logo Sign In

ROBOTECH: The Deculture Collection (Released)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Yes, I know…Deculture’s Macross, not Robotech, but I just had to get a dig in at the Protoculture Collection and its lucasizations (which are, thankfully, mild in comparison to the disasters that happened to other series).

I’ve already got 6 episodes edited (my sources currently only cover Macross which is 36 episodes, and not the other 49 eps), though when encoding 6, I found a mistake in the encoding scripts for 3-5 and had to go back and redo them.  (Nothing big, just didn’t engage the degrainer correctly.  The Macross BluRays are a bit noisy.)

I’ve tended to jinx myself in the past which is why I wanted to make sure I had a significant number of episodes already ready already before I dared to post anything.  I’ll prolly be uploading batches to nyaa (where I use the handle sarachikorita) in 720p mp4.  I don’t have the means for avchd, so that won’t happen.  I may do isos too since this is an upgrade in quality even at 480p.

This is based on the original, 1985, monaural audio mix and the original, 1985, made for syndication TV edit - it does not and will not have the footage which was added in for the Protoculture re-edit.  It is not a perfect re-edit, although I did not take as many liberties in the editing as I did with CardCaptors.

A friend of mine did the end credits, but I added the rest of the onscreen text myself.

I did make a new version of the logo that shows off the 720p-ness of it:

I don’t know if it’s the fault of the masters, or my source, but a lot of these episodes are also horribly zoomed in.  I am not recreating that.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Looks like a terrific project! I didn't mind the extra footage of Remastered so much as the new sound mix: the added effects were loud, obtrusive and unnecessary. It was too bad they didn't simply re-edit the shows with the new Macross transfers and be done with it; I'm glad you're finally bringing us that option!

...oh: there are Macross blu-rays? Wow!

Author
Time

I hear that a lot.

I've also heard complaints about some of the additions ruining the flow or causing issues with the dialogue (such as a "put some clothes on" moment in the Southern Cross footage that was rewritten around its removal).

Mainly it's the audio I wanted to preserve - but I followed that cut.  I'm going to try to get the first 6 eps up this weekend.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

Yeah, I didn't get nearly that far into Remastered; I watched 2 or 3 eps and couldn't take it anymore and returned my discs!

Author
Time

Treadwell said:

...oh: there are Macross blu-rays? Wow!

In Japan, yes. But we'll never see them here due to licensing issues.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

There's ways around that...

A friend told me a rumor about a potential release of Mospeada which I do not entirely believe, but if it does happen, then I'll be doing 61-85 in HD as well.  Otherwise, once I run out of source I'll just fall back to 480p.  (But since I keep the EDLs as separate Avisynth scripts, it may be possible to upgrade the eps as better source becomes available.)

He and another friend are looking over the 6 eps I have already done and once they're OK'd for release I'll put them on some common tracker and post the torrent on Nyaa.eu (as I usually do for my anime releases).  I'll probably have to take a short recovery break before I move on to the next 6 episodes...

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

It's on nyaa.eu and might be on other indexes by now, just the first 6 eps so far.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

Wow, these look fabulous. Thanks for doing this.

However, and I don't want to look a gifthorse in the mouth, but these updoads are macroblock city. Might want to recheck the compression settings or something.

Author
Time

Funny, I didn't see anything. o.o;  And I had several other eyes on the files before I released them, and they didn't see anything either. o.o;

The compression settings have been checked several times and I've been using them for some time with no one seeing any problems.

They're fairly high settings, too. o.o;

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

 

I'm the friend Molly meant. And about macroblocks, I have no idea what you mean.

There really shouldn't be anything that bad surely.

I think you might just be doing something wrong.

Unless you think some of the intact noise are macroblocks?

Or perhaps your player is poorly upscaling when playing in full screen?

Which can happen if you don't have some certain DirectX updates installed,

which CCCP should nag you about when installing that codec pack.

At any rate, it should just look like this:

http://i50.tinypic.com/20rlbbs.png

Author
Time

I'm definitely watching this. Thank you!

Since you are fan editing the Macross SDF TV blurays, have you seen this fan-edited episode 36 that is more aligned to the story of the comics and novels?

http://vimeo.com/17955050

Author
Time

I haven't actually seen ep.36 in any form, Macross or Robotech.  Both series - as well as Southern Cross and Mospeada - are actually new to me.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time
 (Edited)

GonbeFAN said:

I think you might just be doing something wrong.


Entirely possible! However, all I did was download the torrent from nyaa.eu and downloaded the files with uTorrent...then viewed them with Quicktime.

 

 

GonbeFAN said:

At any rate, it should just look like this:

http://i50.tinypic.com/20rlbbs.png

Well, that frame on mine matches:

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j54/Treadwell_Jay/misc/Screenshot2012-12-20at123824AM.png

...but then I get stuff like this:

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j54/Treadwell_Jay/misc/Screenshot2012-12-20at123143AM.png

and THIS!

http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j54/Treadwell_Jay/misc/Screenshot2012-12-20at123045AM.png

 

The video plays like a bad digital cable or satellite feed during a rainstorm. Clear, then movement or shot changes make it go haywire. Would the lack of a codec do that? I haven't previously experienced a lack of codec enabling clean playback part of the time. And if I close QT and play the file again, the errors appear again in exactly the same places in exactly the same way, suggesting they're baked in.

