@ Video Collector - I'm looking forward to this being finish as well and will be posting it on my internal organ, LOL ;)
@ Andrea - With the amount of sync work on my "winnie the pooh" project, I have gotten pretty good at doing that, especially since I can match it by waveform using Audacity, so syncing the audio for this would not be an issue and if you would like me to include those extra tracks I would be happy to do so if you would be willing to share them with me for this project.
@kk650 - I wish there was a new higher quality mpeg transport stream of this version but, alas, it's sourced from the 1080i Sky-HD broadcast rip that has been floating around for a while and even though it's at a lower bitrate, it's a very decent source as it's encoded using the AVC codec and MediaInfo for it is (ONLY posting video section here):
Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 47mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 6 411 Kbps
Maximum bit rate : 40.0 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 50.000 fps
Original frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.062
Stream size : 4.81 GiB (89%)
Language : English
Color primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177
For now, it's the best source available for this project, as ALL 1080i copies floating around, regardless of languages attached (as I've found a German edition that has dead link already, a French version on some private tracker site name t411.me where it's hard to build up ratio as a new user so I haven't been able to download this to include the audio from it, the Russian version which I'm sourcing the video from, and a Polish version on a polish torrent site but it has no seeds) and their video is all remuxed from that original SKY-HD broadcast rip. Then I looked at all 720p HDTV copies and they are ALL sourced from the 1080i. So, for now, that is the ONLY source in HD.
The BIGGEST problem with that 1080i source, aside from some compression artifacts that overall are actually not that often or that bad, is the nearly complete lack of grain (which is why I'm applying real 35mm film grain). Not saying that it's the infamous wax-o-vision that we see in "remastered" blurays due to too much DNR, it's just that the bitrate was too low to retain the grain. However, the bitrate was high enough to capture all of the film artecfacts such as dirty, occasional scratches on some frames, etc. (which are also visible, but barely, on the R2/R3(the Korean release)/Brazilian R4/ DVDs so I know that the HDTV broadcast was sourced from the same transfer)
I realize that this project can easily end up having a version 2.0, the moment a new higher quality source becomes available, but ATM this will be the best HD edition of the movie, as anyone that has the DVD edition mentioned above or the NTSC custom DVD sourced from the R2 release can watch the theatrical release now but only in SD. I just wanted a proper looking HD source and am working with what's available :o)
The encode has just under 11 more hours to completion and I will be posting source/my edit screenshot comparisons shortly after...