The Thief and the Cobbler: Recobbled Cut Mark 4

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I have no current plans to use that material; it's a contrasty transfer and there seems to be some detail lost in the brighter parts of the image, especially in certain shots. (I would also have to remove splices and dirt again, stabilize, etc.)

If this was my only source for this material I could reduce the contrast and try to work around any other issues, but the other transfer is fine for my purposes.

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[GrandeurWazir]

Didnt know it was the wrong time stamp, this is the correct one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKTCSLbjhtM&t=3219s

[Garrett Gilchrist]

That is definitely the wrong time stamp. You might mean during the witch explosion, which is intentional.

EDIT: Oh. That's during a fade in which was harder to fix or deal with.

[TeeJay]

When it eventually releases, Will Mk4.2 be uploaded somewhere at a higher bitrate? (Somewhere in the 20-30 mb/s range, reminiscent of blu-ray?) The 2013 versions, despite being much more portable in filesize, are susceptible to digital blockiness and color banding.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I haven't made any decisions about encoding. If people are that concerned about picture quality I strongly advise them to watch a different film.

[Max Scully]

If people are that concerned about picture quality I strongly advise them to watch a different film.

picture quality in a situation of a film like this is fine when it comes to the quality of the film stock itself. it's when it comes to digital compression that it becomes somewhat problematic.

[GrandeurWazir]

The Mark 3 had the "In The Casbah" Cover by David Burman Whenever The Thief gets closer to The Red Ruby found from the 35mm "KA Reels" which fits the scene a whole lot better, The song in Mark 4 sounds strange, like its constantly changing versions of the song sounding less complete than the "In The Casbah" Cover

[Dennis196492]

It's worthy of mention that a lot of the audio choices on the Mark 4 were due to people at the time wanting more audio from the Workprint, which wasn't possible prior to the higher quality one surfacing. A lot of the KA reels audio made it to the Mark 3 but at the same time it wasn't all accurate. In the case of the Ruby Temple scene, the tune from the Workprint is not the same as the one on the KA reels or the one on David Burman's soundtrack, so choices were made.

[Garrett Gilchrist]

I have not thought about the Mark 3 in ten years and have been busy with the visuals.

I know I'll have to make some minor audio changes, as the intended new edit is longer in places.

But speaking very broadly, the changes made over the years keep getting us closer to what the workprint did, rather than farther from it.

The Mark 4 was the first time I felt that the opening reflected what the workprint intended, and even with this year's fixes I feel like I'm "undoing" some changes made in early Recobbled Cuts, based on the footage available at the time.

I would be curious what can be done with modern vocal-isolating tech.

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I don't think the Thief On Springs scene could actually fit into the movie, as it plays out now. It may have been intended to run opposite the early "transformation" version of the Witch scene. It also ends with The Thief captured, on an unresolved note (although the destruction of the tower of hands may explain that). We have a few brief shots from it (outside of the Calvert Cut Credits), and The Academy probably has a pencil test of the first shot. The credits cover the picture heavily during the scene.

[Dennis196492]

"but something to keep in mind is how future restoration efforts will benefit if someone else takes up the mantle"

You gotta forgive me for following up like this, but everyone that says that so far have been one of those people on youtube that endlessly reposts clips of the Reccobled Cut where they fuck with the contrast or the music and call it "RESTORATION". I get the enthusiasm as I had the privilege of seeing the Mark 4 come to life and felt similarly, but in 10 years there hasn't been much reason to update the reccobled cut besides what's being done now. We have no new HD footage, no new transfers, no breakthroughs. What you mean by someone else taking up the mantle effectively means just throwing a grenade into the whole affair and suddenly everyone makes their own dumb version of the thief, where they keep the songs, or cut a shot short, or slap on different music, and so on.

Actually, it's already like this. I've tried getting several people into watching the thief but they couldn't do it on their own because there's just so much that keeps coming, when there should only be one mainstream version. I'd prefer myself if the new Mark 4 looked better than a 6GB .mov with bad banding and heavy artifacts. ffmpeg is easy to set up and use and can produce great results, an HEVC H265 10 bit rip might be a pipe dream at this point (I don't know what Garrett's hardware is like besides an old Mac and a PC), but I'm pretty sure that for 6GB you can get much finer results on a .mp4 or .mkv H264 format if you start from a much larger master, and it wouldn't take too long even on a cheaper machine.