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Using the '04 SE DVD version to restore the Original (with lots of info) — Page 5

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Originally posted by: ChainsawAsh
... This is not entirely about making a duplicate of the theatrical version, it's about Mike fixing the DVDs the way he likes it. It's his project. He's more or less de-SEizing the discs, but some things are being kept.


So far - and here I'm talking way out of school, mind you, I've only just started - the only SE things I'm planning on keeping are the elongated detention hall corridor (it's seamless, doesn't change the drama and doesn't upset the suspension of disbelief [see my site for more about my philosophy]) and Vader's fixed red saber. But I plan on finally correcting things like the garbage mattes, and the miscolored matte painting/set piece in the tractor beam scene... so... yeah, it's Star Wars as I see it.

So there.


_Mike



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can't you release both? after all that's the problem with lucas. Release the original unaltered version - and then make the movies as you see it.
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Originally posted by: DanielB
can't you release both? after all that's the problem with lucas. Release the original unaltered version - and then make the movies as you see it.


Why? They are the edits he wants to do. It's not like he is making an archived version for all the fans of Star Wars. He is basically giving step by step instructions for anyone who wants to do it themselves.
The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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So, which logo are you using, anyway? And if its a vintage one, where'd you find it?
What do you mean there's no ice? I gotta drink this coffee hot?!
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Just to answer mebejedi's composite question, yep the video signal on the Laserdisc is a composite signal. (Laserdisc tech info here for the interested folk http://www.access-one.com/rjn/laser/ld_faq.pdf)

To decode it properly into RGB or component will mean a slight compromise in sharpness, but a gain in overall detail.

It has to be done properly though, i.e. as early as possible in the video output chain on the player.
The reason you get more detail is basically because you are designing a better output stage, as well as bypassing (in most if not all players) a fairly noisy video path that is prone to crosstalk and other artifacts. So you end up with a stable signal with a much lower noise floor, that captures 'better'. All good!

So if done properly you get a better picture out the other end. Also, most reasonable capture gear has an easier time capturing an RGB or component signal, so you get less quality loss during the capture phase as well.

You can easily tell if your output is cleaner by going to the colour and resolution test patterns on the Video Essentials disc, on our RGB output the test patterns are much clearer and the colour is so much better it is hard to explain. I will try and do some captures when I get back to the office.
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Originally posted by: Laserman
Just to answer mebejedi's composite question, yep the video signal on the Laserdisc is a composite signal. (Laserdisc tech info here for the interested folk http://www.access-one.com/rjn/laser/ld_faq.pdf).


I've heard this before, and have this guide as well (nice to see a fellow WSR reader), but the issue becomes one of garbage in/garbage out. If the signal is somehow "composite" in nature, then that's it, you can't by some method "upsample it." If you can ever separate the data into luminance and chrominance at a source level, then it can't be construed as composite, can it?. The NTSC signal encoded on the disc is comprised of luminance and chrominance values, and if they were truly integrated, then providing an S-Video output would be pointless, since you can't somehow "recapture" the split signals. Unless the hidden message here is that composite signal-to-composite-output would be akin to "stacking" two composite processes on top of each other, whereas outputting on some component level at least wouldn't make it any worse. (?) The whole thing gets very convoluted very quickly. In any case, I suppose my experience is as a content provider, where the data is simply data, and can be encoded in any variety of ways, digtially, composite-ly, or component-ly. We do this all day every day, and there's definitely a difference...

_Mike

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"the issue becomes one of garbage in/garbage out. If the signal is somehow "composite" in nature, then that's it, you can't by some method "upsample it." If you can ever separate the data into luminance and chrominance at a source level, then it can't be construed as composite, can it?. The NTSC signal encoded on the disc is comprised of luminance and chrominance values, and if they were truly integrated, then providing an S-Video output would be pointless, since you can't somehow "recapture" the split signals."

You cannot recreate the original luminance and chrominance values, but you can re-establish them to a lesser extent. This is necessary to get back to the final RGB picture anyways, since your display device requires it. This is why using S-video for video capture can be hit and miss - it depends on which device, the tv or LD player, has the better comb filter. People often assume that the S-video on the player is better simply because it's on the player, and ignore the fact that it's often 10-20 years older than the comb filter in their new tv. They don't realize that, in either case, the composite signal is being changed back to S-video, and will eventually be changed back to RGB for displaying.

