AntcuFaalb

To see the Huffyuv-encoded (sorry, I'm lazy) AVI sample of the aforementioned technique applied to the infamous speeder shot: click here. Make sure to only click the "Click here to start download from sendspace" link, as all the rest are spam.

Notes:

• The bottom is, obviously, what you should be looking at.
• I only did minor cleanup using my RemoveDirtMC script, so there's still some defects/dirt/dust hanging around. These can be fixed with, e.g., Photoshop.
• The affine image alignment forced me to crop a bit from the end result.

Enjoy!

Working on the infamous speeder scene now. It's coming out great!

You_Too said:

hairy_hen said:

Are you going to take advantage of this at all?  Applied carefully and selectively, it could eliminate the worst and most noticeably smeared shots in the GOUT, and that would definitely be worthwhile.

Unfortunately it's not possible since the Technidisc's picture seems to be warped differently, and the resolution of the GOUT's luma is better so it would be too much of a downgrade in quality.

We will keep working with what we have, and we'll have to live with the smearing.

The distortion differences are easily solved by BunwarpJ for ImageJ. This technique can greatly improve the infamous speeder shot. Want me to hack at?

I can only say wow, you were right. They only DVNR'ed the luma.

Yeah, I did quite a bit of experimenting for my now-defunct SWOLT project. Isn't it weird?

Most defects (e.g., dirt and dust) exist in luma, so this probably made sense in the early '90s as a way to reduce the required time for processing.

It would take some insanely intelligent plugin to see the difference.

Agreed, but what do high-end video cameras use? They seem to be quite intelligent...

If the smearing is only present in the Luma, wouldn't shots like this look a bit more weird, like the color not matching the double eyes of the stormtrooper?

You would think. That's why I found the results to be weird.

@AntcuFaalb: It doesn't only show as motion blur, it sometimes make moving things appear doubled or leaving trails of itself and things like that.

But it does sometimes show as motion blur, so maybe a de-motion-blur filter of some sort can fix things up a bit. Do you know of any we could try?

You_Too said:

@captainsolo: Thanks!

And yes, please somebody invent a magic anti-smearing plugin for avisynth. :)

I kind of understand why they did the DVNR back then though. It was probably considered state of the art back then, as it did remove lots and lots of dirt and stuff, which can clearly be seen if comparing it to msycamore's Technidisc capture.

And back then, people were used to see smearing on TV. Basically everything shot on video had smearing.

Of course I still dislike the smearing very much, but I understand how it worked to release this back then.

Would it make sense to treat this DVNR smearing as motion blur? If so, we might be able to take some stabs at it.

(One thing I did notice is that the smearing is only present in the luma. I experimented a few weeks (months?) ago with using affine image alignment to spatially-align the Technidisc capture to the GOUT. After doing the alignment, using the Technidisc's luma with the GOUT's chroma resulted in a smear-free image.)

TServo2049 said:

The colors really remind me of the screenings of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Blues Brothers that I recently attended at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, CA.

Both of them seemed to be modern LPP prints, and CE3K was the late-90s "Director's Cut" restoration, but they both had similar color timing to this. Lots of green and blue in the shadows/darker midtones, slightly off-white/pinkish whites, etc. (And like these images, they seemed to be a tad dark/dim, as if the projector's light source wasn't bright enough. No slight to -1, I know the brightness/contrast/gamma will be corrected later.)

My point is, with the higher resolution and improved compression, I can finally appreciate the quality of this print. I could imagine seeing an LPP print projected in a theater, looking like this.

I think you're close to answering a question I've had for a while. That is: what makes a color film from the 70s (and, possibly, earlier) look like a color film from the 70s? There seems to be a set of difficult-to-identify qualities that, when combined, result in the warm magic we see in the PuggoGrande and in -1's images.

Gorramnerd said:

Jan said:

Well, even if your ISP provided usenet access, it'd probably be limited to text groups only. So first of all, you need to get an account at one of the premium providers which offer access to binary groups such as alt.binaries.starwars, too.

Myriad of them exist, but they all are not free of charge (test accounts do exist, but are very limited). Here's a good point to start: http://usenetcompare.com. Accounts that are unlimited in download volume sell for about 10$ a month.

Now there are two features the providers differ. The first one is the so called retention, which is the maximum time a file is accessible after it's been uploaded and usually is between 2 and 4 years. The second one is speed of course. The given speed is almost always met except when the age of the upload is close to the retention. The content however is the same among all providers.

Once you have an account, go to nzbindex.nl, which is like a usenet search engine. Click on "Groups" on the very top and select alt.binaries.starwars to view this groups content. If you find an upload you want to get, just click on "Download" and a .nzb file will be created.

To finally download it you need a usenet client. I recommend the free version of alt.binz. Enter your account details there, open the .nzb file and start the download.

