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Info Wanted: Moth3r's PAL trilogy vs. anamorphically enhanced GOUT's

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Hey peepz,

Just wondering about the difference between Moth3r’s excellent PAL transfers and the 2006 GOUT with DIY anamorphic enhancement? I have the Moth3r DVD’s and think they are bloody brilliant, great picture quality on 16:9 TV set. But from the screencaps posted of the GOUT discs, they look pretty good also, really sharp with good colour. If any of you have any comparison stories for me, then that would be most appreciated. I’m just wondering whether to actually purchase the GOUT and do an anamorphic conversion myself…or stick with the good old Moth3r trilogy.

Thanks in advance,

peace,

Rebelscum
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i have to admit Moth3r's transfers are my fave so far of the oot and i live in NTSC land.

Supposedly some other guy on these boards made pal transfers of a new hope and empire that were better called citezen then dissapeared from the face of the earth and pulled them from the web when the sucky gout was released in 2006.


“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Originally posted by: skyjedi2005
i have to admit Moth3r's transfers are my fave so far of the oot and i live in NTSC land.

Supposedly some other guy on these boards made pal transfers of a new hope and empire that were better called citezen then dissapeared from the face of the earth and pulled them from the web when the sucky gout was released in 2006.

Personally I didn't think Citizen's transfers were better. They image looked a bit like an aquarel painting to me.

Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Citizen's 1024x436 XviDs are teh bee's knees!
I'm afraid I don't see much resemblance to watercolor painting though.

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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Hey I made Mallwalker's .sig! I'm honoured...

Moth3r vs GOUT? The most disappointing fact is that this is even a valid question. The 2006 release was Lucasfilm's chance to wipe the floor with the previous bootlegs and give us a definitive DVD version of the OOT.

If you convert the GOUT to 16:9 anamorphic, you should also apply some processing to reduce those annoying jaggies, you might also want to apply a bit of grain removal and hard-encode the subtitles. I'm planning on making such a disc when I get around to it. It will probably win out over my transfer with the improved colour saturation and level of horizontal detail.

But I'm confident that the X0 Project release, or Moth3r transfer V2, would be able to improve on any GOUT-sourced project.

Yes the Citizen transfers are also excellent. I have noticed the effect that Arnie mentions; I think the noise reduction was a little too strong and tended to group areas of similar colour together, giving a very subtle "cartoon" effect. You can see it if you zoom in on the moon in this screenshot. Having said that, if you find the halos in my transfer annoying then the Citizen version would be the one to get.

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I hear the PAL GOUT is just a resized NTSC version, stretched to fit more lines. Doesn't the PAL laserdisc have more image resolution and a sharper image than the PAL GOUT? I'm still just blown away by the picture quality of your effort Moth3r, so in what respects would an anamorphically enhanced transfer of the PAL GOUT be better than your transfers? The colour, yes - the sound - yes. But would the picture sharpness/clarity be any better?

Also, would it make any difference if you used the NTSC or PAL GOUT for the anamorphic enhancement? Which would be better?
peace,

Rebelscum
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If I may jump in here, I haven't seen moth3r's transfers - however I have heard amazing things about them. The GOUT in most shots has more detail than all of them, even moth3r's; it just suffers from many different problems that make it worse in the long run. Shaking film, just bizarre damage here and there, and grain. Lots and lots of grain. Could someone clean up the GOUT and make the best OT version ever? I think so. But I can only encourage others to do so.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

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Although the Pal laserdiscs have more resolution, there was never a very good Pal laserdisc player made (compared to the NTSC X0) so it would be very hard to get a Pal transfer free of any laserdisc blur (is there a more specific name for that?).

Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77

http://www.youtube.com/user/Knightmessenger

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Originally posted by: Rebelscum
I hear the PAL GOUT is just a resized NTSC version, stretched to fit more lines. Yes, this is correct.
Also, would it make any difference if you used the NTSC or PAL GOUT for the anamorphic enhancement? Which would be better?
No, there's no significant difference, although the NTSC GOUT is marginally sharper.Doesn't the PAL laserdisc have more image resolution and a sharper image than the PAL GOUT?
Vertically, yes. The PAL format has 576 visible lines. For a letterboxed film about 320 of these lines are actual image. The NTSC laserdisc master that was used for both the NTSC and PAL GOUT only has about 270 lines of image - and these have been blurred for the DVDs.

Vertical resolution is easy to explain because it's related to the number of scan lines. Horizontal resolution of laserdiscs is harder to understand because it's related to the analogue bandwidth of the format, which is about 5.5MHz or 440 lines. DVD's analogue equivalent is 6.75MHz or 540 lines - which means there is more horizontal detail on the GOUT (this might also explain why there is more grain evident).

But there are several other things to consider. The PAL ANH laserdisc does not seem to exhibit as much gate weave or "telecine wobble" that you see on the GOUT and the NTSC LDs. Also, there is slightly less dirt on the film in some of the shots (but a dirty great burn mark in another shot). The PAL LD players produce a signal with more video noise than players like the X0, so some noise filtering is required which could affect the amount of detail present. Laserdisc contains composite video, so any capture process has to split chroma and luma which can lead to dot crawl. Both the GOUT and the THX laserdiscs suffer from DVNR smearing; this is why the X0 project - and Moth3r V2 if it ever goes ahead - will be supplemented with captures from the pre-THX laserdiscs.

