Is there a big difference between this and the PWNGE? Love the fact that these have a higher quality transfer of the 93 audio straight from the LD instead of the crappy GOUT audio.

"crappy gout audio"! Digital audio versus digital audio. What did you want? A PCM track? The Laserdiscs had a 16 bit 44.1 kHz soundtrack. D-3 Tape (which is in all likeliness the probable format of the masters) holds audio 16 to 20bit at 48kHz. DVD Video DD standard is 48kHz. You tell me which is the "crappy" audio. "But it's a Dolby Prologic track" - that doesn't matter. Dolby Prologic was designed on and for analogue audio, compression doesn't matter.

Look at it this way: 1. DD AC3 Track @ 192kbps, 2. PCM @ 1.5Mbps.

That's 1.7Mbps. The maximum DVD bitrate is 9.8 Mb/s, therefore your new maximum video bitrate is 7.9Mbps. Yes, strictly speaking it should be 8.1 on a purely mathematical basis, but this is the real world. On the other hand no PCM audio and you can safely set the video's maximum bitrate to 9.4Mbps.

I just thought it had been watered down for the official release instead of going from the masters.

AFAIK they're both the same thing, essentially.

The audio on the GOUT DVDs does sound more compressed and less dynamic than the audio on the LDs- most people seem to be in agreement on that. However, the custom DVDs made from the GOUT have taken care of that problem, fortunately.

captainsolo said:

Is there a big difference between this and the PWNGE? Love the fact that these have a higher quality transfer of the 93 audio straight from the LD instead of the crappy GOUT audio.

dj's GOUT-sourced Star Wars
Audio 1: '93 mix DD 2.0s @ 384kbps (from LD PCM)
Audio 2: '93 mix upmixed to DD 5.1 @ 448kbps (from LD PCM)
Audio 3: '77 mono mix DD 1.0 @ 96kbps (from Belbucus restoration)
Average video bitrate: 6500kbps
Total disc size inc. menus, etc: 6.43GB

Lucasfilm Pwnage Edition
Audio 1: '93 mix DD 2.0s @ 192kbps (from LD PCM)
Audio 2: '77 mono mix DD 1.0 @ 96kbps (from Belbucus restoration)
Audio 3: '77 Dolby Stereo mix DD 2.0s @ 192kbps (from LD analogue cap)
Average video bitrate: 4500kbps
Total disc size inc. menus, etc: 4.37GB

As you can see from the specs above, both mine and dj's discs have audio track 1 sourced from the LD PCM.

I used 192kbps as it is Dolby's suggested data rate for 2-channel AC3. I suspect that most people would not be able to tell the difference between the compressed AC3 and the uncompressed PCM in an ABX session, but those with "golden ears" and expensive hi-fi's might fare better with dj's 384kbps.

Dynamic range compression (DRC) is a separate issue from audio data compression. I was under the impression that the GOUT audio was from the same source as the DC laserdiscs, so it's surprising to see reports of DRC in the GOUT audio.

Sorry if this sounds obvious, but are you sure that DRC is disabled in your Dolby Digital decoder?

Another potential source of DRC is the DD encoding process itself. Dolby licensed encoders generally include pre-processing filters that are turned on by default, intended to make the audio data more compressible. I have heard that these filters can reduce the dynamic range of the input signal, although this is only secondhand, I have no hard evidence to support this. TBH I doubt that this is the cause of the DRC that hairy_hen noticed on TESB - but to be safe, I turned all these filters off when I encoded the audio for Pwnage.

Isn't GOUT's audio track 192k ?
I'm struggling to remember why you rolled your own, if it's believed to be from the same source. Was it something to do with DialNorm matching?

I really love your Pwnage edition Moth3r, I would like to apply your script to Empire. (will remove the subtitle section in it of course) If I do, do you know if that would introduce any new undesired artifacts to the picture as it is not written for it? or will it work on it at all?

Darth Mallwalker said:

Isn't GOUT's audio track 192k ?
I'm struggling to remember why you rolled your own, if it's believed to be from the same source. Was it something to do with DialNorm matching?

Yes, most 2-channel AC3 tracks on commercial DVDs are 192kbps.

The reason I did my own encode from the LD PCM was alluded to above; there were some reports that the GOUT audio was lacking in dynamic range compared to the LD, so I decided to do my own encode with certain post-processing options (e.g. DC offset filter) disabled.

msycamore said:

I really love your Pwnage edition Moth3r, I would like to apply your script to Empire. (will remove the subtitle section in it of course) If I do, do you know if that would introduce any new undesired artifacts to the picture as it is not written for it? or will it work on it at all?

I've just had a look at the script I used (here). Eedi2() caused artefacts in the Leia cell interrogation so I had to add in a special line to catch that. You will need to check carefully that there aren't any similar cases on Empire. Eedi2() has since been superseded by nnedi2(), so it might be worth updating the script to use the newer filter. You should also check that the colour saturation and hue tweaks and the Y-curve adjustment are appropriate.

Moth3r said:

I've just had a look at the script I used (here). Eedi2() caused artefacts in the Leia cell interrogation so I had to add in a special line to catch that. You will need to check carefully that there aren't any similar cases on Empire. Eedi2() has since been superseded by nnedi2(), so it might be worth updating the script to use the newer filter. You should also check that the colour saturation and hue tweaks and the Y-curve adjustment are appropriate.

Yeah I noticed that line of the script but didn't know that the filter plugin had been updated so thanks for answering my question. I liked your subtle approach to the grain better vs. g-force's script which is also great, I will try it out. Thanks.

Got copies of DJ's GOUTs from Mielr and I'm very impressed. :) Everything is top notch. (the yellow subtitles are a bit odd, though)

And your subtitle track being red was weird too :p.  But yeah, everything about your set is near perfect.

So the only difference in V1 and V2 of ANH is the positioning of the Greedo subtitles and the location of the layer break? Same script used for the video each time?

Wasn't there also a magic tree fix* or whatever it was called?  The steadying of the image when Luke is in the cave, right after he defeats pseudo-Vader?

*Tech terms aren't my strong point

I believe there was, but the "magic tree" scene occurs in TESB.

Oh, I'm supposed to read your entire post?

*facepalm*

dark_jedi said:
Just wanted to let anyone know who's interested that I am doing a version 3 of all 3 films, and want to know what audio files people would be interested in having included.

I am ditching the subs because I have no idea why they turned red on me, or how to change them back to what they are supposed to be, so ditching subs altogether.

 

I'm actually thrilled with what you did with the audio on the current versions- but fixing the music cues on Empire would be great.

What other changes are you considering? (besides making the yellow subs white?) Will you be using a newer version of G-force's script?

Funny this news comes...what, a week?...after I got V2 from Mielr. Haha. You know we're both gonna want V3, of course. :p

...of course! ;-)

I am ditching the subs because I have no idea why they turned red on me, or how to change them back to what they are supposed to be, so ditching subs altogether.

 

Actually that is an easy fix ifoedit.. I forget the exact details, but I did it myself I believe back then.