If you got any further questions just feel free to ask :-)

Oh, and I'd say you get Star Wars - Harmy's Despecialized Edition Remastered, which is just beyond impressive.

Ok, I know this is gonna sound crazy, but I need to know...

So, I buy some time from Newsdemon, and i see that they have a program to download with, NewsRover. I try to start a download, and at that moment, the internet in my house died. Is this a huge coincidence, or did i do something horribly wrong?

I know I'm probably being paranoid, but I need to be sure it won't happen again.

That sounds like a crazy coincidence to me.

none: If I take another crack at uploading PS78 Raw Capture #5, will the Usenet Binary Search Engines group them? If so, what can I do differently to prevent grouping?

captainsolo said:

It's ok. The 1997 BR DVD was print sourced from what appears to be a 70mm blowup print, and also pushed slightly in some of the coloring. You also get nasty blocky artifacts and noise throughout from being an early disc with bad encoding. The LD Director's Cut actually looks a bit more natural. What you're seeing on the later versions of the DC and archival cuts is the intended image. The only thing that may be lost is the timing due to the original print stock utilized etc. The Criterion International cut LD seems to have a bit more saturation as well to my eyes.

On Apocalypse, I agree. I first saw the 1992 VHS which has a distinct color that was all but gone on the Dossier DVDs. It looks fine on the first 1999 DVD I think. However this was color timing done for the home release specifically, I guess to bring out the theatrical colors on CRT screens. It is the same as a 1991 Widescreen Laserdisc. (which is excellent and has the theatrical audio directly ported to PCM ProLogic)

 

Weird. This:

Looks a lot better to me than:

frank678 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

I wouldn't mind tackling Blade Runner, but my setup is only capable of handling NTSC. Would that be OK?

 

Would be brilliant! In case I appear a bit cheap on this - only do this if you think there is a reason for you - I'm still not sure what my monitor is screwing up exactly. However, I think this may be the last gasp for VHS so if ever there was a time for this stuff its now!

Blade Runner is one of my favorite films, so I wouldn't object to capturing it.

Can someone tell me if the colortiming on the Blu-ray release of John Carpenter's Halloween is accurate?

Those samples look amazing, -1!

frank678 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

frank678 said:

If anyone needs ideas for non-star wars vhs films to preserve i have a few! (as I'm sure lots of others do to) :O)

Go on...

Yay!

Here's a couple of titles which I think would have different colour timing on early vhs versions to how they are presented in 2012 and so might be important to preserve: Blade Runner,(http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews24/bladerunner.htm) Apocalpse Now (http://www.avsforum.com/t/1264333/apocalypse-now/510#post_19446351). Blue Velvet looks like its going pink to me on the Blu Ray- certainly its not like the deep blues i saw at the cinema. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare5/bluevelvet.htm

This will probably have no appeal to anyone but to me the criterion Days of Heaven (1978) also looks like it has pink shift in it to me. The trouble is I don't know how much of me seeing this pink/red shifted is effected by my monitor, which has a definite pink tint. Also I dont know how good/faithful NTSC telecines would be. http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdreviews9/days-of-heaven.htm

The first PAL release of Empire Strikes on VHS I think needs preservation.

 

 

I wouldn't mind tackling Blade Runner, but my setup is only capable of handling NTSC. Would that be OK?

Edit: I just took a look at the linked Blade Runner page. What the hell happened to the colors?!

1990osu said:

 

Harmy said: it's quite possible that the tech prints had slightly different colourtiming in some places than even '77 Eastman prints. But since all the surviving Eastman prints are faded, we may never know

 

That's why the new PS78 bootleg tape is so exciting- an unfaded color reference for an unfaded Eastman print....

Excluding the over-bright and over-dark scenes... :-(

Molly said:

pittrek said:

Molly said:

The cloud is a giant step backward...

Are you talking about cloud computing or about the crap what companies like Micro$oft call "The cloud" ?

Specifically the idea of "working over the network", running apps remotely with remote data, as opposed to running apps on local computers with local data.  That's what home computers were created to get AWAY from.

I agree to a certain extent. There's definitely a place for remote computing (e.g., using a terminal emulator + SSH to login to a remote *n*x machine to do work), but I don't think it makes sense for the majority of the computer-using population.

I do most of my programming on remote UNIX (NetBSD and OpenBSD) machines. What's the benefit? It is: I don't have to do sysadmin work to reap the benefits of a proper *n*x box.

frank678 said:

If anyone needs ideas for non-star wars vhs films to preserve i have a few! (as I'm sure lots of others do to) :O)

Go on...

pittrek said:

Molly said:

The cloud is a giant step backward...

Are you talking about cloud computing or about the crap what companies like Micro$oft call "The cloud" ?

