Vertigo and North By Northwest regrades

[PDB]

I'm also going to tackle two of the Hitchcock greats. I want to try regrade Vertigo to the information that Falcon has, posted here:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-223.html?h...=hitchcock

and regrade North By Northwest to the two laserdiscs (Criterion and MGM) which seem to match pics from an IB tech print I saw (like the crop duster scene being very brown). And of course add the mono for both.

[The Aluminum Falcon]

FANTASTIC! Thank you very much, PDB. Really looking forward to your work. The Master's classics deserve to be shown in their full quality.

[PDB]

Hopefully, I make him and you proud Falcon. Vertigo will be first.

[captainsolo]

Great news. Those are the ones that need a regrade of their HD iterations as the rest are all fine on color for the most part. Might I suggest you also take a stab at Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much?

[PDB]

What would be a good source for a regrade of both. Chew already did a very nice Rear Window with Falcon's help using the older restoration. Not sure anything else is needed there.

Wasn't the Man restoration (and BD) totally rebuilt from faded materials? Was there ever IB tech of that?

[captainsolo]

RW is a 1080i hdtv cap of what appears to be the 2008 Legacy DVD master. I'm wondering if regrading the BD release to that might achieve some better results here and there.

TMWKTM '56 BD is the either the same 2005 remaster done for the Masterpiece DVD (that was really a complete mess) or yet another Uni quickie fubared update for 1080p. Some studio did this new scan/master back then that I cannot remember the name of, but I remember thinking it was defective back in 2005 and still hate it now. The best reference is the 2001 DVD which seems to use the preexisting 1984 reissue materials from the "lost Hitchcocks" run, and despite being an early DVD and showing print damage is FAR preferable in every way.
It was certainly NOT a rebuild or restoration-the negative is apparently in very poor shape as was again left to rot by the studio after the 2000 Rear Window restoration.
There should be IB Techs of the film as it was VV and a big 1956 Paramount release so it's well within the timeframe for IB. (Ten Commandments for example-same year also VV, had IB prints from what I can tell)

They have made some newer Hitch prints at Universal though because I managed to see near pristine copies of Rope and Trouble With Harry at a theater about 6-7 years ago that looked amazing and were not at all from that 1980's reissue run.


EDIT:
Found Mr. Harris' comments:

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) is a problem negative, but with today's technology, should not have been a problematic Blu-ray.
It should have, and could have, looked exactly as it did in 1956.
To me, there was a chance here to make everything perfect, and to be blunt, it was blown.
Don't be lulled into a false sense of quality by looking at the occasionally superb resolution.
It's the color and densities, that for much of the film, make it a failure of a Blu-ray.

Also it appears I was right, the old DVD is based on the 1984 materials and aren't right then this new master is different on BD and without the MC DVD's awful noise and edge enhancement but is drawn from the fading interpositive and has color shifts.
So nothing is right.
Grrrrrr.

DVD vs MC DVD
https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/The_Man_...USA,_2005)

2001 DVD vs BD
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews...review.htm

The BD comes out better than I recall on second thought because it isn't so awful like the '05 DVD and doesn't make every person look ghostly pale. But nothing is quite right looking.

[Chewtobacca]

The BD comes out better than I recall on second thought because it isn't so awful like the '05 DVD and doesn't make every person look ghostly pale. But nothing is quite right looking.

Agreed! On my last viewing, I reflected that the BD frequently looked odd somehow but could have been far worse.

[PDB]

Thanks for the rundown Captain.

Harris is brutal.

[The Aluminum Falcon]

Lots of good info, as always, captainsolo. My two cents about the two titles mentioned:

Rear Window (1954)- Chewtobacca's custom disc is my go-to copy at the moment. As mentioned, the BD's colors are oversaturated; while no vintage color reference of the film exists (as no 1954 dye-transfer prints were struck), the BD seems pushed a bit too far. In any case, the colors on Chewtobacca's disc do fairly accurately resemble the 35mm prints of the Harris restoration.

The problems with the HDTV-sourced custom are inherent to the age of the master. There seems to be a bit of EE. This exacerbates grain; more problematic given that, this transfer more than likely uses a higher generation element (the restored dupe negative, most likely) than the BD, which is sourced from the faded OCN. On the other hand, the BD seems to have been subtly grain reduced; there are other concerning things with the new version, such as some color banding, better highlighted by Robert Harris himself on HomeTheaterForum.

It is possible that the BD, with the color timing of the HDTV broadcast, may be superior. But, I'd honestly need to compare the two (BD vs Chewtobacca's disc) again to see which has superior detail.

However, as per Moshrom's latest discovery about the superiority of the lossy DVD track over the BD's audio, it might be worthwhile syncing this audio to Chewtobacca's custom. As they are the same master, there may be no syncing at all required. The LD audio, which I transferred for Moshrom, was found to be inferior, as the transfer stemmed from a higher generation 1980s element.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)- This probably is the one most worthy of restoration, after Vertigo and North by Northwest. While we have two salvageable copies of Rear Window, the BD of this has severe issues, as highlighted by captainsolo. Universal really dropped the ball.

FWIW, the non reissue 35mm prints that I've seen of this film are severely faded.

On home video, the best transfer color-wise is the 2001 DVD, which was sourced from the 1980s reissue materials. Detail's not terrific, but the color has about 20 years less degradation. The 2005 DVD (and the BD, which seems to use the same transfer) used a severely color faded OCN. The color unstably fluctuates to an extreme extent that I seriously doubt a traditional PDB color grade or even Dr. Dre's tool (which I confess not fully understanding) would help. AFAIK, a regrade as usually done here would be relatively useless, as it operates on the basis that the color signal of the problematic commercial release is at very least stable if inaccurate. Even if we were to shift the BD to be warmer and greener like previous releases, for example, Harris's main points of contention about the color seeming to flicker within shots would still stand.

Methinks that the best solution would be to use the luma (B&W) information of the BD and merge it with the upscaled chroma (color) of the 2001 DVD, not dissimilar to what the Doctor Who Restoration Team does to salvage some episodes. That would be a worthy restoration indeed, although quite a taxing one, I understand. But, if this is possible, hopefully someone can do it...

[Chewtobacca]

In respect of RW, the banding that Harris mentioned is the main reason why I'm not sure that a BD-sourced custom disc would be much better my current one.  Perhaps using the chroma from another source would help with that –  perhaps not.

However, as per Moshrom's latest discovery about the superiority of the lossy DVD track over the BD's audio, it might be worthwhile syncing this audio to Chewtobacca's custom. As they are the same master, there may be no syncing at all required.

My BD was synced to the official one, so the fact that the HDTV cap shares a master with the DVD makes it virtually certain that it will be necessary to resync the DVD track.