The credits were absolutely not created in SD, they’re definitely part of both film sources. As I said earlier, the pan and scan camera zooms out during the P&S credits, and I had to stabilize them to get rid of gate weave so I could stack a few of the frames and get slightly better quality. The P&S credits are also fairly splicy and dirty.
Hey guys, so recently a fine lad uploaded something really awesome to the 'Spleen: two copies of the 1990 Russian theatrical version of Star Wars Episode IV. It’s a legit dub of the film, not one of those one man lector narrations. I haven’t had a chance to look at these all the way through, and I don’t know Star Wars shot for shot; just wanted to make that clear before I proceed.
Both are pretty horrible transfers - one pan and scan and the other widescreen - with runtimes much shorter than the original film, even accounting for PAL speedup on one of the copies (the other is a PAL transfer at proper film speed). I think the runtime difference might have to do with how splicy the film sources are, but part of me is really, really hoping it includes censors or edits made by the Soviets.
No matter the case, both copies contain content that’s spliced out of the other, and the picture quality on both is awful, so I figured it’d be a great idea to create a composite of the dub audio, sync it up to the latest Despecialized edition, and recreate the Russian ending credits (the crawl is just the English 1981 variant and the Greedo subtitles are in English) and any possible edits/censorship.
I’ve already done some early restoration work on the ending credits. These credits are very simple - just Russian text in white that fades in and out on top of a possibly unique star field. Here is the first credit from the pan and scan copy (the P&S camera actually zooms out after this credit to present a larger amount of the frame):
http://i.imgur.com/I4EZl8i.png
This is the same credit from the widescreen copy:
http://i.imgur.com/xsyDhic.png
And this is that credit as restored by me:
http://i.imgur.com/uKa3ckR.png
I stabilized and stacked six odd and six even fields from the first credit on the P&S copy, then stabilized and stacked six odds and evens of textless, fuller background from the same source, and then laid the restored credit onto the restored background frame. I darkened the result slightly to get rid of the halos, then I uprezzed it by a factor of two at http://waifu2x.udp.jp/.
Does anyone know a good “film wobble” or “gate weave” plugin for FCP 7? Because that would be the icing on the cake for these restored ending titles.
Anyway, I’ll use this thread to discuss the progression of my Soviet ANH project, but anyone else can use it to discuss upgrades of any other versions of these films from behind the Iron Curtain.
TV's Frink said:
Doug Gorius said:
-The official DVDs of the rest of the episodes
Are these available to purchase officially?
Yup, though two of them are OOP. All of the season one episodes have finally come out, split across twelve sets and a single. I should've been more specific and said season one episodes.
TServo2049 said:
Will you be keeping it interlaced, in its native 60i? It just bugs me watching the show in progressive (like on Netflix). (I remember that I got a couple DVD-Rs many years back in a trade, and one of them had been deinterlaced by the encoder. It just looked wrong.)
Mhm. I happen to hate the deinterlaced look, too. It's just not right.
BTW this is a little early but if I move on to season two and beyond, I'll make sure to include the "dim your lights" thing and as many slates as I can find. If the numerous past bootlegs and shrunken down .avis are Wendy's, these sets will be the thirty dollar steak.
Hey guys! I realized not too long ago all of the season one episodes of MST3K are finally available on official DVD (counting the OOP releases). In other words, it's now possible to compile a season one set from transfers of the master tapes for all 13 episodes, which is what I'm trying to do here with this project.
In addition to extras like outtakes and stuff from the official releases like introductions, I'm adding as much contemporary material as possible directly relating to season one - this includes tv appearances, magazine/newspaper articles and promos. My hope is that this will end up being like a time capsule to late 1989 - early 1990 and that I'll be able to do similar editions of each successive season.
I intend to finish it on a BD50 and a BD25, taking advantage of Blu-ray's significant storage capacity for SD content. Why store 13, ~4 GB episodes on seven dual-layer DVDs when you can put the same number on no more than two BDs - including extras - without souring the quality? This will be the first, truly convenient way to watch a whole season of this show in excellent quality on a home video format.
As I'm sure many of you are aware, there's a number of tape hits present on the masters used for the official DVDs. My intention is to augment the best possible fan recordings whenever these glitches occur, and to revert to other episodes if a hit occurs during reused segments like the intro, the "moon logo" commercial break thing or the ending credits.
