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.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *) — Page 61

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I think the Black Magic process (some sort of combination of laserdiscs release blending and/or film jitter extrapolation) extracts more information than a single frame.
But just to prove my point (this is just simple Lanczos resize, you could do better with deblocking filters and such).

Image 1
The screenshot (from above) from the X0 project
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/3231/x0gn6.jpg

Image 2
The same screenshot enlarged to 133% (about the same enlargement you'd see going letterbox to anamorphic).
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/8210/x0anamorphicvm4.jpg

Image 3
For the heck of it, (approx.) HD 720p version (with some edge enhancement.) (200%)
http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/5575/x0720pv2px6.jpg

Do you feel like the picture is terribly degraded? And this is WITHOUT access to their raw data (or specialized software) before they encoded, resized, jpeg'd or whatever-ed the image before posting it here.

Want more? Here's the full size HD version:
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5272/x0720pv2fullsh1.jpg

I'd watch that.


EDIT: True avisynth filters used for 720p sharpening snapshot... looks better too.

Dr. M

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If it ended up like that we'd basically have an anamorphic GOUT.

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Is that an endorsement or criticism?

An anamorphic GOUT would have been preferred but we're still talking a better master then they had.

Btw, I swapped the 720p image for one with a real avisynth filter sharpening. I think it looks a bit better (but there's some compression artifacts now (probably from the jpg compression)).

Dr. M

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Criticism - the team is trying to make a much better version than the GOUT. In the end, if I understand your explanations correctly, it would probably have the same amount of grain unless they made it very blurry. However, I think you're being a bit hard on them. I totally support the X0 project myself, so I'm a bit biased.
You should switch the screenshots back (and make them links rather than images,) it looks much worse now IMO.
EDIT: Sluggo's post below hit my opinion right on the nail

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While I think this discussion is valid to a point, remember also that the examples being shown are some of the worst of all the film. It is pointless to judge the whole project on the number of grains in one shot. I anticipate the project being incredible, but I'm waiting to see the final shots before I make a final call.
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I think the real point is a lot less people would be interest in the X0 project if they decided to keep the picture 4x3 letterboxed.

The re-done 720p image has more detail than the previous one I posted.
The artifacts it brought out are of a digital compression type and are unlike to exist in the original frames the X0 people are working with. (Look around the words "X0 Project". Some of the worst artifacts are in their lettering).

Dr. M

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Doctor M: Interesting example in that 133% oversize screenshot. And, like you said, we have to factor in that these are relatively low quality jpg's that you are using. The X0 team has the uncompressed full quality video files. Which if they precisely up-sample frame-by-frame before converting it to anamorphic format with an up-sampling method that gives the very best picture quality possible (retaining the original detail, clarity, etc. extremely well), the anamorphic version should look very good indeed. Maybe it's not such a problem, after all. I just want to retain that great image quality that the X0 team has been able to extract from their excellent transfer from laserdisk.

And an anamorphic transfer means the picture will fit 16x9 t.v.'s properly without having to use the apparently not very good looking "zoom" feature on t.v.'s to try to fill the screen.

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Do you feel like the picture is terribly degraded?

Not terribly degraded, but just look at the awful stepping on that dish thing on the right.

(retaining the original detail, clarity, etc. extremely well),


If you're going to upscale by 133% with a simple resizer, none of the original lines are going to make it through unscathed - they'll all be a weighted blend of 4 or more neighbours. If you ask me, that's a bad thing. Even if you did it judiciously with a tweaked algorithm, only 1 in every 4 lines will be an original. Not only can you not increase information by upsizing, you can't even keep what information there is - you have to "smear" it around.

Of course, if have an LCD or Plasma, your picture's going to get scaled regardless, and you may as well try and do it first with a better resizer than your TV has. If like me you have a CRT, you might find that the stepping is less offensive than having visible scanlines. Personal call, that.

I think the real point is a lot less people would be interest in the X0 project if they decided to keep the picture 4x3 letterboxed.


Not that I wish to speak for them, but it seems to me that it's not about getting people interested, but preserving the OUT as best they can - which would mean a non-anamorphic picture, since it's a non-anamorphic source.

Just for fun, here's an "HD" (2x) version done with an intelligent resizer. I sharpened it a little to look more like the upscaled one, because Lanczos sharpens a lot:

http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/1122/eediwb7.jpg

DE
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Originally posted by: Doctor M
I think the Black Magic process (some sort of combination of laserdiscs release blending and/or film jitter extrapolation) extracts more information than a single frame.


