Doctor M

I agree, I'm not sure I would crop the left/right.  We aren't building DivX here, most DVDs contain up to about 8 black lines on each side.

Since 96 lines are cropped top/bottom at the start of the script, I would suggest:

Spline36Resize(720,384).Crop(0,14,0,-10).Addborders(0,90,0,90)

THIS IS A GUESS.  I do not currently have the discs ripped to inspect the actually video for the second cropping (which is a weird decision...  Why isn't the cropping done once... or before the resizing for that matter?)

Btw, Spline36 provides better and sharper upscale quality than Spine16 without adding ringing and without any apparent speed impact.

There is also Spline64, but I've heard arguments that it isn't as good as 36.

(cough)Edit: (cough) to addborders...

What is 5C'd mean?

Blunt rip from TDB:

First up today, there's been a small degree of panic in some quarters online in the last couple days about director James Cameron's recent comments on the remastered Aliens transfer. Cameron was video interviewed over at Coming Soon.net about Avatar, and about 5:30 into the clip he talks about the new Aliens HD master for the upcoming Blu-ray. To quote: "It's spectacular. We went in and completely de-noised it, de-grained it, up-rezzed, color-corrected every frame, and it looks amazing. It looks better that it looked in the theaters originally. Because it was shot on a high-speed negative that was a new negative that didn't pan out too well and got replaced the following year. So it's pretty grainy. We got rid of all the grain. It's sharper and clearer and more beautiful than it's ever looked. And we did that to the long version, to the 'director's cut' or the extended play."

As you might expect, all that talk of de-noising and de-graining has some fans freaked out that the release is going to suffer the same excessively DNR-ed fate as Fox's recent Predator: Ultimate Hunter Blu-ray. Here's the deal: Everyone we trust who was involved, and/or has actually SEEN the new Aliens HD master for Blu-ray, reports to us that the film looks terrific. To the degree that DNR was used, it was applied carefully and with a light hand, with an eye toward striking the proper balance between maintaining the detail and integrity of the image and the desire to reduce grain and address the deficiencies of the stock used at the time. There is apparently STILL grain left in the image, it's just no longer excessive or distracting. Plus, Cameron is no slouch when it comes to the presentation quality of his films on disc, and he approved this transfer and master. Look, there's a VERY big difference in digital mastering when the filmmakers are directly involved in the process, as opposed to when they're not. So we're told the disc looks great, we trust that it looks great and I'll personally work to directly confirm that. My own feeling is that Predator was probably an aberration. Fox has generally been doing very good mastering work for Blu-ray in the last year or so, and I suspect this is going to be a non-issue when we all get our hands on the Aliens disc. 'Nuff said for now. By the way, it's a good interview at Coming Soon, so do check it out.

digitalfreaknyc said:

Doctor M said:

Speaking of, just saw an interview with James Cameron talking about his decisions to extend movies (specifically Avatar, but also the current BD restoration of Aliens)... and he said there are a few nice deleted scenes from True Lies he's considering putting back.

Enough with the giant smurfs already, I want some TL in a special edition BD.

Btw: is there interest in a full DVD PAL2NTSC DVD9 conversion of True Lies?

 You don't need a PAL2NTSC.  There's already a 16x9 version in NTSC from the Japanese Disc.

I'm currently making a blu-ray of the HD version with all extras.

Well, the difference is I could FIND the PAL anamorphic, I've never come across the Japanese DVD.  I made this a year or two ago.

Edit: I'm guessing you are referring to the D-Theater version.  Heh heh, HD digital VHS, I can't believe that format ever existed.

Here are for some screenshots, the picture is very soft (and a bit dirty (or the grain transferred poorly)).  I wouldn't be surprised to find out it was upscaled.

Really, is it worth the labor for the year or two until there is an official BD?

Screens:

digitalfreaknyc said:

Just set the DVR for it ;)

Cool.

Speaking of, just saw an interview with James Cameron talking about his decisions to extend movies (specifically Avatar, but also the current BD restoration of Aliens)... and he said there are a few nice deleted scenes from True Lies he's considering putting back.

Enough with the giant smurfs already, I want some TL in a special edition BD.

Btw: is there interest in a full DVD PAL2NTSC DVD9 conversion of True Lies?

According to AniDB.net, there is an ongoing fansub project for Speed Racer.

Looks like 23 of the 52 episodes have been completed so far.  Their last release was July 14th.

Great site for all your anime info needs.  And if you're handy with IRC you can get caught up.

Edit: Also, has The Shadow been seen to by anyone?  I've been watching an HDTV2DVD conversion I did a while back.  It's 16x9 (open matte) with DTS @ 1536kbps audio.

On the downside there are some artifacts from the broadcast and I was forced to adjust the colors (whoever did the transfer must have been watching Underworld at the time).

Can anyone tell me what the cmg-rad-source.ts is?  Found that part on a news search site.

Edit: Never mind.  I just checked it.  It is a source clip for comparison to the encoded sample clip.

Btw, saw this movie for the first time last night.  No really!  I can't believe I missed it all these years.

