kk650

bttfbrasilfan said:

The skintones are looking great!

I must say that I have your ROTJ Semi-Specialized Edition and it is my favorite version so far. The color correction on that is subtle but pretty good. I'm looking forward to see how this new version is gonna be.

Cheers! I'm also looking forward to seeing how the ROTJ Semi-Specialised Edition turns out as well. :)

Can you have a look at these three shots and let me know which shot you prefer in terms of flesh tones? (difference is quite subtle, easier to see the difference if you view the images in seperate windows and switch between them)

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Could you also have a look at these three and let me know which you prefer the fleshtones of:

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StarThoughts said:

Will you be using the original entry to Mos Eisley, or the Special Edition version?

I will be using the Special Edition version but all the Silly CG droid and jawa antics when they enter Mos Eisley have been removed.

So what do you think of the regraded shots?

Okay guys, i'm planning to release new versions of Star Wars Semi-Specialised Edition, The Empire Strikes Back Semi-Specialised Edition and Return of the Jedi Semi-Specialised Edition (details of what SE changes have been kept or removed can be found above in the first post of this thread, very kindly posted by The Aluminum Falcon).

After having seen lots of film prints and releases like Harmy's Despecialised Edition on this forum I have decided to try to modify the colour grading of my semi-specialised releases to better match the fleshtones/look of these film prints, like the shots from this post in Neverar's thread that have a very distinctive look to the fleshtones: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Neverars-1080p-Star-Wars-Color-Correction/post/683002/#TopicPost683002

I'd really appreciate it if you guys could have a look at these regraded shots and give me your thoughts.

Asaki said:

So why are we trying to remove the green tint from The Hobbit now that we know it's supposed to be there?

FotR I can understand, but if the filmmakers intentionally set up their current film(s) to have a specific color timing...

I suppose some people like their skies blue and their clouds white, like they were in the original lotr trilogy before the remastered fotr ee blu-ray came out.

If this specific colour scheme was only in one scene, that'd be perfectly fine, in the fotr ee dvd colour grading is used differently all the time  in different scenes to create a certain distinctive feeling. It is the fact that this green tint has been plastered across the whole film irrespective of scene that bugs people the most.

Spaced Ranger said:

Yep, PJ is certainly "coloring" his films. He's even pre-coloring make-up for processing compensation in The Hobbit movies (note the make-up applier's own skin for comparison):

The Red-brand digital cameras now are legitimately a part of it. "Red camera tends to eat color a little so we add more color", said a TH:AUJ production designer in an official blog video about 3D filming. But, if the picture is red-reduced for a general shift towards teal (requiring red make-up pre-emphasis for better flesh-tones after red reduction), then that indicates a deliberate teal-tint agenda going on here.

Good thing we're around to fix it!

Yes, i saw the official blog video that had that bit as well months before the release of the film in the cinema but I really discovered this for myself when I started regrading this film. It made removing the teal tint a real pain in the arse.

When i removed the teal and got the whites in the clouds looking just right to my eyes, the red makeup that the dwarves were wearing really stood out, especially balin's makeup.

In the end I had to compromise and make the overall colours slightly colder than I really wanted by reducing the reds so that all the dwarves wouldn't look like they were suffering from severe sunburn throughout the whole film.

Chewtobacca said:

Recompressed means re-encoded.  Thanks for the information on the grain structure.

In that case it doesn't appear to have been reencoded. It still has the black bars on the top and bottom and its been encoded with mpeg-2 like all transport streams.

Chewtobacca said:

kk650 said:  Compared to the hdtv stream i'm looking at that has very strong colour grading all over the place it does IMHO. The EE blu-ray transfer seems more consistant overall in terms of colour to me, like TTT and ROTK, whereas the hdtv stream has most locations with a completely different colour grading to each other. It certainly makes for a very varied film colourwise but consistant in terms of colour its not. I can't think of a single scene from The Two Towers or Return of the King that has anywhere near as strong colour grading as the council of elrond scene in Rivendell on this hdtv stream.

