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Citizen

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Join date
17-May-2005
Last activity
15-Sep-2006
Posts
455

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Post
#114492
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/114492/action/topic#114492
Time
Moth3r, I finally finished the download of your PAL ANH and something's got me curious about the clarity of your version, what sharpening/resizing/smoothing filters have you used?

Apart from the clarity of image on your version, something else struck me as I skimmed through the disc, the amount of temporal blurring it has (loss of detail in faces when heads turn, detail in clothes blurring when people walk etc.), is that a side effect of whatever sharpening filter(s) you use? the 5x digitising & averaging I've been doing practically eliminates the need for any temporal smoothing but it also means I can't get the image as pinsharp as yours, any sharpening I do also sharpens grain and to remove the grain means adding temporal smoothing which has the side effect of taking away detail, I prefer a slightly grainier picture than a motion blurred one because the grainier picture seems more natural to me.
Post
#113824
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113824/action/topic#113824
Time
Yeah I noticed the colour was a little green in those shots so tried a whitebalance filter and things are looking better, I used a chroma smoother because the source is DV and shifted it left and down slightly to align it properly.

I need to get hold of some versions other people have done (MySpleen? or contact people direct) so I can do some better comparisons than just using still shots, I only have the Dr_Gonzo versions so far and the detail is blurred out on those. In my above test pictures I used a 2d smoother which may be the cause of less detail than yours, also the 2x resize that the edgeresample filter may be contributing, I'll try some tests without that filter.

Currently (from memory, I'm not at home right now) my VirtualDub filters are; chromasmoother,2d cleaner,2x edgeresize,xsharp sharpen,lanczos3 resize to anamorphic PAL. I want the last filter in the list to be the scaling down to PAL so if when shown on a PC (or my friend's plasma which doesn't have a native PAL or NTSC resolution) any resizing by the player/screen doesn't resize any artefacts from a sharpen or other similar filter.
When I'm back home I'll post a couple of links to PNG images of the 5-averaged avi's so you can see what I'm working with before any VirtualDub filtering.
Post
#113750
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113750/action/topic#113750
Time
There will be a difference between averaging the 5 avis before and after upscaling, averaging after upscaling will mean 5x a render time which is a bit serious when you're looking at 24hours computing to clean up 2 hours of footage prior to encoding to mpeg2, I won't do tests because I don't think there'll be any real quality difference between the two.

One interesting thing is without doing any extra filtering (sharpening & 2d/3d filters) a screengrab an unaltered single capture saved as a PNG is 455kb, whilst a screengrab of the same frame from 5 merged captures saved as a PNG is 416kb.
Post
#113631
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113631/action/topic#113631
Time
I've just burnt a 2 minute test clip to DVD-RW and I'm extremely pleased with the results I'm getting on my 28" widescreen, the DVD player is connected via RGB. A few example images:

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/CitizenWars01.jpg
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/CitizenWars02.jpg
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/CitizenWars03.jpg

I haven't had to do any temporal smoothing at all which is great, what I did for the 2 minute clip is digitise it in 5 times then using AviSynth I merged them together to produce an average output of the 5 clips, finally processing it with VirtualDub.
Post
#113561
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113561/action/topic#113561
Time
I'll probably eventually end up forking out the hideous prices for dual layer discs to get the best picture quality (over 10x the price of single layer discs! damnit why can't the prices come down to £1/disc at least), in the meantime I'll do some tests with encoding footage to quality suitable for single layer and dual layer discs to see if there really is any noticable difference.
Post
#113245
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113245/action/topic#113245
Time

This is my tri-project thread, I’m going to be creating NTSC DVDs, PAL DVDs and high resolution/high bitrate XviD avis for viewing on my projector.

If you wish to comment on the final output(s) of my project then please do so in this thread:
Citizen’s NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread

I currently have the definitive NTSC laserdisc set and the German THX PAL laserdisc set, a Pioneer CLD-D515 LD player, a Canopus ADVC-100 analogue to/from DV box, a P4 2.4ghz with 300gb hd space (I think I need more, I’ve only got about 80gb free) and the want for my own decent transfer for viewing on my homemade projector (see LumenLab.com)

Going to be using the audio from the definitive set and the video from the German THX set, with sections of video from the definitive set because the German set has burnt-in subtitles over the video and the intro text is in German. I’m intending to create PAL DVDs for viewing on my 28" widescreen when I don’t want to use my projector, and 4gb 23.976fps XviD files at 1024x436 for displaying on my projector without them being rescaled during playback so all scaling/sharpening is pre-done.

During testing of cleaning/converting captured video I discovered if I capture the same piece of video 5 times then read in all 5 captures at once and spit out an average, I don’t need to do any temporal smoothing because the resulting average file has much less noise than a single capture, meaning any temporal blurring present is what’s on the LD in the first place.

Post
#113022
Topic
PAL vs NTSC laserdiscs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/113022/action/topic#113022
Time
This is a cropped grab from Dr Gonzo's discs:
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsLDjaggy5.jpg

it exhibits the same jagged edges/lines as what I'm seeing on my set, my laserdisc player is a Pioneer CLD-D515, capturing with a Canopus ADVC-100, I get the same jaggies if I capture with my Matrox G450 gfx/tv card (see back a few posts). None of the other 30 or so NTSC laserdiscs I have exhibit the same jaggies as the SW definitive set.

Can you post the same still from your capture of the definitive set?
Post
#112936
Topic
Idea: Working & Releasing the Audiotracks separately?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/112936/action/topic#112936
Time
Originally posted by: Moth3r
I don't think this is the type of file that would be welcome on myspleen, you need to find someone kind enough (and with enough bandwidth) to run an FTP.

