Welp, Shout Factory just released Outbreak on 4K Blu-ray and I'm not super happy. No extras for this movie at all. But for the audio I was hoping to get a proper restoration of the audio. The LaserDisc was just awesome and many used it for demos back in the day. The R1 DVD should have the same mix, but I don't have it to verify. I was able to get the audio from the R2 DVD though.. The Warner Blu-ray came with a Dolby TrueHD mix, while the new Shout Factory 4K has a DTS-HD MA mix. Judging purely from the spectrogram, I'd give the Warner Bros the lead. The Shout Factory looks a little bit filtered. The 2.0 PCM from the LD is still awesome.

Only asking because the standalone 4k (non steelbook) doesn’t have it, and sony is notorious for their steelbook releases.

Hey, guys.

I'm currently reframing Zack Snyder's Justice League from 1.33:1 AR to 1.78:1 AR, 'cause had it been released in theaters, there's no way Warner would have agreed for a 1.33:1 wide release. It was obviously intended to end up being a 1.85:1 AR as the trailers from before the 2017 release showed, plus all the negative space on most of the full 1.33:1 AR. Only real IMAX theaters would have had it barely cropped to 1.43:1, while LIEMAX would have had it cropped to 1.90:1, so more than regular theaters and that's exactly what happened in 2017. I found it frustrating not to have the option for a full 16:9 screen, though, so I ended up doing it for more immersion into it as we no longer have 1.33:1 screens at home. Of course, I'm recomposing every single shot one by one to show what's important and to still make it look good regarding head room and stuff, showing more on the top or on the bottom part of the frame. I'm not creating in-shot bogus digital post processing camera movements as I'm not the director nor the camera operator, plus I wouldn't even know how to do such a thing even if I wanted to. I'm doing it using the UHD as source since I have to zoom in, and I'm aiming at a full HD 1080p rec.709 SDR rendering. I have glued the two parts together and removed a few seconds of black in between and cut out the information that "Justice continues on disc 2" of course. For now, I'm at 69% of the whole runtime, at this scene:



Now there is a catch, and that's where I'll need other people's input. As shown in the Youtube video below, in this scene, when Flash comes into play, several slow motion shots were vertically stretched, probably because the VFX were finished for the theatrical 1.78:1 AR or 1.85:1 AR, and thus the stretching, and a bit of cropping as well, permitted to fill the 1.33:1 AR. So my question is: should I keep it that way for the 1.78:1 AR or should I squish it back to more proper proportions? The Youtube video claims it works stretched as it's during a super speed moment that could translate into distortions. I can go along with that, except I didn't notice that on other instances of the super speed, so it's not really consistent in the whole film...

Just realised I hadn't done this yet!

Just kidding. Hello.

The Thing famously had a minor change made in the original analog home video releases where Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" was replaced by Four Tops' "One Chain Don't Make No Prison". I was wondering if anyone had a capture of this release that I could sync to the Arrow 4K or if a sync was already done for an older project I could use, all my laserdisc sources don't have anything for The Thing. It's minor difference but I like both songs and it would be neat to have.

Is anyone aware of a 35mm preservation of Batman Returns (1992) being out there? I remember seeing a couple of screenshot years back that might have been leaked scans from WB's print, before clean-up and modernized color grade. Those screens still had that deep-blue / boardering purple-ish hues in the shadows.
So I take it there was something out there at some point - open matte or matted.

nice to be here !

Hi

happy to be part of this community who share love of movie and their restoration

The Criterion Collection releases (DVD & LD) of RoboCop are the only releases of the film to be in a "Director-Approved" aspect ratio of 1.66:1. While this claim is dubious as the Arrow's 4K transfer is in 1.85:1 and is also labeled as "Director-Approved", this still marks an interesting release for RoboCop. I used the Criterion DVD video and simply cropped and linearly upscaled the video to 1080p without AI use as the master has a lot of grain already that would get destroyed in an average upscale environment and because my PC is simply not that powerful to do so. While the image is still in standard definition essentially, it no longer exhibits letterboxing. I also decided to sync the Criterion Laserdisc PCM track, the commentary is left as is from the DVD. I may revist this project in the future for a more fully featured update.

Video
1080p up-converted Criterion DVD

Audio
English LPCM 2.0 Surround
English Dolby Digital 2.0 (Director's Commentary)

Subtitles
English SDH

Available in a BD-50 compatible MKV, for all forum members new and old.

Screenshots: