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RAW DV VHS transfers of ISD Executor and maybe more (a WIP)

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 (Edited)

Hello.

Is it worth the effort to try to transfer ISD executor box-set into DV video? Or any other VHS tapes for that matter?

I’ve been transferring that way many home VHS films from various people, so might be something I could do.

Straight VHS rips with no upgrades of some SW tapes.

What do you think?

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I’d be interested in the bonus features from the Executor set.

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Some of the features were never released on Blu-Ray, that’s a fact.

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Then please share! 😃

Are the films themselves widescreen or pan and scan?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

Then please share! 😃

Are the films themselves widescreen or pan and scan?

The ISD is widescreen, the bonus features are usually 4:3, with exception of some trailers.

I’ll share the news when I’m done ransferring them.

Though I was also thinking of capturing VHS to FHD, but I have no means now.

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Thanks for offering to do this.

I have a MiniDV camcorder with a pass-through option that I use for capturing analogue sources, straight into my Mac. Simplicity itself! FireWire cable between the camera and the computer and then I have the RAW file. My camera is PAL only, so for NTSC and tasks where I need Huffyuv, I’ve got a dedicated PC with a capture card.

Can you give more information about the bonus features?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

Thanks for offering to do this.

I have a MiniDV camcorder with a pass-through option that I use for capturing analogue sources, straight into my Mac. Simplicity itself! FireWire cable between the camera and the computer and then I have the RAW file. My camera is PAL only, so for NTSC and tasks where I need Huffyuv, I’ve got a dedicated PC with a capture card.

Can you give more information about the bonus features?

First of all, you don’t get literally RAW from DV camcorder, but raw DV file yes.

Second, I am not sure if my VCR outputs native NTSC signal from NTSC tapes. For DV transfers I use DSR-2000AP, much better quality than regular camcorder.

I was thinking to purchase equipment to transfer straight to HD, but that later.

The list of bonus features is available here:
http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/starwars/post/2014/12/11/Executor-Box-Set
Inside the box there is a specific list for each tape.

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Ok, gotcha! I have those exact versions on VHS: PAL UK releases.

Look forward to seeing the captures. 😃

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

Ok, gotcha! I have those exact versions on VHS: PAL UK releases.

Look forward to seeing the captures. 😃

Widescreen as well?

In my country there was a paper box with 3 films in 1995, no special features in pan and scan with voiceover (Still better than dubbing). I’m still hunting it, but I have all other tapes, 5 of PT (I and II in widescreen subtitles and pan and scan with dubbing and III in pan and scan in dubbing, there wasn’t widescreen) and 9 of OT (silver and golden special edition and 2000 rerelease of special edition). I am not counting rental only films and pirated versions.

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SF01 said:

Widescreen as well?

Yep, widescreen:

SW W/S VHS UK 1995

I also have these:

SW W/S VHS UK 1994

Also these, which were on sale from the early 90s…

SW W/S VHS UK 1991-1993

SF01 said:

In my country there was a paper box with 3 films in 1995, no special features in pan and scan with voiceover (Still better than dubbing). I’m still hunting it, but I have all other tapes, 5 of PT (I and II in widescreen subtitles and pan and scan with dubbing and III in pan and scan in dubbing, there wasn’t widescreen) and 9 of OT (silver and golden special edition and 2000 rerelease of special edition). I am not counting rental only films and pirated versions.

A voiceover? Which country, is it Poland? I have Episode I in widescreen on UK VHS. Unlike the other EU nations, we only received the VHS release of II in pan and scan. III on VHS was produced but wasn’t even advertised over here.

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

SF01 said:

In my country there was a paper box with 3 films in 1995, no special features in pan and scan with voiceover (Still better than dubbing). I’m still hunting it, but I have all other tapes, 5 of PT (I and II in widescreen subtitles and pan and scan with dubbing and III in pan and scan in dubbing, there wasn’t widescreen) and 9 of OT (silver and golden special edition and 2000 rerelease of special edition). I am not counting rental only films and pirated versions.

A voiceover? Which country, is it Poland? I have Episode I in widescreen on UK VHS. Unlike the other EU nations, we only received the VHS release of II in pan and scan. III on VHS was produced but wasn’t even advertised over here.

Poland indeed, we had I and II in both variants and III in pan and scan with dubbig only. I also have US Collectors editio of I.

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Dobrze! 😃

Forget to add, I also have this widescreen UK VHS set of the 1997 SE:

UK 1997 VHS

Just wondered, will Macrovision be a problem?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

Dobrze! 😃
Just wondered, will Macrovision be a problem?

If it is present, than there is a chance that might prove difficult, I’ll do a test.

