Star Wars HD coming in November! All SIX movies! — Page 6

Author: s7en
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:19 AM
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And do we know if the original broadcast was in MPEG4? I'm 95% sure it wasn't. AFAIK, all broadcast HD would be MPEG2. If you're finding other versions, it's because people have re-compressed it. So that wouldn't be an advantage.

I'm not sure why this is even up for debate.

Yes, the recent German Star Wars HDTV broadcasts were MPEG4. Premiere HD is a MPEG4 based channel.
"Premiere is broadcasting the HD channels using the new MPEG4/H.264 compression procedure "

MPEG2 may be typical of US HDTV broadcasters, but in Europe MPEG4 seems to be the preferred choice. Here in the UK both Sky HD and the BBC's HD service are also broadcast in MPEG4.
Which means another lot of MPEG4 Star Wars HDTV broadcasts when Sky shows all six movies on New Years Day - and another potential source for english language HDTV version of the movies at that point.

More info on UK HDTV standards here.

Author: boba feta
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:25 AM
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I believe the 9100 does have Firewire. You'll need a cable next and it looks like it only comes factory with a measley 60 Gig HD though, do you have plenty of space on that thing?

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

Author: BountyHunter
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:34 AM
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Originally posted by: boba feta
I believe the 9100 does have Firewire. You'll need a cable next and it looks like it only comes factory with a measley 60 Gig HD though, do you have plenty of space on that thing?

So I'll need a firewire cable?

And you'd have to define "plenty" of space. And then I'd have to check my notebook (which is back at the dorm, not with me).

Author: boba feta
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:40 AM
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Yep, you'd need a Firewire cable and somewhere in the region of 20 Gigs I guess.

[Edit] But I think it's prolly all for nought since there's no way (AFAIK) to beat the 5C encryption.

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

Author: BountyHunter
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:47 AM
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Originally posted by: boba feta
Yep, you'd need a Firewire cable and somewhere in the region of 20 Gigs I guess.

Off the top of my head...yeah, I'm pretty sure I have 20 gigs free (or at least 20 gigs that can be freed up).

Oh, and how much for a Firewire cable? And where can I get it?

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 26-Nov-2006 8:46 AM
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Originally posted by: s7en

I'm not sure why this is even up for debate.

You learn something new every day

Thanks for letting me know! Still, too bad about the PAL speed-up. Otherwise this would have been great!

Author: DVD-BOY
Time: 26-Nov-2006 11:25 AM
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With regards to the PAL speed up, I believe if you were going to flip this into another format (MPEG-2 for HD DVD DFNYC

), then over at abhdtv.com they've been doing some tests with Pro Coder 2, to bring the framerate down to 23.97.

The long and the short of it, is if you're going to play this back on a computer, you can probably do something about the framerate, and if you going to flip this into another format, you can probably do something about the framerate.

In terms of Pros and Cons for the US Broadcasts:

Pros

- US Broadcasts will be in MPEG-2? Easy to play
- Correct Film speed

Cons

- Very Hard to Impossible to extract from a PVR
- 3:2 Motion Judder

In terms of Pros and Cons for Euro Broadcasts (Taking in the original trilogy from Germany and the prequel trilogy from SkyHD in the UK, who will also be showing the OT)

Pros

- H264 Video should be better / smaller?
- Easier to rip
- No Judder

Cons

- 4% PAL Speedup
- Higher CPU Requirements for playback
- Original Trilogy currently only available in German Flavour

By this side of Christmas we should be seeing something hitting the net, and who knows what the fans will do with these sources by May 2007?

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

Author: Karyudo
Time: 26-Nov-2006 11:39 AM
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Yeah, if we were able to get the Cinemax crawls and scenes with subs, then it would be possible to render out the whole film in English, with the correct 23.976 fps framerate, with DD5.1 audio. It could be done in a day or so (per film), I'd imagine.

People are reporting a size of about 10 GB for each of the three original films from Cinemax. The highest number I've seen quoted is 12 GB, I think -- and who knows what all that includes; there's some "bonus material" that may be included in that total.

The real pain is 5C encryption, when applied (i.e. often). Haven't seen that anybody has broken that. DVD Jon, where are you??

No matter: in six weeks, when Sky broadcasts the OT in HD, all will be well. Sky HD and Premiere HD are both considerably better than anything available in North America, anyway.

