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Jaiman Tuckuh

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Join date
20-Oct-2005
Last activity
13-Apr-2015
Posts
409

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Post
#262759
Topic
"Banning of OCPMovie"
Time
As for OCPMovie, himself, I'm hurtin' for the guy. And he's done a hell of a lot for the community, fans, and, as above, even the companies. (They have to weigh having their feelings hurt, and having their lawyers itching for something to do, against the almighty dollar).

But I saw a reprint of a recent "order form", and it was pretty bad. There were seperate charges for covers and for printed discs, and for you-name-it, and they were pretty steep.

I can understand that desperation can drive a person to a lot of things. And when you look around and see people on [site omitted], [site omitted], and [site omitted], staying in buisness for years, selling bootlegs, or fan-edits. You see Ebayers popping up 20 times faster than they get kicked off... You want your own piece of the pie. In a real sense, you earned it. If you took a fucking dead, abandoned property, and put in, literally, thousands of dollars of work - giving it the "value added" thing. You, of all people, deserve a piece of that big, juicy pie that the others are munching off of.

Now (I don't want to make a template to encourage others), if his form letter had said stuff like... "Here's a list of people and places you can get this, for free, for B&P, or for bandwidth." "I cant really spare the time...". "I don't understand the hardware side of things, and my dual-layers often fail..." "But, I am in a bad place, right now. If you would like to donate something in the range of xxx, so I can keep up the good work, blahblahblah."

But, I'm sorry, he was too blatent. It's a bad idea to even hint at taking a profit. You might not get banned from a site if you're honestly begging for donations. But you could get your broke ass sued right off of you. (And they'll find a way to get that blood out of a stone). Or you could end up in the county jail (or worse). An order form is just begging for it.

Don't ask me how some places can stay in buisness. But the world is full of that. Probably fall-guy owners, lawyers and loopholes and, ahem, greased palms. But ya' notice, whatever the crime or lawsuit its always the small fry that get busted...

Edit: as another note, the more people begging, the more (I suspect) the companies will be looking at us funny.
Post
#262757
Topic
"Banning of OCPMovie"
Time
Originally posted by: Will Tasker
Originally posted by: dark_jediand I dont buy this "hard times" crap,everyone has hard times at one time or another,that does not mean it is a free pass to break rules and sell shit that isnt yours


Which would be a perfectly legitimate peice of reasoning, if you weren't on a site that breaks several copyright laws and intellectual properties standards by editing that which no one here owns.

Yes, you're not suppose to make a profit because thats bad - but editing copyrighted material without written permission by the owner is just as illegal, if harder to prosecute since it doesn't involve "obvious" crime like bootlegging.

In the end though, your reasoning is pretty darn flawed. Complaining about someone breaking the law while you're in a den of the same is awfully silly.

First off, editing and sharing, isn't "just as illegal" as selling. The former is generally civil. The latter is criminal.

As a practical matter, an editing/preservation site will be ignored or tolerated. A site that promotes, or even one that *knowingly* permits selling, will get shut down. You betcha. Try it sometime.


As for issues of morally-right, or legally-right, we can debate every point forever. The law is full of gray areas and contradictions, as well as some things that can't reallly be reconciled with the constitution. And, frankly, a lot of issues are given to the civil arena because the authorities and corporations don't want legal challenges.

So it comes down to practicality.

Fan-editing is tolerated, because it simply generates more sales (a larger percentage of people actually *voluntarilly* want to stay on the good side of the law and the follow the you-have-to-own-a-retail-version rule. They'll buy Batman and Robin (ewwww), or Boogeyman, in order to see a watchable version of a failed, or under-performing property). Or, for "cult" properties, because it mostly appeals to hard-core fans who already own 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 (or...) different retail versions (and might recruit a few more fans).

Preservation is tolerated, because it generates interest in re-releases and special-editions (no coincidence that some stuff has *finally* been released - weeks or months after a preservation or restoration).

Fan films are tolerated, for the sheer publicity, and fueling of fandom. (The laws that give companies trademarks on character names, or could technically forbid the photographing of miniatures and sets of a certain design are absolutely in contradiction of the stated purpose of copyright, in the constitution... so they call it trademark).

If the situation changes, we'll run for the woods.

But, for now, the companies love us - as long as we keep our noses clean.


Edit: Meant to say "editing and sharing" instead of "trading or filesharing", the latter isn't on-topic, and its redundant. Brain fart. The original is quoted a couple of posts down.
Post
#262665
Topic
Mysterious Cities Of Gold - PAL Project. * Cancelled * (with lots of info)
Time
Hopefully, the write hit a single bad sector that was lurking in an unused space. It's happened to me a few times. Belatedly, its a good idea to do bad-sector check with scandisk, periodically, with new drives. I've also learned to make md5 or sha checksums of all my data, because a bad sector can be automatically replaced by the drive's hardware, but when copies the data off the old sector, and sees a crc mismatch, it'll retry until it hits the first thing that matches the crc - that's usually wrong, and gives you a glitch in your avi, or trashes a smaller file. So it'd be a good idea to play all your files back.

Anyway, enough of that kind of talk. This project is going to be niiiiiiice.

