The Lord Of The Rings Extended - Page 55

I could not agree more!


Agreed.

Where can I buy the balanced version?

^ The "balanced" versions above look awesome.

There's still a level of green push in all of them, though. It's just nowhere near as obvious without an objectively "white" object to compare it to. The highlights seem to have more of the green push than any of the midtones, which would explain why clouds and snow especially suffered while relatively low-light scenes (such as Gandalf in Frodo's house) don't look so bad.

To be fair to WB, the TE release was never a proper reference transfer either; as has been pointed out ad-nauseum it was a transfer of an IP made from a negative printed from the DI ten years ago. We have to assume at least some flexibility in contrast and color accuracy was lost in the process.

If this is how Jackson wants the film to look... well, I'll respectfully say he's out of his mind. (I've said the same thing about William Friedkin and Johnnie To, too.) If the digital projections of FOTR are indeed without a green push, then Warner Bros. f***ed up. Unless it's the latter and Jackson gets really upset about the whole thing, we may never know for certain.

What I do know is that if a fade-to-white isn't white, there's a severe calibration issue that someone needs to address. Nobody uses a "tealout" in film editing... come on now, that's just asinine.

And bravo, 42041... if I have to do this myself and re-encode the whole damned movie, I just might.

If he did approve this, it IS accurate and there WASN't a screwup than I am
Very underwhelmed. I hate this color trend. The only time it works is like Fight Club and that always looked that way. It's aesthetically a REALLY ugly look IMHO.

And color correcting is a PITA. I do it all the time on shoots I work on where we use multiple cameras from different manufacturers and the white balances are all different. A PITA but getting white to be white is actually really easy. If a fade to white is really supposed to be a fade to white....

Those white balanced shots do look very good. Not nearly as extreme of a difference as the former examples of color correction (which made some scenes look like making of footage from the extras.) The new color grading is still very apparent, to the point that I think people would still be complaining about it.. but it looks better to my eyes with the white balance adjusted.

I must concede there apparently was a slight color anomoly throughout based on those captures.

Yeh completely agree - now they look how they should!!

42041, do you know settings in ffdshow that achieve the same effect?

Saw this tonight on a 120 inch screen. It is ugly. Green green green. They are in the fricking Matrix. This is not what the films looked like. We compared this BD to a 35mm trailer. Yes, an actual 35mm trailer projected on the same screen.

Hollywood has gone insane with this teal and green garbage. It's like they HAVE to alter their work after the fact. Greedo didn't shoot first.

So no more DNR. No more filtering. But contrast boosted and so green that the snow isn't white and skies are no blue.

And for some reason, TTT and RotK do not suffer such revisionism.

Why oh why did the first film have to be the one they screwed up? My favorite of the three, easily. This is just depressing. The disappointments never end with Blu-Ray.

Sorry, it's what popped into my head.

(and yes I know, very poor shopping skills )

Now I want mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Let us be honest, Hollywood has so little quality-control anymore on their home video releases that bad errors such as this one are bound to happen. We have seen it time and time again on Blu-ray, as releases are rushed out the door by underfunded and understaffed home video departments.

Warner is not at all alone in this problem, as the other studios are just as guilty of the practice. Nothing is going to change, in a few months a program will probably be quietly put into place so that the few concerned customers can exchange it for the properly tinted film.

This is why I've decided not to cancel my order. I'm hoping this will be the case.

It really kinda bums me out that this has happened. I was really looking forward to this and now the experience will be tainted (with a bit of green)

I truly fear for next HD format, whatever it maybe (teal-ray?)

I guess DeAd MiKe 187 can add those screenshots to his excellent teal and orange thread.

That does it for me.

