You_Too

Matt_Stevens said:

Amazing film. If I may opine, I hate fake grain. Hate DNR. But I really do frown upon fake grain being added by fans to cover up DNR that was applied by a clueless studio. 

Just my two cents. If the Dutch release looks as natural as I here then it would likely be the source to go with. 

Who doesn't hate fake grain, but even though we'd add "fake" grain it would not truly be fake since it's taken from the grain heavy US BD and scaled to the frame size of the extended version. So it's just grain from another print of the same movie, used to make it look better after blurring the oversharpened edges. It won't look fake.

Also, the Dutch release is the international version, with the color timing we're all used to from VHS or whatever. So anybody who likes the international version with the old colors can just get their hands on that one.

The extended version has been restored to the original color timing and doesn't have dirt and scratches or crushed shadows/highlights, that's why it will be used as source and not the Dutch BD. The Dutch BD will be used to cut and synch our finished extended version to make an international cut with the original colors, since the international cut in the new package is the same horrible version as the US BD.

Kingherb said:

There seems to be some debate about which version is more accurate, from what i have read it seems the Dutch release has the more accurate colors but the print has some dirt or damage im not certain?

The way I got it, the Dutch BD is accurate to what it's always looked like on home video, but the new remaster is matched to the original prints.

Kingherb said:

Btw whoever suggested to do Neverending Story to Team Blu was Genius ;)

I did! LOL :D

Yep, the Japanese BD has just a little bit more grain "preserved", though I suspect that grain to be fake. When using such heavy DVNR on a film, how do you keep the grain at the same time? There's simply no way that grain can be real in my opinion. What do you guys think?

Either way doesn't matter though, since the movie will go through our little special treatment! That is reduction of "edge-enhancement", then sharpening the rest of the details to get a nice balance, then blurring it just a little to match the look of the other BDs and adding the grain from one of those releases to cover up all the DVNR.

Here are some early samples of a test I did with some screenshots a while back: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/54630

We might add just a little more blur before adding the grain though, since I think that might make it look even more natural.

EDIT:

Here's an additional thing some might find interesting. It's an article about the restoration done to the extended (German theatrical) version. After reading it, I just can't believe they were actually talking about using such heavy DVNR. It makes me feel as if those guys really did an amazing job and then some newbie came along and added a filter over the whole thing before sending it to the film company. Unbelievable.

How could I miss that? Thank you!

And Merry Christmas to everyone!

poita has a high quality 35mm scanner so it would probably be even better to contact him.

I'm not an expert, but I guess if this device would have a D65 light and the camera would be locked to a correct white point, maybe something good could come out of it. They don't state anything about the light though so I doubt it's something accurate.

Yeah, I can completely understand that some people want the colors to be "correct", even though the director chose something else.

I completely agree. The end text shouldn't have been changed. Other than that I really prefer the extended cut. The princess is a very mysterious character that we see way too little of in the theatrical cut. Actually, a while ago I read a bit about the making of the film and they even shot a scene in one of the cities where Conan and Subotai met the princess. It would be nice to see all those deleted scenes sometime. I found a few on youtube but not that one.

Now that's very interesting.

poita said:

I can tell you that the 35mm print is green-ish, as it was part of the look the brothers were going for, but nowhere near as green as the DVD.

I haven't seen the BD, so can't say. I have the HD-DVD at home, but haven't looked at that yet.

Take a look at this.

On mouse-over the pictures show the same color timing that was carried over to the BD.

I'm also really looking forward to see this one. Especially since I never saw The Matrix in the cinema.

Huge thanks to all the good people who donated, and to poita of course!

@Spaced Ranger: Great post! You do have some good points there, though I doubt it's got something to do with an attempt of expanding the color gamut, or moving D65 around.

I mean, these movies are first color timed to be viewed in digital cinemas, right? And digital cinemas use a wider color gamut than HDTV so if the teal, orange and green were there in the cinema it can't mean it's something they did for that reason.

And I agree with you that in FOTR they did it all wrong, especially with the shadow detail. When I color correct movies I never touch the black and white points unless really needed, and when these companies do, there's something that's not right.

I can only hope that PJ is not planning on doing the same change to TTT and ROTK when they eventually release them in 4K or whichever format will come next. I can even go as far as to say that if Tolkien himself saw how The Hobbit looked, he would not like it but if he saw the regraded FOTR...

In the documentaries on the bonus discs from the LOTR extended cut DVD boxes, they all explained how they tried to closely follow the books' description of colors and how everything should look. They sure have lost that respect for the author now.

Well the thing with these movies is that I think most of the adjustments might be done with curves, not hue/saturation/luminance. (They did this in FOTR though, since grey and blue was made cyan and then the luminance was dialed down a lot) Anyway, I'm not an expert but here's an example of using curves.

I take this Christmas fireplace photo from wikipedia:

First I reduce red and increase blue in the shadows up to the midtones. Then I increase green in all the picture, as well as reduce red and blue in the whites, just like they did with those films. Then some vibrance/saturation to make the colors "pop" a bit more.

Tadaa! Modern Hollywood film color timing.

EDIT:

I'll add something about Hobbiton too.

Take this natural photo of the shooting location:

In The Hobbit AUJ, when color timing the scenes in Hobbiton it looks like they changed the curves a bit to make highlights less bright and also added some green tint, resulting in something like this:

When you have nothing to compare to, and watch the movie like that you might not even notice the green tint.

