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Info: Archiving Star Wars 1997 Special Edition laser discs...

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Greetings, I hope this is the right section (and the right forum, even), for this. I’m going to preface this with a small introduction explaining myself, as I feel the need to justify what I’m doing before I’m laughed out of here.

So, I’m one of the heretics who quite likes the 1997 special edition versions of the original trilogy (they’re the versions of the films I grew up with). Whilst I do now own DVD versions of the original trilogy (2006 versions), they appeared to have various differences from the ones I remembered, and even the original theatrical cuts included with the 2006 DVDs are rather different. The VHS copies of the films that I do have from when I was younger have aged rather poorly, what with them being much-used VHS tapes and all, so I resolved to try and get a hold of a decent copy of the 1997 versions of the films. I discovered the 1997 special editions were never released on DVD, and that the best quality available of them was the laser disc version (which also would have aged much better than a VHS tape).

As a result, I ultimately decided to try and do the whole thing properly. I acquired the laser discs (they appear to be in good condition, no apparent laser rot that I can see), I acquired a laser disc player (a Pioneer CLD-D925), and I’ve got a ‘VideoMate C200 Pro’ USB capture stick that I can use to connect my PC to the player (no idea if this is any good or not, my Dad used it for converting some other VHS tapes a while back, but it seems to do the job).

This is where I start to hit some hurdles.

I’ve recorded video from the player with VirtualDub. I’ve tried both S-Video and Composite video, and ultimately used Composite, but to be honest I couldn’t see any significant difference between the two. The audio comes out fine (provided I use the x86 version of VirtualDub; the x64 version appears to introduce crackling on capture, but not on preview), however I’m stumped as to the equipment I need to capture the AC3 audio (I do have a ‘Yamaha Natural Sound RF Demodulator APD-1’ that came with the laser disc player for this purpose, but my Googling has yet to find the hardware I can use to get the audio output from the demodulator itself to my PC).

Another issue is that the colours seem slightly off; blacks are more grey, and there seems to be a slight amount of noise, which is most noticeable in the black-ish bars along the top and bottom. Ultimately I suspect I’d probably want to crop out these bars, however before I do that, I want to actually get the colours and noise sorted out.

In addition, the video looks like it’s got a lot of lines in it (most noticeable when there’s movement). Research suggests this is interlacing, and I need to use deinterlacing to take care of this. However, when I’ve tried to do this, results have varied (some curved edges look a bit jagged, almost like aliasing in a video game), or alternatively the video becomes somewhat…blurry?

Anyway, the bottom-line is, I’m fairly clueless on the correct way to go about doing this, but I’m having at it. I’m okay with buying more equipment IF that is necessary, but I suspect my issues mainly lie in what I’m doing with the software itself (settings and the like, although I am aware that filters and so on should apparently be applied after the initial recording is made, not during the recording process). For the software in question, I’ve mentioned VirtualDub above, but I’ve also been using something called HandBrake for encoding the video into a format that doesn’t take over a hundred gigabytes to store, and also in my attempts to deinterlace it.

Am I going about this the right way? I work as a software developer, but it’s worlds away from understanding video-encoding and the like so I’m feeling pretty stupid here!
 

TLDR

  • Trying to rip laser disc versions of the 1997 special edition versions of the Star Wars original trilogy for childhood nostalgia reasons
  • Have acquired Pioneer CLD-D925 laser disc player, ‘Yamaha Natural Sound RF Demodulator APD-1’, laser discs, and ‘VideoMate C200 Pro’ USB capture stick
  • Am stumped on getting the AC3 audio out of the player and onto my PC
  • Am stumped on how to properly colour correct the video
  • Am stumped on how to properly remove the noise in the video
  • Am stumped on how to properly deinterlace the video
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ChainsawAsh said:

You should consider donating to Poita’s 1997 Special Edition 35mm 4K scan project!

Holy biscuits. Googling suggests 35mm film is about as close to the original stuff as you can get(?). I may well donate, but I would probably want to try and continue with my efforts a bit, unless it’s likely to be fruitless (both because ‘I’ve come this far’ and also because my max download speed is 120KB/s (the area I live in is rather remote), besides the fact of which I have no idea what the proper etiquette is regarding discussion of these matters on this forum, regarding understandable piracy concerns, etc). It also looks like it’s just the first film so far in that thread, although it seems they’re also trying to source ESB and ROTJ?

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35mm film is the original stuff! 😉 And I believe Poita has access to all three, but it costs money to scan prints, hence the need for donations. He can also only do one at a time as far as I know, so right now it’s ANH.

