[In progress] Hellraiser (1987) [Project: Celluloid]

[LucasGodzilla]

Hope you get some good results.

Hey by the way, if you want to improve quality more and have enough space, you could take the encode of the same master from the Germany Blu Ray and overlay the two with 0.5 opacity, combining them to hopefully get a better overall quality. Thats basically kind of what I was thinking of doing, but since you're going all-in on this, may as well do it properly. I can help you out with getting the German encode if you need it. I think the Arrow version has some weird grain issues iirc (weirdly moving grain fields), that might help a bit.

You know, I would like to see if I can get my hands on that since the grain is pretty unruly in the Arrow master. The only problem is that I would likely have to reconvert it to .MOV for Da Vinci to be able to read it but I’ll see if I can make it work. I hope you won’t mind me asking some stupid questions if I get stuck lol.

Shoot me a PM if you get a chance.

[deleted user]

Hope you get some good results.

Hey by the way, if you want to improve quality more and have enough space, you could take the encode of the same master from the Germany Blu Ray and overlay the two with 0.5 opacity, combining them to hopefully get a better overall quality. Thats basically kind of what I was thinking of doing, but since you're going all-in on this, may as well do it properly. I can help you out with getting the German encode if you need it. I think the Arrow version has some weird grain issues iirc (weirdly moving grain fields), that might help a bit.

You know, I would like to see if I can get my hands on that since the grain is pretty unruly in the Arrow master. The only problem is that I would likely have to reconvert it to .MOV for Da Vinci to be able to read it but I’ll see if I can make it work. I hope you won’t mind me asking some stupid questions if I get stuck lol.

Shoot me a PM if you get a chance.

Well, my suggestion would be to combine both versions via AviSynth straight into a ProRes .mov file and then work with that. That's why I said "if you have space".

[LucasGodzilla]

Hope you get some good results.

Hey by the way, if you want to improve quality more and have enough space, you could take the encode of the same master from the Germany Blu Ray and overlay the two with 0.5 opacity, combining them to hopefully get a better overall quality. Thats basically kind of what I was thinking of doing, but since you're going all-in on this, may as well do it properly. I can help you out with getting the German encode if you need it. I think the Arrow version has some weird grain issues iirc (weirdly moving grain fields), that might help a bit.

You know, I would like to see if I can get my hands on that since the grain is pretty unruly in the Arrow master. The only problem is that I would likely have to reconvert it to .MOV for Da Vinci to be able to read it but I’ll see if I can make it work. I hope you won’t mind me asking some stupid questions if I get stuck lol.

Shoot me a PM if you get a chance.

Well, my suggestion would be to combine both versions via AviSynth straight into a ProRes .mov file and then work with that. That's why I said "if you have space".

Don't suppose you could help me with that once I have the file since I have literally no understanding of AviSynth lol

[deleted user]

Well, first install AviSynth+. You could also install the original AviSynth without the +, but honestly it's not worth the hassle, the + is better in every way and is compatible with most of the old one's plugins anyway. I made a short guide on this forum for installing it somewhere.

Then install the newest ffmpegsource2 plugin for Avisynth in its plugin folders.

Make an .avs script and basically enter:

Code:

src1 = ffvideosource("yourremux.mkv")
src2 = ffvideosource("germanremux.mkv")

src1 = src1.ConvertBits(16).ConvertToYUV444().ConvertToRGB64(matrix="Rec709")
src2 = src2.ConvertBits(16).ConvertToYUV444().ConvertToRGB64(matrix="Rec709")

Overlay(src1,src2,opacity=0.5).ConvertToYUV444(matrix="Rec709")

Open this file in VirtualDub. (first time opening will take a while as it indexes the mkv files). See if the overlay is clean or whether there are issues due to sync. I haven't tried myself yet.

Once you know that, we can move further.

[LucasGodzilla]

Hello everybody! I would like to apologize for the lack of any sort of real status update for the past few weeks, however, I'm glad to say that after all these times, I have the first version of the re-grade done. Now I'll be blunt, I don't think it's perfect, but all things considered, I think it's step-up from the original master in terms of color accuracy, but a bit of a step down in other regards.

Original Arrow / Turbien Medien Master

Continues on the next post.

[LucasGodzilla]

Apologies for the double post but the image limit forced me.

