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Doctor M

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Join date
1-Feb-2005
Last activity
19-Jan-2026
Posts
2,553

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Post
#129517
Topic
<strong>The Cowclops Transfers (a.k.a. the PCM audio DVD's, Row47 set) Info and Feedback Thread</strong> (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129517/action/topic#129517
Time
I kinda thought the original CC was better as well when I first saw the demo clip. I mean some technical problems were fixed and all, but still...
(Not to be an ass but: ) if you are looking for less technically accurate, but more pleasing visually, you might want to check clips of the discs I'm working on.
Post
#129507
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129507/action/topic#129507
Time
Are you sure? I came up with 288 when I calculated.
Hmm, anyway I am allowing 328 lines for the picture as it is. Now that is somewhat artificial since it has already been enlarged and now I'm reducing it, but whichever number is right (and I'm going to assume it's Moth3r) I'm still slightly larger so there should be minimal if any loss of the original pal resolution when I'm done.

Btw, Moth3r please get back to me on the 8 vs 4 lines thing in PM.
Post
#129436
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129436/action/topic#129436
Time
Erikstormtrooper: Yeah, my dad's TV is slightly off center too and gives a fractional sliver of black down one side, but my other TV covers all of the black up.

As far as the zoom(?) I am of course trying to counter the cropping already done to the movie. But yeah, the down side is a reduced number of actual lines used for the picture. But although it's much less lines than Moth3r's disc, since it is anamorphic it still contains more lines than the original laserdisc source (I think).
Does anyone know the number of actual lines used in a PAL 2.35:1 laserdisc? I think I'm going to go do some calculations on that this afternoon I don't want less...

As far as the break up, I didn't notice, but that clip is several pieces edited together, so there might be some problems from that. I'll check that too.
Post
#129292
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129292/action/topic#129292
Time
That being said I think the general consensus is that things look good and I should get going on the final steps.

As far as the borders go, I guess I will ask the group here since most people seem to disapprove.

I will be definitely be encoding my own copy with the borders. If the demand is overwhelming (for those that will actually WANT a copy), I can make the released version without them.

Ok so poll time. For clarity sake refer to them as TV friendly (with picture framing) or Monitor friendly (no additional borders).
Post
#129290
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129290/action/topic#129290
Time
We walk a fine line here. On the one side is our goal to preserve the original version of Star Wars we grew up with and loved before things went horribly wrong.

On the other side we also have a desire to sit, watch and enjoy the movies we are attempting to preserve. It is our love for them that has us here to start with after all.

Now I know I am leaning quite far into the latter category with my project, and perhaps I wasn't clear from the start. (Though calling it "Reinventing The Wheel" should tip you off that I am aware of the real necessity of my project.) It's also understood that from a preservation stand-point re-encoding a DVD isn't your finest method.

Think of it as a homage to Moth3r's beautiful transfer, which is perhaps the best of all current and complete sets that have been made.

I started this because I want to be able to watch and enjoy his fine work from my sofa, away from my PC. I only have a NTSC DVD player, and I saw a few tweaks that might elevated the movies further. That's why I set about producing these discs for myself. Public release will only be a side-effect since just about anyone could do this (or their interpretation) on their own.

Am I preserving the OT for future generations? Not well I'm not. That's a conscious decision. Heck, my current set of laserdiscs are of the "Incredible Shrinking Aspect-Ratio" set, not exactly one worth remembering.

If your goal is pure preservation, you could grab Cowclop's latest masterpiece, get the original Moth3r set if PAL is your bent, donate to the X0 project, or buy some hardware and start your own archive edition.

I am perfectly aware that what I have done will be obsolete (maybe even before I finish), but that isn't the point. (Look for a possible v2.0 after Citizen has his say). I've never made a secret of my general dislike for the quality of almost all current transfers for one reason or another. What I want is the best home viewing experience I can muster with what is available and not starting from scratch. The PAL resolution of Moth3r's was a great starting point.

