Josh and S.A.M. (1993) Preservation (Completed - then started over - * unfinished *)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107277/

This movie was suppose to be a BLOCKBUSTER for 1993, instead it became a huge flop…the budget was 18 million and only returned something like 700 thousand. Its relatively unknown but the people who do know about it have been wanting a DVD for a while. Both the VHS and LD of this movie are in fullscreen and to my surprise the HDTV transmission was also in fullscreen, which tells me that there isnt a print master and/or it was taken from the LD.

The HDTV came in @ 1080i but it had black borders on the sides, thus reducing the resolution after crop to 1446x1080. I should have some screen comparisons up in a little while comparing the source to the output of the DVD, but all in all the DVD looks pretty good for a fullscreen HDTV to DVD transfer, I think it definitily looks better than some LD cap pics I have seen anyway.

Anyone here interested alittle?

Source 1080i (notice the two different black borders on the right, its VERY slight but its there, makes me think it was taken from a 4x3 source)

DVD

Still OVERALL its not that bad for no DVD being out, Im sure it would beat a LD transfer unless some real time was put into it

The DVD is complete, I scanned thru it and saw some things

The SOURCE at one part I notice has a different telecine pattern than the rest of the movie, instead of following a 2:3:2:3 pattern, the part follows a 2:2:2:2 pattern, this happens for around 30 seconds and then corrects itself. This is not a problem with the DVD, its a problem with the source. I BELIEVE this is because I think the HDTV transmission comes from the laserdisc and not from a print master, although Im not sure of this, but the fact its a 4x3 HDTV transmission makes me think its from the LD.

Also PM sent

Ive decided to scrap the DVD and start from scratch, im using some custom AVIsynth plugins to account for the different interlaced patterns involved and Im currently testing out and comparing a scene from the movie with different encoders

Right now Im comparing CCE, Procoder, and TMPEGEnc

Results look promising