MOONTRAP DVD PROJECT (* unfinished project *)

Hi,

i need some help with a movie that does not almost exist on dvd…
The movie is Moontrap a sweet sci fi 80 flick with Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097911/

I’ writing almost don’t exist because as i was planning on creating a rip from my LD i discovered a french dvd.
After tracking it for month i finaly found it.
And the image is quite good, better than the ld rip i had begun to work on.
But alas there is a catch.
The dvd only has French audio.

So does anyone has an idea about how i can add the english audio track i have (ripped from ntsc LD) to the french PAL DVD?

I 've no skills when it comes to this kind of thing so if anyone is interrested i can provide a copy of the french dvd and the english track from the LD.

Thanks

Ps : sorry if its not the correct area to put this.

I'd definitely be interested in a Moontrap project.  The film's never gotten a decent uncut release, as far as I know - the R-rated US release is missing some dialogue scenes, the PG-rated UK version has had some violence and nudity cut out, and all international versions (e.g. the Japanese version that might be uncut) have hardcoded subs.  If a composite can be put together for this, I'd be all over it.  Am willing to help if need be.

What's the quality of the French DVD like?  Fullframe?  Letterboxed?  Any chance of screencaps?

Hello,

i wasnt aware thta there were different cuts of Moontrap.

I knew there would be some cuts from the uk version but didnt know that the US was missing dialogs.

From what ive seen (and i still need to  watch the french dvd and us ld properly) they seemed to be qui te the same. If i remember correctly there was something about a voice over at the end of the credit that was missing in the US or something like that.

I will post screen from the dvd when i get home (in 10/12 hours).

The dvd is fullscreen and seems to be created from a vhs master (i dont know what it's called like but the master that was used to make the vhs copies), it looks very nice.

i begun to play with the LD, i made a rip of the 1 fisrt minute and it more dark and the tones are more brownish than the dvd. I worked it a bit with procoder, played with contrast and colors and its not bad. I think will probably end up ripping it completely and experiment with it. But before that i need to get a proper capture car.

For now i'm using a device that some kind of HDD internet tv thingie we have in my country that also allow to capture video from different sources.

Trouble is that there is no quality settings, when there is no action the image is pretty good but when there is fire explosion and stuff it pixelate.

I will post pictures from dvd and from the ld rip on my next post.

i'm assuming that the PAL DVD is a bootleg, right? if so - perhaps you could upload to rapidshare/linktalk as this is essentially a PAL VHS preservation already... i've not heard of an official release.

also, i'd be interested in a straight LD>DVD preservation.  i would be surprised if the PAL DVD and NTSC LD are the same.

olbertfrog, if you'd like me to send you a DVD-R from my PAL VHS, please do let me know via PM.  I can tell you straight away that it has some of the differences you mentioned, e.g. the voiceover of Koenig's phonecall over the end credits.  Even with the edits and PAL speed-up, it seems to be a minute or two longer than a torrented version of the US cut I've got.  I'll do a side-by-side comparison if it helps?

Been doing a bit more investigating (when I should be job-and-flat-hunting - curse you, OT!) and uncovered the following:

- Schnitt Berichte has a comparison between the international and US versions - it's in German, but lists some of the extra dialogue sequences not in the R-rated cut.

- There was a comic book adaptation of Moontrap that I've just downloaded from Rapidshare, and includes an interview with Koenig and plenty of photos; would make a great DVD-ROM extra.

Hello,

Thanks to all of you for your help and insight.

I'll answer some questions first.

The french PAL dvd is not a bootleg. It has been released years ago by an obsucre dvd editor. The kind of editor that release a movie with different covers or even different title. I'm not sure its a legit release copyrights wise, but it's official in France since you could have bougth it in a store. Its now out of print.

I can't upload to rapideshare or anything similar i don't have an account nor ftp.

As for the LD preservation, i'm planning on making a rip (for know i just made a test)  but like i said i need to buy a capture card to do it properly. But i've got two problems, i'm out of money until early next week and i'm supposed to sell my ld player (dvl 909) next week too. So to make this work i need to buy the capture card this week and make the rip before the buyer come to pick up the Ld player. Since i know nothing about hardware i need to contact the friend who built my pc to advise me for a capture card. I will probably ask my girlfriend for some cash and stall the buyer a bit to make it work. No way i'm selling my LD player before i finished doing this ld rip and 2 others ^^

djsmokingjam>

Thanks for the comparaison link, i just checked and the french PAL dvd is the same as the german cut (there is timing differences but it comes from the fact that my dvd start directly with the movie, the german vhs probably has some kind of logo intro or something) but its a perfect match cut wise.