I think we've misunderstood each other.  If you mean that the EE BD of FotR is like the other two in terms of consistency of color, I agree.  If you mean that the colors themselves are alike, I disagree.

I wonder if the whole of your HDTV stream was recompressed or if only the parts that were upscaled were.  If it's the latter, it could be useful.  Unfortunately, the alternate takes from the theatrical will have been lost e.g. the approach to Rivendell.

Yeah, I agree that the colour schemes of the three films are different. Using the colour corrected fellowship and comparing to my colour corrected The Two Towers and my colour corrected Return of the King, I would say the first film's colour scheme leans towards green, the second leans towards blue and the third leans towards yellow. All three have their own unique feel.

I don't know what you mean by recompressed but the image quality of the theatrical parts on the hdtv stream are very solid indeed, easily superior to the DNRed theatrical edition blu-ray for whatever that's worth. The theatrical parts are definately HD and not simply uprezed from the extended edition dvds. It's size is 26.8GB overall. The image quality of the extended edition is definately superior though, it doesn't have the lovely fine grain of that release.

Chewtobacca said:

The HDTV cap was the theatrical.  People upscaled scenes from the DVDs and inserted them.  It's the cap that I want to get my hands on.

kk650 said:I believe Fellowship of the Ring was only partly regraded digitally for the theatrical release while the last two films were 100% graded digitally so maybe that's why they changed the colour grading so much for the fotr ee transfer, to make its colours more in line with the others that had been regraded digitally from the start.

I don't think the FOTR EE BD's colors look like the other two films though.

Compared to the hdtv stream i'm looking at that has very strong colour grading all over the place it does IMHO. The EE blu-ray transfer seems more consistant overall in terms of colour to me, like TTT and ROTK, whereas the hdtv stream has most locations with a completely different colour grading to each other. It certainly makes for a very varied film colourwise but consistant in terms of colour its not. I can't think of a single scene from The Two Towers or Return of the King that has anywhere near as strong colour grading as the council of elrond scene in Rivendell on this hdtv stream.

You're right about all the extended bits, they're clearly dvd upscales but whoever did it has done a pretty good job, they flow fairly seemlessly with the rest of the footage

rockin said:

The HDTV rips were pretty good at the time. I remember when the BD came out a few people people were disappointed with it, and thought it was a downgrade from the HDTV rips.

haha, those were the good old days. Indeed, I was one of the people on avsforum and blu-ray.com kicking up a stink about that. Compared to the hdtv transport stream of fotr extended edition I had (and still have), the massively DNRed theatrical blu-ray release was inferior in every respect. I'm sure some of my screencap comparisons are still there on both forums.

I certainly kicked up a fuss as well about the green tint on the fellowship of the ring extended edition blu-ray, posting lots of comparisons. Here's a youtube video even crediting me in the details as being the first person to point out the green tint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwcm-73kZE8

It was the studios continuously messing up fellowship of the ring that got me started on regrading films in the first place.

Unfortunately the framing between this hdtv version (which i'm pretty sure has the same framing as the theatrical blu-ray and extended edition dvd) and the extended edition blu-ray is pretty different. There is more image on the top and right on the extended edition transfer and the left side has been cropped a bit. I don't know if that will cause problems with the colour compare program. That said, I do believe that in many instances the fotr ee transfer (after having the green tint removed) looks better colourwise, the colour grading is more subdued and in line with the other two films. Looking at the colour grading of Rivendell on the hdtv transport stream is now pretty *wow* its so strong and overwhelming compared to the more subtle extended edition grading of Rivendell.

I believe Fellowship of the Ring was only partly regraded digitally for the theatrical release while the last two films were 100% graded digitally so maybe that's why they changed the colour grading so much for the fotr ee transfer, to make its colours more in line with the others that had been regraded digitally from the start.

You_Too said:

Yeah, it sure is a tough one to do with only one setting.

