CapableMetal

Beber said:

John213a, Harmy still projects to do them. He just needs someone to take care of the audio part, and the audios in question are the dts theatrical tracks extracted from the actual dts CD-Roms.

I actually synched-up the theatrical DTS for the trilogy almost two years ago, but never released them because there was no release-appropriate video source to go with them, plus no one seemed to be too interested in them at the time. I have already PM'ed Harmy offering them to him should he want to use them.

Jetrell Fo said:

I wonder if captures of the 2 Japan SE sets would yield a full copy with no frames missing.  Any idea if they are the same as the US set in this regard?

 I honestly don't know, but at a guess I would think they're probably the same. The only way to know for certain is to capture both sets, IVTC, and align them at the first frame of the 'Star Wars' title card and start skimming through. If they lose sync then you can skim back slightly to identify the missing frames between the two.

The PAL set has the extra resolution you'd expect plus it doesn't require IVTC, just a slowdown to 23.976fps. It does have its own issues, though, including custom wipes at side changes and only a Dolby Surround encoded stereo track. I'll have to produce a reference of missing frames from SE video sources from all of my old notes one of these days and post it in the old 'standards' thread.

I admire your want to use the DTS audio but be warned that you will have to tweak it to fit. The NTSC set is missing frames compared to a standard cinema print so the audio won't fit 'out of the box'. The 5.1 AC3 track from that set, however, will match up perfectly and it has a true discreet LFE.

I think you should avoid the DV codec if possible. Its lossy so you are compressing your video three times in that workflow. If you can only capture in DV, then perhaps using a lossless codec for the intermediate file or just encoding directly to MPEG2/AVC whilst removing the pulldown would be better.

I'm currently working on producing a similar project using the PAL discs, which are missing only couple of frames here and there, specifically to show case the DTS audio. I've found that I'm probably going to have to find a better copy of Empire. Its littered with odd noise on the copy I have. Speaking from experience, my copy of the NTSC set plays with crosstalk in one player and it is absent in my other player, so it would seem its not always caused by the discs.

Jetrell Fo said:

My capture card seems fine

In what way? If its not producing video output then how can you tell?

 When I go in to capture mode to work, all I get is a blank blue screen, I cannot see any video.

My experience with older capture cards suggests to me that you may have a driver problem. What is the source of your drivers?

If you have any setup applications that come with the driver, have a look and ensure that you have everything set correctly and that it is set to the correct input if your card has both composite and s-video. Depending on your card, going to VirtualDub in capture mode and clicking 'Video>Capture filter' can give you some options.

I have used both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of VirtualDub in the past and for capturing I had no problems with either, provided you have set the correct resolution and frame rate within the settings. For actually using VirtualDub for processing video though, I stuck with the 32-bit version because its just so much easier for compatibility with AviSynth and plugins.

I don't know, but will hazard a guess that you will have a similar experience no matter which NLE (non-linear editor) you choose. They all seem to support similar formats and you will probably get the same speed out of them when working with AVC encoded files.

Any NLE will have to spend the time decoding the frames and, depending on the AVC profile, there is no guarantee it will be decoded correctly.

It would seem best is to just give it a try. Re-mux your MKV to M2TS, import to your preferred NLE and see how you get on with it.

Muxing is the process of combining the audio and video files into a single container format (in this case an MKV). Demuxing is the opposite of that. TBH, if you demux an AVC file from an MKV and try to open it in Premiere you may still have trouble. Premiere imports M2TS files no problem, so you may want to try re-muxing from the MKV to an M2TS file using Tsmuxer or a similar application.

Be aware though that Premiere isn't very quick when working with compressed files and I've had problems with it decoding frames correctly before from AVC video streams. I export from MKV to a Lagarith lossless AVI before trying to manipulate the video. The files are very large, but then Premiere itself creates a huge cache of decoded video anyway if working with AVC!

Nick66 said:

Where can I download the CapableMetal/Doombot/JetrellFo DTS mix?  I'm only interested in the audio file, and would like to synch it to my existing MKV of the BD.

Credit where credit is due, I didn't actually do any work on that mix other than give a bit of advice/praise after the initial release.

All looks pretty good. If it were me, I'd put a few quid extra into a Gigabyte or ASUS mobo due to poor experience with MSI products in the past. I'm an Intel guy these days, but all the AMD CPU's I've owned in the past have been solid and reliable. Corsair PSU's are bulletproof too provided you don't overload them. Looks like you've pretty much nailed it first time.

I'm curious, what is the read/write speed of the SSD? And which OS are you planning on running?

