Doctor M

I'll say that I don't need the unfiltered release.  I don't know about anyone else.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

No downscaling; this is the raw laserdisc capture, just cropped; of course, as it's cropped, the aspect ratio is not right.

Happy to know you like the filtered version; it took me a lot to reach a good overall balance - not perfect, but good enough and way better than the unfiltered version, IMHO.

 Huh? Then the filtered side is the filters without the upscale.

My concern was a lot of aliasing (stair stepping on straight lines.)  If you had taken the final version and downscaled it, I could see how that could happen.  Now I'm concerned about how the complete version looks.

As far as the the aspect ratio, I wasn't going by measurements, I just thought everything looked a bit squashed.  Like Laserdisc 1 in this comparison: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/86496

Wow.  I'm sold on the filtered version.

I do want to ask though if the aliasing is a result of down scaling(?) for the sample.  I also have the feeling the aspect ratio is a bit wider than it should be.  Again, since it isn't your final HD I'm assuming that's from reducing the size.

Do we have any source (e.g. film) that gives away which if these is the closest to accurate?

The problem with doing a preservation project of these movies is we see the studio is perfectly willing to revise the look with each release and they re-release it frequently.

We could easily see a better new transfer next year in UHD or something.

Any chance of just a clip comparison between filter and unfiltered?  I know that's a bit much to ask, but I suspect side by side it might prove the unfiltered to be inferior and unnecessary.

Wow, that is some serious differences between transfers.   The 2005 DVD is garbage!

Their rules allow low risk Disney (aka, films Disney barely cares about) and if the version being posted is substantially different from what is commercially available (i.e., uncensored or different edit).

I can understand why they were worried about this BD.

Chewtobacca said:

You might try VideoReDo.

 I'll take a look.

Chewtobacca said:

Doctor M said:ADM's video is a mix of 29.97i and 23.976p video.  So short of re-encoding to full progressive, this needs to be edited with the pulldown flags intact(?)

It does.  Have you tried re-encoding the whole audio?  I can't think of anything else.  It's been years since I used Womble.

Does the end product have to be a DVD?  If not, you could perform an inverse telecine, edit in another program, and use then x264 to recompress.  With decent settings, you probably wouldn't notice any difference in quality.

 I was shooting for DVD.  Maybe running delaycut through the AC3 stream will help.

Edit: Hmm.  No errors found in either audio track.  I could deinterlace ADM's stream and re-encode it, then edit it, but that's starting to be a disproportionate amount of effort for a small gain.

This has my goat though.  I always assume hard interlaced and soft interlaced were treated the same.

I didn't think there was much left in the realm of DVD that could stump me, but I'm stumped.

I'm trying to add an 18 second scene back to ADM's Love Actually disc.

ADM's video is a mix of 29.97i and 23.976p video.  So short of re-encoding to full progressive, this needs to be edited with the pulldown flags intact(?)

First I used Mpeg Video Wizard's GOP Fixer on the commercial disc, tested ADM's and it doesn't need fixing.

In MVW I cut and dropped in the scene I wanted to add and done... right?

Playing segments throughout under MVW shows everything to be perfect.  But when I export the streams and remux, the audio is badly out of sync for everything before the point where I edited it.

I normally I don't work in MVW with pulldown video, but it is unavoidable here.  I can't think of a way to fix it, and I don't know any other programs that (nearly) losslessly edit like MVW.

Suggestions?

I rarely watch ADM's Love Actually, not because I don't like it, but because I need subtitles for that foreign language (British).

This month I started working on a set of subs, but then I came across this:

* John and Judy's grossly out-of-place arrival at the play is removed.

Anyone else notice this before?  It's kind of odd to find an extended edit with a theatrical scene removed.

Edit: Ugh.  Tried to cut this scene back in but the streams are a mess.  Anyone planning on redoing this on BD?  I can provide subtitles that should work.

Edit 2: Well, forget it.  If I recut it, it'll be in HD.  In the mean time I have English subtitles for ADM's release (in .ASS format to preserve the layout).

I was going to post it along with the DVD9 version, but after 2-3 days I've still not heard back from the admin at MySpleen to find out if they consider it safe.

If anyone wants the subtitle file, PM me.

@AlecBrood - PM Sent.

There's a 35mm transfer in the works?  Does that have a separate thread?

Any new progress?  (Yeah, South Park made me think to look up this thread.)

