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The Odyssey Collection (* unfinished project *)

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  • Standing on the sholders of others -
    Like everyone else I’m am transfering the “faces” LD set to dvd. I have been in the field of digital video & dvd production for the last 3 years. What I’m trying to do is provide the best possible transfer of the laserdisc to Dual Layer DVD.

Equipment:
Video Capture System: Media 100 i/xr (this system captures a lossless signal) (we have roughly $30,000 in this system)
LaserDisc Player: Pioneer DVL-91

Software:
Mpeg Encoder: Cinema Craft SP (the best software based mpeg 2 encoder available - comparable to hardware encodes)
AfterEffects (for menus, captioning, image adjustment)
DVD Studio Pro 3 for DVD production
Filtering & picture correction software to be determined

The Discs (as I see them now):
No special features other than motion menus (intro+chapters)
Dolby 2.0 audio (track provided by laserdisc)
No trills to allow the highest possible average bitrate (estimate: 5.0 low 8.0 average 9.8 max) (dvd-player-max with audio 10.08bps)
I will encode to use all avalible space of a dual layer disc.

More info to come as the process continues. . .

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Does anyone know where I can track down 300dpi images of the original posters for my cover art?
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Hi & Welcome

Your set sounds intriguing m8. Good luck with it.

If you need some hi-res poster art then Rikter may be able to help you. It may be worth tracking down his bit-torrent of collected covers, inserts and discart - a link to it is probably in the 'torrents thread', as well as checking out a couple of the dvd cover threads in this very forum.

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
‘How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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Hey thanks for the tip. I haven't really explored the forum yet other that your thread.

I haven't read enough on how cinema craft handles the average when the range is so great. I really want to constrain the average bitrate to the haighest possible value. I may try to lower my min and raise my average. I noticed on the new set, they average 8 to 8.5 with the occasional 11.3.

Once again these are value I will play with with the goal being the highest possible average & the least amount of artifacts. The artifacts showing up in the new set sets me off. I know this software compression won't be better but I'll try to let the problems reside in my image quality not me compression methods.

On another note:
I will admit that I need to become educated on non-interlace video and the animorphic stuff. All I have ever done has been NTSC /interlaced/4:3

Did you capture the video in 4:3 and cropped it in another program?
Also, how does the dvd standard handle non-interlaced video?
Oh are these laserdisc player video at a film or standard video(29.97) frame rate?


Thanks & I look forward to reading over all of you posts. I've seen your capture card specs and the mpeg 2 compressor you are using & am very impressd with the stills you have posted. You should look into getting Cinema Craft to get a bit more quality out of your compression. They have a free trail version you can download for testing purposes. Also if you google pdf files you can find a user manual online. There are a ton of settings to play with including the handling of the conversion of film frame rate to video.

Thanks again & take care,

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khamul02,

Welcome to the forums!

You found your new home away from home ~ IF there is anything that I can do to help you out PLEASE let me know ~ I'm not that up on the whole DV thing but ANYTHING that I can do just let me know.

All these diffrent version are awesome in there own ways and the knowledge that has been shared is just wonderful so I do wish you the best of luck with this as it sounds like you have some GOOD POODOO at your disposal.



Rikter

“My skill are no longer as Mad as the once were” RiK

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Yeah, I think a better way to go is to lower the min and up the average. There are some shots that really don't need all that extra bandwith to look good and you could use that extra space for more intense ones.

Did you capture the video in 4:3 and cropped it in another program?
Also, how does the dvd standard handle non-interlaced video?
Oh are these laserdisc player video at a film or standard video(29.97) frame rate?

Yes, capture in 4:3 at your highest possible resolution (mine is 720x480), then crop with an AVIsynth script or whatever video editor you are using (VirtualDub/Premiere). The LD video is telecined to 29.97 from the progressive source. An inverse-telecine (IVTC) process can restore the 24fps progressive frames. To get the most out of your dvd, encode your mpeg to 23.97, not 29.97. You'll save a lot of space this way.

Hope that helps.

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

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So you encoded at 29.97 intially then used a IVTC program to alter the frame rate. Are you editing at 29.97 and coverting right before compression? I noticed that cinema craft has a feature to handle this conversion during it's 9 pass compression sequence.

