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Idea & Info: The Brave Little Toaster DVD - Ideas on how to restore?

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Hi Team

This movie was cherished as a child when my father brought it home one day when I was home sick.  The VHS must have been watched 50 times!

The DVD release is NTSC with a seriously variable film cadence.  What needs to be restored with software (in addition to a clean 24p pulldown) is film jitter.  Disney seemed to have set up a 16mm camera and filmed it handheld then said yep that makes $$$ done.

What modern techniques are available to stabilise frames of animation from budget film sources?  The DVD is in storage and that last time I was obsessed with video encoding was when Tsunamic MPEG encoder was all the range and we all had to use Avisynth with hours dedicated to the perfect script.

How can I upload samples to get advice?

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It isn't only the DVD; according to YouTube, the VHS is also bad.

I was trying to stabilize this a while back...it took a while to get the stab AVIsynth script to work, and once I got it working, I realized that although it did a good job of getting rid of the "jitters", it still needed another pass from a different plugin (I don't have the name off the top of my head) to get rid of the picture weaving all over the place. I was trying to figure out how to work the settings for that plugin before I got distracted by some other project.

BTW, if you're seriously considering this, you might want to consider uncensoring some of the lyrics while you're at it.

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How's the LD? I own it, but I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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I would wager money that the LD is the same shoddy master as the VHS and the DVD.

That is, unless YouTube was lying to me and it wasn't actually VHS footage.

Edit: Here's a PAL LD capture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vr8ln8B-8g

Either it's a lot less wavey than the DVD, or my memory is making the DVD a lot worse than it really is.


Edit 2: Nope, it's not just my memory. Here's one of the VHSes (NTSC?) and you can clearly see it rocking like a ship on a stormy sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcDA-eG9hTw

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drngr said:

The description says it's a UK DVD.

 My mistake. When I searched for "brave toaster laserdisc", it was the very first result, so I just assumed that YouTube wasn't a dirty filthy liar... *flips out* THANKS A LOT, GOOGLE.

drngr said:

Quality looks good judging by screenshots of an XviD on RuTracker (R2 video and audio + other sources for the dub tracks).

 The YT video looked like it had lots of interlace ghosting (or whatever it's called, I can't remember). The XviD isn't like this?

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I haven't downloaded it.

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Oh =(

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A quick comparison between the rutracker rip and an r1 dvd rip - the pal dvd they used is indeed way better than the us one.

I'd say it was worth it trying to track an r2 dvd down if you're really looking for a better version. They don't specify on rutracker what specific r2 dvd was used though, as far as I can see.

There are German (der tapfere kleine toaster) and Polish (dzielny maly toster) dvds that can be had quite cheap(ish), however they may be a different transfer.

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

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No interlace issues?

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Weird that it's all over the YouTube video, maybe it's something YT automatically applies to PAL videos?

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I can't remember what it's called, I tried looking it up real quick and felt like I was wasting time finding no answers...it's where they simply blend the frames instead of separating them first, when deinterlacing.

Like the middle example in this picture:

Speaking of wasted time, I'm real glad I didn't spend very much of it trying to stabilize the NTCS version.

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I have the R2 DVD from RuTracker. There's no ghosting, but there's definitely some noticeable macroblocking. Was this supposed to be a DVD5? Was it recompressed? I can't read Russian and Google Translate does a pretty shitty job.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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 (Edited)

I'm pretty sure it's a straight rip and that the original is a DVD5.

The following R2 DVD release mentions being DVD5 on the back. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IFSUDEW

I wonder if they used the same master...

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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Santiag fixes the aliasing wonderfully.

I'm going to try the amazing denoise node in a herein-unnamed application. I've never seen this fucker artifact.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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There seem to be many R2 releases. Dutch, German, Italian & Polish at least. Some have localized intro titles, some not it seems. Assuming the same transfer but different encoding it could be possible to average/median several videos to eliminate macroblocking.

If someone was so inclined & willing to track down several dvd copies of course :)

The Monkey King - Uproar In heaven (1965) Restoration/Preservation Project

Nezha Conquers the Dragon King (1979) BBC 1.66:1 & Theatrical 2.35:1 preservations

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satanika said:

Interesting difference between the R1 and R2 DVDs:

 The top one is an alteration Disney made for re-releases in the USA, while the bottom one is the original shot. lol

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satanika said:

I don't see blended frames/fields in the rutracker or on the youtube link above.

I get them in the YouTube clips, but this machine isn't set up to run YT at an optimal framerate, so maybe that has something to do with it.

satanika said:

Why don't you grab it yourself from rutracker since I can't convince you?

It's not that I'm not convinced, I was just seeking clarification ;) If the only thing wrong with this DVD is PAL speedup, I'll have to try to find an ISO of it or something. I haven't seen this movie in ages, and the Disney disc is near unwatchable to me.

AntcuFaalb said:

Was this supposed to be a DVD5?

I know this means absolutely nothing, but the NTSC release is less than four gigs.

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I have already started a restoration of this film based on upscaling the superior PAL transfer and removing de-interlacing and ghosting artifacts. I am converting to 25fps progressive then applying slowdown to get back to the appropriate 24fps and remixing the soundtrack in 6.1 EX using the original theatrical stereo track and the original soundtrack album that was released Fairly recently. After that I am doing spot and dirt reduction using the German restoration software Diamant. Should be done hopefully by March. 

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Update on the restoration process. I have completed the upscaling to 1080p and conversion and PAL 25 to NTSC 23.976 slowdown process and removed all interlacing and ghosting artifacts. I have synched it to the 5.1 mix from the American DVD which lined up perfectly with the audio. I am doing some audio work and have completed frame by frame restoration on the opening title sequence restoration and the shot where the appliances venture out into the world through the front door. Both of these shots were in pretty awful shape even on the PAL transfer (which looks pretty spectacular in most other shots by the way.) I may post some screenshots (if I am allowed) Don't know the rules on screenshots, and also didn't know if anyone had any image hosting/posting recommendations when using this site. (Still a newbie to this particular forum.)