Chewtobacca

The Aluminum Falcon said:That sounds like the most practical idea Chewtobacca; though I would push the compression to about the size of a BD 25 (smaller yet pretty good quality).

It's not really a matter of pushing the compression.  If you use lagarith, you get what you get.  I said that the file would probably be about the size of a BD-50 because people do upload things that size: I didn't meant that one should be authored.  It sounds like your talking about encoding to a lossy (delivery) format, which is a different situation entirely.

That's interesting, CSA!  You should be able to use eac3to to do it, but as far as I know there are no free DTS encoders, so unfortunately you will have to pay.

strangelove said: Before people get too much more excited about the idea of disseminating the X0 capture, I think it would be worth considering just what an enormous amount of data we're talking about here. Even a dual-layer DVD wouldn't be capable of containing two hours of *uncompressed* video. You guys want to mail each other DV cassettes, fine, but expecting an online upload is pretty unrealistic.

It certainly sounds unrealistic at first, but if the capture is converted to lagarith instead of uncompressed, it would probably be about the size of a BD-50 and people upload those to newsgroups all the time.  (Just a thought!)

MJPollard said:And to decode between the lines of what I said: some of us only have the NTSC version and don't want to spend money on a DVD we otherwise can't use.  Hope that's clearer. :)

Yes; it's clearer. By the same token, people in PAL areas are importing NTSC discs that they wouldn't otherwise use to implement the scripts for SW and ESB, but if people don't want to spend money on that then of course that's their choice.

Don't know about a Mac and I have never done it myself, but I am almost certain that eac3to can do it on a PC.  You would need to have Surcode (or whatever) installed.  If I were in your situation I would go to AC-3 5.1 at 640kbps: it has always sounded good enough to me, so I have never felt the need to invest in a DTS encoder.  I understand that you want DTS though, and it should be possible.

23.976 to 25fps?  Why would you want to turn gold into lead?  (kidding) :-D

Try re-encoding and see if the error recurs.

msycamore said:

Personally I would be more happy to see someone take a stab at the pre-THX LD transfers instead, but every attempt to get the films colortiming closer to its original state is always welcomed. :)

+1 on both counts! 

Those screenshots look great, Lee. :-)

MJPollard said:  @Chewtobacca  It's nice that the PAL ROTJ master was better, but some of us aren't in a position to obtain the PAL DVD.

Why?  Can't you ship the PAL disc?  It wouldn't cost that much.  I'm not sure why that was addressed to me, but, to answer your question, to the best of my knowledge no one has modified the script to work with the NTSC version.

It's faster than any torrent I've ever come across. :-)   Now, we'd better get back on topic...

The Aluminum Falcon said: I'm new to the Newsgroup thing, so, if I get a subscription, then I can download anything on a.b. starwars, right?

Yes; as long as the archive's still in retention/still recoverable.  Use binsearch to find what you want.

@corellian77

From what I understand, g-force wrote the script specifically for the PAL version of ROTJ because the master is different and the issues are slightly different.  I don't think it can be easily modified to fit the NTSC by changing a few lines: it would need a significantly different script.

@Lee

I assume you would apply the script beforehand.  If so, you would need to decide if you wanted to keep g-force's tweaks or make all the adjustments for yourself.

The NTSC GOUT versions for ANH and ESB are better sources than the PAL, so use those and incorporate PAL conversion if you must.  The script for ROTJ is already written for the PAL GOUT because in this case it is the better source.

Yep! :-)

^^ Stop using a media player to preview AVIs.  For one thing it doesn't have a DAR to correct the image.  Load the video into Virtualdub.

Video-->Copy sourceframe to clipboard

Then paste it into Photoshop and make a picture and we can see how it looks.

EDIT:  I actually use Virtualdubmod because it has a snapshot function, under the video tab, that Virtualdub does not seem to have.

Yes; it depends.  Mine have ranged from 18GB to over 50GB.

That file size is about right.  I would imagine that your previous efforts were uncompressed AVI.  Using lagarith allows you to create a lossless file that is considerably smaller than an uncompressed one.

VLC always gives that message.  You don't play massive lossless AVIs in VLC.  If you need to preview, do so in Virtualdub.

If your transfer takes nominal analogue blanking into account, you might expect to see thin pillarboxing of up to eight pixels in width, on the left and the right.  If that's all you see, then it's normal and you have done nothing wrong.

