Doctor M

Welllll, after a friendly chat with the ffdshow folks, our problem is a feature not a bug. ;-)

They tell me that the AC3 is in a S/PDIF wrapper and the files plays back fine if you use AC3Filter.  Just not with ffdshow(?)

They did ask me to see if I could figure at what version the change was made, so they MAY fix the problem (unless for some reason it is necessary for people that actually use that feature for what it was intended).

Anyway, on the bright side there is a work around for the newest builds that involves an extra filter and the extra step of creating a 5.1 (or however many channel) wave file and then using your favorite DD encoder on it.

On the up side, it gives MAJOR flexibility to the guide to allow for more modern forms of DD, DTS and/or lossless tracks.  (Which I suppose I could have included in the guide earlier).

I can't see asking people to install a 2009 build of ffdshow just for upmixing, so I'll give the ffdshow devs a chance to fix things.  If that doesn't pan out this guide will get overhauled.  (Probably with screenshots.)

@dark_jedi - I think jdobbs' reason might be that Beta7 is the most recent 'official' stable build of ffdshow.  The rest are test builds.

Yeah, it's been quite a while since the last official release.

What do you use instead?

Here is deleted scene #1 integrated into the movie: http://www.mediafire.com/?n5bkoj3y4n1kvu3

I need a ruling on this from the community.

The deleted scene itself is a straight cut in the middle of a tracking shot.  I had constructed a custom close-up shot cropped from the Blu-Ray to put in to hide the cut between the two clips.

The thing is, I adjusted the levels and color corrected, and left a straight cut as a place holder while I worked with other things.  Then I noticed the cut was almost invisible anyway.

So first I'd like to know if the cut from the theatrical footage to the deleted scene is noticeable and/or a problem.   (I'll also take feedback on my color correction.  I don't think perfect is possible.).

Second, once the audio in the scene was upmixed to 5.1, you could tell the ambient hallway noise was different from the sound in the rest of the scene.

To make things worse the last several seconds of the deleted scene is a riff on the dialog and giggle from the next shot in the theatrical cut.

To fix this I took the theatrical cut of the scene's audio and re-encoded a 5.1 track with the center channel muted.

So what you are hearing is a mix of a custom "hallway noise" track, with a DPLII upmix of the deleted scene.  Hopefully the final product is seamless with consistent volumes throughout.

To fix the giggle and dialog I kept the deleted scene's giggle (assuming it's what drew Harry and Hermione's attention), muted the later giggle from the theatrical audio and muted the rest of the deleted scene until the theatrical footage comes in with the dialog.

Comments? Questions? Concerns?

-=Watch the space for updates. =-

Not a lot of details at the moment, but the title is self explanatory.

I’m going to try to take up the slack left by ADM’s absence from the forums.

I’ve found HBP has been much more difficult to work with than previous entries in the HP series.  Mostly because the deleted scenes haven’t been color timed and made to look crappy and dark yet.

Additionally, the DVD audio is 2.0 that needs a DPLII upmix (which is working out pretty well).  The Blu-Ray has 5.1 audio to start with, but the dialog is badly localized, either spreading to the front 3 speakers or all 5.

I’ve just started work, but I can hopefully finish within a week.  There are only 8 scenes.

Edit:  Har, har.  Finished within a week.  A year and a half later…

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Extended and Enhanced by Doctor M

Original Runtime - 2:33:29
Extended Runtime - 2:38:32

General:

All deleted audio has been upmixed from stereo to DD 5.1 with Dolby ProLogic II decoding.

All deleted video has been cropped/resized to match the theatrical aspect ratio.

In cases where noted, a Blu-Ray source was used.  This was done when the deleted scene was of much lower quality than the rest of the film.  The rest of the time this was undesirable because the BD source was of significantly better quality than the rest of the film.

Scene By Scene:

1. Harry and Hermione Walk The Halls - Levels/color corrected.  Custom hallway-noise-only track laid over deleted scene to match the surrounding footage.  Lavender’s giggle in the deleted scene was kept, but the duplicate giggle muted when the theatrical footage comes in.  Assumingly the annoying giggle is what attracted Harry and Hermione’s attention.  Ron’s duplicate dialog is muted in the deleted scene since it is heard when the theatrical footage picks up.

2. Harry and Hermione Discuss the Marauder’s Map - White/black levels adjusted slightly.

In the theatrical cut, in order to hide that a scene was deleted the editor cut a scene in half.  The first part of the split scene appears before Harry finds Ron mooning for Romilda and the other half follows.  It’s actually quite awkward and the script confirms this change was made.

Harry’s first scene knocking on Slughorn’s office door has been moved.  Some of the scene was salvaged and one line deleted.  An additional shot was constructed to fill a removed piece that was probably a reshoot.

Crazy dialog-only tracks and surround-only tracks were created to smooth the transitions.

