After my recent Highlander 2 European Cut preservation, and williarob's excellent Highlander US Theatrical preservation, I thought I'd have a go at bringing the often overlooked French Theatrical Cut of the original Highlander into the world of HD...and English!

Released just a few weeks after the US Theatrical Cut, the French Theatrical version is very similar; most of the cuts made to the US version are here, but it's already a little closer to the full length European Cut which would be released a few months later. The extra wrestling shots and the Bedsoe scene have already gone by this version, and many of the shots have been trimmed or extended by a few frames here and there. The biggest change in comparison to the US Cut is that this version retains the WWII flashback sequence, so Rachel's character makes a bit more sense here. This also features the first appearance of the "enhanced" final quickening which features different effects to the US Theatrical Cut. This would go on to be the version seen in all later cuts of the film. 

This cut can still be bought in France on DVD, and as far as I know has never gone out of print, but it has only ever been available in Standard Definition and dubbed into French.

For this preservation I used the video from the 30th Anniversary Blu Ray, and the audio from the US Theatrical Cut laserdisc to recreate this version in full HD. I used the most recent French DVD as a guide for both the editing and the audio. Obviously English language audio has never existed for this cut, but the US audio is almost identical so it fits quite well.

I also used the original UK Blu Ray to patch the opening shot of the wrestlers walking through the tunnel (this has been trimmed by 9 frames on the 30th Anniversary Blu Ray), and upscaled the end credits from the French DVD (both the US and French Cut feature small differences in the end credits in comparison to the European Cut). I also used the French DVD to patch a small piece of missing audio from the US Theatrical Cut.


I've included the original French audio on a second track. It may be of interest to some as it features Christopher Lambert dubbing himself back into his native language.

This is more of a curiosity for the hardcore Highlander film, but I hope some of you enjoy it. PM me for the link. 

Hey all! With WB's release of Wizard of Oz on UHD I and others were disappointed they've completely dropped the original mono audio with no plans to make it available again. I did some digging and discovered the very first 1998 MGM DVD was the last release to have it in unaltered form. I would have went with the Laserdisc but I don't have the means to capture the audio, so this was the next best thing.



I've ripped the track encoded as a lossless 24-bit FLAC file and synced it to the 4k UHD. All it needed was lining-up and appropriate extra silence added to beginning and end. Thankfully it was that easy!

Upped to Dropbox, PM me for links.

My next few projects will be restorations of the Criterion Laserdiscs of the first three Bond movies. I already have the laserdisc audio, the commentary and effects tracks and the extra features that were on the LD's, plus I've got the chapter timings so can present them with original Criterion chapter stops. 

One issue I am running into on this is this opening logos, the LD uses the MGM UA communications logo followed by the United Artists logo, whereas the Blu Ray uses the MGM roaring lion. The problem is the commentary track starts straight away, so to make it sync with the HD picture would require adding a black screen at the beginning of the blu ray or cutting off part of the commentary - neither of which I would like to do.

The ideal way would be to restore the original opening credits to the Blu Ray version - does anyone off the top of their head know of a blu ray/HDTV that uses the original MGM UA / United Artists opening logos? I only have the newest James Bond blu ray box set myself. 

Finally I wondered if anyone has already done a colour corrected version of these movies? 

Thanks

The original R1 release was a flipper with widescreen on Side A and fullscreen 4:3 on Side B.

I tried and failed to buy one off eBay by purchasing based on UPC. It turns out that they re-used the same UPC for the 2007 HD remastered DVD that is widescreen-only.

Finding someone who will ship outside the US for a reasonable cost is also an issue.

Does anyone here still own this old release?

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I was wondering if the ex rental version of Enter the Dragon was uncut....... If so, I could buy it sometime in the future (ik someone who is selling it) and capture it and upload it and we could combine the rip with possible other versions because i know ronster at originaltrilogy is making a definitive version but he hasn't posted anything for a while.

The photo is from the seller

I have the mouth of The Corruptor 1999 1080p Open Matte with the STARZ pop-up logo. I found a low-bitrate HDTV with the same content, which is enough to hide the logo and it will not be noticeable, the film also has non-disconnectable English subtitles for Chinese, surprisingly HDTV does not have these non-disable subtitles, but due to its low The quality of subtitle hiding in the STARZ source will be noticeable.
Maybe someone has the best source for HDTV and it turns out to perfectly remove hard-coded subtitles.
Is it also possible that there is a Cinema DTS sound? In the Blu Ray edition, the sound is not the best, with a cut of frequencies in the region of 20K

Stupid question. I have a video file the is a certain length and subs for that video that are a little too long (by a little less then a min). Is there a way in MKVmerge to create the mkv to the length of the video and not the subs?

When I mux the video and subs, the running time is that of the subs. Which means a minute of extra black frames at the end. I tried cutting the file in mkmerge to the length of the video or spiting the file to the length of the video but neither work.

I don't want to go in and edit the subs since this should work in mkvmerge but its not and it feels like I'm missing something obvious.

I'm making an HD disc of this (because they only ever released a DVD) but none of the digital versions have the bonus features.

Does anyone happen to have the DVD? It's currently OOP.

So I grabbed The Revenant 2015 Open Matte 1080p BluRay DTS x264-VietHD earlier today but when I started watching the scene of the naked man stumbling into the camp was blurred out making me think this was a TV rip and not a BluRay. Plus I can't see any BluRay release other than the 2.39:1 one.

Anyone know any different open matte versions that aren't censored?

I bought a new HDD lately, an HGST 10TB with a max speed around 250/300MBps.

Lately, I noted that, if I move a huge file (several GBs) from the SSD (SATA, max 550MBps) to it, speed is around 1.7GBps - and it's not a lie, as it takes few seconds to move the file, instead of some dozen seconds...

Why? How?