So looks like the fan fix Mild-Mannered Edition is still the best way to watch these.
So far, but based on my attempts at regrading and regraining screenshots from the Blu-ray, I think that it might be possible to make an even better fanfix based on the Blu-ray.
I don’t get it, how can you truly add grain to something that has been degrained? I always thought once the grain has been scrubbed it’s done.
Film grain overlays, or video effects plugins like Boris FX Sapphire’s S_UltraGrain (which is in some ways more realistic-looking than grain overlays). It’s not really adding the removed grain back (which is impossible), but adding new grain in. In some cases, it can closely approximate the appearance of what the footage would have looked like if the grain had never been removed.
I’d also probably want to match the colors of the various sources better but I’d have to learn how to do that.
Dr. Dre’s Color Matching Tool* works very well.
I don’t have any info but will post again once I’ve watched them all. Early reviews seem to be the expected level of over-compression and too much noise reduction. I don’t know how complete they are (proper intros/outros, etc).
I’ve already had a few people ask whether I’ll incorporate these into a release. I don’t really have any plans to but who knows. Presumably I’d use them as a base and patch them with I guess upscaled versions of other films. It gets to the point where I’d need to do more work to make the different sources match better and I’d probably want someone with actual expertise to help out.
This review is one of the most interesting, since it compares screenshots of footage of the unrestored film scans (as shown in a special feature on the Blu-ray) with screenshots of the shorts themselves as they appear on the Blu-ray:
https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/115440/maxfleischerssuperman.html
It appears that not only Did Warner Brothers remove way too much grain, but they also messed with the colors.
As an experiment, I used Dr. Dre’s Color Matching Tool to color match the screenshots of the “restored” shorts on Blu-ray to the unrestored footage from the special features, then added some film grain in a photo editing program.
Unrestored:
Blu-ray:
Blu-ray color matched to unrestored footage with added film grain:
Unrestored:
Blu-ray:
Blu-ray color matched to unrestored footage with added film grain:
I think that these results look quite promising, and I just threw this together in a few minutes. With some grainier film grain overlay footage that approximates the grain level of the unrestored footage, I think that it would be possible to use the shorts on Blu-ray to make an excellent approximation of what a high-quality restoration with proper colors and grain should look like.
It might be necessary to color-match scene by scene, although I’m not 100% certain. I doubt that there’s a sample of unrestored footage of every scene (or even every short) on the Blu-ray special features, but maybe the DC Universe versions could be used as a color-matching source for the rest.
Is there an easy way to crop and/or resize two versions of a frame to perfectly align with the other (so they can used in the Color matching Tool)?
Obviously I missed my Christmas release window, that’s because the DVD came a little late (sometime around mid-January), and I got caught up with other projects. I recently found the time the last few weeks, I pieced together the edit on it’s own, but then a different idea occurred to me, and I might end up combining it with Infinity War.
I’m probably going to do a combined 2-in-one edit where past Thanos doesn’t show up after Thor kills the present version , and when the world is restored by Hulk, there is no final showdown.
Is there any chance of you doing both versions? They both sound interesting.
Deep Breath is a bore already, and it certainly doesn’t need 76 minutes, so you could easily cannibalize bits of it to sprinkle throughout Series 7 to establish that she’s still living in Victorian London. The Crimson Horror would flow very naturally with that, being the equivalent of modern day stories for other companions. It’d be nice if we could show or at least imply her family living in that time (and remove them from Time of the Doctor, of course). The Bells of Saint John could be moved to right before Name of the Doctor, and Danny Pink could be introduced there. Nightmare in Silver could be edited so that the children she’s babysitting are from Victorian Times, with a line to address their modern wardrobe (and Clara, for that matter). Then by Day of the Doctor she’s all settled in modern times in the hopes of winning the heart of Danny Pink, and Series 8, minus the bits moved to 7, plays out the same as in canon.
At first, I was thinking that making Victorian Clara the only Clara wouldn’t work because of some of the knowledge and familiarity that modern Clara routinely shows toward the 21st century, but then I came up with an idea. Maybe the part in “The Bells of St. John” where Clara gets uploaded into the Internet, then downloaded back again (resulting in her developing computer skills) could also be used to explain why she has the knowledge of the modern era that she has.
You can try out this avisynth plugin, I never tried it so I don’t know how it does. It doesn’t have the warping feature though, so if one of your images has some type of distortion it will not work.