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What editions of the PAL laserdiscs did you use for your transfers? The Faces set never came out in the UK did it..?
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I used the French THX discs, released in 1995.

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Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
What pre THX laserdisc versions were available in Pal and widescreen?
This site should get you started.
The LaserDisc logo links in the left frame are color-coded by country:
blue = USA
green = Japan
dark purple = UK
yellow = France
light purple/violet/lavender/lilac = Germany

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
So was the Faces set in the UK on vhs only? What about the Definitive Collection? What pre THX laserdisc versions were available in Pal and widescreen?
There was no European equivalent to the 1993 DC set.

The Euro equivalent to the 1995 US Faces releases are the THX discs with the John Alvin artwork, released as singles in France and Germany and a boxed set ("coffret") in France only (and only on VHS in the UK). The singles are dubbed in their respective languages, while the boxed set is in English with French subtitles.

There were some pre-THX widescreen PAL releases in France but according to Laserman they were very poor quality.

The Laserdisc Database has a handy search function; here is a search returning all widescreen PAL releases in the Star Wars collection:
http://www.lddb.com/search.php?adv_search=*&video=2&picture=2&collection=11

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Ah, So is it not possible to get a decent transfer of the pre-SE trilogy in PAL - without burnt in subtitles? That's a bit rough.
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No, for some reason (probably that the market in the UK was even smaller than in the rest of Europe) we never got the '95 release on LD.

Fortunately, the French releases had an English title crawl, and the subtitles appear in the lower black letterbox bar so it's simple enough to crop them out them when making a DVD from a LD capture.

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Any timeframe on a Moth3r V.2? ;-)

As far as I'm concerned the picture quality was pretty much perfect on your EPIV and EPV transfers so that's all good. But EPVI was noticably blurrier for me. Also if you could rip the soundtracks from the GOUT instead of the VHS sound (which was pretty good though), then that would be awesome. I could live happily ever after just watching those.
peace,

Rebelscum
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Difficult to give a timeframe because I haven't actually started anything yet, but it is something I'd like to do - if only to demonstrate to LFL how crap the GOUT is. There are a couple of other projects I want to tackle first. So, expect Moth3r V2 ANH sometime after the X0 project releases TESB!

I wished I'd used the same sharpness setting - halos and all - for ROTJ that I did with the other two. Another reason why I want to do a V2.

And I would use the audio that Belbucus ripped off the laserdiscs rather than the Dolby Digital track off the GOUT.

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Here's blown-up comparison pics (NTSC GOUT, Moth3r, Citizen, German HDTV, Official DVD, Sharpened HDTV):
http://i10.tinypic.com/4otvjsz.pnghttp://i4.tinypic.com/4pob6zp.pnghttp://i14.tinypic.com/6glpx79.pnghttp://i19.tinypic.com/66voq6p.pnghttp://i12.tinypic.com/6fizbeu.pnghttp://i2.tinypic.com/66agozr.png
Moth3r's has more vertical definition, but GOUT has more horizontal. Citizen's is way too filtered IMO.

edit:
Added HDTV and Official DVD for fun. I matched the Official DVD's colors to the GOUT image.

edit2: Added sharpened HDTV for ultimate sharpness :^) I wish I had a widescreen VHS copy of Star Wars so that I could add that too.
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The active part of a PAL or NTSC scanline is 52 - 53 usec long and to fill that part with 704 alternating white-black pixels equals a period time of 148.148 nsec which is the same as a 6.75 Mhz signal.


And regarding the bandwidth of LD it's important to remember that the 6.75 Mhz bandwidth of DVD is at full signal strength (well, perhaps with a little drop from imperfect reconstructions filters), but analog LD bandwidth figures usually is somewhat arbitrary measured with a signal drop of 6 dB or even 20 dB.

I've measured the multiburst VITS (Vertical Interval Test Signal) on a few of my PAL LDs and at best the 5 Mhz burst was at -4 dB and quite noisy, so the 5.5 Mhz bandwidth of PAL LD is in practice more like just below 5.0 Mhz. But it's still very player dependant and I'm very sure a X0 quality PAL player would give both higher bandwidth and cleaner signal.

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Originally posted by: Red5
The active part of a PAL or NTSC scanline is 52 - 53 usec long and to fill that part with 704 alternating white-black pixels equals a period time of 148.148 nsec which is the same as a 6.75 Mhz signal.

You're right! I forgot to divide the number of pixels by two. Silly me. I'll edit out my misinformation.

Originally posted by: Red5
I've measured the multiburst VITS (Vertical Interval Test Signal) on a few of my PAL LDs and at best the 5 Mhz burst was at -4 dB and quite noisy, so the 5.5 Mhz bandwidth of PAL LD is in practice more like just below 5.0 Mhz.


Does that mean that Laserdiscs have test signals embedded in them (during blanking)?

Also, I'm still wondering about Moth3r's statement about DVD's 6.75 MHz translating into 540 lines. Shouldn't it be 720 lines?
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Wow. The HD has so much more detail. Incredible.

BTW, when you look at the Citizen cap I think you can understand what I meant by aquarel.
Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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Originally posted by: Arnie.d
BTW, when you look at the Citizen cap I think you can understand what I meant by aquarel.
Yes, I think I can.

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r