"Unless the hidden message here is that composite signal-to-composite-output would be akin to "stacking" two composite processes on top of each other, whereas outputting on some component level at least wouldn't make it any worse. (?)"

I'm not sure where you got that. I was just curious to know the means by which you were converting the composite signal. I knew your LD player had component out for DVD-only, so when you stated that the player had been modified, I was wondering if you were using the existing component circuitry (Which I now know you are not.) It just made me wonder why Pioneer didn't decide to engineer that in anyways for LD output. As much as they continued to promote laserdisc, it would have seemed like a no-brainer.

BTW, laserman. Two things...
1) Which model player are you using, and was it modified for RGB output?
2) CONTACT ME!?!?!?

[EDIT] According to that faq (Thanks! I need to renew my WSR subscription as well), there were some players with RGB and component connections. Anyone know which models had this?

<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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Thanks for the reply. I suppose in the end the whole thing becomes a bit semantic, as even under the best conditions, the Laserdisc images look atrocious. We spent 6 months in plug-in development creating clean-up algorithms to help correct them, and now looking at the results, I can't stomach the noisy, desaturated transfer. But that's what restorations are for

_Mike

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"now looking at the results, I can't stomach the noisy, desaturated transfer."

Now you know why I don't want to watch the official DVD's. It's bad enough seeing the screen captures.

<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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About the Fox logo, on the "Legacy Of Starwars" doco they show the original opening logo and LucasFilm logo for ANH I believe.
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Originally posted by: Kennerado
About the Fox logo, on the "Legacy Of Starwars" doco they show the original opening logo and LucasFilm logo for ANH I believe.


More than that even, this documentary is a friggin' GEM. The original starfield is seen behind the Star Wars logo and the crawl, and even the laser bolts for the Tantive and Star Destroyer are far better than appears on the actual DVD. How THAT happened, we'll never know.

_Mike

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The documentary on the official DVD's is the most definative example that the OT still exists and was not destroyed as some have taken Lucas's quotes to mean. I wonder if the documentary maker required that the originals be used if they wanted him to make the documentary or if someone at Lucasfilm made that decision.
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Originally posted by: wadetv
The documentary on the official DVD's is the most definative example that the OT still exists and was not destroyed as some have taken Lucas's quotes to mean. I wonder if the documentary maker required that the originals be used if they wanted him to make the documentary or if someone at Lucasfilm made that decision.


I can guarantee the documentary maker didn't "require" jack. But yes, an original (actually 2, I think) print was scanned long ago and is on drives at Lucasfilm, or ILM or both. I have a friend who's seen the files. Every last frame of the original is actually intact on drives, just in various stages of restoration/alteration.

Lucas's saying that the originals are "dead," or "gone," or any of that is just figurative.

_Mike

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Originally posted by: mverta
Originally posted by: wadetv
The documentary on the official DVD's is the most definative example that the OT still exists and was not destroyed as some have taken Lucas's quotes to mean. I wonder if the documentary maker required that the originals be used if they wanted him to make the documentary or if someone at Lucasfilm made that decision.


I can guarantee the documentary maker didn't "require" jack. But yes, an original (actually 2, I think) print was scanned long ago and is on drives at Lucasfilm, or ILM or both. I have a friend who's seen the files. Every last frame of the original is actually intact on drives, just in various stages of restoration/alteration.


Yeah, I would have to imagine so. Only a fool would throw away or discard footage, whether you like the shots or not.
The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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Do you think it's really necessary to have a message board set up especially one on Yahoo?

This thread barely gets that many posts.

Keep it here.
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Originally posted by: Faid
Do you think it's really necessary to have a message board set up especially one on Yahoo?

This thread barely gets that many posts.

Keep it here.


Why not? If he wants to have a message board where he can directly interact with the people that are following his work AND general off topic stuff, I think he should go for it.

