[Released] Armageddon Criterion Preservation

[alleycat]

Armageddon was released by Criterion on both DVD and Laserdisc as the longer Director's Cut. As with my previous Criterion projects this is an attempt to preserve that release.

The Director's Cut has not been released on HD, only on DVD, on both the Criterion and UK releases. For this project the US Blu Ray was used for the theatrical scenes and the UK DVD, which is anamorphic, was used for the additional footage. In order to regrade the blu ray footage to use the color grading of the DVD I overlaid the DVD in Premiere, using color blend. In order to do this the blu ray had to be cropped slightly so it matched the DVD. I then exported that cropped regraded version and used that as a target for Avisynth ColorLikeFBF. I then used Autooverlay to place my cropped premiere regrade on top of the uncropped ColorLikeFBF regrade. Finally I took that back into premiere and did a final color blend overlay, this time using the full uncropped blu ray. I then made some slight adjustments to the luma.

This is a new way of regrading for me, overall I'm pretty happy with it. It is certainly a lot quicker than Dr Dre, which is ideal with a movie that has a long running time like Armageddon. Although I did notice some instances where the ColorLikeFBF did not work well and needed correcting.

I then took the additional footage from the UK DVD, did a lot of processing in Avisynth including dehalo'ing, cleaning, upscaling and sharpening. Then I ran it through Topaz and used After Effects to give it the grain pattern of the blu ray. Finally I made some slight adjustments to the luma. I then went through the footage, joining everything together and ensured it matched the DVD frame for frame.

In terms of audio the Criterion Laserdisc is quite expensive and it only contains a 2.0 track so I used the 5.1 from the DVD. I also took the subtitles from the Criterion DVD, which needed a lot of manual OCR correction. All of the extras, commentary tracks and chapter stops have been ported over from the Criterion DVD.

• BD25 with animated menus that look and behave like the official Criterion discs, with a background video, pop up menus and resume function
  
• Recreated HD Directors' Cut with Color Correction
  
• Original chapter stops used on the DVD
  
• English 5.1 AC3 from the DVD
  
• Two Audio Commentary tracks from the DVD
  
• English SDH Subtitles from the DVD
  
• Michael Bay's Gag Reel
  
• Deleted Scenes
  
• Special Effects Interviews/Videos
  
• Production Design Interviews/Videos
  
• Storyboards
  
• Trailer, Teaser and TV Spots
  
• I Don't Want To Miss A Thing Video
  
• Color Bars
  

PM me for the links, contributing/long term members only please. Contributing means active members of the forum who post and/or make their own projects.

High Resolution cover and disc art available from @Pineapples101 Here.


Color Regrading (Blu Top/Regrade Bottom):















DC Footage:









Menu Screenshots:













Just to clarify this is a project that I have made for myself which I am choosing to share. If you don't like the project, if you think it should have been done differently then feel free to keep that to yourself and consider doing your own project.