.: LeeThorogood's PAL LaserDisc Preservation Project :. - '97 SE Finished '95 THX Finished - '97 SE Uploaded '95 THX Uploaded to the newsgroup — Page 10

So which coffret set are you doing the rare and hard to find CAV THX, or the earlier non THX one ?

Anyways cannot wait to see Star Wars coffret.

I have the older boxset and no pal laserdisc player, the set also has from star wars to jedi with burnt in french subtitles,lol.

Since i have never even watched them i am not even sure if they are pan and scan or letterbox widescreen.

My preservation is of the "rare and hard to find CAV THX" one.

While I am here I may as well update you all on where I am up to. I have finished capturing all the LaserDisc audio/video for ROTJ, so now I just need to capture the VHS footage and then I will be ready to start editing it all together. Work has been a bit slow on ROTJ this past week as I have been distracted by the idea of automated GOUT colour correction/enhancement.

It took me only a few hours last night playing with a combination of colour correction filters in FinalCut after a week and a bit of failed attempts in Avisynth to get something that I feel is very close to the photos of the Technicolor IB showing at the Senator Theatre sans the over exposure. The results of the filter combination I have put together is by no means a perfect match, but then considering the source is the GOUT I am amazed how closely and consistently I have been able to match the GOUT to the Technicolor IB! Now there is still some work to be done, mostly minor tweaks to black/white levels, individual colour levels and overall saturation. Once all that is done I will be able to see just how good a result I have achieved and go from there. ;)

Not to worry colour correcting the GOUT is a side project, my main focus is still the coffret set and I am still on course to have this finished by the end of the 1st week of Feb. :)

Happy birthday to me.

Just a quick update. Capturing, Colour Calibration and Subtitling is complete and Rendering has begun on ROTJ. :)

Another quick update. Rendering is complete for ROTJ, I hope to go through and put all the chapter markers in this evening, encode to MPEG2/AC3 over night and then author the DVD tomorrow evening. :)

Is there any preference with regards to the bit-rate of the Dolby Digital 2.0 AC3 file? Although my encoders default is 192kbps I was thinking of using 384kbps, or is this overkill?

It depends.

Some of us wouldn't mind having the raw files to try to convert to NTSC ;)

I captured the audio from the LaserDiscs as 16-bit 48kHz PCM which IIRC has a bit-rate of about 1.5mbps, so I guess it would be worth doing it as 384kbps DD then. :)

I did some tests this evening when I got home from work to try and find out if the audio I have captured is stereo or matrix surround. I re-captured a small segment of the ROTJ audio using the "First 2 channels", "Second 2 channels" and "Mix 4 channels" settings in my capture software. I have then compared the waveforms at max zoom and to my eye they look identical. So I am now fairly sure its matrix surround aka Dolby Surround aka Dolby ProLogic. Which leaves me in a bit of a pickle as I don't know how to encode this to DD without it becoming stereo. :(

Thanks for the tip dark_jedi, in that case I will use 256kbps. :) With this and Moth3r's answer to my question in this thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/LaserDisc-Dolby-Surround-Question/post/466813/#TopicPost466813 I am all set now to encode the audio. :D

Another one of my 'quick updates'. The DVD Audio for ROTJ has been encoded, I dont have a surround set-up so I can't check the Dolby Surround/ProLogic encoding is working, just have to cross my fingers that it is! The DVD Video is also encoded now, although I didn't have a chance to look at it before I left for work this morning, so I will post another update when I know if its a good encode or not. :)

Assuming there is nothing wrong with the video, all I have left to do is to go through and configure the chapter menus, then I can author up the DVD and ROTJ will be done! Although this wont be the Coffret set finished as I still need to re-render the video for SW and ESB with the video calibration settings applied. These will then need re-encoding to MPEG2 and re-authoring.

So all in all I should have the whole Coffret set done in about a week or so.

rockin said:

That's awesome.

Are you going to be putting out your 1997 set at the same time once these are done?

Sorry I haven't posted in a few days everyone. The encode looks good and I have started linking up the chapter menus work on finishing Jedi has been a bit slow as I have been busy / very tired the last few days and so I haven't had a lot of time to spend on it. :(

If anyone has got any particular shots from Jedi they would like me to post screen caps of just let me know. :) Something to tide you all over while you wait for the final release.

OK Guys I will see what I can do about the screen caps ;)

As for a 5.1 Surround audio track. To be honest audio really isn't my thing, and to achieve this I would have to learn how to upmix Dolby Surround to Dolby 5.1 and then actually make the 5.1 upmix for each film which would mean spending even more time on this project when really I want to put this release to bed so I can move onto my 'Replica Technicolor I.B.' Star Wars Trilogy with Theatrical Audio.

As I understand it so long as your 5.1 receiver/decoder can handle Dolby ProLogic/ProLogicII you will get a surround experience, it wont be full 5.1 but then at the same time it wont be plain old stereo either. ;)

The only 5.1 mix was done for the 1997 special editions.

The only star wars laserdisc besides the phantom meance in ac3.

Phantom was of course Dolby digital ex though, and not just plain vanilla 5.1.

The original films never had any real quality audio release on home video until the Definitive collection and the PCM tracks on those were really nice.  Though i hated the added sounds on star wars.

Also the digital audio releases were rather late in the game even in japan.  Late eighties, Jedi being the first in Digital on laserdisc i believe.

I think they considered testing digital mixing on empire but it was not a proven thing yet, and the THX system had not been created yet by Tom Holman.

The first digital mix was star wars done in 1985 in stereo for home video, but did not make it to laserdisc in the states until 1989 at the earliest.  japan got it in 85 or 86 in the japan special collection, and also the pan and scan digital release predating the 1992 issue of star wars in the USA.