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Siliconmaster
June 20th, 2011, 10:44 PM
So the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions come out on Blu Ray on June 28th. Based on reviews coming out, the video quality is much better than the Theatrical Edition Blu Rays, which is great. Unfortunately, over the past few days a controversy has emerged regarding color timing in Fellowship.

From Ken Brown, Blu-ray.com's reviewer of the LOTR EE Blu-ray discs, on the controversy: (TL;DNR: FELLOWSHIP IS GREEN)

I think some of the confusion and hostility in this thread is coming from combining two debates into one.
Debate #1: Jackson and Lesnie certainly re-graded portions of the film, and it's evident throughout the EE of FOTR. This has been confirmed for some time and no one should be debating the new color grading's presence on the disc. It is intentional. (As evidenced in shots like Isildur's more naturally colored face in the beginning of FOTR, and the more subdued palette in Rivendell.) Debate on this issue comes down to film revisionism, nothing more. The new color grading, though, could be (could be) completely separate from the green tint we are seeing.

Debate #2: The green/cyan overcast is a separate debate. FOTR has always been a film that uses a palette heavy in greens. However, there is a full-image green tint that appears throughout. This is not how digital color grading works, at least not as Jackson and Lesnie have employed it on two cuts of three three-plus-hour films. (Not to mention the films that followed LOTR in which Jackson relied on digital color grading.) Digital color grading is applied on a region by region basis. Up the reds in faces, up the greens in fields, darken the whites in snow, dull the blue in skies etc. The green/cyan overcast debate comes down to whether Jackson and Lesnie re-graded the film and then decided to apply an extra full-image tint to most, if not all, of their scenes. (It may not be apparent in some scenes, but if new images from a corrected transfer were issued, the differences in the predominately red and blue-cast images would suddenly be apparent. A slight green tint won't suddenly make every blue and red look green. But it will subtly alter the tone of the reds and blues being observed. Comparing shots of Gandalf vs. the Balrog in FOTR to the very same shots in TTT seems to confirm this. The fiery FOTR shots exhibit slightly different reds and oranges than the same fiery TTT shots.) Ultimately, we know that Jackson and Lesnie re-graded the film and approved all their color changes. But it's also quite possible that a green tint -separate from their new color grade and intentions - was accidentally applied to the full image at some point in the production of the retail discs. The consistency of the green overlay does suggest the very real possibility of an error. It's far from certain but, at the very least, it is, upon careful reflection, strange.

It's also important to note that the increased detail observed in screenshots and the actual image is a product of the new 2K-source transfer, not the new color grading or any green overlay. If a new transfer were issued without the green overlay, the detail and other improvements in the image would not be diminished. If anything, the improvements could possibly be more apparent.

Of all the evidence and arguments being batted around, the complete silence on the controversy from the studio and the filmmakers is the surest sign that there very well may be an error. (I'm not saying there definitely is, but if it was simply intention, logic dictates there would be a statement on the matter to clear things up before the sets, which already shipped to retailers before the controversy began to brew, hit the market.) Every e-mail I send, every call I make, either receives no response or gets a "no official statement has been issued at this time."

That said, buying the set is still a safe bet. If there is an error, I would imagine it is already being dealt with, a statement is already being prepared and a replacement program is already being planned. Again, if there is an error. No matter what, fans will receive the correct discs they are paying for -- be it the first ones they buy or replacements, if there was indeed an error.

Long story short, patience and civility is the only way to proceed. Warner isn't going to be swayed into anything by complaints. They'll do so because they won't want one of their most beloved films to be sullied by a production error. That's why they went back to the original 2K source for this transfer - to honor fans' wishes for a purer experience. Rest easy, gents. If there is an error, it will be dealt with. If there isn't, a statement will be made just the same.

There are examples.

