THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 31

SilverWook said:

I have a plugin for firefox that does that. It saved as a 4 meg mp4 file. It's kind of blocky full screen though.

Maybe ask the guy who posted it nicely, and we could get a better copy? 

Yeah, I thought about that, could you please send me that saved file though?

tonoise said:

Around 20 Minutes into the film, there is this kind of auditorium with spectators "following" a sound bouncing back and forth from left to right.

Now, the english subtitles say that the sound heard is actually a sentence, that LUH had said to THX in a scene before this, when she talks about that they are being watched: "I can feel it" But this sound really doesn't sound like language one could understand and as far as I know this hasn't been in the script. However, the idea that the surveillance system in the society of THX uses its recorded sounds to play it back in a kind of spectacle somehow seems to makes sense to me. So I am really wondering if I can use that to support my thesis on what is going on there or if this was just some subtitle guy going wild...

Hi tonoise, I would guess it is a subtitle error, there's nothing in that scene that sounds like dialogue to my ears, the closed captioning describes a bouncing ball, where as the regular foreign tracks seems to have picked up the same error, most likely due to being based on the English subtitle stream. That's my take on it, even though I can understand your thoughts on it. Is the new Blu-ray subtitled the same way?

Good luck with your essay on the Sound Design.

erri_wan said:

where would we put the 16mm version in possession of SilverWook? Is that the same of the German-TV broadcast? Is there a way to date that 16mm reel?

Yes, like I wrote in the info and what is said on that German comparison site, the TV-broadcast appears to share the same editing SilverWook's print have. The only thing I find weird other than its editing is that how the heck could they air that version on TV in West Germany the same year the Restored Cut got its theatrical re-release in US, the guy I spoke with on Cult Movie forum said it was aired in UK that same year IIRC, but which version that was, he obviously didn't remember.

As both those versions (TV-broadcast, 16mm) have the restored scenes included, they can obviously not be older than '78 as that was the year Lucas was able to finally restore those scenes. But it is the extended footage of Pleasence and different order of scenes in those two versions that doesn't make any sense at all and makes my head explode.

SilverWook said:

Refresh my memory as to where I uploaded the SEN clip last time, and I'll put this up right away.

http://www.sendspace.com/

Thanks. :)

Ok, the Italian Cut is now up on MySpleen. The bad news is that I wasn't able to make a Menu as I desired for this one, so I opted to have the Subtitles - off by default, so you have to turn them on with your remote. :( I'm sorry but I have struggled with it and I'm going crazy, I couldn't figure out the damn subtitles to work with it. Maybe I could have solved it if I had worked a little more with it as I have never done Menus before, but my patience is totally gone for the moment and I feel that I have worked longer on this version than I wanted to in the first place, I really want to get going with what I think is more important - The LD - caps.

If you want to watch a rare, weird and different version of THX 1138, jump on it. If you're after audio and video quality, stay away. ;)

Just give me a PM if you need an invite to MySpleen.

erri_wan said:

Have you got any screens of the menu? I'm just very curious to see them

No I trashed it in furious anger! ;)

At least the avi file you provided have gotten its aspect ratio fixed, audio sync correction on the opening of the film, filtered in VirtualDub to smooth out the worst artifacts, converted to NTSC and beautifully translated by you so that we non Italian speaking people can enjoy it. It still look worse than a VHS-transfer but at least it can be watched in this state.

They switched to .org a few months ago, PM me if you need an invite.

No, I'm still working on the Laserdiscs. The Italian cut is what is available at the moment.

Rogue-theX said:

Does anyone know what features ect. will be on the disc's, or is it too early yet to tell?

Sorry, forgot to answer this. Yes, it's a little too early to tell yet I'm afraid. Will let you know when the time is drawing near. :)

SilverWook said:

If you need some inspiration for menu ideas later on, the official movie website has some interesting imagery.

http://www.thx1138movie.com/

 Thanks, didn't know it still existed.

SilverWook, when you get the chance, can you also check how the Buck Rogers footage look on your Beta if it is included on that tape that is, I'm curious if it appears in black and white or in a sepia tone like on the Laserdisc transfer. Thanks.

Want to show you a few things about the different cropping between the UK LD and US/JAP LD's I mentioned earlier in the thread.

US/JAP

UK

As you can see, the US/JAP transfer is showing more info to the left but losing instead quite much info on the right side, not a big problem but the photography of THX is very stylized with many static shots where there is only action going on to the far left or right of the frame, so when you lose that much info in other scenes it gets a little worse.

US/JAP Here Donald Pleasence is almost completely cropped, not seen at all on regular old CRT-TV's

UK

US/JAP Not as bad as the earlier example but ugly nevertheless...

UK

US/JAP

UK

US/JAP

UK

US/JAP

UK

This aren't the end of the world of course, these are basically the only places in the film I get distracted by the bad framing in the US/JAP transfer. I don't know if I want to use the UK transfer for these shots either when the US/JAP captures is superior in almost every way, the only advantage I can see that the UK have besides the framing, is the lack of edge-enhancement. But I seriously consider to use the 2004 transfer (degraded) for these parts as this bad framing only appears when the damn white dirt is stuck in frame so it would make all things a little easier, two problems solved that way.

If I can use the 2004 transfer succesfully, match the contrast, colors etc, I will still need to clean up seven shots of original footage... I don't know, what do you guys think?

Had it not been for the original WB-logo and green credits, I would never consider to use it, the problem with using footage from it in this part of the film is that it may be harder to blend in with the LD-footage, but I'll at least try it out. I'll also try to improve the PAL transfer, make it more sharp and see what is going to produce the best results. Thanks for your comments.

It sure would be nice to have a reference but no need to go through the trouble just for this, I trust your eyes SilverWook, you have done so much for this project already. :)

Right now I'm going to try out a median filter to eliminate all random dropouts from the different captures, then off to learn some AfterEffects...

I think MSU noise generator for virtualdub could possibly help to blend in the dvd footage with the laserdisc stuff (Its results look similar). The noise in the laserdisc footage looks to be distorted so that it stretches horizontally doesn't it? (I mean just the noise looks stretched, not the actual image). If that is the case the added noise would have to look similar also wouldn't it?

Thanks for the suggestion, will definitely check it out. I don't get what you mean about the LD-video noise looking stretched though, care to explain that further please?

Also... Jaitea, who posted a few screen-caps of his PAL LD transfer on page 17, has kindly offered to send me a copy. :) :)

Heres what i mean by the noise, you can see it clearly here:

Close up:

It almost looks like blocking when i look at it close up like this, maybe it is not noise, but a type of compression artifact inherent in LD video? I thought it was noise at first...

When i mentioned about the msu noise generator i figured you should probably stretch it so it matches (just the noise), but what if instead of using a filter you take a sample of black from one of your captures with that noise (whatever it is) and overlay it on the dvd footage with avisynth? Maybe add a bit of blur to the dvd footage first before the overlay might help blend it in even more.