spoRv

Thanks! But take all the time you, as I'll be away for few days.

Let me be for a moment a fan restoration archeologist... (^^,) from my own OUT laserdisc based project:

I'd like to watch the version with the color grading similar to this one - in particular, grey wall on the Death Star...

The problem is... that I forgot it! (´ `_)

The project resides in an external HDD not currently connected to my PC, so... out of sight, out of mind; add to this that I'm after to more projects than could I afford... plus, every time I want to finish an unfinished project, another new, exciting one surfaces suddenly...

Well, I'll be away from home until monday; please repost your request in this thread, and I'll try to do it ASAP - because, basically, it's almost ready...

I'm happy you finally found the right settings; I know how hard could be these kind of tasks...

Congratulations, good job, as usual! Now, the only problem for me is to choose the version I will like most... advice?

TServo2049 said:

Any possibility of including an isolated score?

He did it!

jimbotron235 said:

Technical specs:

• Container: MKV
• Video: 2.35:1 1080p 23.976fps AVC @20Mbps
• Audio 1: 5.1 English FLAC (2002 mix with some edits using 1997 mix)
• Audio 2: 5.1 English DD 5.1 (640kbps) (Same mix as FLAC)
• Audio 3: Isolated music track (DD 2.0)
• Length: 160 minutes
• Size: 24.5 GB
• Subtitles: None

jimbotron235, you thought to include the most important tracks; if this is your first fan restoration, hats off! If it's not, hats off, too! (^^,)

kk650 said:

Here's another screencap comparison that I posted on blu-ray.com:

http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/80312

 Thanks kk650; I can't stand to watch teal skies anymore! (-^,)

Jerry, interesting project indeed! I will download it, but only when you will add an italian track! (-^,)

Another interesting preservation; well done, Doc!

You accompliced a quite difficult task... great job, congratulations!

Hope you will release some other interesting titles soon!

Yes, I remember that, but I'd like to find more frames if possible...

I use avisynth within virtualdub; both free software, and, despite the fact the former is quite hard to understand at the beginning, now I will not live without it!

There is a script that (tries to) detect scene change; after that, you have a list of each version scene change frame numbers, then you could compare them to find out eventual frame discrepancy; but it's not very precise, and it's still better to do it "by hand"!

600ms=15 frames, and probably there are in groups of two or three (usually one at a scene's end, and the other at the beginning of the next one)... I stack the two (or more) versions one above the other(s), then I look for frames differences; even if it's time consuming, it's maybe the faster and more precise way to do it - at least using avisynth.

After rising the black level of AVP:R, I don't see the problem to lower Batman's one... (^^,)

Can you post here some BD, DVD and trailer screenshots of the same frame(s)? Just to test if final result could be good enough...

little-endian said:

Maybe someone can enlighten me here.

Having sincronyzing many audio tracks in the past two years (from BD/DVD/LD/VHS) I always use video as reference - because it's easy and a certain audio track *should* be in sync with its own video track...

Well, sometime it is not true, and one audio track is out of sync (for few dozen ms usually) in a way, while another in the other way...

Plus, add that almost everytime different versions have few frames added/missing; in that case, I leave the audio track in sync with video, and when frame is missing, I delete the related audio, while when there is an added frame, I add a small empty audio bit, or repeat the previous frame's audio if it sounds good; note that each frame is only a bit more than 41ms, and usually this occurs at a scene change, so that empty bit of audio is usually unnoticeable.

...and it's an hard and time-consuming task, in particular if you have to "cut&paste" audio parts from different versions...

IMHO opening two crowdfunding campaigns for "Fistful of dollars" and "Duck, you sucker!" will successfully raise money in a week or two... if there is some interest in preserving those prints, of course...

About GBU: if needed, I could try to restore the scanned print to a good shape; don't know if I will be able to reach Mondo or MGM 4K quality, but hey, we are all fan restoration hobbysts here, aren't we?

I think it's a good idea, if it's not too time consuming of course!

Discover: Matrix Revolutions AVC is cropped, while MPEG2 is real open matte! So, I will discard the AVC version and use MPEG2 only for the project.

I'm sure you liked the idea, DoomBot! (-^,)

I haven't compared the open matte and BD versions yet, but it seems to me that the open matte color grading is very similar to DVD - at least in the "real world" scenes... someone could post some links to eventual screenshot comparison and/or post/articles that talk about that?

I’m working on my The Matrix [spoRv] project, and, since I promised I will release also an open matte version, I thought to do the same also for the other two episodes.

JEDIT: Now I have both Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions in MPEG2 and AVC, because using two sources with different compression artifacts will lead to a better final version.

If I will decide to release all the three movies in open matte, could someone else (apart me) be interested?

OK, I have not watched the clip yet, but just have taken a quick look at it; what I discovered is, despite the fact CMold is always very very close to the DVD color grading - sometimes 100% - that I think most of the time CMnew2 is better; still got to find out another shot with artifacts using the latter (apart the one posted before) but I'm quite sure I'll find few ones... another thing is that sometimes CMold is still better than CMnew2...