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adywan said:

There is Macrovision on the Executor box set. All the special features, minus the 4 “making of” specials were on the Definitive collection laserdisc set. Someone has already captured those and converted them to DVD but i can’t remember who’s set these were on. These would be higher quality than copying from VHS

But we also have 16mm transfers which is the highest quality we’re going to get right now, no?

I’m not seeing any new special features on these that weren’t on the laserdisc boxed set. Am I missing something?

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adywan said:

There is Macrovision on the Executor box set. All the special features, minus the 4 “making of” specials were on the Definitive collection laserdisc set. Someone has already captured those and converted them to DVD but i can’t remember who’s set these were on. These would be higher quality than copying from VHS

Which LD set? PAL or NTSC? As general rule Laserdisc would be higher quality, but it depends on transfer. Would be worth comparing and worth having diversity. And I’m not going to compress them to DVD. I could do image of Blu-Ray SD though. The 4 making of you reffer to the bonus VHS?

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SF01 said:

Would be worth comparing and worth having diversity.

Absolutely. I for one, would like to see this transfer.

Those who are not interested can choose not to. 😃

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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JayArgonaut said:

SF01 said:

Would be worth comparing and worth having diversity.

Absolutely. I for one, would like to see this transfer.

Those who are not interested can choose not to. 😃

I never understood why people would trash fan projects. It’s not like the source material is going anywhere!

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Yeah, exactly. Some (constructive) criticisms are justified but at the end of the day, if you do not like the project or think that it is unnecessary, there’s no obligation to watch it!

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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Sometimes the context and presentation is of equal interest to content, especially for folks who had the set originally.

I did the same with the features from the roughly-contemporary Alien Trilogy set - fifty people downloaded that, even though most of the material is already freely available from better sources.

By the way, I’d avoid DV for something like this, personally - it’s a pretty punishing codec for analogue sources. A preferable route would be lossless capture, followed by conversion to h.264 for delivery. But it’s your project, of course.

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Jonno said:

Sometimes the context and presentation is of equal interest to content, especially for folks who had the set originally.

I did the same with the features from the roughly-contemporary Alien Trilogy set - fifty people downloaded that, even though most of the material is already freely available from better sources.

By the way, I’d avoid DV for something like this, personally - it’s a pretty punishing codec for analogue sources. A preferable route would be lossless capture, followed by conversion to h.264 for delivery. But it’s your project, of course.

I only have DV passthrough device. But obviously in the future I plan to purchasebetter A/D converters.

DV is still better than DVD compression, even sourced frmo lossless capture.

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SF01 said:

DV is still better than DVD compression, even sourced frmo lossless capture.

No argument there. It just seems unlikely that DV files will be useful for actual viewing, so some further conversion will be needed in most cases, and that’s where returns begin to diminish rapidly. But hey, at least someone’s putting this stuff out there in some form.

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Jonno said:

SF01 said:

DV is still better than DVD compression, even sourced frmo lossless capture.

No argument there. It just seems unlikely that DV files will be useful for actual viewing, so some further conversion will be needed in most cases, and that’s where returns begin to diminish rapidly. But hey, at least someone’s putting this stuff out there in some form.

Pure DV files are easy to watch, if you have latest sata, or USB 3.0. It’s only 25 Mbps. A huge plus is that it is intraframe. I’d love to do them i lossless 4:4:4 and compress to BD, but I do not have the equipment at the moment.
Once I do, it will be done again.
Now I am cleaning up disc space to do the set in the way I can.

Plus, the D-VHS deck will provide the best possible output quality.

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Jonno said:

By the way, I’d avoid DV for something like this, personally - it’s a pretty punishing codec for analogue sources. A preferable route would be lossless capture…

Without wanting to hijack the main topic, I have a question arising from this discussion. Although I agree that lossless capturing is always the best choice and I have a machine set up for that sole purpose, I’ve captured the analogue signal from my older PAL games consoles (late 90s, early 2000s) via DV pass-through and the results were quite good.

Was this in spite of the source and the codec or it because they would have had a higher resolution than LD and VHS? Just curious.

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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The biggest problem I found with DV capture is that is uses 4:1:1 chroma subsampling which really reduces the picture quality.

I tested it for laserdisc capture, and found it wanting:

Airplane LD captured as DV (4:1:1):

DV

Same disc recaptured as Lagarith 4:2:2:

AVI

In 4:1:1 chroma subsampling, the horizontal color resolution is quartered to reduce the bandwidth by half. In 4:2:2 chroma subsampling the two chroma components are sampled at half the sample rate of luma: the horizontal chroma resolution is halved. This reduces the bandwidth of an uncompressed video signal by one-third with little to no visual difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chroma_subsampling

http://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com

http://www.the007dossier.com