Uhm, I think you're misunderstanding the term "Black Magic"... Blackmagic Design is just a manufacturer of video editing hardware. Laserman uses such an editing- and compositing suite, probably in conjuction with Apple's compositing software Shake. It features a couple of plugins that allow the tracking of an image on a "per pixel"-basis, which can be used to stabilize or retime sequences by creating new frames through automated "morphing", without the need for selecting the corresponding parts of the images by hand. Another one of these plugins is called "auto align", which allows the combination of different source images into a single image, again, through morphing and warping. One use of this can be the creation of panoramic images, by combining multiple still-shots, and automatically aligning the overlapping parts of the image to appear seamless, creating one big image. Of course, these images don't have to be overlapping only in parts, but they might as well overlap completely.

Taking several different Laserdisc transfers of Star Wars, getting them in sync with each other and combining them with the "auto align" plugin creates an "averaged" image of all these sources. A defect (like noise, dirt, dropouts or laser-rot) in one transfer gets evened out by the other transfers, and vice-versa, so that only the parts of the image that are the same in all transfers are remaining, adding up the detail to create a clean image. This is of course just a simple explanation of the process, and I'm sure Laserman has some more aces up his sleeve to improve the quality even further than "auto align" alone.

So, "Black Magic" isn't a process, but just the editing hardware used. The real magic happens with Laserman using Apple's "Shake".

Edit:
By the way, scaling a letterbox-image up to HD is pointless... you can't create detail out of nothing. Scaling it up to anamorphic is probably the highest you can go without looking too terrible (which by the way your image does... LimitedSharpen can only enhance detail... not magically create it where no detail was before).
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Darth Editous: Yeah, it's the artifacts caused by up-sampling that I'm worried about, any negative side effects that might be caused to the picture. The best thing is to do an unaltered non-anamorphic version to preserve the laserdisk picture as perfectly as possible, as well as an anamorphic version. Then you can watch which ever version best suits your tastes and the type of t.v. you are watching it on. If the X0 team attempts an anamorphic version, it will be very interesting to see how much image detail and clarity they can maintain.

Like you said, on many 16x9 HD t.v.'s the t.v. up-samples everything you watch on it to either 720 or 1080 HD, whether you want it to or not. So it's probably better to do the upsampling for an anamorphic transfer ahead of time, so you can at least get the picture to full anamorphic DVD resolution with the best quality possible before the t.v. gets a hold of the video and starts up-scaling it on-the-fly to HD. What do you think?

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Thanks Dunedain, that's exactly what I was trying to say.

Dr. M

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Hey guys.

What's an XØ?
So, What Are You Guys Doing?
What Will Your Final Output Format(s) Be?
What Equipment Are You Using?
So What's On the Website?
When it will be finished?
How can I get a copy?

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Yeah, so when will I be able to walk around robed in a flashy new XØ Project t-shirt? If this thing really is fake as everyone is claiming it is, you guys are really doing it wrong. You see, you are suppose to get some hype going, then play the marketing card hard and heavy. You guys are the worst con men ever!! If I didn't know any better I wold think you really were working on the project and that it really does exist. Fortunately for me, I love a good conspiracy, so I am sticking with the OCPMovie view that this is just a cry for attention and a way to sell t-shirts (though I am loosing my faith in this view, as there are no t-shirts for sell and you guys are too busy with the project to care about attention). Well, good luck with the "project"

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Personally, as long as there is an native rez version, I'd love to see an upscaled version availible. As has been posted, careful uprezzing
using industry tools on a lossless master will produce a much better image than a TV scaler working with a compressed file. I've upscaled
a number of SD projects to HD for broadcast using InstantHD, and it can work pretty well. Obviously it doesn't create data, but it's pretty
clever. For fun, here's a different upscaled version. I degrained it, uprezzed it (with too much sharpening), put the grain back in, and then,
unfortunately, re-compressed it to a jpg.

http://freedomsramparts.com/instanthd.jpg

Because of prior compression artifacts, there is still some grunge on the dish as well as some stepping. I wish the X0 guys would post
some native rez PNGs for us to play with.
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Originally posted by: Targ8ter
I wish the X0 guys would post some native rez PNGs for us to play with.


That seems pretty reasonable. I'll bet one of the reasons uncompressed (or even HuffYUV) full-motion video hasn't been made available is due to bandwidth considerations. Uncompressed video is huge!

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Although I understand people's desire to preserve the original non-anamorphic image, I believe having the OT in anamorphic is probably one of the most important things the X0 team could do for this project. I know their version will be leaps and bounds above the GOUT in many areas, but honestly if it weren't for the fact that the GOUT was non-anamorphic, I would have settled on buying and living with that version of the OT months ago.

