rwzmjl

I’d be interested in seeing it when you’re finished!

You only had it up for less than a day… would have loved to have donated and seen the scan. I always support scanners’ wishes, but this is kind of extreme; not really in the spirit of preservation IMO. You can always continue to take donations and put them toward the next project, btw (that’s what most people have done in the past).

little-endian said:

rwzmjl said: […]believe it or not, that’s an intended part of the image![…]

I read that argument often lately, but the word “intended” is a crucial premise here as in many cases, it isn’t really but rather a side-effect of technical limitations (which includes our visual system introducing retinal noise as well). Same goes for the stone age low rate of 24 fps only, causing tremendous amounts of temporal aliasing and making a subjectively stutter-free reconstruction difficult.

So while I can understand the sentiment for artistic reasons and preservation, technically, noise isn’t part of the original image which one tried to capture. Noise also limits — or rather defines — measurements such as the SNR.

I’m also entirely up to “preserve” it in terms of not filtering it out, as not only it isn’t possible to do so without losing information from the actual image anyway, but also because it may fit a certain desired look. However, so do noise and crackles on vinyl records which may be preferred emotionally, but shouldn’t be rationally.

One technical advantage of noise in the source shall not go unmentioned though: (self)dithering, enabling a theoretically smooth reconstruction of an unlimited number of shades (and not just 50 of grey) without ugly banding. However, dithering can be artificially added later during the A/D conversion as well in an mathematically optimised way even so even that is a rather far fetched argument.

Very much disagree with this sentiment, as a DP myself who shoots film (s16 for the most part). And it’s not noise (which is a digital artifact); it’s grain.

You are also forgetting that filmmakers had plenty of low grain options available to them if they wanted it, pre-digital-revolution. Especially in 1994. 50D of course, but even more so, the option of shooting Vista Vision or 65mm. In the case of the filmmakers desiring a grainless image but they couldn’t achieve it, that is because of budget limitations (either from the stock they could afford or the amount of light they needed). And is it the right philosophy when it comes to preservation to scrub supposed artifacts that stem from limitations of the production? That would mean redoing vfx, painting out wires, rerecording ADR, etc. No person seriously in favor of film preservation (i.e. not Lucas or Cameron) would opt for that.

Obviously this has nothing to do with shooting a new production. Shoot noiseless footage with an Alexa LF at 60fps if you want; that is no issue (though you might nauseate some audience members).

Citizen Kane’s 4K restoration didn’t use the negatives (since they don’t exist), so I think this is a non-issue. Always scan at 4K; there’s zero reason not to these days unless you’re on a very tight budget. You want the extra resolution to fully resolve the grain anyway (believe it or not, that’s an intended part of the image!). I even opt for 4K scans of super-8 for this reason.

I’ll donate (as I try to do for all open matte scans) if/when you start taking donations!

Cjmp475 said:

The DTS audio issues have been fixed, I will be sending out an ungraded and graded UHD version of the film with fixed audio.

The center track somehow snuck its way into the LFE track making all the dialogue overly boomy for people listening on a 5.1 setup. It also counts as doubling for people on headphones, making all dialogue way louder than it needed to be. The audio issues are now fully fixed.

The version I sent out before was higher quality than UHD but had a few exporting issues. I’ll be sending out the ungraded UHD version soon with one of the reels rescanned. The graded version will take a little longer but will also be out soon. If you haven’t donated and would like a copy feel free to PM me.

Has this version been released yet? Not sure if I missed it (I did donate).

Still working on it. It’s a slow process for sure! Thankfully I got a Blackmagic 4K Decklink within the last few months, so now I’m grading it on my calibrated LG OLED rather than my MacBook.

That’s unfortunate. I hope you can finish the graded version.

RipThomas said:

Does anyone know if this has been leaked yet? I’m looking for a link on RuTracker and Discord but haven’t found one yet. I’m interested in uploading this to the Archive.

Thanks

Are you joking? Go back just a couple of posts and you’ll see OP saying they DO NOT want the release being leaked.

Is it out of line to say that people who ask openly for this sort of thing should be banned from this site?

imsorrydave2448 said:

rwzmjl said:

imsorrydave2448 said:

https://pastebin.com/MgZ4tyeE Here’s the mediainfo for the full quality open matte version. Figured 94 Mb/s is a good enough bitrate. VLC seems to stutter a lot so I recommend playing the full quality file with MPV. I did an initial DNxHR 444 12 bit encode of all 6 reels into a single file with Davinci Resolve. That file came out to 927GB. Then I did a x265 12 bit encode with Handbrake because I always seem to have issues with 265 encoding in Resolve. I had problems with the DTS track from the bluray so it won’t be included. Idk if it’s my bluray disc or what but every time I convert the DTS track into a wav file it gets messed up.

Handbrake is far better than Resolve when it comes to h265, especially if you set “tune” to “grain” under the Encoder Options.

Will the scan hypothetically sync up with the blu-ray audio track? Because I can try muxing them together. Shouldn’t be too difficult with MKVToolNix (and the DTS track doesn’t necessarily need to be converted to wav).