This info also means that the idea to mix the french PAL dvd with the audio from my LD is not gonna work since they are different cut. (someone could probably do it using every sources available but i don't have the time neither the skills to do so, when my source will be available, be my guest...)

If i understood correctly the PAL VHSrip DVD you have is also the German cut but with english audio, right? If it's the case i can use the english audio track from your Pal dvd and mix it with my french dvd. I would just need the extracted audio from your PAL VHSrip DVD ^^

Could you post some captures from this Pal VHSrip DVD? 

Thanks ^^

About my sources,

i don't know what is the source of the French dvd, could be a vhs master or the french LD (i tend toward the vhs master tape). Check the captures maybe you can work it out.

As for my US LD rip, for the test i made i used the "cinema" setting of the LD player. It gave nicer contrast and colors while i was watching it on my tv but on the rip it came out a bit too dark. So when i will do the real ld rip (when i get my capture card) i will leave off all of the LD setting to make sure to have a raw picture that can be worked after.

Here are the captures from both videos

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/8539/moontrapcompare.jpg

olbertfrog said:

djsmokingjam>

Thanks for the comparaison link, i just checked and the french PAL dvd is the same as the german cut (there is timing differences but it comes from the fact that my dvd start directly with the movie, the german vhs probably has some kind of logo intro or something) but its a perfect match cut wise.

This info also means that the idea to mix the french PAL dvd with the audio from my LD is not gonna work since they are different cut. (someone could probably do it using every sources available but i don't have the time neither the skills to do so, when my source will be available, be my guest...)

If i understood correctly the PAL VHSrip DVD you have is also the German cut but with english audio, right? If it's the case i can use the english audio track from your Pal dvd and mix it with my french dvd. I would just need the extracted audio from your PAL VHSrip DVD ^^

Could you post some captures from this Pal VHSrip DVD? 

Thanks ^^

About my sources,

i don't know what is the source of the French dvd, could be a vhs master or the french LD (i tend toward the vhs master tape). Check the captures maybe you can work it out.

As for my US LD rip, for the test i made i used the "cinema" setting of the LD player. It gave nicer contrast and colors while i was watching it on my tv but on the rip it came out a bit too dark. So when i will do the real ld rip (when i get my capture card) i will leave off all of the LD setting to make sure to have a raw picture that can be worked after.

Here are the captures from both videos

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/8539/moontrapcompare.jpg

Thanks a lot for posting those caps, the French DVD looks pretty good!  Certainly a lot sharper and brighter than the LD.  I'm away this week so won't be able to post screencaps from the UK VHS until either this weekend or Monday, depending on when I get home.  I'll try and make them correspond with the caps you've posted though, and then do a side-by-side comparison to see any differences to the US version.

Yes, the UK video should be the same as the French DVD, minus some edits made by Parkfield, the UK distributor, to get the film a PG certificate.  Off the top of my head, the nudity in the strip club and the gratuitous sex scene later in the film have been cut, as well as a few short cuts to the violence.  Other than that, I think you could put the audio from the UK VHS and match it to the DVD.  Out of interest, are you planning on speed/pitch correcting the PAL sources to 24fps NTSC or leaving them as they are?

Here's the Rapidshare link for downloading the one-shot comic book adaptation - the gratuitous sex scene is even more hilarious and abrupt than it is in the film!

Thanks for your futur cap and infos.

What you say about the uk video worries me a bit. if your english audio is missing bits here and here, that it's not running the same time as my uncut dvd there going to be a delay at a moment or another. I dont know how to make this work?

Have both audio and switch from one to another when it's needed to? How do i do that? Is it even possible? I'm just a noob when it comes to sound and video tweakening

I was planning to make an ntsc conversion of the dvd with procoder, don't know if it would have corrected speed/pitch.

Thanks for the link, not a bad comics. A bit too fast but nice set of extras in the end. If we get this project done it would be a nice extra.

The audio would most likely have to be a composite of the LD and the VHS - and perhaps even the DVD as well - taking the best of each.  The VHS audio is hardly going to be relatively optimal quality compared to the LD (in theory anyway), so it would be good to use the latter whenever possible.

Probably the easiest way to do it would be to put the DVD's video (either before or after you've converted it in Procoder) into an editing software timeline (e.g. Premiere, FCP if you have access to these), together with the audio for each of the three versions and then export the audio once you've picked all the different bits and put it together.

If you don't feel confident enough doing this, but were willing to post me the source files on data DVDs, I'd be more than happy to  :)

MP sent ^^

Any word on this?

The original Moontrap filmmakers are trying to raise money for a sequel:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/moontrap2/moontrap-2-graphic-novel-app?ref=live