I'm not sure if this would go beyond the scope of this forum, since it verges on fan edit territory, but hear me out.

As Mark Kermode keeps telling everybody who'll listen, The Exorcist is one of the finest films ever made. However, the version of it that I would ideally like to watch as my default go-to edit does not currently exist.

The theatrical cut is a masterpiece, which is superior for the most part (in my opinion) to the "Version You've Never Seen" extended cut and subsequent re-edit for Blu-ray. It does however omit at least one or two small moments which I feel the absence of, having seen the extended cut many times over the years. Some of the additions make me cringe big time (call it heresy if you like, but I hate that damn spider walk and the extra Captain Howdy faces are so intrusive it's comical); others are smaller character moments which I feel enrich the film. For example, there's a very brief scene wherein Father Merrin asks Regan's middle name and I love it. I also like the scene with Merrin and Karras sitting in the stairwell discussing the "point" of the demon's antics, although I think I agree with Friedkin's assessment that it is rather obviously stating what the film spends much of its runtime showing us more implicitly ("show, don't tell" after all).

I'm considering attempting to assemble a very simple edit which adds very few of the "missing" scenes back into the theatrical cut in their respective places, leaving it otherwise untouched. This would be almost entirely for my own use, but if I'm going to do it, I figure I may as well share it with others who might fancy it as well. Alternatively, someone who is more au fait with the software and the process of creating such an edit might want to crack this out in an afternoon rather than waiting ages for me to get round to trying it myself.

Thoughts?

Gremlins 35mmized (1984)

The new Gremlins UHD regraded to an old 35mm trailer of the same movie, using DrDre's ColorMatch tool and some adjustments in Photoshop.

Audio options include:
- Laserdisc PCM 2.0 encoded as FLAC
- Laserdisc PCM 2.0 dematrixed using a Dolby SDU4 hardware-decoder to 4.0 (LCRS)
- Dolby Headphone track created from the dematrixed 4.0 after upmixing to 5.1 (rear channel split and LFE crossover at 200 Hz with intact satellites)
- 5.1 from the UHD losslessly converted to FLAC

Enjoy!

Much thanks to:
- williarob for the trailer scan
- BusterD & Chris Solo for the Laserdisc audio
- bronan for syncing the Laserdisc audio to the UHD
- PDB for advice on forum etiquette

Screens:




Available on the blue utopia.

I seem to remember there was a guide on how to do this somewhere, maybe in eac3to but I'll ask anyway: Does anyone know a method to convert Dolby Digital 5.1 EX into a discrete PCM 6.11 or 7.1 track? In other words matrix out the rear channel into a discrete version.

So I already have this and Indio 2 The Revolt as high quality LD transfers done via a professional company. The problem is that I forgot to ask them to capture the audio for the first movie as PCM, so they did it as AAC. For the second movie they did it as PCM. 

So does anyone have the first movie on LD and can they capture the audio uncompressed?

Alternately does anyone in the UK have the equipment to capture the audio uncompressed? I have the LD I just don't have a player or capture equipment. 

Thanks

Hi all,

I have lurked here for a while, finally signed up. Restored classic films are a fun hobby of mine. I hope to be a part of this community for a long time.

Now, a quick question as I have not seen it answered in any posted threads, can I send PMs immediately, or do I need a certain post count in order to do that first? Apologize for the remedial question.

Look forward to being here! Thank you.

Turns out you can encode DTS-HD MA - WITHOUT! - the core, saving valuable disk space. Just set the "Core Bit Rate" to "No Core".


This eliminates the two main problems I've always seen with DTS-HD MA, which made me never use it:

1. DTS-HD MA with a core is incredibly bloated and no good alternative to FLAC. However without the core it's only slightly bigger than FLAC and completely acceptable.

2. You never know whether your player is playing the true lossless audio or the core. For example, VLC will only play the core, but not tell you about it. So you think you're listening to the lossless audio, but you're not. However without a core, this is impossible. VLC will simply output only silence. MPC-HC will play it properly (yay!).


And if you really want a fallback for hardware that can't play DTS-HD MA, you can just include a format of your choice, like AC-3 or AAC. But of course the obvious goal is for people to listen to the lossless audio, so hey!

