[Released] Highlander II - European Theatrical Cut - Preservation - Version 2!

[HippieDalek]

Version 2.1 is now available! 
Details here: https://fanrestore.com/thread-2840-post-...l#pid57882

Did you know there are five six different versions of Highlander II? Yep, five six! It's crazy.

• USA Theatrical Cut
  
• First European Theatrical Cut
  
• Second European Theatrical Cut
  
• Third European Theatrical Cut (Newly discovered)
  
• Renegade Version
  
• Special Edition
  

Sadly the European versions have been largely forgotten about, most likely because there has only ever been a single home release that contained the original English language audio track. Due to poor feedback the film was altered towards the end of it's run, which is why there are two European Theatrical versions.

The European versions are something like a half way house between the USA Theatrical and the Renegade; a lot of the additional content from Renegade is here but the ordering of the footage is very different and it loses a few scenes. And yes, Zeist remains intact! Much of the music throughout this version is strikingly different too. This is also the only version to contain the infamous "fairytale ending."

Back in 2008 a faneditor called Phineasbg created a preservation of the First European Cut, and I spent years trying to track it down. Once I finally got my hands on a copy I was disappointed to find that the picture quality was murky and the audio featured drop outs, glitches, missing segments and was also of overall poor quality.

Phineasbg did the an amazing job with what material was available at the time, but since then better quality visual sources have become available so I thought I'd have a go at putting together an updated preservation.

(Left: Phineasbg's Preservation, Right: This preservation)




As you can see, despite being a bit cropped, the visuals are much improved. However there is little I can do with the audio side. The original audio has only ever been released on a Hong Kong laserdisc, which is so rare that I have only ever spoken to one person who actually owns it. I now have my very own copy of the laserdisc and have used it for this project! I had hoped to get a new audio rip for this preservation but sadly I've been unable to contact the laserdisc owner again. Instead I've done what I can to patch and smooth over some of the rougher parts of Phineasbg's audio. This preservation would not be possible at all without all the hard work done previously by Phineasbg.

The project ended up being a lot more complex than I expected, in the end all of the following sources went into it!

   

Many of the picture sources are in native PAL. This preservation is presented at the correct 24fps, but 576p 24 isn't a widely accepted standard, so to preserve all the detail and the correct speed I've rendered the file at 720p 24. This is still a standard definition restoration though, so don't expect HD levels of detail.

I've also thrown together a handful of video extras (detailed in the image below), I've included these as a separate download.

There are some possibilities for a 2.0 release if anyone is interested:

• Italian and German audio tracks
  
• One scene had to be reconstructed using the letterboxed Renegade DVD. I'd like to replace this with the Blu Ray cut to preserve detail, but currently I don't have a Blu Ray drive to rip my disc.
  
• I'm still looking into ways to improve the audio quality 
  

As I have so many sources for every cut of the film, (including an excellent quality EU cut German surround track, and around 80% of the dialog and fx isolated from the Renegade cut) I'm attempting to reconstruct the audio from scratch. I've got about a quarter of the film done so far and it's sounding far better than I expected, so we'll see how it goes. I'll update if it all comes together. 

I would still love to get hold of a fresh audio rip of the laserdisc though, so if anyone can help at all then please get in touch. 

Anyway, I'll stop talking. PM for links and please let me know if you have any feedback. 




I've uploaded an older version of the UK Trailer reconstruction to YouTube if anyone wants a preview.

[deleted user]

Interesting. Really too bad about the laserdisc. Wish we had a Digitalizer robot in human skin that we could send back in time to track down this laserdisc and digitalize it.

[HippieDalek]

Interesting. Really too bad about the laserdisc. Wish we had a Digitalizer robot in human skin that we could send back in time to track down this laserdisc and digitalize it.

I'd certainly have a few requests for the Digitalizer robot! I've got a fairly large laserdisc collection, including a few interesting rarities, but despite searching for years ths H2 Hong Kong release has eluded me.

[MrBrown]

Are you sure that the german soundtrack is the complete european cut?
It is quite possible that Germany got additional cuts in the movie for theatrical release.

