Will Invasion of the Dinosaurs ever release on Blu-Ray?

[Ace St.John]

Jan 23, 2024 20:30:01 GMT @angelamezquita said:

Jan 23, 2024 20:08:39 GMT John Wall said:

The b&w print is of interest - and not just for the omitted scene.

The original colour film would have been transferred onto 2” VT for broadcast and then telerecorded onto 16mm b&w to give us the telerecording we have. The b&w print should have a larger frame area and may well be sharper, not having gone through several stages to result in a telerecording.

Exactly. Also, since it does contain a larger area and cleaner image, it would be suitable to transfer the scenes to the restored footage when it's fully restored.

Plus, if the B&W film sequence print has the Chroma dots, we can use the color recovery method on it while the rest of the episodes gets manually colorized.

A black and white sequence print would not have chromadots by nature of how chromadots come into being ie: via taking a b&w film of a tv monitor where they forgot to filter out the colour information. So the three RGB dots on the screen will all have different values to be counter worked out from the b&w telerecording.

If it was film , filmed on location there wouldn't be any chromadots because there is no monitor involved.

I can easily explain this in more details via private message. A basic understanding of how television was made back then would make it all clear it is quite simple really but without knowing the technology back then it won't be discernable

[John Wall]

Feb 3, 2024 16:33:51 GMT Ace St.John said:

Jan 23, 2024 20:30:01 GMT @angelamezquita said:

Exactly. Also, since it does contain a larger area and cleaner image, it would be suitable to transfer the scenes to the restored footage when it's fully restored.

Plus, if the B&W film sequence print has the Chroma dots, we can use the color recovery method on it while the rest of the episodes gets manually colorized.

A black and white sequence print would not have chromadots by nature of how chromadots come into being ie: via taking a b&w film of a tv monitor where they forgot to filter out the colour information. So the three RGB dots on the screen will all have different values to be counter worked out from the b&w telerecording.

If it was film , filmed on location there wouldn't be any chromadots because there is no monitor involved.

I can easily explain this in more details via private message. A basic understanding of how television was made back then would make it all clear it is quite simple really but without knowing the technology back then it won't be discernable

Just file it with “NTSC prints” and “Beta scans”.

[Deleted]

You know, I've been thinking. Could the BBC use the same people that recently colorize "The Daleks" serial to fully recolorize Invasion of the Dinosaurs

episode 1? If they want to reduce costs, the BBC can have them colorize the keyframes and use Peter Crocker's program from Mind of Evil 3 to extrapolate the color from the key frames into the intervening frames, with the occasional intervation. Maybe they'll wait to air other colorized 60's serials before recolorizing IOTD 1

[markperry]

I think the Daleks we got very lucky.

[George D]

The daleks colonization was a production for broadcast tv, hence got a higher budget

Look at the bright side, they aren't changing the music on invasion of Dino;)

[Deleted]

Looking at the DVD for IOTD1, the featured section in the B&W film sequence print looks better than the corresponding scene in the episode. Heck, it has some more picture and detail. Maybe if they do recolorize IOTD1, they can colorize the film inserts first, insert them into the episode, then colorize every else. Can't attach pictures, so here's a link to a Twitter comparison by yours truly.

[Rob Moss]

I may be jumping to conclusions here, but I think it's just possible that they may have considered that...

[richardwoods]

Wasn’t someone of this parish having a go at colourising IOTD1? Mind you, the dinosaurs were so unbelievably bad, the whole serial is crying out for a CGI makeover IMHO. I think I’ll get my coat……

[richardwoods]

And while they are at it a CGI giant rat somewhere else would help too😉

[John Wall]

There are many problems with this episode.

There are two picture standards. The first is the 2” colour VT which was just transferred to 16mm b&w film. The second is the colour location film which was first transferred onto 2” colour VT and then onto 16mm b&w film. It’s worth noting that transfers of location film onto VT could be inconsistent at that time. Consequently it’s not surprising that the exteriors on the DVD are of inferior quality than the surviving b&w print from the location footage, the former is two generations down from the latter - but it has chroma dots.

Anybody wanna buy a lottery ticket?

[Deleted]

Apr 29, 2024 21:55:50 GMT John Wall said:

There are many problems with this episode.

