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Laserman

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Join date
11-May-2004
Last activity
6-Sep-2007
Posts
903

Post History

Post
#271491
Topic
Info: The Making of The Empire Strikes Back (Michel Parbot)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271491/action/topic#271491
Time
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0344288/combined


It looks like it *was* broadcast, which means there should be a BetaCAM tape out there somewhere....

or you could get this guy to go back to his mother's place.

User Comments:

5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful:-
respect to the master, the pioneer, 15 February 2005
10/10
Author: kmwells from U.S. Virgin Islands

Look i saw this as a kid and still have the VCR of it at my mom's. At the time it was major kick ass. I remember it being state of the art, cutting edge special effects. It may seem cheesy now, but that is only because old school special effects like this paved the way. Give respect!!! George Lucas was brave enough and idealistic enough to gather the proper folks together to bring his dream into a reality. How many of us have the balls to do this today? All of the old school stuff on this video will show you the ingenuity of creativity in a time before most of us knew it. before digital imagery, anyhow. should view this SPFX and learn about where it all started for THX, Lucasfilm, and Skywalker studios.
Post
#271490
Topic
How to extract BTM lost scenes?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271490/action/topic#271490
Time
OK watch the a.b.sw skies...

Just do give you an idea of the general crappiness so no-one gets their hopes up too high, and what you might be able to do to clean them up - here is the grab from the OCP discs for reference

http://www.mudgee.net/ot/ocp.png


And here is the same frame from my direct rip of the BTM discs, then cleaned up using a quicky temporal algorithm

http://www.mudgee.net/ot/anchtemporal.png


and here is the raw (untouched) frame from my direct rip from the BTM discs.

http://www.mudgee.net/ot/anchraw.png

So as you can see the capture process used to get the images across for OCPs edit lost a lot of detail, but the process did soften the image considerably which hides the pixelation.

To make them usable I'd recommend doing a temporal cleanup on the static backgrounds, create a new extended clean plate and then roto the people back into the clean plates, then you would get something more like (should be better than) my quicky attempt in image #2.

I can't really spend any more time on this though, so I've supplied the raw materials and I throw it out to the rest of you gurus to finish off for whatever projects you have in mind.

Enjoy.
Post
#271407
Topic
How to extract BTM lost scenes?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271407/action/topic#271407
Time
I've already converted the Anchorhead scenes for someone else, so I might as well up them for anyone that wants them.

They are a straight extraction from the disc, so no quality loss at all, but the original quality isn't all that hot. At first glance you think WTF they look more pixelated than the OCP captures, but then you realise that the analogue capture process used has effectively blurred and softened the original footage. You would seriously need to run this footage through some filters but there *is* more detail there to work with than the OCP captures, and it is easier to ramp it to the desired framerate as you are at least starting off with the original progressive frames.

I'll get over to a house with broadband and up as much as I can tonight.
Post
#271373
Topic
How to extract BTM lost scenes?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271373/action/topic#271373
Time
At the moment the 'tools' are a bunch of command line kludges written in machine code that run in DOS. (I'm old OK...)

If I get time I'll stick a GUI on top and make them usable, but at the moment I'm doing a few extractions so it is quick for me to add specific ones to the list while I am at it.

Or, I could just extract the entire discs to their files, (i.e. unpack the bundle files into the 4000 or so actual files that are on the discs) and then other people could go about decoding the video files, jpegs etc. using the tools that are already out there. I just haven't got time to go through all the files and do the conversions, but I can quickly change my code to unpack the entire discs.

This would leave you with all of the jpgs and text, and all of the video in lucasarts file formats (which there are converters out there that will then convert those to an avi or an image sequence) and then you guys can go nuts converting each piece of video for your own projects.

Post
#271265
Topic
How to extract BTM lost scenes?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271265/action/topic#271265
Time
Hey, I have it!
I found it in one of the boxes that I hadn't yet unpacked.
Let me know what movies you want from it and I can extract the directly from the bundle files as an image sequence and a wave file.
The quality of the images isn't great, but I can do a bit for bit perfect extraction of the ones on the BTM discs, so it is as good as it is ever going to get unless someone steals the negs.
Post
#269528
Topic
Info Wanted: Panasonic LD player for doing my preservation project?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269528/action/topic#269528
Time
That model is actually a pretty natty machine, I'd like to see some captures from it. Panasonic went all out with that model, it was their 'prefessional broadcast' mode, and consequently it has a BNC output, serial port for PC control and they developed some nice noise processing. I'd be interested to see how it compares.
Panasonic actually made a MUSE player as well. I can't remember the model#
Post
#269526
Topic
How to Remove Character
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269526/action/topic#269526
Time
I'm assuming you have a clean plate to work from, or that all of the background is available to you even if it is on different frames?

There are a multitude of ways to do this, from the fully automated (mokey) to completely manual (paint through to the clean plate with something like combustion).
In really simple terms...
Typically the first step would be to create a 'clean plate' i.e. reconstruct the background that the character you want to remove is standing in front of.
You would then use the tracker (in the software of your choice, combustion, shake etc.) to track the clean plate to the background.
You then roto out (create a mask for) the character that you want to remove. tracking tools can be helpful here again.
Then basically you use the 'mask' that covers the character to allow the background from the clean plate to show through.

Making it seamless is a whole 'nother issue, but that is pretty much how it works.
You then have to be careful that you don't end up with a predator effect, i.e. that you have a ghostly version of your character because of slight differences in the background plate vs the live action (like film grain etc.).

Look for online tutorials for your software of choice - a good way to do this is to google "softwarename wire removal tutorial" or "softwarename rig removal tutorial"

e.g. just type this into google:

shake wire removal tutorial

and you end up with a bunch of tutes for shake.
Post
#267973
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially "de-specialed" DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267973/action/topic#267973
Time
Originally posted by: DustBunny
I have an account with Giganews (a 3-day trial) and included the username and password. I'll give it a try at home. I'm guessing the port is blocked here at work.


Make sure you have set the account up in grabit, have a look here: except of course put in new.giganews.com as the server and your username and password.

You can go to here: and tick the box next to "Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (Darth Editous v3 Xvid) [1 of 63] "Star Wars Episode IV - A New Hope (Darth Editous v3 Xvid).nfo" yEnc (1/1)" and then click on the "create NZB" button.

This will download an nzb file to your PC, double click on it and grabit will open, tell it to grab the file and it should begin.


There is another tutorial here:
http://www.binaries4all.com/grabit/