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Are the PAL GOUT DVDs upscaled from the NTSC masters?

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(GOUT = George's Original Unaltered Trilogy)

I ordered the PAL DVDs, because I assumed they would be sourced from the same masters used for the French/German laserdisc releases in 1995. The PAL laserdiscs are in some respects superior to their DC/Faces counterparts.

I haven't received my discs yet, but I'm getting worried that I'm going to be disappointed - from what I've seen so far, it looks as though the PAL discs have been created by upscaling the NTSC source.

Here's my reasoning:

- The shot from the PAL DVD showing the blockade runner and the star destroyer (provided by boris here) has framing very similar to the NTSC laserdiscs. The PAL laserdiscs are framed much tighter for this shot.

- Reports of distracting "telecine wobble". This wobble is most noticeable in the NTSC laserdisc of ANH. The PAL laserdisc doesn't suffer so badly.

- No one has mentioned seeing the famous "burn marks" in the first scene with the droids. These marks are a trademark of the PAL masters.

- Reports of aliasing. A side effect of upscaling; also, Citizen noticed bad aliasing in the NTSC discs in the rebel base scenes (can't find the post now).

- Every screenshot I've seen so far seems to be less detailed than my PAL laserdisc transfer.

If this is truly the case, then it is very disappointing (I know the whole non-anamorphic issue was disappointing from the start, but I thought I might at least be able to salvage something from these discs).

The possibilty of a Moth3r laserdisc transfer V1.1 is looking increasingly more likely...

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Very sad if true indeed. But it doesn't surprise me, this is just another example of LFL's sloppy workethic and total disregard for the classic OUT. They just can't be bothered...at all!

I've got your PAL laserdisc transfers and I must say I am very pleased with them, watch them all the time! If some minor audio and video issues could be rectified for version 1.1 then that would be just awesome. So go for it m8, do the Star Wars movies the justice they deserve using the best possible source available to us. Good luck!
peace,

Rebelscum
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Originally posted by: Moth3r
The possibilty of a Moth3r laserdisc transfer V1.1 is looking increasingly more likely...


And I am more and more looking forward to that... although my "ultimate set" is bearing your current transfer.

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Just got my PAL discs. This is not the same as the PAL THX french LDs and look NTSC upscaled. I'm not sure if the audio is pitch corrected. There seem to be halos though, so I think no matter how lossless you would capture from LD you won't get rid of them because they probably are on the mastertape already (or they did something wrong with the encoding settings for the dvd).
Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Originally posted by: Moth3r
(GOUT = George's Original Unaltered Trilogy)

I ordered the PAL DVDs, because I assumed they would be sourced from the same masters used for the French/German laserdisc releases in 1995. The PAL laserdiscs are in some respects superior to their DC/Faces counterparts.

I haven't received my discs yet, but I'm getting worried that I'm going to be disappointed - from what I've seen so far, it looks as though the PAL discs have been created by upscaling the NTSC source.

Here's my reasoning:

- No one has mentioned seeing the famous "burn marks" in the first scene with the droids. These marks are a trademark of the PAL masters.


There are no burn marks. It was the first thing I checked out even before the original crawl.........

4 - 5 - 3 - 1 - 6 - 2

Discuss…

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I won't get my PAL set until Christmas, so I'd really like to know, as I'll cancel them if they're upscaled. Roll on Moth3r v1.1!
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I know I found a comparison somewhere, but can't find it now, so could someone post a comparison between the GOUT release and Moth3r's, using either (or preferably both) the NTSC and PAL version of the GOUT release, and even comparing to Citizens releases as well. It honestly sounds like Citizens/Moth3rs releases are better than the GOUT release which is absurd! If this is the case, I would LOVE to see Moth3r do a v1.1 release of his transfers!

www.bardothodol.net

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I can do a comparison of Citizen's Star Wars and the NTSC GOUT Star Wars.


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Thatd be appreciated, thanks Marvolo. If George can't do better than Moth3r or Citizen, then he aint getting my money. If its true about the PAL GOUT being a resized NTSC, then that is absolutely scandalous! I would love to see some side by side GOUT comparisons of PAL vs NTSC to see if the head stretching which would occur in the PAL version is apparent. I downloaded the images that R2D2 uploaded here and compared them to the images in Moth3rs comparison page, and they look stretched to me!

www.bardothodol.net

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Hey, just a thought, this could be the first time in the history of DVD where the better version to get if you want the better image quality is NTSC, and not PAL. Good one George!

www.bardothodol.net

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Just to be clear, and to prevent any potential problems for Jay: a new laserdisc transfer would be for my own use only, and would not be illegally distributed.