Now I am DEFINITELY buying it.

at this point i dont think the issue should be 'TE bluray vs EE bluray' but 'Theatrical EE vs EE bluray.' imo (and i went in specifically looking for the scenes that i had 30 min before seen the green tinted screencaps of), the color timing in the TEE (thats what i'll call the theatrical EE from now on) was superior to that of the TE bluray. it was also superior to any of the currently available screencaps of the EE bluray. i have a feeling that what PJ said he approved was shown a theaters last tues and something happened between that and pressing the bluray.

too bad its not possible to do a side-by-side comparison of the TEE vs EE bluray...

I used Photoshop's level filter to adjust the levels for individual RGB channels until that transition was white. As far as I've been able to figure out, ffdshow does not allow you to adjust levels for individual RGB channels. There's probably some other way dial out the green with just ffdshow adjustments without screwing up the rest of the image, but I don't know how.

(beware, nerd stuff ahead)
What ffdshow does let you do is run an AviSynth filter through it, if you're familiar with that. Download this AviSynth plugin: http://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/...ers/gicocu.htm
Save this stuff into a text file:
(You could also make a curve that compensates for the brightness decrease as well as the green, if there's some constant offset there)
Then add these commands to the AviSynth thingie in FFDshow:
ConvertToRGB()
GiCoCu("c:\\fellowship.cur") [or whatever you call the file with that text]

This seems to work correctly in MPC-HC, except I think you need 32-bit versions of all the software. Now I just need the actual movie to test it on

Oh wow thanks for that - i'll give it a try later, hopefully there is a simpler overall solution worked out later that achieves the same thing Because your screenie comparisons definitely make the EE Blu-ray look a TON better!

Absolutely right. Yet another reason why comparing film color at the theater to that of the Blu-ray is not apples to apples.

Also, some of us deliberately don't calibrate to Rec. 709 for the Blu-ray input so to get closer to the actual film color gamut but that is another matter and mainly concerns getting a true red rather than the Rec. 709 dark orange.

Yeah, the differences in TTT are extremely minor. No teal-ification or Matrix green tint to speak of. White is actually white.

this reminds me so much of how Aliens has been ruined by new color timing-

it doesn't bother me as much in FOTR as it did with Aliens- it completely changes the mood of Aliens-

Aliens looks great as far as the quality of the image, but the tone is just irrevocably altered by the new color timing-

Blu-ray.com reviews are up.

Linky

Two discs per film to improve the quality.... not.



Disc Three for the Elven-kings under the green sky,
Disc Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of green stone,
Disc Nine for Mortal Green Men doomed to die,
Disc One for the Dark Green Lord on his dark green throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Green Shadows lie.
One Disc to rule them all, One Disc to find them,
One Disc to bring them all and double layered to bind them.

NOW can we go home?

Great and candid set of reviews, it vindicates those screencaps from early on this week

Now I am worried about The Hobbit....

I agree. Thanks for those comparisons, it very elegantly shows what i've always believed, that the green tint is constant throughout.

I've regraded most of the film much like you have in those shots, making the whites white again. The film looks MUCH MUCH better without the strong green tint that runs consistently throughout the film and that goes for EVERY scene.

This is not a case of certain scenes getting better and certain scenes getting worse. Yes, the colours are different/weaker than the theatrical edition in a lot of cases, the tints are not as strong, but all the colour look far more 'correct' and natural when you remove the strong green tint throughout the whole film.

You know what, as I check out the different scenes regraded, I think this colour scheme is actually better in a lot of ways than the theatrical edition blu-ray and fotr ee dvd. It's far less in your face, its a lot more subtle and now that I think about it, its also more consistant with the more subdued tones of the second and third film. The very strongly coloured first film always stuck out a bit like a sore thumb compared to the other two IMO. Now there's more consistancy in terms of look between the three films. So I definately think these changes in colour are 100% deliberate.

Peter Jackson/Andrew Lesnie regrading the whole film, regardless of seperate scenes needs (that he specifically spent a lot of time regrading seperately, as shown in the extended edition documentaries) with exactly the same strong green tint thoughout though? No, its the equivalent of commiting colour grading suicide. I'm with 42041 on this, I believe this 'phenomenon' is totally unrelated to PJ's new colour grading. A mistake must have been made somewhere down the line by Warner's staff after PJ's approval and before it got transfered to the blu-ray masters IMO.