~~~~~~~~~~~
Here is the status of the project so far:
-I have episodes 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 111 and 112 from the official Shout! and Rhino DVDs
-I have a promo for 102, introductions to 110 and 112 and the featurette "Life After MST3K: J. Elivs Weinstein" (all from the Shout! releases)
-I've got a multigen EP recording of 101 with commercials
-Print materials currently in my possession are Satellite News Vol. 2 No. 1 (in .cbr) and the MST3K Colossal Episode Guide (in .pdf), from which I'm including an excerpt of the season one section.
NEEDS (if you think you can help, please contact me):
-More contemporary material of any kind
-The official DVDs of the rest of the season one episodes
-Nice quality fan recordings of all season one episodes
-To verify whether my copy of 101 is of the original premiere or not
Ohhh, so they did it as a big gimmick. Sucky. I assumed the special was a documentary on the remastering process; a similar special was broadcast when they did the films in 2K back in '08. Anyway, 28 films in 4K definitely is a lot to ask for, so I can't say I'm surprised. Thanks for the confirmation.
To the probably very few of you who are in Japan and have the Japanese Movie Specialty Channel (, “www.nihon-eiga.com/),”)http://www.nihon-eiga.com/),, “www.nihon-eiga.com/),”) you’d probably be interested to know they are airing a series of 4K remasters (downscaled to 1080i, of course) of the whole Godzilla series this whole weekend. The “Godzilla 4K Project”, they call it. This has not been covered by the English language fandom press at all, to my knowledge. So to those of you lucky enough to meet the previously mentioned conditions, you should definitely try and record these. They may be promising.
God knows when these new versions will appear on home video. Toho reissued the entire series on Blu-ray two days ago and all are old transfers from 2008. Typical shit-eating Toho decision born entirely of greed. It is imperative that these be DVR’d by an enterprising pirate.
Schedule for the marathon - http://www.nihon-eiga.com/osusume/55godzilla/
Information on the remasters - http://www.nihon-eiga.com/osusume/godzilla/special03.html
I'm using the Roadshow Home Video VHS, not the Carlton. Also, the international version is completely dubbed, with no subtitled Russians anywhere.
I’m in the process of obtaining materials to use for my G85 US theatrical preservation.
For the subtitles missing from the Monsters HD broadcast, I’m utilizing a Roadshow Home Video Aussie rental tape. I will match the font, timing, position, size, etc. of the subtitles and add a slight shake and softness to them so they will be exactly like the theatrical subs. This should be coming in the mail soon.
For the better part of the theatrical audio, I will use the US LD. I’m still looking for this.
The New World logo will have the Godzilla roar over it, as heard in theaters. I saved a YouTube video of this on my hard drive. I might try finding the equivalent roar on a Toho sound effects compilation, as the YouTube video’s quality isn’t perfect
The only other thing I need is a full HD capture of the Monsters HD broadcast. I have both of the widely spread standard definition captures of the broadcast that can be found on the internet, and neither are particularly good. A 720p cap would be sufficient, but 1080i would be perfect.
If you think you can help me in absolutely any way, please, PLEASE PM me.
Moth3r said:
I tried a manual IVTC (simple 3:2 pulldown removal) on the sample, and although it seemed to reconstruct the original frames successfully and eliminate the combing, there were dupe frames appearing every so often. It's possible that there is a more complex pulldown pattern going on here.
That's odd, when I IVTC'd it through the process Chewtobacca suggested I didn't see any dupe frames.
Ok, I loaded my script in Hc Enc, and I saw this message:
"error loading Avisynth script,LoadPlugin: unable to load "Your_Directory_Structure\DGDecode.dll" (\\.psf\Home\Desktop\VideoFile.avs, line 1)
I don't know what I did wrong. Could somebody help me? I'm a complete and utter newb when it comes to stuff like Avisynth. Also, I have no idea what to put in the script for "Your_Directory_Structure".
Chewtobacca said:
Posting a sample of the end credits isn't the best thing to do if you want people to see the problems with your video. This isn't HD: it is is 720x480. Did you resize the clip? If so, you shouldn't resize interlaced video unless you really know what you are doing (and even then I wouldn't recommend it.)
I should have said that it was a standard definition capture. The guy I torrented it from can't record in HD, unfortunately.
