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.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :. — Page 11

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Russs15 has now put me on a path to the dark side.

The following link: <removed - see my thread for the latest> is a test demo of what is now going to be a project for my own personal gratification. At this time I am saying there will be no release of it (at least not without Moth3r's permission.

This is largely an NTSC conversion of a sample from Moth3r's wonderful transfer. The audio is provisional since I used BeSweet to time stretch, which sounds not so good. The video has had the saturation increased (brightness and contrast were left alone), and of course the jiggery-pokery necessary to make this 720x480 @ 23.976fps. Recompression was 5 passes to help prevent artifacts in the process.

My final version will have the audio lifted from an NTSC native source (at least that's the plan).

So here's some screenshots while you're waiting for the d/l:
Check out those stars.
http://adventureclub.postrock.net/snap1.jpg

http://adventureclub.postrock.net/snap2.jpg

Edit: Links corrected & version 2 of the clip is now linked (with better sound, than the following conversation is describing).

Dr. M

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Wow, that's a good job! A nice sharp image compared to the NTSC versions floating around. Just a few things:

The framerate is choppy. I'm guessing you used the video from the MPEG-2 files from Moth3r's DVD? Perhaps that has something to do with it...too many steps.

(and the sound sucks BAD...but you knew that)

Good project to take on though! Keep up the good work!

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Hey Doctor M, it looks great, but why did you decide on that framerate and resolution?

“I love Darth Editous and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” ~ADigitalMan

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Rapidshare won't let me download the sample.

Anyone know how to bypass ntl's proxy server?

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Originally posted by: Grinder
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So popped that one in, and it blew me right off of my chair! I really didn't expect NTSC to be that inferior to PAL.
... Glad you enjoyed the disc. NTSC as a format is not significantly inferior to PAL, just in this case it's a different laserdisc source that seems to be better. Make an NTSC DVD from the PAL laserdiscs and you should still get better results than a transfer from the D.C. disc.
Originally posted by: Grinder
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I have quite some experience in VHS>DVD transfers, and have found that with a good VCR the image can be near DVD quality, VERY near. But the thing always giving away the source is the considerable amount of hiss in the sound.
... I would say the opposite; VHS video is much worse than DVD, however audio from hi-fi VHS (not the linear track - that does suffer from hiss) has an excellent signal-to-noise ratio.
Originally posted by: Grinder
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I did notice an occasional line drop-out and the two color shifts, at first I thought "huh, how could he have missed those?" but I just read the entire thread and found out you had, but didn't fix them (why?).
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Because I only noticed after the video had been encoded.
Originally posted by: Grinder
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P.S. Can't wait to see ESB uploaded on a.b.starwars or MySpleen
ESB has already been uploaded to a.b.sw.

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Yeah somewhere in the audio conversion reconversion, blah blah, it got static-y. Actually turns out I needed to normalize a bit before converting to wave. I have it sounding great now, but don't feel like re-upping at the moment.

As far as the video being choppy, I'm not seeing that on my computer, is anyone else?

The frame rate I used is NTSCFilm and is the true frame rate of the original film. By converting to that it removes the 4% speed up commonly found in PAL video. By tweaking a flag NTSC DVD players will play it as 29.97 so everyone is happy.

Unfortunately there is likely no way to get the raw AVI files from Moth3r even if he still had them, but there doesn't seem to be much vid quality lost. Like I said, is anyone else finding choppy video?

Dr. M

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Russs15 has now put me on a path to the dark side.



Ooops, so sorry about that..................

Does this mean that you are finally going to get rid of your Farsight set????


Looking forward to seeing the results of your labour but I have the same problem with ntl as Moth3r does so I cannot download the sample you posted.

4 - 5 - 3 - 1 - 6 - 2

Discuss…

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My computer must have been slow at the time. It seems to be pretty smooth now.

Glad to hear you got the sound issue worked out! no need to repost, I agree.

This will turn out to be a really good transfer if you keep it up. The only really issue I have with the PAL LDs is that their framing is a little tighter than the NTSC. I don't know why someone decided to cut off that much picture...

What’s the internal temperature of a TaunTaun? Luke warm.

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Can you elaborate on the framing being tighter? I'm not sure what you mean.

As far as hosting the file somewhere else more convenient: can anyone point me to a better server?

Dr. M

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Glad you enjoyed the disc. NTSC as a format is not significantly inferior to PAL, just in this case it's a different laserdisc source that seems to be better. Make an NTSC DVD from the PAL laserdiscs and you should still get better results than a transfer from the D.C. disc.

In terms of percentage the resolution difference is the same in every NTSC/PAL comparison, so PAL will always be an equal amount better looking than NTSC. Right?