Incidentally, if your picture looks slightly squished, it is because you are viewing a 720x480 image without the 16:9 DAR that stretches an anamorphic encoded image back to the right size upon playback.  Don't worry about this.  You add the 16:9 DAR on re-encoding.

How big is the projected size?  Are you converting a whole movie or just clips?

Pagz said: Sweet Merciful Shatner!

Lol!  I hope it works.  I take it you selected Forced Film for Field Operation In DGIndex.

Lol!  I only checked Word.

Chewtobacca = Tobacconist (boring)

Chewtobacca = Tobacco (obvious)

Chewtobacca = Chewiness (possible)

Chewtobacca = Baccalaureate (unlikely)

Chewtobacca -- "no suggestions"

Pagz said: I'm also curious what the point of AVIsynth is if it's better to just write the script yourself.

You misunderstand what Avisynth is.  Avisynth is a frameserver program.  You write the script for Avisynth.

Once you have loaded your m2v into DGIndex, you save as a d2v.  Then write a script pointing to the location of the d2v on your hard drive.

Mpeg2Source("Your_Directory_Structure\Your_Filename.d2v")

Open that script in Virtualdub.  Then:

Video-->Compression-->Lagarith lossless codec

(Install lagarith  if you haven't already)

File-->Save As-->AVI

Rendering might take a while.

EDIT: Vegas requires RGB.  If you use Full Processing Mode (under the video tab), your AVI will be converted to RGB.  I don't use Vegas, so I don't know what kind of RGB it is best to work with in Vegas.  If I were you, I would find this out, add a line to the script to make Avisynth convert to that from of RGB and use Fast Recompress (under the video tab).

Moth3r said:(Also, regarding the error you mentioned in post 11 - VirtualDub has been able to decompress YV12 since about 2004, it no longer uses the Xvid codec for this. Are you sure you got this error with the latest release?)

Yeah, I guess that might be because he mentioned using Virtualdub MPEG-2 at one point.  To be honest, I didn't have time to read the script beyond the error message.  (I didn't realize the new Virtualdub doesn't need XviD.  I still use the old Virtualdudmod because it handles interlaced YV12 properly and it does everything I need.)

Darth Mallwalker said:It's funny though, I never would've classified myself a 'power user' as Chew calls it; nevertheless, I'll say with certainty that 'Ignore' is correct for what I'm doin'

Make an informed choice

What is that last sentence meant to imply?  That I am not informed?  I didn't come up the term "power user".  Donald Graft uses it in the manual for DGIndex.

From the manual:

Ignore Pulldown Flags - The pulldown flags are ignored. This allows one to obtain the raw encoded MPEG pictures, with no repeated fields. However, because repeated fields intended for display are ignored and not displayed, the resulting frame rate may differ from the source frame rate. It may even vary throughout the clip, due to irregular patterns of pulldown flags. If the pulldown is irregular, use of this option will cause the audio-video sync to change at different parts of the clip, and most likely sync will not be acceptable. This option is mostly intended for power users, who would use it as a diagnostic aid for inspecting the encoded MPEG pictures. Although this option ignores the flags, they are still stored in the D2V file although DGDecode will also ignore them.

If you know what you are doing, then that is of course fair enough, but it is not recommended that most users, especially beginners, set the Field Operation to Ignore Pulldown Flags.  If the advice has changed, Donald Graft should update his manual.

EDIT:  I don't think it has changed though.  The thread you linked to was a different situation to the one being dealt with here.  In that thread, the OP started with pure 24fps material that he had pulled down with DGPulldown.  In this case, there would be a regular 3:2 pulldown running through the video, so Ignore Pulldown Flags + Assumefps would not result in a problem.  In this thread, the OP has an NTSC DVD and cannot assume that the pulldown is uniform throughout the movie.  There might well be a certain amount of hard telecined material present.  I still maintain that selecting Ignore Pulldown Flags is a mistake in this situation.

Pagz said:

Chewtobacca:

When I try to load the .avs file I get the following warning:

Couldn't locate decompressor for format 'YV12' (unknown).

Virtualdub requires a Video for Windows (VFW) compatible codec to decompress video. DirectShow codecs. such as those used by Windows Media Player. are not suitable. Only "Direct stream copy" is available for this video.

Try installing XviD.

Do you receive an error message from Virtualdub?  What does it say?  Post your avs script.

I too downloaded parts 5 and 6 and found them to be complete.