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Citizen

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Join date
17-May-2005
Last activity
15-Sep-2006
Posts
455

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Post
#207182
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
pupil, disc on it's way to you on monday

Knightmessenger, the Blade Runner Directors Cut DVD was one of the first DVDs ever produced, some 9 years ago now, technology has moved far beyond the early transfer days so even home-produced DVDs from the HDTV broadcast can make the original DVD look like it was sourced from VHS. But the grainlessness of the HDTV broadcast is partly due to some temporal smoothing (blurring from one frame to the next very slightly) which results in a little motion smearing here and there, a pet peeve of mine but it's the best source we have to date.
Post
#207155
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
I wish I had the outgoing bandwidth to seed such a torrent, it would take a week+ to seed this one on my standard (unreliable) ADSL connection!
But I can send a couple out with the intention the receivers PIF.

Originally posted by: Moth3r
Citizen - I assume they're JPEG compression artefacts visible in those shots, not from the XviD encoding?


Yes the jpegs don't do any justice to the original images lifted from the XviD:

BRHDTVXviD1.png
BRHDTVXviD2.png
BRHDTVXviD3.png
BRHDTVXviD4.png
Post
#206875
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
Uh would you like the XviD version I did of the 1080i HDTV broadcast for inclusion to the set? it's 1024x426 resolution, 4500kbps totalling just under 3.9gb with 256kbps mp3 audio. It's for those whose PCs aren't up to the task of being able to play the HD files natively and looks amazing, much better than any DVD encode played on a PC:

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/BRHDTVXviD1.jpg

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/BRHDTVXviD2.jpg

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/BRHDTVXviD3.jpg

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/BRHDTVXviD4.jpg


BTW the 3:2 pulldown on the 1080i HD broadcast can be undone with a single manual setting, no need to use automatic pulldown removal (it never works 100% anyway) or splice the film up into several pieces each with it's own manual pulldown removal settings like an NTSC LD capture.
Post
#206402
Topic
The Official 2006 Discs Will Be No Better Than What We Have!
Time
Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
basically what they are offering is the same laserdisc master as the definitive collection/Faces releases


I hope that doesn't mean the DVDs will have the butt-ugly temporal smoothing like the definitive/faces/German/French OT LDs have, freeware software of today can clean up grainy video better than paid-for software of 13 years ago, I've gotten some amazing clean-up results with captured grainy LD footage that hasn't been pre-treated before the LD was mastered.
Post
#206210
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Time
Originally posted by: ocpmovie
>> Widescreen? how? the only officially released Howard versions have been cropped 4:3

It was shown on TV in widescreen apparently, and Ben, a pro who has a great collection, snagged it digitally.

It's bizarre that there are no bargain basement DVD releases of Howard. Lucas ...

Any bonus material you have, keep it at the ready -- once I get all the Thief and the Cobbler etc stuff from Ben, when it's in my hands, you'll see a Howard the Duck thread in forum 11. Mark my words. Ditto Muppet movie extended. These are sort of backburner to the big Thief project, but they do seem to be happening.


Well great, that marks another one of my LDs for the frisbee pile... anyway have a look at this "outtake" HowardTheDuck.avi 3.68mb, XviD/mp3
Post
#206183
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Time
Originally posted by: ocpmovie

Citizen ... Tequila Mockingbird and I are doing something with Howard the Duck probably, a widescreen version of it .... and also an extended pan & scan cut of The Muppet Movie.

Well, er, he's doing em cos he's got em. I'll be ... looking at em. And getting em.


Widescreen? how? the only officially released Howard versions have been cropped 4:3, anyway I've been toying with filters and this is a small sample of what I've gotten from the rather grainy LD: HowardSample.avi 9.11mb, 640x480 XviD/mp3.
BTW I also have the soundtrack LP and the 12" LP which has a slightly remixed version of the main theme and the proper Lea Thompson vocal version of "Don't Turn Away".

edit: HELL HAS FROZEN OVER!!


BTW I'm not finished with Blade Runner yet, I've completed a PAL transfer of the HDTV broadcast and added a 2nd 5.1 track which has Deckard's voiceover mixed into the rear channels and will be re-doing the LD transfer to a level where it'll look almost as good as the official DC DVD.
Post
#206169
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Time
Numb.

I feel Numb.

The original trilogy is dead, long live the original trilogy.


I'm just a few days away from completing my ROTJ transfer and then we get this bombshell. I'm extremely pissed off at Lucas for pulling this crap, he kept on releasing the OOT on VHS with the slogan that it would be the last chance to own it, then he added all that CGI crap and denied the OOT still existed, now he's releasing it on DVD.