The old scene order was: Harry talks to Slughorn in potions lab, Harry knocks on Slughorn’s office door and is turned away, Harry finds Ron high on love potion, Harry again goes to Slughorn’s office.

The new order is: Harry talks to Slughorn in lab, Harry talks to Hermione in the common room, Harry goes upstairs to find Ron spaced out, Harry takes Ron to Slughorn’s office.

3. Harry, Ron and Hermione Discuss the Vanishing Cabinet - Scene added. (No color correction.  Already seems to match adjacent scenes fairly well.)

4. Harry and Dumbledore Arrive at Cave Entrance - Scene added. Color corrected.

5. Harry and Dumbledore Leave Cave - I think it feels abrupt, but it’s exactly as the script has it and I tried not to turn this into a fan edit.  Color corrected.

6. Clouds Gather Over Hogwarts as Flitwick Conducts Orchestra - Rearranged scenes before and after. Deleted all theatrical shots that were duplicated in the deleted scene.

Borgan and Burkes scene and exterior shot of Hogwarts now used to establish events and location.  These shots are not in the version of the script I have and may have been added later.  The new placement seems more natural.

Audio deleted from Malfoy walking down the hallway to the Room of Requirement and replaced with choir finishing their song.

Blu-Ray source used because of severe artifacts and banding in dark areas (i.e. most of the scene).  Color corrected.

7. Harry Joins Ron, Hermione and Ginny in Common Room - Color corrected to match surrounding scenes.

8. Harry and Hermione Discuss Ron at Astronomy Tower - Blu-Ray source. Color corrected.  5.1 surround version of soundtrack upmixed to DD 5.1 and mixed/blended.

I have a question on this (I know, right?)...

I like to use DGPulldown on my video files (23.976 -> 23.976) to strip pulldown flags on progressive content.  Womble otherwise reads the source as 29.97 and when it re-encodes the end pieces at cuts, it does so as 29.97i instead of 23.976p.  It makes your output variable frame rate.  So it's better to work in 23.976 and then add the flags back afterward.

I don't remember what order I used to do this in, but I'm working on a project now and ran GOP fixer first.  It said the video file had no errors.  Then I removed the pulldown flags and started editing but had some problems in my editor.

I rechecked it with GOP fixer. This time it found 18,424 time coder errors.

Can anyone explain this to me?

I was upmixing some stuff today and my own guide wasn't working.

Here are somethings I ran into:

AC3 file wouldn't load.  I have no idea why, it might be that I need AC3.ACM updated or something, but GraphStudio threw an error.

The older version of the program GraphEdit had no issues.  I opted to decode the 2.0 DD to WAV via BeLight (BeSweet).  GraphStudio was fine with .wav audio.

The outputted AC3 file was unplayable.  I finally checked the file with DelayCut (an AC3 file fixer) and pretty much the entire thing was frame errors.  Once corrected the file played just fine.

The reason: newer versions of ffdshow encode improperly.  The last "stable version", Beta7, while fairly old does produce errorless output.

So you may have to downgrade your ffdshow to make this work.  I'll see if I can let the authors of the software know.

Chewtobacca said:

Nobody's making things harder.  Demuxing in different ways led to different frame counts, and nobody knew for sure how g-force had done it, so it needed to be established. That's all.

I can't say if g-force did it PROPERLY, but you would have to use PGCDemux.

DVDDecrypter doesn't properly read delays (and celltimes IIRC) from NTSC discs, and just using DGIndex without demuxing the PGC's means you wouldn't be able to properly rebuild the DVD afterwards.

I'd say PGCDemux or nothing.

I ran into something similar recently... but your details are vague so your mileage may vary.

This may help you: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=160470

Okay, I've had some really good success with qtgmc to clean poorly deinteralced material.  I guess just not in this case.

@Dark_Jedi - I believe qtgmc can utilize multiple cores/threads... but not having them myself, I can't be more specific.

I hate to propose changes to the script at this late of a date, but I've been playing around with something lately that might really be useful.

Currently two NNEDI2 calls are used to antialias, and assumingly remove any remaining combing artifacts (or line shimmer.)

qtgmc() is a deinterlacing filter that is a more updated riff on TempGaussMC, and has a progressive processing component.

It is not nearly as slow as when processing field based video.  I calculated about 12x faster than using it as a field deinterlacer.  (And MUCH faster than a double NNEDI2 call.)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156028

This filter identifies edges/lines, cleans them and is really robust without destroying detail or creating new artifacts.

The basic usage for this is: qtgmc(Preset="Slower", InputType=1)

I don't have GOUT discs ATM to test this on, but since I've heard chatter that there are still some artifacts remaining after the current version of script, I was wondering if someone wanted to give it a try as a faster more effective answer.

Just a heads up, I just released Lighthouse Island on MySpleen.

Lightouse Island is a half-hour telefilm produced by Jim Henson.

