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***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread *** — Page 4

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Glad to see the site back up. My shots 11-15 seem to have gone, but not to worry, I'll have all shots updated pretty soon.

So my page works for you now? It's still not ideal, I'd like to know how to preload all images when a new scene is selected.

Yes Doom9's page is pretty clever, the only gripe I have is that the zoom is a basic point-sampling "digital" zoom which gives a blocky result, I would prefer to see something like a bi-cubic zoom that more accurately represents what it would look like on an analogue TV. But maybe that's too much to do in Javascript.

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My shots 11-15 seem to have gone, but not to worry, I'll have all shots updated pretty soon.

Really? I'll look into it and see what happened. They may have gotten lost in the server switch.

If you look at the source code of my page, there's a handy javascript function that preloads the images. It's pretty easy to do.

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]

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Moth3r - SWEET site man!!!!!

Your capture looks like it coming along!

“My skill are no longer as Mad as the once were” RiK

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Sorry if this is off topic, but I couldn't find a better place to put it at the moment.

Does anyone know where to find screenshots of the Han/Greedo scene from the original '77 cropped mono VHS bootleg? This would supply the definitive answer for the formatting of the subtitles and the location on them on the frame, as well as the approximate font used-in the original release.
They have been formatted in so many different ways in the various video releases (in mine, they're in the lower black bar), and I know that the original footage exists to set the record straight. It would help me (as well as many others, I think) in my DVD project.

Thanks!

Trooperman

Episode II: Shroud of the Dark Side

Emperor Jar-Jar
“Back when we made Star Wars, we just couldn’t make Palpatine as evil as we intended. Now, thanks to the miracles of technology, it is finally possible. Finally, I’ve created the movies that I originally imagined.” -George Lucas on the 2007 Extra Extra Special HD-DVD Edition

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looks like the screenshot comparison page is down again...
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Zion's screenshots have been down since the end of Febraury. I expect he's busy with other things at the moment, I've not seen him post for a while.

In the meantime, there are a few shots on this unofficial screenshots page.

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The page in the above link has now been updated to include screenshots from the Farsight and ISOMIX versions. (The info popups are still incomplete at this time).

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Moth3r,

that's a great screencaps interface you have there - it makes it so easy to compare the caps directly. I'd be interested to hear others' analysis of the comparison between these caps.

To my eyes, three of those captures look good in different ways: TR47, EditDroid & Moth3r. The other three are softer and/or noisier. The TR47 and EditDroid caps look almost identical in softness/sharpness, with TR47s being a little brighter, more saturated and a little noisier (perhaps due to the brightness/saturation?). Of these two, I think I prefer the look of the EditDroid caps, although there is some artifacting not present in the TR47 caps (see twin sunset suns). Your caps definitely look sharpest of all, and have nice colours. The only odd thing is that the frame is cropped so differently to the others, showing less of the frame all the way around. I assume this is to do with the PAL LD cropping, since the others are all from NTSC sets. Does anyone know how these crops compare to the theatrical versions?

Keep up the great work and thank you so much for creating a PAL version.
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Here's a bit of narrative to accompany my screenshot comparison, just to give some pointers as to what you should be looking at. (It would also be beneficial if you could ensure that your monitor is correctly calibrated when making comparisons.)

Shot 1: Tonality check (#1)
The blackness of space should be black, not a shade of grey, and the stars should be clear bright spots. Also check that the ships are the correct "temperature" of grey with no colour cast, and look out for dot crawl artefacts on the laserbolts.

Shot 2: Hue check
Incorrect hue is most noticable on skin tones. Check that the face is a natural skin tone, and not too yellow (EditDroid?) or too purple (ISOMIX?).

Shot 3: Chroma subsampling check
Look at the raw DVD screenshot, as it doesn't show up so well on the resized image. Check the extremities of Artoo's red light. The TR47 and ISOMIX versions show the artefacts associated with a DV capture.

Shot 4: Tonality Check (#2)
As well as the black of Vader's cloak, and the white of the roof lights, this shot displays all the midtones in between. The Farsight version shows what happens when the white level (contrast) is set far too high. Also look for the halos to the left of Vader on the Moth3r version, caused by setting sharpness too high.

Shot 5: Detail Check
Examine very fine detail in this shot, such as the appendages of the droid in the centre of the picture. Fine detail appears blurred in the Dr Gonzo transfer.

Shot 6: Dot crawl test
Look at the edges of the red sun in Tatooine's sky. The EditDroid version gives a very good example of what the dot-crawl looks like.

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Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
Okay, someone help me out. My new account will hold 150 Mbs, but it has to be a .JPG. On my old account, I could rename MPGs as JPGs and still save them, but that's not working here.

Anyone got some hosting room for two MPEGs? (13 Mb and 22 Mb)


i can also host files of that size for a decent amount of time.
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What's interesting is how poor the SE DVDs video quality is. They did an incredible job of cleaning up the image, but in re-coloring it, they made the whole film WAY too dark, and screwed up the colors on laser flashes (often lavender instead of red) and light sabers (Luke's is often green instead of blue).

