Jonno

Jambe Davdar said:

I am currently looking for a good copy of the BBC's In the Teeth of Jaws. I have found several fuzzy, low quality versions but I am sure there must be somebody out there with a good copy. Any help would be appreciated.

I imagine it's the vintage that's the issue - this was only screened once IIRC, on BBC2 in 1997, at a time predating most folks' ability to receive digital TV.

I was no exception, but have a pretty serviceable transfer of my analogue-received VHS recording - do you want to have a look and I can then try to dig out the tape if it proves useful?

Another offering from my anachronistic video library, here's a reworked UK rental cover for the Blu-ray of The Dark Crystal:

This is just intended to replace the retail cover (unless there's an edit or preservation I'm not aware of), which is a gaudy monstrosity that I assume was designed by someone who hadn't even seen the film. Hope you like it, I certainly had fun making my first Blu-ray cover and will probably try something Star Warsy next...

Get it here.

Not sure how much appeal this will have for this crowd, but here's a little project I put together last year after finding a very high quality source for this series of ads from the late 70s and early 80s.

They're vintage Scott from a time when he was absolutely at the top of his game, and you'll see many visual overlaps with his imagery in Blade Runner (also from that time period).

This is a PAL DVD with the ads in their original 4:3 ratio, each with a choice of English and French audio, and a couple of documentary snippets added for good measure.

If you're interested in having a look, give me a shout via PM and I'll point you in the right direction!

dark_jedi said:

That being said I need some help from someone, could someone make up a how to on switching out the video files with the V3 DVD and keeping the chapters and such? then I could include it in the torrent with all the right programs needed along with the new V4 video file, this would be greatly appreciated, I think Ady had a how to somewhere, or was that for audio? I can't remember.

You'd need a combination of DVD Decrypter, PCG Demux, Muxman and VobBlanker: rip the original disc to a folder, demux the main movie streams, remux with the new video, and then plug the new audio/video package into the original disc.

I wrote a full guide on all of this a couple of years ago with the intention of using the (rather lovely) 16:9 GOUT menus with your V2 video, but lost it (along with the edited menus) in my last PC upgrade - I now only have the finished discs. I think I may have emailed you a version at the time, though?

MaximRecoil said:

Any suggestions where I can upload a .zip or .rar that will probably be 25 MB or more?

box.com have treated me very well - they've hosted my UK rental cover set for almost 3 years without complaint. They do have a 25MB file limit on the free account mind, though you could of course split the archive.

Speaking of which, I should really give those another go-around. All this talk of 'edited in Word' text has got me feeling guilty...

Why does it have to be PAL? If you're thinking that a UK TV release from the 80s will automatically be superior to an NTSC DVD purely by virtue of being PAL, that simply isn't the case (particularly considering that any extant recording will be analogue VHS, thus falling significantly short of the 720x576 digital standard).

The 'best possible edition' would be the US Blu-ray release. If your PAL preference is because you're limited in terms of playback equipment (and can't play NTSC, let alone Blu-ray) you could - hypothetically - downscale an HD rip to PAL DVD.

In any event you can do much better than an old VHS recording of a fairly common film...

skyjedi2005 said:

It is interesting Luke and Anakin pretty much being archetypal heroes who take virtually the same path in the beginning, but Lucas really botched things with clones and sith.

I'd disagree that Anakin is an archetypal hero. Unlike Luke, who continually encounters - and meets - challenges and choices, Anakin doesn't make any significant decisions about who he wants to be until the middle of Clones, which is ironically the point at which he starts channelling the dark side.

Up until that point he's just a whiny object of Jedi and Sith machinations. I can see how the 'mirrored path' might have been intended at the outset, but the problem with the final product is that Anakin's just too young - apart from the occasional glimmer of thoughtful dialogue, he acts and talks like a child, and gets treated as one by everyone around him. Hardly the stuff of legends.

Yes, and as TheBoost says, that name never appears anywhere in the film. Keep up.

(Quite apart from the nonsensical notion of a ship whose sole purpose is to run blockades. Did it get frequent use? What happened if a blockade needed to be run while it was in the garage? Was it even any good at its job, given that Vader's Star Destroyer - possibly part of said blockade - intercepted it without any effort at all? So many important questions.)

A, though C could be good if the red glow were toned down a bit. Lovely concept in any case.

skyjedi2005 said:

Jonno said:

And Adywan already did a theatrical TPM.

Reconstruction not Preservation see my above post.

In which you entertained both possibilities - I was eliminating the second.

Am I to take it that a laser transfer of the theatrical edit would in some way be preferable to an HD-derived reconstruction, even if that reconstruction is frame perfect? I consider myself a purist, but that's taking it to a ridiculous extreme.

It's quite hard to say at the moment - the only proper review so far skips the issue of the film's history of revisions entirely, and just gives a neutral commentary on this disc's AV qualities. From comments on the angry HTF thread it sounds as if this might be derived from the same HD master prepared for the previous DVD, so content-wise it will in all probability be the same.

skyjedi2005 said:

American Graffiti. On the DVD version the opening shot was replaced with a cgi sky and they changed the color timing and title card ,plus they used DVNR.

The blu-ray released next week has (by all accounts) taken care of the latter problem. While the original titlecard is certainly worth preserving (and possibly reconstructing), it wouldn't exactly justify watching the entire film at LD resolution if you had the choice.

And Adywan already did a theatrical TPM.

skyjedi2005 said:

Speaking of digests i wonder if someone can find and transfer the super8mm sound and color film digest put out by marketing films.

Not sure if that would be any use though since there were no differences except with audio between the 35mm and the 70mm.

