[OUT - ruLes] Original Unaltered Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions - A New Hope (Released) — Page 3

Andrea: Do you have a MySpleen account? If not, then I'll send you an invite!

The first public release of Star Wars: A New Hope [OUT ruLes] is ready!

More info could be found on the first post.

The torrent is on myspleen, thanks to AntcuFaalb invite!

PM me if you are interested; hope you will enjoy it!

(, ° °)         "do you like it?"  

//c '_')      "dunno.."

(_o-o)        "...from laserdisc?!?"

_,,,^..^,,,_ "if a cat likes it, it can't be (totally) wrong!"

To myspleen users: please don't forget to seed as long as you can... (° * ,)

To everyone: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

To myspleen users: please don't forget to seed as long as you can... (° * ,)

To everyone: MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

 

Merry Christmas, Andrea!

Happy Holidays to all!

Merry Christmas to you guys :-)

I finally got this downloaded and I must say it's one of the best LD transfers I've seen to date - it has very little noise compared to moth3r's transfer of the PAL LD and it has a lot of detail, plus I like that it's a 720p upscale, because it makes it possible to keep all the extra resolution PAL offers over NTSC and at the same time it can be 23.976 fps. Great job!

@Harmy: thanks!

As you are the author of the best Star Wars despecialized edition, I'm proud to receive your congratulation... I'm really happy you have appreciated my hard work! Thanks again!

Do you think I should continue my "ruLes" projects?

@everyone who watched the release

What do you think about audio soundtracks? As I have not (at the moment) a working 5.1 amplifier, I have not the chance to test the 5.1 soundtrack. I made all the possibile checks, but no real audio "road test"...

What I really need is someone who has a 5.1 audio system that can check the channel positions, and tell me if they are at the right place!

You_Too said:

This one sure looked great for being LD-sourced! At some points it looks like the vertical resolution is even better than the GOUT. Though like you've stated before, the blacks and whites are a bit clipped but I guess they were like that on the disc(s) too?

Unfortunately yes, the clipped whites and crushed blacks are on the PAL masters, so they are present on all the laserdisc editions used on OUT ruLes (and also onto the italian VHS, by the way...).

But the scenes involved are not too much; as I wrote before, I'm thinking about replace them with the "pyramid" edition, but I still have to find the way to color correct those scenes to look like the rest of the movie - I think colourlike avisynth plugin will do a decent job.

***

And now, the bad news (>_<)

First problem noted: the italian soundtrack sounds too much louder in respect to other languages... I thought I recorded it at a too high level, but that was not the case; infact, I leave the Panasonic videocassette recorder mix setting on, so the track is the result of the HIFI+mono VHS tracks! I just finished to capture and convert the right version - it will be included in the next release, but it is important only to whom is interested in the italian track, so... it's a minor bug (U_U!)

Second problem: frames from 135080 to 135087 are half darkened because in the french and english editions those frames were black, and I forgot to replace them... so the median&average script has averaged normal frames with black ones! I just corrected the error; as now the script have to average only two editions instead of four, these eight frames are a little bit lighter than the rest of the scene, but I preferred to leave this as is, because it's better to have a lighter scene one third of a second long, instead of the whole scene averaged between only two editions - and so with less quality. Also if this issue could be not considered as minor as the first, frankly I could not afford another four days conversion just for it (**O) - I'm waiting for eventual other bugs and then start a new conversion.

Waiting to discover the next mistake!

Found another little problems (it wasn't my fault this time!); the french and spanish subitltes (and maybe the german ones) are not literal; I like best the literal subtitles, to not loose any word. If someone would like to adjust them...

Another thing: during the inspections of still frames, magnified 4x or 8x, I noted that the denoiser I used leaves much "grain", but during the normal playback it seems this is not a problem - to me, at least; what do you think?

Any feedback? Both positive and negative critics are welcome, really!

csd79 said:

It seem to have frozen grain/noise in it but interestingly it seem almost natural. I think with some more tweaking of the noise filter settings it could be perfect.

I'm testing a stronger noise filter, that seems marvelous - seen on static frames... I must test with moving images, but it is really promising.

Although I'm not a big fan of these LDs because of the color palette and the heavy cropping, but I really like the stable, non-shimmering starfields and the fact that it has less aliasing artifacts than the GOUT.

About color palette: I discovered that "pumping" a bit (10 or 15%) the saturation, withouth touching anithing else, the colors are really vibrant, compared to the actual version; but in some scenes, like the initial ones with white corridors, the white starts to be not white anymore... I think I will "pump" the saturation only on selected scenes...

Heavy cropping: this time I must disagree with you: yes, sometimes the image is more cropped than GOUT, but many times the contrary is true!

The DVNR smearing and aliasing problems of GOUT were notorius; this is the first reason I started my project!