Merry Christmas!
Post
#262662
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
Originally posted by: bigrob
Originally posted by: Jaiman Tuckuh
By the way, would it have been on a DVR? Does BBC2 broadcast widescreen?


BBC2 does brodcast widescreen but i don't know if it would have been cropped to 1.85:1. it would have been on DVR then dubbed onto DVD+R.......... But i forgot to set it!

Damn!!!!!!

I'll keep a look out just in case it's on again!

I dont want to even think of all the times I've missed stuff...

Good luck!

Merry Christmas!
Post
#262642
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
Originally posted by: Max_Rebo
Originally posted by: pittrek

3) Are there also other "special editions" on the 2DVD sets, or are movies 3,4,5,7,9,10 the theatrical versions ? Because I didn't note any changes.


I seem to remember reading that there was a line of dialouge not present on the First Contact DVD that was heard in the theatre, the line was from Kelsey Grammer as Captain Bateson of the USS Bozeman responding to Picard's order of attack, this was widely regarded as not being true until the line turned up in the HD version.


Sorry guys. You probably were reading me. And I seem to have got it wrong, somehow. I went to get the audio clip, and didn't hear it on the HD. I thought this version of VLC was playing tricks... so I split the channels, and nada.

I'm still scratching my head... I can't imagine any other version it could be in. We do have a Grammer-like voice say "Acknowledged", when the Defiant and Bozeman are ordered to fall back - but that's on the DVD. PowerDvd was still set on point in the DVD where I remember hearing "Bozeman, acknowledged" on the HD. Weird...

Anyway, I'm going to go edit a retraction, to the original post, so this bad information propagate from there, anymore.


Originally posted by: iRantanplan
USS Bozeman was that Soyuz class starship from the Deja Vu episode, wasn't it? I don't remember seeing such an old ship in the movie...

EDIT
Oh wait, it was the ship that flew across the screen after the Borh ship exploded, right?


Yeah, the episode's name was "Cause and Effect." I don't know if that shot is a Soyuz or not... I'm not very good with ship class.

The Soyuz class was retired in 2288, but the Bozeman had been preserved in the time loop, so it would've been in good shape. The Encyclopedia asserts that the Bozeman was recertified. (The Encyclopedia says that Brannon Braga intended that when he wrote it into "All Good Things", "Generations", and "First Contact". Braga's hometown was Bozeman, Montana, Braga was the one responsible for naming it for "Cause and Effect"). Starfleet keeps their starships running for a long time (according the the Tech Manual, at least). The Soyuz is little different from the Miranda, which is a very old design, that was still around in the Dominion war.

Here's a fun factoid, that I can't find the official source of, so I can't prove it. Somewhere in the planning stages for "Cause and Effect", they wanted to have First Officer Saavik on the bridge, next to Captain Morgan Bateman... Kirstey Alley and Kelsey Grammer. It fell through for some reason. Dagnabbit.
Post
#262637
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
Originally posted by: bigrob
damn i forgot to record it off BBC2! sorry guys!!! but if there is gonna be a HD2DVD coversion, could i put myself down for one!

Drat.

I was quietly hoping you'd say you got an Extended edition. Even if it was narrowscreen or a pillarboxed widescreen broadcast, a DVR recording of the audio would be great, with the letterboxed deleted scenes, for a restoration. The LD only has analog sound, and I don't know if a VHS HiFi Stereo track can be affected by tape stretch.

By the way, would it have been on a DVR? Does BBC2 broadcast widescreen?
Post
#262502
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
@CW: Holy crap! That'd be awesome. I don't recall reading that, if I was where you was.

I, ahem, could use something to upload to the newsgroups, ahem.


@Bigrob: Right on! I can't wait to hear which version it is.


@Number20: Yeah, I'm jealous of all that's been accomplished in the SW preservation realm. Sigh... There has been some done in Trek, tho'. Still a bunch left to do. Not as much as SW, Paramount hasn't leaked nearly as much as Lucasfilm, and they haven't done as much revising. I've been meaning to post more in the Preserving Star Trek thread that just scrolled off... Heh, it's a bad idea to wait for me to get things done.

At the risk of duplicating some of what I would put there:

Early in this thread Hiphats mentions he has a widescreen preservation of TMP. I assumed it was LD, but, rereading it, he didn't actually say. If it's LD, I'll bet it has glorioius PCM sound.

And over here Ash595 did a LD conversion of the 25th Anniversary. He's going to be making a cover for it. I recently sent him a scan of the VHS, I hope that works out.
Post
#262466
Topic
Anyone Hi8 Experts
Time
Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
Are you serious, the lossless HuffYUV can compress 30 min to 10-15 gb? That's sweet! That's incredible, I thought a lossless codec would only be able to reduce the filesize to 3/4. But you're saying it could go a lot lower with no loss. That's sweet!
Yeah! That's great news! Sorry I mislead you, Knightmessenger. I either had a bad source of info, or misremembered it. (I didn't question it, because my cable provider used to give me a staticy, low-compressability signal, when I was capping short clips with Huffyuv, back in the day). Wow... That brings most of my potential projects a lot closer to the realm of plausibility.