Now, my only question would be whether a coreless DTS-HD MA is properly compatible with receivers. Anyone care to test it out?

Hi folks!

I'm a long-time lurker and it only just occurred to me that I should probably do something about that and register.

I've been hanging about over on OT for years after stumbling into the world of restoration due to my penchant for complaining about Star Wars home video releases; Harmy's work on Despecialized and the more recent work by Team Negative1 have been the main draw. However, my ever growing collection of Blu-rays and my purist tendencies are a tricky combination, and the flood of teal and orange regrades currently plaguing the industry have brought me back here. Specifically, the "Fundamental Collection" has caught my attention, and indeed I've already shared a derivative of one of its instalments (Halloween, re-edited into a version of the TV Extended Edition by Croweyes1121, re-encoded to a smaller MKV by me) on "the 'Spleen".

In addition to regrades, I've got a lot of interest in preserving audio mixes (again, see Halloween and its LaserDisc mono mix) and have put together repackages of the 4K77, 4K83 and The Empire Strikes Back Despecialized with a large collection of high fidelity audio tracks under the banner "Millions Of Voices". My next goal is to see if anybody might be kind enough to hook me up with a 44.1kHz version of the Halloween LaserDisc mono track that hasn't yet been upsampled to 48kHz so that I can mux it in with my own version of the video or at least the official Blu-ray as a starting point, so I can have the Fundamental Collection edition, the Extended Version of that by Croweyes1121, and the Blu-ray grading but with the mono soundtrack as options to watch. It really bothers me that the Blu-ray doesn't have the mono, just 7.1 and stereo remixes...

Whatever happens, I expect to be on here quite often from here on out!

Hi everyone

I've discovered this forum thanks to a post in Originaltrilogy.com: I was lookin' for a regraded version of Aliens (hate the greenish tint of the bluray). I've followed PDB's project, and here I am. I don't have much experience with video editing, mostly audio muxing of italian tracks - yep, italians love their dubbing, it's like a side passion (we know most voice actors by name) - or upmixes. 

The recent flow of 35mm restorations is incredibly fascinating to me. I've been lucky enough to see lots of masterpieces in the theater (Indy and the Last Crusade, E.T., the Goonies, Army of Darkness, Starship Troopers) but I wish I had seen much more, and I truly believe the perfect restoration should always aim to reach this final goal: recreate the original experience. If that means havin' some grain, some speckles, even cigarette burns in the corner... I don't mind. And of course color grading is very important, and often overlooked.

Glad to be here, gonna browse some threads!

Whenever I can get my hands on a Laserdisc audio for a project, I tend to upmix it with my Dolby SDU4 hardware decoder. I also tend to upmix that decoded audio (which is 4 channels: Left, Center, Right and Back) to 5.1 and add both the original upmix and the 5.1 to the project.

Today I've been questioning whether that makes sense. Each of these two tracks eats a few GB of space and while that isn't terrible, I was thinking that the track provides convenience at the very best and bloat at the worst, since anyone can easily do such an upmix themselves if they are of the mind to do so.

I was also wondering how most hardware will deal with 4-track audio and thought it would probably be automatically upmixed anyway, which further made me question the need to include the 5.1.

Thoughts? Opinions? Should I keep including the 5.1?

Hi All,

Another project I have been working on for some time is the Norwegian Slasher Trilogy Fritt Vilt aka Cold Prey. Parts 1 and 3 are already done but I'm struggling a little with Part 2. There has never been English friendly extras. I've got a short making of and special effects documentary in Norwegian that I really want to get translated into English. 

These extras also appear on the German Blu Ray with hardcoded German subtitles so I've ripped these to srt (had to type in the German words one by one as the OCR wasn't accurate at all!) and used google translate to get them into English. 

Now google translate is an amazing tool but it's not 100% accurate. I wondered if there is any members who speak German who would be willing to take a look at the google translation and correct any obvious errors? 

In terms of 'payment' I can offer any of the projects I have done so far or have planned for the future, or anything from my extensive collection of workprints and TV Versions. 

Someone on another forum was helping me but life got in the way and now there is only one movie left to do I really would like to get it finished and released. 

Thanks all