I did this myself a while ago, albeit in a very low-tech way (HDV camcorder off a projector screen, audio via minidisc). It's no Puggo but you're welcome to a copy if it's any use.

One of Jedi's crucial problems for me is its complete lack of momentum. The first two films are exhilarating largely because they continually move from location to location, never looking back. Jedi takes place in three locations we've been to before (Tatooine, Dagobah, Death Star) plus... some woods. The universe suddenly seems a lot less huge and thrilling than it did in the earlier instalments.

(Of course, this got far worse in the prequels. When I realised that the finale of TPM was going to be set back on Naboo, my heart sank.)

Having said that, the Star Destroyer / Imperial shuttle / Death Star opening is probably my favourite in the saga. I don't think there's a more impressive example of callous Imperial might in any of the other films...

LeeThorogood said:

@Jonno BTW you weren't completely wrong about there being 53-54 cells in Star Wars, as the PAL version has 52 chapter cells and one split cell. ;)

Ah, that's interesting. I started tinkering with the PAL version myself originally (I'm in the UK so it was the most readily available), but quickly invested in the NTSC when these serious preservation projects arose.

I genuinely think that the GOUT discs are really nicely authored - just a pity that there's no worthwhile content on them whatsoever ;-)

My mistake! ANH only has 51 cells, which is a direct match for the 51 chapters in the navigation - no split cells required. The last chapter occurs in the last few seconds of the end credits, so when you author your preliminary disc image just pop a marker in there.

LeeThorogood said:

Jonno thanks for the info ;) when you say a simple authoring program would muxman do the trick? *sigh* this project just seems to get more and more complicated all the time!

Yes and no ;)

Yes because Muxman would certainly allow you to add your own list of celltimes, but no because you need to place those cell breaks in the context of your own edit/encode, requiring a visual timeline interface.

Ideally you'd use something like Adobe Encore to put this part together - it's got a very flexible timeline and (if you don't mind using its inbuilt MPEG encoder) can even encode around the chapter points you've placed on your AVI, so those can be positioned on precise frames (and the encoder will just force I-frames on those).

Simpler software will probably just let you mark chapters on existing I-frames in the MPEG stream - obviously you won't know what these are until you try navigating around the timeline (you'll only be able to 'park' the cursor on an I-frame) - and then build the video and audio streams into DVD-legal specs.

Perhaps have a browse through these programs for one that will fit the bill/budget (unless someone else can weight in and supplement my own limited knowledge!)

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/sections/authoring-dvd

Of course I could simply offer to do this part for you, if there's an easy way for us to exchange the materials. Sounds like you might need to sort out the issues with your video streams first, but let me know :)

Sorry if you're already on top of this, but since I used Vobblanker myself recently to do the same thing (only with DJ's v3 video) I might be able to save you a couple of further headaches when it comes to recombining!

The original GOUT video has 53-54 cells - that's 50 'reported' chapter headers (i.e. the ones you see in the menu), one unreported (which amounts to the last couple of seconds of the end credits), and a couple of split chapters (sometimes to assist with the chapter break, sometimes for no good reason!)

Since VB replaces video by matching cells, you need to make sure your own video has the same number - this doesn't appear to be as simple as remuxing the original celltimes with your video, however, since the cells should start and end at I frames in the MPEG stream (which will be in different places in your video).

Soooo... you really need to use a simple authoring program to mark your own 51 chapter points in your version (matching those of the GOUT to the closest available frame), export that to a VIDEO_TS folder, then open it in VB to mark the additional cells using the split cells function (using the GOUT cells list as reference - VB gives the clearest view of this in my experience so perhaps open that up for a peek first).

Again, sorry if this is teaching you to suck eggs but I was scratching my head over this for a good while so I thought it might help!

It sounds like my CBS-FOX thing might be of limited help, then - I worked from the faces-era PAL tapes (the ones that came in the Executor tin) and they only had the straight CBS-FOX logo and the Maltin interviews. If there's more to be found, you might have to look further (such as the full rips posted above), but for what it's worth:

http://www.box.net/shared/zfp79l0knp

(There are two versions here, a muxed titleset - for use in vobblanker replacement - and the raw streams for use in an authoring program. These are NTSC format since I needed compatibility with the NTSC GOUT discs).

How are you with DVD authoring? I ask because it seems that the best option would be for you to take the introductory stuff you want and add it to the front of a superior transfer (e.g. DJ's V3) so you don't actually have to sit through a VHS quality copy of the film (which gets old fast!)

I recently did just that with the CBS-FOX part (which I can supply if you're interested) - the Maltin interviews are also around on some folks' extras discs (I did my own PAL transfers of these a while back which you're also welcome to if they're any use).

MultiAVCHD is a great free program for authoring blus. Just import your MKVs or existing blu-ray folder, then it produces a main menu/setup menu/chapter menu for you. Not as flexible as a proper authoring tool but you can still tinker a great deal with the design - use your own text, backgrounds and stuff - and get some pretty respectable results (I used it to put a fancy front-end on Harmy's 720p Empire).

Tutorial here too.

Might I have a PM please?

Received today, cheers JD! Beautiful work on the menus and extras, the finished product was WELL worth the wait.

This project deserves all the recognition it gets - the official blu-ray might well show us stuff we've never seen before, but there's no chance it will receive this level of care and attention.

Or maybe he's just pointing out that you (and indeed posters in general) ought to put a bit of care into what you post if you expect it to be taken seriously.

Indeed - that's what restoration means, i.e. restoring a film to its original state (or as close as possible given available time/resources/references).

Recompositing would constitute an alteration, every bit as troubling as digital erasings/corrections. Sure, there are many effects that no longer hold up to scrutiny but they're a product of the original production, and belong there. You've got to take the rough with the smooth...