I believe so.

FrankT said:

It's still very fuzzy, but for what it's worth, everything's there; no primitive DVNR like the 2006 DVD.

 Are you certain? My copy seems to have it, its just mostly less visible due to the lower definition of VHS. I heard a while ago that the PAL masters have a more conservative application of DVNR than the NTSC masters, but I don't think any post-1993 release of the OUT is completely smear-free.

Check shot changes from chroma issues, such as colours from the previous shot still visible in the following shot (usually for a couple of frames before it blends in) and 'residue' of blaster bolts (also visible for a frame or two after). You will most likely have to do this frame-by-frame to get a better look. These are temporal artefacts left as a result of the DVNR filtering.

If its truly smear-free then I'd love to get a look at this, and fix the apparent problem present in my capture setup (which I'm not ruling out as a possibility ATM)!

FrankT said:

Well let's see...

• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
• CPU Speed: 3.3 GHz
• RAM: 4.1 GB
• OS: Microsoft Windows 8.1 (build 9200), 64-bit
• Video Card: GeForce GT 620; Pixel Shader v5, Vertex Shader v5, 2 GB Dedicated Video RAM
• Sound Card: NVIDIA High Definition Audio
• Free Disk Space: 154.9 GB

 I take it from your graphics card that this is a desktop machine. Can you remove the side panel and get a look at the motherboard? If you can see any free slots you can ascertain whether they are PCI or PCI-E(xpress). This is important as the two aren't compatible with each other. PCI-E is more flexible because it comes in different sizes (x1 being the smallest and x16 being the largest) but x1 cards can fit in any size PCI-E slot.

Take a look at this picture from Wikipedia of the different types; the top four slots are PCI-E and the bottom is PCI. If you can see any of these free on your motherboard you will know what you are aiming for. The rest of your specs seem fine for standard definition capture.

EDIT: If you can see the label on the top your hard drive whilst you're looking for available slots, if you can see a model number write it down and let us know and we can check out the specification of that too.

FrankT said:

Blast it! Well I'm going to have to send that player back now, aren't I?

That's probably for the best anyway. Combi players tend not to be of very high quality. Some of the best VHS players are the the 'prosumer' decks made by Panasonic, JVC and the likes. I myself use a Panasonic SVHS deck with an on-board time base corrector (TBC), and it performs much better than the several bog-standard VHS players, including a mid-range Sony deck, that I had used before. Some consider an external TBC essential, too, but I ended up selling mine because it was introducing momentary tearing problems and dropped frames once every 30 minutes or so. If your tapes are in good condition then an external TBC probably won't be necessary anyway.

You'll get best results using a PC capture device so that you can produce a median of multiple captures of each tape for the best results. I use a lossless codec for capture, and it still produces very large (40GB+) files at 720x576 resolution. If you have a desktop PC with a bit of hard drive space to spare, PC capture is absolutely the way to go. With a laptop its trickier because the hard drives are slower, which can mean dropped frames, but still very possible with SD capture.

If you post your PC specs, we can help advise on the options available.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Even if I love MPEG2 - and I'm sure you know it - AFAIK this one is ridden by many compression artifacts, while the UHE is DNR'ed a lot... neither is perfect, and probably I'll end to choose the MPEG2 even if has those artifacts; but, as the UHE has more details and no compression problems, and *IF* a grain plate overlay could make it more watchable, ***MAYBE*** the final result could be preferable by some... that's it!

The UHE doesn't have more details, they've been mostly scrubbed away by the DNR to the extent that there is little to no fine detail at all. It looks like it has had some sharpening too, so some edges appear more defined, but its mostly horrid and artificial. The original Blu-Ray may well have some compression artifacts, but it looks much more like the film it should.

I don't plan to do a restoration now, but maybe some users who watched the test clips could think if it will be an interesting thing to do, or simply a waste of time...

Using grain plates might be useful for adding short, upscaled or heavily DNR'ed individual shots into a preservation that has an overall higher quality source as a basis, but I don't think its good as a means of pretending to restore detail for an entire film to 'trick' the viewers' mind. To my eyes it just appears to be the same DNR-afflicted mess that it always was with loads of grain applied. Skin tones and clothing are still lacking the texture they should. I don't think its the way to go, at least, not in this case.

At the end, is just an "excercise of style" to understand if the grain plate technique could improve a bit a DNR'ed video... I thought also to test it with the MPEG2 version, to see if it could mask a bit the compression artifacts... what do you think?