By all means, continue with your project! I know we have the Laserdisc 5.1 audio for all three in the wild, as well as the theatrical DTS audio, but I don’t know that there have been any quality Laserdisc preservations yet.

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Just out of curiosity, did you happen to figure this out? Pretty much everything you’ve stated was all greek to me but I know there’s some DVD .iso’s of the '97 trilogy ripped from the LD with menus on the spleen if you’re just looking for the transfer. Though everything you just said does seem to be present on that rip I have, gray blacks, lots of noise, and lines on edges. Just curious as I’d like to clean up my rips as well.

Luke astro-projects himself to Salt Lake Planet, gets shot at by gorilla walkers, has a non-lightsaber duel with Darth Millennial, then dies of a broken heart, inspiring broom boys throughout the galaxy to get creative with their sweeping. - DuracellEnergizer

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If you are dead set on having the laserdisc versions. I have uploaded my preservation of the 97se laserdiscs onto the spleen. They are synced to the theatrical DTS, include the laserdisc 5.1, etc.

I don’t normally go around promoting my laserdisc preservations but I’ve seen a lot of people ask for these lately. The link below will give you an idea of what you can find.

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Laserdisc-Preservations-See-1st-Post-for-Updates/id/15283

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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J0E said:

Just out of curiosity, did you happen to figure this out? Pretty much everything you’ve stated was all greek to me but I know there’s some DVD .iso’s of the '97 trilogy ripped from the LD with menus on the spleen if you’re just looking for the transfer. Though everything you just said does seem to be present on that rip I have, gray blacks, lots of noise, and lines on edges. Just curious as I’d like to clean up my rips as well.

althor1138 said:

If you are dead set on having the laserdisc versions. I have uploaded my preservation of the 97se laserdiscs onto the spleen. They are synced to the theatrical DTS, include the laserdisc 5.1, etc.

I don’t normally go around promoting my laserdisc preservations but I’ve seen a lot of people ask for these lately. The link below will give you an idea of what you can find.

http://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Wars-Laserdisc-Preservations-See-1st-Post-for-Updates/id/15283

I’m afraid that I’m new around here and have no access to myspleen, and (having done some reading) am not silly enough to ask for it. 😛

My efforts with regards to the laser disc versions are because I know of no other way of getting a decent copy of the 1997 Special Edition; The laser discs are the best version available that I know of, for this. The 35mm project does seem good though, and I am considering donating to that, however it is doubtful I’ll ever be able to see the finished result myself, so my project still has merit to me!

As for progress, I’ve been proceeding to rip the other laser discs, whilst hoping I’d get further replies to this thread that would advise me on what I should do (or at least point me in the right direction). However, on the assumption that I would get no replies to that effect, I have tried to do some more research of my own, and have happened across a plugin called ‘Gradation’ by ‘Alexander Nagiller’ (http://members.chello.at/nagiller/vdub/tutorial/tutorial.html). It is my hope that I can perhaps use this to correct the colours. I think it must import a file generated by Photoshop, but I’m unsure what, however manual adjustment of the curves does produce interesting results. It doesn’t support curves files exported by the Gimp, unfortunately.

I have been rather busy of late though, so progress has been slow.

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Unfortunately, spleen access has been locked down so I couldn’t hand out an invite even if I wanted to.

I have always used avisynth/virtualdub exclusively for my laserdisc rips. I can right away recommend that you have windows 7 running and buy a theater750hd pcie capture card if you are serious about results. This is hands down the best cheap capture card I’ve ever come across. It handles tbc correction as well so you don’t need an external tbc to straighten up the picture. The player probably won’t make a huge difference in quality.

As for color correction, etc., I only ever do levels adjustments to get a proper white/black level. Manual IVTC is a whole other bear to tackle. I’d recommend using an automated filter to do that unless you are masochist. If you read through my laserdisc preservations thread there is a lot of good information and scripts on how to accomplish it though.

Best of luck with your endeavor!

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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The Dark side of the force said:
the colours seem slightly off; blacks are more grey

Try to adjust the levels in Virtualdub; the best would be to use a proper calibration disc, or at least a test pattern; if you haven’t one of them, find out a black frame, then a white frame, and adjust levels accordingly to reach the “borders” of the histogram.

Some info on analog capture: https://forum.fanres.com/thread-933.html

Even if I encourage you to continue your mission, you should be aware that laserdisc (as much as I love it, and I DO love it, a lot!) is not the best version available; waiting for 35mm preservation (that would be the best), you can find out SDTV captures that are better - GKar and TB for all the three episodes IV, V, VI.

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com