From what I gather about torrents, you don't need to upload the .torrent file to a site such as MySpleen for it to be active, just creating the .torrent with suitable tracker and 'running it' so you're a seeder will 'activate it', from there you can put the .torrent file on a website or email it to someone for others to download the actual file(s).
Post
#112741
Topic
PAL vs NTSC laserdiscs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/112741/action/topic#112741
Time
The definitive set does look sharper but at a significant cost, those jagged horizontal edges/lines, which look horrible when the footage is smoothly scaled up to 1024x436 and projected to 5 foot wide, the PAL set whilst looking softer looks a whole lot better at 5 foot wide.

Now all we need it the same screencap from the faces set and the Japanese set, anyone?
Post
#112663
Topic
Info & Help: looking for... other ld-rips to dvd movies ex. blade runner int cut, songs of the south, frighteners dir cut - and much much more...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/112663/action/topic#112663
Time
The Quiet Earth got released in the UK on DVD, I got a copy, it's fullscreen but crap picture quality as they over-used temporal smoothing to cleanup the picture.

Just remembered a "only available on LD if you want it in widescreen" film I've been wanting for a while now, The Keep, I managed to get a recording off a satellite broadcast but it was fullscreen, a bit better than the VHS though.
Post
#112656
Topic
PAL vs NTSC laserdiscs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/112656/action/topic#112656
Time
Yeah the difference between the grid of white dots on the right (some control panel?) is quite noticable in terms of sharpness, but the PAL set doesn't suffer the jaggies which is much, much more preferable to me as they really show up when projected onto a big screen.

For my transfer I'm going to have to use some video clips from the definitive set, I can't use the German set's video completely because the intro text is in German as are the subtitles (they burnt it into the picture instead of the black border ), hopefully the difference when swapping scenes between the German & definitive set should be unnoticable.
Post
#112649
Topic
PAL vs NTSC laserdiscs
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/112649/action/topic#112649
Time
My German THX LD set arrived this morning I'd already got bored so started work on a DVD transfer of my Deep Red (1994) LD, not the Italian horror film but a not so known sci-fi starring Michael Bein (Terminator, Aliens) & John de Lancie (Q - Star Trek TNG) so I'll finish that and then I'll set to on making my SW DVDs.

But first a comparison, cropped non-scaled caps of the definitive collection vs the German THX collection:
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsLDjaggy2.jpg
http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsLDjaggy4.jpg
Post
#111919
Topic
Non-DVD transfers?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/111919/action/topic#111919
Time
From what I can see you're both looking at the same 'object' from different angles, no you can't increase the information without a better source but you can present that information better (filtering etc.) and that's what we're doing when we filter our captured video, presenting the video in a visually better way than it currently stands (the laserdisc and the plain capture).

As for the sine wave thing, the edge-directed resampler filter I'm using for VirtualDub is along the same lines, it doubles the image size by looking at the edges rather than blindly scaling the image, the results on hard edges is noticable when compared to Lanczos3 for example, sure it's not increasing the information but it's presenting it in a new (and what I feel to be a better) way.
Post
#111799
Topic
Non-DVD transfers?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/111799/action/topic#111799
Time
Originally posted by: MaximRecoil
One more thing; MPEG-4 would be saturated for a 2 hour movie at something under 3 GB; probably around 2.5 GB, so a 4.3 GB MPEG-4 file (XviD/DivX/WMV/MOV/ect) for Star Wars is not likely even if you tried nor would it be of any benefit if you succeeded.

About that, I did a quick test converting captured LD footage in DV format to XviD format, the only thing I did to the LD footage was undo the 3:2 pulldown, the XviD was encoded at 100% image quality with each frame being a keyframe, had I gone ahead and encoded a 2 hour capture the avi would be an estimated 9-10gb in size, so it's perfectly possible to have a 2 hour 4.3gb XviD avi by having 1/2 or 1/3 the number of keyframes.



The main reason I started this topic is because whilst waiting for my PAL LDs to arrive I'm still trying to work out what format(s) I eventually end up putting my set onto, anamorphic PAL is a very high consideration for playing on my 28" widescreen tv and giving a copy to my friend who has a 42" plasma, both setups have the same DVD player and are multiregion so NTSC playback is not a problem except PAL has a smoother playback. But there's also my PC powered projector (5 foot wide image) so I'm toying with the idea of producing a 1024 width XviD for playing back on that.
Post
#111775
Topic
Non-DVD transfers?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/111775/action/topic#111775
Time
Yes I know all the arguments against upscaling an image, the reason everyone's all doing letterbox or upscaling anamorphic pictures is because of the native resolution of DVD and tvs, but when you're dealing with a projector the image has to be upscaled on the fly (I don't know of any PAL or NTSC native resolution projectors) so what I'm proposing is doing the upscaling beforehand with some slight sharpening so the file you're playing back is in the native resolution of your projector.
In my case my projector's native resolution is 1024x768, upscaling a letterbox/anamorphic PAL/NTSC image doesn't give as crisp an image without additional on-the-fly sharpening, ie I've done some tests with creating 1024x436 XviD files from my LD's using a 2x edge-directed resampler to increase the resolution two fold by edges rather than simply scaling, the difference between Lanczos3 and this edge-directed 2x resizer can be seen here, scaling the image back down to whatever you need improves the picture I've found, this is a quick grab from one of my tests:

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsLD1024.jpg

because the width is already 1024 there's no rescaling when playing back and it looks clearer than the same scene encoded to mpeg2 and scaled on-the-fly.