Puggo GRANDE - 16mm restoration (Released) — Page 7

Ok, I think I've figured out how to set the anamorphic flag in TMPGEnc (I already knew how to set the pulldown flag).  I'm testing it out now.  So now I have a question...

Mothr has been touting the avisynth filter Spline36resize, and has provided some numbers for using it to convert to widescreen.  On the other hand, Spaced Ranger has touted using the anamorphic DVD flag.  Am I right in surmising that the best approach would be to: (1) use Spline36resize (or something similar) to adjust the size of the content portion of the frame to 4:3, if necessary, and then (2) use the anamorphic flag, -not- Spline36resize, to allow the DVD player to convert it to widescreen?  Or am I missing something?

I'm encoding a test as I write this.

Also, I've recaptured the film (yet again), and so I should have new screen captures posted by tomorrow - with slightly less cropping.  Your highlighting really shows how much cropping was done on this print.  This, plus the hair embedded in two of the reels, and the sloppy edits, tells me that they didn't put much care into it when they produced these 16mm prints.

The figures I suggested for resizing assumed you were going to encode to 16:9 anamorphic format.

From Spaced Ranger's analysis above, it looks like the cropping has extended the actual aspect ratio to around 2.75:1.

Therefore, the AviSynth resize step, assuming you are encoding in 16:9 anamorphic (why wouldn't you?) would be:

Spline36Resize(720, 310)
AddBorders(0, 85, 0, 85)

Yes AviSynth does have other resizing algorithms; you could try lanczosresize or lanczos4resize which are supposed to be sharper with a higher risk of artefacts, but to be honest I don't think there'd be any noticable difference.

Your raw frame would look like this:

And when played back on a 16:9 display, it would look something like this:

OK!  Lots to report, and two more questions....

I made some rough test encodes and the results were great.  The anamorphic flag works perfectly, and I now understand the resizing procedure as described by Space Ranger and Mothr (thanks for your patience, and for all of the detailed information!!  I'm slow, but eventually I learn).  The downsizing for encoding to 16:9 works fabulously even with crude resizing in Vegas, and I haven't even tried Spline36 yet.  Although the film is full of noise, grain, and scratches, it is very watchable on my 58" screen, in anamorphic widescreen.  My first impressions are that it is considerably more enjoyable to watch on a large screen than the GOUT, despite the myriads of grain and blemishes.  I'm more excited than ever with how this is turning out.

I've started playing around with a variety of filters, and will continue to do so.  While I want to build it primarily as a preservation (and I will of course keep the original frame grabs), I think that most people will want it in order to watch it, and watchability is noticeably enhanced by VERY conservative use of color correction, brightness/contrast adjustment, spot removal, etc.  So I will continue to play around with filter chains for a while.  As with the 8mm edition, if anyone wants the original original frame grabs to make their own edition, I can make those available.

NOW for the questions!!! -------->>>>

I've uploaded a frame grab from this most recent (and dare I say "final"?) capture to the PuggoGrande site, available here:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

You'll notice immediately that this pic includes a small amount of the border.  I'm sure you'll also notice the tiny yellow region in the lower righthand corner which I will fix in post.  Here are my two questions, ostensibly for Mothr/Speed/Octo, but really for anyone:

(1) Anyone care to do the resizing calculation on this one?  Of course I can do it myself, but dang you guys are considerably faster than I am, and probably more accurate than I would be.

(2) Notice the very slight barrel distortion evident at the lower left and lower right. What are my options for dealing with this?  The way I see it, I have the following four options:

(a) use a barrel distortion correction filter. I tried the one by Emiliano Ferrari and it added too many artifacts, particularly evident in the crawl.  I haven't tried the one by vcmohan yet.  This in theory would be the best solution, but I won't tolerate the type of artifacts I was getting from Ferrari's filter, as cool as it first appeared to be.

or, (b) leave it and mask it by cropping.  This would be the cleanest, but a few rows of pixels in the bottom and top center would be lost (in both dimensions, actually).  I'm not fond of this solution, we're missing enough pixels already.

or, (c) leave it and don't crop at all.  Unfortunately this option is probably the worst of all because there is a lot of distracting flicker at the edges beyond the border, that you can't see in this single frame.  It would probably render the movie hard to watch.

or, (d) leave it and crop with a slightly curved border.  I find this idea intriguing, and wonder what folks would think about it.  I'm not entirely sure yet how I'd do it, but it seems like it should in theory be an easy solution.  I could also pursue some sort of hybrid approach, like a feathered border.

Which option above is preferable?  Are there others?

I just wanted to say that I love this project. Keep up the good work!

Jonno said:

Does Vegas allow you to create a gradiented (graded? gradaded...?) mask?

I think a slightly 'windowboxed' effect, with a soft vignetted edge around all four sides could be very effective method in masking those distortions, with the extra benefit of evoking that lovely 'projected' look.

I don't know Vegas very well at all, but we do have it running on some edit suites where I work, so I could have a poke around the masking options and get an idea of what's possible...

