The Lord Of The Rings Extended - Page 102

I sure wish I had your technical skill and tools. I'd be re-encoding FOTR to a proper color balance myself. I'm jealous!

Mark

If you're right, we may have the smoking gun we needed to officially call this a cover-up. This would ABSOLUTELY confirm it was a mistake. You need to send this out everywhere.

I don't know if I'm accomplishing anything except bothering people at this point (sorry) but here's some of the blu-brew review shots (which are accurate BTW) processed with my more aggressive adjustment, based on the actual disc rather than screenshots, that attempts to empirically compensate for both the white point and brightness offset:

original: http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/4420/lotroriginal3.jpg
processed: http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/1...processed3.jpg

Personally I'm just going to sacrifice some compression quality and re-encode the video to watch on my HTPC, I think it'll make for more enjoyable viewing (and skip the disc swap).

(it may look like highlights are getting clipped in the snow shot but they are not, there is no detail there in the original)

Agreed.

I have ZERO faith in WB to right the wrongs with this release.

If PJ doesn't speak up soon, his credibility as a filmmaker goes down in my book.
A REAL artist that cares about his admirers (fans), who made his "success" possible, would do something about this.

Can you post a screenshot of the menu, I'd like to load up screenshots of the menu of FOTR EE and either the dvd or blu Theatrical release and then put the two into photoshop to look at the RGB values. If the green tint is present in the RGB values then this is definitive proof of a mistake made by the studio. There's no way it was the intent to have the movie and even the menu to have the tint.

Wow! I think we're finally onto something, boys! Before I say anything further, I'd like to thank Mark for his contribution to this thread. Once again, I believe the pictures speak for themselves and it amazes me how so many do not see a problem with the color coding for the FOTR EE blu-ray. I believe it's more than obvious, but it seems as if the statement from WB may have thrown their thoughts off.

In any event, I can't wait to check out the menu and see if the tint is there as well. If so, I do believe this would be the "smoking gun" needed in order to unmask the cover-up. Thank you to all those who brought this up and are now looking into it. We may finally have our evidence to really push the issue and force the studio to take notice...

If you want to check brightness (black level) range why not look at Luma (Y) right from the disc and skip the conversion to RGB? If you're not checking for the black level range, please do it and report.

larry

I would love to. Can I do this on the PS3? I do have a BR drive on my PC, but I am not up to date on the SW side. Not sure if my copies of Power DVD, or TMT will open the disc?

Last night when checking each of these, I had mistakenly put in FOTR, thinking it was the ROTK disc. For a split second, I was concerned that the menu on ROTK was greenish like FOTR, as it didn't look clean like TTT. (It was late guys.) When I saw it was actually FOTR, it just further enforced that something was amiss with this disc. Especially when I found ROTK menus hue looks like TTT.

If anything, the menus on TTT and ROTK lean a little blue, but I do have my TV set at "Cool" color temp. But again, these two discs menus are consistent to each other in hue, while FOTR stands out as different.

Thank you for the nice comment!

As for the menu on FOTR... Yep, it is most definitely tinted green. I noticed it from the very first moment I put in the FOTR EE Blu-ray disc. However, since the menu system is not actually part of the movie, I dismissed it as being unimportant. Perhaps I was wrong to dismiss it so quickly? I didn't watch TTT until the next day and I'd forgotten all about the menu coloring so I didn't think to pay attention to the TTT's menu. But I don't remember thinking the TTT menu looked green.

I plan to watch ROTK tomorrow. Before I do, I'm going to load up FOTR and TTT to see how their main menus compare with ROTK.

Mark

Given the drastic change in the breakfast shot that everyone keeps posting, it's possible that this is one of the scenes that really did get a color-grading makeover by Jackson & Co. before the release, in addition to the green wash that the whole film got.

I think if someone were to remove just the green wash from the scene (only to the level that it's applied throughout the entire film), we might have a better idea of what it's really supposed to look like.

I could probably do it, but I'd need to do some research first.. I'm not that familiar with the methods for removing a tint from an image.

Actually, that was a hell of a lot easier than I thought it would be. I loaded up the handy image that Mark made of the overall green swath and was able to make an Levels filter that would automatically set that level of green to pure white. In effect, a one-button Photoshop filter for removing the green tint from these images (assuming of course that the white parts of the image Mark used are actually supposed to be pure white.. I didn't factor NTSC color space).

Seems to further what I said earlier, though.. the breakfast scene was definitely tweaked beyond just adding the green tint. For comparison's sake, I've created two images here. The first is the Extended breakfast scene with the green tint removed. As you can see, there's still quite a bit of blue-ish tint to it.

More telling, I added the green tint to the screenshot from the theatrical edition, and you'll notice that it looks nothing like what's actually on the disc.

This is not just the tint at work here.

Your posts will have been a bother only if you decline to publish the Avisynth scripts you are using to accomplish your processing, or whatever other method. Details please!

When I buy a car I don't care what the designer's intent was, I care how it handles, looks etc... If a book came out with an irritating font I probably wouldn't get it even if that font was as intended by the author. I don't think we are actually that far apart on this, I'm just saying that whether I like or don't like this green thing is not dependent on somebody else. I guess we agree to disagree on this . Now on to some weekend BBQ!

