towne32

I agree that 4k83 is probably the preferred way to go for that film, especially the later release options. It was such a clean print, you get a really consistent viewing experience. The Rancor scene scan used in Harmy’s version is pretty limited in terms of how far it can be color corrected. It has really never looked better than in some of the latest 4k83 versions. These film restorations look as good as many official Blu-ray releases. And the cleanups look better than official ones on the tier of companies like 88 Films, etc.

For the 1977 film, it’s still hard to give a definitive recommendation. Despecialized has some rough moments, and a couple remaining shots with GOUT elements. 4k77 is a very consistent watch as far as picture quality goes, and the original effects never looked better. The color on the original non-DNR release was was not ideal, IMO, but Rob’s DNR color is much better. And Sanjuro’s grade is excellent.

But the print has a lot of minor damage. Their cleanup is insanely impressive. But once you get to the second half of the film, there is often noticeable damage on every frame, and some very unfortunate light leaks. It’s still a lovely watch (and probably my preferred), but unlike 4k83, you won’t be tricking your eyes into thinking this is an official version from an alternate timeline. 😃 Looking forward to seeing how the Skymaster/Skywalker releases are improved. I’d say Star Wars has great options, but no definitive one yet.

LexX said:

It seems that they have ruined the new Bat-releases with new sound effects and teal colors. Damn, that seems to be the biggest blow so far for new 4K releases as those got worse release than the BDs.

From what I’ve read:

Batman 89 - Incredible transfer for the video. Audio is massively revisionist. Most of the sound effects replaced.

Returns - Great transfer. Some scenes have bluer grading, but it’s not a blanket change. Most people will be happy with it, but obviously this website will not. A couple of effects changes made to the Atmos audio.

Forever (if anyone even cares) - fine transfer, mild HDR improvement . And Robin (if anyone even cares) - fine transfer with fantastic, reference quality HDR .

I’ll probably pick it after a price drop, and maybe seek out a fan edit of 89 with the proper audio. I’ll likely be just fine with it aside from that blunder.

Darth Robin said:

The comparrison image galley no longer works.

Google plus is no more. If anyone still has the images and wants to host them somewhere, they can certainly do so!

whaleman said:

Hi Team: I’ve been away for a while (due to not having a computer for about a year, lol) but I’m back on the grid. In the mean time I seem to have lost myspleen access:( Would be great access again to get caught up checking out the most recent excellent fan preservation efforts; if anyone could help me out please send me a PM! If not, and this is not the appropriate way to ask, then I beg your forgiveness:)

Myspleen doesn’t do invites anymore. But if you had an account before, setting up a second one on any site like this can usually get you (and maybe the inviter) banned. Best to just try to contact the myspleen folks and see if you can get it reactivated.

jamesnobles said:

Can someone tell me when the Team Negative 1’s Empire has a turquoise color to it? In particular the fight between Vadar and Luke when in the carbonate freezing chamber.

It’s a very faded print. There are some basic color corrections in that release, but they can swing the overall look heavily in one direction or another. If you made it that far without feeling bothered by the color, you’re probably not too sensitive to it in general!

Mackey256 said:

ChainsawAsh said:

I think towne32’s “v2.6” had an ANH crawl edition, but he didn’t do the same for v2.7.

The towne32 version of v2.6 is on myspleen if you have access there.

I did it for 2.7, and gave it to quite a few people. But never uploaded it anywhere due to all of the people that complained about the 2.6 accuracy (compared to the 1981 crawl). Of course, it was never meant to be accurate to the 1981 in terms of the star field, but just a fun bonus.

I wouldn’t recommend version 2.6 in general, though.

New Classic Who Blu-ray trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WBpPWy7jB8

So has moderation on this site officially thrown in the towel?

This whole time I thought it really was supposed to be Untilted. I just assumed it was a term I wasn’t familiar with, but was too lazy to look up.

