Doctor M

Capturing flash: Replay Media Catcher.  Hands down the best.  They have a war going with Adobe.  Whenever they think they've blocked flash rippers, Replay quickly turns out an update.

As far as converting, I'm a do it yourself kind of guy.  FLV Extract, Avisynth and lots of assumefps and convertfps sort of things.

If you don't want to spend a lot of time on each clip, you can try Riva FLV Encoder http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?encoder&L=3 or the very popular Total Video Converter: http://www.effectmatrix.com/total-video-converter/

mod16 means that the dimensions of the video must be divisible by 16.

1080p is frequently encoded as 1088 for this reason (the last 8 lines being padding).

Don't have my laser player anymore (but still have my Star Wars discs for no good reason...)

Anyone want to take this on?

To answer my own question, the VHS of Saludos Amigos has the same copyright date as the Gold Edition DVD.

So unless someone has the 1995 laserdisc, this is one we're going to have to wait for Disney to fix.

Heh heh.  So I thought maybe something like TDecimate might do the job.  It gives the ability to open up the cycle size.  Typically you decimate 1 in 5 frames.  I set it to 6 in 30 to make up for the irregularity of the pattern.

No luck.  So I found a clip noticeably bad and counted frames... 90 of them.

Subtracting duplicates, the frame rate was 19 fps!!!

Crazy.  Maybe THAT'S why the movie hasn't been to DVD.

Tested official VHS (which definitely appears to be a different transfer) and I'm finding the same thing.

A B C D D A B B A B C D D A B C D E F F A B C C

And that's within the same scene w/o any camera cuts.

No rhyme or reason to the pattern. Using any sort of decimation makes the picture jerky as all heck.

Looks like it is staying interlaced. Ah well.

That color correction is a bit of a mixed bag.  The good ones look like you've cleaned sludge off the camera lens.  The bad ones look like you washed the color out of the scene.

Be mindful that the chase is taking place in a  jungle.  Light being filtered through the leaves shouldn't look like it's being cast by fluorescent lightbulbs.

@HeKS:  I really don't know why you're messing with that scene.  I never felt there was anything wrong with it.

Using Photoshop is a waste of time since it gets you no closer to actually editing the scene.  If you look, you can see changes in black levels/color between the wipe.  I don't know if that's in the original or your doing, but it needs to be fixed.

Finally: It is not a stretch for Indy to assume that someone who just robbed Area 51 (and made a right mess doing it), might have high-tailed it out of the neighborhood.

My guess is she's long gone too.  Don't get bogged down on the little things.

I don't think so.  It was telecined to 30fps just with fewer base frames.

The runtime is the same as the official tape as well.

I would think it could be a way to expand runtime (make fewer frames go farther).

It's almost like they trimmed a few minutes but wanted the runtime to be the same.  Hmm.  I may need to watch both versions side by side now.

For anyone following this, I was about ready to run a really slooow script to encode the capture I made.

I was disappointed to find out after running telecide that there are fewer than 24 unique frames a second.  Enough so that after decimate the picture is jittery.

This may actually look better interlaced.  Not ideal, but at least it will be smoother.

Someone needs to cap an HDTV broadcast of this somewhere.

You might be surprised, but ADM left the camp-fire scene in, but cut Willy's freek-out.

I was completely surprised when I saw it because I always found the scene mildly amusing.

topdawg193 said:

Let's have a TOD de-Willied and de-Shortrounded while we're at it!

You should take a look at ADM's Temple of Doom.  While not de-Willied, he stops her from being scream-y and annoying.

It's probably one of his best edits because of the subtlety and his reverence to the original material.

Saludos Amigos isn't widescreen AFAIK, so even a VHS rip might work for the missing scene.

Anyone know if the old tape release is intact?  I might be able to get my hands on that.

If you consider the Young Indiana Jones shows to be canonical, Indy had been calling himself Indy since we very first meet him as a child.

If from then up through Holy Grail he had been going by Indianna, it's inane to think he would suddenly decide it's time to change again.

@Molly - While I've gotten good at re-authoring an edited movie back into it's original menu system, I personally have no problem with movie-only DVDs.

Maybe it's from growing up with VHS tapes.  Besides, unless you have extras, a menu is just another hoop to jump through before you watch what you came for.

Um, I know it's on topic, but next time why don't you just post a link to a text file, HeKS.

Nope, still don't see it, but don't let me deter you.  It could be just because it's a bald white smooth shape.

Mind you what Crystal Skull REALLY needs is more CG work. ;)

What are you plans for it when you are done?

Good looking model... I'm not sure there's much resemblance though.

Post edited to reflect change.  (I still don't know what the change was on BatB.)

Didn't someone do Lion King as well?

Hmm. Well that clarifies things, but doesn't get me much closer to solving the problem.

Edit: Testing disc 2 (which is the one I was currently working with) and trimming the center channel to be largely dialog... I end up around -31db +/- 3db... which doesn't help if the loud passages are too loud even at -29db.

I think I'll stick with -28.  It should get my normal listening to around -27/-28 and keep the loudest from exceeding -31... I think.

The first post needs to be updated to keep a running list of 'needs to be fixed' and releases so people can keep score.

AFAIK:

Little Mermaid: Fixed by me.

Aladdin: Fixed by ADM

Beauty and the Beast: Molly (Could someone PM me, I'm still unclear what's been changed in this movie.)