The most obvious involve areas where there were obvious swathes of white in the original footage.

http://blubrew.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/f28.jpg
That snow should be white. I don't care how much revisionist color timing was involved, that's just wrong.

http://postimage.org/image/2zaubxdpg/
That is a comparison of the fade to white when Frodo reaches Rivendell. Note how it is now green. Even if both scenes were colored pure green, that fade should still be to white.

http://img860.imageshack.us/img860/7909/lotrle.jpg
Even the goddamn title is green. Note that the titles for Two Towers and Return of the King are still white. If this were purposeful, wouldn't those be green as well?

Vwcm-73kZE8

Hopefully we'll get some official word on this soon. For now, I'm probably going to cancel my pre-order until this mess is resolved. :maddowns:

Amit
June 20th, 2011, 11:30 PM
:C I was going to buy this on release. Hopefully those aren't the versions that were shipped. People are saying in the comments of that video that the shipped versions have the green tint. How can these random people know if it hasn't been released to actual consumers yet?

Siliconmaster
June 20th, 2011, 11:34 PM
The disks ship in about a week, and reviewers have gotten copies in advance, and all of them have this issue on Fellowship. The other two movies are fine, thankfully. Right now, if you pre-order the trilogy, this is what you'll get. I'm hoping Peter Jackson and crew realize what's happened and convince the studio to fix it somehow, maybe with a trade-in program or something. Unfortunately, without any official statement on the matter, we have no idea if the studio is even going to acknowledge the problem exists. And it IS a problem- I know there is new color timing in Fellowship, but I'm one of those convinced the green tint was added on top of the new changes.

Amit
June 20th, 2011, 11:38 PM
Convinced? The proof was right there. There is a green tint. Since none of the copies have actually arrived, hopefully they have the tint removed and the current versions destroyed. It'll cost money, but I'm sure once word about this gets out, nobody will buy it.

Siliconmaster
June 20th, 2011, 11:41 PM
Hopefully. I'm just worried the general public won't notice the problem- happened with the Star Wars 2004 dvds, and many people never complained, so the studio never fixed it.

Cortexian
June 21st, 2011, 12:15 AM
Where do I complain? Not buying if Fellowship (the best movie) is completely fucked up like that.

Siliconmaster
June 21st, 2011, 12:18 AM
There are already massive discussion threads on every LotR forum on the internet, as well as on both Peter Jackson's facebook page and the LotR facebook page. If those don't raise someone's eyebrows, I don't know what will.

Limited
June 21st, 2011, 12:30 PM
Looks like there master plan of holding the release until a time where it can get people excited about The Hobbit is starting to back fire.

The green tint outside looks like I'm watching a video of the countryside over here, that said I want a film to look like a damn film, bright and have perfect lighting.

n00b1n8R
June 21st, 2011, 08:09 PM
Makes it look more fantasy to me, couldn't care less.

Siliconmaster
June 21st, 2011, 09:39 PM
Makes it look more fantasy to me, couldn't care less.

Hmm, I remember when the 2004 Star Wars dvds came out, I had a similar reaction to the blue cast- it somehow seemed more science-fiction to me. Maybe it's because I'm now a film major, but unrealistic colors just bug the hell out of me unless obviously for dramatic/artistic effect :P

Amit
June 22nd, 2011, 12:01 AM
Seriously. Watch that comparison vid and look at the difference in the clouds and sun in the Shire. All the detail is gone and replaced by a dark green haze of blurriness.

n00b1n8R
June 22nd, 2011, 12:18 AM
I bet you guys hated Fallout 3 as well :saddowns:

TeeKup
June 22nd, 2011, 12:23 AM
^ Hah, I lol'd.

Siliconmaster
June 27th, 2011, 11:59 PM
So the set is released today, June 28th.

Found a very in depth review, and I was especially interested in the part about the tint and how intrusive (or not) it is:

'The Fellowship of the Ring' - When 'The Lord of the Rings' debuted on Blu-ray last year, with the versions that hit theaters, the video qualities created quite the controversy, with 'The Fellowship of the Ring' being the most...well, disastrous. Riddled with DNR, the film looked like no film at all, really. The latter two films in the series had their problems, sure, but nowhere near the scale of 'Fellowship.' So, when Warner Bros. and New Line announced that the Extended Editions, the fan favorite cuts of the trilogy, would arrive on Blu-ray in 2011, the only film mentioned as receiving a remastering for the upcoming release was, naturally, the one that created the big stink.

