Work on my Highlander 2 HD Restoration has ended up being a bit slower than I'd hoped, with various other things eating into the limited time I have for the project, but I've finally completed enough of it to share this preview. 

Using a combination of various sources, I've reconstructed the whole second reel of Highlander 2 in as high a quality as I can. Most of it is native HD from either the Russian 35mm print or Blu Ray, but sadly a few moments here and there still have to come from DVD. 

The 35mm footage has been restored using mostly manual frame by frame clean up, and a bit of guided automated clean up here and there. The footage from Blu Ray and DVD has been colour matched to the 35mm, and I added a bit of light grain to try and merge the it in a bit better with the 35mm.

I happy with how the clean up has been going, but I still don't think I'm quite there with the colours. For now my plan is to start work on Reel 4 as it needs the least attention so will hopefully be a "quick" job, then probably Reels 5, 3, then 1. Once I've got them all cleaned up I'll concentrate more on getting the colours perfect. 

The ~20 preview video also includes a subtitle track that shows what source is being used for each shot, but I ask that for your first watch just watch it normally, however you usually watch films, and let me know if you think it all fits together. 

I've also included a very short demo video that shows a handful of before and after shots. 

I had hoped I'd be at the stage of showing this off back in February, so I'm obviously really behind where I wanted to be, so I won't make any promises on when I'll be able to give the next update, but rest assured I'm still working on it. 

PM me for a link. 

I hope you enjoy, and please let me know if you have any feedback. 

   

original is 51 with blank LFE & mono surrounds.

Limitations: software decoders only, and DPL1 was not tested since hard to find free software decoders.

Conclusion: Although DS/DPL1 decoders might be more authentic to period limitations,  DPL2 preserves the original better, Even when the audio is DS encoded, since DPL2 implementations have 20-2000ish bands of steering vs DS of 0 and DPL of 1. Not to mention, DPL2 decoders are downmix-compatible, unlike DPL1 decoders.

DS-like decoders you can find everywhere, and example of DPL2-like decoder is freesurround.

Sometimes the best things in life are free, and just cuz it's old/rare doesn't mean it's good.

As a big fan of the out of order structure of Tarantino's scripts I always wanted to give this a try. But some deleted scenes play a big part in his original vision of this and they were only available in pretty low quality. The special edition Arrow released recently brought the scenes still in SD but upscaled to 1080i, so the blend with the official HD footage doesn't look too jarring. And of course, Tarantino's original ending was reinstated, which I always preferred anyway.

The edit is pretty much done, I just need to export it and give it a final look.

For those not familiar with Tarantino's script of this film, here's the list of changes:

Just checking if anyone knows of a way to remap the channels of an AC3 file without encoding? Is it possible to do this losslessly? Or do I need to convert to wav, remap and then encode as DTS HD or 640 kbps AC3 etc? Thanks

I need some clarification about this.

So, let's say I have a M2TS file with a DTS-HD MA - let's assume it's in sync - and other audio tracks.
If I mux the audio and video streams into a MKV file, the DTS-HD MA would have a delay of 21ms - adding 21ms of silence in the beginning.

Now, if I mux back the streams into another M2TS file, would be the DTS-HD MA in sync again, or still retaining the 21ms delay?
And if I mux in another MKV, the delay would still be 21ms, or adds up and be 42ms?!?

On Monday Apple dropped Logic Pro 10.7 and it included a major feature: Create Dolby Atmos mixes.

For pros and hobbiest this is huge, as the feature comes at no extra costs. If you know how to mix a 5.1 mix, then moving to Dolby Atmos wont be hard. You can mix up to 7.1.4. Though I couldn't find an option to export to Dolby TrueHD. At this point you export to something that works with Apple Music and probably Apple TV. But it might be also a lossless version that you need the official Dolby Encoder for. Only time will tell if you can go full fledged movie mixes in Dolby Atmos. I don't see a reason why you shouldn't

Regardless, this is pretty awesome news

(2021-10-12, 12:48 PM)spoRv Wrote: A "35mm Dolby Surround Vs 70mm 6-track" debate should worth its own thread... who will start it?

https://www.in70mm.com/library/engagemen.../index.htm Wrote:
The audio was Six-Track Dolby Stereo (“A” encoded “baby boom” format).

https://www.in70mm.com/library/engagemen.../index.htm Wrote:
The audio was Six-Track Dolby Stereo (“A” encoded).

Typo the heading should say doesn’t make it clear. With 4k versions of classics and I don’t know how to talk to him about his ghostbusters fix. because there’s a new uhd coming out using a 100gb disc instead the original 66gb and it’s using Dolby vision instead of regular hdr and it includes the original theatrical audio. this his YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqM4y8-IkNE&t=2s

I have the latest 1.21 firmware for Pioneer BDP-LX54 blu-ray player. As i pointed out before: i am not very much satisfied with the picture and sound quality. Do you think it's a good idea to install some of the previous firmwares? Do you think the quality will improve ? By the way, give me your thoughts for what is the best stuff for video and audio.