I have an .mpeg of a Monsters HD broadcast of Godzilla 1985, and it looks very good, except the whole thing is interlaced and there is some shimmering.
Can somebody show me how to inverse telecine and de-shimmer this .mpeg without compressing it, or compressing it as little as possible? Thanx.
Wow, I registered to tehparadox.com yesterday and made one post. Now my account's been deleted because I'm "inactive." I can't access anything, contact the admin or register again, not even proxies work.
Thanx!
I've got an HD version of a film which has hard-coded subtitles that appear very frequently, and a laserdisc source for the same film, without all the subtitles. Is there a way I could somehow remove the subtitles from the HD source, possibly using the laserdisc as a guide? Thank you.
This is a very interesting project. Nice work, hairy_hen!
Ok, I've found someone who is willing to transfer the print for me. Now, I'm just hoping someone will come out of the woodwork with a nice-looking copy of the end credits...
AvP said:
This is on DVD even bluray....
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=6305326614%7C%20B000FA4TLQ%7C%20B00006FD9K%7C%20B00006FD9J%7C%20B002C6VMKC%7C%20B000007OF8&tag=i0ce-21
That's the Japanese cut, I'm talking about the US cut here.
I have recently acquired a 16mm print of the US cut of the original Godzilla film called Godzilla King of the Monsters. Apparently, it was transferred to 16mm from the original 35mm negatives, and is in perfect condition. It is missing the end credits, but has the original Trans World logo at the beginning and the rarely seen, brief opening credits, the latter which has never appeared on any home video release. I would love to have an HD telecine transfer made of this print, which is where I need you (the fine folks at originaltrilogy.com) to help me, as I don’t know where or how I could get this thing transferred to nice-looking HD. Once this task is completed, the only other things that need to be done are to find the end credits in good condition which should be telecined as well so I can edit them back into the film, and, if necessary, do some light digital restoration. The result will be a copy of GKOTM looking far better than the 1980 Viacom video master which has been used for ever home video edition of the film, and possibly as good as the film in its 1956 US release. Your help and cooperation will be extremely appreciated.
With kind regards and best wishes, I am
Very truly yours,
Doug Gorius
Somebody on Cinemageddon (the torrent site I originally uploaded my dvd to) is putting a new copy of the HD airing up soon; it still isn't full 1080i but it will be an anamorphic DVD, which gives it an edge over my non-anamorphic version.
Also, soon I'll be getting a better Usenet provider so I can download the Japanese cut in full 1080i. Apparently, all the Japanese versions were restored and shown on HDTV over in Japan last year. I'm still hoping I'll find a better copy of the International cut, no matter how bad it is I somehow feel the need to have it preserved.
no, I'm just not in the mood to split up a DVD5 into loads of 200 mb files.
AreaG said:Well I'm gald you reply, so you do have MonstersHD version and International cut?
I have the Monsters HD version and the international cut, although my current copy of the latter looks so bad it's almost unusable.
Do you have the raw HD .ts files or just the DVD you are upping at CG?
I don't have the .ts files, just the dvd.
I'm smiling at the thought of a Godzilla 1985 music video. Please feel free to elaborate at your convenience :-)
The music video is actually hilariously bad, and it features a love song called "I was afraid to love you". It used to be on youtube, but I think it's gone now.
Great to see some interest in this project! If this goes along good enough, maybe we can do a dvd of Biollante and the rest of the convoluted-but-at-the same-time-somewhat-entertaining Heisei series.
There should be a version with suitmation instead of CGI.
I have a copy of Monsters HD's version, and although it's standard definition and non-anamorphic it still looks fairly good. Here's a really good article about the Monsters HD broadcast:
http://hkfilmnews.blogspot.com/2007/10/godzilla-1985-widescreen-on-monsters.html
There's a torrent site called cinemageddon.org, and some people have posted great looking Monsters HD broadcasts. I've been pestering them to put Monsters HD's Godzilla 1985 up there. If anyone has a full-HD copy of this, come out, will ya?
I would gladly help you with your dvd project. I have loads of tv spots and trailers for the US cut, along with a press kit and the original music video. If you want a third version of the film in this special edition, there's the international cut, which is basically the original cut with bad dubbing. It is unique because it has different opening and end credits, and the subtitles and text that appear frequently in the original version are gone. I'm trying to find a better copy of it, and any help would be appreciated.
