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New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh - Preservation Project (* unfinished - lots of info *) — Page 3

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Is the logo static or animated? Opaque or alpha-blended (semi-transparant)?

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My experience is that those Disney Channel logos are quite hard to get rid of - I have never managed to completely get rid of them without leaving ugly artefacts behind. I'm no expert when it comes to those things though, so perhaps someone else have had better luck than me.

If that source can't be cleaned to get rid of the logo, then it would certainly be preferable if jerryshadoe has the patience to manually handle the logo-free source; especially considering the Disney Channel logos are quite annoying and big. But if you don't have the energy or time to do that, then I'm sure no one will blame you if you decide to use the foreign Disney Channel source with the logo.

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 (Edited)

So, before I posted any reply, I did numerous tests and tried to figure out how to proceed.

@ Andrea - the "patch" method seems like a viable option, thanx4suggestion

@ Moth3r - for the most part it is a static logo, except for 8-10 seconds at about half-way through episode where it turns into an animated sequence that takes up bottom 1/4 of screen (where it says is Russian: "you are now watching 'the new adventures of winnie the pooh'"). most of the logo is alpha-blended, but parts (including the letters "Disney") is opaque

@hofverberg - you are right that the Disney logo is a "pest" to get rid of and any script that I used ( trying: DeLogo, DeKafka, InpaintFunc, rm_logo) ALL leave very nasty artifacts for the parts that are opaque and definitely during the animated sequence. As far as using the blended/no-logo source, it's not a matter of time/patience on my part, but I have noticed that in scenes where the frame changes (due to rapid movement/zooming) from frame-to-frame there is a lack of smoothness (the scenes become jagged) and the result, IMHO, looks like sh*t.

So, for now, I am going to process all the episodes: de-interlace, slow back down to NTSC, insert English title cards/end credits, sync ALL language tracks (except for Swedish dub, as I don't have the source audio yet, but this will be easy and fast once the rest is done) AND then, after all of that is finished, I will attempt to "patch" all of the episodes that have the logo with the blended sources. When I first started this project, as the first episode has a logo, I tried to do the "patch" method with mixed results. First of all, the video sources are different in the fact that the logo version contains what appears to be 100% of original frame, where as the episodes without logo are zoomed a little bit (only 97.5% of original frame is there) AND it seems like the no-logo version is slightly warped because no matter how hard I tried to match the frames, there would be one part that would match perfect (i.e. top left part of where i'm covering logo), where as other part (i.e. right part of where i'm covering logo) would look like it's a degree or two off. Also, the level of zoom/warping is different from scene to scene. I sat there and tested different settings for three (yes, THREE) days and no matter how close I got, a little bit was ALWAYS off. Granted, to most people this would NOT be noticeable (as some of my last results where VERY close) but, either way, it bothered me. Unfortunately, during certain scenes it became obvious that there was a "patch" there due to the frame blending present in the no-logo version. And then I got half-way through the first episode, with what was 95% decently reconstructed video, and I hit a brick wall when the logo changed to the animated sequence and took up ~25% of ENTIRE bottom of screen. The frame blending in that sequence is very nasty on the no-logo version and that was when I gave up on trying the "patch" method. This was before I learned about certain avisynth scripts, where I am able to get a lot "cleaner" result and now, after all episodes are processed, I will go back and try to pick up where I left off with that.

If removing the logo (especially the animated sequence) by "patching" gives me nice results I will go that route, but if it ends up looking worse than just leaving the logo in tact, then I will leave it as-is. I also have the problem of the fact that some of the episodes with the logo do NOT have a high bitrate blended counter-part source, where in those cases the ONLY source that there is to do the "patch" with are one of the xvid releases (which I have in four versions as well, but none are better than 640x480 @~800-1200kbps (depending on episode) and most of those are actually sourced from VHS tapes, so there is that issue as well. In those cases, the "patch" is extremely obvious as the "patched" part looks really blurry ("smear-o-vision") compared to rest of frame.

