Twin Dragons (1992) desaturation and colour correction

[pipefan413]

Does anyone know if older SD releases of the HK version have the blue tint as featured on the Joy Sales disc?

I'm curious if this was theatrical. As seen here:

https://i.imgur.com/VN1Dla0.jpg

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

I only have my Hong Kong Legends one, have you checked that already? If not I can have a look at it.

Also did you end up getting the LD mono or no? Because I may be able to grab it if not, but no point if you got it anyway because it would literally just be raw materials.

[Serums]

Does anyone know if older SD releases of the HK version have the blue tint as featured on the Joy Sales disc?

I'm curious if this was theatrical. As seen here:

https://i.imgur.com/VN1Dla0.jpg

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

I only have my Hong Kong Legends one, have you checked that already? If not I can have a look at it.

Also did you end up getting the LD mono or no? Because I may be able to grab it if not, but no point if you got it anyway because it would literally just be raw materials.

Thanks for the response! Haven't checked that one. So far I've only checked the Joy Sales and the HD releases available. I didn't get the LD mono, so any possible help there is appreciated!

In all honesty it looks better without the tint (IMO) but if the consensus is that it was theatrical I'm willing to keep it.

Here's how my correction looks at present without the tint:

https://i.imgur.com/vwvKmwb.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/8GO9pUX.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/SsutSIF.jpg

[pipefan413]

Thanks for the response! Haven't checked that one. So far I've only checked the Joy Sales and the HD releases available. I didn't get the LD mono, so any possible help there is appreciated!

OK so I'm misremembering, Twin Dragons never was a HKL title I don't think: Miramax released it here. But having a flick through, it seems:

1. It's a scan of a print (there's damage)
2. I can't see any evidence of a blue tint, but if you gimme an idea of rough times of the moments where it's really obvious I'll try to find the specific shots/scenes and check those
3. What it *does* have is a (less severe) red push in some shots... but when I tried to find that shot of the doctor to see whether he was as red as he is on the German BD, that shot doesn't appear to be in this cut at all. (The Miramax cut is significantly shorter, about 15 mins' worth is removed overall.) I guess it could be that the ones with the severe red push on the BD are from an alternative source and have been inserted in amongst a better source, which is why only specific moments are like that?

The LD was on eBay and I nearly bought it but the one I'm remembering doesn't look like it's there any more so it either sold, was delisted, or never actually existed and I'm misremembering that too (which is entirely possible because I've been eyeing several Jackie LDs and not bought any so far). I've messaged the seller I think it might've been from to see if I'm crazy or not... EDIT: TWIN DRAGONS LD is en route. Will let you know once captured.

[Serums]

Thanks for that.

That screencap posted above of Maggie Cheung in the car is a good example of the blue tint.

Did that get a blu-ray release in the UK? I know the Miramax version is on blu-ray in Japan, that release is 1080i though. The closest I've seen for the doctor in the US version is how he looks here:
https://i.imgur.com/xDUgClm.jpg

I hadn't considered the possibility that the German and Japanese BDs might have a composite cut. That's interesting. There's a Media Asia logo on the German BD so I'd be curious what kind of shape the source they have is in. Whether or not there's been any involvement from Miramax on the German release.

Great to hear about the LD. As discussed, let me know if you need anything on my end!

[pipefan413]

Japanese LD capturing now...

[pipefan413]

Aye so having seen the Japanese LaserDisc, I'm pretty convinced that the entire German transfer has a red/pink bias, it's just that it's worse in some particular moments. But it's the whole way through, as far as I can see. It's also missing 4 frames that are present on the LaserDisc (I saw the same thing to a much worse extent with another Jackie film from the same German distributor previously).

The Japanese LD is indeed the Japanese cut, as one might reasonably expect, which means it has about 12 seconds (293 frames at 24/1.001 fps) of additional footage in one scene, and the Japanese version of the end credits with the wee video window to one side showing footage from the Police Story films. I also noticed a glaring missing line of dialogue in the 2.0 Cantonese track on the German Blu-ray while syncing the videos, which was kind of impressively bad.

The JP LD is framed differently from the DE BD, showing a bit more on the bottom and maybe the top but slightly less at the sides.

Interestingly, it did seem as if the German transfer used at least some of the exact same frames as the JP LD, because there were some instances where they had identical print damage. In other cases, one would have print damage that the other didn't. As I speculated previously, that could be why the pink bias is more pronounced in some places than others.



I got the videos in sync already but haven't yet actually synced the audio, and I might leave that one to @Serums & co. seeing as I've got about a million other things to get done as well. Part of me wants to just do it, but... I need to choose how to allocate my time a bit here.

[Serums]

Thanks for the rundown @pipefan413

Thanks also for the JP LD track! I'll get this one synced and compare it against the track from the Japanese blu-ray. I'm thinking they'll be somewhat similar.

[pipefan413]

Thanks for the rundown @pipefan413

Thanks also for the JP LD track! I'll get this one synced and compare it against the track from the Japanese blu-ray. I'm thinking they'll be somewhat similar.

Having confirmed that it's definitely the JP cut on the LD, yeah, probably. Although there could be more noise reduction etc. on the Blu-ray version of it, I haven't checked things like that yet. For now, I need to sleep...

That extended scene probably needs the doorbell either mixed in from one of the discrete surround mixes or if you just hold off a wee while until the Hong Kong LD arrives we might be able to straight up patch it cleanly for the whole scene/shot to avoid messing with the audio at all there (which would be significantly better imo). I'm kinda hoping that we can use the HK LD as the main source for the whole lot audio-wise, but the runtime suggests that it's either cut or time-compressed, so we'll see how that goes. If it's cut, it can just get patched from this one, whereas if time-compressed it might be a bit of a headache figuring out precisely the right resample. But I'll do what it needs!

[Serums]

Yep. Initially I thought it might have been a good idea to offer both tracks, if the Japanese laserdisc track needs to be augmented and/or have segments replaced then it might be better to assess that once you've ripped the HK laserdisc tracks. All in good time though, I appreciate you taking the time.

[pipefan413]

Yep. Initially I thought it might have been a good idea to offer both tracks, if the Japanese laserdisc track needs to be augmented and/or have segments replaced then it might be better to assess that once you've ripped the HK laserdisc tracks. All in good time though, I appreciate you taking the time.

We still could, since I expect they can be patched from each other. So say we just lift and patch in the whole scene from HK LD to make it as seamless as possible (less invasive edit), but otherwise leave it alone, so that's your JP track. For the HK one, patch missing scenes from JP in same way, otherwise leave alone, and there's your HK version.

As you say, we'll see when it arrives!