Babylon 5 - Broadcast NTSC (4:3)? (Released) — Page 3

Seasons 2 and 4 have been added to Vudu.com and they're 4:3... I hope they put up the rest of the series soon!

If someone has access to the Vudu episodes - and can post a screenshot - I would be most grateful.

I suspect the quality is going to be comparable to the itunes episodes however (i.e. bad).

Half of Season 2, and all of Season 4 are unavailable on Laserdisc.

Here are a couple shots from Vudu:

Actually - that doesn't look too bad - what's the quality like when it's in motion ? Much macro-blocking ?

Hard for me to say. I think it looks a little worse than Netflix did, but still better than the DVDs. My guess is both services made their own encodes from the NTSC masters.

I think that I would be happy with encodings from the NTSC masters, even if they are only a little better than the DVDs, as long as I could see the show in 4:3 again.  Those screenshots look all right.

Well I just looked through the upcoming Vudu releases through January, and the rest of B5 isn't on there. Weird, why would they only have seasons 2 and 4?

Well season 3 has been added now, so I guess it's just a matter of time. Oddly, though, the episode Severed Dreams is letterboxed.

Sorry to bump a 3 month old topic, but I hope this is still on someones mind :)

I got across this topic when I was searching about the differences in versions of Babylon 5, since I have almost finished re-watching the show on DVD (region2 PAL, 1.77 aspect ratio).

I haven't seen any complete comparisons yet, but when comparing the most common sources (I guess different DVD versions and video on demand), what is the best quality version to get?

I don't know if there is a version that fixes this - but what especially bothers me in seasons 1 through 4, is that in all mixed CGI - the "real" part (usually the actors) look just downright blurry. I am not sure if they did it this way to save money or if it is an effect of any conversion/transfer between formats - but they seemed to have fixed this problem for the most scenes in season5.

Still on my mind.

I'm planning to do a straightforward preservation of the laserdiscs, which I've been slowly acquiring. 

Capture methodology has been an issue, I was experimenting with a standalone lossless recorder - but that didn't work out.

The primary issue is tying up my PC for long stretches while capturing, and capturing the digital audio track in sync with the video.

Regarding how best to watch it. NTSC DVDs are probably the best compromise available, albeit with a lot of dust and crap on the picture in the live action segments.

Various streaming services have a mixture of 4:3 and letterbox versions of the episode, which look reasonable, but tend to macroblock, and generally make a mess of the 60fps effects.

The Laserdiscs look soft compared to the streaming services, and not every single episode is available on laserdisc (see earlier in the thread). 

If someone was going to do a restoration you'd probably take the 24fps 16:9 live action from the DVDs and the 60fps 4:3 special effects from the Laserdiscs, and somehow wedge into together in a MKV container.

For now I would suggest that you enjoy watching the PAL DVDs.

Okay.

I've put a sample up on 'spleen. Would appreciate some technical feedback before I launch into the rest of the project.

Basically size is 4.7 gigs per episode with the PCM soundtrack ripped directly from the LD. I've stuck some color bars I pulled from Video essentials at the end of the episode.

DisgruntledFan said:

Okay.

I've put a sample up on 'spleen. Would appreciate some technical feedback before I launch into the rest of the project.

Basically size is 4.7 gigs per episode with the PCM soundtrack ripped directly from the LD. I've stuck some color bars I pulled from Video essentials at the end of the episode.

 

Grabbing now, I'll be sure to post feedback here as soon as I've had a chance to check it out.

Really looking forward to this! Thanks!

I've seen the sample and it looks great. You could mess around with the colours a little bit, especially the contrast could be improved drastically, but other than this I LOVE it!

Downloaded and it looks very good indeed! The colours do look a bit muted, but I've never seen the LDs so I've no idea if it's to do with the capture or the source material. There's a bit of video noise at the top of the frame which could do with being masked, if possible.

Other than that I couldn't see anything wrong with the capture or the encoding. It's B5 in the right aspect ratio and running at the right speed, so it's already a million times better than the official releases. Well done! Looking forward to the rest of this project!

It looks like the laserdiscs 7.5IRE 'setup' got left in the encode. I can take it out pretty accurately, the only issue might be that any 'blacker than black' in the image will get crushed to absolute black.

I can also mask the video noise at the top, which I suspect is the closed caption line.

Does anyone have any experience pulling closed captions from AVIs ? I've tried CC extractor, etc, and haven't got anywhere. It would be nice to have the subtitles as a SRT track.

Will probably take a crack at the rest of Season 4 shortly.

Good day, I have a just about complete set of all the B5 episodes on SVHS (Super-VHS) in storage, recorded off Direct TV on TBS in 2000 or so. Due to tide and time, I don't believe my SVHS player survives. If someone is interested, I could mail a tape or two. And if that works out, the whole collection could be sent to you at cost. The 60 or so tapes are a bit heavy!

I had blogged about my B5 collection a while back and Thor drew me to this conversation.

Lee

gadlen,

That's awesome !

I do have some NTSC S-VHS capabilities - but I am at a slight geographic disadvantage.

Anyone else on this thread have decent NTSC S-VHS gear, and capture capability ?

I have a D-VHS deck (JVC 30k), which is okay as I understand it - but it's not as good as a panasonic AG-1980.

Can you remember what make and model your S-VHS deck was ?

Oh no! After years tucked in the garage, the giant box of tapes finally succumbed to a spring cleaning a while back. Sorry but I don't have any SVHS Babylon 5 tapes any more.

Sorry.

SilverWook said:

Damn. :(

 

Have all the Laserdisc volumes been collected now?

This is the only LD that seems to be on Ebay right now...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BABYLON-5-SEASON-1-TWO-EPISODES-FACTORY-SEALED-/110314038330?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19af3aa43a

I have everything except the Season 1 disc that has Voice in the Wilderness Part 2 on it (I have two or three copies of every other episode).

I've got the Season 4 discs (all three of them), nicely ripped and packaged as MKV files. But I'm waiting to get high resolution scans of the laserdisc covers. ETA would be late next month.