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FrankB

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12-Jan-2017
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23-Mar-2024
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48

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Post
#1383316
Topic
Info Wanted: THE FAMOUS VAMPIRE KILLERS - Versions? Workprint?
Time

Yes, FEARLESS, not Famous… Thank you…
Thanks also SilverWook, but this is not new to me. These are 12 minutes scenes that had been cut in the U.S. release. But additionally to these cut minutes even in the longer European version (108 min.) there are still 10 minutes missing from Polanski’s original cut (118 minutes!). That’s what I am searching for. 😉

Post
#1383233
Topic
Info Wanted: THE FAMOUS VAMPIRE KILLERS - Versions? Workprint?
Time

Hi all,

not much to say to this movie - one of the best of its genre. Polanski made an “original version” with 118 min., later cut it to 108 min., and it was shown in most parts of the world with or without some minor cuts. In the U.S. it had been cut for about 20 minutes and new dubbed. But since a couple of years there are a lot of fine uncut releases in original length of 108 min. (BluRays with 23.976 or 24 fps).

Two questions, I hope someone can answer:

1.There is an older U.S. VHS release, many copies on ebay, on the cover it says 111 minutes. Is that wrong?

  1. Is there some kind of workprint with the original length of 118 minutes? Or a release with these 10 minutes cut scenes?

Thanks for any hint!

Post
#1380745
Topic
Info: Back to the Future - without DNR & EE
Time

I don’t agree to this. The new master is worse than the older one. Less details due to too high contrasts. See lights/shadows in picture 2. Many light details are missing.
Colors are slightly more saturated, but to me seem also worse in sense of being less original.

EDIT:
Oops, it seems I stuck on page 40. My comment refers to this post:
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1363928/action/topic#1363928

Sorry.

Post
#1378771
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

triadne said:
…using the hd versions of TNG alongside the SD versions of that, to help teach the AI how to upscale star trek images better?

Up to now this won’t work, because the A.I. only uses structure-similarity to guess what new details it might create. What you suggest will be the future, but not the near future, I fear. Machine learning will be really convincing, when it will begin to think like humans think: To categorize and associate things in “tree views”, in order to take details from things that really correspondate with the missing details in the version to be upscaled.
Maybe in 20 years your suggestion would not be wrong. 😃

Post
#1375834
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

I just took the time to try something. I always thought the worst picture quality of the pilot is in the scene with Cisco and son. There is no magic that can turn this in something really good, but it is possible to remove most of the rainbowing, aliasing and (bad) grain, in order to get something to experiment with:

Before

After

One could sharpen this a bit, but that wouldn’t do much good. Too many vertical-ringing-kind artefacts, that would be sharpend, too. It’s even possible to remove these (didn’t try yet, just think so), but would surely cost a lot of sharpness, and I doubt if in the end this would be profitable for AI input

Post
#1375828
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

@Animaxx
Wonderful story! A trekkie-family-tradition! And: what an obligation!
I know this kind of feeling very well: The strong wish to take part, help, somehow in something you really love.

Joel Hruska said:
The problem is DS9 itself. There’s a reason I didn’t use Emissary (1x01) to show off my work. Early Deep Space 9 does not respond to upscaling nearly as well as later DS9 does. It’s not as clear. It’s not as sharp. It makes early greenscreen effects look really fake, and the footage can almost look as though it’s being spliced in from VHS. There’s moire on everything, the models are dull, and it scarcely looks like an upgrade. Some of that is baked right into the source and looks bad there (like the early holodeck scene), but gets magnified by the upscaler. But the show looks bad – really bad – on DVD.

Yes, I know that. I recently watched it (about two months ago the first episode). They seem to have improved scanning equipment through the years… Problems are Rainbowing (see Borg-cube), Ringing (I guess not because of not-so-well DVD-encoding, but somehow compressed storage in the past, quite common - see captions after upscaling), rests of aliasing (same reason, some of the past storage compression algorithms did not 100% take respect of interlacing), artefacts of not-so-well encoded film-grain, a. s. o.
Maybe I can find some time next week for this, I see some possibilities.

