Hi everyone,
I'm ne0phit, from France, and I've been passionate about films, home cinema, and video quality for many years.
I maintain a fairly large personal movie collection and spend a lot of time comparing different masters and releases, especially when it comes to Open Matte versions, alternate aspect ratios, restorations, fan-made preservations, hybrid sources, and carefully made upscales.
What interests me most is not simply having a file labelled “4K”, but understanding how it was created: which sources were used, how different masters were combined, whether details were genuinely recovered or artificially generated, how grain and color were handled, and how much of the original image can be preserved.
I'm particularly fond of Open Matte presentations and projects that recover additional image area while respecting the original photography. I also enjoy comparing commercial releases with fan restorations to understand the strengths and compromises of each version.
I discovered FanRestore while researching some Open Matte projects, including Hitcher's work on Inside Man (2006), and quickly realized that this community goes much deeper into restoration and preservation than most places I've encountered.
I'm here primarily to learn, discover projects, exchange information, and better understand the techniques used by the people creating these restorations.
Looking forward to exploring the forum and learning from your work.
Cheers,
ne0phit

Hi, how's it going. Interested in fan regrades, theatrical audio, and especially 35mm restorations

Hey, guys.

Is this common knowledge? While discussing multichannel audio editing in DaVinci Resolve with Gemini, this came up:

When editing audio tracks, there's an invisible digital trap regarding the LFE channel. If you do not correct it during your editing phase, your final export will lack punch, and your subwoofer will sound completely flat. Here is why it happens and how to fix it.

1. Why is there a -10dB difference?
- In movie theater / mixing stages: to prevent extreme sub-bass frequencies from clipping and distorting the digital master track, the industry standard (Dolby and DTS) dictates that the LFE channel is recorded on the disc 10dB lower than the other 5 channels.
- On playback: your home theater AV Receiver automatically detects the movie track and boosts the subwoofer output by +10dB to restore the correct theatrical balance. Everything sound perfectly heavy.

2. The trap in video editors (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc.)
When you extract a DTS-HDMA track to uncompressed multichannel PCM (WAV) using tools like Shutter Encoder or eac3to, you get raw digital audio streams. When you import these 6 separated mono tracks into your timeline, your video editing software does not know track 4 is an LFE track. It treats it like a regular audio track. If you edit, crossfade and export your project as-is, that 10dB attenuation becomes permanent in your new file. Your final AV Receiver will not boost it, and your mix will lose its cinematic rumble.

So basically, when editing a track you ripped from a DVD or Blu-ray that you converted to PCM to work on, you must take into account that you'll have to boost the LFE channel by +10dB.

Which version of the Dolby Stereo track is better, the Scream Factory or the Arrow Video?

Bonus question I am asking for answer for: Is the Scream Factory or the Arrow Video bluray better in video?

Hi everyone! I’m new to the fan restoration community and recently came across FanRestore while looking for high-quality restoration and fan edit projects.

I’ve always been a big movie fan, but I’m just starting to explore the work people are doing to restore and improve different releases. I’m especially interested in projects that preserve the best presentation of a movie while improving things like picture and audio quality.
Looking forward to learning more about the community, discovering some great projects, and seeing what everyone has been working on!

Found their release from the bowels of internet.
What caught my eye was PCM 5.1 in the description.
I’m almost certain the audio is from cinema DTS. Sounds like it and the sync fluctuates the same way as when the C-DTS is not synched properly.
Anyways, a great sounding track well worth getting if you are unhappy with uhd ”original dts”.

Found this amazing AI logo remover using AI V2 auto remover function which doesn’t leave a blur like other manual ai removers (including the manual one on this site), inpaints obviously but with very good results.

“https://magiceraser.org/remove-watermark-from-video/“

Unfortunately its limited to certain file sizes and time limits even with the expensive paid models.

Does anyone know of a windows based app (or web based without file size/time limits) that uses the same auto method without blur,  time limits etc.

Ones I’ve tried so far all leave a blurred effect.

Filmmaker/Editor from the other end of the world, fan-restoring Indian (and other) films in very limited scale
Film preservation is notorious here in my country, so DVDs, bootleg-audio commentaries and different formats is how I taught myself everything. When companies and technicians themselves seem to constantly work against their original releases...

I'm so grateful and moved by a place like this where everyone's sense of passion for formats, presentation and sense of detail is visible in every project. So inspired!

Hi! Trying to get better quality audio for movies for my daughter! Glad this place exists!

I'm wondering what kind of hardware spec is required for video editing, up-conversion, restoration, etc.

I haven't gone too deep in to much of this yet, but just over 2 years ago I did briefly try using Topaz to up-scale DVD to 1080p with minimal 'clean-up', however, a 25 minute TV episode took many hours and the results were pretty awful. This was only on an Intel i5 8400 CPU with the on-board UHD 630 GPU, which is almost 9 years old now, so I didn't expect it to be fast with great results anyway.

So, as I need to replace my PC, it would be nice to know a minimum spec for the kind of processing others on here are doing, so at least I can move forward with learning more.

It would be nice to know a minimum spec, but also what would be a worthwhile step up, without going OTT.