So, all we are saaaaaayinnnnnng... is give anamorphic a chance. (After all, a 16x9 TV is a terrible thing to waste).

“It’s a lot of fun… it’s a lot of fun to watch Star Wars.” – Bill Moyers

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I think the restoration of the laserdisc sources is like 99% of the work and upscaling it to 'fake' anamorphic only 1% work, so it seems reasonable to make both LB and anamorphic versions, when the time comes.

In any case the X0 will be much much better than the GOUT. Lucasfilm appear to have applied a vertical blur filter trying to hide jaggies and a rather poor deinterlacing job, so the GOUT does not even have the vertical resolution of standard letterboxed NTSC and this is very visible in some scenes where some of the vertical detail is completely gone. And in this respect the GOUT really looks like crap, upscaled or not (IMHO).

I trust the X0 team already done proper deinterlacing and even removed some of the jaggies 'by hand' and this is of course a much better base for a fake anamorphic upscale.

Next step would be to combine the horizontal resolution of the NTSC X0 with the vertical resolution of the PAL laserdiscs and gain some 19% in real vertical detail.

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I admittedly don't know much about the technical details when working with video, however I wonder what resolution the X0 footage was captured at? Wouldn't that make a difference? We can see the quality in the still captures.....and if the X0 was captured at a high res, like say a HD res, then wow I think we're getting into a fuss over nothing.

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Originally posted by: vbangle
I admittedly don't know much about the technical details when working with video, however I wonder what resolution the X0 footage was captured at? Wouldn't that make a difference? We can see the quality in the still captures.....and if the X0 was captured at a high res, like say a HD res, then wow I think we're getting into a fuss over nothing.


Although it's an analogue signal, there's still only a discrete number of lines (480, about 270 of active picture) to capture. There may be some capture cards that will capture over the usual 768 pixels horizontally, but the information isn't really there on Laserdisc.

DE
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Yes, NTSC laserdisc resolution is something like 560x480.

X0 was most likely captured in standard NTSC DVD resolution 720x480 or 704x480, but keep in mind that the actual picture area of the letterbox is only 704x272 The picture area of PAL letterbox is 704x324

So even if you captured a NTSC LD at 1920x1080 you would get 560x480 of real resolution and you just wasted tons of GB on your HD .

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If I understood correctly, releases will include native resolution and upscaled versions. Also, Laserdisc video is analogue format and so doesn't have an actual resolution to speak of, right? Still, given that TV and VHS captures are done at 768x576/640x480, there should be plenty of image detail to start with. Also, playback of a resampled file will always look better than upscaling since current interpolation filters are MUCH better than the (at best) bicubic we are accustomed too. Take a look at the following page in order to see the best interpolators in action:

http://www.general-cathexis.com/interpolation.html

Most of them don't look too good, but bear in mind all of them represent a 4x enlargement, which for a 720x480 video would mean a 2880x1920 result. A 1920x1080 result, which would represent a ~2.45x enlargement, might be able to get to look very nice if one of the better, feasible-for-realtime methods in that page was used.
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Yeah, so when will I be able to walk around robed in a flashy new XØ Project t-shirt? If this thing really is fake as everyone is claiming it is, you guys are really doing it wrong. You see, you are suppose to get some hype going, then play the marketing card hard and heavy. You guys are the worst con men ever!! If I didn't know any better I wold think you really were working on the project and that it really does exist. Fortunately for me, I love a good conspiracy, so I am sticking with the OCPMovie view that this is just a cry for attention and a way to sell t-shirts (though I am loosing my faith in this view, as there are no t-shirts for sell and you guys are too busy with the project to care about attention). Well, good luck with the "project"


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In that case capturing at true vga (640 x480) would be a better aspect for upscaling wouldn't it?

multiply by 2 = 1280x960, and by 3 = 1920x1440 which is why I think the X0 people and Adywan should do a high bitrate avi at 640x480 it should be easier to upscale for HD equipment.
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Originally posted by: eros
In that case capturing at true vga (640 x480) would be a better aspect for upscaling wouldn't it?


It might make the video look a little less "steppy" (except the steps due to the fixed vertical resolution would still be evident), but it's not much different from applying a blur to the 720x480 video before resizing.

David
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The Pioneer HLD-X0 is a high definition player that also plays regular NTSC LDs. But how high a definition are high definition LDs? Does/can the player upscale regular LDs?
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