And that's why the black bars, that's why the color and brightness tweaks. Are they correct decisions? Maybe not. That's why I'm so willing to take input from people that aren't partially color blind (as I am) or probably just plain know more than I do. Is it pleasing to watch from my sofa? Oh, yes it is.

So I agree 100% that I could have done more to preserve the series, but there are better people than I already doing it. If that's what you want than these are not the discs you're looking for.

BUT deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.
Post
#129210
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129210/action/topic#129210
Time
Segaflip: Do you mean this guy: http://aptirrelevance.com/otscreenshots/screenshots.php?shot=4? If so I'll grab a screenshot of him for you.

Moth3r: Yeah, I'm agnozing over the borders, and if so how much. I'm curious if anyone has burned these and tried it on a TV. I'm not sure my TV just has a large overscan region or not.
(Edit: I took a look at the filter, I'm not sure I like how it softens the picture too. The other problem is I'm using VirtualDubMod and frameserving to CCE and they don't seem to have a VD version of the filter.)

Darth: great, now I if someone has the French PAL side changes...
Post
#129151
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/129151/action/topic#129151
Time
MAJOR UPDATE: I gave up trying to make the original audio sound good, grabbed some new software and spent 7 hours(!) last night learning as I went and doing some beautiful work putting that Definitive Collection audio track in.

I'm tired, but I am sooooo happy with it. Cuts in the audio are crossfaded in such a way as to remain unnoticed (hopefully).
I burned a test disc with provisional (1 pass CQ) video. It is stunning just like that.

Don't believe me? The first post of this thread has gotten overhauled to reflect what is what and includes a clip (at bottom) of the release candidate video.
That's a 7-pass vbr, now how do I make CCE go all the way to 11?
Let me know what you think, and be honest, this IS for posterity. To bright, to yellow, too much border, etc.
Final encoding will start in a couple days.

I'm currently d/l-ing Moth3r's ESB. Does anyone have the chapter cuts for this as well (French and DC)? That made life MUCH easier last night.
Post
#128464
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128464/action/topic#128464
Time
Snaps above are updated. After a visit to the X0 site and a bit of brightness comparison I tapped a tiny tiny bit more brightness into my filters (4%). It's just enough to keep there being any washing out of detail, but it whitens whites while you brush.
It also allowed me to tap the yellow/green correction up to 25% (from the previous 15%) with only slight clipping in 1 frame of film (a laser blast).
This brings '3PO up even better. I really should rename this project the Quest for the Golden Droid.

In case you're worried about the green increase, the only real greens in the movie are console displays on the Death Star and the readout at the bottom of Luke's binocular thingees.

Tried to adjust the hue, but where one shot needs it tipped one way, the next scene needs it somewhere else. So that is being left alone.

Any whoser, again, corrected pictures are above...

Still looking for a quick easy way through the chapter stops...
Post
#128389
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128389/action/topic#128389
Time
Well, I was hoping to get some final thumbs up/down from the crowd over the color change and/or the pitch shift setting (there are like 12 variations in Sound Forge).

Assuming all is go, I will post an updated clip of the final DVD with full tech details and if there's general agreement that it warrants release I can send a few discs out to any who want to torrent it or put it on a binaries group.

Since ES is up on MySpleen you all might want to wait since it'll take all of an additional week to get that ready for release as well (barring unforseen problems).

Then there's the whole chapter thing I hadn't considered until just now. Anyone have an NTSC time code list (or .chp file) they want to share?
Post
#128375
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128375/action/topic#128375
Time
Welllll,
In an ideal situation I would need only to correct the A/V sync at the side changes of both the source materials (about 8 points).
That is of course not the case. Spending several hours working on this today, I have decided that it is beyond my current abilities (or the time I am willing to invest) in order to add a new audio track. The first 1/2 hr falls into place nicely, and then you start seeing sync shifts between scenes where there is no side change from either source.

