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
  

Was asked to introduce myself as well...

I am not a fan-restoration guy per se. I do different things. I do not try to restore something how it might have looked once or emulate a Laserdisc look, but instead I go for "upgrading" lackluster releases to something appropiate for modern viewing habits without going too far away from the actual theatrical presentation and its intention as I understand and remember it. This mostly comes down to color grading and some "digital enhancements". Usually some friends point me to a release that could use some help. I take a look at reference material for inspiration, but do my own interpretation, just like you would do in a craft editing seat. What I create has a certain look for sure. Sometimes it's good, sometimes I screw up and went down the wrong path. An sometimes there are limits what can be done with a given source. I think more or less like a DoP, which I wanted to become as a child, but well it never happened. I always think my work is subpar becaue I know what I could do if had some archival master with uncompressed chroma. Curse of knowing what could be possible with proper source material. But it is what it is...

Usually people point me at something that needs help and I see what I can do as far as my time allows, given I am interested in the material to begin with. And usually it is to their "wishes".The better the user who requested something is in commenting on the shortcomings, the better work I can do. Just like the producer is sitting next to an colorist in a studio working out the basic look or going over some scenes that need help. I think more or less like a DoP does. But yeah, I create as much crap as the next guy. And sometimes there are limits to what I can do. You know, the famous last 10% take way longer than the first 90%. So it is always a compromise. And sometimes results or good, something not up to my own standards.

Beside regrading I did a few fan-cuts. I never extend movies but instead un-extend movies to their initial theatrical presentation, or a mezzazine if requested. Often it is very hard to find reference material for the exact cuts and some projects end up in limbo because I cannot find a 35mm scan (quality does not matter) or some laser disc rip. Still looking for some. 

Professionally I work, well how should I put it, in the industry. I once started as an editor in boradcasting but now do other things in regards to cloud services, VFX-IT and streaming services or just as a project manager in related matters. And yes, I have a IMDB page like many of you probably here do. Who knows, we might have worked on a project in the past together or through another company in between.

I would love to work as a colorist as well in my spare time. Not because I love that job so much, it's paid like shit, but because there are so many screw ups. I hate when a good movie is just ruined on e.g. an UHD BD release because they put some intern on it. It's for the love of the movies. And I think with over 40 years of watching and understanding movies and working in the industry I have a good eye for it. But yeah, I can be as wrong as the next guy. But well, in my line of work I have no direct connections to producders/directors or contacts at boutique lables. So it will probably never happen. It is what it is. But it is a shame how especially some UHD BDs as an enthusiast medium turned out. I have a long list of early UHD release that I need to regrade. I stopped working on BDs, only have a few more in the pipeline. But need a decent HDR reference monitor first as I have my ownj production standards. 

I have strong opinion about many things in the industry and the fan scene and not afraid to speak up, which my day job also requires. I might come across harsh sometimes but just saying how I see things. Don't take it personally. 

My setup at home. Well, how should I put it without too much flexing. It's like a craft editing seat. A lot of stuff I bought used, but I have a decent setup. Some people might find it jaw dropping others just see a somewhat outdated craft editing and coloring grading seat. Setup mostly consisting of BlackMagic products I bought over the years as well as a used and a slighty defect HD reference display (display is fine, just some of the more advanced stuff broken I don't need anyway).

For color and editing work I only use Resolve these days. I think with the recent releases it's the best software package available, and if it is good enough for some superhero tentpole it's good enough for me. I hate Adobe Premiere with a passion because it is such a horrible piece of garbage for editing and color grading. Baselight? I am not willing to work with that UI, end of story - though it has some great features Resolve is lacking. Great piece of software but not for me with that user interface. 

Beside that I am producting my own live action shorts, costs lot of cash that comes out of my pocket. Not many, and no, no awards. It's more special interst and usually only shown at smaller short film festivals and never again. I do not put stuff up on youtube as what I create is intended to be watched on the silverscreen or at least properly at home and not a friggin' cell phone. Fuck exposure, I have standards. 

Dunno what else to tell you guys... Well, if you have any questions feel free to AMA. I might not take much part in forum life here, more of a lurker 'cause time constraints.

Oh yes, and if you are working for some boutique label, or even doing an indie project or a blockbuster, hit me up. I color shit for you, even for free, just for the love of the movies and to proof a point. I hate when good movies get crappy releases. I just hurts me that color grading is often so abmyssal...

managed to bag a load of VCD's off Freecycle today as I said in the shoutbox on the front page.

Below is a list of them and authenticity of them. I'll go through them one by one and say if it's a screener, cam or legit VCD over the week or so. Only listing them in case of the framing (open matte) or if the versions on the disc differ in anyway. Sometime CAM jobs from the cinema can reveal any cuts that were made for home video versions.

If anyone would like to see them, leave a message below and I'll back them up to my Googledrive and share the link

Official Release:
Daylight
Volcano
The Full Monty

Possible Official Release:
Bean - The Ultimate Disaster Movie

Bootlegs - Video source to be confirmed:
The Thin Red Line
Payback
The Parent Trap
Rounders
Small Soldiers
Lethal Weapon 4
A Perfect Murder
Jack Frost (Michael Keaton)
Men In Black
Practical Magic
Antz
Shakespeare in Love
As Good as it Gets
Virus
Lost in Space - CAM
Deep Impact
Soldier - VHS screener (fullscreen)
Godzilla (1998)
Mission Impossible 2 - CAM / Telesync with Chinese Subtitles
Dr Dolittle
A Bug's Life
Great Expectations
Message in a Bottle
Patch Adams
Titanic
Armageddon - Source VHS screener