Minority Report [spoRv]

[PDB]

Good luck spoRv!

[spoRv]

Thanks PDB!

Finished to watch it right now. First of all, few years passed since the last time I watched it, and, every time I watch a movie again after much time, something new comes to my eyes, discover little details that I haven't noted before... this movie maybe is not a masterpiece, and surely is not widely known as other Spielberg movies, but I must admit it's very well directed, acted, story flows naturally, and at the end I haven't noted that more than two hours are passed... well done Steven!

Back to the project: there are very few frames (I noted maybe three or four instances during the whole movie) that have a slight brightness oscillations, but I noted it probably because I didn't watched the movie only to enjoy it, but also to spot some flaw. There are. Still, they could pass unnoticed by almost everyone but the most perfectionist of us, so I decided to leave everything as it is, because it works very well, I'm too lazy to work again on this, and I'm pretty sure I could live with 1 out of 50000 frames not 100% perfect, but "only" 90%, maybe...

Now I got to find out the exact bitrate to use for the final video encoding. Can't remember the right formula I used for the other projects, but I would be sure to find the right number. Also, soundtracks... very big as they are, should I include the DTS-MA (4GB) and the other DTS tracks (800MB x 4 = 3.2GB) untouched, and leave the video just around 16GB to fit a BD-25, with an average bitrate lower than 15mbps? Or extract the DTS core for English, convert the others to AC3 384kbps (or 448kbps) so the bitrate for the video could be raised?

According to the Kush Gauge formula, for an high motion movie to obtain a good quality the bitrate should be just a bit higher than 10mbps; considering there are many scenes quite static, and long final credits, I think 15mbps should be adequate, even to preserve the grain.

Opinions are well accepted, as usual!

[spoRv]

Further update: just compared the regraded version, the open matte and the DVD.

Open matte has a different opening; at the contrary of the DVD and BD, there is the Dreamworks logo first, then 20th Century Fox; then, "Dreamworks and 20th Century Fox present", while DVD and BD first 20th CF, then DW, then "20th Century fox and Dreamworks present"... after that, the initial part is just cropped, while almost the rest of the movie is full open matte, with a lot more details top and bottom, and few lost on the sides; sometimes only a side has less details; in the wide shots, usually the image is cropped. A variable aspect ratio version could be interesting here.

Color matching: in almost all scenes the regraded version is really close, if not identical, to DVD; but in very few shots, there is some difference - still more similar to DVD than the untoched BD, yet not perfect... so I thought to do a second pass - regrade the regraded version! It does improve those shots; again, not perfect yet, but they are much closer to DVD, now.

The only way to do a better job is to use directly the DVD chroma; in this case, of course, result is perfect, but, as the DVD image is smaller than the BD one, the outer borders of the BD will use the normal regrade (hence have different colors); or, I could resize the BD to let these borders out, but the image will lose a good part... also, in few shots DVD and BD have different framing...

At the end, I decided to go with the double pass regrade; all the image size is retained, colors are really, really close to DVD in almost all the shots (let's say 98%, if not more), and the few shots not that close, are still a lot better than untouched BD... and they are noticeable ONLY when a direct comparison is made; indeed, I didn't notice them when I watched the movie, and neither suspected something was wrong, color wise... the whole movie, as I wrote before, flowed well from the beginning to the end, without noticing something wrong (apart those two/three slight brightness flicker cited above).

I'm satisfied, after all, becaise a near perfect result is a lot better than a good result!

[spoRv]

When you (read: I) realize to have made a great work, then you (again: I) discover that it's not that great...

I continued to make comparisons after comparisons, and I was not that happy with the second pass; yes, it improved the things a bit, making the regraded closer to DVD, but still there was something I was not happy about... the DVD chroma "trick" was imperfect, as the borders have not the right colors in many shots, and some are cropped differently... then, I could solve this?

Then a flash of genius (a bit like House M.D. you know...); "in mediaN stat virtus"; I thought to use the median of the overlaid regraded/DVD chroma, and two different second pass (two regraded version of the first regrade); yes, a bit better, but still... then, second flash of genius (I'm starting to get used to...); why not using an average, instead of median, with different weight for EACH color channel (red, green, blue)?

That's what I did; and it improved the colors a lot; now they are much, much closer to DVD, even if the usual, harder shots aren't perfect; again, much better; the vast majority of shots are now practically identical... is it the final setting? I hope so... started to encode, it will took "just" two days this time... hoping the system will not crash (again and again) like the first time...

Here you are some examples from some of the most problematic shots: from top to bottom, DVD, new regrade, old regrade, BD


The grass... in this shot, the almost burnt-by-the-sun grass color is not rendered well; still, the new regrade is a bit closer; house, sky, sea, trees colors are good, though.



With this, the new grading is way better than the old one; face color is right now, and the wall is green and much closer to the DVD.


Even if it seems minor here, the difference is noticeable; faces are more blue and Anderton's skirt is more teal (hence similar to DVD) than blue.

[spoRv]

RELEASED!

For info & comments: https://fanrestore.com/thread-1359-post-26834.html