 I don't think adding more grain to a source that already has its own inherent grain would be a wise idea.  I haven't seen either Blu-Ray in ages, but I don't remember the MPEG-II compression really being that bad?

Ryan McAvoy said:

Before ditching the hardware I'd reccomend a clean sweep reinstall of windows and all your drivers and programs. Usually sorts out most catastrophic problems.

 That's the first thing I'd try in this situation just to rule out hardware issues in case its a software issue.

Warbler, are you experiencing any blue screens of death (BSOD) before the restart? That usually points towards a hardware problem, which could mean a driver issue (and the newest drivers aren't always the best to have!), or it could be a physical problem. An old power supply can cause these kind of issues due to capacitor ageing, but I've seen similar symptoms from faulty hard drives, although usually you get a BSOD.

Installing Windows 8.1 doesn't seem wise on a 10-year old system. There's no guarantee it would even work because I believe it was designed to work with certified hardware, which a 10-year old motherboard probably isn't. Illegal operating systems should not be trusted, because you cannot guarantee security, or that it might sometime trigger the Microsoft Product Activation DRM and lock you out until you buy a legitimate product licence.

Do a clean install if you can, and put some decent free antivirus/anti-spyware software on. If you system starts behaving normally, then I'd put a bit of money up for a quality antivirus product, as the best free antivirus products cannot match the best commercial ones, IMO.

Edit: Bingowings suggestion is a good one. Check your power settings in control panel.

Mielr said:

ElectricTriangle said:

Crapple said:

Also does the 97 have digital smearing

 Yes.

IIRC the only masters with "digital smearing" were the ones used for the DC/Faces/GOUT because the notorious "dirt concealment" method was used.

That would mean the '97 is smear-free.

 Unfortunately all of the available '97 versions, including VHS/laserdiscs and the DVB recordings are plagued with the smearing produced by DVNR.

Jetrell Fo said:

StarThoughts said:

Wasn't LD Dolby AC-3 limited to 384 kb/s? If so, the DVD's 448 kb/s track would probably sound better if corrected for the volume discrepancy.

I was referring more to DTS audio that was mixed for the actual film print.  I would guess that it's dynamic range "might" be better than those created to fit the home viewing experience.

AFAIK the mixes for The Matrix over the years are identical, and for this reason the lossless audio from the Blu-Ray should be, technically speaking, superior to the cinema DTS because it has a higher sample rate, a higher bit depth and its lossless, which means it should have a better dynamic range. Whether you notice the difference or not, though, probably depends on your equipment and how discerning your ear is. There shouldn't be much, if any, noticeable difference between theatrical mixes and home audio mixes provided they are derived from the same master and don't suffer 'enhancement' for home viewing.

That looks like crosstalk, which can be attributable to disc mastering, or your player (I think). I had the same problem with my copy of the US SE set, only on side 2 of the first disc when played back through my older LD player. I don't remember seeing the same crosstalk on my newer player the last time I checked, but I wasn't looking for it. I don't think cleaning the disc made any difference, either.

StarThoughts said:

Question: How does the theatrical DTS standard differ from the home video incarnation (assuming 1536 kb/s)? How much advantage is gained by presenting it in DTS-MA? Or is it just being done in this manner to avoid any possible transcoding issues?

I agree with Jetrell Fo insomuch as that I cannot speak for how TeamBlu are processing their audio, but from a purely factual point of view I can answer this question.

Theatrical DTS is not 1536kbit/s, in fact its not even close. Its encoded at 882kbit/s so that it can fit onto two CD-ROM's (some longer films use three), so its not lossless. It also has a sample rate of 44.1KHz @16-bit compared to DVD's 48KHz@16 or 24-bit sample rate. The audio on the discs is also mastered for cinema, so its very loud compared to a home-media DTS track.

That said, my opinion (having extensively worked on the whole trilogy last year) is that they do sound excellent, certainly better than the 1997 Laserdisc audio and are the best way to experience the '97 SE's.

There is absolutely nothing to lose by encoding them to DTS-HD MA because its backwards compatible with DTS. If the lossless 'extention' is not used, then the DTS-HD file will be the same size as a regular DTS file because thats what the 'core' of a DTS-HD MA audio track is, meaning its backwards compatible with DTS. There are no transcoding issues because the audio can only be extracted directly to WAV before you can do anything with it, so from then on it is 'lossless'.

I'm just looking forward to hearing it all along with the best visual representation possible (even if it is the SE!). I'm sure TeamBlu have done a first-class job, as usual!

I never realised there was a French version! If it has the same treatment as the UK tape then it'll be really easy; at least for you, Andrea, your skills in layering multiple sources are well established!

Does the French version have blended frames too, or is it a standard PAL speed-up?

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

the "From Star Wars to Jedi" needed pieces could be used together with the captures from the japanese lasedisc, or, better, from the "pyramid" PAL french laserdisc.

I captured my set on my Panasonic SVHS deck last year, and I have a feeling that all of the 'special features' have blended frames from the conversion to PAL from NTSC (with the original duration being preserved), so its not just a PAL speed-up as is the case with the films on these tapes. I'll have to check to be certain, but I'm pretty sure that's how it is.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

The XL systems was thought as HTPC, and so I think there will be no problems about HDDs heat - infact, in some models there were two, one on top of another, and I heard about no issues about HDDs heat problems, and those models are 6/7 years old... plus, newest HDDs should produce less heat than older, in particular 5900rpm models.

I was talking bigger picture; I also doubt you that would have heat problems with hard drives, but you will have an extra drive in there adding to the overall heat inside the case and taking up a bit of extra space that the air will have to spread itself out it in.

The thing that seems to affect HDD's the most is people dropping them! ;)

Yes, GPU should be low profile; in particular, the AMD based HD 5450, 6570, 6670 and 7750 are the ones tested by many XL users, and all works very well; as the PSU is only 300W, their power consumption is well under their specs, around 50/60W. Still, don't know a lot about Nvidia GT640; it's a new card for "us" XL owners, and should be tested further, but I think it will be OK, too.

PSU's usually produce less power as the capacitors age, but you'll be just fine if you leave a little bit of headroom within your 300W limit, which is a good thing to do even with a new PSU.

RAM: a heat spreader is welcome, but as the max speed is "only" 667MHz for 8GB, and 800MHz for 4GB, I don't think it will be "crucial".

Ah, you've misquoted me here. I said "crucial" in reference to your choice of graphics card. I simply said that a heat spreader is a good idea. Of course, memory at 'only' 667MHz/800MHz still gets hot, the availability of memory now clocked at 1333MHz+ doesn't mean that the old top-spec memory is going to run any cooler than it did 5 years ago.

Actually, all that said, your memory could be 'Crucial' if you wanted it to be... ;)

You might also want to try some quality thermal compound for the CPU to help heat transfer to lower the CPU temperature a few degrees; Arctic Silver 5 is pretty good for this and does work better than the standard thermal compound although the results of 'how much better' can vary, and it is a relatively inexpensive item (or so you will think until you see how small the syringe is, but there is enough for several CPU's).

I've had to repair too many systems in small form-factor cases (and laptops) that have suffered from component failure due to heat, and would rather it not happen to you, Andrea. HTPC cases are generally not high performance. A tool such as SpeedFan will help you monitor temperatures once you have performed your upgrades.

I'm sure you will have little or no trouble, but I figured I'd just give you some food for thought. It would be a shame to have any of your work disrupted by system problems; I'm really looking forward to watching your work on The Thing (when I eventually get around to getting it), and I'm hoping you'll get some more Star Wars-related work done soon.

Nice specs!

The only thing to take into consideration is cooling. Two hard drives will add to the internal temperature, especially if they're crammed in next to each other. You choice of graphics card will be crucial too. You don't want something too excessive in there because it will get very hot. I'm guessing you're dealing with low-profile cards, which means you should find a nice compromise as excessive power doesn't really go hand-in-hand with smaller cards.

One more note: any large PCI cards may obstruct the GPU cooler, which is not desirable if it can be avoided; I've seen a GPU cooling fan melted off its bearing due to this, it was dangling onto the sound card that had been put directly underneath it!

RAM with a discreet heat spreader would also be a good choice.

The ESI Juli@ is an interesting card! Its nice that you can swap between balanced and unbalanced I/O by physically rotating half of the card, and the DirectWire feature is incredibly useful. It seems a solid choice for analogue capture.

If it had been released in 1996 it would have been ahead of its time, but I'm afraid these systems are just standard HTPC systems, albeit higher-end ones, and quite nice looking too. They're certainly nicer looking than most HTPC's I've seen.

As far as RAID and SSD's go, your CPU will be the bottleneck. The (approx) 40% speed improvement is on read/write operations to the hard drives. Loading applications will be faster, transferring files will be faster, and you will have the capability to capture uncompressed HD video without dropping frames. If you perform a lot of large file transfers from drive to drive or system to system, then you will really like the benefits of RAID. However, if you have a script processing at 10fps then it will still process at 10fps because that's as fast as your CPU can do it.

