) — the shot with Ron and Hermione, Harry — you can see (especially with the ground) that you are losing a good amount of detail due to brightness/contrast blow out. Maybe play with the settings on that one to see if you can both keep your overall look and more of the detail? (Or maybe you’ve tweaked that already since that post? It is a few months old now.)

That’s just a quick thought for kicks. Good stuff, CamSMurph, keep up the good work! 😃

I have more a general observation. I’m somewhat reluctant to say it because you’ve surely put a lot of work in to almost all these shots, but I’ll go ahead since you say you want feedback. In my humble opinion — and maybe it’s just me, maybe no one else thinks so — there’s just a little too much packed into this opening of the movie, are too many shots, almost as if you’re making sure to include every possible thing that could fit, but I think this is at the sacrifice of an easier flow for the audience.

E.g., the dam scene (from 2:13:17 to 3:12:13) has 31 shots. That’s a lot for under one minute, but it’s not a huge sin in and of itself. Still, removing three or four of the more redundant/repeating ones (such as toward the end of the scene, with the multiple views of the same thing: the water crashing over and cars flying) might help ease audience fatigue perhaps? I mean, this whole opening of the movie is 17 minutes long, and contains a lot, so everything you have should not fall in the category of being redundant…because all that running time here and we haven’t even hit the main movie yet. (Another little example spot in this regard that pinged me was at 12:29:04, where you have two shots of the ship flying in the high atmosphere. It seems that one would be just fine.)

But, again, maybe this all is just me. If someone wants to chime in and disagree, totally cool by me 😃

I really hope I’m not dis-spiriting you. This is really neat work! 😃 Just needs a little smidge of tightening is my thought, my two cents. Shutting up now 😃

erichf69 said:

WXM, thank you for the kind words and recommendations. I am taking a week off from the project so I can get some fresh eyes on it. I will definitely tinker with some of the values you mentioned. That being said I will probably never be 100% satisfied with it (I am somewhat a perfectionist to a fault).

What you are doing is an extremely challenging thing to even attempt (as I surely don’t need to tell you 😃) and you’ve achieved a miracle so far. Hopefully my little, amateur “fresher eyes” suggestions will be a little bit fruitful and not just have you running in circles with settings-toying for an hour or two only to land more or less back where you started.

However, I’ve come up with an even better idea since that post!: Go to Lucasfilm and tell them you need the original camera negative for this shot. When they give it to you, you get it scanned in 8k (be sure to tell them to turn the color on!) and that way you don’t have to worry about the colorizing anymore. On top of the color being good, the grain and resolution should at a better starting point than what you’ve been using. Yay, so simple, eh?! Bet you’re kicking yourself for not thinking of it! 😃 (that idea is j/k of course 😄)

erichf69, I feel you on the frame-by-frame photoshop work. That stuff can be so brutal, feels like it’s never going to end. I really dread that stuff, but sometimes that’s the only…😦

If I might offer a slight suggestion on your work… Your colorization is great, but it currently looks just a tiny smidge too much like colorized footage in your mp4 composite there. With the background being a largely gray (with no spots of really saturated color) I recommend you try reducing the saturation a tiny wee bit on the colorized layer. Also, try lowering the brightness just a tad (or increasing contrast a tiny bit?) as the shadowing for the foreground material looks a smidge too bright. Again, just tiny adjustments of those, to get a closer overall feel-match for your final composite.

With the hardest (and very impressive) work behind you, I think toying around with these — testing via small increments — could have you hit an even closer sweet spot in your composite than you have now, accomplished with only minutes of adjustments (instead of hours of work) 😃

I just watched this. If anyone has the slightest bit of interest, highly recommended on both the technical side for tonik’s masterful work as well as being just a solid 25-minute piece of entertainment from Disney. (<- The short is a tad more down to earth/heavy than being only aimed at 5-year-olds, for whatever that’s worth to you)

This was tackled pretty thoroughly already many years ago, and more recently even went from DVD resolution to HD via an overhaul. Here’s the latest thread…
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/NEVER-SAY-McCLORY-AGAIN-HD-REMASTER-Released/id/59789

An older one…
https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Never-Say-Never-Again-Eon-Edition-unfinished-project/id/14499/page/1

FanEdit.org listing…
https://ifdb.fanedit.org/james-bond-007-never-say-mcclory-again/

MrColeslaw said:

That looks fantastic, thank you so much for giving it a go! Are you using add-on Virtualdub filters, or just what’s built in? Been years since I’ve touched VD, so my memory is fuzzy on what’s included.