Project: Celluloid Regrade (V1)

Now, first things first, the colors. Obviously, you can see that the movie has a much colder color scheme now that, from what I understand and can tell, are far more reminiscent of the original theatrical print. From what I've also heard from accounts of those who watched the movie, the night-time scenes are soaked in blue in comparison to the neutral colors seen in previous home releases. As you can tell, I've adjusted for this to the best of my ability without tapping into pictures from the trailer of the movie posted by Turisu which I don't think is quite theatrically-accurate for several reasons. But all-in-all, I think it's more pleasant to look at than the duller colors seen in the original master.

Now for the issues. If you can't tell, the grain in the original master is pretty unruly at times and unfortunately, the re-grade has not done it any favors and gives me Black Christmas levels of grain in some shots. Now I've done the best I could by making use of the Turbien Medien master which has less grain in some areas. Special thanks to TomArrow for that (and the AviSynth+ help) by the way! With that said though, it's still pretty bad in some areas, which is why I'm asking y'all a question. Should I attempt to denoise the master and overlay the original master (albeit transparent) to retain some of that original grain and detail? I'd rather not act on the grain issue without hearing some feedback first.

Another issue I have is how the blacks are colored more often than not. Now TomArrow has suggested a fix for this, however I'd rather not act on this either without hearing some feedback. Here's just a little example of a before-and-after test still he made. I'll let you people decide if it looks better with or without the fixed blacks.

Before                                  After

My final issue (or actually, offer is a better word), is the audio track. Now currently I plan on just releasing this with the Arrow 2.0 Stereo track but if anyone has any decent audio track alternatives, such as a Laserdisc audio rip perhaps, I'd be more than happy to try and sync it to my re-grade.

Anyways, I hope you all have a fine evening, and I hope to read some feedback on all of this soon.

EDIT: Looking over this, I just noticed a highlight issue on the screencap of the cenobites (second row from the bottom, furthest left) so that'll be something I'll have to fix.

[spoRv]

First thing: congratulations on your first project! It's so good to see a new member release it so quick!

Second: I dunno if colors are accurate - never seen in the theater - but, according to my (not so strong) memory, your version reminds me the one I've always seen in the past years; TV and laserdisc. At least, it's very different from the original, so I appreciate it; it's always good to have an alternative, after all!

Third: grain, I'd like to see a comparison; blacks, fix the issue!

Hint: post some screenshot comparisons - you can use http://screenshotcomparison.com or http://www.framecompare.com for example; it's easier to compare images before/after.

[LucasGodzilla]

First thing: congratulations on your first project! It's so good to see a new member release it so quick!

Second: I dunno if colors are accurate - never seen in the theater - but, according to my (not so strong) memory, your version reminds me the one I've always seen in the past years; TV and laserdisc. At least, it's very different from the original, so I appreciate it; it's always good to have an alternative, after all!

Third: grain, I'd like to see a comparison; blacks, fix the issue!

Hint: post some screenshot comparisons - you can use http://screenshotcomparison.com or http://www.framecompare.com for example; it's easier to compare images before/after.

Well, I'm not quite considering it as being released since it's simply not entirely finished yet: I've still got to address the other issues as well as properly exporting it and making an MKV out of the file. I may upload this current version onto Mega though and send it out to a few people as a peer-screening to see if anything sticks out that I didn't catch. I can sign you up for that if you're interested.

Thanks for the feedback in general as well by the way. I'm not entirely sure how accurate the colors are either in some areas but it's certainly closer to the print than before. Thanks for your thoughts on the issues as well by the way, although I don't have a good comparison of the grain at this moment, however, I think it's still noticeable in the pics I posted above. I'll see if I get a chance to make a test version of the denoise + blending of the master and see if it's worth the effort. Also, I didn't bother with screenshot comparisons since, in my past experience, it's a pain in the A to set up right and I don't have a singular compilation image to make my life easier cause I admittedly didn't get the chance to make one.

[Turisu]

I agree with fixing the black issue. I can see that being very distracting on viewing.

As for the grain; if you're going for a theatrical look then I would suggest toning it down without losing it entirely. There is way more grain in that master than would have been visible in an original print. In my opinion, a degree of DNR and grain management should be a part of any good restoration (or preservation in this case).

[deleted user]

I think the colors look fantastic! Love it. Huge upgrade. I also can't comment on theatrical accuracy, but I like it, that's for sure.