Hello everyone, just wanted to post that I am not dead but have been merely very busy lately. My free time, simply put, is dwindling so I don't get as many opportunities to work on my projects, however I do want to give a status report of sorts with the creation of this thread.

I've been hard at work for the past few months trying to regrade the European master of Big Trouble In Little China (with many issues arising, forcing me to restart from scratch essentially three times) and I thought it'd be a nice tease for what's to come as well as a means of getting feedback as I am currently pressed with a little issue of sorts.

I'm currently trying to determine what'd be a better approach for this project, attempting to recover more details in the shadows and highlights at the cost of lowering the image contrast and mood to a certain extent or present a regrade more true to the 35mm source I'm working off of (which still holds more details in both ranges I may add but less explicitly).

Higher Contrast | Lower Contrast
 

 

One of the most ingenious shots in film history wasn't ingenious enough for the remastering team behind the UHD of The Wizard of Oz.

For those unaware, the magical moment when the sepia goes into colour was achieved in camera all in one shot by using a monochrome-painted set and a Dorothy body double wearing a monochrome dress, lit with a brown tinted filter over the set lights. As the camera moves through the door, Judy's double moves out of shot and the actress herself enters in her blue dress.

For the UHD, a power window was drawn around the doorway and everything inside the house, doppleganger included, has been digitally converted to pure black and white, then graded sepia.

Here's a comparison, with brightness raised for a clearer view, between the UHD and the 1997 MGM DVD which shows the unaltered colours.

UHD:


1997 MGM DVD:


It really is astonishing just how many of these digital "fixes" are poisoning cinematographic history.

This is the master thread for a series of projects that aim to more accurately recreate how old 6/4 channel mixes were intended to be heard. I'm not a huge fan on how modern theater equipment handles 4.0 tracks (on the rare case where one is available) and the way it handles matrixed audio is far from accurate. I correct this by combining various releases for the highest quality and accuracy, de-matrixing when necessary, and putting them in a 7.1 container with 4 discrete mono surrounds.

#1 Predator (1987)

I have been looking for a way to watch this series which was produced in six parts in '73. I cannot find it anywhere online to stream. It is available on DVD for import but under PAL unfortunately. Can anyone suggest any possibilities for watching?

After spending a lot of time lurking around finally decided to say hello.

As a fan of video edits and fan projects in general this seems to be the perfect place to meet people and exchange ideas. I used to be active in Fanedit.org but I didn't like how the mods dealt with a lot of stuff there so I left.

Anyway, happy to be here and really really impressed with some of the work I'm seeing here. It's great to see there's so many people passionate about this as I am.

There’s a film I’m surprised no one has thought of updating the cgi in 1995 jumanji and using the uhd as a base upgrading the hdr to Dolby vision on top of the 4k resolution. upgrading the cgi because most of it takes you out of the movie now sadly.

As many (all?) of you know, laserdisc format allow more than a single audio track (more info could be found here: https://fanrestore.com/thread-1107.html)

Now, most of capture cards can grab one video source along with a stereo audio track; so, what to do with a laserdisc with more than a single stereo track?

1. capture it twice (or three times), then eventually mux the other audio track(s) to the first audio/video track

• [1] one PC with single capture card
  

• [2] more PCs each one with its own capture card
  

• [3] one PC with two audio cards
  

• [4] one PC with an audio card with multichannel input
  

• capture a laserdisc with two or three audio tracks in one pass, sparing:
  • time - in a case of two hours movie, only two hours capture instead of four or six
    
  • wear - mainly of laserdisc player, secondly PC/HDD etc.
    
  • electricity - not a lot, I must admit, still some
    
  • work - to put in sync two or three tracks
    

• capture a laserdisc with its own tracks AND decoded one by an external decoder
  
• capture two (or more) laserdiscs from two (or more) players at the same time
  

• a laserdisc disc with (at least) two audio tracks
  
• a laserdisc player with both digital and analog outputs
  
• optional: a laserdisc with AC-3 output AND an AC-3 demodulator, if you want to capture AC-3
  
• optional: an external audio decoder if you want to capture decoded audio
  
• analog and digital cables to connect laserdisc player to the capture card
  
• a computer
  
• a capture card (that can grab at least video)
  
• an audio card with multichannel input
  
• a capture software that can grab video AND multichannel audio
  OR
  
• a capture software to grab video AND another that can record multichannel audio at the same time
  

• to capture AC-3 you NEED an audio card with digital input AND bit-perfect AND external AC-3 demodulator
  
• to capture DTS you NEED an audio card with digital input AND bit-perfect
  
• to capture PCM you can use an audio card (from best to worst):
  • with digital input AND bit-perfect
    
  • with digital input BUT NOT bit-perfect
    
  • with only analog input
    
• to capture analog you can use any audio card
  
• to get DVD/BD/UHD-BD compliant audio tracks, audio cards must be at least 48kHz
  

As many of you know I'm a massive fan of the Highlander franchise and I've put together and helped out with many fan projects. 

Well one thing lead to another and somehow I ended up being invited by Panzer-Davis to put together the official trailer for the upcoming Blu Ray release of Highlander the Series! 

The trailer is made with actual footage from the Blu Ray (unless stated otherwise) and was first shown last weekend at WatcherCon, an online Highlander Convention. As of this morning you can find it on the official Highlander Facebook page as well as my YouTube channel.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2d-ieb62sI

Official Highlander Facebook

As it's an official trailer I know that this post might not be strictly meet the requirements for a fan project, but rest assured that it was put together by a real fan  

Obviously YouTube and Facebook are compressing the video quite a bit, so I'm able to make a higher quality file available if people want. 

Now that this is finally out I can get back to concentrating on my Highlander 2 work

Full Frame or just scan the area that was screened? Take a look at this:

When a film goes through the Digital Intermediate process, it is quite common to only scan the actual part of the negative that will be screened. So for a 1.85:1 widescreen film, that's what is scanned. Of course this removes the possibility of reframing for 4x3 TV afterwards - but there aren't any hard and fast rules yet.
The reason for doing this is simply to do with scanning speeds and data storage. With a full frame of 35mm taking up to 12 Mbytes (that's just at 2K, at 4K it's nearly 50Mbytes), a full feature runs into a couple of Terabytes. You can slice several hundred Gbytes off your storage requirement if you only scan the widesreen area. Of course that will give you the same effect as having a hard mask in the camera - black on the final print above and below the projected area.

https://cinematography.com/index.php?/fo...bout-1851/

I often see around here that films that were shown in theaters at 1.85:1 are scanned full frame and I don’t know the reason. If you want to get a final image with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, can a full frame scan be used for this?

The Essential Reference Guide For Filmmakers

https://www.kodak.com/content/products-b...makers.pdf