Good movie, glad there is a DVD of it.  Thanks for the work.

I ran into this for the first time today...

I project I previously compiled I came back to, changed 1 color in the palette and gave the already existing menu buttons 'play' function.

Now I get OOM.  Any suggestions?

Edit: Based on a recommendation on another thread, I deleted the audio from my menu.

The disc then compiled fine.

I added BACK the audio track... and the disc compiles fine.

I don't know what it is, but anyone experiencing this, should just for giggles try removing any menu audio, at least temporarily.

I just noticed last night that this is the #7 top rated extended edition on FE.org.

Womble Video Wizard DVD.  Great for resynching audio.

I like to lay out both tracks at the same time (the source one and the one I'm trying to sync), listen for desync between the two, slide around, cut and tweak, or whatever as needed and output nearly untouched 5.1 ac3 track.

I've tried Vegas (briefly) and found it complicated.  Womble is pretty intuitive (I learned to use it without instructions and created Star Wars RtW on my first go).

Of course if you luck out, you might just be able to adjust the delay, one way or the other, and you're done.

Just think of it as 4x3 is 4x3 and 16x9 is 16x9.

The actually resolution is different only because of video systems, but it's stretched to the proper resolution on playback.  If you think about it 720x480 is actual 1.5:1 and 720x576 is 1.25:1 neither of which is really 4x3.

I've long considered doing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.  It's pretty damn cinematic to start with.

Couldn't have said it better.  If you ever get too confused, Citizen's aspect ratio calculator is something I really couldn't live without.

Not that you really need it in this case, but it would have answered the question as well.

CompMovieGuy said:

If hes using the Hauppauge then he wont get the CC unless its being displayed (hard coded) on the video stream at the time hes using the device.

You would need to raw capture the video in order to get the CC stream as it is part of the PIDs, the Hauppauge doesnt work this way, its not a "direct stream" capture device, its a "on the fly" re-encoding device.

Is it on a PID?  I thought it was embedded in the mpeg video, just like analog TV.

I have a standalone DVR that re-encodes all video (even resize HD channels to SD) without damaging the line 21 captions.

digitalfreaknyc said:

Doctor M said:

I've extracted CC from TS streams just fine with CCExtractor GUI.

It's still embedded in the video the same way as standard def video.  The process isn't very difficult.

 But how were those TS streams capped?  The Hauppauge re-encodes. This isn't capturing the original stream (which is encoded and impossible).

Hauppauge re-encodes?  Hmm.  I have no idea if that will destroy the line 21 captions or not.  DVR typically don't, but PC encoding usually does.

Anyone know?  (Of course this is assuming there is even CC on the broadcast to start with).

I've extracted CC from TS streams just fine with CCExtractor GUI.

It's still embedded in the video the same way as standard def video.  The process isn't very difficult.

digitalfreaknyc said:

I have the HD version and would be happy to cap it for you.  What can you accept?  I can make a blu-ray for you.

Well that sounds awesome... but I don't have a BluRay player yet.  Any chance you could post or send me the raw capture?

From that I could make a DVD and have access to the originals for BD later, as needed.

Since that can be a serious undertaking an HD2DVD conversion would be fine.

If you really prefer to do the BD thing, go for it, I'll convert it to DVD from there.

I do have a special request no matter how you go.  If you re-encode, please rip any English subtitles or closed captioning.

Properly done, it is a new mix, frequently from the original elements that allows the audio engineer to expand the sound field and enhance the older mix.

That said, it isn't always done properly.

Don't mistake a commercial remaster for what we enthusiasts do: pushing the audio through a DPL decoder, saving the separate channels and encoding it as 5.1.

I dunno if there are 2 different Turner channels.  I don't get any of them.

But to be fair, the broadcast is more than 3 weeks away, so it might not me listed on some guides yet.

As far as SD, I was afraid that might be the case, but I believe they've been showing it letterboxed.

What kind of format are you able to cap/send?

bkev said:

Hey, Doctor M... is there any chance you could show me a comparison for Little Mermaid as well? Aside from the boner incident, I'd like to see these alleged color differences.

Probably not.  I no longer have the original DVD release.

That's very interesting.  Many of the color differences are VERY similar to The Little Mermaid's recoloring(?).

I don't know if they are messing with the colors so they look better on uncalibrated televisions or that we are seeing corrections to aging and older transfer methods.

I'm surprsied no one at Disney has stepped up to explain considering some of the flack they've taken.   But then again, they don't bother to defend the 'Home Theater' audio mixes either.

CompMovieGuy said:

I will look into this DoctorM, but Im not sure if I get TCM, but I will report back when I find out

That would be awesome.  I have a VHS recording from cable TV from about 20 years ago and a divx that is artifact ridden, low resolution, and out of sync.

Is the 2005 restoration poorly done?  Lowry usually does a decent job... unlike the films Disney has tried to restore themselves.

Moth3r said:

I've removed the links to what you call "deadware" - I suspect there are still legal issues with the downloads of these programs.

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware

Sure thing.  I'll update it with links to demo & free versions instead.