logo Sign In

Darth Editous

User Group
Members
Join date
23-Mar-2005
Last activity
5-Apr-2024
Posts
844

Post History

Post
#295623
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially "de-specialed" DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/295623/action/topic#295623
Time
Yeah, with my new-found AVS plugin skillz I've been looking at all sorts in ANH. That shot above is an abomination - the walls are almost bright cyan, compared to almost grey later - makes me think all they did was make sure C3PO was gold and screw everything else. Later on, Obi-Wan has orange lips. Then during the battle, Wedge shoots orange frickin' lasers! Then there's all the lasers that Lowry picked out as noise and desaturated...

In other words, don't hold your breath

DE
Post
#295593
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially "de-specialed" DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/295593/action/topic#295593
Time
A new AVS plugin that someone might find useful: mutehue

Input must be RGB32. As the name implies, it selectively desaturates pixels of the specified hue. It takes three parameters:

hue: the target hue to adjust (0-360)
tolerance: tolerance of above (+/- degrees)
weight: amount of muting (0-1)

Before and after (applied twice, once on cyans (hue=190) and once on reds (hue=350)):

http://horman.net/mutehue.jpg

DE
Post
#295150
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially "de-specialed" DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/295150/action/topic#295150
Time
If you've been reading my Episode V thread, you'll know I've found myself dragged back into editing Episode IV after learning how to write AviSynth plugins.

This means I can now fix a lot of the things I just didn't have the time or patience for last time around. For example, I don't think I ever really noticed that Vader's mask had red eyes until recently, and by then I'd already edited and inserted a lot of shots of Vader, for example during the duel. This meant that to repaint his eyes would mean dropping down another generation of MJPEG compression - it would almost certainly be unnoticeable, but it would have made things very awkward, having to extend inserted shots with unadjusted material.

Now, though, I've been able to write an AviSynth plugin which will do it "live". This means I only need to store a mask rather than storing the whole repainted shot. It also means I need to load less AVIs into AviSynth, which limits me to around 70 inserts, which had meant splitting the movie into three sections.

I've also written a plugin to fix the bad blue screen problems that are occasionally visible during the attack:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/8546/badbluegn2.jpg

I only fixed one or two shots like this originally, but there are a lot more (none as bad as the above). Then I found there were other shots which showed a similar blue glow:

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/6405/bluevaderml4.jpg

And it even removes the blue glow on the Star Destroyer's engines:

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/3512/sdpn1.jpg

At this rate I may just apply the plugin to the whole movie...

Other new fixes so far include: a corrected aspect ratio for the clock wipe from the Sandcrawler to the Stormtroopers (now implemented as an AviSynth filter), some matte lines around a TIE fighter removed, and a brief shot of Tarkin mouthing something else before he says "Yes?" fixed.

DE
Post
#294800
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode V DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a work in progress
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/294800/action/topic#294800
Time
Thanks for those suggestions, I'll definitely look into them.

I've been redoing some of my simple alterations )wipes, etc) so they're now done with Avisynth filters instead of being a generated image sequence which was then converted to an AVI and inserted with Avisynth. For example, instead of colour-replacing in Photoshop, I'm now fixing the bad blue screen errors with my Avisynth filter, which means I can quickly apply it to any shot.

I'm also now going through and "repainting" the red eyes in Vader's mask. Previously this would have meant painting each frame in Photoshop (or at least, writing something to load each image, repaint it, and save it, then encode the sequence to AVI...), but now I can fix hundreds of frames in a few minutes. Using filters means I can also fix frames that have already been edited in some way, e.g. where I've already repainted lightsabres. Previously this would have meant re-encoding the inserted AVI - losing a generation doesn't mean much with MJPEG, but I still wouldn't want to do it.

And before anyone asks, no, it won't be colour corrected I may try to fix the skin tones in some shots, but the blockade runner's walls are not going to be pure white. Sorry I am experimenting with ways to increase the brightness - I've come up with one okay method, but in some ways it looks nicer if I just bring the black level up to about 32/255.

DE

PS Quick plug for this piece of software, without which I would have to redo my replacement projection of Alderaan. Serves me right for always shift-deleting...
Post
#294770
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode V DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a work in progress
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/294770/action/topic#294770
Time
The video for the Emperor scene is complete, but the audio is tricky. And, unfortunately and annoyingly for anyone waiting for this edit, I've been inventing new efficient ways of implementing my changes, which means I'm now going back through ANH and tidying everything up, fixing some of the things I didn't fix last time around, and improving some of my old fixes.

DE
Post
#294119
Topic
Info: GOUT Anti-aliasing
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/294119/action/topic#294119
Time
Your script does:

EEDI2().TurnRight().EEDI2().TurnLeft()

Which doubles the height, rotates the image 90 degrees, doubles the height (width) again, then turns the image back. Since the jaggies are horizontal-only for the reasons you described, I think you only need to:

EEDI2


and then scale vertically to 66.6...% and addborders/crop (depending on whether you crop initially or not) as necessary to get back to 480 pixels.

