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Info: Discussion on 80's cartoons on DVD....bad aliasing (jaggies)! — Page 3

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The Shout Factory Transformers set uses the 1" broadcast masters instead of the unfinished film masters that Rhino used.

Starting work on restoring He-Man came up with this:
yadifmod2(order=1,mode=1)
LanczosResize(640,480)
maa2()
Convolution3D(“AnimeHQ”)
RemoveGrain(mode=1)
srestore(frate=25)
assumefps(23.976)

Doubling the frame rate with Yadif, maa2 for aliasing, light filtering to remove the video noise, srestore to remove the frame blending, and assumefps to restore it to NTSC framerate

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I’ve got the PAL UK Boxset of He-Man,but I also have a fan made restoration of all episodes that uses (I believe) the UK set.
I’m not a huge fan of the show so my knowledge of individual episodes isn’t great. I just dip into it now and again. However if there’s an episode, or even scene in a particular episode,that is known to be troublesome, I’m happy to take a screen grab for comparison purposes.

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" Is this actually on the source or is it something wrong with the way I’m displaying it through my PS3 / HDTV?"

I don’t come close to actually understanding the technical side of this stuff, but from what I do understand, there is something (a codec?) which is used when creating the DVD master. Whatever this is, a codec, an algorithm, the point is that it is designed specifically for live action. In order to properly transfer animation, they have to use a different one. The reason so much animation is transferred badly is that the companies don’t remember to do this, they just use the default which is meant for live-action and known to cause issues with animation.

(Hopefully this strikes a chord with somebody who actually does understand this stuff and can explain it for us dummies.)

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Hasbro has started uploading official versions of The Transformers episodes to their “Hasbro Pulse” Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/c/hasbropulse/playlists

Have only checked out a couple episodes, but this might be the best quality yet, with a few caveats:

  • Episodes are upscaled to 1080p24 (1080p23.976 to be precise), not new HD remasters from film
  • The video seems to match the Rhino masters rather than the Shout masters, which means that Season 1 in particular is better quality, but there are additional animation mistakes not present in the original broadcast masters (Skywarp/Thundercracker being colored like Starscream [or vice versa] more than usual, etc.)
  • The audio thankfully does not have the added sound effects from the Rhino DVDs
  • There are less jaggies than the DVDs, but they are still present in some frames due to the occasional ITVC error, so the masters are obviously 480i rather than directly from the film source that Rhino used for their DVDs
  • apparently the same versions used on other streaming services (Tubi? not sure), but I haven’t checked to see if they have a higher bitrate or anything
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I’ve seen these upscales on Starz and they are very good. At least for the first season.

They could easily scan the same film masters and fill in the errors with the original broadcast tape and use the original audio to create a blu-ray release.

Rhino used original 35mm negative and some low contrast prints. They telecined them. Used DVNR to removed dirt and scratches. They backed them up to Digital Betacam. The resolution is obviously standard definition.

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Watched a couple more episodes, noticed some more things:

  • Seems to be a high-pitched whine in the audio, maybe due to YouTube compression?
  • “Dark Awakening” has a glitch in the video at about 10:00, also uses the “Return of Optimus Prime” narration at the end
  • Still plenty of film dirt and scratches visible, some grain in lighter colors as well
  • edge enhancement on lines seems a bit more pronounced due to the upscaling

Still though, probably the best way to watch these officially. I do hope a new film scan is done for Blu-ray someday, but we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up…

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what app are you guys using to encode your vidoes? i’m using staxrip but i wanna ask if there’s a better option. thanks

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After finding out all the seasons of transformers 1984 still have their film prints out there in zaranyzerak’s video make me extremely disappointed with shout that they rather upscale them instead of giving them a real remastered. 😦

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Fullmetaled said:

After finding out all the seasons of transformers 1984 still have their film prints out there in zaranyzerak’s video make me extremely disappointed with shout that they rather upscale them instead of giving them a real remastered. 😦

I think Shout just used the broadcast parts in place for the mistakes present in the Rhino DVD. It doesn’t look good. It looks like it was taken from a VHS

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intensemark said:

Fullmetaled said:

After finding out all the seasons of transformers 1984 still have their film prints out there in zaranyzerak’s video make me extremely disappointed with shout that they rather upscale them instead of giving them a real remastered. 😦

I think Shout just used the broadcast parts in place for the mistakes present in the Rhino DVD. It doesn’t look good. It looks like it was taken from a VHS

That why it’s disappointing because fixing the animation errors including a overlay error in a later season that wasn’t fixed in the broadcast release are easy to fix now a days with computers. so it’s disappointing we never got a blu ray of the series but we get both a blu ray and uhd of the 1986 movie. 😦

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yeah. we’ll probably wont’ get it. hasbro seems to be interested in giving us a new series rather than remaster the old one