TPM 1080p Theatrical Preservation (a WIP)

Purpose:

To preserve The Phantom Menace theatrical cut.

Status:

Incomplete.

Source material:

1. Official DVD.
2. Schorman’s HDTV prservation.
3. althor1138’s LD rip.
4. TB DVD (Scandnavian DVB rip)

Thanks go to:

• Schorman - who not only did beautiful work on his HDTV preservation, but also let me know about the Scandanavian cap which is now absolutely vital in providing greater quality to the Theatrical scenes.
• althor1138 - who capped the Japanese LD, which yes is superior quality to the Scandnavian cap.
• Andrea - who is also capping the Jap LD.
• DrDre - his upscale work with the GOUT proved a useful insight into improving the upscales used in this preservation.
• YouToo - for uploading the Z-VCD to the Spleen. The Z-VCD is essential for recreating theatrical subtitle placement and timing.
• grisan - for uploading the TB release to the Spleen.
   

Discussion:

I originally thought this would be a nice easy project… nope. It’s quite complicated!

The first thing I did, which was time consuming, was to sync the HDTV and DVD versions to the LD.

The next thing I did was colour correct the HDTV and DVD rips. I also worked out how to process the image so it comes out nicely with both versions. The DVD is upscaled in Avisynth to 1080p, and is then used to remove the HDTV’s burned-in subtitles. This was time consuming, but it’s done.

Before:

After:

Download: Early preview clip 1080p (9MB)

I had to degrain the HDTV source in order to get a seamless match between HDTV and DVD. I then add back grain, as well as boosting the grain slightly in the rest of the film.

The subtitles are then put back using my pseudo patented subtitle script, as so:

Now on to the LD upscalling. For reference, here are screenshots of the two scenes that do not appear at all on the DVD. The top is the DVB (TB DVD version), the second one is the althor1138’s LD, and the bottom is my version downsized back to SD.

The first scene is on the extras DVD, so it is upscalled from that instead of the LD+DVB mix. At the moment the upscalling is provisionally completed.

The upscale script is complicated, and slow. It needs to be done in two parts, due to only being allowed to call a certain script once in Avisynth. The scenes are pre-rendered so they can be imported into the final script.

It is mostly based on the laserdisc, although the TB source was used to boost the quality slightly. The LD resolution is 708x274 and it was not cropped any further. Getting the video to look acceptable alongside the true HD material is a very challenging endeavour. Thankfully there is only a handful of scenes where this is necessary.

Release info:

The release will be a 1080p x246 MKV file, encoded to conform with BD comparability. The audio details will be confirmed at a later stage. It will be synced to the LD version.

As should be clear if you’ve read this thread, it’s always been my intention to share the scripts, etc, that I’ve created for this project along with the final product. I have already posted some of the scripts I’ve written, and I’m happy to share information that may be useful to others. Avisynth scripting can take considerable time, and I usually don’t want to share things that are still a work in progress, but be assured that every script needed to recreate the final release will be released in the fullness of time.

I have also uploaded the non-retail SD material. This includes all the deleted scenes I intend to use. This is so everyone has an opportunity to use them for their own needs. I can also make available any of the HD upscalled scenes for the LD material - while it’s still a work in progress I have rendered the present version.

Screenshots:

• Laserdisc vs Upscale (4 scenes in the link)

• TB vs upscale (4 scenes in the link)

Video downloads:

Preview clip (52.3MB).

Sebulba scene - DVD version:
1. Uncompressed AVI (96.8MB)
2. x264 crf16 (2.56MB)

Sebulba scene - LD+DVB version:
1. Uncompressed AVI (96.8MB)
2. x264 crf16 (2.34MB)

Upscale scenes:

These are all the scenes requiring upscales. The x264 are transcoded with a crf setting of 10, or you can download the lossless AVI files (Lagarith).

• DVB recording (x264) / Lossless AVI (TB source)
• LD rip (x264) / Lossless AVI (Althor)
• LD rip (x264) / Lossless AVI (Andrea)

The first part of the upscale is the alignment script, since these videos were already cropped to use it you just need to remove the first crop from each source. Note that this script presently is only calibrated for Althor’s rip and not Andrea’s one.

This looks nice! Keep up :)

Here are some full sized screenshots (they've been cropped to fit on the page). The top image is the unprocessed HDTV resized to 720p, the bottom is my final corrected version. You'll notice the original is over-sharpened and has a pink hue. Although certainly not the worst offender in terms of over-sharpening (I've seen some BDs that look like total sin), it's pretty ugly on the crawl.