Originally posted by: Knightmessenger
Actually, I have played around with the brightness, contrast, gain and gamma using Vegas but I haven't been able to find to the right adjustment. The Hi8 image looks a lot better now. Does this have anything to do with the whole NTSC 7.5 IRE thing?


The NTSC IRE does cut down on your flexability, some. But I know those settings are tricky. Usually looking at tiny, incremental adjustments. That's where the video essentials would come in handy, you could set one thing at a time, with confidence.

You'd gain a lot more by adjusting a Huffyuv capture, than DV, because lossily-compressed images don't have as much room left to tweak with.

And, of course, you'd get the best results if the capture was properly adjusted. Most capture card software will let you see the live results in a window, as you tweak. So it'd help to adjust your monitor... errr... Not sure if you can set the card (driver?) to keep those settings, though, if you end up using a different capture program than what came with the card... its been a while... well, at least you could use your changes as a rough guide.

You could rip the Video Essentials DVD, with DVD Decryptor, if you needed to rid of any Macrovision. Taping it would mean converting it to tape, and then converting it back, so it wouldn't be as perfect of a guide... Can the camcorder take a direct input from the dvd player? If you took that live feed, and adjusted from that...


By the way you asked about deinterlacing short clips. Camcorder's 60-fields-per-second can be blended into frames to fake deinterlacing. There's various great plugins for Avisynth, that can do all sorts of tracking and interpolation to get good results. But I couldn't give you any advice on which ones, or how to tweak them, at this stage. You can search videohelp.com forums to find them, at least. "Bobbers" is probably a good search term. It implys a crappy horizontal resize, but the newer ones do a lot more than that.
Post
#262449
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
Originally posted by: pittrek
Thanks.

Hm, the HD files were an serious offer :-) ?

I you want to convert them to DVD, sure. Otherwise, well, I don't wanna be cold-blooded, but I do my best to avoid sending things in the mail, and I don't want to open the floodgates. So far, I've only sent things that are important to a project, or the wider distribution, or to get something important to a project. (I hate taking 20 minutes, stop-and-go, to go two miles, I hate getting there before closing, and I hate the 40 minute waits in line, and, well, a couple of people can vouch for how damned long it takes me to get around to it. And I hate waiting to find out if it got lost, or not, and hate waiting for stuff to reach me, and...).

I could repost it to Usenet, but a repost just barely expired. I refuse to put my name on a Torrent, but if someone wants to torrent them, I could send them to that person.


I was referring to a dvdtown.com article, which says that the 1. release was the theatrical, but as I wrote, the single-disc editions were not released here.

They goofed on the TMP movie, the Director's Edition was the only dvd. Do you have the link to the article? I gave up trying to dig it up.

Don't you guys know if someone re-created the theatrical version of ST6 or at least what were the changes between theatrical and home video veersions ?


Don't know of anyone who's recreated them. They haven't posted about it anywhere I've been.


Looking at IMDB's list (Link), it looks like a person would only need to trim a few scenes off of the 1st ST VI DVD, unless there's music in the way (not counting the aspect ratio thing):

"The original theatrical release (U.S.) did not include the portion of the scene in the Federation President's office where Col. West outlined his plan to rescue Kirk & McCoy. Also at the climax of the film, the bit where the Klingon assassin is revealed to be none other than Col. West was not included."

The HD doesn't have those added scenes.


"The original ending credits, after the sign-off, has a blue/white background with a Starfleet Logo as a watermark. The left side was blue with white lettering, and the right side was white with blue lettering."

The HD version's credits don't have that logo or background, just colored lettering on stars. Dunno what's up with that.


"Additional inclusions for home video include extra dialog for Spock in the top brass meeting"

There's no difference with the HD version. I suspect IMDB goofed, here. They could only be referring to the scene where Spock makes his speech, as far as I can tell. Or maybe the HD is some weird hybrid.


"and a scene where Scotty verifies torpedo inventory, Valaris mentions the Chancelor's daughter has succeeded her dead father (she heard it on "the news") and Scotty mentions that the daughter never cried over the death of her father. Spock also mentions that Klingons have no tear ducts."

The torpedo inventory, and the tear duct scenes are bridged by them going through a corridor, and Valeris sliding down a pole. They aren't on the HD.

I like the inventory scene. The "tear ducts" line would be an unbelievable error for Spock to make. Lachrymal glands produce the tear fluid; tear ducts are the drains. Besides, it wasn't that funny, IMO.


And your version has a few more changes:

"The Special Collector's Edition DVD includes all the new scenes from the home video releases, and a few new minor changes to certain scenes and effects exclusive to this DVD.

* When Martia gets shot, a disruption sound effect is removed to make her scream more apparent.
* There is a new wide shot of Scotty reading the blueprints of the Enterprise in the dining hall.
* Valeris's interrogation scene has been entirely reedited. There are now close up shots of Kirk and McCoy when they speak their lines instead of being in wide shots. When Spock and Valeris name a particular conspirator, the face of that person briefly appears in a flashback like style."


The "new wide shot", is an earlier moment from that wide shot where he gets up to see the noise.


The interrogation scene thing... on one hand, I like the idea of seeing who is being named, it's not easy to remember characters from the beginning. On the other hand, it looks tacky and sensationalistic, and it reminds me I'm watching a movie - takes me right out of a very intense scene.


