Goldy
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Post by Goldy on Jun 9, 2022 15:12:46 GMT
QPL has released a remastered video of "A Kind of Magic" today (and in 50fps! + no AI upscaling), probably their best (and only original Queen) release this year so far. (judging by the outro, I think there are going to be more)
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JackG
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Post by JackG on Jun 9, 2022 15:29:45 GMT
Beat me to it!
That outro gives me hope for new remastered videos in 4:3, maybe it's correlated to The Miracle boxset?
Also the guy who remastered it has an Instagram, maybe contact him about upcoming videos?
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Golden Salmon
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Post by Golden Salmon on Jun 9, 2022 16:06:52 GMT
Huh? Random remaster.
Queen Remastered 2022... GVH3-like release incoming?
What if QPL is actually gearing up for Queen I's 50th anniversary? Nah...
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Lord Fickle
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Post by Lord Fickle on Jun 9, 2022 16:48:17 GMT
Does seem a bit random. Can't really see much difference myself, but then I'm not much of a video buff.
Now give us the songs from the Highlander soundtrack with decent audio...
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dave76
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Post by dave76 on Jun 9, 2022 18:22:07 GMT
To be honest, it's not that much better, just a tad but that's it. But yes, the text at the end is maybe a hint that more is on the way. Greg Brooks mentioned that by saying that there's more coming. But i hope their video's get the proper treatment like Bohemian Rhapsody and the transfer we got for Don't Stop Me Now. At least now A Kind Of Magic has the right framerate instead of that butchering job for Greatest Video Hits 2.
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boffy
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Post by boffy on Jun 9, 2022 18:34:20 GMT
It worries me that it's remastered “from the original 1-inch / 2-inch videotape masters”. Not from film, even though it was clearly shot on film. The 1997 DVD coming from videotape masters is perfectly understandable, it was a straight port of the existing laserdisc/VHS master. Using the same masters in 2003 for GVH2 felt like laziness. In 2022, I've got to think it takes more time and effort to get old 1-inch/2-inch professional video tapes transferred than 35mm film. So I guess this means the original film elements for at least this video are lost or damaged? This doesn't bode well for the Blu-ray of promos on the (rumoured? confirmed?) Miracle box set. One interesting thing we've gained on this version is slightly more image at the top and/or bottom of each shot. All previous versions have been letterboxed to about a 14:9 aspect ratio. This one is in 4:3, and it seems to be all opened up rather than cropped further. Perhaps James Wong or the band members chose this to avoid zooming in on this standard-def analogue video? Bizzarely, it seems to have been upscaled and uploaded as interlaced 50hz/50fps video, even though the underlying image, being from film, is progressive. This means all motion of people, cameras, etc. is still happening at 25fps (they thankfully haven't tried to pointlessly interpolate the motion). However each frame is based on a single odd or even interlaced field, so it judders up and down slightly. I can't see this in motion, but it's more noticeable if you step through frame by frame. |
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Chinwonder2
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Post by Chinwonder2 on Jun 9, 2022 18:37:17 GMT
Another reason for just using the original 2" final edit instead of the original film reels is likely due to the amount of difficulty re-editing all the special effects. So I'm inclined to let this one slide but most of the other videos should be re-edited from the film reels. Like the Freddie solo videos, as some only had small bits of editing.
-Chin
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DasTarD
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Post by DasTarD on Jun 9, 2022 20:49:43 GMT
Maybe I do not understand, but the upload for this video is from 2008. Did they re-upload the video over the old one?
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Goldy
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Post by Goldy on Jun 9, 2022 20:51:20 GMT
It's worries me that it's remastered “from the original 1-inch / 2-inch videotape masters”. Not from film, even though it was clearly shot on film. The 1997 DVD coming from videotape masters is perfectly understandable, it was a straight port of the existing laserdisc/VHS master. Using the same masters in 2003 for GVH2 felt like laziness. In 2022, I've got to think it takes more time and effort to get old 1-inch/2-inch professional video tapes transferred than 35mm film. So I guess this means the original film elements for at least this video are lost or damaged? This doesn't bode well for the Blu-ray of promos on the (rumoured? confirmed?) Miracle box set. One interesting thing we've gained on this version is slightly more image at the top and/or bottom of each shot. All previous versions have been letterboxed to about a 14:9 aspect ratio. This one is in 4:3, and it seems to be all opened up rather than cropped further. Perhaps James Wong or the band members chose this to avoid zooming in on this standard-def analogue video? Bizzarely, it seems to have been upscaled and uploaded as interlaced 50hz/50fps video, even though the underlying image, being from film, is progressive. This means all motion of people, cameras, etc. is still happening at 25fps (they thankfully haven't tried to pointlessly interpolate the motion). However each frame is based on a single odd or even interlaced field, so it judders up and down slightly. I can't see this in motion, but it's more noticeable if you step through frame by frame. Personally, with the amount of special effects done here, a re-edit from film would've been too far from the original video, though I do hope for film transfers for videos that are just jump cuts (like The Miracle videos). Maybe I do not understand, but the upload for this video is from 2008. Did they re-upload the video over the old one? Yeah, YouTube lets labels upload remastered videos over the old ones while keeping the video metadata. |
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inuliger
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Post by inuliger on Jun 10, 2022 0:02:48 GMT
Even if they have the original film reels from the video shoot itself, the issue potentially preventing a true high definition could be that they don’t have the animation/effects layers available separately. That’s just my guess anyway.
