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.: The Zion DVD Project :. (Released) — Page 5

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Mmh... did you use my settings for the "Exorcist"-filter? Because your image still contains some halo... though I am sure they are the result of your sharpening filter applied, because this time they're on both sides. Maybe you should try the Xsharpen approach (which means scaling the image up to something like 2000x1000, applying that filter, and scaling it back, down to 720x480. The filter sharpens by another method, which won't induce halos). But while my method doesn't produce halos, I've gotta admit that your method very nicely sharpens the detailed areas (although there's some combing visible):

http://www.scummbar.com/mi2/temp/anh3.gif

http://www.scummbar.com/mi2/temp/anh4.gif

http://www.scummbar.com/mi2/temp/anh5.gif

Of course my levels are a little different (but yours are better... I haven't spend much time on my color). But note that I haven't used a noise filter at all (and I still don't think it's necessary... the film-grain adds a little detail, and if you're going for a dual-layer-disc, you won't have to worry about compression, I guess).
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I'd like to add my vote for a NON noise-reduced approach - take a look at the opening snowspeeder shots on TR47's version of ESB to see an extreme case of unsuccessful noise-reduction. The filtering artefacts are FAR more distressing than the MPEG encoding, even at the low data rate. I'd far rather have a little film grain and noise than the whole "behind a veil" feel. Even when it's done well ( Aliens Special Edition, say ) - noise-reduction is almost always noticeable and iritating. I work in audio and follow the same approach there - "hiss is our friend" BTW, for those looking to lift audio levels, the Waves Ultra-Maximiser DX plugin is great...

I'm also interested to know whether you guys are seeing frame-by-frame shifts in colour temp ? Especially noticeable on the opening scenes of SW, all the walls gently shift hue WITHIN the scenes... is that a limitation of TR47's transfer, or the discs themselves ?

Finally, PLEASE go with the best MPEG encoder you can use ( TMPGEnc is great, for the money, but Procoder and CCE are better ) I haven't used Premiere's encoder, but I've never yet seen a "bundled" package that comes close.
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just wondering, has anyone tried mencoder (part of mplayer package) or transcode and if so, how do they compare to tmpgenc and procoder?
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The LAVC (used by mencoder) MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoding sucks... granted, it works in mplayer playback... but my hardware player pukes on the mpeg-1 video stream, and the mpeg-2 in mpeg-1 wrapper thing... just doesn't work outside of mplayer.

Moll.

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

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Cat got your tongue, BadAsh?

I've downloaded the trial version of CCE (I've not received the version promised to me in the mail yet ), and I'm having trouble getting it to work with 24FPS footage. Anyone got any ideas?

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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I'd like to thank the two posters that have provided the audio and video tools in this thread. I was working on a DVD for another project and could not for the life of me adjust the pitch of the audio. That program you posted worked like a charm. Kudos!
The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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You're absolutely right Laserschwert. The convolution3d filter is bringing out the ghosting. So anyway, I guess I didn't look too closely at that last screencap before I posted it last night. I hope you'll let it slide this time though, since it was way past my bed time.

So now without the noise and sharpen filters, I am getting similar results to what you have posted, only the color is looking much better.

I'm going to start experimenting with this TOOT filter now...

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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That's fine, I am staying way past my bedtime for weeks now...

I am really looking forward to the TOOT-results (or basically a report, how good it works). Because the sample capture you gave me contained an "error streak" (don't know how to call it) in one frame in the Vader close-up.
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your remasters look extremely amazing. keep up the great work! you're doing many fellow fans of the original trilogy a huge favor, so i thank you for the effort you're putting into re-mastering the trilogy.
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I agree... thanks Zion. Your work is stunning. I wish I had the capability and the time to do what you are doing. Your work is much appreciated, and Im glad I can help contribute.

aka nostromo777 on myspleen

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Thanks guys. As always, the help you all have provided me is much appreciated.

Well, I'm making a test disc to take around and play on a few tv's to see how the image quality looks. My friend has a 50" HDTV that should do quite nicely, as I'm anxious to take a look at this thing on something other than my CRT.

What I've done is taken various scenes from ANH and cut them together in Premiere. I've taken the audio stream and saved one copy as PCM and another as AC3. As soon as the mpeg is finished encoding, I'll throw all three of these into scenarist and burn a test RW disc. This should make my Sunday....after the Bronco game of course.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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How do the "rot spots" of the laserdisc show when playing the movies? What sort of problem does it cause?

peace,

Rebelscum
peace,

Rebelscum
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@Zion:

If I remember correctly I read about the TOOT-filter (or something similar) in the Doom9-forums, and if you really have three different sources to capture from, you can even use this thing to remove noise, since most probably a lot of the noise is different in the three sources (except of course for the noise, that's already been on the scanned film images), and it'll only keep the stuff that's the same in all three sources. I don't know how good this might work (and our result is already pretty clean, so I guess even this "elaborate" approach to noise reduction isn't needed). By the way, in the forum this method was used with several captures from the SAME source, which helps removing (analog) noise end errors that occured during capturing.