EDIT: By the way, I was searching out threads, for the next reply, and I noticed you asked about "The Cage", long long ago. It was released on DVD. Both the color and the color/B&W versions are on the last volume of the 2-episode-per-disc DVD set. Volume 40. I'm pretty sure its in the 3rd Season Box Set, too.



BTW Merry X-Mas 2 All


You mean the X-Mas as in Futurama? Heh. Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.
Post
#262437
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: Star Trek Theatrical versions - question
Time
I have the single-disc DVDs, for 2 through 10. They should be available, in R1 and PAL, if you can import them.


IMDB has an "alternate versions" link for the movies. They aren't always accurate, but they're pretty good about versions.

ST I, TMP, only had the Director's Edition DVD release.

But the HD version, that I downloaded, appears to be the theatrical version. However, Neil S. Bulk had read that there was some color-correction, because it was made from the digital master that sourced the DVD re-version. I haven't done a shot-by-shot comparison to my LD, yet. I once publicly stated my desire to, perhaps, someday, convert it to DVD, as well as reconstruct the extended version. Unfortunatally, that would be months or years away, if ever. Maybe someone else? I could send them the HD files.


IMDB seems to say that the 1st DVD release, of ST II, is the theatrical version, if I read it correctly.

Also, according to them, both DVD versions of III, IV, V, VII (Generations), VIII (FC), IX (Insurrection), and the widescreen version of X (Nemesis) were the theatrical. (Excepting the Fullscreen Nemesis DVD - which was cropped to Fullscreen).


And IMDB says that none of the released versions of ST VI match the Theatrical scenes, exactly. Even the Laserdisc & VHS versions.

I suspect the HD version, that I downloaded, matches what they list for the theatrical scenes, but I haven't checked it scene-by-scene.


For Aspect Ratio purists, you can't get ST6 in the Theatrical aspect ratio, which IMDB says was 2.31:1. (As far as I know). But at least you will be seing more of the picture, than was in the theater.

ST6 was shot full-frame (Super 35). Both DVD's have the matte opened, significantly. So does the HD that I downloaded. Star Trek films on VideoDisc says all the Widescreen Laserdiscs are 2.1:1. IMDB says 2.1:1 on its alternate versions page, but says 2.35:1 on its Laserdisc specs page. Either way, I didn't get the widescreen LD, yet, so I can't vouch for either claim.

I do have the fullscreen LD, with the matte opened up father - but, like most open-mattes, it's zoomed in far more than seems nessecary - we still don't see the whole picture. I'd love to see a good conversion of that.

They also claim 2.35:1 for all the movies in some of the collections. But that's unlikely.

The director supervised the opening of the matte, for the Collector's Edition. The first DVD's playback looks a little squished, horizontally, to me.


The ST6 HD version, that I got, is roughly 2.01:1, but I suspect it may have been released to theaters, that way, to be "soft matted" by the projector. So it could be possible to crop it and get what we saw in the theaters - but there'd be no way to verify it.

(The DVDs measure out to roughly 1.95:1 for the first, and 1.98 for the second, by the way. I say roughly because I didn't crop every pixel of black off of each edge).
Post
#260827
Topic
Koyaanisqatsi - IRE Fullscreen Version (MORE IMAGE!) (Released)
Time
Yer' welcome. Keeping the holiday spirit.

Yep that's me, I posted right after I started. I connected to one person right away, took a few minutes to connect to two others.

How many seeders do you have? My client usually doesn't show other seeders, and torrentspy isn't updating very often.

I just finished repaying that other torrent, so I opened up the throttle. If anyone else needs it, it's a good time to jump in.
Post
#258637
Topic
DVD Video in Powerpoint
Time
Moth3r replied while I was typing. Might as well post it, with a few edits, in case you want to make wmv clips, or mpeg, or something else besides vob.

ChopperXP is neat. I hadn't tried it until now. That faq seems to imply that it'll decrypt DVDs. But, while it reads one of my unencrypted DVDs directly, it then freezes on an encrypted one.

So if it won't read your's directly, rip it with Dvd Decrypter first. Follow that part of ADM's editing guide, with one exception - don't put a checkmark in the "Enable Stream Processing", so you can rip it to vob.

You can convert the vobs to avi with VirtualDubMod. It can also clip the VOBs to AVI. (Use the slider to find the good parts of each vob, mark the beginning and end with those two buttons on the right - the ones with those arrow-with-half-arrowheads symbols).

I'd save them to Huffyuv (lossless), before converting them to wmv (or another codec). That'll give you perfect AVIs to experiment from. Right-click the .inf and select "Install". Select the codec in Virtualdubmod: Video -> Compression. Virtualdubmod (or Virtualdub, or Virtualdubmpeg) can also convert to any other codec you can get the compression codec for. (Not wmv, Quicktime, or Real Media).

I haven't made wmv's yet, so I can't tell you much about it. Windows Media Encoder.

I'm not sure if mpeg1 comes with Windows, or needs a codec installed, to play it. TMPGEnc makes mpeg1's for free, or mpeg2's on a 30-day-trial.

