.: LeeThorogood's PAL LaserDisc Preservation Project :. - '97 SE Finished '95 THX Finished - '97 SE Uploaded '95 THX Uploaded to the newsgroup — Page 15

Gungankiller said:

I'm new here, so Hello everybody! I need help. Could someone send me a PM telling me where to find LeeThorogood's PAL LaserDisc '97 SE? Thanks in advance!

Moth3r said:
hairy_hen's post about pitch correction vs. simple speedup made me wonder. I discovered that the 1995 UK VHS releases had pitch-corrected audio. The "coffret" laserdisc set has English audio; is this the same corrected audio track in digital form?

I can't remember whether the French audio on the individual LD releases had speed up or not. Never really paid much attention to the French track.

The GOUT Region 2 PAL discs have sped-up audio.

I had some time this evening to take another bash at doing some of the audio for the '97 SE so here is what I have done so far:

1. I used MPEG streamclip to export the following from DEs AC3 files:
- Stereo AIFF for Left & Right
- Mono AIFF for Center
- Mono AIFF for LFE
- Stereo AIFF for Left Surround & Right Surround

2. I used Audacity's change speed effect to speed the audio up by 4.271% I then exported this in the same configuration as listed above.

3. I opened up my '97SE project file in Final Cut Pro and sync'd the center channel to my original LD audio captures. The audio sync'd up perfectly this time no need to make any time adjustments in Final Cut at all! :D

4. At this point although the timeline has 6 audio tracks, it is outputting them as 2 channel stereo so I went to configure the audio output and this is where I got stuck. There is a 5.1 surround preset which has the following downmix settings: Left 0db, Right 0db, Center -3db, LFE none, Left Surround -3db and Right Surround -3db

The reason I got stuck is I wasn't sure if I needed these downmix settings or not as I am using Darth Editious' AC3 captures as the source. Should I leave the preset as it is or should I turn off the downmixing?

I was also wondering if anyone can help me figure out how to configure the following settings in my AC3 encoder?



Many thanks in advance. :)

LeeThorogood said:

 

Moth3r said:
hairy_hen's post about pitch correction vs. simple speedup made me wonder. I discovered that the 1995 UK VHS releases had pitch-corrected audio. The "coffret" laserdisc set has English audio; is this the same corrected audio track in digital form?

I can't remember whether the French audio on the individual LD releases had speed up or not. Never really paid much attention to the French track.

The GOUT Region 2 PAL discs have sped-up audio.

How could I find out if the Coffret audio has been pitch corrected or not?

 

Those people with "perfect pitch" can tell just by listening to the sped-up PAL version that the title music is in the wrong key.

However us "mere mortals" - unless we're accustomed to the NTSC speed - normally need another reference. The difference in pitch is easy to hear if you compare it side by side to the music at the correct speed, for example from a soundtrack CD or an NTSC version of the audio.

hairy_hen said:

If there is a Dynamic Range Compression setting in the encoder, I'd recommend disabling it,

I think this is what the "Compression Preset: None" is for.

However, I'm not sure about the 90 degree phase shift setting.  This probably also is intended for optimal downmixing, but I don't know what effect if any it has on normal 5.1 playback.

You need to leave the 90° phase shift enabled - this is to ensure that the 5.1 can be downmixed into 2-channel Dolby Surround.

I have the Dolby Digital Professional Encoding Guidelines, a PDF downloaded from Dolby Lab's website, which has useful information and good explanations for this stuff.

I would also recommend you disable the three filters in the pre-processing tab. They are designed to make the source easier to compress and, in theory, they shouldn't have any audible effect. However your source has already been compressed to AC3 once, and I don't think that running it through these filters again will have any benefit.

Hairy Hen, Moth3r thank you for all your help! :D I am at work at the moment, but when I get home tonight I will have a go at encoding with the settings you've suggested. :)

With regard to the Coffret audio, so what you're saying is if I was to compare the audio from the NTSC GOUT DVD and the Coffret LDs if the waveform for the opening title looks the same then its been pitch shifted otherwise it hasn't?

As always my apologies if I am slow on the uptake, like I said before audio is not my thing, although I am always willing to learn. :)

No need to compare the waveform, just listen to the first few bars of the Star Wars theme. Try also comparing the PAL GOUT and you'll hear the speed up immediately.

Lee, these caps look wonderful. My question is: How did you get the LD content in 16:9? Through Streamclip or FCP?

As I can't make my mind up which up scales better MPEG Streamclip or Compressor, I used MPEG streamclip to crop the frame size to one that was 16x9 using a square pixel aspect ratio. Before cropping the frame size was 768x576 and after it was ~758x426. I then took this video file and run it through compressor to make it anamorphic 16x9. :)

So you run through Streamclip on the 16:9 setting and then run the resulting file through Compressor set at 16:9, right?

Thanks for the help!

Not quite! I run it through Streamclip using the export to other formats option. For the frame size I choose "Other" the values you enter here depend on how much you need to crop off.

I start by working out how wide the frame should be. In the case of my '97SE LD captures there was 5 square pixels of analogue blanking on each side so you do the following:

768 (PAL resolution in square pixels rather then CCIR.601)
-5 (Left Hand Side)
-5 (Right Hand Side)
= 758 square pixels

So we have determined that the width of our frame will be 758 so to work out what the height should be we do:

758/16 = 47.375
47.375 x 9 = 426.375 (Round this down to 426)

So our final frame should be 426 square pixels heigh, to work out how much to crop off you do 576 (original height) - 426 = 150

So we need to crop of 150 pixels which is 75 off the top and 75 off the bottom. I enter the crop values in the crop section of the export window, choosing to crop the source from the drop down menu. I then enter the width and height values I have worked out and away you go.

I find trial and error using the preview button in the export window is the best way to work out how much cropping is needed on the left and right hand sides. You can also use the preview button to check the crop settings for the top/bottom edges, as the picture is not always perfectly central and so you might need to take more off the top then bottom and vice versa.

I apologise if this seems really complicated, I am the first to admit I am rubbish at explaining how to do things over the web! :(

No, no problem at all! This is all really helpful for me-your projects spurred me to do some work of my own on a Mac and no one else I know of really knows anything about Mac conversions etc. with Streamclip and other software.

So...using NTSC standards of 720x480 for instance I would need to crop about 37.5 pixels off the top and bottom if I didn't crop any off the left and right of the frame. Thus about 720x405. Does this sound at all right or am I totally off base?

IIRC you can only crop by whole numbers using Streamclip so you would need to crop by 37 and 38 rather then 37.5 and 37.5 ;) 720x405 sounds completely correct! :D

yay! THX! :)

captainsolo said:

yay! THX! :)

can someone else confirm the 97 s.e. of episode 4 goes out of sync at

"man your ships and may the force be with you".

It is more then likely it does go out of sync at that point. It turns out the AC3 files I have for ANH are damaged / corrupted :( IIRC the 2nd AC3 file is missing the equivalent of about 6 frames (@25 fps) of audio just before where the pilot in the briefing goes:

"Forgive me for asking sir, but what good are stunt fighters going to be against that?"

Comparing the AC3s to my LD captures the missing audio is just silence/ambient noise so when I release my audio fix for the 97SE I should be able to fix this quite easily with what I know now. :)

I don't plan to work on the audio fixes for my 97SE LD preservations until I have finished my Technicolor project which is going to take at least another 6 weeks to complete.

AluminumFalcon I don't mind so feel free. :)