Now, with the Blu-rays of the Extended Editions falling into consumer hands earlier than street date, controversy again would erupt. Much like 'The French Connection,' 'Fellowship' received some altered color timing, it would seem. The internet would soon become loaded with screenshots, comparisons, all sorts of science analyzing this first film in the set to the point where the improvements in the video became secondary to the puzzling "greenness" of it all. What did Peter Jackson or Andrew Lesnie intend for the video to look like, and did they have a hand? Is the Blu-ray release exactly to their specifications? The answers, or rather, the truth of the matter has not yet become clear, and at this point, it's all theory and conjecture. Intentions are great, but actuality usually beats them out. So, what is this controversy about? Is it legit? Is there something wrong with the Blu-ray for 'Fellowship' for the second time? Has the whole situation been blown out of proportion?

For this review, I went back and compared the new Extended Edition of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' to its Theatrical Edition counterpart, especially in scenes that I found to be...questionable, shall we say. Until Jackson (or Lesnie) himself speaks out on the matter, there may not be such a thing as "right" or "wrong," so, neither of those words will be used to describe the video. However, regardless of "right or "wrong," I want to stress that distractions, jarring moments or changes that alter the way a scene is perceived do, and will, affect the scoring on this release. A film may be, sometimes, locked in to how good it will ever look, with numerous standard definition films having arrived on Blu-ray, and no matter how truthful they are to the source, the end result just does not compare to other films that are faithful to their source and aren't an eyesore.

The big to-do on this first film in the series, the talk of the movie forums and blogs, is the color timing, so let's just hop right into that before anything else. Is 'The Fellowship of the Ring' tainted, or tinted, in a greenish, sometimes cyan hue, in ways that it was not on the previous Blu-ray release? Yes, but, and this is a very important but, it is not as much a travesty as some believe it to be. For starters: the entire film may be tinted, but many alterations or changes can be unnoticeable and/or borderline indistinguishable, rather than being the eyesores or distractions some are making them out to be. There is little doubt in my mind that this tint effects the entire run time, but for some reason or another, some sequences become blatantly obvious while others are still pretty darned passable, as there are many sequences where there is no tint in sight, with believable grays and whites. Skies aren't always turquoise, as beautiful marine blues do show up to provide fantastic brightness to a number of sequences. But...there are those moments where the changes seem hard to miss. Mists, which appear white in previous releases, now have an odd tinge to them, as they are no longer pure or unsullied, and what was once beautifully clean, white snow can look like someone was making snow cones with watered down dye. The title card for the film has a very slight hint of green to it, as well, while rocks in the shire have an odd taint that isn't from moss. Arwen's dress, which originally looked like a sparkly, completely white beauty in Frodo's hallucination, now looks like beautiful emerald, like a key lime pie, and the moment before, where Aragorn fights the Ring Wraights, their cloaks and his attire have olive hints and tints. Skin tones wear this issue, as well, as there are more than a few moments in the film where characters look ashen due to the way red levels are overpowered by greens, when they aren't excessively affected by lighting, far more than the other films in the set. The cyan tints are odd, and make some random sky shots a massive distraction with their new peculiar tint, while there are times where actors look like they have spider veins. That's not good.

There is no comparing the Extended Edition Blu-ray of 'Fellowship' to the previous release, though, as, hands down, this new edition thoroughly and regularly trumps its shorter cousin mercilessly. Detail levels are beyond improved, and the amount of tinkering and tampering has been reduced so dramatically that, get this, it looks like a film again! Beards never get blurry, not once, and facial features remain pure. I dare any viewer to have a staring contest with Gandalf's beard, since, I promise you, there's no aliasing or DNR in sight in what was once their most obvious home. Edges are much more natural, with nary a moment that caught my eye as being egregious or obviously enhanced. Depth? Hoo boy, does this release have it in spades! Crush? Not one inch of it touches the film, no matter how dark some sequences get. The picture is wonderfully clean, with only a tiny, tiny blip here and there, spread so far apart that it takes a keen eye to spot them all. Textures, they're so vivid, so strikingly real, metal surfaces reflect where applicable, rough blades feel dingy, the forest, water, wood, it's so marvelous, it's hard not to get sucked in to the beauty of this release (when it isn't the home of the Green Goblin).