I'll still take the video from the majority of the LD transfers over the new DVDs (before even considering the SE changes). Those DVDs were rushed - hopefully the HD-DVDs we all know are coming will be given more time.
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Oh, and I did notice that the screenshots from my version are still -significantly- brighter and washed-out compared to the actual playback on a TV or PC. Just FYI for anyone concerned by that.
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Farsight, I'm with you on your official DVD analysis (see also this thread).

Also, you're right, screencaps and playback are two different things. I said above I thought EditDroid had the edge on TR47, but that was on screencaps. I just got through a playback comparison of the two and I've got to give it to TR47. The EditDroid is a little overprocessed-looking and a bit too washed out. Oh well, I guess they're both going to stay on the shelf now that Cowclops/TR47 v.2 is out.
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Originally posted by: Farsight
Oh, and I did notice that the screenshots from my version are still -significantly- brighter and washed-out compared to the actual playback on a TV or PC. Just FYI for anyone concerned by that.
Checked out the shot of the stormtroopers in the Tantive, the image I have (which is a direct grab from loading the VOB into VirtualDubMod) looks to have the same overblown whites as the image on Zion's site. Can you check your original to see if this is correct?

All of the detail on the central trooper's helmet is lost. Look at the white level in photoshop:

http://img147.echo.cx/img147/5206/levels5tf.png

It doesn't matter what display you use for playback, there is no way to recover detail that has been lost in the capture process.

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I would agree that there is a slight issue with the extreme whites, just not to the degree that VirtualDub makes it appear.

The problem is that VirtualDub appears to brighten the image in rendering (and saving screenshots). I can load the same frame into VirtualDub(Mod) and MediaPlayer, and in VirtualDub, the frame has less color, and is brighter, looking similar to the screenshots. In MediaPlayer, the image looks much better.

I'm not that worried about it, just thought I'd mention it for the benefit of those that haven't seen the actual video. I'm still hopeful that a future encode or DVD release will render all of the current encodes obsolete, since each is imperfect in some way.

Although, again, I'd still take the video quality from most of the fan encodes over the shoddy DVD release.
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Yeah, screenshots and video are two different horses that is for sure.
Make sure you at least do a rough calibration on your TV sets and computer screens, there is free software around to at least get it setup vaguely right.

Moth3r is right though, a few of the transfers in the past have had crushed blacks and whites, which makes an image look 'punchier' but blows out the detail in the shadow areas and bright areas - no matter what you view them on.
Also the softer and more processed the image, the worse it will look on larger screens.

When looking at the stills try to look at the tonality range in the images, is there definition and detail in the bright white areas, is there detail in the dark shadowy areas?
Then look at small detailed parts of the images, can you see the intricate detail where it should be, or has it been 'smoothed over' and so on.
At first glance a crushed and smoothed picture may look "better", but on closer inspection you may realise that it is too soft and lacking in detail.

I haven't looked at the farsight set in any detail, but I did notice the crushed whites when I watched ANH on my TV.

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In Shot 1, what has caused that yellowish discolouration on the right hand side of the Star Destroyer in Cowclops V2?

Also, in Shot 16 and other Tatooine scenes, the DC laserdisc has a very different hue to both the official DVD and the PAL laserdiscs. I'd be interested to hear the opinion of mverta or the X0 project team (i.e. anyone who has looked in detail at colour correcting the movie) on what this shot should look like.

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Well, for the Tatooine shot, Moth3r yours is much closer to the correct colour than the cowclops versions, as for the yellow on the destroyer in the CC V2 cap, it looks like induced noise to me, crank the saturation on that image and it has all the hallmarks of interference - but it might be on the original disc, (I don't have that scene with me) I'll take a look later when I get home.
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Originally posted by: Laserman
...the CC V2 cap... Originally posted by: Cowclops
I hate it when people call me CC because "Cowclops" is all one word.

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I've had a look at the Cowclops V2 video sample posted in that thread, and there does appear to be an issue with ghosting caused by a temporal smoothing filter. It only occurs on single frames immediately following a scene change, so only those with very keen eyes will ever notice it during normal speed playback.

Here's a typical example:

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/213/ghost8kg.jpg

The yellowness to the left of C3PO is a ghost from the previous frame. (The ghosting caused by the "dirt concealment" processing in some places on the laserdisc master of TESB (example here) is actually worse than this, because it affects several frames whenever fast motion occurs.)

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I wouldn't pin it down on temporal filters just yet. I have had similar results to these straight from a raw capture. The only explanation I had was the settings used on my capture program, though the specifics elude me at the moment. I have a few raw capture files on my HD, all done the same day, that have this same ghosting effect.

It's hard to say what the real cause of this is. There's only one person who knows for sure...

My Projects:
[Holiday Special Hybrid DVD v2]
[X0 Project]
[Backstroke of the West DVD]
[ROTS Theatrical DVD]