I remember there's one scene where the Fellowship walks up in front of the camera and there was some weird very strong blue shadow on a shield or something. And in the introduction of the Shire, there's some shot of a pig, where the pig is green even after the tint being removed if I remember correct. The movie is full of weird things they've caused by their new and very strange color timing.

It certainly is a very tricky one to do with one setting, no argument there. Easily the most difficult release I've ever done in terms of settling on a single regrading setting for the whole film. The amounts of times I encoded this only to still be unsatisfied with certain scenes and have to reencode it again with a different setting, too many times to count...

You_Too said:

@kk650: I'm sorry. What I said might've looked like I'm trying to bash you but it was simply what DJ said: Informing.

I looked at your screenshot of the snow scene from Fellowship and saw that you had balanced out the green but hadn't done the rest that I tried to do, so I simply thought I'd inform people that was the case, so they knew what they had to choose from. And I swear it was no harm intended, same with Terminator.

I think it's very difficult to express emotions with text on a forum, but a good thing to keep in mind is that nothing I ever type here is meant to harm or offend anybody.

You're obviously talented and respect films the way they were originally intended and I understand you're doing your best to fix what's bugging people about some releases. I actually got interested in checking out your versions of The Hobbit and The Matrix sometime.

EDIT: I removed the word "don't" from my previous post since that did actually seem a bit inappropriate. Everybody's free to check out your releases if they want to.

Apology accepted You_Too, I know you're a nice guy from all your posts, thats why your use of 'don't' jarred me a little. I'm sorry if I came across a little defensive myself.

You can't base my regrade of fellowship of the ring off that single snow scene though because I regraded the films using many scenes in the film as colour references and striking a balance between all of them to try to make them ALL look good, not just that snow scene.  In fact, if I remember correctly, I was not able to make that snow scene white like it was in the theatrical blu-ray because it messed up the rest of the film's colour grading, so I had to settle for that scene having a blue tint which I thought was probably intentional by PJ because that scene is meant to be very cold.

If you haven't actually checked my version of Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition in full, please do before you pass judgement, I spent a great deal of time striking a balance in the colour grading across the whole film, not just scenes that are meant to be white. You can't fairly judge the release based off that single screenshot in the snow.

zeropc said:

conan is on usenet - sorry for interruption ;-)

back to topic

Great interruption zeropc so no need to be sorry!

But whenever I search on usenet I don't see it, I only see official bd25/bd50 versions of conan the barbarian. What do I need to search for? If you don't want to say here send me a PM please. I've been wanting to check out this release for a while. I love conan the barbarian, especially the music.

dark_jedi said:

kk650 said:

TylerDurden389 said:

I like to contrast and compare :)

I look forward to comparing as well. ;)

Thread chasing now huh? I suppose this is "good form" lol?

I don't remember telling people not to check out this release when it finally comes out, only saying that I was looking forward to checking it out, which I am. Hopefully you can appreciate the ever so slight difference.

Are you planning to answer my question asking why your Conan the Barbarian release is not on tehparadox or usenet from the other thread? I'm sure it would be very popular there and a lot more people outside of this forum would find out about it. Keeping it only on myspleen with only people on OT.com knowing about it's existence seems counterproductive to me. I asked the question in good faith. I have no quarrel with you or You_Too nor do I want one. All I asked for in the fellowship thread was a little bit of common courtesy and respect shown between releasers, is that too much to ask? I hope not.

I would very much like to check your conan the barbarian release out (conan the barbarian is one of my favourite films) and it would be a lot easier for me and many others to do so if it was on tehparadox or usenet. I assume you want as many people as possible to be able to see your releases right so why not put it there as well? PM me if for some reason you don't want to post the answer to my question directly in the forum.

Mavimao said:

As far as Empire is concerned, the only real problem I have is the new Throne Room discussion added for the DVD and the Vader returning to the star destroyer montage that messes up the Bring me my shuttle line and the pacing of the Bespin escape. 

People seem more split on the Wampa scene. I personally prefer how it was in 80, but I have friends who like it now. 