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Is it just me or does the so called 'original' crawl on the PAL GOUT look errm completely new and CG?
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Originally posted by: Laserman
Is it just me or does the so called 'original' crawl on the PAL GOUT look errm completely new and CG?
IMHO it looks more "stable" because it was mastered at a different time to the 1993 masters.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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No the text looks insanely stable and the stars do not.
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From a screenshot comparison, it appears that the PAL discs are definitley from the same master used for the NTSC laserdiscs.

However, it does seem that the DVDs do contain more picture detail than my transfers - I think screenshots I'd seen previously had been softened and did not accurately represent the quality of the DVD.

(Which is what you'd expect, as the transfer process:
D1 master -> DVD
is theoretically superior to:
D1 master -> Laserdisc -> Analogue capture -> DVD)

But the transfer process has also reproduced a fair amount of grain and noise. I'm sort of leaning towards processing the GOUT DVD for Moth3r V1.1 rather than a new laserdisc transfer, using a filter chain to remove noise and convert the image to anamorphic.

My ultimate dream for V2.0 would use colour-corrected shots from the 2004 version (which have been cleaned up without that damn ghosting), and only use the GOUT version where necessary. A sort of ultimate classic edition, if you like.

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Hmmm. After spending time at Zion's site, there are some scenes that do look better on the PAL laserdiscs. Try shots 22 and 24.

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Originally posted by: Laserman
No the text looks insanely stable and the stars do not.
Well, I think, now, that it's not recreated - but it has been digitally stabilized. The stars wouldn't moved if the crawl was CG. There's no real evidence that it is a recreated crawl. Recomposed, maybe; digitally stabilized, probably.

I also think the PAL DVD's are up-scaled from NTSC resolution. And although there was more resolution on the PAL LD's then the NTSC one's - I would guess they'd been up-scaled as well (I know there's different framing, and I'm not sure why that is - maybe it's due to the way they up-scaled it at the time... but that's what I'm thinking).
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: Moth3rHmmm. After spending time at Zion's site, there are some scenes that do look better on the PAL laserdiscs. Try shots 22 and 24.

Yes and also #36, it's a bit strange though cause they do not appear to even have the vertical resolution of upscaled NTSC.

I wonder if some sort of vertical filter was applied that messed up some of the scenes, and if this also affects the NTSC version.

Also the GOUT crawl and star-destroyer flyover scene did not come from any of the laserdisc masters, so here the 'PAL' could in fact be better than the NTSC.

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I'll give Moth3r #24 & #36. As far as a dream v2.0 is concerned, I don't think the '04 discs are recoverable. The color "correction" is shot-by-shot and goes deep. To say nothing of trying to recover lost shadow detail and still give a balanced picture. You'd be better off using the '97 SE digital broadcasts, I think, for that kind of project.
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OK, to clarify then, people in PAL land are far better off getting NTSC imports of these discs, correct? if the PAL discs are upscaled NTSC, then the image is strectched and audio sped up for absolutely no good reason other than making them PAL.

www.bardothodol.net

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Absolutely not! The picture may actually be greater quality, because they've stretched it (professionally) all the way to the sides of the display, whereas they haven't with the NTSC. Therefore, the thin black borders will distort the picture at the very edges right and left. Also the audio isn't a problem... technically they don't "speed it up" anymore anyway, what they do is they "stretch it" in a way that keeps the pitch consistent (rather then speeding it up, which raises the pitch slightly). Also, you get thicker scan-lines on NTSC which may bother some people, and the NTSC pulldown - which is far worse the speeding the movie up 1 frame per second.

Personally, I don't think it would be worth importing PAL if you live in NTSC-land either.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: Zion
Doesn't it just bug the hell out of you knowing that they bothered to resize the NTSC image to create the PAL version, but they wouldn't use the exact same process to make them anamorphic?


I had never thought of that. Now I despise Goerge even more.


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Originally posted by: Zion
Doesn't it just bug the hell out of you knowing that they bothered to resize the NTSC image to create the PAL version, but they wouldn't use the exact same process to make them anamorphic?
Honestly? No. Very little actually bugs me about this release, so I'm not going to let a little thing like that worry me.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!