I haven't digitized the first frame yet. I really want to make sure I have the intial setting correct for all the post capture tweaking. I plan on reviewing what corrections everyone else has made and implementing them as needed

So far: (please correct me if needed)

I'm captureing at 4:3 at 29.97fps
Capture size 720 X 486
Lossless quality (roughly 300+k per frame)
Will try s-video & composite to determine best quality (I have noticed everyone saying composite is better)

On the audio side:
Does anyone have any suggestions.
All I want is that doly 2.0 track with basic surround.
I have an optical in & rca ins.
Once captured does the audio maintain it's surround features or is there somthing extra that needs doing?

Thanks


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IVTC should be one of the first thing to do, because applying filters to interlaced (or partly interlaced = telecined) footage might mess up your fields, which would make it impossible to IVTC afterwards.
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"So you encoded at 29.97 intially then used a IVTC program to alter the frame rate. Are you editing at 29.97 and coverting right before compression?"

No, no. The LD is encoded at 29.97. However, the material is filmed based, which means it started as 24 fps. 2-3 pulldown was used to create the 29.97 LD transfer, so you want to reverse this. LD players have to play at 29.97 (or 25 fps for PAL), but DVD players can do pulldown with 24fps sources. Since you will have fewer frames to encode, there's less work and more space.

"Lossless quality (roughly 300+k per frame)"

Do you know which codec you will use? HuffyUV has been great for me (thanks again, laserman. )

"Will try s-video & composite to determine best quality (I have noticed everyone saying composite is better)"

Again, it depends on your player and capture board, but chances are your board is better, so composite is the best bet (unless you have one of the few, rare top-end players.)

"I have an optical in & rca ins.
Once captured does the audio maintain it's surround features or is there somthing extra that needs doing?"

No, then it's up to your receiver to create the surround channels from the stereo soundtrack.

When I was using my camcorder with fire-wire pass-through capture, I was able to sync up my audio and video no problem. Now with a separate board, I've yet to figure out how to sync them up. Luckily, Sony Vegas lets me cut and paste wherever I want, so it's easy to line up my video and audio from separate captures. Also, when I capture video and audio separately, there's less CPU overhead, so I won't drop frames while capturing video. This is important, because if you drop a frame, it will ruin the IVTC process (or, at the very least, force you to do it manually, which is a slow pain-in-the-ass.).

<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 have an optical in & rca ins.
Once captured does the audio maintain it's surround features or is there somthing extra that needs doing?"

No, then it's up to your receiver to create the surround channels from the stereo soundtrack.

Your captured audio track will maintain the original dolby pro-logic information to make it surround. Unless you employ some filters that mess with this, your matrixed surround channel should stay intact, and should play back the same way it does off the LD.

(Oh, and always use optical when you can. Of course if you plan on capturing the commentary track, which is analog only, you will only be able to use the analog rca connectors.)

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

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Do you know which codec you will use? HuffyUV has been great for me (thanks again, laserman. )

Media 100 has its own codec that requires their board for playback and editing.

Media 100 also forces interlacing so I guess the first thing I need to do is get the raw footage edited and output it to some uncompressed lossless file type either QT or AVI. Then go from there.

Also, when I capture video and audio separately, there's less CPU overhead, so I won't drop frames while capturing video. This is important, because if you drop a frame, it will ruin the IVTC process (or, at the very least, force you to do it manually, which is a slow pain-in-the-ass.).

This will not be an issue becuase our media 100 does not allow frames to be dropped.

Your captured audio track will maintain the original dolby pro-logic information to make it surround. Unless you employ some filters that mess with this, your matrixed surround channel should stay intact, and should play back the same way it does off the LD.

This is good news. What kind of filtering will mess up this info. (Hi-pass low-pass , general EQing)?
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Please advise:

Here is what I'm thinking the order of events will be for this process:

Capture video with media 100.
Media 100 will allow me to bounce back & forth to AE.
In AE (as of right now) I plan on replacing the captured little black bars with 1-color black boxes to help the bit-rate issues they present.
Also, I plan on re-titling everything on top of those new black bars for the same reason mentioned above.

Once everything is edited (video/audio) and I've done all of the color correction that Media 100 & AE can, I'll output a monster interlaced 29.97 fps video.
This raw video will probably be 1 gig per minute if it is a lossless QT video using the component codec.