If you use this filter with captures from different sources, you have to scale, crop and basically line them all up PERFECTLY (down to the pixel)... I am not sure if this is possible at all, if the image is slightly rotated or skewed (might happen when scanning film images).
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Rebelscum, here's an image from an old "Definitive" capture that shows some bad rotting. I don't have anything anywhere near this bad on my new captures, but it gives you an idea of what it looks like:

laser rot

It's true you have to have three exact copies. Even if the color is off on one of them, it makes things look a little wierd and creates some crazy artifacting. In my tests yesterday, the three source captures I used were lined up perfectly and the filter worked like a charm. And you're right, the filter does do a little noise reduction, which is always a good thing.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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In case anybody's interested, I've put my result up for DOWNLOAD (~10MB).

And Zion, if you're interested, here's my AviSynth-script to IVTC the thing:

AviSource("e:\zion.avi").ConvertToYUY2
SeparateFields
SelectEvery(10,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,9)
Weave
AssumeFPS(25) # for NTSC this should be 23.976
Return last


I guess instead of using the "SelectEvery"-command, and entering the frame order by yourself, some IVTC-plugs will yield the same results.

And here's the filter-qeue I used for VirtualDub:

http://www.scummbar.com/mi2/temp/vdub.gif

As you can see I did the resizing and letterboxing in VirtualDub after all. The sharpening might not be necessary (I think I didn't use it for the example-MPG I posted), as well as the Levels-filter. Note that the result of this scripts is a PAL-clip... just change the framerate to 23.976 and the final size to 720x480 (mine isn't anamorph, by the way).

One more thing: For your raw captures the Exorcist-filter has to be set to 4 pixels, not 3 as I posted earlier (that was the value suitable for your screenshots only).
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Originally posted by: zion
I'm anxious to take a look at this thing on something other than my CRT.
Blasphemy!

How dare you speak ill of CRT. No wonder you want to create a 16:9 version. Because of the limitations of fixed pixels and the inability to change resolution on LCD/Plasma screens, hey? My CRT computer monitor is feeling very sick after displaying that blasphemy, goaghhha CRT FOREVER!

Daniel

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Laserschwert,

I just compared this shot you posted directly with my TR47 DVD and this result is WAY to dark. There´s far less detail in those shots then the TR47 one. There has to be a middleground so that actual detail is not lost. I think I speak for all of us that´s not something we are looking to get.

peace,

Rebelscum
peace,

Rebelscum
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Maybe you haven't read the entire thread, I haven't done any "thought out" color-correction (that's Zion's job ). I have adjusted the levels judging by the brightness range of only the first shot, which is very good for this, because there you have the lights at the ceiling (which are 100% white) and Vader's costume (which in parts is 100% black).

Compared to TK47's screenshots from the screenshot-thread (I don't have the actual DVDs) my version has FAR better levels:

TR47's version:
http://img79.exs.cx/img79/25/TR47_000.jpg

My version:
http://www.scummbar.com/mi2/temp/anh5.jpg

Notice the difference? My version isn't too dark... TR47's version is too BRIGHT. See how in his screenshot the distinction between the stormtrooper's helmet and the ceiling light - as well as the helmet's rim under the two gray shapes - is completely lost? The same goes for the upper edge of the backpack-thingy. Or the shoulder of the stormtrooper on the right side of the frame. Much better detail in my version, I think.
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Yes true, a lot of your shots look better then the TR47 but the shot I noticed the most obvious brightness/detail difference is the frames when we see just Vader and the general, there if you compare Vader´s outfit and cape, it all meshes together in your shots as opposed to actually seeing the cape distinguished from the rest of Vader´s suit in TR47´s shots. You also see it on the caps you just posted that some blacklevel detail is lost as Vader´s suit is all meshed together, but it is less noticeble then when we get the closeup of the two fellas. I compared those shots running simotaniously on my monitor. And I admit the TR47 is pretty bright on my computer monitor but when I run the DVD on my Philps 32" TV (calibrated according to reference quality DVD´s) it looks great and lots of detail is evident.

peace,

Rebelscum
peace,

Rebelscum
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I am not sure how Zion is handling the color correction... I guess a shot by shot correction would be best, though it might take a while this way. Have you tried burning my MPEG to a CD and playing it on your TV? (some DVD-players have an explorer-like menu when putting in a normal data-CD-Rom... mine does) This way you can compare both of them on your TV.
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"My version isn't too dark... TR47's version is to BRIGHT."

Agreed. That's a acene I've used to help calibrate my bightness/contrast levels as well. There should be a distinction between the uniforms and the walls.

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>

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My color correction process tweaks the brights, mids, and blacks individually. The blacks come out much better than how they look in both the raw capture and Laserschwert's mpeg.

Blasphemy!

How dare you speak ill of CRT. No wonder you want to create a 16:9 version. Because of the limitations of fixed pixels and the inability to change resolution on LCD/Plasma screens, hey? My CRT computer monitor is feeling very sick after displaying that blasphemy, goaghhha CRT FOREVER!

Daniel


lol. I just meant I'd like to see what it looks like on an actual tv. Besides, flaws in images show up much better on LCD/Plasma screens than they do on the not-as-bright CRT's.

And on that note, I didn't get to test out my disc today. Too much football on.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]