There are two picture standards. The first is the 2” colour VT which was just transferred to 16mm b&w film. The second is the colour location film which was first transferred onto 2” colour VT and then onto 16mm b&w film. It’s worth noting that transfers of location film onto VT could be inconsistent at that time. Consequently it’s not surprising that the exteriors on the DVD are of inferior quality than the surviving b&w print from the location footage, the former is two generations down from the latter - but it has chroma dots.

Anybody wanna buy a lottery ticket?

Let me explain in a kind way to you. The surviving location film was created by transfering footage from the original 35mm color film to 16mm b/w. This was mostly done to make a practice copy, so the editors can know where to cut, so the cut is perfectly done on the now-lost color version. That's why the 16mm inserts still exist, because some editor didn't throw his edit print away. So, it's a 1st gen copy, not 2nd gen.

Remember, the original 35mm color film would have been cut and transfered to the 2" PAL videotape. Then, a 16mm telerecording was made for international sales. The location film scenes are therefore 3 gens away from the original 1st gen 35mm film. Of course, the studio scenes were also shot in 2" PAL videotape, so they transfer very decently. The 2nd gen film location scenes are nearly indistiguishable from the original studio recording tapes.

So while the live action scenes on the 16mm print of IOTD 1 are 2nd gen and the film location scenes are 3rd gen, the film location scenes from the 16mm editor print are 2nd gen. Thus, even if we only restore IOTD 1 and don't due any colorization, we can still replace the 3rd gen scenes with corresponding ones from the 2nd gen copy, so we get the best quality possible, even in B&W.

If they do recolorize IOTD1, that would be even better. To do so, can manually recolorize the live action scenes from the 16mm print of the episode, use Vidfire on them afterwards, then colorize the film location scenes from the 16mm editor print, and insert them in place. Then, the team can take the beginning of IOTD 2 (which still survives in the original PAL), and insert it into the corresponding ending of IOTD 1. Once that's done, film stabilized and restored, intro and credits redone, and color grading, voila! The last Pertwee episode is restored to as close to the original color PAL that can be done.

Sorry if it's long, but I just want to point some things out.

[Richard Bignell]

Apr 30, 2024 2:33:20 GMT @angelamezquita said:

Let me explain in a kind way to you. The surviving location film was created by transfering footage from the original 35mm color film to 16mm b/w. This was mostly done to make a practice copy, so the editors can know where to cut, so the cut is perfectly done on the now-lost color version. That's why the 16mm inserts still exist, because some editor didn't throw his edit print away. So, it's a 1st gen copy, not 2nd gen.

Let me explain in a kind way to you.

By the time of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Doctor Who hadn't shot any location material on 35mm for close to six years. Location work had initially swapped from 35mm to 16mm with The Abominable Snowmen with it becoming the standard from Fury from the Deep onwards.

We've always known that the material you're talking about is a very low-quality rushes print, which can clearly be seen in the images you've used. Whilst it may well have more surrounding image (as all such footage does when compared with the transmitted version), it is also of noticeably poorer quality being far more bleached. As such, there would be no advantage to replacing the material in the way you suggest.

[timothyk]

A couple of years ago I colourised a scene from Invasion 1, using the rushes print as the b&w source - it is very bleached so it needed a lot of grading, but I was able to pull out a decent enough amount of highlight detail, particularly in faces, for colourisation to work on this sequence

youtu.be/5_gI37vIsPQ?si=iW8ZvvPZurjad-WA

There are plenty of shots from the rushes print where this won't work - anything showing a large amount of sky for instance, as the skies are completely bleached out with no detail remaining at all. So you'd have to assess which source is best on a shot-by-shot basis

(Also I should note that I have no idea what the plans are for Invasion 1 on blu-ray)

[Deleted]

Apr 30, 2024 13:34:38 GMT timothyk said:

A couple of years ago I colourised a scene from Invasion 1, using the rushes print as the b&w source - it is very bleached so it needed a lot of grading, but I was able to pull out a decent enough amount of highlight detail, particularly in faces, for colourisation to work on this sequence

youtu.be/5_gI37vIsPQ?si=iW8ZvvPZurjad-WA

There are plenty of shots from the rushes print where this won't work - anything showing a large amount of sky for instance, as the skies are completely bleached out with no detail remaining at all. So you'd have to assess which source is best on a shot-by-shot basis

(Also I should note that I have no idea what the plans are for Invasion 1 on blu-ray)

Where did you find the print for the film inserts? You can DM me it if you're not comfortable sharing it here.

[timothyk]

It's on the DVD - the b&w version of the episode uses the rushes print for some (though not all) of the film sequences