On the bright side, it probably is technically untilted. Unkilted too.

ChainsawAsh said:

A native 4K encode of the version the Blu-Ray is authored from exists, actually. Guess it just hasn’t made its way around to the more public haunts just yet.

I may be mixing things up, but does that have the reel change markers still in place, unlike the iso?

canofhumdingers said:

Well, that’ll be my next option I suppose. Disc 3 (just the film itself with no fluff this time) is in process as we speak. Fingers crossed!

JEDIT:
Hooray! Dunno what was causing problems with the intro videos, and while it would’ve been cool to have those, I’m just glad I don’t have a third coaster. Looks like I’ll just keep it simple in the future when muxing iso files.

If you weren’t doing so already, I would try multiAVCHD next time for multiple clips. But it’s possible one wasn’t compliant (multi should tell you and give the option of reencoding, though).

Laservampire said:

ChainsawAsh said:

I don’t recommend any form of stick-on/adhesive label. They ruined most of the discs I used them on over time, and I’ve heard horror stories of them ruining disc drives as well.

If you want disc labels, the only truly safe way to do it is to get printable discs and use a compatible printer, unfortunately.

I was after a certain indie band’s very rare home-made CD-R release from the late 90s and every existent copy is now unrippable thanks to the adhesive used in the printed disc labels. Luckily I found someone who had ripped the CD back in the day and still had the files.

It’s worse for CDs because it actually peels the data off. DVDs and Blu-rys should be recoverable in theory.

screams in the void said:

fair enough , would the moderators object to me starting a thread about this topic so as not to further derail this thread ? also , my apologies to the op .I have not heard any thing regarding this issue from him . maybe he is on vacation ? and I am open to topic name suggestions

The OP has a new baby (or one on the way)! So the exact opposite of a vacation. 😛

I can’t imagine the mods would object to a new topic, though.

This looks really nice. Great work!

Tobar said:

I enjoyed the season as well. It wasn’t bogged down by a bunch of UNIVERSE ENDING nonsense. But the views here are not unique, everywhere I’ve gone I’ve seen nothing but negative reviews of the season.

I did like the variety of relatively small to moderate scale threats. That’s an aspect Kerblam did well with, as did Demons and several others.

6 planets isn’t a terrible scale for the finale, but it’s too bad it was awful in nearly every other way. 😃 Still, as I said, the non Chibnall episodes were generally quite good.

Good points, Jason. People that might not want any diversity in the cast/crew might find it too liberal or PC, but so what? If anything, the content itself was far more centrist than ever before in the new series. It’s possible that Chibnall’s clunky exposition and frankly rather poor dialogue made things stand out a bit more, for people that are sensitive to certain things.

It also had perhaps the most conservative leaning episode since the Tom Baker serial, Sunmakers, with Kablam.

I myself found it a fairly disappointing season, mostly, that did a few things quite right. Chibnall’s own episodes felt of an amateurish quality, and the season planning (and what was done with the main characters) quite poor. But all of the guest writer scripts were well written, and a couple of them were great (Demons, Takes You Away, nearly Rosa with the faults likely Chibnall’s doing).

I hope things get tightened up next time. The presentation has taken a nice turn. Good direction, quality CGI, and I do like the new composer. Great actors, but each episode felt like they were still starting out and hadn’t developed the characters. I would love to see the role of show runner be more like a classic series producer, where they don’t write a single word of the scripts. 😉

https://www.doctorwho.tv/news/?article=brand-new-animation-of-missing-doctor-who-serial-the-macra-terror-to-be-released-on-dvd-and-bluray
Can’t wait for this one! The images look much better than Power.

Mavimao said:

Handman said:

Dreamaster said:

Handman said:

You mention the 16mm has great color. Do you suppose you will utilize one of Dre’s color matching algorithms to match the 35mm print to the 16mm color?

Also, you’ve got a donation from me 😃

That could certainly be done, yes… but do you really prefer the 16mm colors as a reference?

