Color Grading - used in "Return of the King"

[Dali Lama]

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/brand/lotr?c=us&l=en&s=gen

The use of color grading mentioned on the Dell website sounds spectacular, but isn't that simply a color shift from blue to red and from green to yellow? This can be done easily with virtualdub and avisynth filters right?

-Dali

[dimitrius]

sounds like the shampoo adverts. They always put so much twist on formula of the shampoo that it looks like it could cure cancer, but when you compare ingredient lists of different makes they all seem the same :rolleyes:

but in this case maybe not. Am I right in assuming they are not talking about dvd and vhs versions but about the original medium. And am I right in saying that the original medium contains vastly more information and most likely a tonne of footage that was cut at postproduction. If so it could very well be it took them terabytes of storage and 24/7 processing to do a simple task of colour grading.

[unmei]

but isn't that simply a color shift from blue to red and from green to yellow?

as i undersand it, they overlay or compare several pictures and get out the most vivid/natural/whatever colors, not simply shifting colors by a amount constant over the entire picture ..i don't think you can do this easily with avisynth or vd filters as you need a algorithm to determine which version or mix between wich versions is the most pleasing one (for each picture, each macroblock or each pixel even)

(but why the heck should dell servers be any better at it than other brands?)

[mf]

If you know that for special effects the 35mm film is usually digitally telecined at around 6000 pixels horizontal resolution, the task of color grading the entire movie (most special effects are only required for some scenes in the movie, so only those parts have to be digitized and digitally stored) is a huge one. Just imagine the storage and network capacity such a cluster must have had. Nice work! But it doesn't beat Star Wars which is recorded digitally at such resolutions, instead of "only" digitized after recording :rolleyes:.

[LordDethstar]

They had a long feature on color grading on one of the Lord of The Rings - The Fellowship Extended Edition DVDs, in case anyone is interested.