I'm pretty certain my version has fixed that montage so its now like it was in the theatrical release. Agree with you 100% about those shots of Vader going back to the star destroyer in his shuttle, totally pointless and ruins the flow of the millemium falcon's escape from cloud city IMHO.

Does nobody else have any suggestions for improvements to these semi-specialised releases? I was sure there were going to be people here making suggestions about how to improve the colour grading of these films at the very least. Flesh tones are noticably redder in a lot of the footage that the negative 1 team are posting and is getting a lot of positive feedback, is that something that people here would prefer in my releases as well compared to the more subdued fleshtones in my current releases?

TylerDurden389 said:

I like to contrast and compare :)

I look forward to comparing as well. ;)

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

@kk650: before starting my "The Matrix [spoRv]" project, I downloaded your Matrix regraded; and it was one of the best attempt I've found it at that moment, even if not so close to DVD colors, it's really better than greener-than-green BD.

Keep on going, color regrading is not a science, it's more like magic... (^^,) and we are a little bit sorcerers, aren't we? Well, I'm more like the mad scientist you could find into my signature, though...

Cheers, I'm glad you enjoyed my Matrix release! I agree completely about it being like magic, that's probably why I enjoy doing it so much! It still amazes me how the feel of a film can change completely just by changing a few colours. It does feel a bit like being a tinkering mad scientist now that you mention it. As for stopping, not a chance! I'm having too much fun! :)

I'd love to check out your The Matrix [spoRv] release, is myspleen the only way to get my hands on it? If it is only on myspleen right now, have you considered putting it up on tehparadox or usenet as well? I'd imagine that the interest for this release would be great.

bkev said:

dvdmike, perhaps you'd like kk650's regraded ROTLA?  You can find it over at tehparadox.  IMO it's a subtle job that gives a good balance between the Blu's warmer pallet and the WOWOW version without going to either extreme.  In fact, it's still pretty warm - but the sky in Egypt is back to being blue.

Thanks for the kind words bkev, I was trying to strike a balance between the two, they are so different to each other though that it was difficult to know which way to lean.In the end I leaned more towards a warmer palette rather than the colder palette of the japanese WOWOW version.

The link you've posted to though is actually of an out of date version, I decided that i'd removed too much red in this release and given fleshtones a slightly greentish tone so with the 16gb release I added a bit more red to give the whole film a slighly warmer tone, I felt it worked better overall with the tone of the film. The skies are still blue of course but the whole film has a warmer more pleasant feel to it in the 16gb release.

dark_jedi said:

lol, he is not scaring people off, he is informing them, You_Too is 1 of the nicest guys on this forum and is always around to help and answer questions, he is also a huge asset to our Team, and I know at least when I read his comments, I fully agree with him, he is that damn good.

Scaring people off, since when is giving information or an opinion a bad thing? some of those files of yours are pretty large to download just to find out that what You_Too said is 100% correct.

1 more thing, You_Too and I have discussed doing this, but for right now we just do not have the time with everything else going, but we will look into it when we are ready.

I know You_Too is a nice guy, I have been reading his posts since before I signed up here, so that's why i'm surprised to find him telling people not to check out my releases. I find that to be very poor form. If he doesn't like my releases of course he's free to state that opinion but explicitly telling others not to bother checking my releases out for themselves is very out of order IMHO.

If he's so good, all the more reason to create a definitive version of Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition, as I said before I'd love to check that out and see the film looking the best its ever looked. Until then though, people aren't able to see his release because he hasn't created it yet so let them check mine out in peace, mine is definately an improvement over the blu-ray IMHO and many others on tehparadox think so too. There's just no need to poo on anybody elses releases like that, its poor form and beneath him.

On a sidenote dark_jedi, I'd love to check out your regraded release of Conan the Barbarian, I was just wondering why you don't put it up on tehparadox or usenet where more people would be able to check it out and enjoy the work you and You_Too have done?

You_Too said:

nirbateman said:

Look for kk650's version on tehparadox.

