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"Doctor Who" (1996) at proper speed [AUDIO FINISHED; VIDEO SECOND PASS IN PROGRESS] — Page 2

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ChainsawAsh said:

So, with that in mind, I pose a question to those that are interested in this: Would you download the DVD-9, with all retail menus and features, or the DVD-5, with just the main feature and the 4 audio tracks/2 subtitle tracks?

I would download the DVD-9 just so I have one disc to use and don't need to really even use my retail disc with all its speed up errors. However, as I don't have a dual layer burner, I would probably just shrink it to a DVD-5 with DVD Rebuilder, which gives pretty good results.

That being said, I'm sorry it took me a while to answer this question. How is this going, ChainsawAsh? I'm excited for this release.

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Well, I've gotten a bit busy for one.  For two, to be honest the second video pass is immeasurably more tedious than the first.  I'm getting so sick of watching this movie.

So I took a break from it and decided to test to make sure I actually can upload a torrent.  So I made a little side project for myself that's related to this one, as a matter of fact.

Search "Big Finish Eighth Doctor" on the Demonoid to see what that side project was.  And, as it turns out, it only took me a day to seed six and a half gigs out to eight people!

So that means that this project will definitely be distributed via torrent, likely on Demonoid, since I know I can get that to work.

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Hola, ChainsawAsh! Sorry to be practicing necromancy on this thread, but I was curious as to where you were at with the Doctor Who movie restoration project. (I bought the NTSC DVD a while back, and the "speaking in a helium chamber" effect is indeed annoying. I'd love the opportunity to get a version of the film that's at the proper speed.)

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who do not.
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It's on the backburner for now.  I've been working in Chicago, but still living in NW Indiana, so with the commute this leaves me about 1-2 hours at home where I'm not sleeping.

On top of that, I had to start going through the movie frame-by-frame in order to eliminate all the interlacing artifacts.  There's still some ghosting that I can't get rid of, but the interlacing issues were much more distracting anyway.

This job should be done with in 2-3 weeks, though (temp gig), so after that I'll have tons of free time to crawl my way through this movie once again.

Don't worry, it's not dead - I'm going to tentatively say that it should be done by winter 2011.

I honestly don't know if I'm going to continue with my fan edit of the movie, though.  I'm not going to touch it until I get the conversion finished at the very least.

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No problem, CA. Real life does have a tendency to throw a hydro-spanner into the works. It's good to know that the project isn't dead, just hibernating. :-) Looking forward to the final product, and thanks for all the hard work, it's appreciated!

There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who do not.
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Anything been done, since then? Curious to hear... :-)

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Isn't VMWare or BootCamp also being able to use for Windows operating systems if native one is Apple based? My native operating system is Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and I use VMWare for both XP and 98 for programs which won't run on my native one.

Good to see a fellow Doctor Who fan working on a way to retain the film speed instead of PAL which isn't its native format. The rest of the Classic Doctor Who range I own as PAL only, the Current with Series 1-4 being PAL DVD but the Specials, Series 5 and 6 are Blu-ray disc format.

Though I'm still looking for a preservation for the Loose Cannon Productions VHS to DVD as PAL and the Silver Nemesis longer cut including behind-the-scenes again from the PAL VHS release. Doesn't need to have any menus either if needed.

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Well, I'm back, but unfortunately the hard drive on which my project files were stored failed on me a couple months ago, and I didn't have any backups.

BUT!

I do still have both DVD9's (the Region 2 Revisitations and Region 1 discs), and I still remember most of what I learned when I was going through this the last time.

The upshot of which is that I'm going to be converting the PAL disc to a ProRes 422 .mov tonight, and loading it up into Final Cut tomorrow.  I'm going to try to fix as much of the interlacing problems as I can while it's still at 576i25, then convert it to 576p23.976 and fix any other problems I run across, then resize that down to 480p23.976.

Because I'm sure some of you have been looking forward to this, and my intentions with the DVD-9 authoring will require more time than the conversion of the video itself, I'm going to first release this as either an .mkv or .mp4 file, in order to get it out there ASAP.  The DVD9 (and possibly a DVD5) will come later.

I'm hoping the video work won't take super crazy long, but I really can't promise anything - I do know what I'm getting into better this time than I did the first go-round, so I'm hoping it'll get done quickly, but this is still 90 minutes that I have to go through shot-by-shot, and in some cases (the goddamn ending in particular, with all the 1-frame flashes) frame-by-frame.  So I won't speculate on how long it will actually take.  I want to get this done quickly, but I want it to be done right at the same time, and believe me when I tell you that the video on these discs is a mess.

