THX 1138 "preservations" + the 'THX 1138 Italian Cut' project (Released) — Page 33

No sepia tone. Might be a whole different print that was used. Didn't see our little thin white friend, but the pan and scan could have hidden him.

There are reports of HD DVD's going bad recently. I already found a unplayable disc among the 30 or so titles I own. If I had a larger collection I'd be more worried.

I hate that slow as molasses Java crap that's on some Blu Rays, but at least the format has matured enough that you don't have to update the firmware every other week anymore. I saw a bin of Blu Rays at the supermarket last week, and got The Dark Crystal for nine bucks! I paid almost a hundred bucks for the Collector's edition Laserdisc back in the 90's!

Anyway, I should have the '86 THX Laserdisc by next week. :)

Molly said:

I use Aegisub to make my own subtitles but the only format both Aegisub and DVD Lab Pro support out of the box is SRT.  (I think DVD Lab Pro supports SSA 2.x also, but not 4.x or ASS.)

Yeah, that's what made me mad. ;)

erri_wan said:

It just came in my mind that perhaps I should take care of subtitles in Italian for the English DVD. Italians have never seen the "restored version" and I suppose many could be curious to watch it.

Luckly the new CGI version has dialogues closely translated so I can base my work on that.

What do you say msycamore?

Everyone is of course free to make their own subs and mux them in for their own enjoyment when it's done, I will not include various subtitle streams for this, because it means more work. They don't take up much space but it's not like I can just drop in various subs for people without any work, they have to be synced specifically to this audio/video file and I'm not even sure if I will include my own English sub stream at this moment. It is easily done by yourself when you have this disc on your computer. Hope you understand.

SilverWook, thank you so much for going through the trouble capping those Betamax frames! quite washed out colors, but you get the general idea. It seems the 2004 opening match those pretty well, I'm actually surprised by the appearance of color on the Buck Rogers clip.

Betamax

Laserdisc

DVD

The Betamax seems to have more of a green tint but otherwise it seems pretty close, will be interesting to see how the Pan & Scan LD look.

EDIT: Also, thanks for letting me know about the editing as well, I became a little paranoid about all these different versions for a while there. ;)

That's not so easy. Selectable DVD subs cannot be saved as an editable text file. DVD subs are basically a video stream. There are programs that can convert them to a text file but it works on a text recognition principle, similarly to converting a scanned page into an editable text file.

As to the SRT only problem, there are free programs that convert between different subtitle formats, so it shouldn't be much of a problem to use whatever subs you have and then simply convert them.

PS: MSycamore, could you please check out my ROTJ DeEd thread and tell me what you think about the subs in my latest sample video?

Harmy said:

That's not so easy. Selectable DVD subs cannot be saved as an editable text file. DVD subs are basically a video stream. There are programs that can convert them to a text file but it works on a text recognition principle, similarly to converting a scanned page into an editable text file.

Sorry, I'm not sure if I get what you really mean or what you're referring to, erri_wan could easily get an editable SRT-file from the DVD by simply demux it.

Harmy said:

As to the SRT only problem, there are free programs that convert between different subtitle formats, so it shouldn't be much of a problem to use whatever subs you have and then simply convert them.

Yes, almost every sub program have that function. You have that function in SubtitleCreator as well. My own subs was of course a SRT-file so no problem there, the reason was that I didn't want to begin from scratch again, when I was finally happy with my SUP-file, the subs I made in SubtitleCreator was superior in every way compared to what I was able to do in DVD Lab Pro, and I just wanted to get going with the Laserdiscs.

You can't just import a SRT-file to a sub program and convert it to SUP and mux it with a DVD and expect to get good results without any further work done to it before that stage. Subs are a real bitch to do right. With a little more patience, and perhaps different software I could have done it better.

Maybe someone further down the line will re-work it and make menus for it, if they think it is in need of it.

msycamore: Sorry, I'm not sure if I get what you really mean or what you're referring to, erri_wan could easily get an editable SRT-file from the DVD by simply demux it.

Are you sure about that? I'm quite sure that in order to work, subs on a DVD have to be rendered as bitmaps, so he could hardly just demux a SRT file from the DVD.

Wikipedia:

Subtitles are stored as bitmap images and therefore can contain messages in any language. Subtitles are restricted to four colors, including transparent "color", and thus tend to look cruder than permanent subtitles on film.^[27] Transparency allows laying subtitles over the video during playback.^[28] The subtitle tracks are contained within the VOB file of the DVD.

DVD Video may also contain closed captioning material which can only be viewed on a television set with a decoder.

No, he will of course need to convert the SUP, SUB or whatever to SRT format first, I just misunderstood your post. But it is all easily done nevertheless.