I’m pretty sure I have to convert it to wav because Resolve doesn’t support MKV or MKA files, at least for editing. And if I just rencode everything at 23.98 FPS so I can just attach it in Handbrake or MKVToolNix, I don’t know if it will end up slightly out of sync. When I convert it to wav, the audio starts when Napoleon and Pedro are talking about Pedro’s bike for some reason. But the MKA file is perfectly fine. When I do V2 sometime later I’ll do a test encode at 23.98 and attach the MKA in MKVToolNix to see if it’s out of sync.

I gave converting to wav a shot (via ffmpeg) and got a size limit error. Maybe that’s been your issue? I then converted the blu-ray audio to flac, and it seemed fine when I checked it out in Resolve. Here’s the 5.1 flac: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Z2Dw6PJ-En1sq1CfZhFjmN2QVTvDXjlA/view?usp=sharing

Curious what your Topaz settings were for this one? Looks quite good from the stills. The increase in detail is maybe on the subtler side, but I don’t see many artifacts.

Still need to download your Titanic upscale. Looking forward to seeing how that looks.

Cjmp475 said:

Update: A 1080p version has been sent out to all donors while I’m waiting to find a way to upload to 4K one. It’s 40GB which is huge, so I’ll probably start paying to keep it up in a Google Drive. Again, if anyone is interested in this print PM me.

You could possibly split the 4K version into a few rar files then put them on separate free Google Drive (or Mega) accounts. You can make multiple Google accounts with the same phone number (I’ve done it before).

imsorrydave2448 said:

https://pastebin.com/MgZ4tyeE Here’s the mediainfo for the full quality open matte version. Figured 94 Mb/s is a good enough bitrate. VLC seems to stutter a lot so I recommend playing the full quality file with MPV. I did an initial DNxHR 444 12 bit encode of all 6 reels into a single file with Davinci Resolve. That file came out to 927GB. Then I did a x265 12 bit encode with Handbrake because I always seem to have issues with 265 encoding in Resolve. I had problems with the DTS track from the bluray so it won’t be included. Idk if it’s my bluray disc or what but every time I convert the DTS track into a wav file it gets messed up.

Handbrake is far better than Resolve when it comes to h265, especially if you set “tune” to “grain” under the Encoder Options.

Will the scan hypothetically sync up with the blu-ray audio track? Because I can try muxing them together. Shouldn’t be too difficult with MKVToolNix (and the DTS track doesn’t necessarily need to be converted to wav).

Restorations are always good news. Personally, I still see value in enthusiast scans even when good 4K restorations exist because there will always be differences. The grade and the image area is almost always going to be different.

We’ve known about this restoration of Amadeus for a while. It was reported that Criterion would release a 4K I believe a year or two ago. No idea when it’ll actually make it to home media though. Going from theatrical to 4K blu-ray can take forever (for instance, I saw the 4K restoration of Soy Cuba premiere at Lincoln Center in 2018 and it is only now being released in the US).

Wow, that looks really good. Love early '00s film stock.

I did just find open matte copies of Spider-man 2 and 3 online, sort of. They’re not open matte in the same way as the first one. They’re 16:9 and look like studio transfers rather than an enthusiast 35mm scan, and they’re highly compressed. It does have more image area than the 2.39 film scan, though (at least on the shots I checked).

0x897673 said:

I was able to grab the higher encode and have open mattes of 2 and 3).

You have open matte scans of 2 and 3? From my understanding, 2 and 3 shipped out with only hard 2.35 mattes. Interested in hearing what you have though.

I have a 35mm scan of Spider-man 2 (hard matte), but it isn’t mine to share. OP, you’d need to ask the user Aluminum Falcon.

This looks like an interesting project. Would love to see the final result.

Looks awesome. I’ll donate (will PM you).

MonkeyLizard10 said:

rwzmjl said:

The scan looks gorgeous.

I’m not sure if putting an SDR transfer in an HDR wrapper really increases compatibility. Basically any player that supports HDR10 4K is also going to support SDR 4K. I’m curious if you have encountered a situation where that isn’t the case. Is the colorspace of the transfer rec 709 or rec 2020?

122Mb/s is fantastic.

Thanks!

The color gamut is that of REC2020 not REC709 so that is why I put it in the HDR wrapper (I believe every player automatically turns on wide gamut in HDR but even though they should be able to do SDR wide gamut, I think some players fail to turn on wide gamut when the SDR flag is there and then you’d have to manually select wide gamut on the display, although for an SDR wide gamut monitor you need to do that anyway regardless).

Ah, okay, then definitely keep in an HDR container to preserve the extra information of rec 2020.

The scan looks gorgeous.

I’m not sure if putting an SDR transfer in an HDR wrapper really increases compatibility. Basically any player that supports HDR10 4K is also going to support SDR 4K. I’m curious if you have encountered a situation where that isn’t the case. Is the colorspace of the transfer rec 709 or rec 2020?

122Mb/s is fantastic.

Always interested in donating to open-matte preservation. I’ll PM you.

Yep, I’ll be doing the full feature. The version I have is almost exactly three hours.

The “gaia” upscaler in Topaz AI is the way to go if you end up doing a 4K upscale. It does a very good job with 1080p-to-4K (although it is quite slow). And then afterward maybe add back a very light grain to the image in Resolve.

Appreciate the interest from everyone (and surprised). I was very busy second half of ‘23, but things are in progress!