It accidentally happens that I have both versions of "The Arrival" on laserdisc (the normal edition and the special edition boxset, STILL SEALED!) AND a very good choice of laserdisc players - between them, again accidentally, the Pioneer HLD-X9...

Maybe a new preservation project is "arrived"? ;)

Elmo Oxygen said:

Are you still up to do this preservation? If not, send it to me and I'll do it. I have an LD player, capturing hardware, and menu design capabilities.

Now I'm really involved into my SW projects!

As soon as they will be released - hope before the end of this month - I could think about it; I have good LD players, good capture card, but poor menu design capabilities - truth is that my free time is all devoted to SW project, and I have no time to dedicate to/I'm too lazy to learn how to make good DVD/AVCHD/BD menus... (^^,)

May you help me with the SW menus?

What about using MultiAVCHD for menus? It could author not only AVCHD, but BD and DVD too!

I'm thinking about making also a video preservation of "The Arrival" using the laserdisc(s) as source... as the DVD was non anamorphic, and the BD video quality was - as I read in several reviews - "not so good", to put it mildly...

For sure, the laserdisc image is not high definition, but, as I have just finished the video for OUT 2.0, I could say that sometimes "high definition ≠ high quality"...

I checked my laserdisc collection, and discovered that, apart the Special Edition, I have TWO copies of the NTSC widescreen edition of "The Arrival"... three is the magic number, when median is used to get a cleaner copy of a laserdisc (and any other analog video) capture; probably, the quality will be a little better than the DVD and BD, if I will use the Pioneer HLD-X9 as a laserdisc player; and, if it will be not true, at least the video quality will be on par with the extra features, in particular the alternative ending.

And, because until now I used only PAL sources for my restoration projects, it's time to understand how to make a proper inverse telecine process!

With my OUT and SET projects, I decided to release them as AVCHD (on DVD9) because the AVC (H.264) codec is better than MPEG2 at the same bitrate, and because with AVCHD format I could release a movie at 23.976fps instead of 29.97fps of NTSC DVD with its inherent problems.

The downside is that I have to upscale the image from SD to 720p, but the result is not that bad; consider, for example, that the vertical chroma resolution of NTSC 2.35:1 laserdisc is 272 lines, exactly the same of a 1280x720 2.35:1 AVCHD/BD... and, I must add, all the NTSC laserdisc with AR > 1.77:1 have the same vertical chroma resolution of a 720p movie with the same aspect ratio.

At the end, maybe an AVCHD of the movie on a DVD9 and an AVCHD of the extras on a DVD5 will be the best solution, and/or a BD25 with both movie and extras, with higher bitrate.

I must finish SW:ANH OUT 2.0 (almost ready) and SET 1.0 (in advanced progress) first, but if someone likes my OUT project (picture wise) AND is interested in "The Arrival" restoration, please post your comments here; if there is enough interest also in the laserdisc capture of the movie, let me know...

Last IMPORTANT thing: a french PAL laserdisc of "The Arrival" exists; if someone here has it, it could be possible to capture its french soundtrack and add it to the laserdisc restoration project.

About subtitles: I didn't think about them... could you provide them, if they are on the BD and/or DVD? I could try to extract them from the laserdisc CC, but until now I have not find a working software that could take them from the captured video and save as text.

For the extra and commentary subtitles: my english is good, but I think I'll be not able to transcribe an entire commentary and extra features... here, an external help MUST BE provided!

If I'll release a BD25, I think to add the original PCM soudtrack (just converted from 44.1KHz to 48KHz); obviously, I will add the AC3 soundtrack too. For the commentary, maybe 448kbps DTS is not needed, as a lower bitrate will be enough, but I'm open to every suggestion.

About video bitrate, I usually use 7000 or 8000kbps for AVCHD, with pretty good results; for BD, I think 15000kbps will be enough for the movie and the alternative ending, less for the extras.