Captainsolo's laserdisc transfers: Bond and a few others (Released)

These are the transfers I’ve done with what I have on a crummy school Mac.

The transfers were done with a Pioneer CLD-D504.

Work chain: Imported LD and digital audio into Final Cut Pro in a lossless DV codec, cut together with any dropouts fixed with VHS if necessary, Scaled to fit a 16:9 anamorphic sequence, Exported as lossless quicktime mov, converted to Apple ProRes 422HQ, brought into Compressor and exported at maximum bitrate and Dolby ac3 @ 448 kbp/s (Surround encoded if necessary) with Reverse Telecine, DVD built and encoded in DVD Studio Pro to an .img file.

The Spy Who Loved Me-1989 LD with Theatrical Dolby Stereo Surround

You Only Live Twice-1989 LD with Theatrical Mono

Fan Filtration is working on a perfected transfer with the Connery Collection. I also did a transfer of the Connery Collection Vol. 1 since I had it, but I did no tweaking or correcting with any of these. They are all straight transfers of the LDs with just reverse telecine done.

Dr. No-1992 Connery Collection with 2.0 mono

From Russia With Love-1992 Connery Collection with 2.0 mono

Goldfinger-1992 Connery Collection with 2.0 mono

I also just started work on the 1993 edition of Chinatown which has an isolated score that will be included.

The Spy DVD is completed and depending on comments the others will soon be fully authored. I thought I would go ahead and start a thread for this project so that people could chime in with their thoughts. These certainly won’t be the best thing ever seen, but they serve the purpose I originally intended. And please, if you see anything that can be fixed or made better say so.

I also have done a transfer of the 97SE set and will probably make a separate thread for that in the SW Preservations forum.

Here's a few really quick random caps from the Spy transfer. I simply did a quick screengrab in quicktime so they aren't all matched in their frame sizes.

I did these late at night in my old school's editing lab. The player and capture device I had access to wasn't the greatest and the Macs fought me every step of the way. I didn't have time to really go through them frame by frame so on some of the discs there are a few glitched frames here and there.(by this I mean frames that appear as color blobs/bars/snow and sometimes with a brief audio dropout etc.)

I'd like to redo these with my own player as soon as I build my own editing PC. (If I can ever save up enough! ;)

If you'd like to have the ones I did finish that's no problem, but they are very very rough. I tried all kinds of things on these transfers just to see what was possible on the software I could use.  Each is a dual layer, hand scaled 16:9 disc. I did the scaling by hand because I couldn't get measurements to look right and I wanted to not crop any part of the frame-especially on the 1.66:1 titles. Gosh, that was a nightmare trying to measure and anamorphicize!

The IVTC I chose looks good for the most part, but I'm not really happy with the overall picture. The sound was originally to be PCM but I couldn't get an authoring that would work so I just encoded everything at 448 ac3. Dolby Surround titles are encoded as such.

Work chain: Imported LD and digital audio into Final Cut Pro in a lossless DV codec, cut together with any dropouts fixed with VHS if necessary, Scaled to fit a 16:9 anamorphic sequence, Exported as lossless quicktime mov, converted to Apple ProRes 422HQ, brought into Compressor and exported at maximum bitrate and Dolby ac3 @ 448 kbp/s (Surround encoded if necessary) with Reverse Telecine, DVD built and encoded in DVD Studio Pro to an .img file.

Titles done: (Dual Layer, 16:9, Trailers+Logos included if present)

Connery Collection Vol. 1: 1.66:1, 2.0 mono@448 kbp/s

SW Trilogy 97 SE+Doc: 2.35:1, 2.0 Dolby Surround encoded@ 448 kbp/s

The Spy Who Loved Me-1991 LD-2.35:1, 2.0 Dolby Surround encoded@ 448

You Only Live Twice-1989 LD-2.35:1, 2.0 mono@448

Chinatown-1993 LD-2.35:1, 2.0 mono, 2.0 isolated score@448

I managed to get the subs in the black bar letterbox area where they originally were by making a separate copy of each subtitle shot and then scaling to 16:9, shrinking the area to fit and cropping off everything but the subs, and then overlaying that on top of the black bottom letterbox of the main transfer. All in all it works pretty well. I didn't like the FCP text much anyway.

I'll probably upload these somewhere. Will shoot you a PM when I do so.

No thunderball pre THX and full picture?, the fanfiltration version never was released.

Ahh..I've gone back over these and they're pretty bad. The player image wasn't the best to start with and in trying to fight some of the bad combing that came out of the Spy transfer it had made the image appear a bit soft, and the LD was already soft. It also continually fights the grain that was on the transfer, something that the DVDs simply have as video noise. The print used is a bit worn, so there are a few big glue spots, and the audio even has what appears to be a tearing noise during the "ride to atlantis" sequence. I wasn't ever able to fully match the side break either, and that was using VHS frames in addition to the LD.

I also think the cheapo capture card I had to use may have had something to do with this.

I think the best thing to do with TSWLM is to utilize the LD audio with either the THX or SE DVD. Despite their flaws they look miles better than this particular pressing and retain all proper colors etc. I've gone back and forth between the two DVDs and I think the THX may be slightly-and I mean very slightly-better. The 5.1 mix isn't bad, and actually keeps the mix identity. It was very well done from the Dolby Stereo original and does not really have much if any stereo separation in the surrounds. This should be the exact one done for the 98 LD when they knew how to upmix properly.

After extensive comparison between all, I think TSWLM had a video master done in say 1989/1990 for LD and this was later scrubbed and applied with EE for the 98 LD and THX DVD. Then this was ported to the SE disc with perhaps a bit more compression for the added features. The UE utilized the video master but Lowry went overboard in scrubbing and completely re-timed the film to suit modern sensibilities.