I don't think anyone disagrees with you on that point. I don't particularly like the tint either, but whether I buy the current EE release still depends on whether the tint is intentional or not.
If it is, then I'll buy the set and just have to live with it. If it's not, I will wait for a fixed release.

The next time I buy a movie and want to treat the purchase as if I were buying a car, I'll keep this in mind.

Increasingly tedious debates about 'it's green' or 'it's not green' aside, I've never enjoyed these films more. This is my first experience with the extended editions and I'm impressed. I didn't particularly enjoy these films back when they were released into the theaters, and frankly do not view the source material with the same reverence as some, but the experience of watching them at home has been a lot of fun.

I'm quite surprised that the pioneering approach PJ took to these films has not been replicated more frequently - namely, to actually create a version of the film designed for the home viewing experience, not limitied by the practicalities of theatrical runtimes. Most extended editions of movies just put deleted scenes back in which, in most cases, simply make obvious why the scenes were cut in the first place. Certainly, the majority of hollywood films would not be candidates for such treatment, but those based on longer, more complex books, would! Perfect examples would be the later Harry Potter books. Ok, they have split book #7 into two films (thankfully), but how about having home theater versions of some of the others, like 4, 5 or 6. Opportunity missed IMO.

But has anyone noticed the slight greenish snowing/tint in the TTT when Gandalf speaks of the fight/battle on the mountain ?

Finally saw FOTR and TT over the past couple of days after reading about the color correction choices for what seems like weeks.

There is no question in my mind that the color schemes throughout the entire trilogy (including the greener push now in FOTR in many scenes) are by design. I also noticed the green push in the menu and that was the giveaway for me - well, that and the green case of the FOTR EE DVD as you say. The menu has nothing to do with the transfer and color correction of the film. It's encoded separately, and appears to be comprised of computer graphics elements (not film).

Notice the TT menu is cooler, with a blue-ish cast. The TT EE DVD case was blue. Throughout TT there is a distinctly cooler color scheme, but that's not to say the green cast is absent from the TT Blu-ray. For a quick reference, look at the opening of disc 2 during the walk to Helm's Deep. Those skies are not blue. And there is a greenish palor over the image. Very similar to the scenes from the FOTR Blu-ray that have caused alarm.

ROTK's menu is warmer, with a more golden appearance, etc.

I think that it would be a mistake to assume that Mr. Jackson and co. intended whites to always be white, blacks to always be black, and the overall color palette to be representative of our earthly environs.

I think the Blu-rays ALL look stunning. YMMV.

No, it wasn't blue.



ROTK case was blue.

I found this statement of Peter Jackson concerning the theatrical Blu-Ray release of LOTR last year.

Jackson was asked how he felt about fans purposefully giving the Blu-ray trilogy one-star reviews on Amazon because they want the extended version on Blu-ray.

"I agree with the fans. I was heavily involved in the DVD process when the films were being released through New Line, but now that Warner Brothers has taken control over the releasing of the films, they just tell me what they're doing and don't involve me in the process. [With New Line,] the one thing we never did with the fans was make them feel cheated. Back in the original release, we always put extra material in, extra documentaries a lot of added value. I so totally understand why the fans would be upset; I don't disagree with them."

filmonic.com/peter-jackson-talks-lord-of-the-rings-in-3d-blu-ray-disappointment-2012

+1 The black levels are drastically changed with the remaster.

Hearing explanations of the logic behind purposely washing the entire FOTR in green is quite humorous. We should compile a list of them and revisit them when this gets fixed.

I'm still amazed that WB did a fix for that Matrix sequel that had what, ONE frame screwed up.

Totally agree. I've got the spanish version and could not be happier with the pack (awesome packaging too)

I can only think that PJ had your processed clips in mind when he wanted the film re-graded. Not only do the original clips look too green, but they are way too dark. The processed clips look excellent.

All three EE's are on the Xbox Live Marketplace as well as iTunes, maybe someone could give those a look and see if the green tint is there.

As of this moment, in the poll I started, 76.7% of 103 people who responded think that the FOTR PQ is Above Average or better. So far, the majority do not find the issues debated here to be a detriment to the transfer.

Excellent: ---------31/103 - 30.1%
Above Average: ---48/103 - 40.6%
Average: ----------10/103 - 9.71%
Below Average: ----7/103 - 6.8%
Poor: --------------7/103 -6.8%

Is the audio the same for all three? I watched the first movie last night (never saw the Blu version of the TEs) and the voices felt a tad muddled. Even my no techie daughter watching the film for the first time said she had trouble understanding Gandalf when he spoke low (I had to pause and recap it for her).

It is not terrible overall (the action sounds perfect), but dialogue just not as crystal clear as usual for the format. There's an airy hint of it sounding like they are talking in a hallway or something, I can't quite describe it. I've never had this issue with other Blu flicks on my 5.1 HDMI receiver setup. Am I using the wrong audio track or is the first movie kind of an issue in this area? Are the other two movies better in this regard?

BTW, for the record I say the PQ is excellent.

I'd like to see a poll setup as this:
FOTR picture quality is negatively effected by green/blue tint
FOTR picture quality is positvely effected by green/blue tint
There is no tint

Start it up!