logo Sign In

ROTJ LD Preservation Project (* unfinished project? *)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

This is my first preservation/restoration project and the source material is the US ROTJ 1990 Laserdisc release. At this stage, I don’t know if the end result will be a DVD, MP4 etc - this is where I’ll probably need some guidance.

Main project equipment:

P4 3.6Ghz PC with 2GB RAM and 360GB HDD with a WinFast VC100 XP capture card, running a heavily optimised XP SP3 installation.

1Ghz G4 Mac with 1.2GB RAM and 250GB HDD with an M-Audio 2496 card and M-Audio CO2 converter.

Pioneer CLD-925 and LD-V4400 Laserdisc players.

This is what I have been doing so far. I have used iuVCR on my PC to produce NTSC analogue captures in 720x480 with the UT codec from the LD-V4400. The entire film has been captured onto the computer and de-noised using the Neat Video plug-in for VirtualDub.

I am using the Mac to extract the PCM audio from the D925’s optical out and and then at a later stage I’ll sync everything together.

There’s still a lot of work to do and I’m still finding my feet to a great extent. I will keep this thread updated as the project progresses. If anyone has any questions, suggestions or questions in general - by all means, fire away.

Check out the screenshots if you’re curious at all.

J

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/9168/77530586.th.png[/IMG]

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/4677/48624235.th.png[/IMG]

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7951/37449140.th.png[/IMG]

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/8176/51216946.th.png[/IMG]

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/6383/53460504.th.png[/IMG]

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4932/37194849.th.png[/IMG]

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/895/54331540.th.png[/IMG]

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/1945/22176621.th.png[/IMG]

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/8536/99978125.th.png[/IMG]

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/2788/18230529.th.png[/IMG]

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2236/92271365.th.png[/IMG]

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/1849/76862180.th.png[/IMG]

http://img545.imageshack.us/img545/8447/69808800.th.png[/IMG]

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/732/40224459.th.png[/IMG]

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/429/10899468.th.png[/IMG]

http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/2296/95070406.th.png[/IMG]

http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/3198/95914733.th.png[/IMG]

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/5192/54415391.th.png[/IMG]

http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/6392/70495081.th.png[/IMG]

http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/6656/46767362.th.png[/IMG]

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6653/18061708.th.png[/IMG]

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/282/87701847.th.png[/IMG]

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/7942/53768538.th.png[/IMG]

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/3778/49403056.th.png[/IMG]

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/2328/18219504.th.png[/IMG]

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/4968/80795387.th.png[/IMG]

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/5765/52780969.th.png[/IMG]

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/6973/43646500.th.png[/IMG]

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/7379/96969856.th.png[/IMG]

http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/4187/49393917.th.png[/IMG]

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time

I'm honestly not one of the expert on laserdiscs but good luck on this. The 1990 ROTJ used a different master from the GOUT. Because I believe msycamore has done the Technidisc edition of ANH and ESB will come after his THX preservation, it's nice to know someone will be doing a preservation like this to complete the smear-free trilogy.

Good luck on this.

Author
Time

It's a film source; it should not be deinterlaced.

What you should do, however, is carry out IVTC to restore 23.976 progressive fps.

Guidelines for post content and general behaviour: read announcement here

Max. allowable image sizes in signatures: reminder here

Author
Time

returning the original progressive frame from two interlaced fields is what i call deinterlacing. so does wiki:

Progressive source material

Interlaced video can carry progressive scan signal, and deinterlacing process should consider this as well. Typical movie material is shot on 24 frames/s film; when converting film to interlaced video using telecine, each film frame can be presented by two progressive segmented frames (PsF). This format does not require complex deinterlacing algorithm because each field contains a part of the very same progressive frame. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinterlacing#Progressive_source_material

Author
Time

Moth3r said:

It's a film source; it should not be deinterlaced.

What you should do, however, is carry out IVTC to restore 23.976 progressive fps.

As per your suggestion I have made an attempt to carry out an IVTC on a 27 minute segment and the expanded from just under 8 GB to nearly 50 GB! Is this correct or have I made an error somewhere?

Here's my VirtualDub settings for the IVTC.

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/5343/vdubscreencapivtc.png[/IMG]
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/4757/vdubscreencapivtc2.png[/IMG]

The Aluminum Falcon said:

I'm honestly not one of the expert on laserdiscs but good luck on this. The 1990 ROTJ used a different master from the GOUT. Because I believe msycamore has done the Technidisc edition of ANH and ESB will come after his THX preservation, it's nice to know someone will be doing a preservation like this to complete the smear-free trilogy.

Good luck on this.

Thanks. :)

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time

Awesome news.

This signature uses Markdown syntax, which makes it easy to add formatting like italics, bold, and lists:

Author
Time

I figured out the problem, VirtualDub was set to uncompressed instead of the UT Video codec. Once this was corrected, I then performed another IVTC but there's a marked degradation in image quality. I'll have to look at other options to achieve the pulldown...

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time

Time for a status update...

I'm approaching the stage where everything is almost ready to assembled into an A/V file. Since this is my first foray into this area, I would really appreciate some advice on how best to proceed.

The video files are spread across three separate Huff captures that total 50 GB. They've been cropped in VirtualDub and I now need to resize them back to 720x480 (in order to make the video a true 16:9?), which software/techniques would you recommend for good results? 

I have extracted the LD digital audio as an Audacity project and need to choose a format that will preserve the PCM audio quality. FLAC seems like a good choice because it uses lossless compression and offers substantial savings on file size compared to AIFF and WAV. Again, I'm open to suggestions on alternatives.

For the purists among us, would you appreciate the inclusion of the CBS/FOX Dolby Surround intro? :)

Any feedback and advice would be a great help, thanks.

J

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
Author
Time
 (Edited)

 

This is the only picture I can see right now, from the images above....  :(

I think this is exciting....hope to see this one turn out well.

 

 

Author
Time

Nice pics ! Do you also plan to do some colour correction or do you want to preserve the exact look of the laser disc ?

Author
Time

Thanks for the replies. :)

Whether or not to correct the colour is a good question. Whilst working on this project I've given it some thought, I would have to teach myself the techniques because its not something that I'm familiar with.

Perhaps I could produce two versions? One being untouched with "warts and all" quality and the other enjoying a restoration with colour correction and tweaks to remove glitches that were inherited from the LD.

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk