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Citizen

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17-May-2005
Last activity
15-Sep-2006
Posts
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Post
#129603
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129603/action/topic#129603
Time
Reply sent.



Any AviSynth gurus out there? I've run into a problem trying to overlay subtitles onto my video with AviSynth.

I can't use the built-in Subtitle() function because it outputs text in 1:1 ratio and I'm working with anamorphic footage so the resulting text would be badly squashed when the video is played back, so far I've been able to overlay an image containing the text onto the footage which is ideal because I can make sure the text looks just how I want:

video=avisource("source.avi")
logo=imagesource("subtitle.bmp")
overlay(video,logo,0,511)

but that overlays the subtitle image over the entire length of the footage, I need to be able to specify the range of frames it overlays the subtitle image onto and I can't figure out how to, help anyone?
Post
#129461
Topic
Citizen's Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool for your browser
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129461/action/topic#129461
Time
I think I can sum up a reply in just 7 words, from the page: "This JavaScript utility is designed for me."



In the case of fixed pixel displays of LCD panels & plasma displays, like CRTs the width/height can be adjusted and they can also have overscan areas where the edges of NTSC/PAL footage isn't displayed so for normal DVD content it's still up to the the screen itself to do the scaling of the input source because as far as I know they haven't made any flatscreens (LCD/plasma) that are perfect full NTSC or PAL resolutions so no scaling is done by the panel.
Which is why I'm not too fussed about that aspect of this tool.

As for outputting video at the right aspect ratio for projectors powered by PCs, they're 1:1 which is why there's a PC (1:1) output box on the page and I'll be producing a set of XviD files from the trilogy for myself that are 1024 pixel width at 1:1 aspect for my projector so it doesn't need to do any scaling.


I've changed the calculations so that they use the ITU-R BT.601-4 standards because that applies to the source material I'm working with, laserdiscs and for the moment I'm not working with recent high quality source such as HD or DVDs produced from HD masters.
Under the original set of calculations the aspect ratio of my French SW LDs came out at 2.29:1 but with the ITU-R BT.601-4 standards they come out at 2.35:1.
A friend of mine knows how to code javascript very well so I will ask him about beefing up the code so there's more input/output flexibilty without cluttering up the screen with a million and one options.
Post
#128891
Topic
Citizen's Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool for your browser
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128891/action/topic#128891
Time
I submitted the link to ARCT to a couple of websites, digital-digest.com and http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=ARCT, the first comment on videohelp.com has got me thinking, they mention 352x576 which is a format some digital broadcasters use and some standalone DVD recorders use, now I haven't added that resolution to the calculator yet but apart from that 352x2=704 which some capture devices use for the width instead of 720.

If someone could get their thinking cap on and have a muse over this; if you capture letterbox footage at 720x576 and the same footage at 704x576 the pixel width of the actual letterbox image will be the same (if there's sufficient empty space on either side), so which width resolution (704 or 720) should be used to calculate the aspect ratio of the footage?
Post
#128395
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128395/action/topic#128395
Time
In a word, slowly.

I keep getting distracted by watching episodes of Lost, The Dead Zone, Battlestar Galactica, Andromeda, Stargate (SG-1 & Atlantis) etc.

Currently at the stage of the 5.1 upmix from 2.0 audio, added an extra sprinkling of surround to it which adds to the feeling of being 'in' the movie instead of watching it, ie most films only use the front three speakers of a 5.1 setup but I like it when the surrounds kick in more, especially the background music which is so important in SW.
The 'minor' glitch I'm smoothing over is a problem with too much subbass because the 5.1 upmix method gives you an empty .1 track you have to make yourself, just not sure what crossover hz to use so anything below x hz goes to the .1 and anything above goes to the 5.

ANH will take longer to DVD than the other two because once I've got the procedure nailed I can just repeat it for ESB/ROTJ.

Still need money to get another 100gb+ of harddrive space to make the project easier, plus some more to fix/mod my Tamiya TLT-1 mini-monster truck.
Post
#127861
Topic
Help Wanted: Looking for ESB Behind the Scenes Footage
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127861/action/topic#127861
Time
Not sure how relavent this is to your search, but last week on UK TV they had a show under the Favouritisim series called "Al Murry's Showbiz Fights" and at number 4 was the duel between Luke & Vader in ESB, they had Mark Hamill's stunt double in to point out scenes where he was playing Luke such as going backwards through the big round window.
Luckily I managed to download it last night and it was encoded at high quality (718 pixels wide).
Post
#127469
Topic
Citizen's Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool for your browser
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127469/action/topic#127469
Time
thanks

As far as I'm concerned it's now finished, I've completed what I wanted to create. Latest and (currently) last addition to the tool is an Addborders(0,0,0,0) AviSynth type output for directly putting into an AviSynth script or using with whatever other tool you're using to expand the footage up to full PAL/NTSC/HD resolution.
Along with being able to put 4:3 footage into anamorphic by adding side borders instead of zooming in and cropping the top/bottom.