This gif is for you, Lucas...
http://www.haku.co.uk/b3ta/Smash.gif


I'm going to finish my ROTJ transfer just so my trilogy is complete but after that I'm done with SW LD stuff, my US definitive box set, my German set and my French set cost me a lot and I don't think I'd get much money for them on eBay now so they'll just be packed away like the ark of the covenant in Raiders. Will I buy the DVDs later this year? "baa baa".


The future? I still have a pile of LDs that haven't been released on DVD:

Arcade (1993)
Cookie (1989)
Deep Red (1994)
Dream Machine (1990)
Dudes (1987)
Hamburger The Motion Picture (1986)
Howard the Duck (1986)
Invisible: The Chronicles of Benjamin Knight (1994)
Mandroid (1993)
My Demon Lover (1987)
Out on a Limb (1992)
P.K. and the Kid (1982)
Rad (1986)
Recruits (1986)
Sticky Fingers (1986)
The Invisible Kid (1988)
The Night Train to Kathmandu (1988)
The Prince of Pennsylvania (1988)
The Wiz Kid (1989)
Solarbabies (1986)
Willy/Milly (1986) aka Something Special

so will be doing some crisp DVD transfers of those.
Post
#190417
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
VERY few people noticed the issue. It's not as massive as you would expect.

I think this is down to the abomination known as 3:2 pulldown, so many people whose tv system is natively NTSC are so used to 3:2 pulldown on films and tv shows that they probably wouldn't notice the repeated frames of your first release. Whereas PAL land people watching it on a PC screen (so the playback is progressive) may spot the repeated frames fairly quickly. (death to NTSC!)


Originally posted by: Rikter
Originally posted by: Citizen
er, I've just done a PAL DVD of the HDTV broadcast, with a 2nd audio track that has Deckard's voiceover laid onto the rear speakers: <snip> Full 3:2 removal was done to make it progressive PAL, no duplicated or skipped frames anywhere.


- Just the rear speakers, why not all of them?


Basically I've watched the OV so many times that it's become the 'definitive' version of BR to me so with the HDTV DC broadcast's quality I just had to do something with it except I'd miss Deckard's voiceover, I could've applied it to the center speaker only which would have been easier (I don't have multi-channel editing software so had to place the voiceover manually on two different wave files) but had the idea of placing the voiceover on the back speakers because it would more accurately represent Deckard's thoughts in the back of his mind.
It works well I think, especially when the audio from the front speakers aren't drowining out the voiceover on rear speakers. I'm going to boost the voiceover on the loud sections anyway and do another test.
Post
#190070
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
As per Rikter above, my version wouldn't fit any more audio tracks than just one. This is pure audio/video quality.


You used HDTV2DVD didn't you? what kind of output does it give? I used a few different programs to extract the audio & video, do the pulldown removal and then a 3-pass CCE encode from a huffyuv avi. 4600kbps avg with two 384kbps DD 5.1 tracks.
Post
#190067
Topic
<strong><strong>BLADE RUNNER: The Unauthorized OFF-WORLD Box Set</strong></strong> (Released)
Time
Single layer, for a few reasons; my burner can't successfully burn dual layers, DL discs are still too bloody expensive, the source quality is so clean that I don't think I'd notice any benefit from the higher bitrate. Watching it now on my Sony 28" widescreen through RGB scart connection it looks stunning, makes the official DVD look like it was sourced from an old laserdisc or VHS, just a shame they used temporal smoothing to reduce the grain on the HDTV broadcast.

I think I'll have to boost the audio of the voiceover sections because few of the voiceovers are almost drowned by the audio from the front speakers, I'm sending a copy to another BR fan who has a higher spec setup than me to see what they think.
Post
#183618
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
Not the most elegant way to achieve this, but it does the job, remember to alter the frame setting in the blankclip command for the length of video you're comparing, as well as the width/height/fps if you're working with NTSC:


blankclip(length=2981,width=720,height=576,fps=25,color=$000000)
clip1=avisource("before.avi").crop(0,0,360,576)
clip2=avisource("after.avi").crop(360,0,360,576)
overlay(clip1,mode="blend",opacity=1)
overlay(clip2,360,0,mode="blend",opacity=1)
Post
#183616
Topic
Blade Runner HDTV (Released)
Time
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
Originally posted by: ShiftyEyes
How's the quality on the "On the Edge of Blade Runner" doucmentary? I already downloaded Rikter/Citizen's version. Is this one worth replacing it?


To be honest, I dont' know the source of mine. It's very possible that it's Rikters. I'm not sure. I got it from someone here a while back and it's 16x9.


Well it's not the first time someone has ripped off my capturing/cleaning hard work...
Post
#170567
Topic
Micheal J. Fox in talks for a new BTTF?
Time
Originally posted by: ricarleite
I do not belive those movie announcements anymore. I'll only belive a movie is made when I see it on the theaters. So, for me, Rocky 6 and Indy 4 DO NOT EXIST.


