What happened to the original MV colors?

[mvnyc]

I think it all comes down to time and money.  It appears that neither was allocated for in transferring this series to Blu-Ray.

[Jay1984]

Looks like the dvds and bluray didn't get proper color correction applied. a shame. Same happened to the star wars blu rays, they look nothing like the original theatrical prints of the 70s and 80s.  Season 2 on blu ray has the Miami letters and border in vibrant green... 

I tried to fix it, the top is the bluray and the bottom is my fix 

 

Edited October 24, 2016 by Jay1984

[James]

Would it be possible to get a comparison on "The Rising Sun of Death" in season 4? I was watching it last night and the colours looked pretty good, the blues were showing and the episode itself was very vibrant. (DVD version not Bluray)

[ivoryjones]

4 hours ago, James said:

Would it be possible to get a comparison on "The Rising Sun of Death" in season 4? I was watching it last night and the colours looked pretty good, the blues were showing and the episode itself was very vibrant. (DVD version not Bluray)

Hey, James,

Let me know if that would be good for you. Otherwise, I can work on more screen captures. I think "The Rising Sun of Death" it's not a bad episode on DVD. Not bad, but still a little far from the original, in my opinion.

[James]

3 minutes ago, ivoryjones said:

Hey, James,

Let me know if that would be good for you. Otherwise, I can work on more screen captures. I think "The Rising Sun of Death" it's not a bad episode on DVD. Not bad, but still a little far from the original, in my opinion.

Just as I thought, the colours seem the same shades, just less contrast on the DVD. But that could be due to the VCR settings when recording? The first screenshot is way off though... But the rest seem very close.

Out of all the episode, I think this one is the closest to the original broadcast.

[ivoryjones]

For my experience, when it's about 1st generation VHS tapes (that's the case of the sources from which the pics came), you'll get something pretty close to the original broadcast, but of course with much less detail, some color instability here and there (sometimes colors might seem to be "pumping" if they're too strong). I remember paying attention to the broadcasts when recording then, and immediately watching the opening after I stopped the recording (sometimes I would watch again the entire ep after that). I was not particularly obsessed by that back then, but I just found that the white glow era logo was so beautiful that I had to see it again. I don't remember much details of course, but I do remember that back then my main frustration was never about color changes on recordings, but about their dramatic sharpness loss. Nowadays, it's exactly the opposite. Each new release of Vice looks sharper, but the color is a source of pain for me.

I also think the first image of "The Rising Sun Of Death" shows a disappointing difference, though undoubtedly this episode is one of the greatest surprises of the DVDs. I've tried to apply my Photoshop setting and I've got the following:

I think that one looked nice. But just to make a point that these adjustments won't work all the time, take a look at how bad the second picture looks when adjusted:

I'm not sure about the 3rd image below... What do you think?

Maybe the correct would be to find one particular adjustment for each episode (this one I'm using is some sort of "jack of all trades", it came even from another movie adjustment). Or, maybe, 2 or 3 particular adjustments for each episode (night scenes, day scenes etc). Something that the Universal pros probably should have done

 

[Tony D.]

You may be looking for this Topic on Blu-Ray.

[Matt5]

21 hours ago, Tony D. said:

You may be looking for this Topic on Blu-Ray.

Ha ha ! I'd say the blu ray release is quite a hot topic Tony!

[Matt5]

The new logos in the 'Images' section where are they from ?

[ivoryjones]

I've been checking my Mill Creek Blu-Rays for some weeks now. There is one thing I just don't understand (and I don't like it). Apparently, they've used nearly identical settings for groups of episodes, so the opening credits and logos will look the same on them. For instance, the openings of Heart Of Darkness, Cool Runnin' and Calderon's Return (part I) look nearly exactly the same on Blu-Ray, whereas in all previous releases there were subtle hue differences between them, so Cool Runnin' would look a little lighter than Heart of Darkness and so on.

Heart of Darkness, Cool Runnin' and Calderone's Return (part I) look all the same on Blu-Ray:

 

But look how they could be different originally

 

002-Heart of Darkness (NBC)

 

003-Cool Runnin' (NBC)

Another incredible case was Season 2... ALL openings are pretty much the same, and if you've seen one, you've seen it all...

The Prodigal Son or Whatever Works on Blu-Ray (it's just the same for both, and the same for the rest of Season 2!)

 

 

But check how they could be different originally (NBC was like that, and even the DVDs somehow kept a bit of that)

023-The Prodigal Son (NBC)

 

024-Whatever Works (NBC)

 

 

023-The Prodigal Son (DVD)

 

 

024-Whatever Works (DVD)

 

 

From 3rd Season on, also openings look a lot like each other, and unfortunately the wrong look is what you get:

Here is Child's Play (but could be many other eps):

Edited November 16, 2016 by ivoryjones

[TylerDurden389]

I love what you're doing. I can't imagine how a tv show that not only puts such an emphasis on color, but it's what people remember most about the show, could look so drab on both DVD and now Blu-ray.

[Matt5]

On 24/10/2016 at 9:30 AM, ivoryjones said:

Hey, James,

Let me know if that would be good for you. Otherwise, I can work on more screen captures. I think "The Rising Sun of Death" it's not a bad episode on DVD. Not bad, but still a little far from the original, in my opinion.

Great post ! Thankyou informative and detailed , Good to see the colors in the screen cap!

