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Info: Droids and Ewoks, anybody ? — Page 4

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ringwraith1973 said:

Pittrek,

I am not using deinterlacing I am doing an inverse telecine which can be achieved with Avinsynth.  I played with deinterlacing a couple times and it left a "step effect" on curves, it irritated me to no end so I have been researching how to get rid of that effect.  These cartoons were originally shot in 23.97 fps (frames per second) .. NTSC adds dummy frames for American tv at 29.97 fps and PAL adds dummy frames to 25 fps... if you don't at least deinterlace them (which i don't recommend now) though you will see a "comb" effect on monitors if you ever watch them on a computer screen...tvs compensate and re-interlace them.  Doing an inverse telecine restores the frames back to the way the animators did them at 23.97 fps...yes I have learned alot over the last month just because of me wanting to get it right.

Sorry, I didn't understand you correctly originally. Of course, IVTC is absolutely necessary

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 (Edited)

ringwraith1973 said:

Pittrek,

I am not using deinterlacing I am doing an inverse telecine which can be achieved with Avinsynth.  I played with deinterlacing a couple times and it left a "step effect" on curves, it irritated me to no end so I have been researching how to get rid of that effect.  These cartoons were originally shot in 23.97 fps (frames per second) .. NTSC adds dummy frames for American tv at 29.97 fps and PAL adds dummy frames to 25 fps... if you don't at least deinterlace them (which i don't recommend now) though you will see a "comb" effect on monitors if you ever watch them on a computer screen...tvs compensate and re-interlace them.  Doing an inverse telecine restores the frames back to the way the animators did them at 23.97 fps...yes I have learned alot over the last month just because of me wanting to get it right.

Oh, okay. You said in your original post you were making them progressive, that's what's called de-interlacing. Inverse telecineing is not the same thing, but no matter. Good of you to make your process clear.

The fact of the matter, these were animated on two's, so they actually only animated 12 fps, doubling that to 24 by shooting every frame twice onto film. IVTC'ing to 24 frames from an NTSC master does make sense.

However, being a PAL native, I must take umbrage with the claim that PAL ads a 25th "dummy frame". It most certainly does not! It just plays the original 24 frames at increased speed (25 fps), resulting in the world-famous "PAL speedup". Anyone mention dummy frames and PAL in the same sentence again will face my wrath! :-)

So, If you're going to be IVTC'ing my PAL captures, that's a different process to the NTSC procedure.

If you've researched this thoroughly, I am sure you're aware of the dangers when noise-reducing animation. Outlines are very easily mistaken for dirt and rubbed out with the rest of the garbage. Even the pros eff that up. (Warner Bros. anyone? http://www.lyris-lite.net/dvnr_lt_castles.html )

Is that also what happened to the laser bolt in your first image? A before/after will tell.

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I stand corrected on the PAL but i have read in animation forums that there is still a need to reduce the number of frames with a form of IVTC or slow it down in the case you are speaking of and not just deinterlace it because it causes an undesirable effect.  I wouldn't use the same IVTC for the PAL that is done on the NTSC in that case.  I will email you the forum and website that i got my information from and you can pass that onto Pittrek as well.  I learned alot from it.  It spells out too the dangers of over noise reducing on frames as well but that is not what caused the missing "bolt" part I think that is in the film but i don't have the original caputre to compare it with.  

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ringwraith1973 said:

I stand corrected....

Ha ha. Welcome to the OT forums! Here, the sum of all human knowledge is at your fingertips. Rest assured, if you are wrong, someone will set you straight. They always do with me. :-)

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Well guys I have some bad news,
After spending all night and most of the morning on it without sleep I didn't have any success at all in trying to restore the frames on the PAL video.  I kept having a problem (which was also the main problem for me with the NTSC video as well) and that is dealing with frame blending.  Almost every other frame (and sometimes more) is done in a way in which the animation is a blend from the previous and the next frame.  I was hoping with the PAL format it would be a quick fix and just eliminate the blended frame and have a cleaner transition. Inevitably though, there are still additional frames that arise that are blend.  For example, a still shot would show wicket with a ghost image looking like he has four eyes.  I don't know what to do to eliminate this option and I have a feeling it is going to be a problem for me later when I convert the PAL dvds to NTSC format so I can watch them on my television.  I humbly admit, I overstepped my assumption on what I could do to restore the video (at least I am admitting it right away though).  It seems as though blended frames are a difficult common issue for animation in video editing and being the novice I am I can't correct this.  Maybe, Pittrek has another option in this too.  Another concern with the frame rate difference will be when we are mixing the NTSC and PAL videos for the pristine copy, I don't know how well they will mix and hopefully won't cause the NTSC's to have a jerking motion or vice versa.  I am not giving up and will continue to research this but it isn't as quick of a fix as I thought it would be.  I guess we will have to see as a group.  At least we collectively have each other to try to make this work.
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There's an AviSynth filter called AnimeIVTC() that sounds like it is designed to deal with this sort of thing. Might be worth a try.

