Hi,

I just wanted to draw attention to an issue I have with all the releases of "Psycho" so far. The latest Blu-ray is certainly not lacking in quality in my book, but Universal still insists that this version is the "original, complete, unedited theatrical version of the film as it was released in 1960".
Their words to me in an e-mail back from 2010, before the actual release. I told them that the German print of "Psycho" contains uncensored footage of a few scenes. But since that rarely gets shown anymore and has been replaced with the "official" US-version on most TV-broadcasts I could not provide footage to prove it.

But now I got lucky! A local broadcaster here in Germany aired the old print again and I recorded it. The quality is not great but good enough to show the differences. And now I finally got around to put together a YouTube video that compares both versions. Since I am not allowed to post links, I suggest you search for "Psycho UNCUT" on YouTube if you are interested.

And a quick e-mail to Universal would be nice so that they just might restore these scenes properly. Alas the quality of this TV-recording is not good enough for a restoration. One would at least have to get to the master elements of the German prints (if these still exist). And I would bet that these shots are also present in French and Italian prints of the time, as they had less strict censorship standards.

Thank you all in advance for your support in bringing this classic back to it's real Director's cut!

For those that don't know, this was a television horror film directed by Steven Spielberg that premiered on CBS on January 21, 1972. For some reason Spielberg has tried to "bury" this film in the "sands of time" and, therefore, this film has NEVER had an official release in any format. There is a low-quality VHSrip floating around from a TV airing on Starz!Family that is in a WMV format. A few months ago, the UK tv station "Horror," broadcast this film a couple of times and Mass5160 (on OT) was kind enough to capture both airings and has provided me with the files. They have a small "Horror" logo in the upper-left part of the screen and towards the end there is an "up next:..." banner on the bottom-left part of screen, very briefly, for about ten seconds. The files are at a resolution of 544x576, using the MPEG2 codec with a bitrate of ~1600kbps and ~1800kbps (very weird that the two broadcasts have different bitrates) and have very decent sounding clean audio (especially in comparison to the vhsrip copy that has a LOT of hiss and was encoded at a crappy 64kbps using WMA) that was encoded using the AC3 codec.

Of course, I'm doing all editing, clean-up, etc in lossless format using Huffyuv. I just got done de-interlacing both "Horror" sources. Now, I am encoding a video where I am overlaying one on top of the other to get a slightly better "final" picture. This helps nullify some of the noise and artifacts a little bit. Once this is done, I have to work on patching the logo, which will have to be done using the VHSrip source as there is no other source available. I already IVTC'ed the VHSrip source to use for patch on the "Horror" source once I slow it down from 25fps to 23.976fps. Of course, I will have to correct speed/pitch on the audio as well. Once all of this is done, I plan on re-sizing this to 720x480 using the SuperResolution technique and then I will author it as a DVD5 (anything more than that will be overkill considering the sources I am using) I will add English subtitles (which I already have put together) and probably the Russian subtitles since I have those as well.

This will be posted on MS

Regardless of response here, I am finishing this project and releasing it and I hope some will enjoy it. Will be posting comparison screenshots between the VHSrip/tvrip and the "Horror" sources soon, as well as comparison screenshots between sources and "final" result. This project is 80% finished already, as I started working on it last month (one of the reasons, besides HDD space, that my WATWD project has been temporarily on hold)

Is there any interest in this or am I doing this one mostly for my own benefit?

What programs do you guys use to sync laserdisc PCM audio to blu-ray video? Do you just slap the LD audio and BD video in a video editing program and then sync from there?

I plan on getting an LD player in the near future so I can try this process myself, as there are several blu-rays that I'd like to watch with LD audio.

So my problem is taking a video i encoded and mux or join it with another video file. I can't seem to encode it exactly like the movie file. I don't want to re-encode the entire movie just remux it. I'm replacing one intro with another but i get this (H264 warn: Force frame_mbs_only_flag division invalid detected. Cancel this flag)

Here's the intro as an avi  https://mega.co.nz/#!EUNA0QgY!ZgP0WHRo9a...DgSTp-d48c
Audio to go with the intro  https://mega.co.nz/#!cJFhGQZD!cyzNUU1lb5...tUSJbtXAZs

Here's a sample from the first 30 seconds of the movie https://mega.co.nz/#!hcdlFLhA!evjSD8xZL-...UdlCvPRkj8

MediaInfo only tells me so much.

