Chewtobacca

Booshman, another approach to integrating the 4:3 material into the BD footage is to pillarbox as well as letterbox it (after resizing it appropriately). That way, you can enjoy most of the film in widescreen. I’ve seen this done before, and it works. After all, the bulk of the film is unchanged, and the switch occurs only briefly for a few shots/sequences, which are going to stand out whatever you do. It would save you a great deal of work.

By the way how are you panning and scanning the film? It sounds as if you are managing to do it quite swiftly.

To be honest, I don’t understand exactly how the ABC and RIC differ. I know that the latter has some shots that are missing from the former, but is the reverse true? I wonder if there’s a comparison of the two somewhere.

Booshman said:
I made that dual layer version, which I sourced from the original PAL release. So the intelacing problem is present on that version too. My suspicion would be that it was also present on the original 2 disc NTSC version too. I hope there is a way to undo it but we may be stuck with it.

I didn’t know that there was a 2-disc NTSC original – I thought that the PAL original was later converted to NTSC. Could some of the footage that you need be taken from the ABC cut?

Happy Christmas, everybody! 😃

^ That’s certainly the situation in general. I was curious as to whether you knew something that I didn’t about 2. (As far as I know, the releases don’t differ.)

Molly said:

How hard would I have to hunt to get the right BD(s) of Superman 2 and Superman 2 RDC, to have the necessary footage?

What do you mean by the “right” BDs? Are there different BD releases of 2? I picked up the UK anthology set years ago simply because it was cheap.

EDIT: I’m pretty sure that the DC in the anthology set doesn’t differ from the first release (if that’s what you mean).

My DVD-5s are approved by Harmy.

althor1138 said:…you index the dvd with forced film as an option and I think it’s generally accepted as the way to achieve gout sync.

That’s right.

Williarob said:
I’m thinking I might abandon the DNR version…
…Would anybody here be too upset?

I was going to suggest sticking to a non-DNR version, so that’s fine by me.

DrDre said:

Here’s the complete set of warmer regrades:

The set looks great, DrDre. Add me to the list of those who prefer this regrade to the one that followed. 😃

AntcuFaalb said:
So the SPFX are 30p?

They certainly seem to be, but I can’t absolutely rule out there being some hybrid material. If I have the chance, I’ll have a look at some of the other NTSC discs.

If this is the case, what if we used motion compensation to generate 4 intermediate frames for every group of five and then drop the originals? This would give us the 4:5 ratio we need without jerky movement.

Motion-compensated frame-interpolation could certainly generate intermediate frames, but when you generate so many, the resulting video is riddled with artifacts. What you suggest is even worse than the typical use of frame-interpolation to double frame-rates, because – as you say – the originals are discarded, leaving no “clean” frames that might otherwise draw some attention away from the deficiencies of the interpolated ones. Tackling the effects sequences in this fashion presents similar problems to the ones discussed in this thread.

The only issue left, I think, is figuring out what to do between each group of 4 because the lack of an intermediate frame there will result in its own jerkiness.

That would negate any advantage frame-interpolation has over simple decimation of the effects sequences; however, it should be possible to use SVPFlow or SmoothFPS2 to generate frames at evenly spaced motion-increments without a gap. As you’ve probably realized, I don’t recommend it.

JayArgonaut said:

Great news!

Indeed! Your efforts are much appreciated, AntcuFaalb. 😃

EDIT: I trimmed out one of the effects shots and…

• a) recompressed it without changing anything (B5_orig)
• b) changed the frame-rate to 23.976fps with SmoothFPS2 (B5_new).

The live-action scenes were shot at 23.976fps and telecined: they can be inverse telecined. The effects shots were created at 29.97fps and can’t be inverse telecined: they can be decimated, but that leaves you with jerky movement. One can go ahead and deinterlace them, but the result will be a mess because they’re not really interlaced in the first place. (There might be some hybrid material, but going from memory and a quick look at the first disc, there doesn’t seem to be much.)

Of course, I was assuming NTSC. The effects shots in the PAL versions are more of a mess and do exhibit combing and, I think, some field-blending.

But that’s the problem: they can’t be successfully deinterlaced, because of how they were made. It’s possible to IVTC the live-action shots, but then you’re left with a VFR, and VFR encoding is not straightforward. I think it’s better to keep the episodes 29.97fps and let any deinterlacing/interpolation occur upon playback.