Ironically, very soon the only people not able to capture and watch American movies in HD, will be Americans.

Author: DVD-BOY
Time: 26-Nov-2006 12:28 PM
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Wow, that sounds quite low. I think the prequel rips I'm just finishing downloading of the Sky Broadcast are about 18GB in H264, so 12GB in MPEG-2 doesn't sound great.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

Author: totsugeki
Time: 26-Nov-2006 12:48 PM
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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
And btw...i wouldn't touch the German broadcast. Watching any Star Wars movie with PAL speed-up is atrocious.

Ah yes, that horrible speedup. AssumeFPS(24). Oops? And like I said, you can get audio from another source. They can be combined, youknow? No more atrocious speedup.

edit: Fixed broken quotes.

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:29 PM
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Originally posted by: Karyudo
People are reporting a size of about 10 GB for each of the three original films from Cinemax. The highest number I've seen quoted is 12 GB, I think -- and who knows what all that includes; there's some "bonus material" that may be included in that total.

I thought no one was able to rip it? If they were, where are these reports coming from and why are we having this discussion?

And like I said, you can get audio from another source. They can be combined, youknow? No more atrocious speedup.

No you can't combine it. You'd have to slow down the video then as well.

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 26-Nov-2006 2:30 PM
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Originally posted by: DVD-BOY
I believe if you were going to flip this into another format (MPEG-2 for HD DVD DFNYC

Sorry...that's Blu-Ray. HD DVD uses VC1 almost completely and is a much more efficient codec taking up 1/3 the space (sometimes less) than MPEG2 does.

Author: totsugeki
Time: 26-Nov-2006 4:16 PM
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No you can't combine it. You'd have to slow down the video then as well.

Well _obviously_ you have to slow down the video as well (which is what AssumeFPS() does). I bet that can even be done losslessly by changing some flags in the bitstream. So yes, you can easily combine them.

edit: Also, Blu-Ray supports VC-1 and H246 as well.

Author: Karyudo
Time: 26-Nov-2006 5:39 PM
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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
I thought no one was able to rip it? If they were, where are these reports coming from and why are we having this discussion?
People on AVS Forum have reported sizes. Is it possible that their PVRs could report sizes? I think some of those poster are also archiving to D-VHS. It's possible some of them even have cable without 5C, but that's not entirely clear from their posts, and my attempts to PM have gone unanswered.

No you can't combine it. You'd have to slow down the video then as well.

Sure. As others have mentioned, that's easy. Combining Premiere and Cinemax video and adding DVD audio is no big deal in AviSynth. The result can be rendered as DivX, if nothing else. I think there are also solutions for rendering MPEG-2 at MP@HL, and muxing as a transport stream. Then you've got HD quality video, at the original framerate and audio pitch. Perfect.

Author: s7en
Time: 26-Nov-2006 6:19 PM
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abhdtv.net has a great thread on 'How to convert recent Star Wars Discusssions to NTSC' ('Discussions' being the German HD alt.binaries.hdtv releases) - here's a couple of relevant posts:

"It is possible to change the 25fps to 24fps.

On playback, using Reclock, you can force the video to 24fps. Reclock won't pitch correct ac3 on-the-fly, so you'll have to do that some other way. ffdshow perhaps.

Another way is to demux the video into an .mkv, then remuxing the mkv with the timecodes option. I do not know how easy it will be to keep the audio in sync using this method.
edit: Well, it works perfectly and adding audio is no problem. The files play smooth, stay in sync, and seek perfectly. But it is .mkv, which isn't good for everyone.

The third way is to get a ts muxer with h264 support, feed in the 25fps video as 24fps (duno if possible directly), sync and mux with an ntsc ac3 track...
And if you successfully do this, be sure to share

)

You don't need to lose quality, because no reencoding should be involved."

and

"Quote:
On playback, using reclock, you can force the video to 24fps. Reclock won't pitch correct ac3 on-the-fly, so you'll have to do that some other way. ffdshow perhaps.
Reclock can sort of do it - you add FFDShow Audio Decoder to the graph, connected to the splitter's audio out pin. Then you add Reclock after FFDShow Audio Decoder - make sure you tell FFDShow to decode the audio into the 5.1 streams (liba52 for AC3, libdts for DTS). Turn on Hardware Sampling in Reclock. FFDShow should present a PCM 5.1 stream to Reclock, and Reclock will resample!"

