Looking for the "right" Terminator 2 color grading...

[TServo2049]

Also, comparing the Squeeze LD samples to the film cell photos I have, I think I can safely say that this LD is absolutely not the original theatrical timing. There is no tint at all in the hospital chase, whereas the film cell images I have show a blue tint. The Squeeze LD looks more like the neutral, untinted footage seen in the trailers. This was probably a situation like the original DVD release of 1984 that's missing the bleach-bypass desaturation effect, or the DVD remasters of Miami Vice where some episodes are completely missing the blue tints in some nighttime scenes. Looks to me like Pioneer transferred an element with incomplete color timing without realizing it.

I do wonder about the sound mix, though...

[alexpeden2000]

I think the regrades look great personally with just the right amount of green and purple. T2 on home video always looked like it was balanced towards magenta, and you've finally compensated for that.

As we saw with that obscure 35mm-scourced German T1 DVD, teal was very much present in the grading of these films.

Agree with this, regrade looks great PDB

[TServo2049]

I doubt a 4K remastered release of T2 would look any better. It would probably be like T1 - closer to the theatrical timing than older transfers in some scenes, but still plagued with revisionist modern digital blanket tinting, dulled and yellow/green-tinged whites, and so on. (The remastered T1 BD has some scenes which hew closer to the original German DVD and the film cells I've seen; other scenes- the parking garage, the factory - look sort of like what the theatrical timing seems to have been but with an ugly teal blanket on top; and other parts actually look warmer than the German DVD or the film cells - the eye surgery and the police shootout have this warm yellow look to them which seems totally wrong).

[PDB]

I think the regrades look great personally with just the right amount of green and purple. T2 on home video always looked like it was balanced towards magenta, and you've finally compensated for that.

As we saw with that obscure 35mm-scourced German T1 DVD, teal was very much present in the grading of these films.

Agree with this, regrade looks great PDB

Thanks guys but given the comments about the green I pulled-up an older file that was just the blue without the green (and also fixed the black level):



(check out the pink concrete in the second pair)

In answer to your questions Servo I did use that video (which has the teal/purple) but also a couple dozen 35mm shots and two crappy boot telecines.

The green was a big question for me since it did show up in some 35mm shots:


but that gets conflicted here:


So, I am inclined to agree with you but green is an odd color for non-color corrected material. I would think it would look more neutral. Otherwise I think the BDs are still off since the bar and maybe arcade lack blue color timing.

I actually stopped work on my HD regrade since there is a 4K (and 3D) remaster coming out this year but this conversation makes me want to pick it back up again.

[TServo2049]

You have crappy boot telecines of T2? I did hear about them, actually, but I don't think anybody ever got me a copy of them...

[TServo2049]

I also have a sample image of the 3rd shot out of those 4, from the same seller as the bottom image.



Maybe the seller of those yellow-green images captured them with incorrect white balance? Do you have any more screenshots from the same source as those yellow-green ones, so I can see if I can find matching images from the eBay seller?

[PDB]

I also have a sample image of the 3rd shot out of those 4, from the same seller as the bottom image.



Maybe the seller of those yellow-green images captured them with incorrect white balance?

That seems likely. In my T2 thread I fixed the white balance and they got more blue.

You can see a pic from the boots in this thread servo:

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/The-Loo...850/page/9

If you want a copy of the boots I can send them to you servo but they are very rough. One is very blue and the other tends to green.

[zoidberg]

PDB,
Just out of curiosity, which Blu are you using as the source for your (awesome looking) regrade? I'm guessing the Lionsgate stealth re-release.
Slightly off-topic but did anyone ever hear the 7.1 DTS-HD track on the German HD-DVD? It kind of stands alone as a curio and I wondered if it used the Rydstrom 5.1EX remix as its basis or the theatrical/laserdisc era mix.

[TServo2049]

Yeah, magenta was almost the 90s equivalent of teal/orange. Video transfers, while more neutral and balanced in terms of color palettes and contrast than what we see today, were also often plagued with this magenta boosting - for example, I noticed the weird magenta/purple tinge on A New HopeE even back then (especially after looking at Treadwell's side-by-sides with the GOUT LD). The first DVD of Ghostbusters, some transfers of Jurassic Park (I think the DVD more so than the VHS/LD?) and most transfers of Phantom Menace look that way too. From what I remember, even the VHS/LD transfer of Beauty and the Beast that I and others always held up as looking better than the DVD/BD, had too much pink in it. I'm sure there are plenty of other 90s transfers with the same tendencies. And it wasn't just theatrical films - if you compare the original video masters of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the HD remasters, you can definitely see that the Enterprise bridge, Picard and Riker's uniforms, and other stuff have this pink/magenta tinge to them in the SD originals.

Was it done to get the colors to look good on that generation of CRTs? I do remember that the colors of these transfers did look good on my family's late-90s-vintage tube TV back in the day, it probably wasn't as glaring before LCD flat screens, but even then I think I did notice more purple/magenta (especially with stuff where I'd seen previous video releases, like ANH or Ghostbusters). I've said this before - just because the teal/orange revisionism on modern remasters is wrong, doesn't mean that the colors on the previous masters of those same movies were any more accurate to how they looked in theaters.

And BTW, earlier in this thread you said you thought PILF-2187 comes the closest to the theatrical timing. I beg to differ; I watched MrBrown's samples, and there are parts which have little to no blue tinting at all, where the film cells have a definite blue cast - for example, the hospital chase:

Squeeze LD:


Film cell:


Squeeze LD:


Film cell:


Squeeze LD:


Film cell:


And here's the hallway scene:

Squeeze LD:


Film cell:

[Chewtobacca]

It was rumored that the DTS-HD HR 7.1 on the German HD DVD was just an upmix, but I didn't hear it and don't know for sure. Is there much interest in it?