DE
Post
#294115
Topic
Info: GOUT Anti-aliasing
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/294115/action/topic#294115
Time
Arnie, did you start with the PAL DVDs? If so, the jaggies are partly (if not entirely) due to the PAL DVDs being a simple upscale of the NTSC ones.

The jaggies do seem to be horizontal only, so perhaps you only need to EEDI2 once, and not turnleft/turnright. There's also a plugin from the same author called something like EEDIupsizer, which scales up by 2 in both directions in one go.

DE
Post
#290246
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/290246/action/topic#290246
Time
At the very least, you can do a screenshot by hitting the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard, then going into a picture program and hitting paste into a blank picture document.


Doesn't always work, if the video is being played on the graphics card's overlay. Besides, from the description, there's only one shot it can be. And to be honest, the DVD picture is so dark, and the shot is so short, I can't tell for sure whether Peter's got his Chewie head on or not.

David
Post
#289942
Topic
<em><strong>The &quot;Darth Editous / ADigitalMan Hybrid Edition&quot; Info and Feedback Thread</strong></em> (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/289942/action/topic#289942
Time
The NTSC is still being seeded, and you might be able to catch the Xvid version if you're lucky. The PAL version has been removed from Demonoid, presumably due to inactivity, which is a shame because it's the "original", so to speak.

If anyone out there would like to show appreciation for my work, you can do so by offering to burn and send copies (and receivers please PIF where possible).

DE
Post
#289786
Topic
STAR WARS: EP IV 2004 <strong>REVISITED</strong> ADYWAN *<em>1080p HD VERSION NOW IN PRODUCTION</em>
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/289786/action/topic#289786
Time
Does anyone have experience with this software? I hear it preserves the PAL image quality much better than other methods.


I had a look at the webpage, and it doesn't look like it will give you any advantage over any other method. In fact, it preserves the pitch of the audio, which is not what NTSC viewers will want. Nothing special needs to be done - the video is squished down to 480 lines, the framerate is changed to 23.976, the audio is resampled, and the MPEG is encoded with a pulldown flag.

DV Atlantis might preserve PAL quality better if you start out with interlaced video (which this isn't), but that can be done with free tools too.

David
Post
#287119
Topic
***The &quot;Darth Editous&quot; Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially &quot;de-specialed&quot; DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/287119/action/topic#287119
Time
Does this version have the color-corrected intro with the rebels fighting on Tantive 4 ?


Nope. The next version (if there is a next version) might have some colour correction, perhaps going part-way to a colour match with the GOUT - if I can reduce the noise that will be introduced because of the too-deep blacks.

DE
Post
#286801
Topic
.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/286801/action/topic#286801
Time
Originally posted by: eros
In that case capturing at true vga (640 x480) would be a better aspect for upscaling wouldn't it?


It might make the video look a little less "steppy" (except the steps due to the fixed vertical resolution would still be evident), but it's not much different from applying a blur to the 720x480 video before resizing.

David
Post
#286604
Topic
.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/286604/action/topic#286604
Time
Originally posted by: vbangle
I admittedly don't know much about the technical details when working with video, however I wonder what resolution the X0 footage was captured at? Wouldn't that make a difference? We can see the quality in the still captures.....and if the X0 was captured at a high res, like say a HD res, then wow I think we're getting into a fuss over nothing.


Although it's an analogue signal, there's still only a discrete number of lines (480, about 270 of active picture) to capture. There may be some capture cards that will capture over the usual 768 pixels horizontally, but the information isn't really there on Laserdisc.

DE
Post
#286471
Topic
.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/286471/action/topic#286471
Time
Do you feel like the picture is terribly degraded?

Not terribly degraded, but just look at the awful stepping on that dish thing on the right.

(retaining the original detail, clarity, etc. extremely well),


If you're going to upscale by 133% with a simple resizer, none of the original lines are going to make it through unscathed - they'll all be a weighted blend of 4 or more neighbours. If you ask me, that's a bad thing. Even if you did it judiciously with a tweaked algorithm, only 1 in every 4 lines will be an original. Not only can you not increase information by upsizing, you can't even keep what information there is - you have to "smear" it around.

Of course, if have an LCD or Plasma, your picture's going to get scaled regardless, and you may as well try and do it first with a better resizer than your TV has. If like me you have a CRT, you might find that the stepping is less offensive than having visible scanlines. Personal call, that.

I think the real point is a lot less people would be interest in the X0 project if they decided to keep the picture 4x3 letterboxed.


Not that I wish to speak for them, but it seems to me that it's not about getting people interested, but preserving the OUT as best they can - which would mean a non-anamorphic picture, since it's a non-anamorphic source.

Just for fun, here's an "HD" (2x) version done with an intelligent resizer. I sharpened it a little to look more like the upscaled one, because Lanczos sharpens a lot:

http://img462.imageshack.us/img462/1122/eediwb7.jpg

DE
Post
#283011
Topic
.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/283011/action/topic#283011
Time
Originally posted by: MeBeJedi
"but if they do choose to remove it, wouldn't the best thing be to just paint it out of the LD capture?"

Because the film has judder, the "blank space" might still be visible, and distracting. It's not impossible to overcome, but very tedious (much like everything else we've been doing with this transfer. )


I'd happily take a stab at it for you - I'm good with judder

DE