Also are there any other screenshots than the one in post 237?  I'm not convinced the CM2new tweak look much different than the BD screenshot.

That's the first I've heard of a Lady and the Tramp HDTV version.  I agree. the BD is just wrong.

Nice screenshots, titanic.

As far as grain on CAPS films, the point is the presence of grain or not doesn't indicate any loss of quality from the source.  However, the absence of grain in earlier films usually includes a loss of some detail and depth.

If you want grain on your CAPS BD's, it's simple enough to re-encode them adding grain to the image.  It would be just as accurate.

It's a tricky one and I'm really not able to speak authoritatively.

My understanding is that when you are talking digital sources (such as the CAPS animated films) being transferred to modern film stock, there is little to no need for the animators to 'compensate' in color or style like they did in early films.

So while HDTV and old film prints may have grain, there has been no need for Disney to actually scrub or clean them for BD since the masters do not have grain.  As a result the film transfers in all likelihood look nearly identical to what the animators see on their computers.

So while I do like grain where appropriate, these films haven't been altered when being transferring digital to digital (like CG animated films).

As far as HDTV prints having grain, they versions created for HDTV broadcast.  Since HDTV existed before Blu-ray, they are usually struck from film masters because it's cheaper and hey it's just TV.

B&B, according to all reviews I read, is the theatrical cut.  The material that was restored for the extended version looked quite poor on DVD, it wasn't good enough to use for a BD.

I have mixed emotions since those cut scenes were after the final cut.  I'd like to see them re-restore if they can in the future, but it is nice to have the old version I'm used to again.

I'd say get the BD if you like the old pre-restoration version but save your DVD.

Agreed, the quality of the bobber is the most important.  I do recommend testing a couple different ones.  Sometimes the slowest/most powerful doesn't produce the best results when blended fields are present, but mostly the slower the better.

To explain, bobbers separate the fields into 2 frames (odd field and even field), adjust the height so they line up, and then upscale to full resolution.

Smartbobbers work similarly, but instead of a dumb resize, they extrapolate the missing data from the other field and surrounding frames.

My thoughts on smartbobbers:

QTGMC is the best.  Try the default 'Slower' setting first.  There are faster settings that don't always look that different, but there is a point when it's better to just go to something else because the results are only slightly less slow but crappy looking.

YadifMod, supposedly an improved version of Yadif, but I can't remember actually ever using it.  I usually test it on my videos and then go with something else.

Yadif: If your computer is more than 3-5 years old, this is probably ideal.  It's fast and produces really impressive results considering.

There are other smartbobbers out there, but this is my toolbox.

You could also try RePAL().  It's designed specifically for 25i to 29.97i conversions.

I'd go with:

mpeg2source("source.d2v")
loadCPlugin("yadif.dll")
yadif(mode=1) # Bob mode doubles framerate
BilinearResize(720,480) #bilinear is usually considered best for downscaling
ChangeFPS(59.94) # Creates duplicate fields. Use ConvertFPS if you prefer blended fields.
AssumeTFF()
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()
converttoyuy2(interlaced=true) #Assuming you are encoding with CCE

@_,,,^..^,,, - That's pretty much what I thought.  Short of a quick and dirty DVD encoding from your capture, there wouldn't be much point.

A straight upscale would pretty much look the same as an SD encoding upscaled by your BD player or TV.

And I do like grain, but not grain plates.  It's not the grain per se that I want to see, it's that a noise filter hasn't been applied.

Once the grain is gone I see no reason to artificially add it back.  I'll definitely be grabbing your release once I clear some HDD space.  Like I said, last I saw I thought you had found an error you were going to fix and re-release over.  I must have hallucinated that.

I'll probably be adding it to the front page as the recommended version once I (get on to(?) my lazy butt and) make the next update.

titanic said:

Doctor M said:

@titanic- That's smoke alright.

@_,,,^..^,,,_ - Maybe that's a communication thing.  Is he asking for an SD lossless capture or just a version that is less cleaned?

 Are you talking about me?

When I said initially "raw capture", I didn't mean the 40Gbs file.

I meant a smaller file size of this LD capture (possibly 1080p), without the filters.

That's what I thought.  The confusion is 'raw' means uncompressed video which can be huge.  Although unfiltered means a new project for _,,,^..^,,,_.

I dunno how that would look since you have to contend with upscaling and analog noise, but that doesn't sound bad in theory.

