"This 'final cut' of the film is effectively a reconstruction carried out by director Corrado Farina in an effort to return it as closely to his original edit as possible, including the re-insertion of a couple of cut scenes and censored shots. The previously available version had been recut by the producers behind Farina's back, a re-edit that that was taken through to the negative cut, the final stage of an edit that once carried out is – or at least used to be – impossible to reverse, as the cement join made on each edit (it's a technique known as A/B roll negative cutting if you want to look it up) would involve destroying the frame on which the join was made. Thus to bring the film to anything close to his original vision, Farina has had to draw on what looks like either a slash print (a low quality print made from the negative that editors would use to cut the film in pre-digital days) or a low band video transfer for the missing material. In his interview in the extra features, Farina admits that some shots were impossible to re-insert because of these very problems.
As a result there are some sudden and drastic shifts of quality here and there, but given the circumstances this is something we should accept as inevitable and be grateful that we can see at all. The sequences in question are short, sometimes only a small part of a single shot, and some aren't as bad as you might expect. Certainly overall the quality of the picture is rather good. Framed 1.78:1, anamorphically enhanced and slightly windowboxed, its contrast and sharpness are sound, though the colour has lost some of its punch with the passing of time. There are also some occasional but very noticeable motion glitches on panning shots. The rescued material stands out a mile, having generally weaker colour and less accurate contrast and sometimes accompanied by a blizzard of dust and dirt, but such is the price we have to pay and as I said before, they don't last long. Unusually for Shameless, there is no front-of-film warning of this." (Dvd Outsider)
Seems the motion glitches are caused by missing frames?
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