But I promise you this will get done.  And I'm sorry this project's been dead in the water for so long.  I intend to rectify that as quickly as possible.

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It should be relatively easy to remove the blended fields using an automated process, I've done it before.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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It would be if they hadn't cocked up the conversion this badly.  The blended fields occur too randomly for any automated process to work.

It probably doesn't help that, while the movie was shot at 24fps, the effects were all done at 29.97.  So some of those field-blending issues got baked in during conversion to 25fps, and aren't fixable.  At least that means I can actually get this to 23.976fps and have it be watchable, but it won't be 100% perfect.  (Though it certainly won't look any worse than it does at 25fps.)

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Isolate the effects shots, and start from there. By the sound of it, those are the only ones that won't be peftect at the end? I haven't seen the source, but I'm sure that - minus the effect shots - it should be easy to remove field blending. This happens all the time in music videos, exactly the same things: 24fps --> 60i (pulldown) and effects mastered in 60i.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Any way you look at it it's bad DVD authoring. If the source is 60i then it could at the very least have been "1:1" on the NTSC DVD. Dunno how or why they cocked it up, but it seems riddiculious when you think about it. Even if the effects shots were done at 60i it isn't that hard to bring it back to the original 24fps. If absolutly necessary, just re-do the effects. Anyhow, I stand by what I said, it isn't too hard to remove field-blending using automated, so long as you isolate the "effects" shots. :)

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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From Moth3r's earlier post:

The Restoration team website mentions that the PAL video was a DEFT conversion.

As mentioned above, the preferred method of converting film-based content that has been hard telecined with 3:2 pulldown to 30fps is to IVTC back to 24fps then speed up to 25fps.

While a DEFT conversion purports to do this, it does all other kinds of shit as well. So you end up with video that has 4% speedup and blended fields - DVD buyers in PAL-land have been disappointed with the results of these types of conversions (Star Trek TNG and Futurama are two that spring to mind).

Do you know anything about undoing DEFT conversions?  If so, that would be awesome.

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Well since I accidently posted a 2nd post (see below) I may as well use this one to explain the theory behind the blended frames...

Your source is hard telecine 60i NTSC material (2:3 pulldown). Although very easy to completely remove now on any home PC, instead of being a perfect IVTC job, every so often you have a completely "random" blended field here and there because the process thought that was the progressive one.

Anyhoo, this is then converted/resized to PAL (field by field), and as such you shouldn't actually have blended frames, you should only have blended fields (unless it was authored as progressive and then you might have a problem!)

Then you have the effects shots. Because they were done at 30fps, you now have 24fps and 30fps material laying on top of each other (yuck).

But what if the material is actually not sped up? Okay first we have random blended fields resulting from a poor IVTC, and then we will have 1 blended frame per second.

Okay, there's a simple description of the problem and how it happened. :)

How to solve... you go through and yank out all the blended fields, and then put the frames back together, interpolating where the missing fields are. Simple. Well except for the effects shots because you only want to remove the blended 24fps fields, not the 30fps ones (in other words, if there's a blend in the effect but not the action you ignore it and accept it as being inevitable). And if it hasn't been sped up you simply remove the extra frame.

Srestore for AVISynth was made for this exact purpose. Well except it will prob identify blended effects as blended fields and you don't want that, so you'll need to do the effects shots - and only the effects shots manually.

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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I was placing an order on amazon.co.uk for some DVDs+BDs, but this title is OOP. :( I don't really know much about it, I have seen various Doctor Who's (the first one, Hartnell, and some of the others, and some of the new ones). But being as I am a bit of a Paul McGann fan it would be nice to see it.

Anyhow, yes the process is reversable. However, it's not *completely* reversable when your material has had effects added to a telecine.

You indicate that Speedup AND blended fields are present, in that case you need to do this in Avisynth:

Yadif(Order=0,Mode=1)
srestore(Frate=25,speed=1)
AssumeFPS(23.976)

50i > 25p > 4% slowdown.

If however, speedup is NOT present and the underlying material is in fact 24p, then it's:

Yadif(Order=0,Mode=1)
srestore(Frate=24,speed=1)
AssumeFPS(23.976)

50i > 24p

That's it, that should be all you need to do. If it comes out looking like shit, change the order in Yadiff. If it still looks like shit then try the second version above. The effects shots, you may need to go through manually since there's no perfect way to convert that back to 24p.

