kk650

Guys, I really need your thoughts on the quandary which i've found myself in with regards to regrading and releasing Star Wars this week.

As far as I can remember nobody in this thread has mentioned anything relating to the brightness of my current settings for Star Wars. The thing is, the more I watch certain scenes with my current settings, like the Battle of Yavin, the more I am convinced that I have really underestimated how bright this film is meant to be. Certain shots during that battle just don't look right to me, they look too dark and underexposed.

Looking back at the frames I have been provided with, it makes me even more convinced that the brightness of my current settings is too low, the frames are much brighter, especially leia in the prison cell when luke comes to free her. When I correct the brightness of those shots during the Battle of Yavin to make the exposure look more 'correct', my concern is that the blacks in the film are becoming too bright. I can't increase the contrast to bring the blacks back down because the film starts to look digital again like the blu-ray rather than filmic like I want it to look.

What I am wondering is whether with Star Wars the black were always meant to be brighter than what one would normally expect in a modern film. I started reading up about the brightness of Star Wars and was very interested to discover on the Save Star Wars website that there has always been debate about how bright the binary sunset scene is meant to be, with the majority believing that the scene was much brighter theatrically than it was in the DVDs and Blu-rays. This also seems to support the idea that i've underestimated how bright this film is meant to be. Also the photos from the senator screening seem to be very bright as well but of course they are not all that reliable because the camera settings could be messing with the brightness and not capturing it accurately.

Below are three clips using the retro settings, one from when luke finds leia in the cell, one from when luke is having dinner with his aunt and uncle and the binary sunset scene and the final clip from the first couple of minutes of the Battle of Yavin. Each clip has two versions with different image dynamics/brightness but same colours, the brighter version and the normal version that matches the brightness of the screencaps above.

Please check these three clips below and let me know which brightness setting you prefer between brighter and normal, which seems more 'correct' to you:

-

Luke rescues Leia from prison cell clip - brighter setting:

https://mega.co.nz/#!GgZhXSbK!TYatK-xKrVNkV9Y-Yzzy7RU26-cpsI-ymN5kDjJJrHc

-

Luke rescues Leia from prison cell clip - normal setting:

https://mega.co.nz/#!ykxTHabY!FFvbXibe5pITjM9dHgrQwGVIe9R_yJhBjkd6NEUptNU

-

Dinner with Aunt and Uncle and binary sunset clip - brighter setting:

https://mega.co.nz/#!bs4VBaAQ!pPMncHvHD_nLFH6ZrBGAKuG7afJ80VBof7zqOhj_YWg

-

Dinner with Aunt and Uncle and binary sunset clip - normal setting:

https://mega.co.nz/#!fppj2QKT!x4Yb9aLwQl2iRG7KbrC4lLD0sPN4M-MedITjRqfBVnM

-

Battle of Yavin pt1 - brighter settings:

https://mega.co.nz/#!a1gCFSyI!Hs35Xh40WbH11QQbTBFw5tSow6vntiZ-nKezUocoi3s

-

Battle of Yavin pt 1 - normal settings:

https://mega.co.nz/#!a5JHHCoY!Omj5l24poWlOfKdcMcFKGtfrjhAw4zWM1LnjM_Q7d2A

I've been on myspleen and I can only see the Star Wars 97'SE theatrical track, which i've already very kindly been provided with by CapableMetal. Still waiting on the other two though. :(

PDB said:

TServo2049 said:

About Aliens: I've never seen Aliens in 35mm, but every 80s LPP print I've seen projected as of late (granted, most of them at the same theater, the Castro in San Francisco) seem to have (Caucasian) skin tones that are pale peach, maybe some muted orange or yellow in them. Skin tones don't usually seem to have too much red/pink in them. Also, fire and propane explosions and pyrotechnics often look very yellow, not much orange.

My question is: Anybody who's seen an original print of Aliens, does that sound at all accurate?

