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Star Wars Laserdisc Preservations. See 1st Post for Updates. — Page 13

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althor1138 said:

EDIT: These are raw files with no audio btw.

OK, as a test, I've made esb97se available at absw.  It is all 5 captures averaged together, manually ivtc'ed, and cropped to 720x288.

The sides are posted individually instead of lumped together in 1 massive rar set. Each side has it's own header name and par set.  Nzbindex seems to not care about filenames or headernames so I'd suggest getting it elsewhere unless you want to just nab it all at once anyway.

Since each side stays around 10GB this way, there should not be any par problems like the 50GB rar sets I was trying to post last year. Somewhere over the 30GB mark the par's get screwed up.

Anyway, if everybody is positive about this method I can continue with it.

 Is anybody interested in this? I'm done with sw97se now as well but I'm not going to up all of these if nobody wants them lol.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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Alright, I'll continue then. SW97SE should be ready for transmission tomorrow or so.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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I'm still interested, for sure.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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The 97SE trilogy raw files are now available.  I'm moving to another apartment in December so I might not be around for a few weeks.

JSC is next up in the chute.  It should be simple since Mallwalker has already IVTC'ed it.  My new captures will just have to be aligned up with my old ones and then I can just feed it to his ivtc script. That's the theory anyway.

BTW. I understand that the '92 Mitsubishi pressing of the SWE has DVNR.  Could somebody point out to me a scene or scenes where this is most egregiously present?

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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What you are doing is greatly appreciated Althor! Thank you! Before you're ready with your JSC, I hope to send you a problematic sample to look at. Stay tuned...

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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glad to see you're still at it althor! Looking forward to your next capture.

-G

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Hey guys I'm new to the forums so sorry if this has been discussed before, but I'm wondering, has anyone ever tried a 720p upscale and restoration of these 1986 Japanese laserdiscs like Dark Jedi and You_Too have done with Project Blu?

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Althor, I've sent you a PM.

@bbhaltz a 720p upscale is quite possible and relatively easy, but to be honest if you want a 720p version you're best off going with Harmy's incredible despecialised editions.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Althor, I've finished downloading everything available, and look forward to your captures of Empire and Jedi.  

The five capture average makes a huge difference with these, and they look amazing.

At this point the only way I can see to improve these would be to capture from other copies of the same disc, and run a median script, in order to eliminate the tiny bit of laser rot artifacts that are left over.

Again, this problem is really minimal, and I don't mean it as a criticism, but it's the only improvement that I think could be made, at this point.  The really do look great.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Thanks for the feedback guys. Also, thanks for confirming that the new posts are downloadable. 

With that being said, at this point, I have to halt all capturing because I've just acquired an R7G and I feel like it might be better for capturing than the HF9G. I want to figure out which machine is best for capturing before going any further.

I believe that capturing with the s-video from this unit might be the way to go actually. I have a copy of ggv1069 on the way.  Let's hope I get this one. The last two times I tried to get it off LDDB and got ripped off.  This time I had my sister order it from pioneer and she's going to forward it to me here in Europe.

Once it gets here I'm going to do some tests and then post some clips here and with the help of some expert eyes we can determine which settings/player to use for future captures. I plan on doing 3 captures for each output(composite/s-video) on each machine using 0%,50%, and 100% as the comb filter strength. The Y/C dnr and the sharpening will always be turned off during these test captures. 

For the raw captures I will always leave the laser rot alone but for future BD releases I was thinking about doing a 1 pass manual "dirt" removal and target not dirt but laser rot.  I can pretty easily make it through about 5-10 minutes of footage a night just flipping through frames.  Of course with 1 pass and 1 set of eyes I might miss the occasional  blip but it won't erase any buttons or pupils, etc.

EDIT: BTW, will soon be adding THX-1138 to the list on the first post as long as it arrives here safely.

EDIT2: The 2000 Japanese pressing of the 97 SE's is on the way as well. I don't know if this has anything to offer but I've never heard of anybody preserving it and I figure a 2000 pressing might be better than a '97 pressing.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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The Pioneer Reference Disc is in the mail and should be here soon but in the meantime I decided to share a 4 minute sample of what the R7G looks like. This is a single pass s-video capture with the comb filter set to 50% strength that is getting fed into the Theater750HD.

I haven't had much time to look it over but it seems like there is much less noise or interference on this player/output combo than on the hf9g composite output. The picture seems sharper. There is some checkerboarding on the first frame of a scene change. Overall, I think this is a bit better than the previous setup and with the 5 capture average method it might be a lot better. Thoughts?

BTW, I just did a quick manual IVTC so there might be cadence changes throughout, if only for a frame or two.  Also, i forgot to extend the luma white point while capturing so yeah there is some blown out whites but this should give a general idea of what the player's output is like.

R7G TEST SW JSC

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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It's definitely an improvement.  It's tough to tell exactly with the difference in white level, but there seems to be a more detail and less noise. 

I wonder if the 5 capture average would eliminate the shot change problem.

BTW, I can tell you that the 2000 Japanese SE is nothing special, really.  It looks no better or worse than the 97 Japanese edition, or the US version.  However, the US version is missing frames at a few places.  The two Japanese versions match the frames from the TB and G'Kar sets.

It would be nice to see a capture of the Episode II preview though :)

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Sorry about the white level. If you compare the histograms between the HF9G and R7G it seems evident that the R7G is the winner by a mile. The checkerboarding is pretty minimal compared to most captures I've seen and even the Theater750 checkerboards  on a scene once in a while. I'll bet the 5 capture average will alleviate most of it.  Once the reference disc gets here I'll run both machines through the tests but I can already tell that the R7G is superior.