It looks promising, but the few attempts that I’ve made at using Avisynth have been failures. I’ve never been able to successfully figure out how to use it.
You have to use the auto align feature in photoshop, it will auto resize and warp one image to match the other.
I don’t have Photoshop. Are there any freeware solutions? Is there possibly a way to do it with GIMP?
Is there an easy way (ideally through the use of automatic software) to align two versions of the same frame that have different framing and/or sizes in preparation for running them through Dr. Dre’s color matching tool?
I’ve been trying to manually crop and resize some versions of such frames to match different versions, but I can never get them to quite line up.
Here are two images that I am having difficulty with:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190704065018/https://images2.imgbox.com/ab/a2/u6rvG6i6_o.jpg
https://web.archive.org/web/20190704065052/https://images2.imgbox.com/96/84/THMFoysZ_o.jpg
I’m trying to resize and crop the former one to match the latter.
Emanswfan, did you create any LUTs of your Technicolor emulation? And if so, would you be willing to share them?
KK650, would you be interested in regrading “Thor: The Dark World”? It has a greenish/yellowish tint and is overall very desaturated and dull color-wise, which makes it feel less “alive”, for lack of a better term. I think that a regrade to remove the tint and maybe also bring it somewhat closer to the more colorful look of the first Thor movie would greatly help it.
While I like the idea behind this edit, the execution didn’t work for me. Several edits were choppy and obvious, and certain things made no sense. The explosion at the top of the tower happens out of nowhere now, with no explanation for what it is or why it happened. Also, the shot in which Steve runs to Diana as she is lying on the ground is confusing, as we don’t know how she got there. Diana also seems almost completely passive in the final sequence of events, which doesn’t seem quite right. Unfortunately, it needs much more experimentation and fine-tuning before it could work.
On another subject, the version of “Wonder Woman” that I’d most like to see is as follows:
It would be a “Golden Age Edition”, set entirely during WWI, with no modern-day sequences and no events that wouldn’t happen in a truly standalone version separate from a larger universe. Most notably, Steve wouldn’t die. Steve’s death is actually my biggest pet peeve with the movie - killing him off in an origin story is, in my eyes, like killing off Lois Lane in the first Superman movie (without having Superman go back in time and save her, that is). I’d like to see the early scene of Steve stealing a plane and bombing the gas factory tinted and darkened (to turn it into a day-for-night sequence) and edited into the final scene. My idea is that when he asks if the gas is flammable, he then steals the plane and bombs either the factory or the large plane stocked with gas, then flies away from the explosion.
The scene in which Steve and Diana stay the night together in a house would be removed. It felt very out of place to me.
If possible, it would be implied that the version of Greek mythology that the Amazons believe is, at best, spotty, and that the “gods” may not be what they seem. All references to Zeus being the creator of humans would preferably be removed. If at all possible, Ares would be cut out of the movie. If that wouldn’t be possible, then his scene would be fine-tuned to remove some of the worst lines and trim a bit of the CGI excess. It would also have to be re-edited so that Diana’s reaction to Steve’s death is no longer included. Preferably, it would be turned into less of a physical battle, and more of a temptation/resistance battle of wills.
The overuse of slow-motion would be remedied by speeding up certain shots to regular speed. The movie would be color-graded to remove the blue tint and give it an overall more colorful look (preferably something reminiscent of three-strip Technicolor). Also, this is the least essential change, but it would also possibly be re-scored with some more classic and less Zimmerish.
davextreme said:
I’m aware I’m losing some quality over Blu-Ray but the tradeoffs, for me, are tremendously worth it.
I see. For me, it’s the opposite. There’s something about physical items that I can hold in my hand or put on a shelf that, with few exceptions, I like much more than digital items.
By the way, I’ve updated an article that I wrote about Superman’s creation and proliferation to include your Mild Mannered Edition versions of the Fleischer cartoons under the Superman Resources section of the page. I’m not sure about the etiquette of posting links to such things in the forum, so I sent you a private message with the link.
Yes. Same files.
Thank you for clarifying.
No. I don’t even own a DVD player anymore. Nor Blu-Ray. 😃
Out of curiosity, why not?
Oh, and the complete set is up on MySpleen now.
Is the version that you have uploaded on Tumblr the same as the one that you have on MySpleen? It is as complete?
Also, do you have any plans to release a DVD version with menus?
