ElectricTriangle

blaice said:

QUERY 2:
Is there any upside to directly muxing the 17.8gb MKV to BD ISO and putting the resulting directory on a blank BD rather than getting the reduced AVCHD for DVD? The drop in size from 18gb to 8gb seems intense but I have little esoteric knowledge in this area so I thought I'd ask. (Is it similar to the audiophile argument between FLAC and 320kbps when most find no discernible difference etc?)

The bigger encode should look somewhat better, but its not a huge difference. The other difference between the two is lossless audio and foreign dubs. If you want those, burn a BD. If not, the AVCHD is fine (and is ready to burn.)

SilverWook said:

The Ms. Pac Man machine at my local movie theater looks weird with an 16:9 LCD panel mounted in the cabinet.

 Who did that? That's terrible! Those games were expressly designed with CRT display technology in mind.

hairy_hen said:

The Lowry stuff definitely didn't happen until 2004.

The reason that shot in particular looks so bad in the official release is because it is one of those Harmy alluded to earlier: scanned into the computer using outdated 90's film scanning technology, composited into frame along with outdated 90's CGI, printed out to film, then rescanned into the computer again in 2004 and subjected to additional degraining for the Lowry process.  It has been through significantly more generation loss and destructive processing than a typical projection print, as exemplified by the -1 scan.

The whole movie doesn't look that bad, just the parts that have been through all the stages of crappy digital alteration.

Film, to a 2k scan, add cgi, to film, to another 2k scan and then Lowryized. Whew! Then add in poor color grading for good measure.

Wouldn't this type of generational loss include almost every scene that was digitally altered in 97 and then not redone in the 2004 edition?

Lowry didn't come into the picture until the 2004 discs. The 97 edition is Lowery free.

Edit: Actually, the laserdiscs have early DNR just like the GOUT, but the film prints are DNR free.

That was the whole "Lowery process," wasn't it? DNR the whole thing and then regrain it to hide the fact that there is less detail.

Stinky-Dinkins said:

ElectricTriangle said:

At least on my end, your links for Star Wars and Jedi are 1024x685 rather than the 1730x1146 that Empire is.

They're definitely 1730X1146 (I think SW and Jedi are slightly bigger than that actually.) It's your browser settings. When you first open them up your browser won't show them full-size, depending on what browser you use - something like IE will do that. So, after you open them up click on them to make them full-size. The ones you linked will do the exact same thing, because they're identical files. Your browser must be auto-sizing them to fit your screen dimensions.

Figured it out. If i click the link it redirects to "imagizer.imageshack.us" which gives me a low-res preview image (For Star Wars and Jedi, but strangely not not Empire). If I change the domain to "img242.imageshack.us," then it gives me the full-res file. Same in Chrome and Firefox. Imageshack is odd.

At least on my end, your links for Star Wars and Jedi are 1024x685 rather than the 1730x1146 that Empire is.

Stinky-Dinkins said:

Handman said:

Stinky Dinkins, I've got those same covers, but I don't know what that inside art is. What is it?

They're some art I found in another thread on here a while back. I'm more than a little buzzed so I have no clue what thread it was, but I think it was some Japanese manga art or something? Makes for a fucking killer interior cover though.  I saved the images when I found them because I liked the way they looked, here are the links if you want 'em:

http://imageshack.com/a/img537/4052/jT14y6.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img742/2069/EiHovD.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img674/2022/Zojzuv.jpg

Those are the full-sized images as I found them, so you just have to crop 'em a little bit if you're going to make them BD cover-sized.

 Here's links to all of them in Hires (Jedi and Star Wars are low res in the above links)

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/1141/japanhvj6.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9906/japesbil9.jpg

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/6638/japrotjcn4.jpg

davextreme said:

"should I be able to hear the difference from an average mp3 there?"

For a high-quality MP3, probably not. Some can.

There have been tons of tests on this, and the answer is that even with very good equipment most listeners can't tell the difference between a good mp3/AAC file and a higher-quality file in AB and ABX tests (where you listen to multiple clips blind and then have to identify which is which). This infuriates audiophiles who've spent fortunes on good equipment, but the science is there.

You want lossless sources of course so you can manipulate them without without introducing error, but for almost all listeners, compression is fine. (I know I'l have people chime in saying "I can hear it." Maybe you really can, but I'd wager if you took an ABX test under scientific conditions, you'd be surprised.)

 This is very true; the whole idea behind lossy compression that the "lost bits" are parts people wouldn't be hearing anyway.  Decent audio equipment is still a good idea. Even though you can't differentiate between a CD and a mp3, you might as well have them both sound good.

That’s so cool that the LD got a unreleased audio track. H_h, your posts are always so interesting and well informed.

Those test shots of Aliens look promising.

Does anyone have the original French audio track from La Femme Nikita (1990)? The Bluray has only a 5.1 mix.