EDIT: Just to let you know if you attempt it, all programs that do convert DVD subs to SRT format, doesn't recognize italics etc. and I often see the letter I as an l as in the word letter when converted.

Some bad news... I wanted to use a median script in AviSynth for all the different LD-captures in order to remove all the random noise and dropouts etc. but it proved to be impossible to align them for some reason, the frame count differ slightly between them in different parts of the video (mostly just 1 frame difference) which I found weird, even between the three captures of the same LD. Could this have something to do with me IVTC'ing them before attempting this? (I've heard this shouldn't be a problem) or does it have something to do with how these LD's were captured in the first place?

Please help me out here if you have any idea what's causing this frame count difference.

Sorry to hear this is still giving you headaches. :(

Got the '86 Japanese LD yesterday, and it's the same awful transfer used for the Beta. (With subtitles added of course.) Interesting thing I didn't spot before is the image is slightly squeezed in the early reels, resulting in everyone looking taller and thinner than normal. Pity the whole movie was not squeezed.

It's also remarkably inconsistent in that some computer displays are squeezed enough to be readable and the "Officers In Service" display isn't, nor does it pan over to the right of the frame to show the numbers change.

msycamore said:

Some bad news... I wanted to use a median script in AviSynth for all the different LD-captures in order to remove all the random noise and dropouts etc. but it proved to be impossible to align them for some reason, the frame count differ slightly between them in different parts of the video (mostly just 1 frame difference) which I found weird, even between the three captures of the same LD. Could this have something to do with me IVTC'ing them before attempting this? (I've heard this shouldn't be a problem) or does it have something to do with how these LD's were captured in the first place?

Please help me out here if you have any idea what's causing this frame count difference.

It is quite normal for framecounts to be different between versions. However, three different captures of the same LD should line up frame-for-frame.

It may be caused by the IVTC process if you are using an automatic field-matching filter, that may give different results for the different captures. If so, do the multi-cap median before the IVTC stage.

It could also be caused by dropped frames in the capture. More common with VHS than LD, but I suppose could still be a possibility. 

If you're using AviSynth, AvsPmod is good for lining up different files and finding where they differ. You can have three scripts open in three tabs and scan through the timeline of all 3 together.  

Yeah, it's really frustrating. No idea what's causing the frame differences when I line them up against each other, maybe the IVTC plugin I used removed or added certain frames, even if it is just one frame difference, it makes it impossible to use this median script to get any good results. I'll try to line them up before IVTC, I just hoped that I would be able to avoid IVTC'ing them again.

Thanks for the report, seems they did an unusal awful job with that transfer. I noticed the squeezed computer display on your Beta, why not squeeze the end titles as well... weird. Your Beta screenshots will serve me well.

EDIT: Damn, thank you Moth3r! You're my hero. :)

No, I had problem register on that site for some reason, maybe you could give it a shot? It would be really nice to have it in better quality.

SilverWook, can you do me one last favor, how does the color look on this computer screen...

...on that LD/Beta transfer? Don't necessarily need a screenshot of it, I'm just a little curious about this one as the colors are very unstable on this particular screen. (it's bright green in the 2004 DVD) Want to rule out any possible flaw in the LD transfer.

Well, I'm one of those last few people on earth who don't have a facebook profile. ;)

That would be really nice, thanks. :)

erri_wan said:

Ok found it. http://www.youtube.com/user/BMTPTrailerCentralV3

Would you care of contacting him Msycamore? You're better than me at these things.

He doesn't have THX trailer on youtube but sure is the same guy.

Am I? :) Don't know about that, do you need an account on youtube in order to contact him? I'll see what I can do...

erri_wan said:

Msycamore I'm watching this film and I'm amazed how much smoother it looks (is that just my impression?) and the audio sync now makes SENSE!

You did an incredible job my friend. I'll see if I can make a trailer soon

Yes, it do look much better compared to the source file, I'm glad you're happy with the improvement. Thank Leo for the VirtualDub filter suggestion.

msycamore said:

No, I had problem register on that site for some reason, maybe you could give it a shot? It would be really nice to have it in better quality.

SilverWook, can you do me one last favor, how does the color look on this computer screen...

...on that LD/Beta transfer? Don't necessarily need a screenshot of it, I'm just a little curious about this one as the colors are very unstable on this particular screen. (it's bright green in the 2004 DVD) Want to rule out any possible flaw in the LD transfer.

I was going to do a DVD capture anyway, so no problem. I just found a place to get 8 gig flash drives for 15 bucks, so sending you stuff in the future might be a little cheaper now. :)

Very nice! it seems the price on flash drives are starting to drop pretty rapidly. :)