The 2000 Japanese SE has LD-G so I'll at least grab the subtitles off of it. Interesting that the frames match the TB and G'kar.  I did notice while IVTC'ing the US 97SE that there were a couple of oddities.

Once it gets here I'll do a quick cap of the Episode II preview and put it on usenet for you. Maybe even with sound since I have a bit-perfect setup now!

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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I do have the sound already captured and posted.  It's on myspleen :). It might save you the trouble.

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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Haha. Yeah I didn't even think about that. 

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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althor1138 said:

The Pioneer Reference Disc is in the mail and should be here soon but in the meantime I decided to share a 4 minute sample of what the R7G looks like. This is a single pass s-video capture with the comb filter set to 50% strength that is getting fed into the Theater750HD.

I haven't had much time to look it over but it seems like there is much less noise or interference on this player/output combo than on the hf9g composite output. The picture seems sharper. There is some checkerboarding on the first frame of a scene change. Overall, I think this is a bit better than the previous setup and with the 5 capture average method it might be a lot better. Thoughts?

BTW, I just did a quick manual IVTC so there might be cadence changes throughout, if only for a frame or two.  Also, i forgot to extend the luma white point while capturing so yeah there is some blown out whites but this should give a general idea of what the player's output is like.

R7G TEST SW JSC

 Dude, I love this. Seems to have less dot crawl and rainbowing than I remember from other captures (sorry, I'm traveling and don't have anything to compare to at the moment).

Looking forward to more.

-G

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Great to see you're doing everything you can to improve on your previous work, Althor! Too late for the sample, care to reupload or have you all come to a decision already? Also nice to hear you are planning a THX-cap. Man, you're a machine! Keep up the good work! :)

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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msycamore said:

Great to see you're doing everything you can to improve on your previous work, Althor! Too late for the sample, care to reupload or have you all come to a decision already? Also nice to hear you are planning a THX-cap. Man, you're a machine! Keep up the good work! :)

 Nothing definitive yet.  I've not gotten any feedback yet on the reference disc captures.  Here's some screenshots and on absw i've posted the raw reference disc video files which are about 10GB.  I'm currently uploading R7G-SWJSC-5xRAW.  Side1 is finished now I believe.  The R7G captures are not perfect but right now it seems to me that they are a step up from the HF9G. I figured now that the HF9G-SWJSC and R7G-SWJSC is available it can be evaluated by better eyes than mine.  The reference disc tests are interesting too, for sure.

I am also currently trying to implement software decoding by capturing the full RF signal with a makeshift software defined radio in linux. There is a whole thread devoted to it over at LDDB so I won't delve into what that's all about here.

I'm not so great at compiling custom drivers and using the commandline for everything. I've got all of the hardware to do it now I just have to figure out how to use it lol. It's a slow process but if I succeed I'll definitely let everybody know.

UPDATE: Well the R7G is not tracking right. It begins looping and you can't fast forward past it. It started on side B but is now doing it on side A as well.  I believe the motor holder is maybe broken and/or the slider/rail mechanism is gummed up.  The player is in excellent condition but if it hasn't been used for ages stuff like this happens. The m-holder on these is notoriously brittle apparently.

Anyway, I've ordered the m-holder and new belts. The new m-holder is made from much more durable material from what I hear.

It's kind of a delicate operation though to remove the slider/rail mechanism and then pull out the optical pickup assembly to get to the tracking motor.  I'm not going to spend 500 dollars to send it to the US to get fixed though and I'm certainly not sending it to a local shop so some 20 year old kid can try to fix it, break it even worse, and then tell me it was way beyond repair from the beginning anyway. So it seems if anybody is going to send this thing to the grave it'll be me.

Luke threw twice…maybe.

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Good luck!  I haven't replaced an m-holder yet, but in general these last dual-side players are a bit less complicated, so your chances are better I'd say.  I think there are videos up on youtube.

Also you should be able to use a 515/925/406/606 service manual for the mechanical parts.

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The R7G looks like a winner. Checked out the first part of SWJSC-5xRAW, unfortunately it seem to me it's captured with the white level set a little high, haven't studied it too well yet but in certain parts the whites looked clipped to me?

Sad to hear the player is malfunctioning. I think you're doing the right choice of trying to fix it yourself. There used to be a few good service places in Stockholm and Göteborg I think but I'm not sure they exists any longer.

We want you to be aware that we have no plans—now or in the future—to restore the earlier versions. 

Sincerely, Lynne Hale publicity@lucasfilm.com

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@Happycube.  Thanks for the advice. I did find a lddb'er who'd posted a video on how to fix the d505 and it looks like the same setup so that helps a lot to have a visual reference to look at.

@Mysycamore. The R7G chops everything off above 255.  Side 1&2 of SW-JSC have some sort of weird mastering problem on my pressing where the black level starts at 16 even though it has the full range of a Japanese disc.  This means that there is white information all the way up to 260-265.  On the HF9G I could just extend the luma white point in virtualdub and recover everything.  On the R7G I have to turn on d-ext and bring most of it back down under 255 so it doesn't get chopped off by the player.  I guess there might be a tiny bit that gets clipped off but it is only in a couple of scenes on the tantive and maybe 1 or 2 elsewhere I think.  I've been able to write a script that masks that information and copies it from the HF9G to the R7G but honestly I can't see a difference at all other than I have set the white levels higher on the R7G capture. I've only ever seen this on swjsc side 1 & 2 so I don't think this will ever be an issue on any other disc. BTW, could you do me a favor and let me know if you think the SW&ESB LD's on tradera right now are the Technidisc pressings? Is there a Technidisc ROTJ and is it any different than the 2 previous pressings? I'll probably throw a bid down on it if it's the Technidisc.

Luke threw twice…maybe.