Found a neat little regrade method today that might be an alternative to having to manually create a LUT in DrDre for every single scene. I have only done one test, so there's probably lots of room for improvement, however I quite liked it, so I thought I'd share and maybe others can tune in and improve on it.

It has one major downside and that is: You can't really regrade any part of the image that isn't in both sources. So for example it won't work to regrade an Open Matte version with a scope versions colors. Well, I haven't tried it, but I can't imagine how it would work. Feel free to try it obviously.

Another downside is that it's not nearly as precise as the DrDre method, but on the other hand it's very quick so it may be something nice for tests or quick projects.

An upside is that it's not very susceptible to problems from noise, since it works with a strong blur.



Anyway, here's an example from Matrix. UHD, CAM, REGRADE
           


Proper screenshot comparison:

http://www.framecompare.com/image-compar...n/D77WPNNX

Here's how it works

This guide is based on Photoshop, but you can very likely easily adopt it for AviSynth+

1. Align both your source images. Convert the image to linear RGB in 32 bit floating point. I'm not sure how important the linear part is here, you can do your own experiments. If you're wondering how to do this, you need to create a Custom RGB profile with Gamma 1.0. There are guides for this on Google if you struggle. 32 bit floating point is important because some intermediate values may be over 100% and would be clipped in 8 or 16 bit.

2. Put the image you want to regrade on the bottom.

3. Duplicate this image and apply a 50 pixel radius Gaussian Blur. You can experiment with the radius, this one was simply my initial test.

4. Set the blurred duplicate to "Divide" layer mode.

5. Put the (aligned) reference image on top of these two layers and also apply a 50px Gaussian Blur (or whatever radius you used in step 3).

6. Set this blurred reference image to mode "multiply".

7. That's it.

It's pretty self-explanatory, as you can see. It basically equalizes the rough color tone in an area by dividing through the average (50px radius) color tone of that area and then multiplying with the average of that area in the reference image. And since the radius (50px) is so big, it of course misses small details, but on the other hand it's absolutely not distracted by noise and slight misalignment and shitty reference quality (like a cam) and stuff like that.

And the nice thing is, it doesn't even seem to produce any ringing artifacts, at least with the example I used, because while you are of course multiplying with a blurred image, you are dividing by another blurred image first which has (ideally) the same image geometry, so you should end up with an image that still looks good and smooth. Though I can't vouch that it will work for all examples. Maybe it won't work for some high contrast scenes, who knows.

Not a magic trick or anything, but I was kind of happy with my initial result and I think it might be good whenever you don't need 100% precision or your reference has really bad image quality. Maybe it falls apart with other examples, I'm not sure, but hey, it's something.

Feedback always welcome.

The 4K Blu-ray of EFNY has a 2.0 PCM track on it. Does anyone know if it's the original mix or just a faltdown of the 5.1? I couldn't find any information about this track.

Thought this might be interesting to all of you. SSD prices seem to be at an all time low and still slowly falling.

I was surprised to realize you can get a 1TB SSD for around 90 EUR now. Maybe it's wise to still wait a little bit, I don't know, but I got myself 2 1TB SSDs to speed up project work a bit.

Most of us are aware of the dismal state of Leone's work on home video, and this project is intended to bring more options to the plate for fans of this iconic film. As the title says, I'm recreating the actual Italian cut, using the Mondo as the primary source (only because the Kino disc didn't recover the eradicated colors on MGM's master). Taking inspiration from PDB's great, if mildly flawed, IC reconstruction from a while back, I'll be using shots from both US Blu-rays depending on which one is easier to fit into the given sequence.

Now, about the "English" part. I'll be inserting the English title card, English "good," "bad," and "ugly," cards during the film, and the English "THE END" card. BUT, the credit sequence (barring the title) will be the Italian version. This is because I just really hate the changes that were made to the sequence for the English version. Primarily that they didn't bill Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef with Clint Eastwood at the beginning, but also the fact that the white powder splashes for the text have been reanimated as blobs. I just don't see having the English credits being worth compromising the artistic integrity of the sequence.