[HippieDalek]

Are you sure that the german soundtrack is the complete european cut?
It is quite possible that Germany got additional cuts in the movie for theatrical release.

The German version is highly censored. As far as I know there has never been a fully uncut release of European Cut on home video. Videos detailing the cuts to the German and Italian versions are included as part of the extras of this release. Between the two (as well as the HK LD audio) it's easy to piece together the full European Version.

Despite being cut the German release provides the highest quality video and audio (despite being dubbed into German) for the European Cut.

My release has patched all the censored scenes using other sources, and features a fixed version of Phineasbg's audio. 

Phineasbg's audio quality is generally quite low so I'm currently using the best elements of all the other sources to try and closely reconstruct the original audio in English. I'm about a quarter of the way through at the moment and it's working a lot better than I expected. This approach will never be seamless but it should provide an overall better quality soundtrack for a future release.

[deleted user]

For your reconstruction efforts: You probably already thought of it, but you can try EQ matching to make the difference in sound less jarring. For example using iZotope.

[HippieDalek]

For your reconstruction efforts: You probably already thought of it, but you can try EQ matching to make the difference in sound less jarring. For example using iZotope.

Thanks for the tip. I've not tried iZotope but I'll check it out. I've already been doing a bit of EQ matching. I carried out a test on what I estimated would be the most difficult and problematic scene and managed to get something pretty good. I'm now going through the whole film and putting together a rough edit and working out the best sound elements for each scene, then I'll take a second pass to do all the EQ stuff to smooth out the remaining jarring transitions. 

I'll do my best but I expect there will still be some noticeable transitions as I have to rely on the low quality LD rip for about 10% of the dialogue.

[HippieDalek]

Look what just arrived in the mail! After almost a decade of hunting the Hong Kong laserdisc of Highlander 2 is in my hands! 



This is the only known home release of the First European Cut to include the original English language audio for the film. It contains the English audio on both the analogue and digital PCM tracks, so I'll be looking into the best ways to preserve each and use them both to improve the audio for this preservation. 

I don't have much time at the moment but I've quickly skipped through the film, checking a few problem points from the poor quality audio track I'd been working from, and this sounds perfect! Crystal clear and no stuttering or other audio glitches. 

The picture quality is a lot better than I was expecting too.

[HippieDalek]

Yesterday I hooked my player up to my desktop PC and captured the PCM audio from the Hong Kong laserdisc. I've managed to get hold of a second hand Creative SoundBlaster SB0880 X-Fi Titanium card which is capable of capturing bit perfect PCM audio via Toslink. Both sides were easy enough to capture and it sounds perfect (though I haven't gone through the tests yet to verify they are indeed bit perfect). 



Both the video and the audio on this laserdisc are taken from at theatrical 35mm print, so although the audio is PCM it is far from CD quality. When I listen to the audio on headphones there is faint pop/crackle noise throughout, nothing serious, just reflective of the source. There are also brief dropouts during reel changes and a few moments where the audio gets blown out, like it's clipping, but again this is in the source and nothing to do with the capture. 





So now I've finally got a clean, high quality audio source to work from I'm going to start working on this preservation again. I think version 2 will have two, maybe three audio tracks:

Restored PCM - This PCM track but with the rougher parts patched with higher quality sources.
Raw PCM - The PCM audio as close to un-tampered with as possible. There will probably be brief silences at reel changes to maintain sync.
Reconstructed Audio - If I get the time I still think it would be possible to put together a high quality version of the English audio using other sources. I'd previously managed to reconstruct about half of the film's audio before I stopped working on it when it looked like I might be able to get this LD. 

There's also the possibility to add German and Italian dubs but these would both require patching to cover up censored scenes. If anyone wants these then let me know and I'll include them in the next version. 

For now I'll get back to audio editing, I'll report back when version 2 is ready.

[kgbeast]

this puts a large smile on my face, looking forward to this update HippieDalek, greetings to all Highlander fans from Chile