And earlier in the this very thread the .mkv repost of star wars has successfully combined alternative/additional audio tracks with the original broadcasts.

On that note, MKV versions of all three movies are now on alt.binaries.hdtv.repost - although I think the only difference between these and the original broadcast uploads is someone added the German 5.1. audio from the PAL DVDs.

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 27-Nov-2006 12:06 AM
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Originally posted by: totsugeki

edit: Also, Blu-Ray supports VC-1 and H246 as well.

Of course it does. Never said it didn't. But unfortunately a majority of the releases aren't VC1.

Author: DVD-BOY
Time: 27-Nov-2006 8:30 AM
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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc

Originally posted by: DVD-BOY
I believe if you were going to flip this into another format (MPEG-2 for HD DVD DFNYC

Sorry...that's Blu-Ray. HD DVD uses VC1 almost completely and is a much more efficient codec taking up 1/3 the space (sometimes less) than MPEG2 does.

Sorry, I thought I saw you on the AVS forums with regards to making red laser DVDs of HD content, playable in HD-A1 using Ulead's software. Isn't that how you did your Trailer HD DVD?

In the near future, hopefully the homebrew community will be able to run out DVD-Rs / DVD+R DLs with H264 & VC-1 video, but for the short term, HD DVD is stuck with MPEG-2, although at least that works (I understand Blu-ray and Ulead don't)

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 27-Nov-2006 9:31 AM
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Originally posted by: DVD-BOY

Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc

Originally posted by: DVD-BOY
I believe if you were going to flip this into another format (MPEG-2 for HD DVD DFNYC

Sorry...that's Blu-Ray. HD DVD uses VC1 almost completely and is a much more efficient codec taking up 1/3 the space (sometimes less) than MPEG2 does.

Oh totally. I'll be doing it with the recent Madonna concert as well. But, yeah, unfortunately we'll be stuck with MPEG2 for the moment because that's all they're offering with regards to authoring. Even still, those MPEG4 captures from the UK are MPEG2 sizes so the quality should be great...but still wouldn't fit all on on DL DVD. We'll have to wait until recordable HD DVD's come out.

Author: Dunedain
Time: 9-Dec-2006 7:14 AM
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So no one was able to record the Star Wars movies in HD off of Cinemax in a way that would allow ready copying over to high definition DVD's?

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

Author: Karyudo
Time: 10-Dec-2006 11:00 AM
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Nope. Doesn't look like it. Oh, well -- no great loss.

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 11-Dec-2006 1:14 PM
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Told you.

I'm sure someone did. Hopefully it will show up one day.

Author: Karyudo
Time: 11-Dec-2006 4:17 PM
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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
Told you.

I'm sure someone did. Hopefully it will show up one day.

I doubt it. It will be superseded by the superior, h264-encoded, 5C-free version airing in January on SkyHD. Just like it's pretty much been pre-empted by the PremierHD airing (German language crawl and subs notwithstanding).

Proving once again that the best place to get American HD movies is Europe.

Author: Dunedain
Time: 12-Dec-2006 9:56 AM
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Well, I'm very glad to hear that an unencrypted broadcast will be made on this SkyHD. But those will be messed up by the PAL speed up. So the video will have to be slowed down and the soundtrack replaced with the U.S. DVD 5.1 soundtrack (unless there's a way to flawlessly correct the sound (so it sounds exactly the same as the U.S. DVD) without replacing the soundtrack). But at least there won't be any German words on the screen fouling up the whole movie.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

Author: digitalfreaknyc
Time: 12-Dec-2006 10:46 AM
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Originally posted by: Dunedain
Well, I'm very glad to hear that an unencrypted broadcast will be made on this SkyHD. But those will be messed up by the PAL speed up. So the video will have to be slowed down and the soundtrack replaced with the U.S. DVD 5.1 soundtrack (unless there's a way to flawlessly correct the sound (so it sounds exactly the same as the U.S. DVD) without replacing the soundtrack). But at least there won't be any German words on the screen fouling up the whole movie.

Agreed. Pal speed-up is teh suck.

Author: BountyHunter
Time: 17-Dec-2006 5:44 PM
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Originally posted by: Dunedain
So no one was able to record the Star Wars movies in HD off of Cinemax in a way that would allow ready copying over to high definition DVD's?

I was able to record them all on my DVR....but no one really got back to me about wether or not it can be used.