On side note, (I know, I'm hijacking my own thread, LOL) working on just this project, mentally, burns me out, so I'm simultaneously working on a couple more things now too. I have, finally after searching forever, located a very high bitrate 1080i HDTV copy of "Innocent Blood", also known as "Bloody Marie" from 1992 and am looking at doing a BD25 release of this and have located two different sourced 720p copies of "Desperate Measures" from 1998, as well as numerous extras for that movie (including a featurette and numerous interviews) that deserves a proper BD25 release as well. the first one will be easy as it's just a matter of de-interlacing, the source is nearly flawless in terms of transfer, and the second one I will try to do the method that Andrea used on Supernova, as the two different sources have similar issue as what Andrea delt with there (if you could PM me with what script you used there, that would save me some time and would be greatly appreciated) This keeps things interesting and my mind fresh, because looking at just the frames of winnie the pooh for too long makes me feel like a zombie, LOL. Anyway, I was able to find all these lovely things on usenet and would like to let everyone here know, that there is a great 3 day trial (with 30 connections, unlimited bandwidth [my average download speed was 25-30mbps] and unlimited transfer [I downloaded 475GB within those three days]) if you sign up with hitnews. (.com) I am NOT SPAMMING here, there is NO referral service, just sharing with those who would like to try usenet but don't wanna pay for it. the coolest thing about this free trial is that it requires NO credit card info in order to get it. ALL you need to do is enter your name, e-mail address (where they send you confirmation e-mail to activate the account) and select a password. that's it !!!

Anyway, back on topic, I am going back to the editing on this project ;)

Peace

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 (Edited)

ok, I know I'm double-posting... please forgive me;)

the reason for this post is simple... I know that if I saw a thread somewhere about the preservation of this series, I would be excited and await with anticipation, as I'm sure some people that have read this thread feel themselves. I appreciate everyone's patience with me, as this is my first preservation project, I'm learning as I go, and this is a HUGE project. There have been certain problems that I encountered as I have worked on this, and most of them have resolved themselves with the addition of new sources. In my TEMP folder for this project I have ~250GB of data with a total of 7 "unique" sources. Two, very high bitrate Russian sources (the no-logo blended source, which is mostly garbage and the disney-logo proper transfer version), 4 xvid sources (2 German, 1 Polish, and 1 English) ranging from horrible to ok (~800-1800kbps) and a AVC source (also Russian, ~1500-1900kbps) that is decent. I just finished going through all the sources and realized that from the high bitrate "editions" almost HALF of the episodes end up having the Disney-logo in them. However, ALL the episodes are now proper transfers (I haven't finished the conversions yet, but I did verify my sources first) and a simple de-interlacing, slowing down to 23.976 and syncing the audio will do the trick. So this is turning back to any easy project. NOW, I HATE the logo and agree with Andrea that this should be taken care of. So, just to see what I can do in terms of a "patch" for the logo (and animated sequence that I mentioned in previous post) I realized that one of the German xvid releases is also a proper transfer to PAL and once slowed down to 23.976, aligns PERFECTLY with the Russian Disney source. Now it's just a matter of syncing the color/contrast/brightness/gamma/slight sharpen and I end up having a logo-free version. Because of the fact that it's from an xvid release, however, there are occasional frames "in-motion" where there are certain compression atrefacts presents inside the "patch" but this is very seldom and most of the video ends up looking fine. I do HAVE to go through it frame-by-frame, but this really only needs to be adjusted scene-by-scene, NOT frame-by-frame, (for the most part, at least) so the "patching" takes about 4-5 hours of editing per episode which is reasonable and very doable.

So, I feel like I'm back on the "proper" track with this preservation and am pretty sure that in about 6-7 weeks it should actually be finished. This would be a great time to get the Swedish dub so I could sync that as well, as I now have 16 episodes, ALL "logo-free", completed and this is really moving forward now. In the last couple of weeks it doesn't really seem like I moved forward a lot, if people have actually read my posts, but now that there are no more "problem" episodes, this really will move forward reasonably, even with the "patch" work that has to be done. The only part of certain episodes that I will NOT be able to "patch," due to lack of sources, is SOME of the end credits, where I will leave them as-is because I don't believe in blurring of logos.

Again, thanx2ALL that have helped with suggestions/advice and, also, thanx2ALL4the patience.
Please trust me, it will be worth it ;)

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That sounds good, and I'm glad you're making progress.

I have just finished digitizing the Swedish dub for episodes 1 - 11, so I will extract the audio for those and send to you within the next few days.

I'm still trying to locate the Swedish dub for the rest of the episodes.