Post
#1375745
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Animaxx said:

Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).

So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.

This certainly has to do with bad deinterlacing… You are right: Especially NTSC-DVDs can be watched best, when you set HDMI to 576i. That may be the mode your player used.

I just looked into the upscaled pilot. Well, I don’t want to be negative, but it’s not for me. And I still think, there is not REALLY much done about new details. Everything Topaz did, seem to me to be also possible with slight sharpenings (if you know how) and simple resizing.

But: This can be the future, and everything new needs pioneers who just do it, become better and better, inspire even better techniques, a. s. o.

Maybe it’s also about youth and age. I watched my first Star Trek episodes in Germany in 1972, so I think I can also wait a few years longer to see something really revolutionary.
But keep on to move forward, where no man has gone before!

Post
#1375730
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Animaxx said:

Thanks for all your input. But I must ask: Does the 25 FPS bother you on my version? If so, I would consider doing the slowdown to 23,976 FPS, but I did watch my pilot-version and did not notice any decline in audio quality despite me doing modifications.

No bothering at all. But
-23.976 (24, but THIS difference isn’t noticeable…) is the original speed.
-Resampling audio is never lossless, but quite lossless, if you change speed AND naturally pitch together with it. Manipulations of pitch are always lossy. Meanwhile there are really good algorithms, but it’s never the same.

Bothering? No. But you want the best possible quality, don’t you?

Post
#1375669
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Joel Hruska said:
Then you can pitch-shift the audio down by 4% or get yourself the NTSC discs.

4% isn’t enough. This would fit if you slowed down to exactly 24fps. You have to resample with 104.271%
We use these numbers (the opposite for speedup is 95.904%) that often, that I know it by heart.

Post
#1375484
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

RwAoNrDdOsM said:

The newer masters for the DVDs were carefully IVTCed (and the 29.97 portions brought to 23.976 in I-don’t -know-what-way), and then sped up to 25fps.

Are you sure they did this?
From what I found it was suggested that they used a method called DEFT to convert it to 25 fps. It does produce some combing artifacts but it works 99% of the time and that’s why I haven’t touched the PAL discs since then.

The portions with originally film, 23.976fps, seem clean progressive, and just sped up. That’s why the German sound for the DVDs had to be sped up too, while in the nineties they had done another type of conversion without speeding it up. Often done at that time, but not suitable for modern Flat tvs. This was a mixture of keeping the original interlace structure plus blendings - sometimes quite well reversable with avisynths SRestore.

The portions with originally 29.97fps (cgi, and, as Joel pointed out, even more scenes) have to be converted in another way: To get them from nearly 30 to 25 it is not possible just to slow down, that would be much too highly noticable, for sound and also picture. Also decimating is not possible, because there are no double fields to remove, and the result will be very jerky. So this is done with motion flow algorithms, f. e. with hardware or software alchemist (which can also DEFT, as I just read, but I don’t know anything more about this special technique).
In this special case they had to bring it first to 23.976fps, so that the whole episode in the end could be sped up alltogether to 25fps for PAL.
This is all a bit speculation, because up to now I haven’t seen any of the NTSC DVDs to be sure, but it should have been made like this - I can’t think of any other reason, why the German sound was sped up for the DVDs. And this was used typically.

So you can simply take the PAL discs, slow it down to 23.976, and you have the best possible conversion already done to
-one unique framerate
-progressive (if the original 29.97fps sections ARE progressive, I just assume this - if not, deinterlace first)
Everything you need for upscaling.

Post
#1375107
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Animaxx said:
Strangely enough, the tv broadcasts and dvd versions are higher pitched around germany than the original vhs tapes, which had lower pitch.