VHS video is much worse than DVD, however audio from hi-fi VHS (not the linear track - that does suffer from hiss) has an excellent signal-to-noise ratio.

I didn't know there was a difference in sound-quality between the hi-fi and linear track, have you any idea what causes that? About VHS video being that bad, it totally depends on your VCR. I did some transfers with footage recorded and played back for the conversion with my B&O VCR, and the results astound me. It's crisp, I'm telling you!

ESB has already been uploaded to a.b.sw.

OK, meant reposted...

That's no moon. It's a LaserDisc.

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Hifi VHS is remarkably good, a lot of Bands used it as a recording medium before DAT came to the masses.

Re PAL vs NTSC, for anamorphic DVDs the resolution difference isn't staggering, but for letterbox it is huge.
The reason is that the amount of lines left for a scope letterbox transfer in NTSC is only around 277 lines, which is bugger all. (from memory it is around those numbers, I don't have anything handy to check).
So starting from such a low base, any increase in available lines = a massive jump in image quality.
So a PAL letterbox transfer, with its higher linecount should be a hell of a lot better quality resolution wise.

To answer another question, the PAL laserdiscs are more tightly framed, this means that when you put the NTSC version and the PAL version side by side, that some of the picture is missing on the PAL version - you could think of it as the PAL version is a bit more 'zoomed in' so some of the picture has fallen off the bottom of the screen so to speak.
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Wer-Al_Zwowe could you add a link to your cover for ep4. Thanks

Nevermind found it back a few pages.
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Wer-Al_Zwowe: Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Dolby Surround consist of 2 channels that decode to 3 front and 1 channel in the rear?
So the diagram would be:

o__o__o


___o___

Dr. M

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You're eight, Doctor. But hell, who cares?!
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By the way, Moth3r, when can we expect ROTJ transfer? If I'm not speeding up, of course
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Dolby Surround is a way of encoding a rear surround channel into the 2 main channels. There is no centre channel in the mix, but if you decode Dolby Surround with a Dolby Pro-logic decoder, it creates a new channel by steering any sound with equal strength in the left and right channels to the centre speaker.

I think that's right; certainly Pro-logic is a system for decoding only.

I've got a few smaller video projects to do before I start on ROTJ, so I can't say when it will be done yet. In theory, I should know what I'm doing this time so it won't take so long.

I'll post some screenshots when I have the raw video capped.

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Yeah, hope it won't take so long, cause I really can't wait!
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To answer another question, the PAL laserdiscs are more tightly framed, this means that when you put the NTSC version and the PAL version side by side, that some of the picture is missing on the PAL version - you could think of it as the PAL version is a bit more 'zoomed in' so some of the picture has fallen off the bottom of the screen so to speak.


I've been working on a different PAL to NTSC project recently. The source was originally NTSC that was PAL-ified and I am re-NTSC-ify-ing it.
In the process I ran into the same thing: tighter framing. In fact a lot of the names in the opening credits were lost in the overscan area when I was done. What it looks like (and I'd really love if someone can verify authoritatively on this) that they cut off a percentage of the left and right portions of the frame and then just enlarged what's left in order to get instant PAL resolution.

Now back to the PAL Star Wars: although the laserdiscs should IN THEORY have been derivied from a film source, I'm wondering if they started with some form of 480 line master that they did this butcher-jobber thing to. It would explain the tighter cropping and mean that any NTSC conversion of Moth3r's DVD would have to involve adding vertical black borders to prevent further loss in the overscan area of a TV (which is what I'm doing with my other project).

Anyone?

Dr. M

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I also don't think you need to do anything like DoubleWeave to the video. You could AssumeFrameBased to be safe but that's all.

Out of interest, have you found that running a video through an AVISynth script makes everything darker?

DE
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What do you mean exactly DE?
Do you have an example script that shows the problem?
If you are only getting the problem when running MPEG2 into AVISynth, then it can be fixed with colormatrix.
Just add the line colormatrix() before the ConvertToYUY2() line.
You can get the plugin here.
http://www.geocities.com/wilbertdijkhof/ColorMatrix_v19.zip
edit:
BTW, if coming from an interlaced source then you would have to unfold the fields, then colormatrix the results then fold them back again.
-L
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Of course the above only applies if using an MPEG2 source file.
Let me know if it fixes yer problem DE.
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No, I was using an MJPEG AVI as my source, though I think it happens on all AVIs. I've found one or two references to it in forums, but very little interest in finding out what's going on. It could be down to some YUV/RGB thing. Anyway I soon dropped the idea of using AVISynth at all, so I just ask every now and again out of curiousity

DE