That sounds good, and as there’s no need to hit a certain file-size, CRF encoding is definitely the way to go. As you know, values ranging from 22 to 18 (inclusive) are considered standard. In this sort of situation, my preference is for 16. Perhaps you could encode one episode with that value and see how it turns out.

^ Failing that, just use a high CRF value. What do you envisage as a delivery format?

Understood! I wasn’t actually expecting anyone to do it – just expressing frustration at the situation. 😃

There must be some way of getting these from VUDU. B5 in 4:3 is really high on my wishlist. It’s frustrating that the episodes are floating about in various places but I can’t purchase copies of the wretched things.

The lettering looks good, and the sample looks very promising. Best of luck!

Aiming for .mpg files is unusual. They are for MPEG-2 (or MPEG-1). Unless you want to make DVDs, pick something that offers better compression. I’d encode with x264 and make MKVs.

And I’m curious as to what was made at 60fps and put on a tape. I’d be grateful if you’d send me one such file. 😃

EDIT: By the way, the episode has a levels issue but only with the white text on the purple border: the rest of the video looks all right.

Thanks for the full episode and for the additional information about the files. I think that the next step is to find something other than the Elgato to capture these because it seems to be creating some abnormality in the header (and because there must be a better way).

Frame rate mode                          : Constant
Frame rate                               : 29.970 (29970/1000) FPS
Original frame rate                      : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS

The conversion from 25fps to 29.97fps is being achieved by duplicating every fifth frame – and, I think, a frame every 1001 frames (or not): the abnormality in the header makes it difficult to tell exactly what frame-rate the Elgato wants this to be. That’s quite common, and usually one uses TDecimate(Mode=2,Rate=25) to restore the video to 25fps, but in this case, it returns a non-standard rate: 25.0005fps. I tried to account for the abnormality in the header, but it didn’t make any practical difference to the output.

To do what I did, install AviSynth (the latest non-MT 32-bit version) and FFMS.

FFVideoSource("My Great Game - OilRig - 2016-09-04 21-40-20.mp4")
TDecimate(Mode=2,Rate=25)

But as I said, it would be better to find another way to capture, one that enables you to stay in 25fps. Nonetheless, HCenc seems to accept the input for DVD, even at 25.00005fps. What is your intended delivery format?

EDIT:

TheStarSwitcher said:
SMALL SNIPPET FROM VHS CAPTURE (what I’m trying to aim for, these tapes are in an amazing 60p if this helps. It’s presented here in 30 from a basic capture):

I don’t understand how a tape can be 60p. As you say, the sample is 30i – when deinterlaced, it’s 60p.

Oh, I see. You have the files on your iPhone and are recompressing them to transfer them to PC. Is there no way of transferring them without recompressing them? I’ve no experience with iPhones, so I can’t suggest a method, but I’d imagine that there’s a way of copying them onto some sort of drive and from there to the PC.

Failing that, please provide a sample that’s not been through Vegas, because that’s adding another step to the process and another lossy recompression. It might be best if you upload an episode. 3GB isn’t that big.

If the sample’s been cropped in Vegas, it’s not a sample of the untouched file. What format is the original in? We’ll need a sample of that. If the episodes aren’t too big, just upload one and PM me the link.

TheStarSwitcher said:
-My initial source for these is in 25p.
-The files I have are in 30p, resulting in a duplicate frame.

…Is there any way to get rid of the duplicate frame, going back to 25p…?

I don’t understand this. Whatever you did that changed the frame-rate was the wrong thing to do if you’re now asking how to to undo it. Don’t handle your initial source in that way: find some other way.

…and possibly restoring some lost motion by interpolating that to 60p?

Motion interpolation won’t restore lost temporal resolution. You’ll probably find the result smoother in terms of motion, and the interpolated frames might resemble the lost ones superficially, but there’s no getting them back. What’s gone is gone for good unless you find another source that’s not been (mis)handled in the same way.

Best of luck for Monday, Warb.

If all you want to do is watch the GOUT for nostalgia reasons, it would be simpler to remux the NTSC GOUT with Laserschwert’s German track – that way, you wouldn’t have to speed up the audio.

Haarspalter said:

How can i successfully sync the desired audio track to the PAL GOUT of Star Wars?

Why not just watch Laserschwert’s version? Who wants to watch the GOUT video?