The longer broadcasts of the first two movies where in the “ultimate edition” releases as far as I know…
Sadly the stopped doing this for the others…
That’s why a project maker could step in… 😄
Thanks for the input, I added them to the main list in my PC, will show up in the next update.
Harry Potter: as I wrote, I just gathered info from several sources in the web, so frankly I don’t know, sorry!
Same test clip now available on Vimeo (if someone would like just to watch the video without download it): https://vimeo.com/199760634 - do not forget to watch it in 1080p!
There is a Star Trek Generations workprint, and several workprints of Star Trek TNG, DS9 and VOY episodes
Thanks for the info! If you can compile a list (possibly with some more details), I’ll include them in the next update!
There was nothing similar around, so I thought it was time to create a master list, with workprints, TV versions not available on released media, and similar things. I gathered around 1000 entries, almost all are different titles. As usual, correction and addition are welcome. Have fun!
WORKPRINT - Master List: http://blog.sporv.com/workprints-master-list
You may be interested in this, too:
OPEN MATTE - Master List: http://blog.sporv.com/open-matte-master-list
FAN EDITS - Master List: http://blog.sporv.com/fan-edits-master-list/
New HQ workprint to work a lot better:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197342
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/197341
Thanks for the info, and happy someone finds it useful!
I’m at 2068 entries now, will update the list tomorrow.
EDIT: UPDATED! Added also the link to the WORKPRINT Master List.
Ooops… 😃 thanks Jay!
As far as I know, the first HD version was the one broadcasted on the German HDTV (7MAXX IIRC), in 16/9; no 4/3 HD, nor 480p. Again, AFAIK.
The only way to get the best quality is to find out if the laserdiscs are better than DVDs (highly unlikely), or combine both PAL and NTSC DVDs (and add some cleaning filter) to obtain a better upscaled version than each single PAL or NTSC upscale.
Every time I want to know if a given title has an open matte version, I must looking for all over the net… I searched a lot for a complete list of open matte movies, but what I have found are meagre lists with just few dozen titles (when I was lucky!); so, I thought it was time to compile a comprehensive list, THE master list… currently, there are more than 2000 entries!
Hope it will be helpful for someone; you are free to post the link everywhere, to help find out as many titles as possible, and to correct all the errors (and I’m pretty sure there are many).
I’ve decide to let the list reside into my blog, just to avoid to update the same list scattered around various forums; for any addition and correction, you could post a comment here or directly on the blog; write first the title(s) (with as many info as possible) then eventual comments; have fun, and without much further ado, here you are the
OPEN MATTE - Master List: http://blog.sporv.com/open-matte-master-list
You may be interested in this, too:
WORKPRINT - Master List: http://blog.sporv.com/workprints-master-list
My 2c about the original Jabba: as much as I could love the idea (“You are a wonderful human being!”), we see him in Episode VI (and Episode I as well), so following a logical path, it can’t be human.
Unless some wizard put a spell on him after EP I, and then he managed to return to his original form before EP VI - even if, I must admit, if I can chose, I’d prefer to be a not-so-handsome human instead of Pizza-the-Hut or something… 😄
Back on topic: if you want to partecipate in the project, we could join the force and share our works.
The sandstorm scene does not have all that dialog, but I think this could be used nevertheless, because as it is now, it’s unusable, unless an audio magician would be so skilled to extract and clean the existing dialog…
If you can share that part, it will be great, thanks a lot!
First attempt at ropes removal, in Shaq Ti scenes from EP3: https://vimeo.com/199000498
I got a question: first colorize, then cleaning, or vice versa?
might be a dumb question but where all of this can be found?
For the moment, you can take a look at the few restored and test clips here: https://vimeo.com/user60642398
The only other restored scenes - as you can read in the first post - are the upscaled EP1 ones from DVD.
Any feedback, suggestion, help, is appreciated!
I know there were some projects before about restoring deleted scenes, both as stand alone projects, and to be used in extended editions. If someone still has them, and would like to contribute to this project by let it use those scenes, please post here!
Random thoughts.
Yesterday I picked up my old pan&scan copy of Spaceballs laserdisc, just to spend some time and maybe get fresh ideas. Two things I noted immediately: this is not a p&s, but actually an open matte version, and it’s incredibly nice, given the fact it’s a 30yrs old disc… well, Mel Brooks did a good job; I like more Young Frankenstein, but this comedy has its moments (the Alien gag is great, and to hear John Hurt saying “not again!” is priceless!).