Yes, you could add a feathered mask in Vegas (or really any editor for that matter).  It would simply involve making a .PNG the appropriate size and adding it as a layer over the video in Vegas.  I have done this myself for something different.

lol, i dont know if I would call it unduly complicated. it would take only a couple minutes to set up, literally.  But, yes, there may be a feather option.  I just havent used it. 

The mask I created before was not a simple letterbox.  I had to vary the amount of transparency in certain sections (thus, a simple feather tool in Vegas wouldn't have sufficed).  I would be surprised though, if Vegas didnt have this ability built in, or a plugin available

With a windowbox effect, don't you run the risk of things not looking right if a TV's overscan isn't properly set?

Octorox said:

wow that's unduly complicated. There's no built in edge feather in Vegas?

There is, sort of.  Making feathered boarders is really easy in Vegas... just use the built-in mask filter, run it out to the edge, then repeat for the other three edges.  There's a feather slider right in the filter settings.  I think there's a border tool too, but I don't remember if it has a feather slider.  The mask approach is a bit slow to render, but it works great and is very easy.

A curved border, however, is going to take a bit of thought.  It may be possible with the mask filter, if it will let me generate oval masks that are BIG enough... I fear that the maximum size is going to be to small to do it that way.  So it may require building a mask externally.  As ThrowgnCpr said, that's actually not particularly hard either.  The hardest part may just be playing with it and verifying that it is good quality after encoding, that it doesn't get all jaggy.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

So it may require building a mask externally.  As ThrowgnCpr said, that's actually not particularly hard either.  The hardest part may just be playing with it and verifying that it is good quality after encoding, that it doesn't get all jaggy.

If you do end up creating a mask externally, I don't think you would have too many problems with a jagged or stairstepped edge.  How would you render from Vegas?  You could save it as a lossless AVI, or frameserve directly to something like CCE for a good DVD render (I usually do not render to DVD straight from Vegas).  Either way, I think that the result would be fine.

ThrowgnCpr said:

If you do end up creating a mask externally, I don't think you would have too many problems with a jagged or stairstepped edge.  How would you render from Vegas?  You could save it as a lossless AVI, or frameserve directly to something like CCE for a good DVD render (I usually do not render to DVD straight from Vegas).  Either way, I think that the result would be fine.

I would probably use avisynth/virtualdub to do the resize, then - and this presupposes that I am using Vegas to do the curved border instead of avisynth - I would take the resized .avi file and open it in Vegas to add the curved additional border.  I'd render that as an avi, and use TMPGEnc to encode the final result for DVD.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

ThrowgnCpr said:

If you do end up creating a mask externally, I don't think you would have too many problems with a jagged or stairstepped edge.  How would you render from Vegas?  You could save it as a lossless AVI, or frameserve directly to something like CCE for a good DVD render (I usually do not render to DVD straight from Vegas).  Either way, I think that the result would be fine.

I would probably use avisynth/virtualdub to do the resize, then - and this presupposes that I am using Vegas to do the curved border instead of avisynth - I would take the resized .avi file and open it in Vegas to add the curved additional border.  I'd render that as an avi, and use TMPGEnc to encode the final result for DVD.

sounds good.  I cannot imagine that this would produce any sort of stair-stepping or pixelation, if you are encoding to a lossless AVI from Vegas.  and the translation to DVD through TMPGEnc should be fine too. 

It might be interesting to see some samples eventually with the different "fixes" you proposed.  A picture is worth a thousand words.

...oh, and if I hadn't said it before.  This project totally rocks!!!! Keep up the great work Puggo :)

I also would be tempted to use a simple crop on the top and bottom to leave a hard clean horizontal edge.

Side cropping is a matter of taste - it is true that overscan will cover the edges on nearly all displays (even the official Region 1 GOUT has some garbage to the RHS if I recall). The only case where this is an issue is if using an upscaling DVD player, or HTPC, with a digital display set to 1:1 pixel mode (aka 'just scan', 'PC mode', etc.)

I assume that there has been some side cropping already, which is why the frame is now 654 × 480, however based on the sample frame a suitable crop/resize/border operation would be:

Crop(0, 10, 0, -12)
Spline36Resize(720, 310)
AddBorders(0, 85, 0, 85)

That looks a little weird IMO... I wouldn't crop anything, either.

Moth3r said:

Crop(0, 10, 0, -12)
Spline36Resize(720, 310)
AddBorders(0, 85, 0, 85)

Awesome, I'll give those settings a try.

Moth3r said:

Side cropping is a matter of taste - it is true that overscan will cover the edges on nearly all displays (even the official Region 1 GOUT has some garbage to the RHS if I recall). The only case where this is an issue is if using an upscaling DVD player, or HTPC, with a digital display set to 1:1 pixel mode (aka 'just scan', 'PC mode', etc.)

Hehe... indeed, "just scan" is what I was testing it with.

Seeing Jonno's sample feathered border, I agree that it probably isn't the way to go.  I'll try the other barrel filter, and assuming that doesn't work adequately, I'll next try both a slightly curved border and a hard straight border.  When I have samples of each, I'll post them here for perusal.  They probably won't be ready until next week (ski trip this weekend!).

Jonno said:

I have a feeling that After Effects might offer the best toolkit for the manipulations required, particularly in terms of resampling quality

What resampling are you referring to?