 Most of the vintage 80s 35mm films I've seen at the AFI are slightly yellow/golden in hue.

I've seen Aliens on 35mm in the 2000s and a DCP of it last year. The DCP looked like the Blu-ray (had all the fixes) without the all-encompassing green. The green was there just less. The 35mm was long enough ago that I'm not sure of the exact colors but I did a little research and found these frames from a cutter on ebay:

I don't know if they are from the movie or a trailer and don't know how they were scanned so the colors and saturation might be off. Otherwise, if they can be trusted, they seem like half way between the DVD and LD. Colors less saturated then the LD and more saturated then the DVD. It has the blue and green highlights that the LD has but that were muted in the DVD. Skin tones are warmer then the DVD but not the extreme of the LD. 

Edit: I was going through youtube and it does look like it comes from a trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSQmYUaIyE

Fleshtones are all very nice and orange in those 35mm shots of Aliens, I think you want to try to make sure you're getting those just right, I can see a little green in those fleshtones as well so you've got leeway to lean in that direction if you want, i'd personally avoid leaning towards the reds though in terms of fleshtones, the characters looking permanently sunburnt is not a good look IMHO. 

Lights look nice and yellow as well, could probably use a little more red though to warm them up a bit more, at least for my taste.

I really like how the colours of those 35mm prints look! If you get the fleshtones and lightsources looking like those in the Aliens 35mm prints, you'll definately be onto something great here IMHO.

kaosjm said:

I was able to get a hold of this and am curious if this still requires the +8950 delay for the 2013 US bluray or will it mux just fine as quoted above "It will work with any remastered version of the new Blu-ray released worldwide [2012-2013 releases]."

Thank you!!

 Are you talking about the mono preservation or the 16gb terminator release?

If you're talking about the mono track, I have no idea though i'd imagine that it'd sync to the blu-ray with no delay required.

If you're talking about the 16gb terminator release, all the audio tracks are already synced to the video so no delays need to be added.

TAP said:

kk650 said:

TAP said:

I don't suppose this torrent exists any more does it?

I've just gotten into tracking down fixed versions of my favorite films, but it looks like I'm a few years too late.

Search for 'regraded terminator' on tehparadox and you should be able to get it there. I recommend the 16gb version.

 Does it require an invite like Myspleen?

I recently joined there, but it seems unlikely anyone will be sending an invite my way.

No need for a myspleen invite. Just download jdownloader and download the .dlc file using the link under the 1fichier heading in the kk650 terminator 16gb release thread. Open the .dlc file with jdownloader and the parts should be added to the program, then highlights the parts, right click, then select 'download selected files'. It should ask you to agree to the 1fichier conditions. Agree and it should start downloading the parts. When they've finished downloading, extract the file with winrar.

Those scans don't look good to me personally, everything is far too red, fleshtones are far too red, all the other colours have been adversely affected, there's no balance to the colours at all. Not an appealing look, for me at least.

I doubt that's how it looked in the cinemas, more likely that 35mm print is suffering from severe red fade IMHO.

jimjimmyjones85 said:

Stamper said:

SPORV bring on your MM2 regrade! Can't wait to see it!

 Agreed SPORV ! Bring it on !

Andrea's got a lot of things on his plate right now so you could be waiting a long time.

A suggestion though, why not give it a shot yourself? That goes for Stamper as well.

Flexicon9 said:

Once again, this project turned out spectacular... highly recommended to anyone who loves The Road Warrior (Mad Max 2).  Just do yourself a favor and get it.  Thanks kk650 for another bitchin' flick in 16gigs.  This one looks and sounds stunning!

 Thanks Flexicon, I'm very glad you're enjoying this! :D

Just letting those interested know that i'll be releasing a regraded release of The Abyss with the blanket green/teal tint removed tomorrow on tehparadox.

I used the high quality theatrical cut hdtv transport stream that's cropped up recently, the one shown in the comparison of the post above as the source.