Well, back to topic, there is at least one shot that could be used; the escape pod from the last part of the movie is extremely well done, and I thought that it can replace (please do not shoot me!) the one at the beginning of EP4…
Another thing that I ever wanted to do is to fix the edit mistake done in EP4, when Owen and Luke are buying droids; there is a shot of R2 with the red droid still near it (him?), while it is actually broken few meters away near Luke and 3PO; TMBTM managed to solve this - have someone else thought about this little, but important, detail? Not GL, of course, he had to hide R2 behind some rocks!
benduwan said:
here some links for you.
maybe you find more informations or ideas:
I managed to spend some time to visit all the threads, and read the interesting parts; I read many of them before, but I reread them to find something more; there were some interesting ideas, but sadly many images and links are dead now, and some member who can contribute to this project were offline since years.
Luckily, some others are still active, and I dropped a PM to them, to know if they have some restored deleted scenes, and would like to share them, to be used in this project.
The Aluminum Falcon said:
To be honest, I strongly prefer the 4th option. Moreso than the other options, it comes across as a “deliberate creative” stylistic decision. 😉3 inescapably looks like B&W footage that was computer colorized, and I have suspicions that 2 would as well to a lesser extent. 4 is so radical that you can almost buy the filmmakers intended it to be that way. Grade the hues just a tad more subtly, and I think you’ve got yourself a scene!
If done properly, following a color reference, point 2 will lead to good, if not excellent, results. The fact I’m not skilled (and also too lazy, I must admit) will not help, of course! So, unless a good soul would step in and offer his/her services, it’s simply not a viable option. But I must add this: if a photoshop/GIMP skilled user will follow this basic idea (http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~yweiss/Colorization - there are some basic how-to guide around), it will take “relatively” few time to properly color the needed scenes/shots.
Point 3. Yes, I agree, as I wrote before, that result is less than perfect, and it’s difficult to believe anyone will be fooled enough… but, again IMHO, it could be less distracting than a single (or dual) tone trick. Of course, further tests should be made.
Glad to hear that part of the cantina scene will be restored. Should be cool.
The fact is that this (brief) shot should be integrated in an existing, colored scene, so the “color trick” can’t be used, I think…
I might also advocate for using a colorized original arm shot instead of Adywan’s for authenticity…
Actually, the “nice guy” had the gun, so why we see the alien cut arm instead? Adywan corrected it perfectly!
It’s when Han meet Luke and Ben for the first time; his “girlfriend” is there as well, and then leave.
And I thought to use the “nice guy” cut arm found on Adywan edit.
I should point out this isn’t Bail Organa but is Bail Antilles.
Yep, I read about this, but I refer it to “Bail Organa” as this is the name of which this scene is known… that’s all… but it seems nobody pronounced his name, so at the end he may be anyone, more or less! 😉
have you ever look at these links?
Some I read before, for the others I’m going on - hundreds posts, it will take some time… the fact is, reading through dozen pages to extract maybe just one useful information for the project is not that easy; that’s why I must rely also on your help for any specific question.
Like the topic we are talking about now, for example; the “colorized classic” thread is not useful for the project, because I’m more than aware how to transfer a low resolution color grading to an high definition source; the fact is, do the b&w SW deleted scenes exist in a recolored form, in ANY resolution? I asked this before, but it seems they do not. Because, if they do exist, even as CD-ROM content at 320x240 and 12fps, I CAN extract the colors from those, and apply them to the HD b&w scenes, up to 90/95% accuracy - that will be more than adequate!
Ronster said:>
I think all effort should be made to get that particular scene that is in Black and white done and done proper.Han & Leia extended kiss Empire strikes back.
Not only that… even Han’s “girlfriend” and Chewie “nice muzzle” is a nice shot. I think this is the only piece worth of recolor in the whole cantina scene - not that because the rest in uninmportant, but because it will take SO LONG and SO MUCH WORK to restore colors, and result will be always not so good 😦
Honestly you could take or leave the rest. you could probably get away with Coloring Luke a sort of Cyan trying to hold on in the Rancor pit again a bit of trickery like TMBTM and use some clever ideas to “Get away with it” actually looking at what TMBTM did actually the blue and the Red should be the other way round sort of… I would go with a Red Bacta Tank as it was originally meant to be Red and is red in the background in a few shots so again no real issues.
Say if you wanted to do general Veers Death you could simply color in the cockpit of the AT-AT red like an alarm was going off. And seeing has they occasionaly have red cockpits it’s not gong to be a massive issue for anyone.
I thought about this, too. The rebel hangar, apart Chewie, Leia and Luke who salute Lando, is almost the same and can be skipped.