Yes, I'll admit, I did tire of the randomly blue eyes or teeth. I also got a bit tired of the constant contrast between the wonderfully vivid, colorful moments and those that are obviously afflicted by some excessive color change stigma. The random darkness of the film also got to me, especially when Gandalf first knocks on Bilbo's door, as that shot looks the same on this release as it would if you watched the Theatrical Blu-ray wearing sunglasses, and that isn't even an exaggeration. This release has its flaws, serious, unmistakable flaws that do rain on what should be its parade. Is this a truly satisfying, breathtaking, stunning image? Not as much as it should be, nor as much as its untampered with brethren are. So, sadly, what may be the finest long cut of the trilogy is (there is no may be's or possibly's here) the weakest visually, with completely unnecessary little "fixes" that don't quite fix anything. If you love the color green, this may very well be the an "achievement unmatched in the history of cinema." If you love films looking natural, realistic, and untampered with...this may be the new test case for what all can go wrong when revisionist history takes a spin at creating a new look for a film people have seen so many times that they cannot accept the differences made. A remastering was necessary. A re-envisioning was not. No matter what gets said down the line (if anything is said at all), the end result is a picture that is not as engaging or inviting as the other two films in the epic motion picture trilogy. No words can change this problem, be it an intentional change or a mishap, unless they are the phrase Paramount has had to utter quite often with their Sapphire Series: disc exchange.

Tl;dnr- Is it there? yes. Is it horrible in every scene? No. Is it the end of the world? Up to the viewer. Now to wait for some sort of official word on the matter.

Amit
June 28th, 2011, 02:20 AM
They are re-releasing something that looks phenomenal (on DVD) to Blu-Ray that has at least 3 times the resolution, but you're going to slap a premium price on it and tell me that it doesn't maintain the outstanding colour toning that the originals had? Where's the logic in that?

Cortexian
June 28th, 2011, 04:09 AM
I think I'll go buy the set tomorrow, if it was a fuck-up there will likely be a replacement program.

Bodzilla
June 28th, 2011, 09:44 AM
Your Dreaming freelancer.

Cortexian
June 28th, 2011, 07:22 PM
Your Dreaming freelancer.
Why? There was a replacement program for Pirates of the Caribbean...

EX12693
June 29th, 2011, 02:14 AM
You are all Lotrtards...

Patrickssj6
June 29th, 2011, 10:33 AM
You are all tards...
.

Cortexian
June 29th, 2011, 10:57 AM
Tolkien > All of you combined.

Amit
June 29th, 2011, 12:20 PM
^

Cortexian
June 29th, 2011, 02:33 PM
^
WRONG.

Tolkien > the Internet.

EX12693
June 29th, 2011, 07:14 PM
Derp. (http://eye.swfchan.com/flash.asp?id=66383&n=You+are+a+Lotrtard.swf&w=550&h=400)

Cortexian
June 29th, 2011, 10:16 PM
The page cannot be found.

Amit
June 29th, 2011, 11:33 PM
^

EX12693
June 30th, 2011, 02:49 AM
Ffs stupid links. Nvm.

Siliconmaster
June 30th, 2011, 06:16 AM
So Warner Bros says Fellowship is fine and we should all stop whining. >_< Great. To be fair, while I've bought the disks, I haven't watched them yet, so I'll report on how bad the tint really is. If it's bad, I have half a mind to rip it to my computer and do a minor color correction pass myself. Would at least get rid of the faint green tint.

Cortexian
June 30th, 2011, 08:14 AM
Where did they say this?

