[In progress] Police Story IV First Strike HDTV fix/reconstruction

[Serums]

Tagged this one as 'help', as it's in the very early stages and I'm very new to software I'll probably have to use.

First, thanks to gameboy and maksnew for making me aware of this.

This one is essentially The Film Whisperer's project, but as he's working on other projects concurrently I'd like to help with as much of it (or at least roadmap it) as I can.

The goal here is to use the Chinese HDTV capture (screens below) WEB-DL and the upscaled Towa DVD (screens coming soon) to reconstruct the HK version with as much picture information as possible. The blu-rays available of the international version are slightly cropped, so might not be as useful for the project.

The Chinese HDTV capture has its drawbacks, namely:

• Embedded subtitles and sidetitles (including an overlay over the title card)
  
• Broadcast channel logo
  
• Some damaged frames
  
• Censorship in one scene
  
• The ending credits aren't complete, so we'd miss some of the outtakes.
  

The Film Whisperer did a reconstruction using the blu-ray and Towa DVD. This would hopefully improve on his initial work. 

We do have access to the HK and Japanese laserdiscs, so we're covered for the original audio track.

Screencaps:







As you can see, there's a lot that would need to be worked on. Hopefully the upscaled Towa DVD can be used to fill in the gaps/cover as needed. I'd like to hear opinions though. Would you think it's worthwhile to attempt?

[SpaceBlackKnight]

Interesting project! Have you or your friend checked any streaming services in HK or Taiwan for this version? With so much content popping up on those platforms (sometimes in different cuts or remasters not available elsewhere) they would have it with no watermarks and completely uncut.

Warner now owns distribution rights in China/HK (since they acquired a good amount of the post-93 Golden Harvest titles) and this HD transfer of the HK version looks like a recent-ish scan (soft PQ due to compression aside).

[Serums]

Thank you! It's ambitious for me (since I've primarily focused on colour corrections) but I know my friend would have the skills for it. Just trying to do as much as I can.

We have not. Do you have any idea about how we'd go about it? Would it be a matter of perhaps just searching under the Chinese title, or maybe something more involved like accessing the streaming services as well?

We're also fully aware that Warner could announce a physical release of this tomorrow and render the visual aspect of this project moot, haha. But as fans we'd enjoy it all the same.

[PDB]

Very cool. Good luck on the project Serums

[X5gb]

Maksnew asked me about this one, like you, new what a mammoth task it will be to remove the logo and all them subs considering the limited sources to do this, said I'd take a look when I had finished a few other project's but said it would be better if someone with auto overlay skills could deal with this. Thankful someone has decided to take this on and good luck in your task.

[Serums]

Very cool. Good luck on the project Serums

Thanks PDB.

Maksnew asked me about this one, like you, new what a mammoth task it will be to remove the logo and all them subs considering the limited sources to do this, said I'd take a look when I had finished a few other project's but said it would be better if someone with auto overlay skills could deal with this. Thankful someone has decided to take this on and good luck in your task.

Thanks. AutoOverlay will be a learning experience for me. With that said, if you have ideas or suggestions as this takes shape feel free to let me know. I'll keep this thread updated of course.

[maksnew]

Very cool. Good luck on the project Serums

Thanks PDB.

Maksnew asked me about this one, like you, new what a mammoth task it will be to remove the logo and all them subs considering the limited sources to do this, said I'd take a look when I had finished a few other project's but said it would be better if someone with auto overlay skills could deal with this. Thankful someone has decided to take this on and good luck in your task.

Thanks. AutoOverlay will be a learning experience for me. With that said, if you have ideas or suggestions as this takes shape feel free to let me know. I'll keep this thread updated of course.

Thanks! Let's hope everything works out)

[tjmackey]

that’s so many overlays jeeeez!

[Serums]

Proof of concept. From a few months back, but work will pick up.

Rotoscoped:


Sharpened:


Noise added:


The latter two should hopefully compensate for the soft nature of the raw capture. Keen to hear what you all think.

This capture also shows us how different the colours are from the New Line Cinema edit, it's overly blue if memory serves. Not to mention that bizarre crop and rematte that NLC/Warner seem so fond of.

[X5gb]

Based on above prefer the look of the first screenshot before sharpening but not sure of what they look like in motion.