Hello to everyone.
This is my first post, but I’m a long time lurker.
I want to say thanks to everyone that spread a lot of work and effort on preserving our beloved original trilogy! THANK YOU!
Back to the topic:
is “really” necessary another restoration project?
There are many available, some with very good quality, so…
I have available a dozen laserdisc players, both NTSC and PAL (also “the dream” HLD-X9), with a LOT of Trilogies, OUT and SE, PAL and NTSC, CLV and CAV…
Well, I decided to do a little test with my PAL french THX laserdisc; because it’s a decent PAL master (with 20% more vertical details than NTSC and no problems with IVTC) and in particular because it’s DVNR FREE!
I used a Pioneer CLD-D925 (a less-than-perfect specimen, to say the truth) with a standard S-Video cable (I know, I know, more explanations on the next posts) and a 9-bit capture card based on the Philips SAA713x chip (a good card, indeed).
Then, I “recicled” some Avisynth script found “here and there” to make my own script, called… WHITE MAGIC (an homage to Laserman’s Black Magic).
It upscale the capture to 1920x1080 (actually 1920x810) with some basic noise reduction and color correction.
The (eventual) project aims to upscale the PAL OUT laserdiscs to 1080p@24fps in avc/h.264 and make an AVCHD recorded on a double layer DVD, so it’s possible to see it on a PS3 or a compatible Blu-Ray player.
I know that upscaling doesn’t rapresent a full HD image, but IMHO is better to transcode - and have “fixed” results - than let the HDTV make the uspcaling “on the fly” - leave the work to the internal (or external) upscaler, with different results.
Here you are the screenshots:
raw capture 1
white magic 1
raw capture 2 (look, I have LEGS!)
white magic 2
raw capture 3
white magic 3
(images are formatted to the same size, but the raw captures are PAL SD and the “white magic” are FULL HD)
To see the real improvements, cut and paste the following links to test clips:
raw capture (about 11MB)
https://rapidshare.com/files/817154170/TEST_-_RAW_CAPTURE.avi
white magic (about 11MB)
https://rapidshare.com/files/2227793752/TEST_-_WHITE_MAGIC.avi
(both the test clips are compressed by VirtualDub; video AVC/H.264 at 8000Kbps, audio PCM uncompressed)
You are encouraged to tell the truth: if this project has to be further developed, or must be terminated ASAP because it is REALLY unnecessary.
All comments are welcome!
In case of positive reactions, any help are highly appreciated - in particular Avisynth masters!!!
Thanks to all (k. in particular),
ThaiPanther