In FOTR they used HSL to make cyan/blue dark and boost the rest and the result was a bit like this:

Bottom line: There's many aspects to color timing and of course changing fire to orange doesn't automatically change skies to cyan, but they just like doing it that way these days.

@Feallan: The ones in the shops seem to be sourced directly from the original negative without any color timing done. All old releases has been color timed like in the theatres which is how most people are used to see them, so we brought back the original look to them.

The Dracula screenshots look correct, and just need a bit of reduction to the edge enhancement and maybe some slight balance to reduce the pink tint.

guiser said:

The bottom one looks like a badly done HDR image to me.  The shadows look way over-brightened.  Is this really what the blu-rays look like?

Yeah the blu-ray looks like this. But the reason you think the shadows are overbrightened is because you have the shot from the trailer to compare with, which is darker. When simply watching the blu-ray you'll think it looks nicely balanced.

The next morning was a director's morning as dim and sick as could be dreamed: cyan sky and green clouds, ...

:D

Turisu said:

That's interesting about movies being delivered on HDDs. I had no idea that's how things were done nowadays. :)

I didn't know anything about it either until I read an article in my local newspaper about a month ago.

You see, I live in a small city in Sweden where we've had the same cinema running since 1940! It was rebuilt in 1989 though so since then everything has been very modern and pretty top notch, or so I thought. Next year, they will open a new cinema in my city with Sweden's largest projection screen and all new equipment. This means they will close the old one.

So the newspaper had interviewed a projectionist who had worked many years at our cinema and there were some photos of him with the harddrives, and he said that it's much easier than having to change film reels!

I guess the reason for the harddrives is also that digital cinema has a different colorspace than blu-rays and maybe 4K resolution too? Wouldn't fit on a disc.

I just checked all trailers for The Desolation Of Smaug and took samples of the whites in Photoshop. All of them had the green tint already.

But I gotta add that I also checked both trailers for An Unexpected Journey and it was only the first one, the "teaser", that didn't have the green tint. The second one has it.

@Matt_Stevens: The worst thing about forums like that (yes there are more where people fight over the same thing) is that not only does people deny the green tint even though we have technical proof that is very understandable, but they also deny the horrible changes to the color timing done to FOTR. The most obvious one for me is that they made a lot of neutral grey colors into dark cyan/blue, which also changed the balance since those colors weren't supposed to be so dark.

Turisu said:

You_Too said:

...That's also probably why I didn't notice it in the cinema.

I'd love to know whether the green tint was present in the theatrical prints or just added for the BD. If the green was there in the cinema then that's the way I want it on BD. I don't care which looks better.

Everyone is gonna have to pay REALLY close attention to the colour timing on Desolation Of Smaug. ;)

You know, it's kinda funny that you say "prints". :)

Are there actually any theaters that screened The Hobbit on 35mm? Would be interesting to know! The cinema in my city get all their movies delivered on harddrives.

And I actually did look a lot at the colors when I watched it in the cinema. I'm almost sure it was identical to the blu-ray because the thing I remember the most is how dim the highlights were, and that's typical when they're a bit more green because they become warmer and less bright. But in the cinema I didn't know if this was because of a tint or if they were really white and just dim, it's tough when you can't compare with anything, or just take a color sample in photoshop!

EDIT: As for The Desolation Of Smaug, I'm gonna check the trailers for that one and see if they're as clean as the ones for the first film were.

@ultrakaiju: Actually, sitting through The Hobbit was easier than you'd think. Right away from the start your eyes will adjust to what you'll think is white and your brain is fooled. Even when I grabbed that screenshot it was only first when I compared it to the trailer that I really saw the difference. That's also probably why I didn't notice it in the cinema.

With FOTR it was another thing though since it was applied a bit heavier.

I know kk650 showed that there was a green tint even in The Hobbit.

I checked it out and he was right, all the way from the MGM logo until the credits start there is a green tint. Even the hardcoded english subs aren't white!

This made me interested in seeing whether or not the theatrical trailer looked like that. Here's the same shot (different takes though, obviously) taken from the trailer vs the blu-ray.

Seems Peter Jackson has started to love cyan skies and green clouds.

ilovewaterslides said:

I've tried to color correct the whole movie to match this purple/pink tint (that might be the original and theatrical one.)

Actually, I suspect that the VHS screeners predates the theatrical prints, and that it's the reason why it's so pink overall, that they hadn't finished the color timing. But only a 35mm print would prove this to be true or wrong.

Believe me poita, if I had the money I'd donate it.

@SilverWook: Interesting, but what worries me is the release date saying 2000-10-01. That would mean it could be just a downscale of the official DVD.

AntcuFaalb said:

You_Too said:

I do have some softwares that filter out lots of things that can be harmful or sneaky

PeerBlock?

Off topic! :D

Yeah, one is Peerblock.

I do have some softwares that filter out lots of things that can be harmful or sneaky, and sometimes normal users can be filtered out and maybe that's what's happening. Either way, one of the downloaders have 49.5% now, and as soon as some have 100% I bet the seeding will work better.

So just wait a while and you'll get the files. I might go offline every now and then, especially at night but will seed when I can. Right now it's seeding at full speed.