He's probably referring to the the use of the cloud as a buzzword by companies like M$. I doubt he thinks that distributed computing is crap.

negative1 said:

AntcuFaalb said:

 

Are we discussing the cloud or networks in general?

Networks are great for CLI stuff (e.g., connecting with a terminal emulator via SSH to a big *n*x box -- I do my work like this all the time), but the cloud seems to be a less-rigidly-defined means to deal with "big data".

GUI stuff is, more often than not, nasty over a network. However, X11 does a pretty good job at it, IMO.

a little bit of both..

 

how would you go about setting up a 'star wars' server?

obviously it would just be plain data storage.

 

but there was speculation that using some online scripting,

you could do some simple preview cleanup of frames. (i think

'none' suggested that)... and submit some of that back

to the site..

 

also, you could probably submit avisynth scripts,

and have it run remotely on a faster computer.

and see the results.

 

i only have access to dual core computers from

about 6 years ago.. so anything more powerful

would be great. i'm not doing any heavy duty

editting, but i can run the software for cleanup.

the other guy have much more powerful computers.

 

i could use more ram, but at some point i'll upgrade

in the future. however, running windows 7 64bit

works well enough for me with 2 gigs of ram.

it does take a long time to render/convert stuff,

but i'm not in a rush. it's better to get it done right,

than rush through stuff with errors.

 

later

-1

Oh, I wasn't talking about setting up a Star Wars server or anything like that.

I was just discussing the cloud vs. network dichotomy.

Edit: Also, I recently noticed that you're a programmer, too. What kind of programming do you do? I work mainly with low-level stuff (e.g., C and assembly).

none said:

Usenet search engine results take time to compile.  Usenet works as a series of servers, you upload to one but it takes time to get those files to all the other servers (and there's no guarantee all the servers will accept them or may only receive part of the file).  So one search engine may have incomplete for file 54, 192 and 193, and another engine have a different set.  As you are uploading all the servers have different pieces of the pie and that's why things are coming up incomplete.  Yet when you make the .nzb your server can possibly give back different incompletes or none at all.  It's rare that pieces go missing, but retention is not perfect over the whole system.  That's why PARs were invented.

Anytime there is a reset, the files will typically be considered as two separate uploads.  Usenet search engines are taught now-a-days to spot similar names files and group them.

Thanks for the information, none.

I was familiar with Usenet's architecture, but I didn't know that the Usenet Binary Search Engines work that way.

Can you recommend a good Usenet binary upload program?

I currently use:

1. WinRar to create and split the RAR archives
2. QuickPar to generate the PAR2 files
3. WinSFV to generate the SFV file
4. Camel PowerPost to generate the NZB and upload

negative1 said:

Molly said:

The cloud is a giant step backward...

no, it's NOT!

 

IT'S great for low level, CLI stuff.

text based forms, and data entry.

which is what a lot of it is..

 

for anything fancy, gui-based,

or data intensive. i can't stand it..

 

but if you have a superfast network connection,

or something else, it really shouldn't make a 

difference.

 

i have yet to see a video intensive EDITING

(not watching like netflix/hulu/etc) application

that can work through a network or wireless

connection that works right.. i could be wrong

in the future it could get better.

 

later

-1

Are we discussing the cloud or networks in general?

Networks are great for CLI stuff (e.g., connecting with a terminal emulator via SSH to a big *n*x box -- I do my work like this all the time), but the cloud seems to be a less-rigidly-defined means to deal with "big data".

GUI stuff is, more often than not, nasty over a network. However, X11 does a pretty good job at it, IMO.

lpd said:

I've come up with a saying about digitally created sets n stuff, are you ready....

"If its done well, you shouldn't be able to tell" (copyright lpd)

 

"If its done well, you shouldn't be able to tell" (copyright trademark lpd)

:-D

Molly said:

The cloud is a giant step backward...

Yes, it is. Remember hardware X-Terminals?

Brooks said:

negative1 said:

Brooks said:

 

That is interesting, I never would have noticed that.  One of the things I love about the screenshots you guys post is seeing details in the film that I've never noticed.  Not just strange artifacts like that but just how elaborate the sets were in scenes like that one.  It's amazing they built all of that for such a short shot.  I miss the days of real sets.

if the set looks real,

what difference does it make?

ever see this:

 

stargate studios virtual backlot

========================

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PIEC4WqGOw

 

 

who need's real sets? ha ha

 

later

-1

That is really neat.  Why didn't the environments in the prequels look that good?  Maybe it's because they weren't based on real world settings like the ones in that video were.  I did notice that the other worldly setting in the youtube video was the worst looking one.

The prequels would have been better off if Lucas released them in 1986, 1989, and 1992 :-(

Damn. I'm really pissed off.

I don't know what the hell is going on. Now binsearch.info seems to list my two separate uploads (with different titles) as one upload and claims that there are even more incomplete parts in the most recent one.

This is ridiculous >:-O