Highlander 2 - 35mm Scan

[HippieDalek]

Ok, I've been through the settings with the scanner and I've now got a much better base to work from. Here are some better quality screenshots of the pictures I posted before: 





They might look a bit "flatter" than before but the blacks are a lot less crushed and the red push is a lot less aggressive. There's still plenty of room to balance the colours better, but this is a great starting point.

I've also taken a few more screenshots throughout the film. I've tried to match the shots used here:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=9293&d...=0&l=0&a=0

The frames don't always match as the Blu Ray version uses a dramatically different cut of the film. Where the frames don't match exactly I've used the nearest possible one.













I find the screenshot of old MacLeod at the bar an interesting comparison; not only are the colours quite different the Blu Ray shot looks so digitised and jaggy. However the explosion frame looks much more balanced and less blown out on the Blu Ray. 

Still a lot of work to be done but hopefully this gives you guys a nice taste of the print.

[deleted user]

I think it looks great. Cant wait to see it in motion.

[Hitcher]

So looking forward to watching this. Glad the HDD worked out.

[dvdmike]

Very exciting

[HippieDalek]

I think it looks great. Cant wait to see it in motion.

Me too. Due to the sheer size of the files my poor computer can't manage more than 4fps during playback at full quality.

I'll try and render a short sample clip soon. Does anyone have a request for a scene?

[HippieDalek]

I've got a couple of test clips rendered, but one of them is too large for Vimeo. I could upload to YouTube but I'm worried it might get removed and the compression is usually pretty harsh on there. Does anyone have any suggestions for where to host it?

[Hitcher]

MEGA? Google Drive?

[HippieDalek]

I've managed to upload one of the samples to Vimeo, and the other to YouTube. I went for YouTube in the end so I could embed it here and I wasn't sure about directly linking to it as a Google Drive download. Hopefully the YouTube one doesn't disappear.

Both videos show the 35mm footage in it's raw form with the English audio from the Hong Kong laserdisc synced as best I can for now.

At the moment my computer can't play the raw files back smoothly so I had to render these before I could watch them properly. As a result I didn't know if the footage would have splices or not until I rendered them. Tonight I'm going to start on rendering the film reel by reel. This will probably take a few days as I can only render during down time (I use my computer for work too), but once they're all rendered I'll have a better idea of the overall state of the scan.

The first video is from the very start of reel 1. Sadly reel 1 is a bit of a mess with a lot of splices. Not only does this mean there are a lot of jumps but also a lot of dirt.



The second video is from the middle of reel 2 and shows a much cleaner picture. Sadly we've still got a few splices.



I hope you enjoy the clips, and let me know what you think. Please remember that these are just samples and there is still a lot of work to be done.

[deleted user]

Nooo, not streaming. They recompress everything to pixel soup. I can also recommend MEGA for samples and such.

[HippieDalek]

Nooo, not streaming. They recompress everything to pixel soup. I can also recommend MEGA for samples and such.

Yeah, streaming isn't the best, but I thought it would do for now to show off a few samples. 

I'll be looking into MEGA soon as I'll need somewhere larger than my google drive to host the grindhouse release when it's ready.