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@ hofverberg - I still am hoping that you will be able to provide the Swedish dub audio tracks for this project ;)

@ ALL - I realize it's been a while since there has been an update posted here. I haven't been able to work on the project as much as I wanted to due to some family stuff popping up in my life. Now, not only am I taking care of my daughters (ages 4 & 2) but, my parents are getting older and need my help with certain things here and there as well.

This is a VERY time-consuming project. The "patching" method being "easy and fast," as I stated in my last posts, is only PARTIALLY true. With certain episodes, yes the process takes me 6-8 hours for an episode and with other episodes, it takes 4-6 sessions six hours each (so, yes, a total of ~24-35hours!) to finish. The reason for this is... well actually there is a couple reasons. First, the "patch" source in certain instances does NOT match in color/chroma/contrast/brightness/etc. at all. And since the "patch" source episodes are a very low bitrate xvids, there is a LOT of information that is just missing and doing any colormatch scripts yields garbage. Also, in cases where I have a Disney-logo episode that was PROPERLY converted to PAL, the PQ is noticeably lower (even though it's the second highest quality source I have to work with) compared to the incorrectly transferred logo-free encode. Here's an example of what I mean:

The LOGO-FREE version

And the exact same frame from the Disney-logo version (which in this shot is "patched" but incorrectly as it doesn't align perfectly because this was a quick sample shot I took, whereas with the actual "patched" frames I align them properly)

the difference is VERY noticeable, especially in the trees right behind Piglet's right foot and in the pattern of the curtain on the right side of screen where is lacks detail and looks a little "smeared." (NOTE: this is actually one of the better frames as some of the scenes are so much lower quality that it looks like a pixelated mess, especially in rapid-motion scenes)

Now, some of the episodes are proper DVD transfers (where the NTSC to PAL conversion was done right) and some of the episodes only have the disney-logo proper transfer version, where for the DVD transfers it's just a matter of de-interlacing and then going through it just to make sure all is well (as sometimes there is still an occasion frame blend) and then slowing them down to NTSC and adjusting the audio. The Disney-logo transfers are NOT all that much lower quality, but about half of them are and in the case where I have the two sources they are usually lower quality than than the logo-free source. Still, I have to "patch" those and replace Russian title cards, etc. BUT then there are episodes (about 25% of the entire series) that have a proper transfer disney-logo version and the field-blended (and I'm using that term correctly as the blending is down at the field level) logo-free editions that are the highest PQ. For these episodes I try to use as many frames as possible, correcting everything FRAME-BY-FRAME, from the logo-free version, ONLY using "patched" frames from the other source when necessary, HOWEVER I only do this for ENTIRE scenes (as in same background for the few seconds its onscreen) because otherwise it's too obvious that there are switches between sources for TWO reasons. First, the difference is PQ, second, the disney-logo version is slightly cropped on the left and bottom sides (about 16-20 pixels varying on scene) So, in certain scenes, I had to clean up the logo-free version of the blended frames by dupping the frame before or after, depending on when the blend occurs, but this is NOT always possible as certain frames are unique and this mainly happens when the scenes is panning across a certain background or during zooming sequences. Because of this, sometimes it seems like the zooming portion lacks smoothness a little bit. At times like this, I have to make a judgement as to whether to use the lower quality source or clean-up the better one as much as possible. So I have to do some test encodes for certain sequences to see how it looks in-motion because when looking at something frame-by-frame you don't see if it plays smoothly.

By the time this is all done, it looks decent when it all is playing in "real-time" and it's funny how some of the "defects" of the sources that I see when working on the project frame-by-frame I don't notice when it's playing. All in all, once I complete the entire series it will be the BEST transfer of the series BUT it will NOT BE PERFECT. There is only so much you can do when the sources you are working with are inferior. I am a little disappointed with this announcement as I was hoping for being able to reconstruct a perfect transfer. Either way, I'm completing this project and am still very excited about it, as it will be the closest to the original that will be available until Disney releases this properly (and for that I'm not holding my breath, LOL) For those that this will not be good enough, they can always "enjoy" the crappy xvid release that's still "floating around" on the net.

Sorry about the monolog, LOL... 

Peace

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Jerry, that is a very hard task, and I'm happy you are doing this; I always think that a less than perfect version is a lot better than a bad one... (^^,)

Keep working, hope you'll finish it soon, so you may apply your excitement to the next project - whatever it will be!

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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Any update on this project Jerry?