Let's see some frames together; first two without artifacts, the other three with them (NOTE: you could just go to the main comparison and switch images from there)

Frame 27784: here CMnew retain almost all the general color grading, while giving Agent Smith's face some pink, and here his shirt is white - as should be for an FBI agent, even in The Matrix... (^^,)

Frame 84000: the "infamous green beard" shot; even if in CMold Neo's face color is a bit flat, I continue to prefer it to the CMnew, which is still "too green for my taste" - even if, as I wrote before, these kind of shots are rare and almost all the time CMnew2 is way better than CMold

Frame 103953: CMnew2 has no trace of artifacts, and Neo's face is a lot better, while in CMold its color is very flat; in both the beard has equal traces of green, but not so offending as the previous frame

Frame 124008: again, CMnew2 has no artifacts, and Tank's face has better depth, while in CMold its color is quite flat

Frame 155508: some colors are lighter than CMold (and consequentely than DVD), but overall grading is right, and IMHO better - indeed water seems fresh here, while stale in CMold...

Conclusion: I think I will stick with the CMnew2 color grading for the whole movie, replacing the few shots where clearly CMold is superior (that frankly seems to sparsely appear), and eventual shots plagued with artifacts will be replaced by upscaled DVD or cropped HDTV; a test version should be encoded to support (or eventually confute) my theory.

A dear friend has taken care of it and have uploaded it to teh paradoxical site for me; many thanks!!!

Thanks Doombot! Test encoding is finished, and I will watch it carefully tomorrow, then I'll post some thought about it.

Screenshot comparison: IIRC it's AntcuuFalb's first grain plate test, and I owe him this idea of using grain plate - thanks!

Still not have seen it... I should download'em all, but my connection is slow, and always busy for my projects, and my children's business (read: youtube, games and so on)...

Maybe in the newer settings the blue is gone, but the red and green are a bit too much present and noticeable, while in the older settings I haven't noticed too much blue; again, this apply of course to the latest two test clips posted; don't know if there will be any difference in other scenes, but I'd like to watch some Hoth's snow shots, the worst offenders, the ones with the bluest blue snow you could find... is it possible?

Here I am! Sorry for the delay, I have been quite busy in the last few days...

Back to the comparison: I have watched both the clips, in both versions each, one after the other; differences are not so evident, even after repeated watching... so, I imported them in avisynth and analyzed them on virtualdub, one over the other, to have a clear view of the differences.

I can say that the new settings have a bit too much red for my tastes, that could be spotted in the first clip, in the fighters; there, in old settings they are perfectly grey, while in the new one they tend a bit to be pinkish.

In the second clip, the walls in the old settings are of that kind of white I always thought a luxury spaceship corridors should have (^^,), while in some shots of the new settings they are a bit too pinkish, and I noted also a yellowish tint sometimes, due IMHO to the fact that I think you raised green a bit (am I right?); indeed, the faces in the new settings displays a little too much green, again IMHO.

The older settings retains the "spirit" of the laserdisc color grading, and to me, they are perfect - at least in these two shots, in particular the second, which is one of the most difficult one to regrade - I still remember this from my first two SW projects... not that the new settings are bad, and if I had not the occasion to compare them directly, both in the same screen, it will be hard to spot the differences, but, again, the older settings are clearly the winner...

Conclusion: stick with the older settings, you made a very very good job - said from a friend, but also from a fan restoration "competitor"... paraphrasing the adage of Charles Kingsley, "Better is old wine than new, and old settings like-wise." (^^,) ...like what I discovered in The Matrix, but this is another story, for another thread...

ColourMatch new script variations:

After a lot of testings, I managed to refine the new ColourMatch script, and ended with two variations; one with a color grading more similar to DVD, but still with some artefacts, the other with no artefacts but with a not so good (quite bad, indeed) color grading... let's call them for the moment CMnew2 and CMnew3.

I'm very happy about CMnew2, because improves the good results of the latest version; I tried to delete the artefacts and it seems it works with CMnew3, but color grading sometime is quite different from the DVD, as you can see in the following image - reason why I would NOT to use it (at least not for this project), but I added in the comparison just for knowledge:

From top to bottom:

1. CMold - the first ColourMatch script, the one I used for most part of The Matrix [spoRv]
2. CMnew1 - the new version I posted results two days ago, with less artefacts in comparison to CMold, but with a worst color grading
3. CMnew2 - improved version of CMnew1, with better color grading, even if still not on par with CMold
4. CMnew3 - no artefacts, but worst color grading than the previous one
5. DVD - used for color grading reference

So, apart the fact - now obvious - that I WILL DO the open matte version, I thought to do the following for the OAR one:

• continue to use CMold for about 90% of the movie like the old [spoRv] version, retaining 95-100% color grading accuracy
• use CMnew2 for the remaining 10%, retaining about 85-90% color grading accuracy
• for the few "survived" shots with artefacts, either using the upscaled DVD or, better, the cropped HDTV - where the side details are intact, and I could confirm that, even if in a lot of scenes there is not true, few are "pseudo-open-matte", loosing very little details at the sides, and adding many top and bottom.

It's qute difficult to say how many "survived" shots will remain, but looking at the screenshot comparisons of two days ago, where I picked up some of the worst offender, I guess they will be around 1 or 2% - a lot better than the old percentage, I think!

Plus, as I still have (of course!) the avisynth script where I used the upscaled DVD shots, I just have to replace them with the new CMnew2, make a test video, watch it CAREFULLY - another pair of eyes are welcome, though - and then locate the few shots with artefacts and replace them with HDTV or upscaled DVD (possibly using the PaNup technique and a real 35mm grain plate, to recall better the BD)... easy, no? (^^,)

Opinions?

JEDIT: I decided, ten minutes after the post, to put in action what I wrote, so now the test encoding is running, and it should be finished the day after tomorrow; then, I'll post my thoughts; meanwhile, still waiting for your opinions...