[In progress] A Better Tomorrow regrade

[Serums]

Hello.

No doubt many of us are familiar with Colek's project that regraded the remastered ABT print to look like the Golden Princess laserdisc. I've been toying with the idea of doing something similar (as you might have seen from my thread in the 'requests' section), while hopefully creating a playable file that didn't have the brightness issues. I'm doing this because I always felt the remaster deserved better than what it got, so if I can do something that looks a bit more pleasing (and closer to the theatrical colours) I'll be happy if it turns out like his would have been.

I've not actually seen his preview version (only the initial version he released some years ago with the newly translated subtitles and laserdisc audio tracks), so all I've got to go on is the screencaps that he made available.

However, I'll be taking on board some of the suggestions I've already received here like reducing the overly magenta nature of those colours and adding back some of the blue that these remasters always seem to leave out.

Here are some in progress shots, and as ever I welcome any feedback. I hope this can stand as a complement to what Colek was doing with his.

As for audio and subtitles, I don't have many sources available beyond what Colek used for his early version, so if anyone has any tracks they'd like included I'm all ears.

Thanks!

[Stamper]

Looks nice! I think Colek's versions had problems where all the fade to black were pixelated.

I think I have somewhere the ADC release which included several LD tracks.

[Serums]

Thanks!

Yeah, I think that'd be what I've got too. That's what I'll use for the bulk of the tracks, but if anyone would like to see anything included (like those tracks with the replaced score).

I haven't noticed pixelation with what I've tested so far. I realise that Colek and I were likely working with different programs, but I'll do what I can to ensure that the encode doesn't have any issues.

[Serums]

This will be ready to go in a day or two, unless anyone has any further suggestions/ideas.

This will essentially be the same as Colek's original project that he released some years back. So full credit to Colek (and those who contributed materials for this) for the materials and syncing, and credit also to kuyahukduk for those wonderfully translated subtitles. 

As such, the audio options will be Cantonese 7.1 (from the BD - I realise this may not be anyone's preferred track, but for the sake of completion), Mandarin 2.0 (perhaps this is DVD-sourced), and captures of the analogue and digital Cantonese tracks from (I assume) the Golden Princess laserdisc. 

This will be quite barebones as it were, just an MKV (I don't yet have the capability to author and burn blu-rays, but will soon) with colours that are hopefully truer to the original presentation - or something close to that idea. 







Being that the print on the blu-ray does have its own issues inherent that perhaps can't be fixed, I do hope that this will be enjoyable all the same.