hello. im anonymous. im trying to find workprint versions of disney, pixar, or animated movies. i cant find any workprint movies on youtube, but i hope to find some here. i look foward to being in this board.

Hi everyone

I am currently working on preserving all of the 4:3 Open Matte DVDs in my collection and the four original Batman films are the first ones up. They are also arguably my favorites to watch in this aspect ratio since I grew up on the VHS copies, which are the same master as the "flipper" DVDs. These are 1:1 copies of the DVD files so all of the menus are in tact. I also took the liberty to make 600dpi scans of the cover art.

Here's a screenshot comparison so you know what to expect for framing (slightly cropped sides with top and bottom opened up):
https://i.imgur.com/Ff8oSo2.png
[url=https://i.imgur.com/j5mrzwd.png][/url]
PM me for a link!

Hi everyone

My name is Josh, and I figured that I'd start participating more in this forum (I'm currently on OT.com as "trillary dump" and TSWT.com as "Jobeinator" which I'm aware is confusing). I am very interested in Open Matte copies of any film, as well as hard-to-find cuts of films, preferably extended versions of films. 
Another thing that I just started getting into is obscure media releases. Right now, D-theater (or D-VHS) releases and early HD broadcasts interest me most since they are usually the same master from the LD.

I look forward to discussing further in these forums!

Hello.

No doubt many of us are familiar with Colek's project that regraded the remastered ABT print to look like the Golden Princess laserdisc. I've been toying with the idea of doing something similar (as you might have seen from my thread in the 'requests' section), while hopefully creating a playable file that didn't have the brightness issues. I'm doing this because I always felt the remaster deserved better than what it got, so if I can do something that looks a bit more pleasing (and closer to the theatrical colours) I'll be happy if it turns out like his would have been.

I've not actually seen his preview version (only the initial version he released some years ago with the newly translated subtitles and laserdisc audio tracks), so all I've got to go on is the screencaps that he made available.

However, I'll be taking on board some of the suggestions I've already received here like reducing the overly magenta nature of those colours and adding back some of the blue that these remasters always seem to leave out.

Here are some in progress shots, and as ever I welcome any feedback. I hope this can stand as a complement to what Colek was doing with his.

As for audio and subtitles, I don't have many sources available beyond what Colek used for his early version, so if anyone has any tracks they'd like included I'm all ears.

Thanks!

I updated forum software and a bunch of plugins, and also tweaked the way forum should be presented in search indexes. If you notice anything not working properly, please report it here

Just sharing information about a regrade I did a couple of months ago. I was in the mood for an Eastwood western, and popped in "High Plaines Drifter" (Universal, 40th Anniversary). 

Just in the first few minutes the colors annoyed me as they were off. There was a nasty slight blanket green, color temperature felt too cold, like the movie was shot in Spring and not in Summer, overall it was undersaturated and the contrast was just not there. I felt like watching a TV movie and not a theatrical feature. I might be wrong here, but it looked to me like somewhere down the line during working on the release they used the wrong color coefficient. It's more of a gut feeling, but it looked like Rec.601 instead Rec.709 was used at some point and ruined the colors. At least this would explain some of the shortcomings, especially the slight overall tint and the magenta tint around the knee. Had to stop watching and fire up Resolve on the next weekend before being finally able to enjoy the movie that I had not seen since it's DVD release.

I checked some other BDs: they are all the same transfer/grade, but the Universal BD had the best encode. Though mine had a uncrecoverable read error I had to insert a couple for frames from the 2018 Capelight BD. No one will notice, it just right after a cut. Did not check any DVD release or a LD for reference, as I had none at hand. But well, it was pretty straight forward for me what was wrong and how to movie should look. No need for more reference material as there was never any elaborate coloring timing done for sure back in the days. So nothing for purists, but well my regrades never are.

Beside that the black levels on the BD were a bit squeezed, almost crushed at night, and the shadows were to dark in general. The theatrical print already as deep blacks for sure, given the way it was lit and shot and the film stock used, which fits the plot perfectly. In other scenes the shadows on the BD were a tad washed out though. I expanded them a bit mostly, so that in dark scenes with harsh contrast there are still visible details in faces, which would otherwise would be problematic even for OLED TV. The blacks nowl feel a bit software overall, but still going very deep. The highlights were way too low even though they had a slight white blow out indications ofc lipping, and looking at the scope it seems clear to me that some normalization filter was used for whatever reason as they all stopped at levels usually used in Rec.601 SD transfers for TV broadcasts. Yeah, the plot thickens...

As mentioned already, all in all the film didn't look like shot in the Summer of '72 but more as it was shot on a cold Spring day. Given the sweat on the actor's faces and looking up some production stroies on the net (it was hot, very hot), the colder look with sometimes almost neutral color grading did not seem plausible at all. Some moron just did an white balance correction for sure with some stuff he thought should be white. Why do people are allowed to do color correction for BD releases when they have clearly no understanding what they are doing? So I adjusted the white balance and temperature a bit, all subtle changes to get the right ambience back how the movie once must have been looked or better how the audience back then perceived it and translate this to modern viewing habits.