Also, the digital download copy you get through iTunes is fine with no green tint. Yet apparently the Blu-Ray version is "fine"?

Edit - Oh here it is:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=212216417436&topic=15958



Warner Bros Home Entertainment Group confirms that The Lord of the Rings The Motion Picture Trilogy Extended Edition Blu-ray accurately represents the intended look of each of the three features. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring™ was remastered from the original digital production files in order to reproduce the full color imagery of the feature.

Bodzilla
June 30th, 2011, 08:32 AM
told you that you where dreaming.


it's a "feature"

Cortexian
June 30th, 2011, 08:53 AM
It's not, the digital copy that was included with it doesn't have the green cast. It's clearly an error and they're still just trying to cover their asses.

Siliconmaster
June 30th, 2011, 12:55 PM
Theoretically the explanation for the digital copy is that it was a direct transfer from the 2K master, without any tinting whatsoever, including the intentional coloring that was going to be applied (whether that includes the green or not). I don't know if it has the same video quality as the main disks, but if it does, that's a good thing.

Also:


"Earlier this month there was some hub-bub about some of the Blu Ray forums that the FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING EE Blu-Ray mastering was completely f--ked with an ugly green hint over everything, oblitering any real whites and messing up the entire gorgeous color palate of the film. I wrote Peter Jackson to alert him to the rumors. Peter had Andrew Lesnie look into it – you see… of the 3 films, FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING EE was the only film of the trilogy that did not go through the extensive and expensive Digital Color Grading process. They did that for this. Peter had seen the new mastering of FELLOWSHIP – in fact anyone that had seen it on HD broadcasts recently was looking at the gorgeous master sans any tinting. In Peter’s opinion the film has simply never looked better – including theatrically, because this new digital color grading was something that Peter wanted from the very beginning."

I still want to hear it from the man himself.

Amit
June 30th, 2011, 01:08 PM
I'm confused. That guy is saying two opposite things and melding them together. Where did you get that quote anyways?

Cortexian
June 30th, 2011, 01:09 PM
What? That's bullshit, all three movies had their Digital Color Grading done. As a matter of fact there's a scene in one of the special features DVD's where Peter Jackson is specifically talking about Hobbiton in Fellowship:
eDMuaKLbyaY

3:34 - 4:28

They even talk about REMOVING green from the shot and warming it up with magenta and gold instead. This entire thing sounds like a huge fuck up to me. If you watch and listen to that entire Digital Grading special feature you'll see that there was never any mention that Fellowship should be greened over, quite the opposite in fact.

It sounds like Peter Jackson wasn't originally satisfied with the level of Grading that Fellowship got so they went back and worked on it some more for the Blu-ray release here. However it looks like instead of only touching up some scenes with more greens (some scenes actually look a lot nicer with the green tint) that someone slipped up and tinted the entire film green instead. Perhaps the grading guys forgot to set a correct start/end point for the grading process somewhere.

Siliconmaster
June 30th, 2011, 01:14 PM
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/50193

Two posts down. And yeah, I think it still sounds bogus. Grr.

PlasbianX
June 30th, 2011, 01:15 PM
Never seen any of the movies, maybe now I'll watch em.

Siliconmaster
June 30th, 2011, 04:07 PM
...yes. Yes you should do that. :P

Edit: Alright, so I popped in my copy of Fellowship: Extended on blu ray to see how bad the problem really was. I did this on my mom's 55" LCD tv, which was calibrated by the tv people when we set it up. I went to all the scenes where screenshots had shown it to be overly bad, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the green tint was either very hard to detect, or came across as more of a gold (probably due to my brain adjusting for it after only a minute or two of watching). Overall, I was happy with how it looked, even if I could tell that some whites looked more gold/green than they should. However, if I hadn't known about it, I probably wouldn't have noticed. Even the fade to white in Rivendell comes across as off-white, rather than lime green.