The reason I want to keep everything in a media 100 format for as long as possible is because although it is lossless the file sizes of the actual media 100 files are small.
Their compression scheme for lossless is awesome. This will allow me to easily archive all of my footage. Each movie should end up being roughly
60 gigs in the media 100 format. The downside to this is that this footage will require their card to be edited in the future.

OK so here I sit with this best possible footage. Now, I've been combing through the Cinema Craft manual and it will handle the de-interlacing as well as the frame rate conversion during its 9-pass compression sequence. So I take care of those issues when compressing it to an mpeg 2.

Here is one of many (to come) of my questions. If I need to use some of the filtering you guys are using to remove halo/ghosting etc can those filters be ran on QT files?






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"What kind of filtering will mess up this info. (Hi-pass low-pass , general EQing)?"

Oh, nothing of that nature. The "surround coding", if you will, is based on the phase of the sound wave. It would take a pretty determined effort to screw up the audio - though I, for one, find the audio mix to be fine (my 5.1 soundtrack simply steered the various tracks to their respective speakers, though I did have to lower the volume on the rear channels.)

"In AE (as of right now) I plan on replacing the captured little black bars with 1-color black boxes to help the bit-rate issues they present."

Unnecessary. Simply crop them out from your initial video capture. The black bars have to be there in the final product in order to make a "legal" frame size, but your mastering program should be able to put them in for you. Anything you add on top of this would unnecessarily add to the overall bitrate. I used to do this in Vegas before I learned how to crop the files in Virtualdub. It will also reduce the filesize of your masters and AVIs.

"I'll output a monster interlaced 29.97 fps video.
This raw video will probably be 1 gig per minute if it is a lossless QT video using the component codec."

Actually, it'll be a monster 23.976+2-3 pulldown monster. (If you convert a 24fps directly to 29fps, you get stuttering video). It would be interesting to see how big your video ultimately is, since laserman and I both came up with 200GB captures with uncompressed RGB.

"Their compression scheme for lossless is awesome. This will allow me to easily archive all of my footage. Each movie should end up being roughly 60 gigs in the media 100 format. The downside to this is that this footage will require their card to be edited in the future."

That's about what I get with HuffyUV (actually, a bit less.)

"If I need to use some of the filtering you guys are using to remove halo/ghosting etc can those filters be ran on QT files?"

I'm unsure if AVISynth will work on QT files. Are you going to transcode your Media 100 files into QT/AVI files (and keeping the masters as M100)?

<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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Welp, before I start I have a cover & a new name for my "Backups"
Dark Empire Collection ( big fan of the dark horse books)

Anyway, here is a link to a very low quality jpg of the cover I'm going to use on a 3-disc case.
Next while I'm awaiting my laser-disc player maybe I'll knock out the disc covers & start storyboarding a menu for Empire, Since it has
to be first . .

Fun while at work...

Low Quality First attempt at a cover

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Originally posted by: khamul02
Welp, before I start I have a cover & a new name for my "Backups"
Dark Empire Collection ( big fan of the dark horse books)

Anyway, here is a link to a very low quality jpg of the cover I'm going to use on a 3-disc case.
Next while I'm awaiting my laser-disc player maybe I'll knock out the disc covers & start storyboarding a menu for Empire, Since it has
to be first . .

Fun while at work...

Low Quality First attempt at a cover


Wow, thats a pretty nice cover, good job.

just an fyi, you know there are single thick cases that can hold 3 discs (actually ones that will hold as much as 6 discs), Cause i know my personal preference is the single size case, though for a multi movie set the bigger case wouldnt necessarily bother me. Not saying you should go single, just letting you know the option exists

-Darth Simon
Why Anakin really turned to the dark side:
"Anakin, You're father I am" - Yoda
"No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!" - Anakin

0100111001101001011011100110101001100001

*touchy people disclaimer*
some or all of the above comments are partially exaggerated to convey a point, none of the comments are meant as personal attacks on anyone mentioned or reference in the above post
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That's a very cool cover m8 - like the way you used the original poster art on the front, and the style of linking the trilogy stories on the blurb at the back.

Very nice

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
‘How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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thanks for the comps. I've seen those singles but I guess I want it to be grander. You know it was one of the appeals of buying albums. Bigger Sleeves = More to look at. I don't know, These cases feel more like a book.

Thanks again for the info