Before I set out to write this I had a look round and was surprised there weren't any tools that did this exact task, most were just concerned with the basic 4:3, 16:9 & 2.35:1 ratios and weren't flexible enough with the source x,y values.
Post
#127301
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127301/action/topic#127301
Time
Originally posted by: Doctor M
Hmm. First let me nit-pick and say that technically PAL audio isn't time stretched, it is time compressed since the runtime is less than the original. It runs faster, hence the increased frequency. Correcting it requires time expansion. For most PAL material, like it or not, that's really the best alternative out there if you're turning it back to NTSC.

Commenting on the rest (and I could be butt-ass wrong):
As far as pitchshifting. Typically it would not be needed as it only changes the frequency, not the actual speed/length of a clip. In this case (and I thought my ears were playing tricks on me too when I heard the butch C3PO) time expansion is STILL needed. Otherwise when the framerate is slowed to 24fps, the audio will run too short. We are (unfortunately for me) finding that evidentily it will need ADDITIONAL pitchshifting to reverse the whole process they put it through.


From what I gather it's not common practice for films on PAL VHS/DVD/LD to be pitch corrected after/during the 4.096% speedup to 25fps, which is why it surprised me somewhat to find it had been done to the SW VHSs Moth3r used for his DVDs, especially considering how old the recording is.

I was playing with timestreching whilst preserving pitch with CoolEdit earlier, I thought I'd found an optimal setting that didn't destroy the audio till I tried it on a much larger clip... it practically destroyed the intro music completely
I like the idea of resampling first and then adjusting pitch, may have to give that a try, otherwise if I'm not happy with that method I'll just stick to my original plan of resampling and having a 4% higher audio pitch.

So the choices are looking to be: exhaustively edit in an NTSC audio track, give up, or wait for Citizen's release since he will probably not have to add/remove frames to make his audio track match (which will make for an easier match to the DC audio later). Anyone got an external drive they want to send to Citizen for me so I can get the avi files instead


I have on my harddrive a 2.6gb avi of the definitive LD of ANH with no frames lost during the capture, manually removed the 3:2 pulldown then highly compressed it to mjpeg format because each frame is a keyframe, looks terrible but it doesn't matter because I only need it as a guide for syncing up to my PAL capture, the audio was captured & stored in the avi as uncompressed 48khz PCM...
Post
#127298
Topic
Citizen's Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool for your browser
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127298/action/topic#127298
Time
Going to add an extra table of information sometime, one that contains necessary border additions to get a letterbox image up to PAL & NTSC resolutions, ie for if you're working with AviSynth.
Also refine the output calculation so you can input 4:3 resolution and get anamorphic output with borders on the sides instead of cropping the top/bottom, for when you want to create a 100% widescreen DVD - it's a slight annoyance having to change the aspect ratio on my tv viewing some DVDs when viewing the bonus extras.

Just occured to me, could add HD resolution calculation, but I don't know the resolutions involved.
Post
#127255
Topic
Citizen's Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool for your browser
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127255/action/topic#127255
Time

Because the source of the SW letterbox laserdiscs aren't in a true 2.35:1 aspect ratio I had to do some calculating when rescaling to anamorphic so everythign looks fine, I've taken that one step further and been working on more aspect ratio calculation and finally started putting them into some javascript, this is my first stab at coding javascript so you'll have to bear with me

ARCT - Aspect Ratio Calculator Tool

It's just at the first stage of completion, calculation of the aspect ratio, the next stage I'll be adding is outputting the rescaling needed for if you want to output it as PAL or NTSC which is letterboxed or anamorphic, including what size borders to add.