I just watched this. I just wanted to mention that I really like the new logo at the beginning. Very cool.

nirbateman said:

I don't think that this comparison captures the feel of it in motion.

The German BD is a lot dirtier, in a good way.

 Oh, did they run "auto dirt remove" on the MGM? That stinks. German wins again.

nirbateman said:

And yes, the German FAFDM, does use the MGM master, but it doesn't use the filtering that MGM used for the BD.

 I think it does, look at the comparison. It looks the same to me.

For "A Fistful of Dollars" I would recommend the Italian BD over the German. They are both from the same source, but the German is slightly darker, so you can lose a little detail in the dark scenes (comparison). I'm assuming the Italian is more accurate, as the restoration happened there.

It's worth noting that in "For A Few Dollars More," the primary source of the German BD is the MGM transfer, and they look the same. This transfer is the best of the MGM transfers, but both versions share its excessive EE (comparison). The German version is still the best, of course, as it's uncut.

Cool. Thanks for the update.

Any updates on this, or has it been put on hold?

Pheran said:

hairy_hen said:

The '93 mix of ESB contains a few glitches, so I did a bit of restoration work on it since it was the primary source for the new 5.1.  This includes declipping, declicking, and noise removal, all with iZotope RX 3; as well as patching editing mistakes in the laserdisc source.  I shall therefore upload this corrected copy in AC3 form to be included in the MKV.

Are you saying that the ESB 2.0 AVCHD has the bad version? :(

 The '93 mix is not included with the ESB 2.0 AVCHD. The 5.1 mix is hairy_hen's custom mix based off the '93 mix. It has all those fixes and more. (and is included with the 2.0 AVCHD)

Harmy said:

Yeah, it's supposed to be the TB 97SE.

Also, here's a completed comparison gallery:

https://plus.google.com/u/1/photos/109609428403596349302/albums/6044645069501365185

 That is a impressive gallery.

Is there any chance you might release a stereo version of your new ESB track? I liked having the stereo version of Star Wars so I didn't have to downmix the 5.1 track when watching on my computer.

hairy_hen said:

Hmm . . . well, just from the few comments that have been made here, it is clear that opinions on which mono additions are important to the film and which are not vary widely.  Obviously there will be no consensus on this issue.  Nonetheless it may be helpful to determine which ones are generally viewed as being the most significant so I know what to focus on.  Keeping in mind, of course, that I can't possibly include them all, and that my own personal preference is likely to play a part as well.

I'd also like to hear some opinions about the two possible methods I outlined above.  Which do people prefer: the 70mm with some things added to it, or the '97 SE mix de-crappified?  Either one is a viable possibility for a potential hybrid version.

 I love the blast door line as well as the alternate Aunt Buru takes. But adding any changes from the mono mix is cool.

In terms of the method, I think it comes down to how much work you want to invest in it. I imagine the '97 mix would take a lot of work to despecialize.

Erikstormtrooper said: Adywan managed to integrate quite a bit of mono mix dialog into the 5.1 mix for Star Wars Revisited.

IIRC, he used the 2004 mix, which keeps the dialogue in the center channel. I doubt Hairy_hen will want to touch the 2004 mix with anything less than a 20-foot pole.

digitalfreaknyc said:
No offense but that's like saying you shouldn't be able to tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD. And that's just dumb.

 Actually, most available testing shows that people can't tell the difference between a proper, high-bitrate mp3 and a CD. The difference is usually a placebo or a poorly encoded or low bitrate mp3.

Of course, I would much rather have a CD then an mp3 album, simply because it's more versatile, and I can rip to the format of my choice (vorbis!).

captainsolo said:

I too agree that the DC with reinserted violent bits is best overall in feeling with the 1982 release before going to the fully spiffed up and blue/teal Final Cut.

 That would be wonderful.

TServo2049 said:

 I don't know. I just assumed PCM always sounded better than compressed DD.

 Unless they give it a particular anemic bitrate or screw up the encoding, DD (and other lossy codecs) should sound identical to a lossless track (of the same master). The whole idea of lossy compression is to remove data that the human ear can't hear. Lossless audio is useful for editing as going from one lossy codec to another will produce noticeable decay.

That being said, poor encodes happen as does over filtering audio tracks. (Which is one of the reasons this thread exists.)

hairy_hen said:

You know what?  I wasn't going to do this, but since I have the most recent version of ABC's score restoration, I'm going to assemble a GOUT-synched isolated score from that, starting right now.

The sound quality of his latest effort is better than what's on the existing edited version, so it will be worthwhile.  Assuming I don't run into any unexpected difficulty, it shouldn't take long to complete.

35mm stereo mix is now finished, aside from final quality check.

 Dang. You are dedicated. That's great! Will you edit the cues to the existing ABC isoscore (he tried to keep them similar to how they were composed) or to how they appeared in the final movie?