Too right! I heard Mel Brooks was planning on doing Spaceballs 2 film, only later to find out the project had changed into a cartoon idea, which has yet to surface - screw em, companies can make all the announcements they want, but if they don't deliver I'm not going to take a blind bit of notice of their spindoctoring.
Post
#170545
Topic
A Future For Futurama?
Time
Originally posted by: ricarleite
Jumping the Shark means when a series gets to a point where the show begins to go downfall, usually due to some change on the thematics or the plot, or a character change.


Stargate SG-1, wot no Jack O'Neill (with two l's)

The guy off Fartscape is absolutely no substitue for Jack, sure they managed to retain Sam, Teal'C and Daniel but Jack was the main character of the show, they should've called it a day at the end of season 8 when he didn't return, and I've found out they've renewed SG-1 for a 10th season! I think a lot of fans will be very pissed off if Jack doesn't come back for that.


I love Futarama, especially watching the DVDs with the commentary and I really hope Futurama returns, with the full original voice cast, animators and writers. Fox has a bad habit of cancelling shows because they feel they don't make them enough money, despite them being great in their own right, I really liked "The Tick" & "Action".
Post
#170468
Topic
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Belan
Can anyone repost Citizen's NTSC DL Trilogy at a.b.starwars? It would be greatly appreciated.

You're asking the impossible, I haven't finished the trilogy yet


Originally posted by: Hoichi, the Earless
the one I had was his NTSC version, & it looked great...actually a little better on my tv than my computer, which I thought surprising..


It's not really that surprising, the DVD versions were engineered for non 1:1 aspect ratio displays (16:9 tv) so will look better on that than a 1:1 PC display, whilst the XviDs were engineered for 1:1 displays.
Post
#170379
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
Great stuff, thanks segaflip for upping my SW discs to usenet!


HyperYagami, yup that's it. Most PAL DVDs have had their audio sped up to match the increased framerate but occasionally (rarely) they pitch correct the audio or leave the audio alone and framerate convert the video, which isn't a nice thing because the resulting interlaced footage isn't as smooth as playing it at 25fps and doesn't look good on a truly progressive display (ie your PC).


eros, I wouldn't like to try that because matching the foolscreen footage with the widescreen footage seamlessly could prove to be a bit of a nightmare, getting the colour/brightness and cropping/resizing to perfectly match seems quite a daunting task.


ROTJ capturing is going well, this is the film I've been looking forward to completing because I think I like it better than the other two, I did notice that the picture on ROTJ is slightly softer than ANH & ESB, may have to adjust smoothing/sharpening settings so the clarity matches the first two films. Tests to be done.
The merging of the 5x captures is going 25% faster than before, I adjusted a setting in the bios so now the 2.4ghz P4 is running at 3.0ghz had to increase the CPU fan speed a little but that's the only other adjustment I had to do, didn't dare push it above 3.0 because if it wouldn't boot I'd need to reset the bios and I don't know where the jumper is. If I can muster up £160 from somewhere I'm going to upgrade my two 120gb drives for 300gb drives, putting the total system space to about 800gb. Which would be nice.
Post
#170295
Topic
Capture cards
Time
When I was looking for a decent capture device some years ago I did look at getting a DV camcorder but throwing the idea around on some boards came to the conclusion that a dedicated analogue to/from DV device would be much better than getting a DV camcorder that has passthrough as an added option, for two reasons; a dedicated device would generally have better digitising/compression than a DV camcorder, and if you use the DV camcorder's input/output ports a lot they could get damaged as they're not designed to be in heavy use like a dedicated capture device.

I ended up getting a Canopus ADVC-100 which I've been very happy with, I would have liked to get better hardware that can capture at the same quality but to uncompressed/lossless compressed video but back then high quality capture devices were expensive (I paid £275 for my ADVC-100) and so was the harddrive space needed to deal with hours of uncompressed/lossless compressed video.

I do now have a DV camcorder with DV passthrough but haven't really done any quality tests against my ADVC-100.
Post
#168742
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
Converting 25fps PAL film footage to 3:2 pulldown 29.97fps NTSC footage is very easy, just rescale to NTSC size and set the playback framerate to 23.976fps, then after mpeg2 encoding use pulldown.exe to add the 3:2 pulldown flags to the mpeg2 stream.

The PAL & NTSC versions have the same framecount, but to make the NTSC audio match the PAL playback you have to speed it up by 4.096%, a drawback is that this also increases the pitch, I tried timestreching the audio with a few different 'main' audio editing applications to preserve the pitch but it introduced glitches into the audio, not noticable on speech but with orchestral music you can hear them, which I wasn't happy with so I left it with the slightly higher pitch.

In the case of my ANH, the NTSC version runs for 2:01:18 and the PAL runs 1:56:06.