HOWEVER: I know enough about screen calibration to know that stuff looks radically different on a tv screen, even a properly calibrated one, than it does on a computer monitor, calibrated or otherwise. Sure enough, on my computer screen it almost exactly matches the screenshots. My guess is that while it IS there, it's just faint enough that it's barely detectable on a tv, while on a typical non-profesional computer monitor, it is definitely obvious. If I ever have to watch it on my computer, I'll just tweak the color settings so it looks nicer, but honestly I'll suck it up and admit that I don't think I'll be bothered by it on a normal tv.

There's my general opinion. Even if the tint is accidental, anyone who went to check on it at Warner Bros or even Peter Jackson and company probably used a calibrated television, so they didn't see much. It's only when viewing it on a non-calibrated/non-professional computer monitor that it becomes an issue.

Edit edit: On a whim I fullscreened it on my computer, and within a few seconds of watching, my eyes adjusted due to the lack of a blazing white gmail window next to it to compare it to. So yeah. Additional suggestion- never watch it in windowed form. Lol. And overall it's nowhere near as terrible as the 2004 Star Wars dvd release, so we can be thankful for that.

Cortexian
June 30th, 2011, 04:48 PM
FYI, computer monitors offer superior picture quality than televisions regardless of their "professional" level. I never calibrate my monitors or televisions, default settings are usually the best all-around experience.

It's more noticeable on monitors because of the superior picture quality and depth.

Siliconmaster
June 30th, 2011, 11:22 PM
You do have a point. But at least I can load up the disk on my tv and it looks pretty good. Right now I'm ripping the blu ray to my hard drive to attempt a slight color correction pass. If it works, at least I'll have a perfect looking version on my computer, where I actually need it.

Edit: So a fellow film major and I just ripped the video stream of the Fellowship blu ray and removed the green tint. Currently exporting from After Effects. If all goes well, I'll be able to reconstruct the disk with the menus and everything, but with the green gone. It'll be tricky, but I think I can do it Then I just have to buy dual layer burnable blu ray disks. Ick. Don't want to think about how much those will cost. If this works, maybe we'll upload it somewhere. Only downside is that we're trying to keep the bitrate as high as possible, so it's still going to be 30 Gb per disk. Pretty high for a download :/

We did our best to match the colors to these images that someone else did:
Original: http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/5162/originallotr.jpg
"Fixed": http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/3254/balancedlotr.jpg

The result is very much like the second set of images. Whoever did those somehow washed out the image slightly though- the actual blu ray is a little bit darker.

Amit
July 1st, 2011, 01:45 AM
Wow, nice job on that if your fix looks anything like the second set of images.

Siliconmaster
July 1st, 2011, 02:37 PM
It's pretty darned close- I'll post a screenshot comparison if it exports correctly. I'm personally not a color correction specialist, so I contacted a guy I know from school. I sent him those pics as well as some frames I grabbed from the blu ray directly, and he sent back an after effects preset he called "dumb LotR CC". I'll see in the morning if it looks as good as it should.

Edit: The export looked pretty good, but it was offsync by 6 seconds for some reason- I think it got cut off at the beginning. I'll fix it. Also did some experiments to make sure the quality was being retained- I upped the VBR pass number to 2, and it looks much better now. Except that the render estimate is 20 hours for disk 1. Guess it'll be a while before I have any results to post.

paladin
July 1st, 2011, 07:43 PM
your fix, to me, seems like theres more blue....

Cortexian
July 1st, 2011, 08:11 PM
There is, the difference is that the blues are blue and the whites are white. Not different shades of green.

Amit
July 1st, 2011, 11:15 PM
And blue looks better than tingy green.

Siliconmaster
July 1st, 2011, 11:35 PM
The greens killed all the whites and made most of the blues more of a faint teal. With the green removed some scenes actually look a bit MORE teal than they used to, because the green muddled everything else. We've checked all the parts with white in it, and the fade to white in Rivendell is actually white now (it was slightly pink on the dvds, and very green on the blu rays). All the fire has white-hot cores instead of oddly green ones, the reds are back in full force, and the skies are a beautiful pale blue. Note that those images I posted before are NOT ours, but we based ours FROM those, so they should be pretty much the same. I'll post a comparison set of my own early next week- I'll be gone this weekend, so I won't know if the export worked or not until I get back on Tuesday. If this works, I would really like to get it out there, but I don't know how- maybe a 1080p MKV- would be sad to lose the high bitrate of the blu ray, but it would be something.

