Hello Everyone.

I thought id throw this out to the fanres hive brain

I have 2 VHS captures from 2 Different tapes, its for the audio side of things and the Video side is irrelevant.
Both have dropouts and faults but (Hoping!) not in the same places and the idea is to edit between them for a clean Audio Track.

Does anybody know of any quicker way than just cutting between the 2?
Kind of like a method of removing the difference?

Any help and advice would be great

I was wanting to rewatch some of the OT movies. Started with ROTJ and enjoyed it, but now I went on to ESB and saw that the Grindhouse version (my preferred way to watch this) has the 2.0 Dolby Stereo from the 35mm. 

Now, naturally, I was inspired to create a 5.1 track out of that using my Dolby SDU4. BUT since this was likely recorded straight from the film, there was likely no account for any Dolby Noise Reduction that was very likely used on the print, so any attempt to reverse the 4-channel fold-down before reversing the Dolby Noise Reduction would be kind of pointless.

So I was wondering if there was any "authentic" and lossless track out there.

I was thinking Laserdisc maybe.

Checked out the Despecialized Edition and that one has a "1993 Laserdisc mix", but only included as AC-3 (meh), not lossless.

Also, what does "1993 mix" imply? Was it changed? Not for the special edition right? Those came out in 1997, afaik.

It also includes a 5.1 and 2.0 track, both titled "1980 mix". Now this utterly confuses me. What does that mean? To my knowledge, in 1980 there was no 5.1 surround for movies. So what exactly are those two tracks? Is it the original 1980 2.0 track and the 5.1 one is basically the same thing I would do (converting to 5.1 with a Surround decoder) or is this some kind of later 5.1 revision?!

I realized that the ROTJ Grindhouse version also has a 5.1 mix called (1983 mix). That should have made me skeptical already I guess, but somehow in my mind I thought, okay, maybe in 1983 they already had surround? But even that isn't the case, I think.

So what are those mysterious 5.1/2.0 tracks on the Despecialized Editions and what's the source and what is the best way to get something that very much resembles the original theatrical experience?

according to HD digest review the surrounds have been poorly remixed on the bluray (too loud)
probably shouldn't be making a request since I hardly use this site but whatever

Originally presented here: https://fanrestore.com/thread-2023.html

What better day than Easter Sunday - the day Jesus stood up from the dead - to not only bring you a very good zombie movie, but to bring you an actually REBORN version of a very good zombie movie. And as if this wasn't shocking enough in and of itself, what better day to release it than April 1st? Except this thing actually exists - even though it shouldn't - just like Jesus actually (?) stood up from the dead - even though he shouldn't have. Okay okay, enough is enough.

May I present:

Shaun of the Dead - 35mmized Edition

This is little regrade project. I always found the colors in Shaun of the Dead a bit boring and dull and thought the movie deserved a more exciting look.

I regraded the movie with a couple of 3D LUTs which I generated using DrDre's ColorMatch tool and some snaps of 35mm film cells on eBay.

No idea what those film cells were taken from. Likely trailers. Either way, there is little consistency in them. Sometimes the same scene is present with two different gradings.

But, for what it's worth, I was able to figure out two basic looks with a few variations. The one is a normal kind of warm film look. The other is something that looks like some extreme kind of Bleach Bypass.

I don't know which one of these looks is more theatrically accurate, so I decided to use them both depending on the current scene/context/music/score. Neither really fits in all the scenes, so a blanket LUT doesn't make much sense. Bleach Bypass look usually when zombies are involved, the normal film look in more calm scenes - especially in the beginning of the film, at Shaun's workplace etc.. And then there's one that looks a bit like pushed slide film and on the colder side, which is good for the indoors shots in the bar; but I think that one is just a variation of the normal film look.

Thumbnail comparison:

It was time!

I tried first blending the full screen and the open matte 1.66:1 Criterion versions, but they differ too much in color and contrast, and didn't match well in almost any scene, so I put it on hold, hoping to find out the right match. And I've finally found it - the unreleased Sony BD.

So, do not expect the best version possible; apart the obvious fact that full screen is standard definition, both shares the same master with high contrast (crushed blacks and clipped whites, albeit they could be partially recovered) and a lot of grain (lost on the FS, that I'll try to reinstate to match the BD).

Without much further ado, here are some screenshots from a VERY preliminary rough quick'n'dirt alpha test (so you won't expect too much! )









color matching should be improved, as well as FS grain; the sources aren't in sync, so if you note some spatial misalignement, it will not be present in the final version; but the main aim of these screenshots is to show you how much image it will gain.

Thought also to color matching it to Criterion DVD. Still undecided which audio tracks should be included, though; I've thought about the Criterion laserdisc PCM, then what else? The 4.0? The 5.1?

Last thing: even if in some (many?) shots the remastered BD has a bigger frame, sometimes the contrary is true - I distinctly remember there were few shots really zoomed in in the new version.
Example: http://ultimateaspectratio.ga/Robocop_19...s_UAR.html (watch it fullscreen!)

Working on 20,000 leagues under the sea, the distortion given by the CinemaScope anamorphic lenses was clear (to me) in more than one horizontal pans; vertical axis seems to not be affected at all, but I may be wrong.

So, it would be beneficial to fix this problem; Avisynth filter WarpedResize (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/SimpleResize) may fix this easily; the only problem is to find out the right settings... once found them, the fix *should* apply to all CinemaScope films - at least the ones which had not received an eventual distortion fix.

I bought the version I wanted from Walmart because the same version on eBay was double it's actual selling price.

I got the Bluray/DVD/Digital set that had the Bluray bonus disc and the 6 card choices for the cover.  Well worth the $25 samolians it cost me.

Attached Files

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Today, during the usual HDD cleaning from unused files, I've found a very old, unfinished project - 20,000 leagues under the sea; idea was to add needed soundtracks and few more, maybe a slight color correction and noise reduction.

Then, I noted I have two versions... guess what? Yep, they have different aspect ratios! So, why don't give it a try with an UAR version?

Well, they have also very different color grading, so they won't always match perfectly, but for most of the shots they seem to blend pretty well; for the others, one of the sources must be used.

Top letterbox, bottom UAR (that has usually more image on both left and bottom sides):


(comparison: http://ultimateaspectratio.ga/20000_Leag...e_Sea.html)











Opinions?

Hi everyone I'm Jeff. I'm a workprint collector been collecting for 11 years and would really like to get to meet some people and maybe trade for some workprints.