Interesting, I didn’t know that. That means:
By the time the series was brought to Germany it was often practised technique to convert from NTSC to PAL in a mix of blending and keeping the original interlacing, especially with such mix-content of pulldowned and native 29.97 material.
So they seem to have dubbed it in its original length. This is what is also on the VHS cassettes.
The newer masters for the DVDs were carefully IVTCed (and the 29.97 portions brought to 23.976 in I-don’t -know-what-way), and then sped up to 25fps. Then they sped up the sound without correcting the pitch to its lower original. So you are damned right when you pitch down - even better would have been to slow down to 23.976 and then simply resample the German dub down, pitch would be corrected automatically and everything fine!

As for the speed down to 23,976 FPS: That would cause motion stutter again, which I was happy to have avoided with PAL at 25 FPS.

That’s an error. Slowing down does not at all cause any stutter, if you do it right - that means the very simplest way. Try it with avisynth with, as I said:
new=assumefps(old,24000,1001)
This will just change the SPEED, no t one frame will be added or dropped.

Post
#1375063
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Animaxx said:

Guys, I have done it. The 4K-pilot is finished. It was rendered at 15 Mbps in 4:3 format at a display size of 2846x2160p (4:3).

First: Congratulations!

I also used the original NTSC audio and adapted to the PAL-running time while maintaining the original pitch; also, I have pitch corrected the german audio so the PAL-Speedup has been taken care of (no more high pitched voices).

Critics: (as always…)

  1. For the German sound there is no pitch to correct if you leave it at 25fps. Or do I misunderstand? It is originally made for 25fps, and your result is also 25fps. Why correct?
  2. As I said before: You should simply slow down Video to 23.976, and the English audio will fit.
  3. IF you do so, THEN the German audio you would have to slow down, too, and in this case you should pitch correct it about 1/4 to 1/2 tone up.

By the way: These pitch corrections always produce a quality loss, even with the best algorithms, be aware of that fact.

Post
#1374958
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

FrankB said:
Bringing everything to 120 (119.88)fps is not good, too. Ok, you can take the smooth, ready IVTCed 23.976 and “enlarge” it with a ratio 4:1, that is, repeat each frame 5 times. For the 29.97 portions, also smooth, repeat each frame 4 times. Everything 100% smooth, ok, BUT: The speed ratio of both won’t be correct, the latter ones (29.97) will play 4/5 slower than the others.

Just did it again… myself a victim of the mentioned fallacies… 😉
After combining the different portions to 120fps as mentioned above, everything will of course play in exactly the same and correct speed. So 120 would really be an option, if done right.

Post
#1374942
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Joel Hruska said:
I will get you some samples made today. Do you have a Microsoft OneDrive account or do you prefer Google Drive?

Thank you, but please try to keep it SMALL. I live on the flattest country 😉

A person who paints paintings is not the same as the person who restores them, but you cannot restore art if you do not understand something of the artist.

No question. You have to know a lot and if you do your best, it’s not easier than to create something like a tv-series, where they also do their best.

The creativity in restoration comes in choosing which techniques to apply, and maybe in finding / inventing new techniques that handle something better than a previous solution did.

Yes, you are right, this is a creative, sometimes VERY creative process, too.

I am preparing some clips to show you final output of the method. I want to make sure I am clear about what I expect you to see:

1). Recovery of the same progressive frames as in the 23.976 fps Rio Grande version.
2). Interpolated frames that provide the smoothness required to make the 59.94 version move smoothly in places where the 23.976 fps version fails to recover ideal motion.

Ok, ok, thanks, but: This is a possible way to go, BUT:
If you go to 59.94fks, then:

  1. you get smoothest motion in the parts, that were 29,97fps originally
  2. you get somehow smooth motion but with slightly variing speed for all the parts that were pulldowned from 23.976 (originally 24)fps.

The parts with 2. are MUCH larger than 1.
So it’s the only way to go to do FIRST the best you can do for these large parts, and that means:
Decimate.
If you do this right, you get 100% smooth, progressive frames 1:1 of the original film material.

THEN you can think about what to do with the original 29.97 parts. You have to slow them down to 23.976
This is only possible with motion flow. If you decimate somehow you get big jerky junk. As I said above: We did this with Alchemist, that did a quite good job, not perfect though. In Avisynth there are also several ways, one is a larger script called “framereatconverter”, another, that is used by the first, is using MVTools.
There are also AI possibilities, f. e. Resolve, which makes use of GPU / CUDA - but I am not very good in this.
I tried it several months ago, but was not very pleased with the results.

