Hey guys, I'm looking for someone able to capture/grab two films (hdx) off VUDU for me, could anyone help..?

I don't know if this happens only to me... so I would write here to know if I'm the only one, or there are some other "lucky" ones like me!

Example 1: DVD movie; I was sure I had that title... asked to others in the family, someone remembered it, someone told me I was crazy... I searched a lot between the titles scattered around different rooms in the house - they are few hundreds, after all... nothing... searched in unthinkable places... nothing... so I thoght that maybe I was crazy... few days later, I visited my sister, and she came out with "Do you remember I borrowed THAT movie from you some weeks ago? No? Well, maybe I picked it up without asking you..."  lesson number one: write down every title you lend and borrow, and ask friends and relatives to inform you about them...

Example 2: LD movie: after the last quest, I thought "may be this title at someone's else house? not a laserdisc, for sure!" and "are you sure you have REALLY this title? yes, according to the list I made that is 100% accurate", and also "why don't you put them in SOME order? because I'm lazy and... hey brain, shut up!"

So, I began from the shelf #1, trying to find it just reading the titles of the movies on the spine with the right colors... many shelves after, nothing... maybe the spine color wasn't right... restart, fast reading... an hour later, nothing... OK, probably I missed it, time to read the title one by one, not so fast... well, I found it... at the end... it was near the 3000 point out of 3200... lucky as usual!  lesson number two: put your movies in "some" order; possibly, write a list in a spreadsheet that points each title to a shelf position - it will be easier to spot it between fifty ones instead thousands!

I inverse telecined some DVD's and I have come across some field blended footage. I'm curious if anyone could tell me why some footage would contain blended fields when the th rest is fine?

To give an example. I IVTC'd a disc with six episodes of a cartoon. There was one episode with the intro full of blended fields. The same episode had just a few frames that were blended in one scene. Another episode has several minutes of blended fields in chunks thoughout.

How would this happen duing the mastering of the disc? Has anyone run into this issue before?

I'm going to try and get the PAL version of the disc to see if the same issue is present, but it's a bit frustrating to have to go to the extra effort.

These days I'm toying with Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection; today, in particular, I rewatched the Alien 3 trailer present in the PAL UK LD, that I think it's a rough 35mm scan... ok, it's (heavily) cropped, so only a bit more than half image is present: still, it's very nice, cinematic.. "gritty" in a way...

So, I thought to imitate that look; using the BD as base, I regraded it using the LD as color reference (and contrast, too); then, I tweaked a lot contrast, increased a bit the saturation, and added a coarse grain plate; at the end - apart colors, which I didn't even attempted to touch - result is pretty similar, and quite interesting; colors "pop" up better, and the image is more alive; the price to pay are crushed blacks and clipped whites - most noticeable in very dark shots, and where there are very bright objects or during light flashes.

ALIEN 3 - top BD untouched, bottom "gritty" version:


ALIEN RESURRECTION - top BD untouched, bottom "gritty" version:


and three direct high def comparisons
BD Vs BD regraded: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/199970
BD Vs "gritty": http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/199971
BD regraded Vs "gritty": http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/199972

Army of Darkness - Open Matte (Upscale Project #3 v1.0)

See project origin here: https://fanrestore.com/thread-1071.html

Video:
The open matte DVD was upscaled with a combination of super-resolution and nnedi with filters to reduce macro-blocking and edge enhancement/halos. The resulting image was further processed and then re-grained with a real grain best matching the BD version. The video was then color corrected with a 35mm LUT and color matched to some 35mm frames and the 35mm trailer scan from book of the dead (www.bookofthedead.ws)

Audio:
1. Dolby Surround PCM 2.0 from the wide screen laserdisc

2. Dolby Digital 5.1 from the open matte DVD.

Pics:




Thanks:
MrBrown: for the open matte DVD
BusterD: for capping the laserdisc

It should be a well known problem, but, to whom is not aware of this, Event Horizon on Blu-ray is stretched vertically - or, rather, squeezed horizontally, I could correct, as it has more image on the sides, in comparison to the old DVD and the LD (SE DVD has the same problem, though). Leaving the height unaltered, obviously the aspect ratio is wrong...

Provisional plan:

• de-stretch the video, diminishing the height and taking the aspect ratio from 2.35:1 to the best value - that, according to someone, should be around 2.42:1, if not higher
  
• regrade it using the old color grading found on LD or first DVD edition as color reference, to get a more colorful version, and, probably, one nearest theatrical version, and get rid of the pink tint problem
  
• add eventually a grain plate when needed
  
• add the DTS Cinema track
  
• add the PCM track from lasedisc, as it seems more punchy and less dry, according to widescreenreview
  

Lately me and PDB talked about the "pink tint" problem (provisional name, until someone would bring up a better one!); so, without further ado, let's talk about

THE "PINK TINT" PROBLEM


What is it?
It was noted that some releases, often from 1990s and 2000s, present a pink blanket that was not obviously present in the theatrical version.

Why does it happen?
It is still not clear if it was a problem arised during the telecine tranfer, a byproduct of color regrading process, due maybe to get natural skin tones always, even when it's not the case, or something else... who knows? Do you know it? Please post a comment!
 
Which titles are affected?
At the present, it seems any title could be affected.

How can I find if a title is affected?
Sometimes is so clear you have not to look for, you will be able to say that a given title has the pink tint problem few minutes after you start to watch it... but it's not always the case; as our brain is a great tool, we adapt what we watch to "balance" the wrong colors, and we interpret them as right... that's why, often, you have watched a pink tint prolematic title without knowing it (me included!).