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emrabt
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Post by emrabt on Jun 10, 2022 13:16:26 GMT
Even if they have the original film reels from the video shoot itself, the issue potentially preventing a true high definition could be that they don’t have the animation/effects layers available separately. That’s just my guess anyway. That's a good guess, but I think they do have the animation layer, It's used a few times in The Show Must go on montage video, they superimpose it all over the place here. My guess is that originally the film was edited into the music video, then the animation was superimposed over it on to tape, so the earliest generation of the fully complete Music video is tape. That's what happened with "The Next Generation" and other 90's Star Treks; shot on film, but it was far easier and cheaper to do optical effects work on tape, so when it came time to remaster it they had to recompose all the elements from scratch, expensive and time consuming. Which was worth doing for The Next Generation, but not for "Deep Space 9" or "Voyager", presumably it's the same here, it's not deemed cost effective for "it's a kind of Magic". |
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highlander
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Post by highlander on Jun 10, 2022 14:55:46 GMT
The second good news about Queen for this year!
The new remastered version looks really good despite not being in true HD. A very good improvement over the old version we had in the past and it's not cropped!!!
Cheers Queenproductions!
(Of course it would have been nicer to have even the animation in proper HD using the original as a reference but it might be a bit too much to ask for.)
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baronlutenvank
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Post by baronlutenvank on Jun 10, 2022 15:15:24 GMT
I won't lie, this remaster's a bit of a breath of fresh air. It's not trying to look like it was filmed yesterday, which is the 1st thing I noticed. The fact that this is in 4:3 is also a surprise. Never thought they'd do that to be honest. God, I hope this is a start of something here
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boffy
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Post by boffy on Jun 10, 2022 18:43:53 GMT
I don't think proof is needed at this point that the reason for using the analogue tape master was to avoid re-compositing the effects. But I find it reassuring to have it, because that gives me hope that, as Chin suggested, the simpler videos might still get remasters from fresh film scans. So here you can see that the composites in the remaster are identical, down to a couple of errors I don't think I'd noticed before stepping through frame by frame. Going through the two versions side by side also highlights just how much clearer the new master is. One of the full-screen flashes over John's first transformation is actually what looks like a card identifying the shot number: 1997 Greatest Flix II DVD  2022 YouTube  And on this shot, the "hole" in the animation to let Freddie show through doesn't match up well with his movements. I think it was overlaid out-of-sync with the live-action footage. 1997 Greatest Flix II DVD  2022 YouTube  |
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highlander
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Post by highlander on Jun 10, 2022 18:55:50 GMT
In the description of the new restored video it says: "Click here to buy the DVD at the Official Queen Store" but no new DVD listed there yet.
Could this be an indicator of a DVD / Blu-Ray set with all music videos / promo films in restored quality coming?!
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velizar
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Post by velizar on Jun 10, 2022 19:11:16 GMT
In the description of the new restored video it says: "Click here to buy the DVD at the Official Queen Store" but no new DVD listed there yet. Could this be an indicator of a DVD / Blu-Ray set with all music videos / promo films in restored quality coming?! One big no. All the videos have that "click here to buy the DVD" written in the descriptions since ages, and it refers to the Greatest Video Hits compilations from when they were still in print. |
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dysan
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Post by dysan on Jun 10, 2022 20:43:47 GMT
I love this video so much. That said, might have been nice to fix those couple of those sped up Brian shots. The concept and execution is faultless, but those 2 shots are jarring.