Thanks guys!
First a brief preamble: it is NOT possible to restore perfect colors from a black and white image (or video). Period.
Said that, and as I’ve written before, I’m not going to colorize by hand thousand frames (this is the only way to achieve a great, almost perfect result). So first I used the only avisynth filter that tries to guess how to colorize a b&w picture; it’s a nice filter, but, as this is a simple one, that could rely solely on its own, results are usually quite bad. (this doesn’t mean I don’t like the filter, at the contrary; and the author did a good job, you know that…)
The only other logical way IMHO is to use neural network; here results are better, but dependent on many factors; I used one of the websites that offer this service for free; unfortunately, I have first to export each frame as a picture, then load it in the website one by one, by hand, wait for the conversion, save the colorized one, rescale at the proper size, and use it as a chroma plane. Now you know why I wanted to make a test clip first, using just few frames as reference…
I guess if there is some software (now available) that accepts a b&w picture, and a color picture for reference, and tries to recolor the b&w following the reference… I don’t think so…
About quality: I’m aware that’s pretty bad, but you have to trust me that this result is the LESS WORSE… all the others were so ugly in comparison, so now you can understand a bit better.
So, this is one of the options we have for the b&w scenes. I wrote about those before, but I’ll refrain them again here:
The fact is, there are many edits around with the b&w scenes inserted untouched (AFAIK all not even cleaned); the only attempt at recolor them is TMBTM’s edit; yes, better than the b&w version, but still not what I aim to.
At the end, until a crazy fan would step in and declares that he/she could recolor them by hand, or using a NASA-kind of supercomputer that will guess almost perfectly the colors, or some sort of miracles, I guess the less of the evil is to continue with the path of automatic colorization.
Last words: pick all the deleted scenes, shots, outtakes and so on, and throw them in the films as they are is quite easy. But it’s not what I’d like to achieve. A perfecly inserted version with all the shots cleaned as film? An impossible task for fan users like us. The right compromise, that’s what I would like to obtain. Is restored blue screen shot like “Bail Organa” perfect? Nope. But is good enough to be used. Is the Dooku extended duel (a mere 3 second shot) perfect? Far from it! But it’s the best version available, so it’s OK. Are those colorized scene perfect? Of course not. But should work better than an out-of-place b&w version. Again, everything IMHO.
Ideas, opinions, critics?
On my desktop PC (using Firefox) I can’t see my subscription, while on my phone (Android) I can… how can I fix this?
Thanks in advance!
What about Fox and the Hound? I have the PAL fullscreen french laserdisc (“Rox et Rouky”); how is it ranked?
I watched it, and its solution is not that bad at all; but I would try to colourize it instead. And, if it does not work really well, add something like the red alarm he added in a Tantive scene, to mask the recolor, but leaving it behind somehow. What do you think?
Russian Despecialized Extended editions: they simply cut&paste (sometimes badly) deleted scenes, untouched, into the Despecialized edition… no color correction, no cleaning, no music added, nothing… there are better versions around, like the previous mentioned Wae Of The Star I and II - I may say that I do not agree with some chosen shots and music tracks, but overall they are fantastic edits!
Of course they look bad! The colors jump around because, as I have written, only 7 recolored frames are used to recolor 237 ones… so, taking this in account, result is not that bad at all. Never say it’s perfect, and it never will, because I use an automatic colorizer software. And I’m not technically savvy to recolor a frame by hand, nor I have the time and patience to do that (if I was able to) to do that… recolor by hand literally thousand frames for just a few second long scene will take months, full time, years maybe part time. And, with my luck, the day before I’ll finish, the original colored scene will show up somehow, granted! 😄
Of course, again, if someone could, and would, recolor the b&w scenes, by hand, by an automated software, by black magic, he/she is welcome!
A LOT rough, but I made this just to know how good could be the recolorization process, using just few cclored frames and repeat them for static parts, and create interpolated ones for moving parts; if you think this result is achieved with just 7 colored frames on 237, it is quite good! Probably, to have a very good result, a frame every 10 (or probably less) is needed - hope to NOT be forced to recolor every single frame…
Only color correction test - nothing else, no cleaning as you can clearly see!
Feedbacks are needed as usual.
Thanks a lot! Yep, so many shots for Rogue One, sadly so short that it will be hard to put them back… we’ll see!
For now, I’m working on some sort of automated colorization script, but nothing works well… I wonder if someone has recolored any of the b&w scenes, even in low resolution!
Lately I’ve found ShotCut; it’s free, and seems quite easy but powerful.