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Thank you Moth3r for checking,

I actually tried this script a couple times but I didn't have any luck with it.  It still showed the blended fields on the PAL and NSTC clips when I used it.  I registered for that forum to ask for help too, a couple days ago but they have a 5 day waiting period before you can post any questions.  Go figure.

 

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 (Edited)

Ted,

From your picture it looks like you have the same copies of DVD's from the Sci-fi channel that i do.  I also have a copy of the Saturday Morning fall preview with C3PO and R2-D2 that aired.  It may be a nice addition to the final copies. Do you know if yours are in PAL format or in NTSC?

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Agreed.  It looks like we have the same ones.  My DVD's are NTSC.  I got them straight from the source about 5-6 months ago.

The Official VHS tapes are all PAL though except for a couple of J2 releases.

 

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I got mine straight from the source as well ok this is good to know that we have multiple copies of the missing episodes as well.

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Nice.  I was actually the one that got him to transfer his old Droids S-VHS tapes to DVD.  He had only made Ewoks transfers when I ran into him and I persuaded him into getting me a Droids DVD set as well.  He is a super nice guy.

Now, as I said earlier, there is an actual official release of Coby and the Starhunters in Mexico.  I have yet to see a copy for sale anywhere, but I have seen photos and screenshots.  This site swccmty.page.tl used to have photos and screenshots of it up.  But it looks like they have gone through a redesign and are a little shady now.

That would cover it for Droids.  Using the UK PAL releases for all other episodes, plus the Mexican release for video and the ontherunvideo.com audio for Coby.   This would make a complete set of Droids.

Because as I am sure you guys have noticed, the Sci-Fi channel versions are edited.  There is about a good 2-5 minutes missing from each episode.  Not always a bad thing as they sometimes just edited out the groan worthy "comedy" bits.

 

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Good to know.. I didn't realize the Sci-fi channel episodes are edited.  So instead of about 21-22 minutes you are saying the episodes are actually longer?  I saw that about a year or two ago another guy on this forum was creating a preservation set with all the different language sound tracks.  Do we know how successful he was or if he is still in the process of doing this?

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yep. 

I have done a number of side by side comparrisons of the Sci-Fi channel rips to the ontherunvideo.com and the UK VHS rleases (heck even the official DVD's) and the Sci-Fi channel releases always have less footage.

I am sure this was down for two reasons...

a) for time

b) because there is a lot of painful moments in both series :)

Truth be told, the edits aren't that bad and actually kind of move the story along.  Comparable to most fan edits.

 

As far as the other person working on this a year ago...he kind of fell off the map.  And that was what sort of what motivated me to start stockpiling all of the videos that I do have.  This set needs to be done one of these days and we need to make sure that we have the best possible transfer when we do it.

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Ted, you are right.  I looked at the Scifi version of Coby compared to the online torrents that have no logo on them, there is approximately 2 minutes shaved off the Scifi version like you said.  I was hoping that maybe this episode was the exception.  Its good we have a clean copy but it would be nice to find one with the two minutes put back on like you said the Mexico tape should have.  Do you have a copy of theontherunvideo.com version? Is it a clean copy?  I have noticed and it may be possible to remove the water mark if that is the only thing that it causing a discrepency.  I know somewhere out there too has to be a vhs source for the original broadcast, after all the torrents had to originate from somewhere.   For what it's worth I did a search for Coby and the Starhunters in Spanish on google...found one site but just reflects a timeline.  It's called "Coby y los Cazadores de Estrellas" if anyone can have luck searching for this tape it has to be out there so we can get it and add it to the series.

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Ted and Pittrek, I sent you guys private messages.  I may have found an additional good lead.  Let me know what you think.

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retartedted said:

 

Because as I am sure you guys have noticed, the Sci-Fi channel versions are edited.  There is about a good 2-5 minutes missing from each episode.  Not always a bad thing as they sometimes just edited out the groan worthy "comedy" bits.

 

Indeed, The Great Heep is a whopping 7 minutes shorter in the Sci-Fi channel version.

Would the Mexican tapes be dubbed? We could use the torrented version for sound, though. Do you know what the tape looked like? If I know what to look for I'll scour the net and buy it! Money is no object.

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Dammit, they cut out 7 of 22 minutes ? I know that TV stations use to cut the shown material to be able to show you more of the "more important" stuff (= commercials), but this is ridiculous.

 

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pittrek said:

Dammit, they cut out 7 of 22 minutes ? I know that TV stations use to cut the shown material to be able to show you more of the "more important" stuff (= commercials), but this is ridiculous.

 

Ha ha, no, in this instance they cut 7 minutes out of 48! The Great Heep is the "hour long" special episode.

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The semitransparent watermark can be removed quite easily, e.g. with the DeLogo filter for VirtualDubMod, so that's not a problem

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OK I probably used an incorrect term (English is not my native language), what I was trying to say is that there are parts of the logo, which are transparent (you can see the background through those parts) - at least according to the screenshots you uploaded. That's the type of logos which can be removed almost perfectly