This shot is actually available on the bonus DVD.  It's part of the extended podrace grid sequence. (Yes, there actually is a longer version!)

There's a different shot that is present on the DVD version, but is trimmed compared to the theatrical version.  It's right when the fans are standing up to cheer for Sebulba.  I'll post a screen cap later.

schorman13 said:

This shot is actually available on the bonus DVD.  It's part of the extended podrace grid sequence. (Yes, there actually is a longer version!)

There's a different shot that is present on the DVD version, but is trimmed compared to the theatrical version.  It's right when the fans are standing up to cheer for Sebulba.  I'll post a screen cap later.

Thanks for that information, I'll be able to use the Extras DVD instead for that one shot. Yes I know about the trimmed shot it's this one:

It's not extended on the Extras DVD so I'll take the entire shot from the LD/TB sources.

Extras DVD:

Okay I now know how the subtitles look. I've also converted them to their theatrical versions (none are on two lines and there were some minor grammatical differences).

Subtitles 01-27

Subtitle 28:

Here it is correctly styled over the DVD image:

I'm not going to burn them in I'll use a .ass in the MKV and a .srt with the .srt.style file. That way people can change them if they want (eg. in another language). In the theatrical version all but two of the subs fade in and out, that will really be the main difference between burning them in and using a subtitle file. The other difference is the shadow is less theatrically accurate, but it's a detail that is really minuscule.

Here is the style (with the video size currently at 1280x546, but I will change that later to add black borders and bring it to Mod-16 i.e. 1280x560, the black borders you see in the image above are not in the HDTV version but I used the DVD for that preview and calibration which is slightly cropped).

ScriptType: v4.00+
PlayResX: 1280
PlayResY: 546

[V4+ Styles]
Format: Name, Fontname, Fontsize, PrimaryColour, SecondaryColour, OutlineColour, BackColour, Bold, Italic, Underline, StrikeOut, ScaleX, ScaleY, Spacing, Angle, BorderStyle, Outline, Shadow, Alignment, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Encoding
Style: Default,Franklin Gothic Demi Cond,48,&H00E0E7D3,&H00FFFFFF,&H00000000,&H00000000,0,0,0,0,100,100,0,0,1,0,2,2,10,10,82,0

You can use it in either an advanced sub station alpha file (.ass) or a .srt.style file.

As much of a pain as it would be, I would suggest releasing both versions. This project looks awesome, looking forward to it. (Oddly enough, sparked my curiosity on what AotC and RotS would look like if matched to the theatrical TPM, rather than the typical trying to match them to the OT.)

Erik Pancakes said:

I'd prefer them burned in and theatrically accurate (fades and all), like they are in Harmy's Despecialized and schorman's AOTC HDTV release. But that's just my preference, of course, and it's your release, so do it however you want! Either way is better than the crappy burned-in ones on the HDTV version.

(I'll probably just make my own version with burned-in subtitles for myself if you stick with the .ass/.srt method, anyway.)

Yes it will be very easy to do that. I may end up doing it myself if there really is enough interest. In any case the difference will be really small. I may be able to get the fade effect to work with the .ass, I haven't tried yet.

Thanks for letting me know AOTC has the theatrical style subs on it, I've re-matched the style I had to it (only a very slight change - font size down to 48, no bold, no outline). It looks almost identical, except that it appears LFL used a slightly different version of the font itself (most letters look identical but the e's look slightly different).

Awfully courteous of them.

Interesting if someone has the correct font send me a PM.

Meanwhile I'm removing the present fonts using this code, it's somewhat tedious but I'll get there. As mentioned, later on when the video is resized to 720p I'll have to add some grain back to all those 28 scenes.

For a comparison take a look at HDTV vs. DVD, and HDTV vs. removed subtitles.

I'm curious what the "DVDSource()" filter does.  This looks pretty good, btw.  I can send you the font you need, as well.

The dvd version of the garage scene is missing 10 to 15 frames on either side of the additional material.   The theatrical cut is actually available within one of the extras on disc 2 of the dvd set.  I can't remember which documentarmy, though.  The problem is that it's 16:9 instead of 2.35:1, so the footage doesn't match the rest of the movie.  All other known changes are in the DVD active article:

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-four.html

The theatrical DTS CDs are also circulating.

Maybe team negative-1 can telecine the few hundred frames that would make a theatrical version possible ??