Now, if that isn't bad enough, I'm not even leaving the English text alone. For the title card, and for the final "and the good" card, I will be editing the footage to match the Italian footage. So, the "in" will be removed from the title card, as the Lee Van Cleef credit already says that. The title card will also be centered as it grows in frame, and it will grow a bit larger to fill more of the frame, just like the Italian title card. As for the final "good" card, I'll just be removing the "and" part from the frame. I don't really like it, and of course, the Italian shot just says "il buono."

Concerning these changes I'll be making to the film, I'm aware that revisionism isn't exactly what this community stands for, nor do I personally. This is why I'd like to ask, what options would everyone like me to release? I would gladly release "my cut" along with a version with all the original unaltered English titles put in, if some would prefer that, or if some would prefer the Italian text is left in, I could also be up for that. So for all who may be interested, let me know what you think of what I'm doing and what you'd like me to release.

Now, back to the point. This probably will take a little while to complete because of one roadblock. The torture scene. This scene can't be easily stuck back together the way it's supposed to be. And it's really only because of the English audio being not only shorter, but with parts of the scene re-ordered. This will make syncing the English dialogue to the extended and re-ordered footage very difficult without causing some pretty jarring and abrupt music cuts, and even the music itself is a little different in the Italian cut. I'm going to try experimenting with using both the full length Italian audio and the English track mixed together, and I'll try it in a couple different ways to see if a pleasant solution can be found. So, if anyone has useful knowledge, skills, or advice for this bit of trouble, please feel free to chime in

That said, I don't have the MGM disc right now, only the Kino, which has a messed up frame rate on the bonus feature, so I just ordered a copy of the MGM 4K to use the full length Italian footage from that. I'll have to wait for that to arrive before I can get started editing the beating scene. But, I thought I'd post the thread now to get some discussion going.

Last question I'm posing to anyone who has maybe done more research than I have: Is there still any footage from the Italian release that simply doesn't exist on video yet? I know about this:

https://vimeo.com/169015668

and if I have to I'll end up using that preview to include the footage, though for this:

https://vimeo.com/169704930

I may have to exclude that due to the heavy damage, sadly. Lastly, this:

https://vimeo.com/214113261

is something I'm not sure if I can fix, but I'll definitely look into it. But other than those I don't know of anything that doesn't exist anymore.

Anyway, the majority of the film will be Mondo color corrected to appear generally more like a 35mm print. And i will be making the opening background orange instead of red as detailed here:

https://vimeo.com/213306321

Unless that was exclusive to the IC, though I would assume the background colors remained the same between cuts.

There is a part in the trailer for Hard Target where Van Cleef says "Look at it this way you're gonna get to meet elvis" after cutting the money belt off Roper's body. As far as I know this isn't in any known cut of the movie. Does this part actually exist in a cut of the movie or was it made just for the trailer for marketing?

So, after a few weeks I finished regrading this. Now gone is that orange push. Blues are blue, and everything looks as it should.

I used the wowow HDTV as reference (but not as a matching reference). I regraded the frames in photoshop to look as the wowow reference, and then Dre’s colormatch to create the LUTs. Finally, DaVinci Resolve to load to apply the LUTs, and some minor corrections. A couple of scenes and a few shots here and there looked already good, so no need to regrade those.

The source was, of course, the Paramount BluRay (so 1080p).

Size: 36.3 GB

Audio: DTS Master Audio
            DTS Core
            AC3 (640 kbps)

Subtitles: English, Spanish



A gallery (70 pics) here: Gallery


















For more subtitles, use opensubtitles, for example, to find the one you want.





You can find it on katcr dot co (kickass torrents) (it’s ok to say where as long as I don’t post any links, right?).










PM if you need a link or whatever.

Does anyone think the Cobra and Predator 2 workprints are still out there or have they been destroyed? It's hard to believe someone would just toss it into a fire although I wouldn't put it past 20th Century Fox

I have the Cinema DTS for these two and would like to sync them and offer them for participating members. However I'd like the raw lossless theatrical (!) Blu Ray audio as a reference to sync to, does anyone here have it and could demux it for me and send it?

Do you guys know if any such thing exists? Is there any official or unofficial release of a score-only track/isolated score?

Top is the new master.


Did anyone else know about this??
I know The Siege and The Living Daylights were a nightmare to find at the time, but I had no idea this happened