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Post by andyparting on Mar 29, 2023 8:34:56 GMT
That's not correct, of course. The television episodes of Hancock's Half Hour were made in the 1950s, long before the introduction of colour by the BBC in 1967. The BBC held telerecordings of the Hancock episodes in b/w, but the episodes had been made and aired in b/w. Unlike Invasion of the Dinosaurs, the episodes had never been in colour. So the Hancock episodes weren't being re-coloured. There were no colour episodes from surviving colour videotapes of other parts of the serial to compare, for reference; probably there were no colour stills photos either, to use for comparison; and no friendly chroma dots lurking on the b/w film negative. Is it wrong to say that the market for the Hancock tv series is greater than for Dr Who? Would BBC Worldwide in fact expect a colour Hancock DVD to outsell a colour Pertwee DVD? You can colour-in two half-hour Hancock episodes much more cheaply than colouring in, say, six Hartnell or Troughton episodes: to colourise a typical Sixties Who serial typically involves doing three times as many episodes as those 2 Hancock's Half Hour episodes. At the most favourable, it involves 4 Who episodes, or in other words double the amount of film that colouring two Hancock episodes involves. Is Dr Who to be a victim of the fact that a tv comedy is complete in itself at only 25 minutes, but a complete Hartnell or Troughton serial typically runs 6 x 25 minutes? It would have been better to say that the HHHs were coloured. Wasn't the story code for Invasion of the Dinosaurs WWW, John? |
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Post by John Wall on Mar 29, 2023 8:40:52 GMT
It would have been better to say that the HHHs were coloured. Wasn't the story code for Invasion of the Dinosaurs WWW, John? 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 |
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Post by Richard Bignell on Mar 29, 2023 9:57:29 GMT
Why was it considered unreasonable to do the same with Episode 1 of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, an episode which had a head start over Mind of Evil, in that a partially coloured version already existed (thanks to the chroma dot process), whereas only a purely b/w print had been available for colouring Episode 1 of Mind of Evil? What was the over-riding factor that made it economically unviable to restore that single episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs? Because recolouring the first episode of The Mind of Evil took much longer to do than planned and was a very stressful endeavour for those concerned. There wasn't the will or the money available to go through the same process again at that time. That is incorrect. Episodes 2-6 of The Mind of Evil only had chroma-dot recovery applied, so only required a fraction of the time, money and effort compared with that put into recolouring Episode 1 from scratch. |
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Post by Rob Moss on Mar 29, 2023 10:41:51 GMT
Why was it considered unreasonable to do the same with Episode 1 of Invasion of the Dinosaurs, an episode which had a head start over Mind of Evil, in that a partially coloured version already existed (thanks to the chroma dot process), whereas only a purely b/w print had been available for colouring Episode 1 of Mind of Evil? What was the over-riding factor that made it economically unviable to restore that single episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs? Because recolouring the first episode of The Mind of Evil took much longer to do than planned and was a very stressful endeavour for those concerned. There wasn't the will or the money available to go through the same process again at that time. That is incorrect. Episodes 2-6 of The Mind of Evil only had chroma-dot recovery applied, so only required a fraction of the time, money and effort compared with that put into recolouring Episode 1 from scratch. Although what you’ve said is quite true, this does raise the question of why it was viable to manually colour a single episode for the Mind of Evil release but not for the Invasion of the Dinosaurs release. |
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Post by Richard Bignell on Mar 29, 2023 12:13:24 GMT
Although what you’ve said is quite true, this does raise the question of why it was viable to manually colour a single episode for the Mind of Evil release but not for the Invasion of the Dinosaurs release. I think the reason is quite clear. The extensive amount of time and the related cost. |
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Post by John Wall on Mar 29, 2023 15:22:30 GMT
Although what you’ve said is quite true, this does raise the question of why it was viable to manually colour a single episode for the Mind of Evil release but not for the Invasion of the Dinosaurs release. I think the reason is quite clear. The extensive amount of time and the related cost. Remember that we’ve just had two HHHs coloured for one of the satellite/cable channels; Yesterday or Gold. We need half that effort for IotD1 and then Peter Crocker or one of his colleagues to blend that with the colour recovered version. |
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Post by Ed Brown on Mar 30, 2023 2:20:32 GMT
Remember that we’ve just had two HHHs coloured for one of the satellite/cable channels; Yesterday or Gold. We need half that effort for IotD1 and then Peter Crocker or one of his colleagues to blend that with the colour recovered version. I'd like to jump back in, at this point, and mention that those who do the restorations on Dr Who have already had the experience of re-colouring one episode and blending it with a chroma dot recovery. Isn't that exactly what was done with Planet of the Daleks? IIRC, the episode had already been (expensively) recoloured by hand, by a specialist outside contractor, when it was discovered that it was possible to reconstruct the original colour using the embedded chroma dots on the telerecording. And the two sources were then blended together to achieve the final restoration. It may have been the first attempt at restoring an episode to colour, but it was a beautiful job, entirely indistinguishable from the original 2-inch PAL VT. |
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Post by John Wall on Mar 30, 2023 7:59:26 GMT
Remember that we’ve just had two HHHs coloured for one of the satellite/cable channels; Yesterday or Gold. We need half that effort for IotD1 and then Peter Crocker or one of his colleagues to blend that with the colour recovered version. I'd like to jump back in, at this point, and mention that those who do the restorations on Dr Who have already had the experience of re-colouring one episode and blending it with a chroma dot recovery. Isn't that exactly what was done with Planet of the Daleks? IIRC, the episode had already been (expensively) recoloured by hand, by a specialist outside contractor, when it was discovered that it was possible to reconstruct the original colour using the embedded chroma dots on the telerecording. And the two sources were then blended together to achieve the final restoration. It may have been the first attempt at restoring an episode to colour, but it was a beautiful job, entirely indistinguishable from the original 2-inch PAL VT. Yep, exactly what was done with PotD3. |
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Post by sonnybh on Mar 30, 2023 20:58:59 GMT
I'd like to jump back in, at this point, and mention that those who do the restorations on Dr Who have already had the experience of re-colouring one episode and blending it with a chroma dot recovery. Isn't that exactly what was done with Planet of the Daleks? IIRC, the episode had already been (expensively) recoloured by hand, by a specialist outside contractor, when it was discovered that it was possible to reconstruct the original colour using the embedded chroma dots on the telerecording. And the two sources were then blended together to achieve the final restoration. It may have been the first attempt at restoring an episode to colour, but it was a beautiful job, entirely indistinguishable from the original 2-inch PAL VT. Yep, exactly what was done with PotD3. I was very impressed with the restoration, if I didn't know the story behind it I would have assumed it was a transfer from the original tape! |
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Apr 3, 2023 7:30:41 GMT
A few points to clarify the situation with Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part 1.
The film recording is not as good as some of the earlier film recordings for Doctor Who. It's slightly out of focus on the right hand edge for a start. Chroma dot recovery doesn't fully work with this film recording; in fact, the most successful colour recovery was for Planet of the Daleks and few colour recoveries for any film recordings have been as successful as that. People think that it looks so good because it was combined with the manual colourisation, but in fact the latest iteration of it (featured on the Bluray) only used colour recovery and nothing at all of the manual colourisation.
The chroma dot recovery of Invasion of the Dinosaurs has delivered an incomplete colour gamut. There is little or no blue, but other colours are mostly accurate. That being said, all colour recoveries need a large amount of manual intervention to get them to look presentable and the colour for all recovered colour requires a lot of stabilisation. In the case of this recording, it is impossible to recover the full colour gamut. Obviously another solution, such as manual colourisation is required.
The colourisation of Hancock's Half Hour is a new process, not in terms of the physical creation of keyframes (which has to be done manually) but in the number of keyframes required... a lot less. Tracking technology has improved so much since 'The Mind of Evil' and that reduces by a significant amount the number of keyframes required to render a shot. Previously some shots needed up to 65 keyframes. The same shot now may require just 3. However, achieving that requires some quite pokey and pricey software and 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs' has many tricky sequences, shot on location for which there are few true colour references.
Paul
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Post by John Wall on Apr 3, 2023 8:04:47 GMT
A few points to clarify the situation with Invasion of the Dinosaurs Part 1. The film recording is not as good as some of the earlier film recordings for Doctor Who. It's slightly out of focus on the right hand edge for a start. Chroma dot recovery doesn't fully work with this film recording; in fact, the most successful colour recovery was for Planet of the Daleks and few colour recoveries for any film recordings have been as successful as that. People think that it looks so good because it was combined with the manual colourisation, but in fact the latest iteration of it (featured on the Bluray) only used colour recovery and nothing at all of the manual colourisation. The chroma dot recovery of Invasion of the Dinosaurs has delivered an incomplete colour gamut. There is little or no blue, but other colours are mostly accurate. That being said, all colour recoveries need a large amount of manual intervention to get them to look presentable and the colour for all recovered colour requires a lot of stabilisation. In the case of this recording, it is impossible to recover the full colour gamut. Obviously another solution, such as manual colourisation is required. The colourisation of Hancock's Half Hour is a new process, not in terms of the physical creation of keyframes (which has to be done manually) but in the number of keyframes required... a lot less. Tracking technology has improved so much since 'The Mind of Evil' and that reduces by a significant amount the number of keyframes required to render a shot. Previously some shots needed up to 65 keyframes. The same shot now may require just 3. However, achieving that requires some quite pokey and pricey software and 'Invasion of the Dinosaurs' has many tricky sequences, shot on location for which there are few true colour references. Paul Thanks 👍 Are there, perhaps, any production piccies? |
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Post by barneyhall on Apr 3, 2023 8:34:42 GMT
Not that I'd want to stifle any future development or work done on IOTD ep1
...but I was more than happy with the recolour on the dvd. There's only a few place I thought it didn't look right but I also think I was looking for it. For one thing I think it looks far better than most of season 8. Not in any way rubbishing the extensive work done on season 8 but playing the blu ray of 8 and the IOTD 1 on my big telly in my room I think IOTD looks better as an overall package. Anyway the point of this isn't to be disparaging of season 8 but more to say how lucky we are of what we already have of IOTD 1. Any future improves is obviously a have bonus but if the state its in now is the bes that could be done then so it.
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Post by Ed Brown on Apr 3, 2023 9:10:39 GMT
The chroma dot colour recovery software has been worked on quite extensively, since it was used to restore say the Dad's Army episode, Room at the Bottom, in 2008. The restoration of that film recording, and the b/w film for the Are You Being Served pilot episode, another David Croft production, would be much improved if re-done now, with the latest software version, 15 years later.
Software is improving all the time, at one point - back in the 1990s - we would have been laughed at if we had suggested thst an episode could be restored to colour without finding a 2-inch PAL colour videotape overseas.
In a few years time, it will probably be possible to restore Invasion of the Dinosaurs fully, using just the existing telerecording, by deriving the missing blue signal from an analysis of the surviving red and green, if an algorithm is developed which can 'guess' the missing blue level by understanding that there are only a few limited combinations of R, G and B that can result in a photo naturalistic combination for them.
This is a job for the new Artificial Intelligence programs, which are already in advanced development.
You might like to keep an eye out for the latest advances in computer processing of audio, too. It is already possible to take a piece of text and process it to sound like a certain American actor, whose voice was damaged, just by inputting a short section of audio of his voice before it was damaged.
Fraser Hines currently re-creates Patrick Troughton's voice for Big Finish episodes. Shortly, an expensive piece of computer software will be able to replace Fraser, and re-create Pat's voice, just by taking an audio section from any surviving Dr Who soundtrack.
We have come a long way since 1993's Dimensions in Time, when Pat was re-created, if you can call it that, as a floating disembodied head.
Tim Treolar and Fraser might find their undoubted talents redundant, if Big Finish can afford the cost of the new software. But that cost will be coming down fast.
Very soon, it's only going to be a question of money, of can the BBC afford the available software. It will no longer be impossible to do these things, merely expensive. One day it might become economically viable to do this for Dr Who bluray releases, or for whatever follows bluray. It'll just be a matter of money. When isn't it?
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Post by josephsenior on Apr 3, 2023 10:33:21 GMT
Correct me if I'm wrong, in theory you could convert the partial colour gamut to a colour filter array (CFA), and then analyse the CFA data to estimate the colour. Then use colour interpolation to fill in the missing colours based on the estimated colour values, and apply colour correction/grading to the overall footage.
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Post by Paul Vanezis on Apr 3, 2023 15:35:42 GMT
Correct me if I'm wrong, in theory you could convert the partial colour gamut to a colour filter array (CFA), and then analyse the CFA data to estimate the colour. Then use colour interpolation to fill in the missing colours based on the estimated colour values, and apply colour correction/grading to the overall footage. Yes. Astro-photographers have been doing this for years. But on single images. In one minute of Invasion of the dinosaurs there are 1500 frames. In one 25 minute episode there are 37,500 frames. You would also want the starting point for the estimated colour to be the best it can be, so you would first have to restore the R,G. After that, there is no guarantee that you're going to get a decent result out of the other end. having said that, I can see where this may be useful for certain specific examples. Paul |
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