Song of the South: Released by Mentor and Br'er Preservation Group

Did I miss anything?

I think wasting time fixing OAR/Open matte is silly. Some of these films were meant for wider, some were cropped after the fact, some were re-opened for full height of cells, some re-opened for 16x9.

The fact most of animated features are created as 1.66:1 no matter what was intended during production or finally matted for theatrically. Cells are squarish. Anything else is open to debate.

It would take a lot of time a research to find out the 'original intent' on these and at the end of the day it doesn't matter much.

I know there's been talk about stuff like Little Mermaid's color. While it might be different from a prior release, it is pleasing to the eye, and the changes were made under supervision of the original animators.

I don't think they intend to damage the film when they make these decisions. When you take into account the age of the films, and possible changes introduced by color timing, it's hard to tell what the original intent was at this point. If it looks good, save your time. I'll take slightly skewed color on a good looking DVD over the best laserdisc/VHS preservation any day.

What's more important is deliberate censorship. I think that pisses more people off than anything else and our time is best spent there.

My top list for fixes includes Saludos Amigos, and (as far as I can tell) the undiscussed changes to Fantasia.

I also understand Make Mine Music and Melody Time have been censored... but don't ask me what.

Does anyone know if Three Caballeros has had any changes? I saw someone mention that they thought it might have been censored as well.

Finally... IS the PAL release of Saludos Amigos complete? I see it's active on a notorious bittorrent site. (see edit2 below.)

Edit:

And that's without mentioning the following which are banned outright...

Hell's Bells
Trader Mickey
Mickey In Arabia
Mickey's Man Friday
Education For Death
Reason And Emotion
Commando Duck
Der Fueher's Face
Mickey's Mellerdrammer
Cannibal Capers

Edit2:

My googling turns up that R2 and R4 are censored for Saludos Amigos as well. Anyone know of a clean source for this movie?

I'm currently working on a project to covert a looooong movie from PAL to NTSC. It's split across 3 DVD.

My typical method for determining dialog normalization in a 'from scratch' project involves doing an RMS normalization scan with Sony SoundForge.

For PAL2NTSC projects, I will usually examine the original audio track, and use the same normalization they do (figuring they have commercial tools that can calculate this better).

In this movie, the PAL audio is -31db (on all 3 discs). When I tried that number for my test disc, I found myself occasionally turning the volume down to about -32/-33db in the louder portions.

Typically, with my set up, -28 +/- 2db is my normal listening level and NEVER turn it below -30 to -31db.

So I tried -27 (figuring it seems to be 4 db louder than my normal levels). It's largely ok there, but I end up listening around -26db and there still seems to be a good deal of swing between loud and soft dialog, let alone loud music and effects. I ended up reaching for the remote quite a bit. (A good indicator of the wrong normalization.)

I'm not completely clear about testing the RMS with SoundForge in a 5.1 situation. One guide says test the whole Center channel, another says highlight and test just a section with dialog. If I don't have an original AC3 track to examine, it's usually 2 channels and I do well scanning the full film (both channels).

Trying different methods I get wildly different numbers between discs, channels, segements tested, etc. (Between -27 and -35.)

Any suggestions what to do here? I'm thinking of just using -31db and turning down the volume. I suppose as inconsistent as the audio is on this disc, being commercial produced their number is probably more correct.

I just don't know.

No PAL equipment, and most importantly, no screen shots.

There is no way of knowing.  The box design is the same as the one I have.  Possibly the same master.

I know there was an "Amazon Exclusive" release.  I don't know if it was just a rebox or new transfer.  Frankly, after getting burned once, I'm hesitant to buy a second copy.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084625/

I’ve been considering a preservation of this long OOP film starring David Carradine, Stockard Channing, and Christopher Lee.

It’s not a very well respected film, but I love it anyway.

Over the holidays I purchased a new/sealed VHS from Amazon’s Marketplace. Lddb has no listing for this film so that (seemed) like the best idea.

To my horror the picture quality is terrible. There is very little left to restore.

I still have an old analog cable/VHS tape copy that has better whites and blacks, more vibrant colors, much more detail, and correct aspect ratios.

The original has tall thin characters during the credits, the cable copy letterboxed these parts. And even though I haven’t checked directly, to my eye the rest of the movie’s AR appears slightly off.

Of course the cable recording’s audio is better as well with better detail and a more clear high end.

As much as I hate having to restore Analog Cable2VHS2DVD, I can’t think of anywhere else to find a better source.

If anyone has a suggestion, please jump in.

These are the only 2 screen caps I made (from the opening credits) before I deleted everything in disgust:

(Images are raw and resize to 1:1 only. No other changes were made.)

Official VHS

Cable broadcast

Mod Edit: Doctor M’s finished ‘Safari 3000’ project can be found here:-

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Safari-3000-A-Doctor-M-Preservation/id/10133

For the train racing scene, did you try making the motion blur a bit more cartoony and colorful (like Smallville)?  Still, I thought what you did worked well.

I don't know what the complaint is about the missile launch.  I thought the scene flowed fine.

Have you considered not joining the two films directly but putting in an intermission card and running the score for a minute or two?  At that runtime, it's not unreasonable.

Of course you could just make it a 2-disc set with the disc change covering the problem.  2 DVD5s are cheaper to burn than a DVD9.