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Citizen

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

Post History

Post
#148173
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
Yes once the mpeg2 encoding is complete I'll set the computer onto making the XviD version (need it for my projector, playing the DVD version with a software player just doesn't look as good on the projector), good thing about making the XviD version is I can leave VirtualDub running completely in the background, unlike the mpeg2 encoding of which I can't use the computer for *anything* else due to the resource & drive hogging that goes on (estimate over 850gb of data transfer for the 4 DVD encodes...)
Post
#147838
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
The Canopus ADVC-100 isn't like a 'conventional' capture card because all the analogue/digital conversion it does is completely separate from the computer, it's a standalone analogue to/from DV converter and doesn't have any adjustable brightness/contrast/colour/sharpness settings.

I'm using the German LDs for the bulk of my DVDs and the same post-processing brightness/contrast/colour settings works fine for all sides of all the discs, but when I patch the side breaks & intro with the French LD footage I find that yes I have to individually tailor the post-processing settings for each clip as one setting doesn't work for all.
Post
#147504
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
From the source capture files I make an anamorphic NTSC resolution huffyuv avi and an anamorphic PAL resolution huffyuv avi, from there I encode the avis into dual layer and single layer sized mpeg2 files for the DVDs. I convert the capture separately to PAL & NTSC because the last sharpen filter is slightly different, the PAL sharpen setting is 20% higher than the NTSC to compensate for the 20% more pixels compared to NTSC.
If I were to convert the capture files direct to multi-pass mpeg2 it would take 27 days processing to make the PAL & NTSC dual layer & single layer DVDs! hence the need for the huffyuv avis that can be directly encoded to mpeg2.

Believe me the computational process is going as fast as it can.
Post
#147489
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
AbsoluteDestiny, you're welcome to upload it somewhere for people to download, however once I've finished the trilogy transfer I'll be doing covers & disc labels using the same source images I used for the main menus (the faces & backgrounds)


Conversion of ESB capture to anamorphic PAL & anamorphic NTSC resolution huffyuv files has begun, now for the 3 day wait till they're done...
Post
#147321
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
I can't see how dynamic compression can be a side effect of time compressing, I think they did it deliberately, if you (can stand to) look at what they did to the 2004 DVDs it's unfortunately not really suprising.


In the middle of colour correcting ESB and thought I'd post an example of the difference between before & after correcting, mostly I did the correction 'by eye' with help from the elusive eyedropper in VirtualDub, I'm use the same settings/filters on all 3 films because they were all mastered at the same place with the same technique.

http://www.haku.co.uk/pics/StarWarsColouring.jpg
Post
#146755
Topic
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Time
russs15, yes I have all 3, the DVD versions are encoded at 224kbps because there's nothing worse than listening to low bitrate speech, I don't often download/listen to other ones because most of the time the people who encoded them are deaf idiots; "hey it's only speech so I can put it at 32kbps mono 22050hz, I doubt they'll notice it sounds like a herd of cats being dragged backwards through a ten foot deep hedge..."
Post
#146686
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
A friend of mine gave me these yesterday:

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

I did a quick capture of the beginning 5 mins, the stardestroyer going over and stormtroopers wiping the floor with rebel scum, it appears to have been created from the same source the French & German THX laserdiscs were made from as it has the same burn marks when you first see the droids, and the audio has the same characteristics as the French subtitled LDs, timestretched so the pitch is correct and the dynamic range has been altered so the explosions don't have a disctintive oomph and are just more loud noise amongst the other loud noise. I don't know who allowed the audio to have THX certification but they need a slap.

Are these the tapes Moth3r is using for the audio of his LD transfer?

The only good thing about these tapes is that they have the full English audio for the George Lucas interviews, my German LDs have the same interviews but dubbed.
Post
#146602
Topic
***The Official NON-Star Wars FAN EDIT*** Release Thread
Time
Any fans of the 1985 film "Explorers" starring River Phoenix & Ethan Hawke? When Paramount finally released this on DVD they buggered up the transfer, slightly incorrect aspect ratio (three kids with squashed heads fly around in an oval bubble) and a couple of scenes in the UK release were added as bonus scenes and weren't put into the movie - see my Explorers VHS/DVD/laserdisc comparison page for more details.

Well I set to and corrected the aspect ratio and re-inserted the scenes ...but I lost the disc somewhere, planning on re-doing it because it's one of my all time favourites, a shame there's cutting room floor scenes that will never be seen again (pause the film when Darren's getting those images zapped into his head and you'll see a still of the 3 kids walking next to each other at school)
Post
#146594
Topic
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Time
The logo/text on the main menu was sort of on purpose put there, close to the overscan border, the extras menu I got more concerned with placing the text on the picture than in the 'invisible' overscan border (bloody overscan, it probably ruins more films/tv than pan&scan - and people don't know!). The logo/text is in the exact same position on ESB/ROTJ menus and will stay there but the extras menus for those will be ok.

If you're viewing on an oldish non-widescreen CRT you probably won't benefit from the increased video bitrate of the dual layer version, plus the single layer version has no extras menu (there'll be a separate single layer disc with all the extras of the trilogy) In other words if you're going to the cost and trouble of burning a dual layer version you'd be nuts to watch it on an old 4:3 screen, from the start I'd intended my project to be at a high enough detail level so it can be shown on a really big screen without looking like VHS.