If you're happy with the performance that the Q6700 brings then that's really what you should get. Motherboard upgrades are not possible in these VGX-XL systems due to the custom form-factor they use, which is a shame because if you could change the motherboard then you could increase performance dramatically for relatively little cost. I'm not convinced a faster GPU would make much of a difference, but of course if you play the occasional 3D game, and/or want to just tweak your system to the max then certainly there is no negative impact, provided your case cooling is adequate. ;)

An observation about overclocking, its interesting how it was once a risky, warranty-voiding endeavour for the cash-strapped and MHz-hungry and these days its used as a marketing gimmick and can actually cost more to implement effectively than just buying a faster CPU or GPU in the first place!

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

I don't want to buy new PCs, as my three Sony VGX-XL systems are really beautiful "vintage" computers, still today with very good qualities that cannot be found on normal PC without a quite big budget... so, no "fancy" Intel I7!

I both agree and disagree with you here. I don't buy new PC's either, nor do I like doing so. Loads of bundled and unnecessary software, limited upgrade options due to the case/motherboard designs... no thanks!

What are these qualities it has? I find it hard to believe that a superior (contemporary) system would cost more than one of those systems brand new, which makes me intrigued as to what these features are that these systems have?

But, a Core 2 Quad Q6700 at 2.67GHz (the best CPU that Sony's motherboard and PSU could handle, and with no overclock, I'm sorry to admit) will be a huge improvement in speed.

It should be fairly cheap too, although you might have to shop around if you want a new one because LGA775 CPU's are becoming hard to find. I'd try to avoid used processors that have been over-clocked if you can as its possible the life of the CPU may have been shortened if it wasn't cooled adequately.

You should absolutely see a big improvement in speed over the Core2Duo without overclocking, and it wouldn't be recommended to overclock your systems either due to the case design.

I'm aware of no further speed boost by upgrading the GPU, but as the other two old videocards are dead, I think a better GPU than a "simple and honest" HD 5450 will give some modest speed improvement - after all, as I should replace them, I'll go for the best it could fit, e.g. GT 640 2GB or HD 7750 (1 or 2 GB).

If it is a case of the speed being higher because the newer GPU is leaving more resources free, then there's no guarantee that an even faster card will make a difference. The performance gain could be so small it would be out-weighed by the cost.

I was also aware of the CUDA related things, but I was surprised that an AMD Radeon could improve avisynth/virtualdub speed too!

DXVA and OpenCL are available on both AMD and nVidia cards and have been for some time, and I haven't found many free applications that support CUDA, but there are certainly more that support DXVA. CUDA has no effect on Avisynth/VirtualDub, but I don't know if DXVA does, either.

The fact that there are GPU-specific plugins available for Avisynth inclines me to believe it has no built-in 'default' use for a GPU. As usual this is just postulating, I have no technical evidence for this. ;)

About SSD and/or RAID: I could do both, but after I will upgrade CPU and GPU, I think the speed boost will be relatively small (5%? 10%?) - a RAM booster maybe could be a cheap alternative with comparable results, what do you think?

Admittedly, in terms of processing speed, it won't make much (if any) difference with an SSD or RAID setup, but the benefits are there when transferring files, capturing uncompressed at higher resolutions, or processing very 'light' scripts. A RAID 0 array of two hard drives, in the most basic terms, 'doubles' the access speed; the actual improvements at full speed are probably around 40%, in my experience. The more drives you add to the array, the faster the transfer speeds. A single SSD will be faster and more reliable, although way more expensive for considerably less space. SSD's in RAID would almost certainly be a waste of money given the cost/size ratio, and your CPU would be the bottleneck anyway.

msycamore said:

CapableMetal said:

The Japanese Special Collection features a shrinking aspect ratio (ANH only)

No, it doesn't. It's only the Pioneer/Mitsubishi pressings of ANH - Special Widescreen Edition that does.

My bad, you're both quite right. The ratio does vary slightly from reel to reel but it doesn't shrink throughout the course of the film. I backed up my JSC and SWE discs recently and have gotten my wires crossed. Sorry about that!

While the Technidisc pressing doesn't have the same issue as the Pioneer/Mitsubishi pressings due to using a different film source and master, its cropping varies quite much - about two thirds of the film is quite heavily cropped with an aspect ratio closer to 2.25:1 rather than 2.35:1/2.40:1. So the parts that are not as cropped are instead vertically stretched.

Thanks for the info, I had noticed the ratio was closer to 2.25:1 but hadn't noticed the stretched parts.