Bringing everything to 120 (119.88)fps is not good, too. Ok, you can take the smooth, ready IVTCed 23.976 and “enlarge” it with a ratio 4:1, that is, repeat each frame 5 times. For the 29.97 portions, also smooth, repeat each frame 4 times. Everything 100% smooth, ok, BUT: The speed ratio of both won’t be correct, the latter ones (29.97) will play 4/5 slower than the others.

The 60 fps motion of Orinoco is smoother than the 119.88 fps conversions that I’ve tested (I tested 119.88 as a way to equalize the 23.976 fps and 29.97 fps content). The motion is less irregular. There are still absolutely interpolated frames being used to smooth out the presentation and I won’t claim there aren’t, but the subtle, hitching jerking that I spent so many months trying to repair has vanished. I’ve messed around with changing the frame rate from 23.976 to 29.97, 47.952, 59.94, even 71.9128 (a little) and 119.88 (a lot).

These experiments are not new to me. I did similar things some years ago, and I fear, everyone who has to work with these things had to do so once. I also can remember how frustrating this can be - and how many fallacies you make…

The encode method I call Orinoco is the best 59.94 conversion method I have found.

I believe you, and also that the method is intelligent! But the results cannot be “correct”… That is
-progressive AND
-smooth AND
-always have the same speed
Just because you can’t divide 60 through 24… 😉

I’d prefer not to use it. It takes a very long time to upscale 59.94 content. But it does solve problems in the places where Rio Grande leaves bad motion – and it does so without causing visible frame rate stutter. Are the interpolated frames still there? Absolutely. Do I want them there? No. I’m just willing to tolerate them if I have to.

As I said, you have to decimate for the pulldowned sections and then take care of the real 29.97 material in a different way.

Post
#1374882
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

This is not a creative art, as one could think sometimes. It’s just preservation of something others created, and which is worth to be preserved the best possible way. The result counts, that’s all!
The real big thing is to create something like Star Trek, compared to this, we are all small, but it’s always fun and very rewarding to somehow do something good for this worthy content, I think Joel feels it similar.

Post
#1374876
Topic
Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released)
Time

Joel Hruska said:
Seriously, Frank. In no way am I trying to either imply you are unhelpful or crap on your expertise.

Never mind, so didn’t I with yours. Maybe my English is not that good, and you feel wrong subtle “vibrations”, not meant. It is not really easy to help, if someone of high intelligence like you is in the job for months, already did hundreds of experiments a. s. o.
But in spite of this you - sorry - seem not to really understand what really happens with the original 24fps-film when being pulldowned.
Ok, you see RELATIVE smooth motion in your 60fps result, because you use interpolated frames, but this artificially extended motion cannot be really smooth, it’s sometimes faster, sometimes slower. This can’t be called “stutter”, ok, but it is not the original smooth motion, where one frame of the original celluloid-film is one frame (or at least a multiple of one for EACH frame) in the end result. This is simply not possible, if you have 24fps film and 60fps end result.
Pulldown is done by doubling several fields (several ways to do so, doesn’t matter here). These have to be decimated to get back the clean progressive, original content, which is necessary to fill the AI upscaler, and to get really smooth and good results.
Your interpolated frames are not really good anyway concerning picture quality, but make also motion slower and faster.
Just the portions where you might have native 29.97fps, (interlaced or not, not important because you deinterlace), will work, because there you have simply doubled frames, when going to 60 (59.94)fps. This is smooth, ok.
I don’t think, it’s the way to go, to keep any double frames, and even worse to add interpolated frames to make it a bit(!) smoother. So your decision to get to 23.976 was the only way to go.

Again: If you like to see a IVTC-by-hand-script, send me some portions of the NTSC-DVDs. Also the opening credits are interesting for me - is this field-shifted? Interlaced? Pulldowned AND field-shifted?