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Millennium (1996 FOX TV) DVD Restoration/Upscale Project (RELEASED)

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What are you using for the upscaling?

You saying “broadcast equipment,” that sounds cool and isn’t the likes of something we see mentioned here too often. Interesting, and welcome aboard 😃

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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Wow! Sounds good. Mark me down as interested!

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TVArchive said:

Here are some screenshots from the pilot episode, up-scaled to 1440x1080.

Okay, here are my criticisms of your up-scales. You see, when I do my up-scaling of SD material I try to be sure to… Wha-what I’m aiming at is when ya upscale ya should try to avoid… I guess I’m saying you should consider changing your techniques here by implementing… Oh, NEVER MIND (and j/k!) PHENOMENAL results! 😃

The third one’s trees’ details in the b.g., and the strands of hair in #5, wow just wow! When I clicked on the fourth one I was actually kind of expecting to be able to read the tiniest print of the newspaper clipping. Not at all a slam on you that I (of course) couldn’t. Just expressing the effect I’d already gotten by then that full/native HD was the territory we were in. And this is 2.25x vertical enlarging of mpeg2-compressed material (assuming your DVD are NTSC and not PAL?). Amazing

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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TVArchive said:

Yes, they’re the standard old NTSC DVDs. The framerate is kind of wonky on these so I had to do some cleanup work on that as well.

I can’t help but be curious what the issue was. The framerate of the VOBs must be 29.97, right?.. so do you mean there were extra or missing frames throwing off the pull-down pattern?.. and/or fields swapping? I’m not well versed in dealing with those kinds of things so hearing others’ stories of how they overcame IVTC issues is interesting (to me at least), might be great info to help expand my bag of tricks in the future.

But if you’re too busy to elaborate, don’t want to go into things not having to do spec. with the upscaling, etc., no prob.

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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TVArchive said:

Hey, thanks for the kind words! Yes, they’re the standard old NTSC DVDs. The framerate is kind of wonky on these so I had to do some cleanup work on that as well.

I’m glad I picked them up “way back when”, as the 3rd season has become a bit pricey. The good news is that seasons 2 and 3 are in widescreen. Of course, the film masters would give us a beautiful 4k set, but Disney won’t fork out the cash to do it. So I’ll have to be happy with my upscales.

This will take a bit of time to do, but in my sights is another FOX show that was criminally underrated, “Brisco County, Junior” with Bruce Campbell. One season of the Chin in all his campy glory!

Anything Bruce Campbell is worthy of a fanres

Fate is best Anime/Visual Novel.

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TVArchive said:

The VOB files were indeed 29.97, but were encoded such that every piece of software I dropped them in to deinterlace said the framerate was 24.172. In all my years of ripping/encoding, I’ve not seen that one before. The second episode on the first disc was 29.97 but the other 3 were reporting back 24.172. Strangest thing I’ve seen. Pulldown was extremely weird! I had to run them through Hybrid to get a reliable 23.976.

Egads indeed, I’m glad I’ve never come across something like that!

Thanks for the replies 😃

LightWave = fun times with gfx for me 😃

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Have you tried the PaNup technique using both PAL and NTSC DVDs?
https://forum.fanres.com/showthread.php?tid=25

I remember I made some tests with The X Files many year ago - but then HDTV came, and subsequently Blu-ray, hence I quit - but results were quite good; can’t say if better than AI upscale, though, but it may worth a try.

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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The upscale appears great and I don’t see any excessive DNR as some people who use upscaling for other projects.

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TVArchive said:

Thanks so much! I have been working on my upscale technique for several years, each source requires a different approach but I try VERY hard to lower DNR as much as possible to keep the upscale from looking like plastic. These were mostly shot on film and that grain needs to be there.

Again, thanks for the kind words. I’ve got several projects in the works so stay tuned!

Film grain is heavily preferred! Majority of fan restorations need to realize this, especially upscales, instead of making everything plastic waxy garbage. Would another of those projects be Harsh Realm or The Lone Gunmen? Because Chris Carter TV Shows.

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As you progress from episode to episode, I imagine you are picking up speed with this.
Be awhile before you get to “Lamentation” and the first appearance of Lucy Butler.

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The clip I saw was exquisite, very sharp.
Mmm, not to lob rocks at you, but are you trying to upscale an episode, a season, the series itself?
Even one episode would be an awfully big task.

And no, I cannot envision Disney restoring Millennium and more than I can picture them restoring Profit, another FOX gem.

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These look incredible! I had no idea this level of quality could be retrieved from such a source. Yes would love to see these if you choose to release them!

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Those screenshots look amazing. I’d like to try something similar with the first few seasons of the X-Files to retain the correct aspect ratio but I’m not sure the DVD’s (particularly the second season) are as good as the Millennium ones…

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TVArchive said:

Millennium Season 1 has been upscaled, encoded and is in the ‘done’ pile. Beginning work on Season 2 next week!

Amazing news, this will definitely be one of the more popular projects on here I’d imagine!