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Post by pimderks on Jun 10, 2022 21:25:04 GMT
I love this video so much. That said, might have been nice to fix those couple of those sped up Brian shots. The concept and execution is faultless, but those 2 shots are jarring. What about Roger appearing "transformed" in the John transformation shot before RT's actually transformed? |
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georg
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Post by georg on Jun 10, 2022 21:39:14 GMT
I love this video so much. That said, might have been nice to fix those couple of those sped up Brian shots. The concept and execution is faultless, but those 2 shots are jarring. What about Roger appearing "transformed" in the John transformation shot before RT's actually transformed? Argh, that’s ALWAYS bothered me, ever since I got Classic Queen on VHS 30 years ago. |
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jw224
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Post by jw224 on Jun 11, 2022 11:45:39 GMT
Hopefully they actually go to the effort required to properly remaster all the videos at some point. I don't really see not wanting to put the effort into re-doing the effects as a valid reason for not using the highest quality material they have.
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Dimitris
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Post by Dimitris on Jun 11, 2022 13:17:10 GMT
There was an auction with the designs of AKOM, I don't remember if it was album's or video.
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cmsdrums
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Post by cmsdrums on Jun 11, 2022 14:11:35 GMT
I had assumed that they had all the original animation cells, computer graphics etc because they are being used extensively in the current live show, but they could have just repeated everything from scratch.
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Post by deathtoming on Jun 11, 2022 17:45:42 GMT
I had assumed that they had all the original animation cells, computer graphics etc because they are being used extensively in the current live show, but they could have just repeated everything from scratch. I'm not sure how much of the original materials they have, because "nine cels, ten black and white photographs and thirty-four animation drawings in pencil/coloured pencil" for the A Kind of Magic music video were auctioned off in 2015. Also, Twitter user @nosauceatall says he has about 200 of these original cels, and he posted a few. I've included one of his pictures.   |
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Dimitris
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Post by Dimitris on Jun 11, 2022 18:00:43 GMT
I had assumed that they had all the original animation cells, computer graphics etc because they are being used extensively in the current live show, but they could have just repeated everything from scratch. I'm not sure how much of the original materials they have, because "nine cels, ten black and white photographs and thirty-four animation drawings in pencil/coloured pencil" for the A Kind of Magic music video were auctioned off in 2015. Also, Twitter user @nosauceatall says he has about 200 of these original cels, and he posted a few. I've included one of his pictures. That auction I was reffering, thanks for finding. |
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Post by simonferocious on Jun 12, 2022 2:57:41 GMT
I had assumed that they had all the original animation cells, computer graphics etc because they are being used extensively in the current live show, but they could have just repeated everything from scratch. in classic animation, all the layers of drawings are merged when transferring the animation frame-by-frame to film, so i'm sure they're not using the original cels but the film transfer of the cels. |
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boffy
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I have a bad habit of over-explaining things. That is to say, I give redundant detail in an excessiv
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Post by boffy on Jun 12, 2022 10:31:57 GMT
I had assumed that they had all the original animation cells, computer graphics etc because they are being used extensively in the current live show, but they could have just repeated everything from scratch. The versions in the current show could presumably be based on either a scan of the animation film elements or even the raw 80s video transfer of them. Twitter user @nosauceatall says he has about 200 of these original cels, and he posted a few. I've included one of his pictures. It looks like someone paired the wrong animation cel with this background.  Because this is the same shot from the video. |
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Post by peacelovingguy on Jun 12, 2022 11:35:11 GMT
Huh? Random remaster. Queen Remastered 2022... GVH3-like release incoming? What if QPL is actually gearing up for Queen I's 50th anniversary? Nah... It could be that they’ve done it because of the Coke Studio campaign currently out that has a gazillion covers of A Kind of Magic. |
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Post by potpotmixes on Jun 12, 2022 14:09:55 GMT
Huh? Random remaster. Queen Remastered 2022... GVH3-like release incoming? What if QPL is actually gearing up for Queen I's 50th anniversary? Nah... It could be that they’ve done it because of the Coke Studio campaign currently out that has a gazillion covers of A Kind of Magic. Was thinking of the same thing, though the end screen is making me second guess lol |
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emrabt
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Post by emrabt on Jun 14, 2022 8:24:08 GMT
You get that all the time with cels, when I've bought in bulk before I normally get a folder, the cels are stored with blank paper in between them to protect them and the sketches (Or in this case the photo's of the frames) are separate, in the same folder but not paired with the cel they correspond to.
You have to sort through and pair them yourself.
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Post by scapp70 on Jun 14, 2022 18:30:48 GMT
Remastered 2022!?!
Listen, I would definitely buy a UHD Blu-ray or even if they just would release it digitally for sale. I would love to have all of their promos in my library with this quality, and with Dolby Atmos to boot one could only hope.
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