Cortexian
July 2nd, 2011, 01:40 AM
I honestly have to say that after sitting down and actually watching the film in its entirety today that it's pretty un-noticeable.

paladin
July 5th, 2011, 12:23 AM
I honestly have to say that after sitting down and actually watching the film in its entirety today that it's pretty un-noticeable.

.

Siliconmaster
July 7th, 2011, 05:19 PM
It is done. Do many people care? Not really. Do I feel pretty accomplished and satisfied? Absolutely.

Original: http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/6486/fellowshiporiginal.jpg
Fixed: http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/2228/fellowshipfixed3.jpg

I managed to retain nearly the exact HD quality, while keeping the menus, audio tracks, everything. They play exactly like the original disks, but with the green totally removed and the white point restored to full, instead of the weird 80% or so that it was.

Amit
July 7th, 2011, 08:17 PM
I still loathe that tinge. It destroys the brilliance and surreal quality of what was released on DVD.

Siliconmaster
July 7th, 2011, 08:44 PM
Yeah. Right now I'm trying to fix an issue After Effects has with .m2ts files- it hates the codec, so it randomly corrupts frames in exports. So far I've found one, but it's in a different spot every time I export. I think I'm just going to use this export, use a video splitter, then splice in a fixed couple of frames. Hopefully that will work.

Cortexian
July 7th, 2011, 11:59 PM
Why use m2ts?

Siliconmaster
July 8th, 2011, 12:49 AM
That's what the blu ray files are in, and I'm trying to avoid converting the video as much as possible to retain the quality. I've found a .m2ts splitter, so I may be able to cut out and reinsert the affected frames without having to re-encode anything, which would be great.

Patrickssj6
July 9th, 2011, 05:42 AM
m2ts is not a codec ;)

some weeks ago I watched Ocean's 13 on BluRay and it had some strange overlay as well.

2165

looks like ocean has a poison ivy rash :P

Siliconmaster
July 9th, 2011, 12:14 PM
Oh derp, you're right. Stupid terminology- and I should know this, I study film and related tech stuff. The codec, I believe, is h.264 blu ray within a .m2ts file shell. Regardless, After Effects is a bitch.

Cortexian
July 9th, 2011, 06:57 PM
Why not just use H.264 Blu ray MP4's? Those export straight from Premiere/After Effects.

Patrickssj6
July 9th, 2011, 10:33 PM
MP4, MKV or M2TS are all container files so it doesn't really matter which one you use.

It's like RAR, ZIP and 7zip.

Cortexian
July 9th, 2011, 11:45 PM
MP4 is much more usable by editing programs though, MKV and M2TS are just a pain in the ass when it comes to editing.

Siliconmaster
July 12th, 2011, 11:43 AM
Yeah, editing direct from .m2ts can be a pain, but AE and Premiere support it natively, so usually it's alright. Instead of my old method of .m2ts-->AE-->Adobe Media Encoder export as H.264 blu ray-->remux into .m2ts, I've exported it as a lossless quicktime animation file, which is approximately 485 Gigs. :haw: Now I'm running that through Adobe Media Encoder, and hopefully when it comes out the other side as a H.264 blu ray it will be free of the strange frame errors.

If they're still there, the issue involved some slight compatibility problems between AE and .m2ts in the initial import. If the errors are gone, it means that the only problem was somewhere in the export from AE through AME to the H.264 files.

Patrickssj6
July 12th, 2011, 03:40 PM
I usually export with Losless Windows Media from AE and encode with Microsoft Expression Encoder. It reduces the size from 2.5GB to 14Megs in HD so I am happy with that method.