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Visualizing a digital restoration in one image

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I've been spending the past few too many months on a personal project cleaning up a whole film by digitally removing dirt from more than 1000 frames, dot by dot, splotch by splotch, scratch by scratch. All dirt that Universal never ever bothered cleaning (and probably never will) before dishing it out in blu-ray.
I wondered how I could convey the amount of work that is spread all through-out its 98 minutes running time so I came up with the idea to make one single image with all the patches fused into one single layer and here it is:

[Image: Uncle_Buck660framesfixed.png]
I called it "Universal dirt", post-modern art of sorts.

And I made this image when the frames fixed were "only" 660. I ended up fixing 1000 frames in total... probably there are many dots that ended up behind the bigger patches but you get the idea. Each element is a little patch that covers seamlessly some type of damage or dirt on the original film. It's what Universal should have done in the first place, honestly.
I figure it would have taken me only 3 weeks if that was my actual job, probably a lot less with different tools, but I learnt an invaluable lesson: never promise to yourself "I'll just fix a couple of things" if you know you're OCD Big Grin
(This post was last modified: 2018-02-04, 01:25 AM by Evit.)
I actually kinda like film dirt, heh. Still, this is a fun image. Postmodern indeed.
They were really distracting and of different types, not just the usual black dots. They ranged from small white dots to black speckles, hair, blu lines, "grease" stains, spray of bubbles and teared parts. I started by eliminating the most evident ones, then I gradually got annoyed to see all the rest. The website Blu-Ray.com listed print damage along with other visual defects in their review as part of the reason for the average score. I corrected as much as I could because I know nobody else would.

I'll try add some comparison shots with http://screenshotcomparison.com eventually
(This post was last modified: 2018-02-04, 01:44 AM by Evit.)
Is it an AVC Blu Ray? If so, do you plan to just replace the bad frames with smart rendering or do you plan a complete reencode? To me it sounds like a great opportunity for the former.
AVC, yes. It's for a re-encode because I also recreated Italian theatrical credits but I wonder if Univrsal might be interested in using my patches.
How do you replace bad frames without reencoding?
Any hints about the title? Wink
Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash... Sad
Fundamental Collection | Vimeo channel | My blog
A title nobody cares about ahah, I'll let you guess when I post some comparison shots.
I already "guessed" just by clicking right to see it full frame. The name of the picture comes up: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098554/
Ah, shoot! I uploaded the wrong file ahah.
I wanted to keep the mystery until I had comparison shots ready.
Here's the review on blu ray.com http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Uncle-Buck...10/#Review
Beber is the Sherlock Holmes of FanRes! Happy
Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash... Sad
Fundamental Collection | Vimeo channel | My blog

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