I must say that I find the colour grading of the laserdisc and those 35mm shots pretty unusual to say the least, especially the fleshtones, looks like a completely different film to the Alien i've seen.

Definately Very interested in checking this out when you release this though PDB, it'll be like watching Alien again for the very first time. :)

ElDonante said:

I haven't had a chance to read through this entire thread just yet, just wondering if anyone's taken on doing a preservation of The Matrix.  I see the disc on the list and I had been happy with it's home release audio, but this is a movie that had its color changed somewhere between the theatrical release and it's home video HD release.  Some horrible green filters were added.  Having gone to the theater quite a few times to see The Matrix, I vividly remember the colors being more red/blue shifted than what was on the HD-DVD and Blu-ray.  My copy on LD looks closer to what I remember in the theater, but a 2.39:1 movie on LD leaves lots of detail out.  There's also a TV version of the movie in HD that looks close, but with a bit of DNR -- that one is not matted to 2.39:1 either.  Would be pretty cool to attempt a version that combines the Cinema DTS audio with a color corrected HD version of the film.  Any other details on the original color scheme?

I have actually released a regraded version of The Matrix that removes the blanket green tint on the blu-ray, bringing back the reds and blues and reduces the over the top contrast of the blu-ray. The 16gb version also includes the cinema DTS. You should check it out.

You can find it on tehparadox, search for 'regraded the matrix 16gb' and it should pop up.

TAP said:

I don't suppose this torrent exists any more does it?

I've just gotten into tracking down fixed versions of my favorite films, but it looks like I'm a few years too late.

Search for 'regraded terminator' on tehparadox and you should be able to get it there. I recommend the 16gb version.

hairy_hen said:

The DVD and Bluray versions of ESB and RotJ are essentially the same as the 1997 mixes much of the time.  They just have additional edits and changes piled on top of them whenever they felt like adding something to the later versions of the movies.  There are some additional surround effects in some places that the 1997 versions didn't have, as well as being in a 6.1 format (or 5.1 EX) instead of the standard 5.1 from '97.  But in all unedited sections, they seem to be virtually identical.

There isn't a lossless source for the straight-up '97 versions, but the Cinema DTS does sound rather good.  It would be easiest to just use them as the primary source, with perhaps a splice from elsewhere to remove Luke's scream as he falls, since it is rather ghastly and nobody I know of would be in favor of keeping it.

Keep in mind, of course, that the Cinema DTS audio is at 44.1 khz at 24 frames per second, while video formats must be 48 khz and 23.976 frames per second.  So this conversion must be made prior to any editing work.  To avoid degrading the sound quality further, it should be performed at 24-bit resolution or higher, and dither should be used if it is to be cut back down to 16-bit again.

Thanks for all that info, I'll keep it in mind.

A question though. If I want to get rid of Luke's scream from the Empire Strikes Back cinema DTS audio, which audio track would fit in more seamlessly do you think, Belbucus's '93 PCM audio, the dolby digital 5.1 DVD audio track or the DTS-HD blu-ray audio track?

nafroe said:

Count one vote for the Classic "slightly warmer" version... They both look fantastic, however.  :-D

Thank you for the kind words nafroe, really appreciated! :D

A lot of work has gone into reaching this point with the colour grading for V2.1, constantly tweaking the settings slightly here and there over quite a few months and i'm personally very happy with how this looks now, I'm just glad that i'm not the only one haha

With these current settings I think I have done the very best I can do with SW, TESB and ROTJ in terms of colour grading, I personally can't see myself being able to make these films look any more appealing for me personally using the current blu-rays as the main source.

Danfun128 said:

Wait a minute. Aside from changes like new new emperor and boba fett in ESB and the naboo scene in ROTJ, weren't the sound mixes for those films almost identical to their 97se counterparts? I know that ANH had a very different (and inferior) sound mix in the 2004 dvd, but do the ESB and ROTJ sound mixes have the same issues?