Anyway, if it's just on my end, then it isn't anyone's problem but mine. Again, good job on the remaster!

 

Author
Time
 (Edited)

That's strange.  It's regular 8-bit h.264; QuickTime should play that just fine.

I haven't played it in QuickTime though - I believe GonbeFAN usually uses Media Player Classic and I usually use MPlayer2.  I'm not sure what other players may have been used though I don't know anyone else who uses QuickTime either...

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

I recommend getting some GUI for mplayer or even just good ol' VLC.

Admittedly, VLC isn't the best thing in town, but it certainly is a huge

improvement over friggin' QuickTime Player. I was gonna recommend

CCCP and MPCHC (which comes with CCCP), but it seems you use Mac OS X.

So anyway, that might fix your problem.

Author
Time

Yeah, it's been my experience that *anything* usually has better output than QuickTime for QuickTime's own formats... and this was true all the way back to the era of QuickTime 2.0, comparing Apple's player to Microsoft's...

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

I thought over the comments a bit.

Yes... QuickTime Player is the one player I think none of us have tried, and historically, I've had better results with any other player.  Nor have any of us tried Windows Media Player.

I use MPlayer2, I think Gonbe uses Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and I would bet that somewhere along the line, Videolan was tested.  These work fine.

A lot of us over on my IRC network use Matroska for our main format, we encode everything with x264 and qaac or mainconcept, then put the file in an MKV container.  I don't like to use the MKV container unless I need one of its features, so I didn't - Robotech, which is single audio and single video, is encoded with x264 and mainconcept, and muxed in an mp4 (QuickTime) container.  So yes, theoretically QuickTime should be able to handle it; but practically, my experience with Apple has been mixed.

The video settings, branded into the video track by the encoding software, are as follows:

x264 - core 129 r2230 1cffe9f - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2012 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=16 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0x133 me=umh subme=10 psy=1 psy_rd=1.10:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=40 chroma_me=1 trellis=2 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=0 chroma_qp_offset=-4 threads=8 lookahead_threads=1 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 bluray_compat=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=16 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=2 b_bias=0 direct=1 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=2 keyint=288 keyint_min=23 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=60 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=18.0 qcomp=0.60 qpmin=0 qpmax=69 qpstep=4 ip_ratio=1.40 aq=1:1.00

I used 8-bit color depth as, while using 10-bit allows for a comparable quality of video in a smaller file, many players do have issue with it still.

The file is encoded at High Profile, Level 5.0; could this be the source of problems as well?  We've never had any issue with it but some players don't seem to like 5.0 level H.264 encoding.  (Again - the ones we all use handle it just fine; props to the libavcodec folks.)

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

I'm a HUGE Robotech fan, and as has been said, I like the original mono mix more than the new 5.1. But I really like how much better the image is in the Remastered Edition. This project sounds like the perfect hybrid. I can't wait to see it. 

What can you get a Wookiee for (Life Day) Christmas when he already owns a comb?

Author
Time

VLC did the trick. Funny, I've more often had problems in the other direction (something not playing in VLC but QT handling it just fine).

Something I could've tried before I complained about it. ;)

I put an ep on a stick and tried to play it with my Sony Blu-Ray player, but it probably didn't know what to do with a 720 file. 

Looking forward to more!

Author
Time

*^^*

I've had trouble with VLC in the past, though usually MPlayer's worked fine.  Funny, since they use the same built-in codecs.

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

Hi Molly, I was just curious if there are any updates on this project? I've been blown away with the work you've done on the first 6 episodes. Robotech has never looked better! I know this must be a very time consuming process. Believe me, I'm not trying to rush you. Keep up the great work! =D

What can you get a Wookiee for (Life Day) Christmas when he already owns a comb?

Author
Time

I've been busy working on other projects, but yeah. :/  Lately most of my focus has been taken by subtitling Detective Conan.  The rest this week has been with me and Gonbe collecting material for Toei's "Arajin to mahou no lamp", since we have 10 audio tracks including Japanese for that, and apparently there's a live-action version of Holic coming out that a friend wants to see.

I'll try to get back to this when I can, because *I* want to see this too. ~.^

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

Molly said:

I've been busy working on other projects, but yeah. :/  Lately most of my focus has been taken by subtitling Detective Conan.  The rest this week has been with me and Gonbe collecting material for Toei's "Arajin to mahou no lamp", since we have 10 audio tracks including Japanese for that, and apparently there's a live-action version of Holic coming out that a friend wants to see.

I'll try to get back to this when I can, because *I* want to see this too. ~.^

Thanks for the update! I'm a big Detective Conan/Case Closed fan, too, so I'll have to keep my eyes out for your work. =D

What can you get a Wookiee for (Life Day) Christmas when he already owns a comb?

Author
Time

It's prolly not hard to find. xD  Almost every episode since 658 has been subbed by my group and we've been working on redoing some older episodes.  (We got a bit of a queue right now, a bunch of episodes in various stages of completion.  Plus there's a pair of episodes that knocked out 4 of our translators as well as another group, so...)

"Right now the coffees are doing their final work." (Airi, Masked Rider Den-o episode 1)

Author
Time

Aren't the broadcast masters for robotech on some obsolete form of station broadcast tape?

They had to recreate robotech from scratch using the original japanese film from macross, and the other shows.

Or use VHS quality video on DVD.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.