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 (Edited)

I haven't posted anything in this thread, as all I had to say was that the project is still "in progress," because I stopped working on in back in August. I got SOOOOO tired of looking at this show (frame-by-frame) EVERY night that I had to take a break. I worked on some other stuff, have had a lot of personal stuff going on, and then I forgot about this project until just a few days ago when my daughters asked me if they can watch some more episodes of the show to which I had to tell them they will have to wait or watch what's already finished. My daughters' asking me about this made me feel bad that it's not finished yet, so I have FINALLY resumed my work on this project. I am NOT stating a "release date" yet because (as many know when it comes to these kinds of projects) I'm not sure how fast I will be able to complete it and what kinds of "issues" I still might run into during the process of editing this together. I don't want to be in the position where I'm trying to meet a "deadline" and end-up cutting corners just to release the project especially after all the hard-work already put into this to make it proper.  I will say, that I would like to finish it and have it released in January-February 2015 but we'll see...

Since I never heard back about the Swedish dubb, that language option will be omitted and I will be including the languages that I already have: English, Polish, German, and Russian.

There is still the topic of where to release this once it's finished. I contacted the admins over on the spleen who told me that I can NOT release this project over there because it's a Disney production. I have seen other stuff on there from Disney, this show has never been released on DVD, it's not recent, and technically ALL sourced from TVrips or PAL DVDs. I tried to persuade them using all of those points but they won't budge stating that "Winnie the Pooh" is "too high risk." So, I have NO idea where to release this once it complete... I want to make this as available as possible but know that retaining seeds (especially on big torrents) is an issue using public trackers. ANY suggestions here will be welcome;o)

Again, thanx4the patience and I promise the wait will end up being worth it;o)

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I'm terribly sorry; I also forgot all about this due to personal matters. I will be sure to send you the audio ASAP for all episodes I have been able to find so far in Swedish.

I believe a couple of episodes are still missing, but I do have almost all episodes anyway.

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Hi

Good work so far! I hope you are able to one day finish this. I have some bad quality encodes of the series, and like you would like a better quality release.

As others have mentioned, I wish Disney would just release some of these shows properly. Give us a full complete boxset of this and stuff like Gummi Bears. Individual volumes etc was just a bad idea, keep it simple with a semi affordable complete set.

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Hi is there any update on this project? I am one of the people working with Hofverberg in collection the Swedish audio, we have now managed to get hold of all the episodes in Swedish. Even though most of them are VHS-rips which are missing the outro. I am trying to contact someone which might have most of the episodes recorded digitaly from Swedish Disney Channel in the early 2000(but he has not responded in a while).

Are you still interested in the Swedish audio? What is the status on this project? It has been a while since this thread was updated. Just wanted to know if it is going forward or if you have abandoned the project?


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I am also interested to know of any progress.

I have sent Swedish audio files for the first 15 episodes a while back, so now it's just a matter of collecting the rest.

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Since my last update, I have been working meticulously on this project and one more (which I will be announcing within next 24hours.) Of course, I didn't manage to get much done around the holidays, but the project is NOT abandoned and IS moving forward. Release date: ??? (I'm giving myself a LOT of leeway and estimating that it will be finished before this year is over) It has been extremely time-consuming and, at times, frustrating to work on as some of the sources contain that much "damage" that needs to be addressed, plus the time-consuming task of "patching" the logo with different footage (which also has a logo but in different corner of screen) Honestly, there are times during the work on this project that I want to shoot my computer and/or the a-holes that converted all of these incorrectly to begin with. But it is what it is and I'm slowly making progress. I apologize to all that wish I was already finished with this (including my little daughters, LOL) but I can only work on this so fast and for so long at a time... AND, in all honesty, these kinds of projects usually take a long time... to the best of my knowledge, there are numerous projects out there that took one or two years to completely assemble and people just had to wait. I have posted questions about my sources and asked for advice, as to easier ways to "fix" the damage and so far everyone that has looked at the samples I posted, basically told me that my source footage is really messed up. Does this mean it can't be done? NO!! But it does require a lot of MANUAL corrections, in many cases on a frame-by-frame basis.