Someday, I'll make a post that doesn't need to be edited...
Post
#256545
Topic
Info: FANEDITS ON RAPIDSHARE - maybe a permanent hi-speed home
Time
Originally posted by: trickbaxter
i have winrar and all the files. it still refuses to do anything. is there a specific file that i need to click on first? do i need to group the video ts files into folders? do i need to wear a bra on my head and hook up the doll?

LOL!

I haven't downloaded the big files, but the batch files use Dos "copy /b" commands to join the files. So it's a simple file-joining operation.

I believe you're seeing a Dos window open, and then terminate, before it executes the batch file. I remember that being default behaviour with double-clicked batch files. I don't remember the cure. They aren't acting that way on my computers, now, I don't know if I fixed it, or if M$ did.

In any case, Batch files work if you open a Dos window and run them from there.


But the easy way is to use HJSplit (freeware). It will do the same work as the batch files, with less typing.

Or you could use MasterSplitter, which is Nagware. It will let you choose a different folder for the joined files.

Or any file-splitter that doesn't add bytes to the parts it splits. (Byte-adding splitters look for those extra bytes when they join).

(Hjsplit doesn't get rid of the split files when it joins, and MasterSplitter wont, if you tell it not to... in case you're worried that they'll fail).

Since the files don't have a rar extension, they should be ready to go, once they're joined, without involving Winrar.

(Are you guys sure Winrar split them? I didn't know it could do that without rar'ing them).
Post
#256544
Topic
Info Wanted: James Bond Edits
Time
Originally posted by: marioxb

Have you seen the edit of this movie? Was any of this done already?


No, I don't have the edit, I'd like to see it though.


The movie has some action, after the credits, before the point where the sample starts, he may've chosen to use that.

I'd never heard of anyone using compositing to remove credits, before I tried it. But it works (in many cases), so I was throwing the idea out there. Just in case he had done that, or might want to make a version 2 or something.
Post
#256395
Topic
Info Wanted: James Bond Edits
Time
Originally posted by: marioxb
What was used as the pre-credits sequence? EDIT- I watched the clip of the opening on that site. Is that the WHOLE pre-credits scene, or is it the whole opening scene from the real movie? If it starts where the girl is tied up on the bed, that's pretty short, isn't it? The way I would have done it would have been to use the ENTIRE opening of NSNA minus the singing and credits. Anyone know of a way to remove the credits?


There are automatic logo removers - but they'll give you (a) distracting blurry area(s).

Or it can be done with a compositor (preferably with motion-tracking to compensate for camera movement). Mask off the credits, and then take the clean frames before and/or after each credit to replace them. But whenever an actor (and the leaves, in this case) move, you end up with something that resembles glitches in the mpeg. So you have to do corrective surgery in an image editor. Morph/tween/slo-mo proggies can interpolate between the clean frames to give you something to patch with - if you're lucky, you can repair one or more frames, then tween again. Tween gets confused if there's a lot of movement between frames, but you can clip to matching portions of each frame.

I can do the compositing, but I don't have time to do the frame-by-frame image repair. (I'm in the middle of cleaning up credits from a couple of TNG episodes, which is tough, in places, because the credits are huge in comparison to this one's).

Compositing doesn't work for all credits. For example, it wouldn't help where the camera is flying over the everglades, because the perspective keeps changing. But I doubt if an editor would want to use those shots anyway - too lengthy for anything other than credits. And the rotating shot of the building would need a lot of hand work to fix the foliage. You can fix a single frame to look good - but when you fix a bunch & put it into motion, you see fluctuations... you can fix half the frames and do a slo-mo, though, and that'll smooth it out some...

Looking at the DVD, most of the shots look fairly reasonable. But there are always problems that you don't really notice until you've done the compositing.

Image editing is a ***** at DVD resolution, by the way. It would be infinitely easier to repair HD-rez frames & shrink them. There was a Bond flood in a.b.hdtv, but those have all expired. I haven't seen them in the repost group, yet. But they might turn up again. Maybe somebody downloaded them?

HD would also give you the choice of cropping out parts of the credits...

There would probably be some color grading issues between the DVD and HD versions, maybe not distracting if you stick to whole shots. I'm not knowlegeble enough to deal with that problem, yet.

It would probably be feasable, right now, for a company to make tweening software that could automatically remove credits/logos in most scenes. But nobody's gone that far yet. It could read previous frames, interpolate & tween, and you'd just tell it what sections to replace. The makers of another type of software are talking about doing one of those functions, for another purpose. One of these days... maybe...
Post
#256382
Topic
How do You Play USF files
Time
I haven't heard of a way to resave files that only Winamp plugins can play. There might be a way, but I haven't heard of it.


I don't know of another place to get Winamp. You can hunt the software sites, but those would probably link you right back to Winamp's site.


You could keep trying to download Winamp at different times of the day/night.

Right-click and save-as?


Or you might try shutting off your firewall and antivirus. If you have a router, maybe you could DMZ that computer for a while (shut off all protection for that computer - Linksys calls it "DMZ").

(Your firewall could be keeping them from doing a "reverse DNS lookup" on you. That can stop things with some web sites, though they really should expect it, in this day and age of firewalls).