Srestore isn't human, so of course it won't be 100% perfect, but it does a very good job and was specifically made for this purpose.

You could also do it with the NTSC disc and compare the results, this code should work with the NTSC version:

Yadif(Order=1,Mode=1)
srestore(Frate=25,speed=1)
AssumeFPS(23.976)

60i > 25p > 4% slowdown.

Or, if that doesn't work, then:

Yadif(Order=1,Mode=1)
srestore(Frate=24,speed=1)
AssumeFPS(23.976)

60i > 24p.

All things being equal they should end up looking pretty much the same, although this will also depend on things like DVD bitrate, etc, so you might notice one looks better than the other in terms of underlying authoring quality.

Required plugins are yadif.dll and srestore.avs as such:

import("srestore.avs")
LoadCPlugin("yadif.dll")

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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See, all your methods use AviSynth.

First, I'm doing this on a Mac, which can't run AviSynth.  Second, I don't know a damn thing when it comes to command-line stuff - I need a GUI in order to do anything.

My method is time-consuming, but I'm happy with the end results, so I'll just keep doing what I'm doing, which is essentially PAL DVD > MPEG Streamclip to 50i ProRes 422 > Final Cut Pro to fix the worst problem areas > new ProRes file > CinemaTools for 50i-24p conversion > Final Cut Pro to fix the rest of the issues that show up after conversion > Compressor to convert from 576p24 to 480p24.  That's the simplified version, without going into the 4 audio tracks at all.

Also, this DVD is not OOP - it's just not available on its own anymore.  It's in the Revisitations 1 box set.

And yes, the 4% speedup is absolutely present.

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ChainsawAsh said:

See, all your methods use AviSynth.

First, I'm doing this on a Mac, which can't run AviSynth.  Second, I don't know a damn thing when it comes to command-line stuff - I need a GUI in order to do anything.

True AVISynth doesn't run on Mac. But it is still silly to do it manually when an automated process can do it for you near perfectly. Frankly, they should just get their original NTSC master tape out and IVTC it properly - paying close attention to the effects scenes.

Thanks for the amazon link. Bundled with two random classic episodes, no thanks. Especially not for £14.99 + postage :(

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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But it is still silly to do it manually when an automated process can do it for you near perfectly.

Maybe, but I actually kind of like doing it my way.  It's sort of relaxing to me, if that makes sense.

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I bought the DVD now :) still haven't watched the movie. You were most certainly correct that speedup is present (the video is 25p from appaerantly 24p film). The source doesn't look too bad, and "srestore" in avisynth fixes all the probs in one hit without any issues that I saw in vDub. Also, it appears to me the effects are in 24p not 30p, from what little i could tell in vDub, and looking though the part of DrWho walking through the window it looked fine. Hopefully I can encode it soon and watch it!

I did notice some minor combing in areas where the fields were out of sync, so post-processing wouldn't be a bad idea.

For a pure, "unfiltered" video:

# Fix field errors
Yadif(Order=0,Mode=1)
srestore(Frate=25,speed=1)
AssumeFPS(23.976) # Or just use AssumeFPS(24)

# Crop side borders, and resize vertically (4:3 mod16)
crop(10,2,-6,-2)
Spline36Resize(704,528)

Just going to decide upon what post-processing to use before I encode it.

BTW: to reiterate, if their source is a 30i telecine NTSC tape, they *should* have, *easily* gone to it and IVTC'd it properly, it's so bleatingly easy!

[ Scanning stuff since 2015 ]

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Just want to chime in my support for this project, ChainsawAsh.  I just bought the NTSC Special Edition of the DVD, but I am aware of the mastering issues and would love to be able to keep an extra disc in my DVD case that has all this corrected.

As flawed as this TV movie was, it at least gave us Doctor Who in the 90s and paved the way for the high point of the later series.  And Paul McGann is a really great and worthy Doctor; I wish he had been given the chance to do more filmed episodes (hopefully with better scripts!).

--SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

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Hey Chainsaw, any updates on this project? :-)

Since Series 7 is coming out this month, I've got into the mood for some Who and remembered that you were doing this project along with a fan edit based off of it. In any case, would still love to see Paul McGann in all his non-PAL pitch changed glory.

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infoleather said:

Would you consider another track with the fixed, the deeper voice of Dalek?

I believe ChainsawAsh is making a fan edit of the movie, as well, presumably from the result of this preservation. Fixed dalek voices will hopefully be in the edit. That did always bug me as well.

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Did this ever get completed? I'd love to get a copy of it.