What happened to the March footage from Rainbow?

Does anybody here have a slightest idea what has happened to the March footage? I am very shocked to see how it looks. I mean the colours are all red-shifted and there is less detail than I remember from the unofficial versions...

Was it again a deliberate decision like the previous releases? Yes, I'm talking about Montreal 81. It doesn't look intentional, it looks like fading.

But is it really caused by fading? I mean of course this is clearly a transfer of a film print, so this COULD be that they simply scanned a red faded print, but why did they do it?

I mean, we KNOW that EXCELLENT looking prints DO EXIST. We KNOW that, because we have seen various bits and pieces over the years in various documentaries produced by both BBC and Channel 4. Even the Swedish TV copy looks MUCH better dammit :) If QPL or Queen Films or Universal or whoever had just a badly faded print, why didn't they use one of the good looking prints?

Anybody has an idea? Sikke? Pablo? Gary? Greg? Anybody?

Don't get me wrong - I LOVE the deluxe box, and I'm happy that after many, many years I have a reason to be excited about a Queen product, but I'd really like to know why does an official release of the March show look worse than the unofficial copies sourced from TV recordings

Now i´m curious about the quality of march rainbow! Somebody can post a screenshot, please?

I was thinking exactly the same.

I was also wondering how they know that 38 mins of extra footage exists? Do you think they've gone to the TV production company (or whoever) who own the original film, then refused to pay the amount they were asking but in the meantime discovered the TV company have 48 mins of footage in their archive?

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case and they are now hunting down a lower gen copy they can hopefully get their hands on for free.

Here are a couple of screens. This is the DVD, but I doubt the Blu-ray looks any better.

I rather like the red tint myself.

Here are some screenshots from the Blu-ray version.

Can someone post a snapshot from the moment where Freddie sings "So watch out"? Then we can compare it to the version shown here at 8:19:

Here you go.

Here's a snapshot of Freddie singing "out".

I'm always late to the party. :-(

It looks like the footage is not remastered, they didn't bother for only two songs. If you ask me, the March footage will see the light of day in the future, in some re-release of Rainbow, is a good business movement, everybody will buy again Rianbow if we could see the March show, and then, probably, the quality of the footage will be crystal clear.

Saying that, put the March show on CD was an ACE movement by Queen Productions, this product will sell equally only with the November show, but the March gig was a great gift for the fans.

[QUOTE] [b]Doga wrote:[/b]

It looks like the footage is not remastered, they didn't bother for only two songs. If you ask me, the March footage will see the light of day in the future, in some re-release of Rainbow, is a good business movement, everybody will buy again Rianbow if we could see the March show, and then, probably, the quality of the footage will be crystal clear.[/QUOTE]

I don't think so. It can't be made to look much better unless they have a better source to work with. There's only so much they can do, correct the colours, remove grain etc. I do think that they added noise reduction to this March footage though since it looks smooth.
If you want to see non-remastered film footage check WATC studio session video from DOOL documentary Blu-Ray, it has film dirt and scratches but there is a lot of detail in it whereas in this March footage there's hardly much detail.

Hope I make sense. Writing from a phone so please excuse me :)

^ Can you remaster that like you did with other official videos, and upload it to RuTracker or The Pirate Bay?

In the end of the part of march show, it explains that the original march show is 38 minutes that was originally recorded