Any help would be great  

Well, sometime there is some HDTV movie that is still not available on BD, nor on WEB download... here you are my latest "discoveries" - recorded bit-perfect (until the occasional broken frame occurs...):

Qualcuno in ascolto (a.k.a. High Frequency) (1988) -> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095940
Lucky Numbers (2000) -> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0219952
Hurlyburly (1998) -> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119336

first one has few broken frames, but would be *quite* easy to fix them; I should check the others, recorded this very night; all of them has (still) the logo but, apart the first which was not ever released on DVD, and so I should rely on "simple" delogo filters, the other two have a DVD release that could be used for the "patch" source to delogo them...

Have you "saved" from the oblivion any interesting movie?

So how many of you out there have seen this and what did you think?

Here are some of my initial thoughts.

I loved it. Fury Road is basically the final chase scene from MM2/Road Warrior stretched out into a full feature. That sounds like a formula for disaster, but George Miller never lets the action overwhelm the viewer or frankly become boring and repetitive. He also succeeds in building character in short pauses between the chaos.

Also as many have pointed out I was so happy to see Miller for shot the movie without shaky cam, snap zooms, breaking the frame or any of the technique that initially seemed interesting but have been done to death in the last 2 decades. I can actually appreciate the full frame and see everything that's going on. I know he does use a bit of over-cranking but hey, that has been in his bag of trick for a long while, so its fair game. I was disappointed to not see any classic, swipe dissolves like in MM2.

In a perfect world I would Gibson back to play the character he is most associated with but he has too many troubles at this point and is too old to do these stunts. Regardless, Tom Hardy equips himself well. He takes a stripped down, lone wolf character and strips it even further. He barely speaks in the movie letting his actions do the talking, all the while the audience only gaining insight to he character through his memories (or is it delusions) of the people he could save. That puts the question of this being a reboot or a sequel up in the air. There are so many call-backs to the other films but this movie never really will fit well in the continuity. It stands on its own. There have been people complaining that Max gets short-changed in his own movie. That Furiousa is the main character. Well they are right, she is sort of the main character. Max just get caught up in her quest. But I have to say I didn't feel short changed. I felt it was more adding another great character to the long list of great Mad Max characters.

If I had a couple of complaints, they are minor, nit-picky and come from the place of a fan. I wish they had shot on film. I know why they didn't, with the hours and hours they shot from numerous camera, many of which were destroyed but all the same I miss grain. Grain would of fit this movie perfectly. I also would of loved to see Bruce Spence in a role being a big part of two of the previous movies. But that's just the fan in me. And man, the Interceptor just can't catch a break.

Can someone please provide the australian audio mono track from the Shout Factory BD, as it is lossless for the first time.
I'd like to sync it to the MGM BD, which only has the audio in lossy Dolby

Thanks

PS: The Trailers and TV Spots would be welcomed as well :cool:

Wow, it took me a really really really long time to start an account here.

So what should I be checking out?

Yes, I confess... I watched it - like the past three or four editions - and I liked it...

Winner song was good and easy to remember, "Heroes"; I liked also "Golden Boy" and "Love Injected", and also "Warrior" (Georgia) and "Beauty Never Lies"; not bad Russia, Albania, Spain and UK...

Of course, the usual "I vote my nearby Country" trend continues...

Anyone have seen it? And, what's your thought?

The project I'm working on is a recolur of Superman 4. I haven't been trying to match the DVD colour timing, but to make the colours more favourable than the bluray. The suit looks very green in a lot of shots, and the skin tones orange. The whole film is just a bit too overly vivd for my liking. Unfortunately I noticed that through my effots to change the suit back to blue, this has affected other green objects on the frame. My thinking now has been that if I can get the bluray to look somwhat like the DVD colours, where the suit is consistently blue, I can then colour correct from there and avoiid the issues I'm having with the green.

I ran a few clips with mixed results. Here's some comparison pictures.

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