[Released] Harry Potter saga - open matte

[Stamper]

I have em all with french audio, even canadian audio, but these are the Theatrical cuts though I may have one extended cut on a hdd

[spoRv]

Nice to know that someone has actually seen the comparison!

Deleted/extended scenes in HD are on their way; for 5.1 tracks, HP 1 and 2 were available on BD, while 6, 7, 8 are safely on my HDD, and 3, 4, 5 would be captured next week; first I would finish this project, then I'll start with the extended editions.

[nightstalkerpoet]

You should release them as the same Fundamental Numbers - HP1 Would be #013-T (for theatrical) and #013-E (for Extended)

For the comparison btw, was the second source for HP2 not useable for the glitchy shot of the wall?

[spoRv]

I'll release them for sure as #013-#020 for the open matte theatrical versions; still thinking about eventual #xxxEX for extended versions.

Luckily, the second source served to fix both shots which has corrupted and missing frames!

[spoRv]

HP 4:

worked all day on it; albeit second source was a bit inferior to the main one, when mixed together (both cleaned) final result is just a tiny bit less sharp than the main one alone (cleaned as well), but with less noise and less color bleeding; I think is a very good compromise indeed - and of course better than the untouched source IMHO - without talking of the fact that those nasty artefacts are completely gone now!

Encoding complete "fast" version now (not cleaned and without grain plate, just mixed and delogo'ed) to check if eventual glitches have passed the first quality check... three hours for encoding, two and half for watching. I'm pretty sure it's OK, but one never knows if a small 8x8pixel glitch that last just one frame is occurred during an eye blink...

HP 7:

thanks to babouin, we have now the last five minutes, plus end credits, in 1080p delogo'ed!

Now, let's talk about this film again, briefly. It contains few shots in open matte - still to be found all, but I'd bet they are around 1-2 minutes, plus "three brothers" animation at 3m21s. The rest of the film is just cropped but, at the contrary of the other films, where there were more details on top and bottom, here there are less... so, the best option would be a total reconstruction, taking the BD as source, cropping it accordingly to the HDTV, and upscale to fullscreen. But there is quite a lot of work, because, even without assuming a pixel-perfect cropping, a choice should be made; I've produced a strip with eleven positions - L5 all left...L1 left near center, Center, R1 right near center...R5 all right - but for every shot, the first and last frame numbers and position should be noted, and it's a lot of work.

I posted a request on doom9 forum to see if it's possible to find an avisynth script that could do that, so I'd wait few days to see if there could be a solution; meanwhile, if someone would help with this, I could send him a properly prepared version to check the frame position, as the following:



the first frame is dead center, second is L2, while third has no correspondence, as it is an open matte shot.

EDIT: Good news! It seems there are more open matte shots than what I thought... difference with cropped shots are not that great, but it's there!

Summary:

HP 1: ready
HP 2: ready
HP 3: ready - but I'll wait for second source to see if video could be improved a bit
HP 4: ready
HP 5: ready - but I'll wait for second source to see if video could be improved a bit
HP 6: downloading the second source right now
HP 7: have to work on it; if not using BD as source, it could be ready soon
HP 8: have to work on it

note: in this case, "ready" means that avisynth script for video is finished, and lossless encoding should be made; audio and subs are ready to be muxed when lossy video will be ready.

[spoRv]

HP 7:

tried everything to find an automated way to do the task - modified avisynth script, Harry's spell, voodoo magic - but nothing found...

So, I ended up to make it manually slowly, hardly, I'm progressing... the tool I prepared is this:



works quite well, and helped me to effectively locate the most similar frame cropping - the difference between one setting and the other is 32 pixels, so if one frame falls in between, the error is ±16 pixels; think that many are perfectly centered, and quite a lot of others fall exactly in one of the other locations, I can say that average error is around ±8 - if you consider that Blu-ray image is 40 pixels wider and 20 pixels taller than fullscreen version (before upscaling) I'd say error is not a problem...

I discovered that there are A LOT of open matte shots, but, as they last few seconds, and some with few lines more than cropped BD frame, it's difficult to spot'em "on the fly", picking up random frames... also, there are some effectively pan&scan shots, but they are quite few (4 until now, for a grandtotal of a dozen seconds or two), and panning is limited to few pixels per frame, hence not very noticeable - but I'm happy they decided to apply those pans; of course, for those shots, fullscreen version would be used.

I'm around 1/3rd now, hope to finish today.

HP 6:

continues to download, slowly - it's great, delogo'ed, and would probably be used as main source - have to check if mixed result would be better or not; still thinking about missing frames around commercial breaks, though... I'd go with second source (with logo) using third source, the SDTV, to remove the logo.

HP 5:

will be the next to be downloaded; can't say if it would be used, as WEBdl is pretty neat, still, too "smooth" maybe... we need some dirt!

[spoRv]

Wow... finally HP 7 alignement has been concluded...

For the curious, here you are some numbers:

Code:

2h14m40s total time of movie without end credits        
        
1h21m    centered   60,29%
  19m25s open matte 14,38%
  17m22s right      12,88%
  13m40s left       10,15%
   3m07s pan&scan    2,31%

 15 crop settings (7 left, center, 7 right)
718 crop points

[spoRv]

HP 1, 2:

ready

HP 3, 5:

ready, but I would wait for a further sources (720p for HP 3, 720p & 1080p for HP 5) to see if quality could be eventually improved.

HP 4:

I've worked on it all day, as it had not only some residual glitches hard to spot - indeed, a very small block on one side that lasts one frame is quite hard to find out! - but the logo changed sometimes and I had to build a better mask; now *it seems* (hope so) that everything is right...

An example of the work done: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/211576
this is maybe the worst case scenario, where the image is ridden with those nasty MPEG-2 "mega blocks" - those one, I must admit, pass almost unnoticed when watched at the proper distance... but try to zoom in!

Well, apart obvious block removal, the noise is lowered thanks to the use of two sources, and color bleeding greatly reduced, if not eliminated - take a look at... that thing (I don't know the word to define it) that Ron has in his hand, top right has green bleeding from the jacket on the HDTV.

I've decided to remove the 4pixels on top and 2pixels on sides borders, and upscale the image accordingly - OK, the aspect ratio would be wrong by something around 0.1%, but I can live with this... and, at the end, the ubiquitous 35mm grain plate - a "must", I think!

HP 6:

finally downloaded the second source (hey, 168GB!) and I'm going to work on this now.
Note: up to date, there is no 1080i HDTV versions released "in the wild", so we have an exclusive!

HP 7:

have to put in sync the two 720p sources, delogo them, and use the result for open matte and pan&scan shots; it *should* be a simple task... for the final five minutes, and end credits, I would use the 1080p babouin has provided.
Until an eventual 1080i HDTV source would show up, this will be the best fullscreen version, with 17% upscaled from high-quality 720p HDTV, and 83% sourced from BD, with better quality and more details on top and bottom for the non-open matte shots in comparison to 720p HDTV source.
Note: up to date, there is no 1080i HDTV versions released "in the wild", and only low bitrate 720p version with logo, so we have an exclusive!

HP 8:

I remotely thought about doing the same I did with HP 7 - using BD for the cropped shots - but luckily we have a 1080p source, almost perfect, that needs just to be integrated with another source (actually two) for missing frames and residual logo, and, most important thing of all, HDTV, at the contrary of HP 7, has more details on top and bottom even in cropped shots, so no need to do that - phew!
Note: up to date, there is no 1080i HDTV versions released"in the wild", so we have an exclusive!

[OogieBoogie]

I cannot wait to see these, they shall be stuck on my server an seeded to infinity and beyond .. lol

[OperatorIV]

I agree @OogieBoogie