towne32 said:
I think it is a good question. One that I probably wouldn't have brought up, due to the hard work you've put in. But if you're at the point of deciding whether or not to begin another massive encode, it's certainly worth discussing.
I admit that my enthusiasm in the end product (but not the technique) has waned a bit, now that TN1's work is shaping into something quite nice. The benefits of your upscale, to me, were:
1. It's 'pure' SW. There's no mixing of sources that need to be matched or rotoscoping to be spotted by the trained eye. This is also the main benefit of TN1.
2. Color. It's not perfect, but it's roughly the color of the film I grew up watching. It's fairly consistent and not insane like 2004 and onwards. As you say, 35mm projects can be made to match the GOUT for those who are interested.
3. You've come up with a great script that has already been applied to other things, like Hal's project. It can be used for DeSp type projects where nothing better than GOUT is yet available.
The cons:
This is going to take you a very, very long time to start over with. You have other great projects going on. And there are two other films which will need adjusted scripts and again enormous periods of encoding.
DVNR. It's not going anywhere.
This (I mean encoding the entire film, *not* the R&D) is being done for practical use, to view a less ugly version of the (approximately) untouched film. It's one of many options. That's what's great about this community. It has kind of a shot-gun approach. Every imaginable way of making this film exist is being attempted. That said, what is the userbase that will prefer this version to TN1 or Harmy or Team Blu? If it were a 2-day encode, I would say who cares? Let's add it to the pile and the list of options! It's not trivial when we're talking about probably more than half a year spent encoding the trilogy, if it's something five people watch once.
I'm sure people will disagree. But I say, just get the script out there. People can do the scenes they need. Or the entire film if it's really ready-to-go. Someone might figure out how to get distributed computing power working for this, some day, and we can get it done rapidly.
I think this is worth discussing!
I think you hit the nail on the head. I agree completely. I've cleaned up the SRV11 script for SRV15, so I will definitely post that later today, when I get home, but the encoding takes an terribly long time, and most of it's to do with reducing all the artifacts that are caused by applying super resolution to a terrible source like the GOUT, not so much the super resolution itself.