@titanic- That's smoke alright.

@_,,,^..^,,,_ - Maybe that's a communication thing.  Is he asking for an SD lossless capture or just a version that is less cleaned?

titanic said:

@jolennon

I know about this, but they didn't correct the error I mentioned (the wrong placement of the titles)

@doctorM

You have The Great Mouse Detective twice..

about Saludos Amigos: it's in HD on itunes I think, with no problems..

(and uncut!)

about beauty and the Beast:

Are you talking about SPorv's release?

It's not in the works, it has been released for quite some time.

Although I have asked him and would be interested very much in the unfiltered preservation of the Laserdisc, which seems to be much better than the previous LD rip (I think molly's).

So Disney fixed less than half the issues with Little Mermaid.  Great.  I'll wait for the next release(?)

I thought I had deja vu while writing that Mouse Detective bit.

Does the iTunes Saludos Amigos have Goofy smoking?

I thought something felt familiar when I was writing about The Great Mouse Detective.

SPorv's BatB: I thought he had something to fix still with a re-release coming.  I kinda stopped following for the same thing you mentioned: I'd like to see a less filtered version.  I'll probably still grab it though.

titanic said:

Doctor M said:

@titanic - SOME Disney films, particularly the 'B' films (less popular) have more grain and look better on BD.  The guide needs some updating in that regards.

What movies are you thinking about?

 Well, the most popular ones.. (Pinocchio, Dumbo, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, SLeeping Beauty, Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, etc. etc.)

From what it seems the only ones I could buy on Bluray, that  haven't been over-restored and retain grain are:

-The Rescuers

-The Rescuers down under

-The Great Mouse Detective

isn't that right?

I could get The little mermaid, but I don't want to because it has an error with the titles and it makes me furious (the misplacement of the main title which is out of sync with a music effect)

Also, i could get Fox and the Hound, but I want the full screen of the DVD.

So, other than those I don't see anything else..

also, i guess I could buy all the Blurays from Pocahontas and on, right?

Since they were digital or something..

At least I have the HD version of the unrestored Sword in the Stone, and Saludos Amigos, which are great.

My thoughts on these movies as regard to Blu-ray.  This doesn't supersede the original list, so much as this favors HD and makes allowances for overcleaned transfers:

Pinocchio isn't great on BD, they really killed it.  I wouldn't go with that.

Dumbo doesn't seem to have ANY version that's correct outside of a laserdisc.  If that's not an option the BD is probably as wrong as any other digital transfer.

Cinderella, again, unless you are going the laserdisc route, you might as well get the BD.  It's as bad as the rest of the digital releases and is at least HD.

Peter Pan - I'm probably alone in liking the '02 Special Edition DVD, but I can't stand the BD's colors.

Lady and the Tramp - I didn't find the BD to be awful.  It won't have grain any more than the rest of the above, but I don't think they messed it up too badly.

Sleeping Beauty, there are many who would disagree, but while over-clean, this shows better accuracy IN SOME AREAS on BD.  If you must have it on BD, you could do worse.

Jungle Book - No.  Disney hasn't figure out how to properly restore Xerography based animation yet.  I wouldn't go BD on this one.

Beauty and the Beast - Much talk, few answers.  There is a laserdisc preservation to HD in the works... don't expect grain, but it'll at least be the original theatrical version of the film.

Lion King - If you want the un-screwed with animation, you need to go VHS/Laserdisc source.  Otherwise, the BD is a good option.

Etc. etc. - Yes and no.

The Rescuers - I haven't even decided myself.  I originally said yes, studying it I'm not in love with how hard it's been cleaned, but the original DVD is pretty poor too.  The BD probably has a slight edge.

The Rescuers Down Under - Yes, with no reservations.

The Great Mouse Detective - Yes, but WITH reservations.  Scrubbed, but improved over the previous release.  There are compelling reasons to get this on BD as well.

The Little Mermaid - Has Disney ever made good on the promise of a corrected disc?  I've heard nothing following this up.

Fox and the Hound - Scrubbed more than you'd think for that title, but the AR change is more on one side and less on another.  A bit of a wash there.

Pocahontas and on, I don't think there are any issues to worry about.

Sword in the Stone - I'd go for an HDTV version, or the DVD (which is nearly the same quality).

Saludos Amigos - Is this even on BD?  I'd probably still favor the Walt & El Grupo release unless they used that transfer for a recent BD.