The most easy way to find it out is a direct comparison between different editions; in this case, usually it's quite easy to find it out. But it's always possible to desume it even without a direct comparison; just look for some clues:

• bright lights: flashes, explosions, fire, flames, spaceship engines; if not directly pink, you can spot it in the halos
  
• bright objects: white walls, that's the best choice... but also water, that, instead of blue, cyan, green, it could have a magenta, violet color; sky as well, could be violet instead blue
  
• too natural skin tones: even when they should not have natural color (the one you can get in a bright sunny day), in the pink tint titles often they have it... or, at least, they seems more natural than what it should be... a face under a blue light should have a colder tone, why a face in front of a torch should have a warmer one; instead, in a pink tinted title often they look natural under both circumstances
  

Project Info:

There were two goals with this project. The first goal for me was the complete one project for each of the movies in the the Alien Trilogy. Alien was a regrade to the 95 LD with the Sensurround track, Aliens was the TV Cut (eventually the TC also) regraded to the 95 LD and the final was Alien 3 to be cut the Workprint (WP).  In other words its an attempt to re-cut Alien 3 as close as I can to the tape(s).

For example, in order to recreate the WP's opening credits I had to make 24 cuts to TC and 19 edits to the 5.1 soundtrack. That involved moving shots to recreate the flow of the WP and then covering up the sound edits by rebuilding the 5.1 dialog and music track. And that's one example. In the end I will try to make this as close to the WP as possible. For unique WP shots I will either use close substitutes from the AC/TC, for example the unique EKG shot from the opening of the WP is replaced with the exterior Sulaco shot from the same time or find the original footage if I can. I was able to recover a few WP shots from trailers and EPK video. Things such as Ripley "for the last time" shot and Golic's original death when releasing the Alien. Some shots like the "bigger cage" shot will have to be left out altogether.

I was going to keep the existing color timing until one day I came across some lobby cards for Alien 3 and they looked a lot like the color timing on the WP tape. So I thought I should use the tape as a basis even though it most likely is theatrically inaccurate. Point of fact: there are actually 3 WP tapes. One without a time code (which I don't have) and two with a time codes. The two with the time codes are from the same source but differ slight, with one tape having title cards for the reel changes and the 20th Century Fox logo. The colors are also similar with a heavy bias towards blues , oranges a lot of red but with one tape having a lot of green in its picture also. I balanced the look between the two tapes to come up with an average that I'll refine some more after editing is finished.

This is actually the most difficult project I've undertaken. Not only does it have a massive amount of editing of video but also audio, a new territory for me.

Video:
2010 Blu-Ray (AC and TC) video color regraded to the Workprint tapes and cut into the WP edit

Audio:
1. 2010 Blu-Ray Dolby Digital 5.1 re-built from scratch from the AC/TC BD but adding in dialog from the WP tape if needed.

2. The soundtrack from the original WP tape that is dialog and sound effects only, no music.

Pics:
BD/WP regrade (WIP)

I seem to have come across something from my past that I've had for years but never really gave a second thought.
After joining this board a while back now it has reignited my passion around Laserdisc's and other versions of movies.
Currently re bought a Laserdisc player and currently working my way through buying all my fav discs again.

Anyway, I found a disc I got back in 2005 of the Matrix from eBay. I can't even remember why I got it to be honest, I just did.

From looking at it again it seems to have something close to the original colour timing of the movie when first released and also is cropped in 1:85 which looks fantastic on a HDTV, admittedly its only in 720p but still looks amazing.

Here are some screenshots from it, I'm thinking it would be great to replace the audio with maybe the LD PCM or something as the audio that comes with is okay.

After I have found that the LD has a different color grading than BD/DVD/HDTV, and that its master used *may* be a silver retention processed print, I thought to give a try also to Alien³ laserdisc...

First, we know that DVD and BD have the same color grading; here I compared the LD just to my PAL DVD only because I can play it on the fly, but of course the following should apply to BD as well, so I'll refer to BD from now.

I have two Alien³ laserdiscs, one NTSC US, that is the only one ever released there (so, no THX or DTS or AC3, even if there is a Japanese THX and AC3, and a French THX one) and the other is the PAL UK. They have similar color grading, but not exactly the same; usually I think that a US (or JP) laserdisc is the way to go for a US film, but this time the US LD is not that good, it is cropped on bottom and right in comparison with the PAL LD, so *probably* the color grading is wrong as well; then, for this movie, I'll take the PAL LD as color reference here.

To me, it seems like the Alien Resurrection "affaire": the LD has more golden skin tones and richer colors, while the BD has natural skin tones but duller colors in some shots; there is not a single variation for the whole film - for example, is not the case where one is colder and the other warmer, or one leans towards magenta while the other towards blue and so on... there are instances where the LD is more magenta, while sometimes the contrary happens; the only things that seems costant is the skin colors, which are more natural and paler on the BD, and often the green/blue is a lot more saturated on LD.

Again, a quick'n'dirt comparison, so this could change after the proper comparison will be ready; I should prepare it to show you the differences, but I'm lazy and it's late, so that's all for now (not representative of the whole difference, but it gives you an idea) - top LD, bottom DVD:




Can't say the LD has the "right" color grading; I have seen many comparisons between LD and DVD or BD and almost all the time there are just slight difference, color wise, due mainly to color spaces, luma levels and saturation settings, once they are adjusted the color grading is, more or less, the same; but sometimes it differ greatly, and could not be matched adjusting the various setting; in these cases, most often the older master have the "right" grading, thanks also to the fact they usually use a release print to make the master, hence retaining the theatrical colors, while nowadays the norm is to scan the negative and, because it has no color grading, they are forced to make it digitally, with the result that it could not be the same of a release print scan; without talking about the teal&orange trend, and the fact that it seems impossible for the studio to release a new version of an older title without "refreshing" its color, to be more "modern"...