The Jedi are all but extinct.......
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Well, the laserdisc does not have the chroma and luma stored separately on the disc, We used to prepare laserdisc masters back in '96 and they are composite all the way. The only advantage of coming out via component or RGB is that you can have a better signal path than the original componentry in the LD player.
Theoretically you could redesign the composite output path but keep it in composite video and get a better image than we get with our redesigned RGB output stage, but in reality composite video doesn't 'travel well'.
The idea is to try and reconstruct it (or extract it if you like) in a better way than the laserdisc player can by itself.

You do lose something in the conversion though, it is inevitable, and we found we would lose some horizontal resolution vs the composite out, but pick up much greater detail and a huge reduction in video noise/crosstalk.

All said though, the image is still not great out the other side, even when we retimed the whole thing. The colour and detail looks a lot better than off the laserdisc, but it still looks awful compared to a reference DVD pressing. We are lucky in that we have a complete 2nd reel of the 1978 theatrical release to compare to.

I'm hoping once we have finished on Stealth that I can get back to my inferno room and start work on my archival project again. Funnily enough we also decided to repaint the starfields by hand, and I redid the credit crawl manually - I didn't realise the other languages had it at the right speed D'oh!
So I am going to leave Ep IV for a while and move onto the Jedi ghosts and work backwards as that is the scene I hate the most

With the work mverta is putting in on IV, I may start on Jedi instead.
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Oh yeah, just one other thing.
For any of you guys that aren't doing this at work (like me) there are a few things that are important if you want to get a decent archival copy for yourself.

1) Calibrate your systems.
This means setting up your computer monitor and your capture system so that the colours and greyscale are correct befor you begin. Otherwise what looks red on your monitor may look pink on another with disastrous results.
For the home user calibrate your monitor and graphics card first. You can get an inexpensive calibration tool such as the colorvision Spyder (or rent one) and use its automated setup. If you don't have the cash, then at least run through the configuration for your graphics card to set up your colour profiles. Most Nvidia and Radeon cards have a reasonable adjustment tool built in.
Then at the very least grab the video essentials laserdisc and calibrate your input side. (It costs about $25 online)

Do NOT use an LCD monitor, the colour and contrast ratios are too far off for video work.

Then of course you can calibrate your TV as well to view the final product, the Avia Test DVD suite is very good for this.

Even if you never get round to making the bootleg, the upside of all this is that your system will look better than it ever has for all PC work, and your TV will look great also!

2) Use a lossless codec
When capturing from lasedisc, you want to get the best quality you can. At work this means capturing uncompressed.
At home with normal equipment, you can get a manageable filesize by using a lossless codec like Huffyuv or one of the others out there. This way you are not throwing away any detail like you would be if using a lossy compression mechanism, but can still fit each episode onto a 250GB disc.


3) Use a decent encoder with VBR.
When you finally have finished your masterpiece and want to put it out to DVD, use a decent multipass VBR encoder.
If you are working on PC, then the cinemacraft encoder is a very nice tool for this. Adobe encore 1.5 also does a pretty good job. I'm not sure if any of the free encoders on the PC are any good, but asking questions in a place like doom9.org would be a good place to start.
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laserman, please PM me!

<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've been giving the de-specialized 2004 DVD project some major brain bandwidth over the last few weeks. What if we all pooled our resources and took parts of the official DVDs that bugged us the most and fixed them seperately. Then, we could periodically "release" a DVD with people's contributions added in. In cases where people have duplicated efforts, we could vote on the best clip to include in the completed movie. This could be a continually morphing project, kinda like Lucasfilm treats them, but with a slant toward reversing what has been done over the years.

This would require a major commitment of time, money and resources by everyone that chooses to get involved, but the end result would be worth the effort.

Here are a few things off the top of my head that we would need on top of each of us having the ability to edit video.

1. webhosting for works in progress and completed clips so that everyone could view and vote.

2. someone willing and able to peice the clips back into a full movie.

3. someone willing to distribute the results. (burn DVDs or Torrent)

Thoughts?

-G

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Cool idea, but I can't see it working.
Unless everyone used the same capture equipment or worked from the same captured video, and had the same gamma settings, same encoders etc. etc. you would end up with a mish mash.

But hey I am happy to edit the final piece if you ever get takers to do the rest of it. Our Avid suite sits idle most nights so I could do it in my sleep (quite literally)