Highlander 2 - 35mm Scan

[deleted user]

I would call ist "Grindzeist", because "house" is more like a location, as is "Zeist", while "Grind" stands more for the style... so making it like from stylelocation into locationlocation... fells kinda wrong...

Hahaha... I would have taken you more for the "Zeistgeist" type.

[dvdmike]

Diet Zest: now with Lemon

[MrBrown]

Zeistlander 2 - There only can be Grind

[Bigrob]

Highlander II - There can be only two


I'll stop now lol

[HippieDalek]

Highlander II: Zeist Harder?

[HippieDalek]

I've just compiled an MKV for the grindhouse release. I wont release it until I've had the chance to watch through it all and check for any errors (not sure when that will be), but from just skipping through it everything seems ok. 



The MKV contains chapter points at the start of each reel, and both English and Russian audio. Both are unrestored, so expect even the English laserdisc audio to sound a bit rougher than the restored English track of my Standard Definition preservation.

I've also done a quick fix for the problem of the frames going out of alignment during the end credits. It's not perfect but it's an improvement at least. 

Expect a release shortly!

[HippieDalek]

I'm happy with the grindhouse release, but I'm struggling with my upload speeds just now so it may take a while before I can successfully get it hosted and verify the upload.

Also after hosting problems with the reels last week (I didn't expect them to be so popular) I'm planning to use at least two different hosts this time.

Oddly my download speeds have remained excellent during lockdown, but my upload speed is just a trickle which makes uploading 19.6 GB a problem.

Please be patient.

[HippieDalek]

The grindhouse release is available now! 

You can read about it in this thread.

[HippieDalek]

So now that the grindhouse (Zeisthouse) version is done I'm starting to look at the next stage; restoring what I can and patching the rest with the best available alternative source. 

I've done a few tests with various pieces of software and I'm now fairly confident that I can clean up most of the dirt and scratches, and with a bit of experimentation with Dr. Dre's Colour Matching Tool it shouldn't be too hard to match other sources to the colours of the 35mm print. 

But what I need to decide before I really get started is what resolution should I aim for? 

A raw frame looks something like this: 

   

As I've said before this is a 2.5K scan; roughly squarish frames at 2456 x 2054. When adjusted for an anamorphic picture this gives a resolution of  4912 x 2054. While this is below 4K (3840 x 2160) it's still a lot higher resolution than Full HD (1920 x 1080). The raw frames do contain non-picture information such as sprocket holes, so cropping these would lower the resolution a bit. Even so when I looked at single frames and zoomed in (on my 1080p monitor) I could see extra detail and sharpness in the frames when rendered to 4K  that weren't there when rendered to 2K.

My PC isn't really set up for 4K video processing (it can just manage it but the rendering times are horrendous), but I don't want to throw away useful picture detail. So I rendered at test scene; once at 2K (1920 x 1080) and once at 4K (3840 x 2160), to find out if I could still see the difference in motion. 

Watching the test scene back on my 4K 55" OLED I could see the extra sharpness in the 4K scene, but it's nothing revelatory. Both pictures look good, but when directly compared to the 4K the 2K image looked a little fuzzier. So nothing dramatic, but at the same time my TV is fairly small when it comes to the world of 4K. 

So I though I'd make the test clips available to you guys so you could have a look and give me your feedback and opinions. If anyone wants to see the test scene in both 2K and 4K then just send me a PM and I'll send you the links. Give me your honest opinions on the detail level, and whether you think it's worth trying to render the whole project in 4K. 

The downsides of going down the 4K route is that I'd probably need to upgrade my GPU, and I'd need even more storage. Each raw DNG frame is just under 10MB, and the whole scan takes up 1.3TB. For cleanup I'm going to have to convert every frame to a TIFF file, and when converting the frames to a 4K TIFF I end up with a file size of just over 20 MB (8bit LZW Compressed), meaning that converting the whole film would end up somewhere over 2.6TB! 

If however I go with 2K then I actually end up with TIFF files just over 5MB, making storage much easier. 

Another thing to bare in mind is that I will be using other sources to patch up the print. Where possible I'll be using the Blu Ray (which isn't the best 1080p transfer) but I will sometimes have to resort to using Standard Definition materials; so these will probably stick out like a sore thumb. If anyone has seen the German Blu Ray of "Fortress" then you'll have an idea of what it's like watching something that shifts from HD to SD. 

Sorry for the massive post and probably too much detail. I just want to make sure I make the right decisions before starting the restoration, rather than getting part way through and having to start again.

[deleted user]

That extra detail you saw in the 4K, was that actual image detail or just dirt etc? Prints don't tend to have all that much of a high resolution but dirt/scratches of course can have that.

Something else to keep in mind is that the extra detail may just be more of the 2K detail being preserved due to the higher bitrate. The Grindhouse encode you did smoothes out most of the grain etc. and I suspect it's because you used the internal H264 encoder of Resolve, which is awful (all integrated H264 encoders are pretty much, including Adobe too). I'd recommend doing your 2K vs 4K comparison in a format like DNxHD to account for that variable, or to do proper x264 encodes of DNxHD renders with good settings, otherwise the comparison isn't necessarily conclusive.