THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 16

I was confused aswell, lol.

Guys, feel free to make suggestions as to what you would like to see for cover art, i will keep track of them. And in the meantime, i'll start whipping up some concepts.

This thread have been frighteningly silent lately, any news, SilverWook and erri_wan? I'm waiting to begin work on your files.

Just so you know, SilverWook, if you're able to send me the raw capture, I'm willing to help you out with this.

Sorry for having been so quiet. I had the chance to get a nice quiet weekend away from home, and took it. (And I really needed to be "off the grid" for a while.) Several untidy messes awaited me when I got back, but I really needed the rest.

To complicate matters, the hard drive in my laptop dropped dead this morning. (It gets hung up on the startup screen.)  I tried various old dirty tricks, including yanking the HD out and plugging it back in. Finally, I gave it one last try this evening before contemplating finding a repair shop, and the thing came back to life. I'm furiously backing up my files, because I don't know if this thing will turn over again after I shut it down.

I have a backup for the laptop, but I haven't been able to warm up to using Vista. Barring any more unforseen computer problems, I will try to get things back on track this weekend.

And thanks for the offer, msycamore. I want to get a transfer using the Pioneer 704 done to add to the other discs before sending them out to you.

No need to apologise guys, real life always comes first. I just were a little curious about the current situation, that's all... My above post actually sounded like I was a little impatient. ;) Anyway, thanks for the quick updates. :)

Your bad luck seems to continue, SilverWook. :( I hope you get things back on track soon, computer problems are really tiresome. Really nice to hear you're planning a new capture on the 704! :)

Thanks, erri_wan. Looking forward to see the extended SEN scene!

I've now gone through the Italian cut, thanks again, erri! It was nice to finally see that extended scene with Donald Pleasence.

A few comments on the video:

The intro and end titles is letterboxed in order to not crop out the titles, however it is stretched causing a wrong aspect ratio- that should be easy to fix, I guess.

Unfortunately, this video is also in very low quality sometimes, lots of bad MPEG artefacting as you can see below, in fact, this whole scene looks like this, and many other scenes as well.

So a different source of this cut would've been nice to have.

This cut of the film is 01:17:25 min, converted to NTSC it is 01:20:43 min... I want to know what you all think of this, if it is even worth to convert this file to NTSC and loose the extra lines of resolution? Should we do anything with it? just release it as it is, with the subtitle stream, or should we wait and see if we could get a better source for this?

I've tried improving the video quality on VirtualDub, using the filters MSU Smart Deblocking and MSU Cartoon Restore (the old version, the beta will crash virtualdub)

I have used these settings:

VirtualDub.audio.SetSource(0);

VirtualDub.audio.SetMode(0);

VirtualDub.audio.SetInterleave(1,500,1,0,0);

VirtualDub.audio.SetClipMode(1,1);

VirtualDub.audio.SetConversion(0,0,0,0,0);

VirtualDub.audio.SetVolume();

VirtualDub.audio.SetCompression();

VirtualDub.audio.EnableFilterGraph(0);

VirtualDub.video.SetInputFormat(0);

VirtualDub.video.SetOutputFormat(7);

VirtualDub.video.SetMode(3);

VirtualDub.video.SetSmartRendering(0);

VirtualDub.video.SetPreserveEmptyFrames(0);

VirtualDub.video.SetFrameRate2(0,0,1);

VirtualDub.video.SetIVTC(0, 0, 0, 0);

VirtualDub.video.SetCompression();

VirtualDub.video.filters.Clear();

VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("MSU Smart Deblocking 0.8");

VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[0].Config(1,1,1,1);

VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("MSU Cartoon Restore 1.3");

VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[1].Config("bilateral", 1, 5, 0);

VirtualDub.audio.filters.Clear();

copy this into a txt file, then rename it as a vcf and load it into virtualdub

using my settings the above frame (30272) comes out like this:

what do you guys think?

^That looks fairly promising :)

How does the rest of the video come out?

Roughly like that frame. The filters I've used take out the big ugly blocks but leave the detail alone, something a simple blurring won't do. Do you want me to post some screenshots? some before/after?

It leaves the detail alone? Right on!

Yeah, i'm sure some before/after shots couldnt hurt :)

ok, check out this little slideshow of some random frames from the same sequence

Slideshow

Very impressive, Leonardo! Would you consider helping msycamore out with the Laserdisc captures I'm going to send him?

In other news, I'm really disappointed with how THX looks played back on the 704. This player does some internal digital processing of the video whether VNR is on or off. This was probably a good thing in the era of smaller CRT monitors, but just seems to degrade things slightly now. I also saw signs of the dreaded "CLV smearing", that drove me back to my old gas tube monster for DVD capture to begin with. I don't regret getting it fixed though!

Long story short, I think captures made with my other two players of both the domestic and Japanese discs will be what we need. Some scenes look slightly better on one machine than the other.

Impressive results, Leo! Looking very good, do those filters work in YUV or RGB? I only do Avisynth, but I guess the results would be about equal? Thanks for helping out! I'll check it out. :)

And I am not mocking your source, erri_wan, I just wanted to let people know what we're up against and how high we're setting the bar.

SilverWook, thanks for the update and for taking the time studying the best capture options. Damn, you have three players! :)

That's great, Jaitea! Could you check it against the screencaps I posted a few pages back to see if it's the same print that was used? Or possibly post some screencaps from your copy?

I was planning on taking pictures of my LD's for potential extras on the eventual DVD. Shots of the PAL disc and jacket would be most welcome!

Thank you, Jaitea!

In other news, I've belatedly realized the analog to HDMI converter I use on the flat panel in the living room is adding it's own video gremlins to what I'm seeing. (The analog video inputs on this tv are screwy, but I didn't start using them until it was out of warranty.) Therefore, I'm going ahead with a 704 capture and will see how it looks on the other screen in the house before counting it out.

I know it would make sense to simply have everything in the same room on the better tv, but there just isn't space anymore. And I need to get to the back of the LD players, S-VHS VCR, and DVD recorder to swap cables around often.

And msycamore, I didn't intentionally plan to have three LD players, honest! ;)

erri_wan said:

I know msycamore, don't worry. I agree with you 100%, we should definitely find the best source available. Unfortunately I haven't been able to secure a copy of this film yet. I'm still hoping that the guy I contacted on a forum will reply my message, he was selling it for 5 euro.

 

I am still keeping my eyes open for it as well.

erri_wan said: 

Do you guys think that it could be possible perhaps to make two separate (but identical) products, one NTSC for Americans and the other PAL for us Europeans?

Of course, no problem. We make it both ways then.

Another thing, in the broadcast, the channel logo appears in the corner of the frame five or six times, I don't remember exactly, the first appearence is in the black border so that one is easy to mask out, but the other instances we will have to live with, as it was broadcasted in pan & scan.

You could always try to splice in fullscreen footage from another source to get rid of them, but I don't think the logo is that disturbing. Thoughts?

Speaking personally, i do not think the tv logo is much of a problem at all, and wouldn't worry too much about it. IMO its all part of the fun :)