You could install Firefox, and see if that'll download it. Or, if you're running Firefox, you could temporarily try IE again (without making it default).

There's probably a timeout setting in each browser, that you could increase.

Or you could try a download manager...
Post
#256372
Topic
Anyone Hi8 Experts
Time
The capture software should have slider adjustments for brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation. I don't know if you can do any more calibration than that.

The digitising magic is done by a chip - called an "Analog to Digital Converter" or "A->D" chip (it measures the signal's voltage the appropriate number of times per second and spits out a digital signal). That chip needs to connect to other components (and connectors), so it is put onto a circuit board. A circuit board can be designed to fit into a box. Or the board, itself, can be a pci/isa card. Your typical box will also have hardware to convert the signal into mpeg - which takes away most of your options for processing the capture. A box's mpeg solution will be optimised for real-time speed, at the sacrifice of quality, so it will suck. When you use a capture card, its best to capture to Huffyuv, which is lossless. Then you end up with a gigantic file (80 Gigs per half-hour) that you can process to perfection.

Avisynth and Virtualdub have various methods for deinterlacing & Inverse Telecine. Your camcorder footage is probably 60 fields per second, so that leaves out Inverse Telecine (which is for progressive footage). Deinterlacers can do a fair job of blending or interpolating fields to get progressive. But since there's a lot of action in your footage, its probably better to leave it interlaced, unless you want to make it 60 frames per second, for the computer monitor or an advanced TV (standard NTSC tvs are 30 frames per second = 60 fields per second). I can't recommend plugins, I've only done IVTC (Inverse Telecine). There are forum threads (Doom9) for each plugin, and threads about general recomendations (Videohelp), where experienced people will talk over your head and tell you to read the often-ambiguous & sparse & often-undefined documentation, and tell you to experiment and learn. Not that I'm ranting or anything.
Post
#254753
Topic
Adobe AE Questions
Time
Originally posted by: GhostAlpha26
after I have corrected the frames how do I re-import them back into the DVD? Just one at a time or is there another way to do that? And should I use womble to mesh the project together?

I know I’m being a real nag but this means the world to me thank you so much.
51 views, so these answers are helping other people, too.

Use VirtualDubMod to reassemble the images into an avi.
(First, make sure the image filenames are absolutely consitant, because VirtualDubMod gets confused with filenames, very easily).
Save as Huffyuv, which is lossless, then use TMPGEnc to turn that into Mpeg2.

I tried putting the Huffyuv avi directly into Womble, once, but Womble misinterpreted the aspect ratio. I might've missed something, tho'.

Give the mpeg2 the highest possible bitrate, to preserve the quality. Let your DVD software decide the final bitrates of everything.
Put the mpeg2 into Womble, and splice it into the DVD footage. You can use the DVD audio to replace the sound in your clip.
Make sure it syncs up.

Read "ADigitalMan's Guide to MPEG2/AC3 Editing", stickied above, for the full procedure.

By the way: Export the whole scene (camera shot), into the image sequence, because color shifts can happen when decoding, encoding, and recoding. You don't want the color shift to happen in the middle of the shot.


One possible drawback with using Image Editors... I haven't upgraded to the latest and greatest, yet...
But so far, the image editors I use insist on position-moving one-pixel-at-a-time. (I might be neglecting an option somewhere).
If there's camera movement, you often need to position your clean image to partial-pixel accuracy.
That's where AE Pro comes in, its manual positioning and motion-tracking use partial-pixel positioning.




Tuckuh, I was having some problems with that tutorial (I think I just suck at AE) but I think many of those other tutorials will really help me, thank you



Yeah, I forgot - that tutorial had a rotating keyframed matte. Just draw a fixed oval or rectangular map.
He also talks very fast, and like most teachers, the more important the concept, the faster he goes.
You need to rewind the video all the time to catch things. (There are player controls at the bottom of the page).
But It's the only useful motion-tracking tutorial I've found. It also has the matteing. And a bunch of junk we don't need.

Here's some more tutorials. A lot of them are useless for this, but there's useable bits scattered around: CreativeCow

And don't worry, you're supposed to suck at AE, its one of those programs (you know--- the majority ) which go beyond counterintuitive, straight into anitintuitive. I sucked at it about a month ago, and I still do. But I've been doing this stuff a lot, so I'll tell ya.

How about a step-by-step that probably leaves things out?

I'll base it on that tutorial.
Ignoring Motion Tracking, for now, in case you don't have Pro. Also, the Motion Tracking would make this list too confusing.
He imports the clip twice, and picks a frame to freeze. I usually import a sequence of frames, and then a single frame.
It's easiest to talk about importing a clip and a frame, so I'll do that.

Once again, if you import a clip, you might want to import the whole scene, in case a color-shift happens, at some stage, before, during, or after AE. That's why it's best to do clip and clip, or image & image-sequence, to avoid color mismatches between elements. It'd be easy for you to adapt my instructions to either.


Step by step always sounds more complicated than it really is...

1) Import the clip, and your single clean frame.
2) Click on the frame. Shift-click on the clip. Drag them to that composition-window symbol to the left of the trash can icon.
Ok the popup. Drag the right side of the Project window leftward - to open up some room for the viewscreen.
3) Create a white solid. Click on that eyeball symbol, (at the far left of the timeline clutter), to make its eyeball go away - the white is invisible for now.