A dark nite -time driven episode directed by Leon Ichaso 

Edited November 23, 2016 by Matt5

[Matt5]

I agree just shows that however was in charge of the digital transfers could have done a much better job - shame really as for a show as unique as MV should have had a better more respectful treatment

[S0NNY]

OK, i looked through all the posts regarding the colors, and let me tell you what i think. I say that that all the episodes were retouched for DVDs and Rays. They probably used automatic colorizing - retouching, hence every frame was retouched/edited for new sharpness, depth, lightness, color saturation etc.  That is why the colors are different, they applied new color settings for these times. I bet they were thinking they had to "refresh" the episodes before releasing cos in their mind they were thinking that if they didn't retouch it fans would  buy an outdated color setting in episodes.  

Now regarding intro titles, to me it is obvious that "Miami Vice" logo on each episode intro is digitally replaced with newly redrawn logos and colors.   

[Dadrian]

Has anyone mentioned/noticed how the Laserdiscs stand up in this department? (Pilot and Prodigal, right?)

[James]

44 minutes ago, Dadrian said:

Has anyone mentioned/noticed how the Laserdiscs stand up in this department? (Pilot and Prodigal, right?)

I wasn't even aware that there were any Miami Vice releases on Laserdisc. Does anybody here have one?

[Dadrian]

I see them on eBay from time to time, but I don't have a Laserdisc player. Laserdiscs had superior sound to DVDs because less compression was required, so that would be great for concerts, or TV shows with great music.  

[ivoryjones]

I've been working on this since my Blu-Ray set came and I think I've stepped into a way to have some wider control over colors during the Blu-Rays playback. I don't think I can really make the Blu-Rays to look exactly like the old NBCs (getting the original vivid/darker colors together with a good clean digital transfer has been my dream for years and years), but I do think it's possible to make them look dramatically closer to the old sources.

To do this, one needs a BD-ROM and a computer in which there'll be some sort of control panel graphics menu with independent settings of Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow. There's no big thing about it, I have an ordinary machine. I changed settings and saved particular presets for particular eps and/or seasons.

Here are some images (always the original first, then the color change making it look somewhat like Miami Vice looked originally)

No Exit

 

Little Miss Dangerous (not a big change at all, but "VICE" color gets correction)

Duty and Honor (I think this is the most difficult episode of all! But now there's finally some sort of blue on the sea, the 3rd Season logo is not snooker green/purple anymore, and the dark scene at the end gets darker and with a blueish touch that was more or less like it looked in the '80s).

 

Child's Play

 

Again, there's nothing big about my laptop, and I am an amateur on this. My machine has a motherboard with an onboard Intel graphics that offers Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow independent control (it's not even a game graphics card not anything, it's just an onboard card...). I just worked empirically on it and had different settings for different eps or seasons. I'm sure there are many brands of machines from the last 5 years (or more) that will do that. The point here is trying to get more than a single "hue" control (normally just what one gets with a DVD/BD player and a TV) and finding a way to have separate control over different colors.

Edited December 21, 2016 by ivoryjones

[James]

It does look better, more natural. And it eliminates that grey faded film look. Nice work pal. 

[ivoryjones]

If there's any future on this kind of "workaround", the nice thing is that, at least theoretically, it's possible to exchange color settings presets among people who have Intel Graphics Card and a BD Rom to play the discs. I think it could work out even if the cards were not exactly the same, maybe a generation or two apart.

Best thing it would be if there were a popular PC/MAC Blu-Ray player software that would have comparable flexibility in terms of color control. If we ever find it, many members here could even work in cooperation, exchanging settings, learning from each other, and then this community as a whole could get nearer to the original look of Vice, keeping the decent quality of the Blu-Rays.

The issue is that, in order to reach that, a popular software player would have to show promising results in this area, but players like VLC Media Player and PowerDVD, as far as I know, won't be enough (maybe I'm missing some important function on them). I've tried everything on softs like those and my results were ridiculous... Whenever I got a color right, the other colors would look wrong... I could only get somewhere with the Intel Control Panel, as it offered functions like brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow -- all independent from each other. Having only a "hue" control (like most the TVs and players like VLC and PowerDVD) just won't do the trick...

I can't believe there's not a software that can do that during playback... I stepped into this kind of solution by accident, using a non professional, onboard graphics card, and all of a sudden Miami Vice and a couple of my favorite movies that sucked in digital just looked nice again. So there must be a software that does the trick during playback...

 

Edited December 25, 2016 by ivoryjones

[Noggie]

My tv had those type of color controls. I wonder if that will work. 

[Matt5]

4 hours ago, Noggie said:

My tv had those type of color controls. I wonder if that will work. 

I also wonder?

[Noggie]

I'll give it a look. I've adjusted most of the settings but avoided those color ones. It's a Vizio. 

[ivoryjones]

1 hour ago, Noggie said:

I'll give it a look. I've adjusted most of the settings but avoided those color ones. It's a Vizio. 

Let us know if you had any luck on this, Noogie. I happen to have tried out a Samsung TV that had similar (not equal) controls like the ones my Laptop has. Somehow the ones on the Samsung TV didn't change image as much as the ones from the onboard graphics card of the Laptop. They just didn't change the image as much as it was needed. As a matter of fact, even the onboard graphics card would show even better results if its controls could be tweaked a little more than the maximum allowed...

[Matt5]

15 hours ago, ivoryjones said:

Let us know if you had any luck on this, Noogie. I happen to have tried out a Samsung TV that had similar (not equal) controls like the ones my Laptop has. Somehow the ones on the Samsung TV didn't change image as much as the ones from the onboard graphics card of the Laptop. They just didn't change the image as much as it was needed. As a matter of fact, even the onboard graphics card would show even better results if its controls could be tweaked a little more than the maximum allowed...

Yes I would also like to know if Noogie had any luck on this