I can see all the menu options fine on my 28" widescreen Sony Trinitron, I got it 2nd hand and found the overscan to be too much so found the code for going into the service menu and adjusted the picture so the overscan is as small as possible without seeing the small black borders on broadcasted material.
(a tip for anyone going into a tv service menu, DON'T! took bloody weeks of tweaking it so the picture looked 'right', if you thought the trapeizoid etc. was difficult to adjust right on PC monitor you ain't seen nothing)

Post
#145906
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
I'm low on discs so can't help out for now, but segaflip isn't the only one with the PAL & NTSC, DL & SL ANH...

ESB capturing is going well, should be able to start encoding the video for the DVDs at the weekend, I'm planning on finishing ESB & ROTJ by the end of this month, then do disc/case artwork, after that PAL & NTSC Blade Runner from the DC HD source with the 5.1 and a second audio track of the original version with the voiceover (hope it's easy to edit the audio to compensate for the extra and missing scenes of the DC) - it's going to make the official DC DVDs look like VHS transfers.
Post
#145530
Topic
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Time
It's not the 5x capturing it's the edge directed 2x resizer that takes away a little of the sharpness which is why I added 2 sharpening filters into my conversion to compensate, I've stuck with the edge directed resizer because it also reduces some of the grain, the sharpness on Moth3r's version is an illusion helped by the haloing, if you were to take away the haloing the perceived sharpness would decrease.

Both the PAL & NTSC versions of my trilogy come from the same 'master' capture files so look virtually identical in terms of colour/detail etc., I didn't encode one format then convert to the other.
Post
#145315
Topic
.: Citizen's NTSC DVD / PAL DVD / XviD project :. (Released)
Time
Originally posted by: THX
Given that you're based in the UK and have had great results with your PAL transfer, wouldn't it make sense to look into a pre-Definitive Collection PAL set like this one?

Yes it'd make perfect sense, I'm not totally clued up on the available SW LDs floating about so thanks for the heads up on the pre-1995 French widescreen LDs, I'm still in the middle of my trilogy transfer and at this point it's all speculation and just looking at the idea of doing a transfer from non-temporal discs, any and all information is useful.
Post
#145159
Topic
***Citizen's NTSC DVD/PAL DVD/XviD Info and Feedback Thread***
Time
Moth3r I agree yours has an edge (no pun intended) on the detail level, I tried to match yours but soon realised the side effects of doing this would mean either edges that were too hard so individual pixels & grain would show up too much, or end up with halos like your set. So I went towards a more natural film-like look which meant a slightly softer image that still has clarity.

Nero handled burning the DL ISO ok? wonder how it handled setting where the layer change occurs... when I authored the DVD I had to set where the layer change happened, then when creating the ISO from the AUDIO_TS & VIDEO_TS folders using pgcedit it must've imbedded it in the ISO as well as giving me the sector number for burning with DVDDecrypter.
Post
#144501
Topic
<em><strong>The Official Dark/Sega Special Collection</strong></em> OT LD Release Thread (Not an SE Transfer) (Released)
Time
I know you didn't do any filtering but the software to capture/encode still makes a difference, just looked at the nfo on the disc, I use a Canopus ADVC-100 which has identical conversion hardware to yours and it's conversion is good which would suggest the colour variations are on the discs themselves. Out of curiosity what DV codec do you use? I tested a few different ones before settling on Canopus' own one, the others I tried introduced colour alterations and/or over sharpening.
Post
#144485
Topic
<em><strong>The Official Dark/Sega Special Collection</strong></em> OT LD Release Thread (Not an SE Transfer) (Released)
Time
I detest temporal smoothing, it 'taints' films I feel, if there's only a little amount of dust/scratches as with this Japanese set there's no need for it because your own eyes/brain do a much better job of ignoring them than poor quality brute-force filters like those used on the Definitive/Faces/PAL THX discs, so will in the future probably be looking towards getting the earliest widescreen discs so I can try to make a high quality no-smear trilogy set of my own.
Post
#144480
Topic
<em><strong>The Official Dark/Sega Special Collection</strong></em> OT LD Release Thread (Not an SE Transfer) (Released)
Time
About a £170 arm and a leg with postage it is then it's not something I could look at affording this year if I were to have a bash at transferring it. Something I noticed was how out of whack the colours were on the Dark/Sega transfer, you get the colours right for one scene and look at another scene with those settings and the colours are wrong again, I don't know if it's due to the capturing hardware/software or if it's like that on the laserdiscs.

What's the '92 US widescreen set, different from the Definitive Collection I take it?
Post
#144468
Topic
<em><strong>The Official Dark/Sega Special Collection</strong></em> OT LD Release Thread (Not an SE Transfer) (Released)
Time
Inbetween capping TESB for my trilogy I've been taking a closer look at this Dark/Sega Special Collection version, removing the 3:2 pulldown, adjusting the white balance/hue/saturation so things look 'right' and it's leaving me with a single thought... I WANT THIS JAPANESE LASERDISC SET!

The test results I'm getting are showing that it could really give the PAL transfers a run for their money, firstly it doesn't suffer the interlace/jaggies problem of the definitive set but the main reason being they didn't use any temporal smoothing to reduce grain, no smearing during motion!

Check this short XviD clip out, first half is from my PAL LDs (I had to increase the brightness to match), the 2nd half from the Dark/Sega SC DVD, on the Dark/Sega part you can see the rockface in detail whereas on the PAL sourced version it's badly smeared (same on the Definitive & Faces discs), the blurred smearing is not a result of the cleanup filters I use - whoever authored the LDs did that.

StarWarsDarkSegaTestClip.avi - 916kb, 720x306, XviD


Knowing my luck it's probably as rare as chickens teeth and costs an arm and a leg