Thank you for sharing, Andrea!

I hope you will do the rest of the trilogy! Nice project!

Thank you very much! I'm happy to hear someone who likes my project!

Normally I finish a work that I started, so the OUT ruLes will continue!

But I need more comments about ANYTHING, to improve the quality of the next episodes! Your comments are really appreciated.

And I'm thinking also, as I wrote into the 1997 SE thread, to make the SET ruLes, with DTS tracks...

g-force said:

The combination of the residual grain being both large and slow-moving is not very appealing. There appears to be some other slight temporal issues that I can't tell are from the original capture, the denoising, or the median/average of the captures.

I think I can release a SD file, with only average/median applied, and without any denoising, @25fps, and another like the former, with the new denoising, @25fps; if the problems come with the first, than probably they are in the original capture (I don't think median and average could cause such issues); if the problems arise in the second, than the denoiser/sharpener is the guilty; if don't appear in both, maybe it's TsMuxeR which did a poor job of converting from 25fps to 23.976fps.

The audio looses sync slightly over the duration of the movie.

Could you please be more precise? I presume you are talking about the english track; I just checked few minutes at the end, and it seems the audio is in sync with the video... Don't know, the audio tracks were left into the original captures, and the same cuts were done both for audio and video, so they MUST (theoretically) stay in sync... again, maybe TsMuxeR messed up all, or I did something wrong during the conversion from 25fps to 23.976fps! You'll may check one of the file I'll release, cited in the previous answer.

Any chance you could upload the best of the raw captures before combining them and post-processing? Might allow better feedback as to how to improve your final product.

May the two files I'm talking about in the first answer be enough? As I'm really, really sure the four captures are aligned with a pixel perfection...

If you think this is my first attempt at restoring a movie, and it took a month (about 150/200 working hours) to do it, I'm proud of the work I've done!

And, G., "this isn't too bad" to me means "quite good"! Thanks!

I forgot to mention... when calculating the video bitrate, I used 384kbps for each audio track, but at the end I changed my mind and used 448kbps... so, the resulting file it too big for a dual layer DVD!

I think the next release will use the same video bitrate, and the soundtracks lower bitrates (from 448 to 384kbps) to stay inside DL DVD size limit. OR I'll include DD 2.0 Dolby Surround encoded. Or should I lower the video bitrate?

It can't be tsmuxer - there's no conversion involved in changing the frame rate in tsmuxer, it simply slows it down but every single frame remains the same as before.

I'm testing new denoise filter - soon I'll post some screenshot comparisons.

Next version will include original 2.0 Dolby Surround encoded tracks, converted to AC3, because they will sound better than the current 5.1 encoded with FreeSurround.

Meanwhile...

Happy New Year!

FluxSmooth artifact on frame #3661? http://imageshack.us/a/img191/287/wtfaoq.png

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I'm testing new denoise filter - soon I'll post some screenshot comparisons.

Denoisers often do more harm than good, especially if they're temporal.

The best is the poorly-named MDeGrain1/2/3 IMO, but you still run the risk of artifacts if it's applied globally.

AntcuFaalb said:

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I'm testing new denoise filter - soon I'll post some screenshot comparisons.

Denoisers often do more harm than good, especially if they're temporal.

GOSH! Where are my green lasers?!? (°°_)

Thanks to have pointed to this error - this IS a really constructive critic, indeed!

I agree with you, but as laserdisc picture is analog and prone to noise, denoiser is needed... here you are a comparison between unprocessed, OUT ruLes 1.0, and the new denoiser (plus a bit more saturation) - the green laser is back, yooppeeh! (^^,)

Hope this time the overall result is better. (by the way, no FluxSmooth was used...)

g-force said:

AntcuFaalb said:

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I'm testing new denoise filter - soon I'll post some screenshot comparisons.

Denoisers often do more harm than good, especially if they're temporal.

The best is the poorly-named MDeGrain1/2/3 IMO, but you still run the risk of artifacts if it's applied globally.

I think it's well named (or at least better than most functions). Motion-compensated degrain and the temporal radius afterwards. Why don't you think so, AntcuFaalb?

But I agree, artifacts are guaranteed. IF you have to denoise, best is to median with the original a couple different denoisers that don't produce the same artifacts.

I don't know what I was thinking at the time. Silly me! ^_^

I might just miss MVDeGrain1/2/3.

g-force, AntcuFaalb, what do you think about the new denoiser?

I'd like to release a new version, but as my PC will do the conversion in FIVE days (OO_)I want to be sure it is good enough... Thanks to AntcuFaalb; he found that strange glitch - caused by the denoise filter - probably never noticed by anyone else, including me...

Maybe a little clip will be more explanatory! Please let me know which scene do you like to see, to show the new denoiser potential - around 30 seconds, if possible, as it will be dubbed in more than an hour...