Note: The solid breaks the link between the clip and the frame. So, now you can drag them up or down, and you can change their transform stuff independantly.

4) If the frame is underneath the clip, drag it up - between the clip and the solid.
5) Click on the frame's arrowhead, then click on it's "transform". Sometimes I have to click "reset". periodically, because the frame likes to
get moved out of place at seemingly-random times.
Make the frame's opacity about 40%.
6) Run through the timeline's playback and see if the frame's image lines up with the clip.

Note: To zoom in, where you want, in the viewscreen, Hold down the Alt key, move your cursor where you want, and use your mouse-wheel to zoom in & out.

Note: Also, I'm constantly having to click the bars above the viewscreen, or using their dropdowns, to get the correct view. That takes some getting used to.

7) If the frame doesn't line up, adjust the "transform"'position-controls until it does.
8) Make the frame invisible (eyeball symbol). Make the white solid visible (eyeball symbol). Now make the white solid about 30% opaque (transform).
9) Position the playback so that Luke is highest in the frame, when he's not supposed to be.
10) Make the White Solid visible. Click on its bar. Make sure you are viewing the solid, and not the composition or the clip.
Drop the White Solid's opacity to about 30%, so you can see the clip underneath.
11) Draw your mask(s), on the White Solid, to cover him.

Note: You can use the mask's transform "feather" setting to soften the edge of the mask in case there's noise, or the exposure changes a little bit.

12) Make the white solid opaque again. Then make it invisible, by shutting off the eyeball.
13) Make the frame visible. Then set its "TrkMat" dropdown to "Alpha Matte "White Solid 1"".
14) Switch your viewscreen focus to the composition. Move the timeline play-arrowhead-thingy around to see the results in motion.
15) Set the frame's markers, on its timeline bar, so that the matte only kicks in after Luke jumps down.
16) Zoom the viewscreen in on the matted area. (You can zoom in tight on any part of the matte, to get a good close look).
Run through the preview and see if the camera moved at all. (Then you'd pretty much need motion tracking).
(The camera will move in most shots, in most movies and shows. You often wouldn't notice it until you start compositing...).
16) There's a little curved vertical bar, at the right end of the timeline, just under the time markers. Drag that bar leftward, to cut off the excess crap after the clip runs out. I find it impossible to figure out exactly where it goes, so I leave a little slop at the end.
17) If I didn't leave anything out, it should look perfect. So go ahead and export your clip or image sequence.

Post
#254625
Topic
Adobe AE Questions
Time
Its a piece of cake if you have AE Pro. Otherwise, it'll be a pain, if the camera moves.

The bit where he jumps down after he knocks Vader off the platform? I'm not up on my SW gaffes.

AE Pro has motion tracking, if the camera does move. If not, then regular AE works.

Either way, here's a tutorial that should give you all you need.

Tutorials - click on the "Assisted Suicide" one
Post
#251310
Topic
Cleaning Up White Noise On Audio
Time
Originally posted by: iRantanplan
Isn't white noise supposed to be inaudible?

I think I know what you're thinking of, but I don't remember what it's called. Probably another word for ultrasonic or infrasonic.

Originally posted by: andy_k_250
I have an audio recording of people whispering that would llikely be audible were it not for the white noise on the recording.

I haven't spent a lot of time on audio, more time reading about it. So I hope an expert steps in, here.

The signal, probably, barely exists - near the level of the random tape/circuitry hiss. Worth a shot, though.


Goldwave (fully-functional nagware) has noise reduction. But the more heavily you apply it, the more metallic and robotic the sound gets (like a special effect).

Sony (noise reduction plugin). Sony bought-up Soundforge, which was the big name in audio software. Dunno how its doing under new ownership. Look around their site. Dunno if their trialware is fully functional. You might be able to do a temporary licence transfer with a pal...


If no one, more knowlegeble than I, answers you, here, you'll need to google around, try stuff, and look for forums, I guess.


The first thing is to get a noise profile. Circuitry hiss isn't entirely random, and there's likely ambient (background) noises going on. So you take a stretch of audio where no-one's talking, and have the software analyze it.


Then there's tricks with using equalizers, bandpass filters, and bandnotch. The strongest harmonics in human voices are in certain bandwidths. CB's, and such, filter to a narrow bandwidth for minimum "recognizability" (but you know how badly distorted those are). I haven't had the slightest luck with that. There's vocal on every bandwidth. But if you do filter to the bands where the vocal is strongest, you eliminate a ton of noise.


If it's stereo, and the people aren't directly between the microphones... I've had a crazy idea for a long time...

I wonder if you could experiment with delaying one channel (microseconds), so that the voices would land exactly on the center channel? I haven't ever got around to to trying it, but it should work... Then the two channels would reinforce each other, while the static would be spread around in all directions.


Another crazy idea would be to try a "tube warmer" plugin, and set it to apply to low volume, too. I'm talking about plugins that emulate the harmonics effects of old Tube-Driven amplifiers, when the amps were driven high. That adds pleasant, and natural-sounding harmonics to the sounds, and I expect it would make voices more audible. And, while the static would get more harmonics, I suspect the "amplified" static wouldn't obsure the voices any worse. Back in the day, Tube amps made things sound a lot sweeter and clearer, when you cranked them up. Anyway, one thing Tube amps excelled at was making limited-bandwidth sources sound more natural, by adding those pleasant harmonics. So if you got a good result by harsh equalization, you might make it a lot clearer with the right "tube" settings.


If you have the original tape, then the original tape recorder would be set up to play it back the best (unless the manufacturer cheaped out too much, which is common). It'd be great to have a pro tape decks that let you adjust the azimuth, bias, and all that good stuff... I could use one of those, but I've been afraid to look at what one would cost (even used)...

Post
#250327
Topic
Info: Star Trek TNG bonus disks - has anyone done a preservation of them?
Time
Originally posted by: Spock

How is that bad? Now you don't have to go through hoops to get them.


I live in the US...

It doesn't appear to be legal to import the R2/R4 to the US. And I don't plan to re-purchase the DVD box sets, anyway.

It seems possible to import them, but I don't know what happens if customs notices the shipment.


But I'll probably get the HD sets, that we can expect to see at some point. Maybe they'll make things right, then.
Post
#250193
Topic
Idea: Preserving STAR TREK - a preservation project?
Time
I've been wanting to bring this up for ages. Including a couple of things that I want for my own edits, actually. But I haven't had time to get much done, I was going to do a couple of things before I brought it up.

There's so much out there to preserve, too! There are various utils that supposedly snag videos off of Youtube, for example, without recording and converting them (without recompression loss). But the one I that I've tried didn't work.

I don't have any knowledge about game ripping, tho'. Let's not forget the actor's voices in games, either. I finally got the enhanced versions of the 25th Anniversary game, the sound file converter claimed it wasn't that company's weird format - even tho' the format is listed in the file header. Sounds awful on my Win98 machine, I'm sure it sounds better in Dos (haven't tried yet), but I don't know how to capture it digitally, from Dos, without recording it off the soundcard. (Yes, this subject has come up before, for other games, without an answer).

I've heard of that STV MST3K, but haven't found it. I've got all kinds of crap on VHS (usually stumbled on it when I was at low speed), and I've been meaning to get a time base corrector. But I haven't had the hdd room to capture any of it. All of it is snowy & staticy, of course, despite paying all that money for cable.

There's leaked deleted scenes that are basically unwatchable & un-listenable. I got some that were leaked for Generations (and left off of the dvd extras - of course the ones in the extras have timecodes and copywrite notices destroying them, and they are letterboxed). A pay-cable channel (apparently Showtime) used to run an ad with some deleted scenes from Wrath of Khan - also not in the DVD extras - one guy did a cap from his horrible tape, then compressed it down to nothing---

There's long-OOP LPs, unique LDs, various sources of bloopers, Electronic Press Kits... quite a list, when you think about it. Those Bonus Discs (Best Buy, perhaps Walmart). Scripts! Those scripts that they don't seem to sell copies of anymore. (I got burned by a guy who was supposedly selling his spare scripts. I tried to buy unused Phase II scripts, and some early versions). There's a need to preserve the original TOS series mono audio. The DVDs added inappropriate sound effects to the bridge hum. The TOS LDs didn't have a digital audio track - but the expensive Japanese sets did... There's the temporarily-changed song in City on the Edge of Forever. The open-matte version of the ST6 movie - only on LD.

I'll do whatever I can, as I get time (if?), and I'll probably go into more detail, if RealLife ever lightens up on me. There's stuff I might send off to people with skills and equipement, if I don't get said skills and equipment myself...


Edit: Retraction: The following turns out to be wrong:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Heck, there used to be a debate about whether Kelsey Grammer's voice was in First Contact, as the captain of the Bozeman - until a guy pointed out that none of the captians replied. But I distinctly remembered hearing a reply in the theater--- wasn't on the DVD--- but its on the HD version! Muuuwahahahahaaaa!"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I went back to clip the audio--- and it wasn't there... I don't get it... There is a Grammer-live voice earlier, aknowledging when the Defiant and Bozeman are ordered to fall back to position 3, but that's audible on the DVD. I've can't think of any other version it could've been on. I thought that VLC was playing tricks, so I ripped the audio to 6 wav files - nothing. PowerDvd started playing the DVD from the point I had been comparing to the HD... so I know I didn't swap places with a counterpart from a different timeline...

Maybe Paramont broke in and replaced the disc?

Anyway, I don't want to be the source of misinformation. So it's better to retract it than delete it.
Post
#250190
Topic
Aspect Ratio Help
Time
OMG! You're right! I see it on my rips of the first 5 movies. They are thin, but there. Usually just on the left side.

And, last night. I was noticing the same thing on HD versions, of some of the movies, that I downloaded. I wonder what's up with that? Maybe it was done to compensate for overscan? But that doesn't explain the HD. Maybe the scanning equipment doesn't match the screen specs exactly? Weird.

I would think think that its nothing to worry about fixing, although it'd be a lot less impractical to fix the movies.


But I'll have to defer to the experts, on this one. Moth3r? ADM? Hey, where did MeBeJedi go?