The interesting question for me now is if Peter Jackson will choose to cover for Warner or not. Perfectly understandable if he does of course, they're financing the two Hobbit fims so if he doesn't want problems down the line in production or post production for those two films, he needs to keep them sweet. I hope he steps forward and calls foul, but my cynical side thinks that he'll stay quiet and let things die down. Hope i'm proven wrong.

I had heard some faint whispers about this earlier, but never got to round finding out more. It sounds both interesting and slightly baffling; I'd love to learn more. Some links perhaps...?

I agree. Thanks for those comparisons, it very elegantly shows what i've always believed, that the green tint is constant throughout.

I've regraded most of the film much like you have in those shots, making the whites white again. The film looks MUCH MUCH better without the strong green tint that runs consistently throughout the film and that goes for EVERY scene.

This is not a case of certain scenes getting better and certain scenes getting worse. Yes, the colours are different/weaker than the theatrical edition in a lot of cases, the tints are not as strong, but all the colour look far more 'correct' and natural when you remove the strong green tint throughout the whole film.

You know what, as I check out the different scenes regraded, I think this colour scheme is actually better in a lot of ways than the theatrical edition blu-ray and fotr ee dvd. It's far less in your face, its a lot more subtle and now that I think about it, its also more consistant with the more subdued tones of the second and third film. The very strongly coloured first film always stuck out a bit like a sore thumb compared to the other two IMO. Now there's more consistancy in terms of look between the the films. So I definately think these changes in colour are 100% deliberate.

Peter Jackson/Andrew Lesnie regrading the whole film, regardless of seperate scenes needs (that they specifically spent a lot of time regrading seperately, as shown in the extended edition documentaries) with the same strong green tint thoughout though? No, its the equivalent of commiting colour grading suicide. I'm with 42041 on this, I believe this 'phenomenon' is totally unrelated to PJ's new colour grading. A mistake must have been made somewhere down the line after PJ's approval and before it got transfered to the blu-ray masters IMO. As Ken Brown has been saying on blu-ray.com, there are quite a few steps between director approval of the transfer and being written onto the blu-ray master. The error could have been introduced in any of those steps.

The interesting question for me now is if Peter Jackson will choose to cover for Warner or not. Perfectly understandable if he does of course, they're financing the two Hobbit fims so if he doesn't want problems down the line in production or post production for those two films, he needs to keep them sweet. I hope he steps forward and cries foul, but my cynical side thinks that he'll stay quiet and let things die down. I hope i'm wrong.

Simply slapping a constant filter on top of the entire movie reeks of laziness to me. It should have been used at various strengths based on scene content. To be honest, a constant filter sounds to me like a mistake between PJ's approval and BD replication.


But whites are very rarely pure white, especially in a fantasy movie. Whenever there's mood lighting (or mood grading), white is tinted. Or it could be we're talking of different things here..?

BTW, full points for the perseverance you've been showing wrt regrading. That said, I have to wonder if you're aware of the pitfalls of re-grading 8-bit 4:2:0 footage that has a grade already baked-in?

You're right about white never being totally white of course. I've been using the fade to white as a point of reference, much like 42041 did, because that's the only scene i'm certain should be white.

As far as regrading 8-bit 4:2:0 footage pitfalls are concerned, not really but i don't see that i have much choice. I don't have access to the pre-graded master. I'm liking what i'm seeing though so I don't really mind to be honest.

kong, do you have a 'quick fix' calibration suggestion that can be applied as a simple/general work around for non PC/powedvd, etc type displays? What I'm looking for is something like "reduce your Cyan by xx %, then bump your red by xx %, etc." Or will that then foul up other scenes too much? Anything is worth a shot and the few minutes it would take in the calibration menu for 3+ hour movie! thanks in advance.