The 3rd act is a disaster. The flames have a clearly visible green tint and the whte balance is completly off. Yes, it is perfectly fine to grade eveything blueish in night scenes when there is only neutral lighting, even going into teal is fine. But that does not work when the actors are in front of fire and the only light soruce in orange. It makes no sense to grade the 3rd act this way and was clearly digitally done. Someone noticed this in QC probably later and their solution was not to fix the grade but to seriously lower the saturation to cover their tracks. I wouldn't be surprise if Lowry was invovled in color grading or restoration. Color wise they have screwed up everthing they ever touched for DVD or BD releases.

In the end I did a full regrade of the 3rd act (flames rotoscoped), but also took some artistic license to create a specific atmosphere. These are clearly modern techniques that were not possible back in the days. For example when Eastwood uses the whip on the bad guy on the ground some shots are deliberately drowned in red, especially in the shadows. You know, when you look into bright lights and then close your eyes that you see a red "afterflow" on your closed lids? Yup, I was exactly going for that. Because the scene has many quick cuts between fire and the guy on the ground, I wanted that red afterglow to get specific emotional reaction out the audience: they should feel the flames, they should think there was more blood on screen then there has been. Yeah, good ol' editing back of tricks. Screw with the audience and make them think they saw stuff that was never there to begin with. Without me telling you this, you probably would never noticed that a few scenes are deliberately altered to fit the larger context. There is a screenshot below of one frame, where - out of context - you see that it is actually way to red in the shadows, but it works great this way with the overall scene.

There is a slight chroma noise, but not much and not really annoying and even with trained eyes you barely see it, so I did not do any work on it or the grain.

Summart of what I did:

• removal of blanket green
  
• removal of blue tint around the shoulder
  
• remove of magenta tint around the knee 
  
• color temperature correction
  
• white balance correction
  
• custom contrast curve
  
• contrast detail enhancement
  
• shadow expansion around the toe
  
• boosted highlights 
  
• fixed gamma level
  
• rebalancing of shadows in serveral scenes
  
• unsharpen/resharpen to bring back some details
  
• slight edge enhancement as the edges were frayed out
  
• full regrade of the 3rd act
  

Hi, i just following one specific movie thread (The Abyss) for a few days/weeks, so i thought i register to watch it when it's done, but i see now this forum is so more complex and serious than i thought in the first place, and so many hard working restorations are done and in progress. I will check back sometimes, looking forward to see some gems are not available other places. Respect!

This project is canceled with a superior 4K remaster now coming out



Tremors Regrade (Project CRT #0 v1.0)

Project Info:

This is the inaugural project of my CRT regrade project. You can read more about it here:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-3228-post-...l#pid62453

The short summary is many older HD transfers have a red/magenta/pink/purple look on modern flat panels. That is because they were graded on older CRTs which have different color characteristics and technology. The goal of this project is to view those older masters on a CRT and then regrade them to look correct on modern flat planes.

I selected Tremors as the first test because it has a pronounce and obvious magenta look, I had the BD and it was on Netflix, so I could compare the colors of the two version. Most of all I love the movie. It's simple B-movie with a lot of charm and a perfect mix of danger and humor. The CRT regrade gets rid of the purple skies and pink whites and brings back the greens, yellow and blues. I don't know if it is more theatrically accurate but it does look a  hell of a lot better, IMHO.

Problem with using Tremors is it has a terrible, terrible HD master. Lots of DNR but even worse copious amounts of EE/halos. Clearly it had machine applied variable EE. Some shots look OK, other look like someone took a white crayon and drew an outline around the character. After a lot of hard work with After Effects and regraining, I think I got rid or reduced of 80% of the EE. Far from perfect but the best its going to be until there is a remaster.

I pulled the 5.1 and ENG subs from the BS but also added the PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround from the open matte laserdisc.


Video:
The Tremors BD regraded to how it looks like on a professional color grading CRT. That reduces the amount of magenta and red in the picture and brings out the greens, yellow and blues. Further the master has had the EE reduced and has been regrained.


Audio:
1. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the US OM LD)
2. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the US WS CE LD)
3. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the US CE DVD - Converted from DD 2.0)
4. DTS-HD MA 5.1 (from the US BD)

Subs:
1. English (from the US BD)

Sync:
Synced to the US BD

Pics:

MKV


BD/BD Regraded to CRT (Test Pics, Out of Date)


Thanks:

BDgeek: for the CE LD track
alinskey : for ripping the CE LD track

Hi all,
I've heard it's damn near impossible to replace foreign audio that overlaps with English audio. I have John Candy's last film "Canadian Bacon" but this version is completely different then what was released. The only problem is that it has Russian audio overlapped with English. Now again, I know it's impossible but there has to be a way it can be fixed.

This is a three disc set featuring all episodes of the slasher series Harper's Island in HD, together with all the extra features from the DVD release.

• BD25 with menus, background video, pop up menus and resume function
  
• 1080P HD Episodes
  
• English 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus Audio
  
• Original chapter stops used on the DVD
  
• Optional English Subtitles
  
• Deleted Scenes for certain episodes
  
• Audio Commentary Tracks for certain episodes
  
• All 16 Webisodes
  
• Casting Harper's Island
  
• One By One The Making of Harper's Island
  
• Guess Who?
  
• The Grim Reaper
  
• CBS On Air Promos