Definitely a number of add-ons: Gradation curves, Color Mill, Color Balance, Multi-adjust, plus a couple of built-in ones. I’m not really saying “you should go my route!” It could well be that using all those things at once on your master will give you artifacts. I was just wanting to give a try and see what I could do for kicks, just kinda fun for me. 😃

The background art being different, I wonder why they went through the extra trouble? I don’t recall a case like this before for a number of shots (that have nothing to do with censorship).

I’m actually not remotely an authority on this show/movie, have never seen any of it. I just wanted to try the matching with VDub…so I have no sources or anything to offer, sorry. Hopefully someone chimes in offering your ideal materials.

MrColeslaw said:

does anyone know of the best software for color grading?

Well, I’m just a simple feller who likes using VirtualDub for many things. 😃 It’s surely not the best there is for color correction, but fwiw here’s the result of my messing around (with a just screen grab – hence the noise and blockiness – of your “home video colors” frame on screenshotcomparison).

Did you notice that the trees are very different between your trailer and the home video snapshots?

I still have yet to try this tool. A part of me likes succeeding at manually matching things. (I accomplished a seamless match across two pieces of mismatched footage just earlier today! So satisfying!) But I’m surely wasting time with those cases by not just using this tool.

One day I’ll hit a brick wall or 'll get fed up or something, and will finally…

UPDATE: I spent the last half hour writing and editing this post, and see you just cancelled. Well, I’m still going to post what’s below anyway after spending that bit o’ time 😃

darksteel1335 said:

…approx £150 shipping to Australia…

… If anyone can recommend a scanner in Melbourne, Australia that would be appreciated so that it keeps costs lower

Assuming the listing you’re talking about it the same one I just looked up…

That seller is in the UK, and that region has some world-class scanning facilities I believe. E.g., Arrow is in the UK. So, ponder this longish shot: maybe the seller drives by Arrow on his/her way to work each day and if so then maybe he/she would be open to just dropping it off? I mean, shipping a full 35mm print is a pain in the ass, so if the longshot happens to be so, he/she might well much prefer just dropping the thing off at a scanner if in their area rather than deal with packing, shipping, tracking the thing across the globe, would maybe just charge you £5 for petrol. 😃

So, to reword it: check out the great scanners in the UK, then pass those addresses to the seller with querying if a scanner just happens to be in their area, and if so would they be willing to just drop the print off. After the scan, you’d be dealing with the shipping person at Arrow (or whoever) who of course has vast experience shipping prints around the world, which might be better in some ways than having the seller ship it to you.

Of course if Melbourne happens to have a great scanning facility (that you can just drive the print to personally) then groovy. It’s just that when I saw the seller is in the UK it clicked in my head they do some great scanning there in more than one place IIRC. (Melbourne… Since that’s your city, can’t you just do a local look up, make a few phone calls yourself? You wouldn’t even need to use long-distance minutes 😃)

Hopefully a user or two here who has checked into scanning in the UK will chime in here. I have no experience with this, am just going off of reading these forums over the years.

Hi!

This sounds cool. 😃 What software(s) are you using for these phases if I might ask?

To get back on this thread’s topic…

44rh1n, your Extended Edition Color Restoration here, are you thinking about maybe using bits of the new 4k — ala maybe "average"ing or "median"ing — to help the shots you couldn’t get to your satisfaction, or just use them as inspiration, or are you just going to leave it as is (or some other option)?

I’ll put this last one from my looking around, one that puzzles me most. I don’t know if these are real mountains or purely effects, but regardless it’s strange how the 4k frame is without as much detail…

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=5240&d2=15006&s1=48928&s2=156526&x=665&y=172&i=16&a=2&go=1&l=1

I don’t suppose anyone knows if those are real mountains — is real footage that would’ve been scanned at 4k as claimed — or just pure effects/CG?

To be balanced, here’s a bit of detail that shows up nicely/better in the 4k, proving that what I posted above is not a blanket issue for the set

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=3&x=35&y=208&d1=5240&d2=15006&s1=48925&s2=156523&l=1&i=13&go=1