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Doctor M

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Join date
1-Feb-2005
Last activity
2-Dec-2025
Posts
2,550

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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.
Post
#127521
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127521/action/topic#127521
Time
Pupil, no I think we were on the same page the whole time just explaining it differently.

I was referring to the fact that I have worked on other projects taking PAL back to NTSC. They obviously were not pitchshifted like Star Wars.

But you were saying:
So you just need to slow it down (resample it) by 4.096% and its back to the normal speed and pitch again.


In the past (and my future plans) involved using BeSweet's simple 24 fps -> 23,976 FRC preset. Do you know of a program that actually can resample as you've described or are you referring to the kind of process BeSweet already uses?
Post
#127295
Topic
Dr. M's Reinventing The Wheel Edition (PAL to NTSC+) (Released)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/127295/action/topic#127295
Time
Hmm. First let me nit-pick and say that technically PAL audio isn't time stretched, it is time compressed since the runtime is less than the original. It runs faster, hence the increased frequency. Correcting it requires time expansion. For most PAL material, like it or not, that's really the best alternative out there if you're turning it back to NTSC.

Commenting on the rest (and I could be butt-ass wrong):
As far as pitchshifting. Typically it would not be needed as it only changes the frequency, not the actual speed/length of a clip. In this case (and I thought my ears were playing tricks on me too when I heard the butch C3PO) time expansion is STILL needed. Otherwise when the framerate is slowed to 24fps, the audio will run too short. We are (unfortunately for me) finding that evidentily it will need ADDITIONAL pitchshifting to reverse the whole process they put it through.

From what I'm seeing with soundforge though, pitchshifting doesn't seem to be done on a percentage basis making this much more wobbly a problem to deal with.

So the choices are looking to be: exhaustively edit in an NTSC audio track, give up, or wait for Citizen's release since he will probably not have to add/remove frames to make his audio track match (which will make for an easier match to the DC audio later). Anyone got an external drive they want to send to Citizen for me so I can get the avi files instead

Color: I am not not not color correcting, I played around a bit with it today, and I will say, categorically, it's not happening. Again with this, there is more going on then a few simple tweaks. I will however still use a saturation boost (something in the 25% to 35% region) (a trade-off yes).

I did finished d/l-ing the full ANH tonight, and am about finished working on my current project so I can take a serious swing at this Thursday.