Any comments or helpful hints most welcome.


edit: now completed

Post
#127227
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127227/action/topic#127227
Time
Hmmm, some interesting points to note in this thread:

The sharpening process Moth3r used produces halos around dark edges, No, the halos were not caused by the sharpening (see my post dated 18 April). It's actually an analogue oversharp problem, you can see that the halos are on the left hand side only (if it was digital sharpening it would be both sides). But my version is designed for analogue (CRT) displays, where such things are not as noticable, whereas I understand yours is intended for a digital projector?



Ahh so it's the capture card and/or the LD player that caused the halos? I captured mine on a Pioneer CLD-515 that doesn't have s-video so no combing filters, on a Canopus ADVC-100 which I find produces a very clear image.


I've never seen (heard) a PAL release with preserved pitch.
I hadn't either, so this is a bit surprising. Can anyone confirm this is definitely the case?


Before I posted that the PAL VHS audio source you're using has had pitch preservation I checked yours against the audio from the NTSC definitive LD:

StarWarsAudioSample-Moth3r-25fps.mp3 47kb
StarWarsAudioSample-Definitive.mp3 49kb
StarWarsAudioSample-Definitive-25fps.mp3 47kb

The Moth3r-25fps.mp3 and Definitive.mp3 sound identical, I sped up the Definitive clip to 25fps to show that Moth3r's audio is at the correct pitch whilst playing back faster, also note the filesizes.
Post
#127170
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127170/action/topic#127170
Time
Originally posted by: Mavimao
This is going to be a popular release I can imagine!

Probably, except for a few points:


1. The sharpening process Moth3r used produces halos around dark edges, I used a different method which maintains clarity whilst avoiding halos:
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsDarthMoth3r.jpghttp://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsDarthCitizen.jpg



2. The scene where Obi-Wan and Luke lift up C-3PO after being attacked by the sand people is broken so there's no smooth transition between that shot and the outside shot of Obi-Wan's place.


3. Most importantly, if you merely resample Moth3r's audio from 25fps speed to 23.976fps speed the correct audio pitch will be lowered by 4.096% and everyone will have deeper voices.
This is because the PAL VHS audio source used for his release has been sped up from the original 24fps film but they (the VHS producers) didn't just resample it they also preserved the audio pitch, undoing that and keeping the audio as best as possible may be difficult because you'll have to resample whilst preserving pitch, I couldn't find any timestretching tool I was happy with, the ones I tried (proper packages) weren't competant enough to stretch and keep pitch without ruining certain pitches, it would ruin John Williams' score.

Use NTSC audio source if you can, but fitting it to the video source will be very difficult if the NTSC audio source doesn't have video to go with it as a guide to sync them up.
Post
#126760
Topic
Info Wanted: who no UK PAL LaserDisc Version for a DVD transfer?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/126760/action/topic#126760
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Editous
But it is theoretically possible (albeit very difficult) to take the X0 transfer and reconstruct it as PAL.

It's not a theory, I've "PAL"'d a few NTSC film laserdiscs and it's a relatively simple process after capturing; undo the 3:2 pulldown, rescale to PAL resolution, set the video playback speed to 25fps, speedup the audio to match.
Post
#126566
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/126566/action/topic#126566
Time
Fitting audio from one film source to another film source isn't difficult, just time consuming because you have to scan through both sources at the same time to make sure the frames sync between them, removing or adding frames to the one with the audio so it matches the one you're using the video from, if the playback speeds are different it doesn't matter so long as neither of them have 3:2 pulldown applied (must be removed beforehand).

Speeding up the audio for PAL is very easy, either use something like CoolEdit to resample it or when encoding to AC3, BeSweet can do it on-the-fly.
Post
#126294
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/126294/action/topic#126294
Time
Can't use the audio from the French LDs as it's dubbed in French so will be using the audio from the Definitive collection, starting to think lugging the player+discs over to my friends house to capture at silly high quality is too much hassle so will probably stick to my Canopus ADVC-100 for the audio capture at 48khz, it'll certainly be good enough and there won't be any khz conversion needed at least but will filter out any background inteference noise before upsampling to PAL speed & the 5.1 trick.

Colour, it's been tweaked a little (white balance,hue,saturation) so it looks good I think, I didn't put the saturation as high as the definitive collection because that has too much, nor is it as low as Moth3r's, face colour looks 'right' without them looking like they're badly sunburnt

I don't have the skills or tools to make fancy animated menus so will stick to plain static ones because those I can do, going to keep them simple because I hate DVD menus where it's too cluttered and you can't really work out what option is actually hilited before you select it. I do have some unique SW easter eggs I picked up at a car boot sale, one for each film (not saying what they are )