For those interested in the technical aspect here, the video was transferred incorrectly from NTSC to PAL, where there is a ton of field blending (not talking about frame-blending, the result of incorrect de-interlacing) and the order of fields changes at random from bottom field first to top field first, making de-interlacing the footage an interesting challenge, as I basically have to de-interlace this by doubling the frame rate and changing every field to it's own frame, and then manually "cherry-pick" every frame that I'm matching to a low-bitrate but properly transfered german sourced PAL footage (which I'm also using for the logo patches in most cases where it's needed) Here, this is the BEST way to go but also the SLOWEST. I am able to recover ~95% of all "clean" frames this way (where any avisynth script I tried, and there have been tons that I've tried, researched on video forums, asked other users here and AMPS; all usually ended up being about 50-50 regardless of scripts/methods tried as they all went "coo-koo" trying to deal with these sources) BUT there are still up to 5% per episode of frames that are blended because they were that way on the field level and were single "unique" frames that couldn't be "cherry-picked" from any fields around it.... Anyway, yeah, sloooooooowww process.... but relatively satisfying results...

as far as Swedish dubb is concerned... yeah, sure I'd be happy to sync it too... lately I have been offline a lot more, because my computer processes all of this video stuff waaaaay faster that way and I ran out of HDD space (which was just resolved for xmas, yay) so I haven't downloaded all of the stuff hofverberg has sent me. I hope that those 13 episodes you sent me are still available and that the links are active. I apologize for that :(

now, back2work...

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What a great project! Thanks for all your hard work, can't wait to see this show in all its glory again!

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Thanks for the update, and please do take your time.  Good things such as this are totally worth the wait!

Personally, I would rather have a better final result even if that means waiting much longer.  Thank you for all your hard work with this project!

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Thank u for the update. Take your time, there is no rush. Just wanted to make sure that you have not given up the project. It will take the time it takes.
Just focus on trying to get a as good result as possible.

Me and Hofverberg can focus on trying to find better quality of the Swedish dub in the meantime. Just let us know when you have finished enough of the episodes, and want to start syncing the audio.

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 (Edited)

First off, thank you to all the people that have shown support of this project by posting in the thread, as well as the numerous people that have sent me PMs concerning this project. I greatly appreciate all the support and anticipation of the completion of this project.

Honestly, I have been slacking on this project a little bit lately because I have been working hard on a couple of other things. However, with the "flood" of messages I have gotten within the last couple of weeks here and in other places where I have mentioned this project, this project is now moving back up to my "top priority," where I will continue my other projects, but devote a lot less time to them.

What does this mean to anyone reading this thread?! Well, first of all, there will be more frequent updates on progress. Next, hopefully, this means that the project will be completed much faster. Granted, there is still an a**load of work ahead of me, but it will go faster if I devote more of my time to it, as now it has been limited.

Finally, as far as the Swedish dub tracks are concerned, it would be nice to have them for all of the episodes and, if possible, I will include them. As I stated above, I will start working on this project a lot more and will post updates, which will help you figure out which episodes I need the audio for.

As I have started the work on certain episodes on more than one occasion (as I managed to find better video sources) for now, I have the first 13 episodes completed (where I am in process on syncing all audio right now for episode 13) and I will continue from there. Originally I had 21 episodes completed but, like I said, I found better sources so I had to go back and re-do some of it. It's actually pretty crazy, because between all the different sources that I have now, the project takes up nearly 350GB(!)

Anyway, again, THANK YOU to all that are interested in this project and continue to support it. Your patience will be greatly rewarded;)

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I think that all of the time and work that went into this restoration project will make me appreciate the finished product MORE than if the series was just released on DVD by Disney.

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How's the project coming?  My kids love Winnie the Pooh and I would love to get this series for them since I loved it as a kid as well.  I've seen it available on IOffer, but yours seems like it will be so much higher quality.  I'd like to hold out for your version.  So, is it progressing?

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I literally just made an account on this site just to comment on this thread. I really want these videos please finish them? :/ I can't find them anywhere anymore and you're my only hope.

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Man... your trials / travails with this is starting to make me want to do the same with Muppet Babies (which would be my first project of this nature), which really badly needs a preservation that's closest to the best quality and could (possibly) be used as a proper DVD master if Disney ever got off their butts and did something with the show. That's going to be a Google search and a half to get me started on learning the ropes.

Anyways, I'm rambling now. I'll subscribe so that I can keep better in the loop on your project, which is very important to me because I loved this show as a kid.

BJ

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This was a favourite of mine as a child, and my fiancée also adores Pooh Bear and friend. Can't wait to see the end results!

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Any update on this? I would LOVE to have a copy of this, and would even pay for it. Been searching forever 😦