I was under the impression that our 35mm sources were in much worse condition than they are. I really like the 16mm colors, but the 35mm looks good enough. I just grew wistful remembering an instance where color matching tools were used to reobtain original color from high quality black and white footage and a very low quality NTSC videotape.

It’s not “color matching” that’s being done here but rather frame blending. You take the b/w luma channel of the film footage and take the chroma channel of the video footage and overlap the two to recreate the color footage.

And in this case, it worked well because of a particular type of noise that allowed them to unwarp the 16mm source and overlay things more easily.

Presumably it’s not always an easy task to align two film scans.

JonathanArthur19 said:

How long do you think it might take due to how good the prints are? 4K83 had an amazing print so how good or bad is Empire?

Unlike the pristine Return of the Jedi print which needed very little work, this project is expected to take at least two years - many of the sources are faded, and have at least as much damage (perhaps even more) as the Star Wars prints we were working with.

oojason said:

‘Doctor Who to skip Christmas Day for first time in 13 years’…

The festive edition of Doctor Who will be shown on New Year’s Day on BBC One instead of Christmas Day for the first time since the drama’s return in 2005.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46210019
 

Not really a fan of this change. From what I’ve read, this is the kind of situation where, once the give up that time slot, they’re possibly never going to be able to get it back. And, when this rumor was going around a few weeks ago,
the reason stated was that Chibnall thought all of the Christmas plot ideas were tapped out. Which is… strange. It doesn’t need to be about Christmas to be broadcast on that day. And several of them have only had a passing reference to the holiday.

This would also explain, perhaps, why Chibnall initially refused to take over for the last Christmas special. Moffat stuck around to produce yet an extra Christmas special, specifically to make sure Doctor Who kept that time slot. Oh well, thanks anyway?

Have there been tests done with the Fuji scan to see just how far the colors can be pushed (at least approximately in the right directions)? I’m sure you’re choosing the best sources you’ve got, of course. Seems like something that you might have checked out before the restoration folks spend their many hundreds of hours on cleanup (thank you for your service).

LordZerome1080 said:

I think he mentioned it in one of his workflow videos. 🤷🏻‍♂️😉

Without any kind of actual source to look at here, I’m just going by memory. The inclusion of GOUT in Jedi 2.5 was minor and more of a little homage, as all of the other 2.x releases had GOUT (in other cases, because it was needed, for Jedi just for fun).

This is in contrast to 3.0, which can totally break free of GOUT dependence. What would be the reason for including one GOUT shot for each film, in this case? I’m pretty sure you’re mistaken on this, but I’d be curious to see if he did in fact say that. 😃

LordZerome1080 said:

Fang Zei said:

It was mentioned upthread that Despecialized 3.0 will be “entirely 35mm based.”

Does this mean 3.0 will finally be the “best of both worlds” version? In other words, the unaltered 70-80% of the bd color-corrected, with the 35mm scans used for the stuff that was altered, and none of Harmy’s meticulous recreations nor using the ‘97 re-comp shots in place of the true originals?

I think he said all that and he will only be using one shot of GOUT.

Jedi 2.5 had a piece of a shot from the GOUT, but I don’t know that there is a plan for 3.0 to do that. I would guess not.

Tobar said:

I’ve really enjoyed the last couple of episodes. I’d dare to say that nuWho has finally reached Big Finish’s level of quality.

Looking forward to next Sunday’s. Another historical that looks rather good. And four weeks in a row with non-Chibnall writers (and first time writers for the show) sounds good to me.

ChainsawAsh said:

It’s actually easiest to put it on an external drive and plug it directly into the 4K TV and play it that way. It won’t work on a PS4 (overly restrictive requirements for 4K media, such as it has to be h264, which the 4K releases from TN1 are h265), and I dunno about an Xbox.

On Xbox One you can definitely play it via Kodi. Not sure about the native apps, but I expect not.