[No Longer Available] Alien Regrade (Fox THX Laserdisc)

[Stamper]

Studio tweak movies because they have to remaster them, scanning and color timing gear evolves fast, as does television sets.

Often, they color time was is in front of them on the screen, and do not waste time to compare like we do with old transfers, unless a director asks to. They usually do full films in 2/3 days, that's why you get lots of blunders.

Of course, it's totally different when they do a real restoration like Wizard of Oz etc. They take the time to do it right. Or different. LOL

[PDB]

Just a little update on this. Doombot has been very generous with his time helping me with a bunch of different projects. Acting most importantly as a second pair of eyes. So on a different project I was working on, he noticed two errors. First, it looked like detail and grain had been erased in my encode. Long story short. Using the file type I was created errors converting back and forth and destroyed grain. This also happened on Alien. So I went back to BD encoded it to AVI and started over. That fixed the problem but it means I have to regrade the movie again. That's not as bad as it sounds since I have all the regrade info for the original files, so instead of re-coloring I just need to re-apply the colors. Still it will take a few weeks to re-do.

The second error is not my fault. He noticed a magneta tint to my H.264 encode. That's a similar compliant to what people have said here about the self-destruction sequence. The LD has a lot of magenta so I though it was that. It seems there was some extra tint. So long story short we found out that Adobe Premier has some sort of bug in its H.264 encoder that it adds a tint. I found one or two reference to other people having the same problem. It also doesn't appear at the same level all the time, Less in one encode then the other. So I ran through a host of other files types. It doesn't happen in AVI, image sequences, mov, nothing but H.264 encodes and it seems also Mpeg2 encodes. So after messing around trying x264vfw which turned out to be a disaster, I'm now going to try the wonderful guide CSchmidlapp posted here:

http://fanres.com/showthread.php?tid=97

and the setting Andrea came up with.

So big thanks to Doombot. He's been a big help. And thanks to CSchmidlapp and Andrea for the encoding ideas. That is fanres in action.

[spoRv]

Thanks to you! Happy to be of some help to everyone in the forum, this is the mission of this community!

Two hints:

1. try to use an higher bitrate than you could think is good for material with grain - usually, for a 1080p I'd not go under 16mbps, better higher.
   
2. avoid x264vfw at all cost... don't know if it's faulty, or it's the interaction with the other software... to be sure, render the file in a lossless coded, THEN encode in x264... using the command line is not so difficult, just copy&paste!
   

[PDB]

Thanks again Andrea. The strange thing about x264vfw, is that it seems to do whatever it wants regardless of the settings you put in. It was VERY frustrating.

[spoRv]

Don't tell to me... I discovered it AFTER I have released my first projects...
Now that you know it, avoit to use it at all cost; if you need a fast encoding for test purposes, use Simple x264 launcher - it "remembers" your last settings, so for example you could use it for all your test clips, and use the x264 command line for your final encoding... plus, now it encodes also x265 (HEVC)

[Stamper]

PDB you don't use the actual h264 encodes as source? Or you can convert them to prores but it takes alot of space

[PDB]

No I didn't use the H.264, I just used another format I shouldn't of. Just a stupid mistake on my part. I had already stopped doing things this way a long time ago, so only a few parts of Alien were affected. I just wanted it as best as it can be so I started fresh.

Oh well its all part of me figuring out the encoding quirks of Premiere. I redid the encode, changing the H.264 of the BD to lossless AVI/Lag, and re-applying the color grades. So I'm well on the way to fixing it. Glad to sort out problems now and not later.

[PDB]

In keeping with spoRv's advice in my Aliens thread. I was fixing up my Alien regrade and was wondering what reducing the saturation to about 75%-80% in my LD capture would look like in the Alien regrade. Its not as big a difference as Aliens overall since Alien is far less pushed and darker. Its a subtle change, especially in the reds and skin tones. What do people like best?

BD regraded to LD/BD regrade to LD with 75% reduction in saturation
[Image: alien_c_1a.jpg]

[Image: alien_c_2a.jpg]

[spoRv]

Even if a bit pale, if I will be forced to choose, I'd prefer the 75% version... maybe an 80% will be the best compromise, because 100% is too saturated IMHO... but please don't take my feedback in so great consideration, as you know my poor monitor is not the best to judge the colors; just wait for other's feedbacks, before taking any important decisions!

[lightsabre]

nvm guess I was wrong