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Post #617467

Author
spoRv
Parent topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/617467/action/topic#617467
Date created
2-Jan-2013, 5:42 PM

_,,,^..^,,,_ presents the [SET ruLes] project

Special Edition Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions


Project mission: restore the 1997 Special Edition Trilogy using audio and video from various Laserdisc editions.

Video sources: analog video captured directly from Laserdiscs; other analog sources are admitted (VHS, CED, VHD, Beta etc.) only if the material is not present on the Laserdisc format.

Audio sources: uncompressed PCM and AC3 soundtracks captured directly from Laserdiscs; DTS Digital Surround theatrical soundtrack from CD-ROMs, other analog sources are admitted (like VHS, vynil etc.) only if the material is not present on the Laserdisc format.

Subtitles sources: Project Threepio (for english and german), literal subs for italian.

Project prohibition: to use DVD, BD, DVB, HDTV or any other audio or video from any digital sources; exception is DTS original theatrical soundtrack, because it was originally released on theaters and never commercially availble after that, and because it is of the same kind (bitrate, bit depth, frequency) of any other laserdisc DTS soundtrack.

Supplemental material: will be released in a future [ruLes] project.

 

Episode IV - Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes]

 

Source Material

Video: THX PAL laserdiscs

 

Video: PAL VHS HiFi

  • Star Wars: Guerre Stellari - Edizione Speciale (only for italian crawl and alignment)

 

Audio: THX PAL laserdiscs

 

Audio: Theatrical DTS soundtrack

 

Audio: THX NTSC laserdisc

 

Audio: PAL VHS HiFi

  • Star Wars: Guerre Stellari - Edizione Speciale - Italian DS

 

Subtitles: english, german, italian (full and forced); french and spanish will follow.


Capture setup & processing info

Hardware:

  • Pioneer LD-V4300 PAL/NTSC laserdisc player (6x) *
  • Pioneer CLD-D925 PAL/NTSC laserdisc player (3x)
  • Pioneer CLD-600 PAL laserdisc player (2x) *


  • Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder (as comb-filter) *
  • Pioneer DVR-320S DVD recorder (as comb-filter) *
  • Pioneer SP-D07 Dolby Digital decoder (as AC3 RF demodulator)

 

  • Panasonic NV-FS88B S-VHS recorder
  • Sony MDS-J520E MiniDisc recorder (as analog/digital converter)

 

  • Sony Vaio VGX-XL201 PC Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz, 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD
  • AverMedia BDA A16C internal video card (with Philips SAA713x chipset)
  • Western Digital Elements 1TB external USB HD (only for Star Wars)

 

  • Monster Cable S-Video 5pin cable (very high quality)
  • Monster Cable S-Video 5pin cable (high quality)
  • LINN composite RCA video cable (very high quality)
  • Audison stereo RCA audio cable (very high quality)
  • SONY optical S/PDIF cable (very high quality)
  • SONY optical S/PDIF cable (high quality)
  • unbranded BNC/RCA & RCA/BNC adapters (medium quality) *

 

* this tools will not be used anymore for this project


Software:

  • VirtualDub as capture software
  • VirtualDub and AviSynth for video editing
  • AviSynth + SoundOut for audio conversion

 

Settings:

  • video captured at card native resolution 720x576 @25fps, YUV, HuffYUV compression
  • PCM digital audio from Laserdisc to PC via S/PDIF bit-perfect 16bit 44,1KHz stereo
  • AC3 digital audio from Laserdisc to DD decoder via S/PDIF, then to PC via S/PDIF bit-to-bit perfect 16bit 48KHz 5.1 surround
  • DTS theatrical digital soundtrack extracted from CD-ROMs
  • analog audio from VHS recorded through the MiniDisc A/D converter 20bit Sigma-Delta modulation and then to PC via S/PDIF bit-perfect PCM 16bit 44,1KHz stereo

 


Project status: RELEASED

Captures:

testing various combination of laserdisc players (different models and units), DVD recorders (different models) and comb filter settings, connection methods (S-Video and composite, RCA and BNC) and brands.

After many tests, I decided to use only the Pioneer CLD-D925 as its video quality (resolution, noise, drop outs) is better than the others; the connection used is S-Video, as the laserdisc player comb filter is better than the capture card's.

 

Video treatment:

all laserdisc video captures will be time and space aligned, then with AviSynth median and average scripts will be overlayed to eliminate some noise and drop-outs, and put out unwanted video parts (as burned subtitles); color correction, at the contrary of OUT, was necessary... after many tests, I found the best compromise to retain the original colors when correct, and to correct them when wrong - in particular during the Tantive corridors initial scenes and Mos Eisley; little noise reduction and sharpen; upconversion from PAL 720x576 4:3 to 1280x720 16:9.

 

Video tracks:

  • the original video format is 720x576@25fps 2.25:1 letterbox PAL, with a video resolution of visible image around 700x340, captured using the HuffYUV lossless codec; video is upconverted to 1280x568@23.976fps 2.25:1 as source, inside a 1280x720pixel 16:9 frame, using x264 codec and compressed at 8000kbps.