So I am packing it in with that idea. Sorry guys I wanted it too. If anyone else wants to take this up, you can contact me and I'll help out as best I can.

What I can show you (and what will probably be my final material) is this:
Audio track: Ripped from Moth3r's disc, converted to wav, PAL -> NTSC (all BeSweet at this point), and pitch-shifted (Music2 profile in Sound Forge). I'm going to keep this as PCM audio since the black borders allow a Q of 35 with 1900kbps (no kidding).

Audio clip is here (Right-Click, save target as...)

I DID originally boost all colors 35%, then it was 25%, then it was only yellow and green, now it's 15% (some late movie laserblasts clip above this level). Scanning the whole disc this seemed the best way to go. I just didn't like the pale colored C3PO in the source.

Anyway some snaps for you all. You can see that the black borders on the sides seem beefy, but they are all but completely lost in overscan on a TV.

http://home.earthlink.net/~originaldrm/snap1.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~originaldrm/snap2.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~originaldrm/snap3.jpg

(Pictures are direct output from VirtualDub, pre-re-encoding.)

The test burn clip from all this was fairly pleasing on a 4:3 35" TV with a THX 5.1 select audio system.
Yes I know it's not perfect and I'll take input on this since I'll probably be running this through the mpg encoder in a few days.

It's not all I hoped for, but in my mind better than most NTSC transfers to date.
Post
#128152
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128152/action/topic#128152
Time
Hmm, ok first swing and things are looking much better than anticipated.

I take back some of what I said about the color levels. Especially the reds. Scanning a larger chunk of the movie (about 40 minutes) I see that the reds are plenty saturated. Also, the blues are full as well (I so much wanted more blue for R2 but that would be bad). Using the Color corrections tip from the X0 Project's web site I maxed out the saturation. Set like that I found at the beginning I couldn't boost most colors without the walls turning non-white (as was observed earlier in my posted clip with the pink-tint). Now I will confirm this later (and post screenies for your approval), but it looks like boosting only green and yellow (and not red, blue, magenta, and cyan) 25% allows us to improve the overall appearence without taking any colors past the 75% target and without adding ANY tinting to the white walls, troopers, or Leia's clothing (maxed out saturation confirms this).

As far as the audio, I took my PCM audio clip and added about 1/3 of a second less than 17 seconds of silence (during the THX logo). The audio appears to sync perfectly for about 30 minutes from the beginning.

Now I can add/remove blank audio from the PCM clip further to see if I can keep going like this but 2 things stand in my way.
First I have to free up a bunch of drive space but given time That's easy enough.

What would be monsterously helpful at this point would be if anybody could quote me as closely as possible the side changes for both the DC edition and the French PAL (? Moth3r's source). I'm thinking that's going to be the key blocks where the audio will need to be resynced each time.

If that's the worst of it, this project should work out great.
Post
#128134
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/128134/action/topic#128134
Time
Anyone who was waiting for an update thursday, I must apologize. My other project was a vhs to dvd coversion of a badly degraded wedding video.
The project was almost done when I made the amazing discovery that in the worst parts, the odd fields were 80% intact and only the even fields were damaged. So a completely unwatchable noise ridden wedding video with some slight filtering has become an amazing resurrection from the trash heap.

With that out of the way I can now start tonight/tomorrow looking at Moth3r's movie.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Moth3r did say he added and removed frames to help sink the audio? Ay, that's gonna hurt.
Post
#127622
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127622/action/topic#127622
Time
Pupil: what is your source for the 72.4 cents number? Calculated or from elsewhere?

Btw, my father back in the 80's(?) had a high end audio cassette player that could let you adjust playback speed and set pitch so you could listen to lectures at faster rates while preserving pitch.

Yeah the technology is old by remember all the sources were analog. But for those you pretty much have an "infinite" sample you're reading and changing as you drag it across some sort of tape head (or record needle). (Ok not infinite but you know what I mean).

But digital recordings only have so many samples per second when if you expand a give sample it now has to go further. This would definitely lower quality.