The show itself, was filmed as a pilot for a series that was to center around Lighthouse Island, its strange inhabitants and the people that would visit. Chris Makepeace was intended to only be a guest for the first episode.

When the show was not picked up, it aired the following year as the second half of The Jim Henson Hour’s second episode on April 21, 1989.

(http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Lighthouse_Island)

It is a VHSRip dubbed from a Betamax tape.  The Betamax tape was a cast member’s personal copy.  (I am not equipped to make a BetaRip, sorry.)

(Jim Henson’s introduction (the first few seconds) were partially cut off on this copy and had to be added from another source.)

I cleaned it a bit, IVTC’d the progressive portion, and ripped the closed captioning to add as English subtitles.

Quality is fair, but better than existing rips on the net.
Cover art in BMP and Nero format.
(I seriously considered asking my friend to do an audio commentary track, but chickened out.)

I don't know if we should expect anything more from ADM in the Harry Potter series, but has anyone had the opportunity to check out if there is worth while deleted content on Deathly Hallows 1?

I've been sort of holding back on this title since I have the weird feeling that well see an official Deathly Hallows 'Whole Bloody Affair' sort of thing talked about in the near future.

Edit: And hoping to not be TOO off topic, if no one else is going to tackle Half-Blood Prince, I've been thinking I'd start putting together an extended edition later this week.

Don't expect menus (unless someone wants to volunteer some), and I'm not sure I'm even going to do a DVD9 release (unless there is serious demand for it).

I'm more curious if anyone is making progress on a TehParadox or newsgroup release.

I could burn a flash stick for moving data, but I don't have equipment for playing the content away from my computer.

Also my DVR/DVDr can't copy to flash only DVDs.

Good for test burns and temporary content that I have no intention of keeping.

A bit off topic, but I have a hole in my media knowledge when it comes to RW discs.

Do you all use RW  Verbatims too?  Heck I don't even know if + or - RW's are better. 

ibleedspeed: You will not win the copyright debate.  I suggest you let it go.

As far as your interlace problems are concern, you may want to post a short clip.  That should be allowed.

Is this just MySpleen so far?  I'm waiting for newsgroups or TehParadox.

I hesitate to suggest it, but he could leave the progressive pulldown flags alone and edit it directly in Womble.

The output would be variable framerate but for a novice it might be easier.

A bit too choppy for my taste.

doubleofive said:

Great stuff, as usual.

I have two more suggestions:

- Bleep out every mention of "Sith". Childish, yes. Funny, maybe.

- Have Yoda speak correctly. This is something that always bothered me in the prequels. When Yoda gets serious in ESB and stops playing around, the backwards talk goes away (for the most part, I'm still working on some statistics to back this up), which made me think that Yoda didn't really talk like that, but slipped into doing it after playing the part of "crazy swamp creature" for 20 years. Then we see that 20 years before that, nearly everything that came out of his mouth sounded like a crazy swamp creature. I'd love to see if even serious edits could work on Yoda's backwards speech, because way too many moments that could have been dramatic in the prequels were ruined by Yoda not being able to make a coherent sentence.

It could be argued that maybe Yoda's non-"English" native language has some weird sentence structure, but consider that when he gets serious, the speech instantly corrects itself. This is definitely a topic for another thread once I have my statistics down, but I'd be interested in hearing what could be done with the prequel dialog either way.

I can't say I've ever noticed Yoda talking 'normal' when serious.  But that's a good point.  Yoda, in theory, is smart enough to speak properly.  It'd be nice to see a prequel edit that has Yoda's speech corrected and he only goes all Yoda-speak when he's excited or serious (which if what you says is true would involve mixing up normal to Yoda-speak on these occasions).

It's not uncommon for non-native speakers of a language to slip into an accent they had lost or their native language when excited.  It makes more sense that Yoda speech pattern develope from living alone in a swamp for so long.

As for THIS edit, it'd be funnier if Yoda was just made more crazy (like the MTV movie awards clip). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LKDRb-lK9s

I like the idea of the battledroids speakin in text/internet abbreviations.

Might I suggest instead that the R2 units speak in LOLcat instead of what you've got at the moment?

Sorry to revive a dead thread, but I wanted to let you all know this worked out great.

I was getting a 50-75% failure rate on Memorex blanks.

I've burned a half dozen or more Verbatims so far without a single bad disc.

Verbatims may cost more up front, but they are cheaper in what you don't throw away.  I can't believe Memorex hasn't been sued over this.

Thanks again for the advice. (Btw, I had a bunch of Office Depot store credit and a coupon and used it to buy more Verbatims recently.  OD's were from the Singapore plant as well.)

If anyone who gets a hold of these discs would like to share them on MySpleen, newsgroups or TehParadox, please PM me.

anatema is okay with it being posted as long as his name isn't associated with it.

FYI, I'm told there are 3 discs: one PAL, one NTSC, and one of extras (NTSC only).