 

Audio treatment:

the original soundtracks are: laserdisc PCM 16bit 44.1KHz 1441kbps stereo, Dolby Surround encoded; laserdisc AC3 16bit 48KHz 384kbps 5.1 surround; DTS CD-ROMs 16bit 44.1KHz 1441kbps 5.1 surround; VHS HiFi recorded in PCM 16bit 44.1KHz 1441kbps stereo, Dolby Surround encoded.

All the soundtracks will be converted only when necessary; the conversions will be: from PAL 25fps to 23.976fps (pitch corrected when needed); from 44.1KHz to 48KHz; from PCM 1441kbps to AC3 384kbps; from DTS 16bit 44.1KHz 1441kbps to DTS 16bit 48KH 1536kbps and 768kbps. Only minimal treatments will be done, right for the conversions (NO audio enhancement).

 

AVCHD Audio tracks:

  • english soundtrack from NTSC THX laserdisc, AC3 5.1 Dolby Digital 384kbps 48KHz
  • english soundtrack from english PAL THX laserdisc, AC3 2.0 Dolby Surround Encoded 384kbps 48KHz

 

BD Audio tracks:

  • english theatrical soundtrack from CD-ROMs, DTS 5.1 Digital Surround 1536kbps 48KHz
  • english soundtrack from NTSC THX laserdisc, AC3 5.1 Dolby Digital 384kbps 48KHz
  • english soundtrack from english PAL THX laserdisc, AC3 2.0 Dolby Surround Encoded 384kbps 48KHz
  • german soundtrack from german PAL THX laserdisc, AC3 2.0 Dolby Surround Encoded 384kbps 48KHz
  • italian soundtrack from italian PAL VHS HiFi Stereo, AC3 2.0 Dolby Surround Encoded 384kbps 48KHz

 

Subtitles: to be refined; SRT format, both full and forced, English, German, Italian; French and Spanish will follow.

Subtitles tracks:

  • english full 100% literal - from threepio project
  • english forced 100% literal - from threepio project
  • german full
  • german forced
  • italian full 100% literal - adapted by me from the italian script
  • italian forced 100% literal - adapted by me from the italian script

 

Conversion from 25p to 23.976p: done with TsMuxeR

Final formats:

  • AVCHD folder, 720p/23.976fps with two english audio tracks and six subtitles (three forced and three full)
  • BD folder, 720p/23.976fps with five audio tracks (including DTS theatrical one) and six subtitles (three forced and three full)

 

  • other formats will maybe available in the future

 

Actually AVCHD and BD are both available on myspleen.

ATTENTION: to view the AVCHD version of SW:ANH [SET ruLes 1.0] correctly, it should be burned onto a DVD9 or BD-R, and played on a stand-alone BD player or a Playstation 3! - To view the BD version of SW:ANH [SET ruLes 1.0] correctly, it should be burned onto a BD-R, and played on a stand-alone BD player or a Playstation 3!


Jobs to do for the next version:

  • french and german literal subtitles synchronization
  • adding eventual subtitles in other languages
  • adding the eventual french and spanish soundtrack, if could be found
  • correct eventual video, audio, subs errors

 

To do later:

  • author AVCHD, DVD, Blu-Ray discs properly (menus, audio and sub tracks etc.)
  • provide opening crawl in german and italian (A LOT later...)

 

CREDITS:

  • Capable Metal for the synchronization of the DTS and laserdisc AC3 soundtrack, and for color correction tips
  • Jetrell Fo, Borisanddoris and Eldonante for their work about the 1997 SE Trilogy DTS theatrical soundtrack
  • marvins and spielt mit for their french and german OUT literal subtitles, that will be used also for SET soon
  • AntcuuFaalb, ilovewaterslides, Capable Metal, msycamore, You_Too, g-force for their support, comments, hints and technical help about my [OUT ruLes] project - really helpful for this new project, too
  • Harmy, Moth3r, Zion & laserman & MeBeJedi @ X0project, and all the other restoration projects founders and members, to have inspired me to start my own Star Wars restoration projects!

 

Self comments: There is no official DVD or Blu-Ray disc of the 1997 Special Edition trilogy (and never will be, I'm afraid to add); thankfully there are many DVB broadcasting around, released on DVD (like GKAR, TB, Reivax, Flunk)... but all of them have some of the following problems: MPEG2 "blockiness", compression artifacts, motion smear, image too sharpened or blurred, wrong colors, missing frames, burnt-in subtitles, PAL wrong audio speed, low bitrate, only one or two audio languages, not the best audio quality, lack of subtitles (check my own post here about these issues).

What I'd like to achieve is: eliminate compression artifacts, minimize motion smear (if possible), have the "right" image (not too sharp, not too blurred), correct colors, keep all the possible frames intact (as there are three different edition involved, it's feasible), retain only soft subtitles and not burnt-in ones (especially inside the picture), set proper audio/video speed @23.976fps, set the best bitrate available for any given format (minimum 7500kbps video bitrate for AVCHD and BD with 1280x720 resolution), add some interesting audio soundtracks (DTS theatrical, AC3 5.1, PCM Dolby Surround) in different languages, plus add several subtitles, including proper italian one.