project analysis: The Arrival (1996) UAR

[spoRv]

During these days I worked a lot onto this project, because I spent so much time in previous versions, that I wanted to give it another spin...

Previous versions:
The Arrival [spoRv] *BD-25* - OriginalTrilogy - FanRes
The Arrival (1996) [Fundamental Collection™ #008] - FanRes

I did also an upscaled fullscreen 1.33:1 version, but as it seemed nobody cared about this, I deleted the file - that wasn't that great, indeed; still, has a lot of potential, as the BD frame is mainly the center of the fullscreen frame, obviously cropped, with a bit more image on one or both sides, apart few shots where the added image is bigger, but not so much.

So, I thought to do a UAR version (Hybrid Vs UAR - a simple guide), that will do justice to the fullscreen. Of course, as source for the latter the PAL Italian DVD is used, while for the letterbox version I had the BD, what else? Well, yes and no... yesterday I've found a letterbox DVD, so it is there as well.

Let's see one frame in particular, randomly chosen, but with vertical lines to see better the alignment between the two sources used in the UAR:



as you can see, fullscreen and letterbox DVDs are almost identical, while BD is very different regarding colors and contrast.

So, first attempt was to combine FS DVD and BD, as I had no other LB source (at that moment); of course, BD was regraded to be as closer as FS DVD as possible... I was sure to get a good result, as previously tested UAR projects: WRONG! Yes, BD it has a lot better detail than DVD, but the image doesn't align perfectly, as well as color grading:


Then, I found the LB DVD, so I thought to regrade the BD using is as reference; this should be better than using the FS DVD, which has a different aspect ratio, hence now color matching could be as good as it can be; I was sure to achieve the right result: WRONG! Yes, now it's better than previous attempt, color wise, but still not aligned:


I gave up, end using the LB DVD instead of the BD, as they both have the same contrast and color grading: RIGHT! Yes, alignment and color grading were OK, as expected; as well as inferior resolution due to SD sources:


I was almost happy with it, when suddenly I had a flash of genius: why don't I reform the BD, to be as closer as LB DVD? So, after various resize and related crop trials & errors, thanks to WarpedResize, that stretches only sides or center of the image, I finally get a version that is almost right for the whole film (I hope, still finish to test):


Then, feed both to first pass of the AutoOverlay plugin, to get the BD better aligned with the LB DVD, then result was used to feed the second pass of the AutoOverlay align:


I was almost there; a little tweak to colors, a grain plate... et voilà le jeux sont fait!


Comparison between fullscreen DVD and UAR: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/133547

About color grading: after few days of testing, I realized that slightly corrected DVD colors are not that bad, and *may* be more theatrically accurate than BD - due to some clues like fullscreen format, dirt and speckles and the fact that at the time was not infrequent to use interpositive prints as sources instead negative.

[deleted user]

Nice one!