Don't. No offense against that guy but he only removed the slight green tint, he didn't fix the rest of the color errors like the dark teal everywhere.

And actually I think I could improve on that fix I posted as a blog back then. I didn't have colourlike for avisynth when I made it. That plugin would allow even more control.

I won't do this now though but maybe sometime in the future.

You_Too, you really don't like me or my releases very much do you lol I jump from thread to thread in this forum and all I see if you crapping on my releases from on high.

If you are capable of doing much better than I have, please go ahead and do so, i'll be the first in line to check it out. I would love for someone to go ahead and create an even better version of a film I love. The reason I created my version in the first place was because I could find nobody else that had stepped up and done their own version.

Please try to show me and my releases a little more respect though, I implore you. Colour correction is not my profession, i'm just an amateur that does this in my spare time. It'd be nice to be able to read threads on this forum without constantly running into your posts denigrating my releases and scaring people off, its really poor form. Let people decide for themselves by creating your own version so everybody can compare. I'll be the first to admit if your version is superior. Until then, please stop scaring people off checking out what i've done.

Okay, I finally got round to trying to download lee thorogood's 1997 versions but annoyingly many of the parts are missing on usenet, making me unable to properly extract it, I assume due to the age of the post. Does anybody know anywhere else where I might be able to check out the 1997 SE releases?

With regards to the Semi-Specialised Editions of Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, has anybody that has checked these out over the last week have any input on how they could be improved?

stretch009 said:

kk650 said:

penguinofgreatness said:

I would go with the 1997 SE mix (some forum members recently released the theatrical DTS version) rather then the Bluray/DVD mix. The 97 mix is a solid remix, but the 2004 mix sounds rather awful. It's all muffled and dynamically compressed, with a droning bass sound.

Do you know anywhere where I might be able to get the 1997 versions of the films, so I can check out what new scenes were included at that point? The image quality isn´t important so it could be a tvrip or vhs no problem.

On usenet (binsearch.info) search for 'lee thorogood'.   Scroll down to his 1997 dvds.  Myspleen might have some broadcast versions still available.

 

Thanks for pointing that out, I'm off to check those out right now.

kitt1987 said:

Just out of curiosity where can we find these to view?  Sounds interesting as I've always had a personal interest in something like this.

I mention where you can find these in my initial post, at the start of the second paragraph. I hope you enjoy what i´ve done with these. Do please get back to me with your thoughts on these semi-specialised editions and even better, any suggestions on how they could be improved.

Chewtobacca said:

Kk650, you might find NeverarGreat's thread interesting.  What program are you using, by the way?

Thanks, i'll check that thread out. The program i'm using is TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 5, its pretty basic compared to the programs the pros use but its got everything that I need.

penguinofgreatness said:

I would go with the 1997 SE mix (some forum members recently released the theatrical DTS version) rather then the Bluray/DVD mix. The 97 mix is a solid remix, but the 2004 mix sounds rather awful. It's all muffled and dynamically compressed, with a droning bass sound.

I agree with you completely about the post 2004 audio mixes to me, dynamically compressed is exactly how I would put it as well, they lack the richness and dynamic range of the PCM audio. The 1997 SE mix sounds like a great option but I don´t know if it covers all the SE scenes I included in these semi-specialised editions. Do you know anywhere where I might be able to get the 1997 versions of the films, so I can check out what new scenes were included at that point? The image quality isn´t important so it could be a tvrip or vhs no problem.

Chewtobacca said:

kk650 said:technically no audio quality loss should have occured along the way from either of the two sources to the final output mix, apart from the downmixing of the dolby digital 5.1 audio of course.

That's true, but it would, of course, be better to use a lossless source.  I can help you out with a downmix of the BD audio at some point if you're interested.

If you could downmix the BD audio to stereo and save it to a lossless format like PCM that would be fantastic.

Do you think that the downmixed BD audio would be noticably better than the downmixed dolby digital 5.1 audio though or is the difference likely to be very subtle?