For the record: at the beginning of the capturing phase, I discovered a frightning thing: the capture, any capture, ALWAYS had 4 frames lost, everytime... I ask myself why not 3, or 5, or any other number, but always 4... I started the captures with the PC only dedicated to VirtualDub in capture mode, to not disturb the process. But, at least I have to wait for a CAV side 30 minutes, so what? I switch to TV (I use my hidef 55' as monitor too) and after, say, 15 or 20 minutes, I switch back to PC to see if all goes well, and here you are the 4 lost frames... everytime...
I then discovered that the switching from TV to PC (and not viceversa) made the PC to "forgot" those 4 frames, just in the moment I changed the source... I repeated that action, and so it lost 8 frames, 12 frames etc... it seems there is something with the HDMI, and I'm sure is a driver problem, as before the complete reset of my computer, the problem was not there... at the end, I started the capture "blind", just hit the F5 when the laserdisc side starts, and hit ESC when the side ends, and that way no missing frames!!! It makes me crazy for a whole week to find where the problem was...
Back to dropouts, as laserdisc is prone to them, when I realigned all the captures, I use an avisynth script to zoom near the borders to find better the alignement, and when zoomed, the video dropouts are more evident. There seems there are no missing frames, but I will have nightmares for years if I have to check all the four captures, frame by frame... something like 720,000 frames, more or less... (_O o)
I haven't used yet TOOT just because using the captures from four different sources - in theory identical, but they are not, from the missing frames (in the source, due to side changes mainly) to the fact the luma and chroma are different - the TOOT doesn't work well. Where it works very well, is when using the captures of same disc taken with different players, or different discs (same catalog number of course) with same player, or better different discs on different players!
So, to improve a bit the video quality, next step will be to use TOOT, different discs (where available, like french and spanish discs) and different players(I just used (one of my three) Pioneer CLD-D925, I think to use the next time the industrial LD-V4300D, mainly for its direct motor and the lack of any digital gadget, and the Pioneer CLD-600, also noted for its simple but clean video path, digital free) to eliminate those annoying drop-outs (basically, to someone who can't figure out what we are talking about, drop-out are small errors present in the image, usually as black lines few pixels long, but could be also colored).
I'll do it if there is some interest in my project, as it seems nowadays everyone hate laserdisc capture and think they are crap; but as I stated in my first post, the mission of this project is to provide a good alternative to GOUT, mainly (almost) DVNR and smear free, using only analog source - a real and unusual challenge - and I think I accomplished the task - you'll be the judges.
At the end, do you like the name of the project, or should I change it? If you like it, the next one, 1997 SE, will be named "SET ruLes (Special Edition Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions)" - after that, maybe there will be also "TPM ruLes". If you don't like it, the alternative I will use will be "LOUT (Laserdisc Original Unaltered Trilogy)" and "LOSE (Laserdisc Original Special Edition)".
To whom it may concern: the conversion is going on, it's at 67% now; tomorrow morning will be finished; after I'll figured out how to show subtitles (forced and not, in all the same languages as the audio tracks - thanks 3PIO!) using TSmuxer, and after I have synchronized them, I'll release the first complete version.
It will be a .m2ts file, video 720p 25fps 16:9 @7400kpbs; five audio tracks (english, french, german, spanish, italian) AC3 5.1 @448kbps; five subtitles forced + five full.
PM me if you are interested - maybe there are three or four fans here who are waiting for this first release! (^-^)
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HELP NEEDED!
The main goal of the project is to obtain a 23.976fps version - the most similar to theatrical release, but for that I NEED someone who knows perfectly the SW soundtrack and who help me. How? Just listening some audio clips from the different PAL tracks (could be only music, just tell me which part is needed) to determine if that track has the right pitch or not!