If not, can't you take the good parts of the 2011 mixes and the 97 dts mixes and...mix them together (pun unavoidable but unintentional)

Honestly i'm not familiar with all the differences in audio between the different releases and whether the cinema DTS audio of ESB and ROTJ is similar to the blu-ray DTS-HD 6.1 audio of ESB and ROTJ. hairy_hen would be the one to ask about that.

What i've found in the past though is that different mixes with different amounts of channels can be pretty difficult to mix seamlessly, especially modern DTS-HD 6.1 audio tracks that have had their special effects audio boosted to the detriment of the music like these blu-ray Star Wars OT tracks have from what i've heard.

For the sake of continuety if I use the cinema DTS for Star Wars, I really want to use the cinema DTS for ESB and ROTJ. If i'm not able to get all three of these, I'll most likely have to look into using the blu-ray DTS-HD 6.1 audio for the three films. Certainly thats exactly what a lot of people on tehparadox have been asking me to do, to get that extra punch on their surround sound systems.

Okay, the count is currently 2 votes for retro and 1 for classic.

Anybody else have a preference for either setting based on those screencaps above? Once I go ahead with one of these settings, i'll be releasing the whole trilogy with that setting before releasing any of the films again with a different setting, so if anybody else prefers the classic setting, now's the time to say.

The grain looks fantastic! The colours look very nice as well, especially liking the colours on the last image.

All in all, definately a big improvement over the blu-ray. Really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

My memory lacks (as usual) but aren't they ready available? At least for the '97SE, that could be easily adapted for your version... am I wrong?

TeamBlu's '97SE version of Star Wars is the only release that i'm aware of that uses the cinema DTS audio. Are there others? I've been provided the Star Wars cinema DTS, its the ESB and ROTJ cinema DTS tracks that i'm currently missing.

As for adding chapters/menus, I plan on adding chapters to the AVCHD releases but i'm not currently planning to do menus or anything like that, though if anybody has any good menu authoring programs they could recommend, i'll definately look into the possibility of including one.

team_negative1 said:

kk650 said:

team_negative1 said:

Seeing how there is a lot of interest in some of the altered scenes. We will try to post a few shots. It looks like the Darth Vader unmasking scene with the eyebrows is a popular one.

Also we have contacted Harmy about sharing some scenes. Hopefully we will have something suitable for him to use.

We are still evaluating our second scan currently

Team Negative1

Would you be willing to share the unaltered scenes of Lapti Nek and Yub Nub with me as well?

I would much prefer to have 35mm sources for these two scenes to work with in order to reinsert them into the Return of the Jedi V2 Semi-Specialised Edition i'm planning to release soon. I've been able to get fairly satisfactory results from upscaling the GOUT and manipulating the image dynamics a bit but I'm certain the 35mm sources you have available of those two scenes look much better and more filmic.

 Send us a PM, and we'll consider it. We don't have a time frame, and Harmy will probably come out with his version first.

Team Negative1

 Sounds fair enough to me, thank you very much! I'll send you a PM now.

Thank you for the feedback Andrea, as always, greatly appreciated.

I have considered doing a BD25 certainly but I am still waiting on the cinema DTS audio for all three films so those will have to wait.

team_negative1 said:

Seeing how there is a lot of interest in some of the altered scenes. We will try to post a few shots. It looks like the Darth Vader unmasking scene with the eyebrows is a popular one.

Also we have contacted Harmy about sharing some scenes. Hopefully we will have something suitable for him to use.

We are still evaluating our second scan currently

Team Negative1

Would you be willing to share the unaltered scenes of Lapti Nek and Yub Nub with me as well?

I would much prefer to have 35mm sources for these two scenes to work with in order to reinsert them into the Return of the Jedi V2 Semi-Specialised Edition i'm planning to release soon. I've been able to get fairly satisfactory results from upscaling the GOUT and manipulating the image dynamics a bit but I'm certain the 35mm sources you have available of those two scenes look much better and more filmic.

TheHutt said:

Even if it's there, there is no evidence that it actually shouldn't be there. ;)

Well yeah, I certainly agree that it seems that the filmmakers intended it to be there, considering that The Desolation of Smaug shares pretty much the same blanket green tint as An Unexpected Journey.

Its just my personal preference that clouds look more white instead of green and since others seem to share my preference as well, I share the regraded releases I've done that fix this. Whether it officially should or shouldn't be there honestly doesn't concern me either way, only what looks more appealing to my eyes when watching the films, which is without the blanket green tints.

@towne32: Yeah, the difference is certainly very very subtle, I have difficulty seeing the difference myself on my big monitor unless I know what to focus on when I switch between the two. I've checked clips using the two settings on my TV and I definately believe the latest settings is an improvement, it seems to breath more life into the film.

@pittrek: You did say SLIGHTLY more red in capitals haha I do believe you were spot on though, I find the difference fairly noticable in these two screencap comparisons below if you look carefully at the wall behind the guy and Vader when switching between the two, how there's more red amongst the green there in the new settings (its easier to see the difference with the classic settings of course due to the higher saturation):

Retro:

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/88811

Classic

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/88814

The extra red is also most noticable in the increased warmth of the light hitting things and lightsources, for example the sunlight reflecting off R2D2 and C3PO in the first desert shot looks warmer and more natural now when before it has more of a slightly faded photograph feel to it. The sky behind them and the clouds are also noticably more red in the new settings, as least on my monitor:

Retro:

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/88818

Classic:

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/88831

I can't seem to get away with adding any more red though because it starts adversely affecting the other colours, especially the blues. Its particularly noticable with the technicolor settings. I want to keep the balance of colours intact as much as possible.

darklordoftech said:

I can't imagine them letting Lucas be involved at all. They know how it went last time he was involved.

Damn, I really do hope you're right and Disney are wise enough to see that.

I would not be at all surprised if GL was the one pushing for the punchier/more contrasty/more saturated/digital looks of the blu-ray releases we currently have, crushing the blacks and blowing out highlights in the process, seems to fit with his 'more intense' methodology.

imperialscum said:

Harmy said:

This is true. With the analog technology, no two prints looked the same - so taking a few low fade prints as a reference and making a sort of amalgamation of that would give you something approaching the "original" colors. So, I don't think it would be a good idea for a major professional restoration to stick religiously to one particular print, if they have access to more and they probably should keep the clors somewhat consistent throughout the film. What I think should however definitely be done, is to keep the over-all color schemes of each sequence as they appear on the original prints - it would be very wrong for a restoration to attempt to make the film look modern.

The Godfather restoration is a great example of that - the colors are nice and consistent and probably better than even on the initial release, but they have that beautiful vintage look fitting for the era in which the movie was made.

When it comes to this matter I think probably the best technique to restore the colours is to just call the Director or DP and let them give their judgement regarding what kind of colour tone they were trying to achieve on the set. It will be subjective of course but I still think it better than using some worn-out film stock and letting someone who had nothing to do with the film (i.e. what people refer to as "professional") subjectively decide the tone.

I imagine this is exactly what they'll do. Might be a little scary having GL involved in that process though, which I imagine he would be even if he doesn't own Lucasfilm anymore, at the very least for the first film which he directed. Look at what he did with Star Wars, the blu-ray that looks the worst of the original trilogy IMHO, a dark overly contrasty/saturated blue mess...

One can only hope that if these UOT releases happen, Star Wars in particular will be treated with the utmost respect this time round, maintaining its filmic look and the feel of the decade it was shot in, rather than creating a totally new modern looking colour scheme with a strong blanket tint across the whole film like Raiders of the Lost Ark or one of James Cameron's films on blu-ray with their blanket teal tints... *shudder*