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Laserschwert

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Join date
27-Sep-2004
Last activity
25-Jun-2025
Posts
1,423

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Post
#288398
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/288398/action/topic#288398
Time
That worked like a charm. I went with 30, and now your audio-track has the same level as my German one.

By the way, if you've incorporated Moth3r's transfer with other audio-tracks, the command line changes a tiny bit: Instead of just putting the desired audio level at the end (31 in Moth3r's example), you'll have to have the number of the audio track first (0 being the first one), followed by a slash and the level (so, if the second audio track should be changed to 31 it'll be "1/31").
Post
#286474
Topic
.: The XØ Project - Laserdisc on Steroids :. (SEE FIRST POST FOR UPDATES) (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/286474/action/topic#286474
Time
Originally posted by: Doctor M
I think the Black Magic process (some sort of combination of laserdiscs release blending and/or film jitter extrapolation) extracts more information than a single frame.


Uhm, I think you're misunderstanding the term "Black Magic"... Blackmagic Design is just a manufacturer of video editing hardware. Laserman uses such an editing- and compositing suite, probably in conjuction with Apple's compositing software Shake. It features a couple of plugins that allow the tracking of an image on a "per pixel"-basis, which can be used to stabilize or retime sequences by creating new frames through automated "morphing", without the need for selecting the corresponding parts of the images by hand. Another one of these plugins is called "auto align", which allows the combination of different source images into a single image, again, through morphing and warping. One use of this can be the creation of panoramic images, by combining multiple still-shots, and automatically aligning the overlapping parts of the image to appear seamless, creating one big image. Of course, these images don't have to be overlapping only in parts, but they might as well overlap completely.

Taking several different Laserdisc transfers of Star Wars, getting them in sync with each other and combining them with the "auto align" plugin creates an "averaged" image of all these sources. A defect (like noise, dirt, dropouts or laser-rot) in one transfer gets evened out by the other transfers, and vice-versa, so that only the parts of the image that are the same in all transfers are remaining, adding up the detail to create a clean image. This is of course just a simple explanation of the process, and I'm sure Laserman has some more aces up his sleeve to improve the quality even further than "auto align" alone.

So, "Black Magic" isn't a process, but just the editing hardware used. The real magic happens with Laserman using Apple's "Shake".

Edit:
By the way, scaling a letterbox-image up to HD is pointless... you can't create detail out of nothing. Scaling it up to anamorphic is probably the highest you can go without looking too terrible (which by the way your image does... LimitedSharpen can only enhance detail... not magically create it where no detail was before).
Post
#285656
Topic
Idea & Info: for a Spider-Man 3 edit...
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/285656/action/topic#285656
Time
Although I liked the movie, it had some problems causing it to not live up to the first two films.

Especially the plotlines of Sandman and his daughter, as well as Venom himself should've been covered in more detail. The problem is, the movie is already long, and adding the necessary 30 or so minutes to accommodate for these shortcomings could quite possibly make it TOO long (at least for a steady flow... I don't care that much about running time in general, but sometimes it slows down the movie too much). Still, I'm hoping for a 3.1-Release, and hopefully not that long after the normal release (as it was with 2.1, being released way to late).
Post
#285375
Topic
//Star Wars Begins\\: HD Version Now on Vimeo
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/285375/action/topic#285375
Time
I think if you use an old version of the crawl on the DVD, it might make sense to use a different take of the main title theme. The hidden track on the first SE-soundtrack contains all 5 takes that were recorded for the main theme, and I especially like the opening "hit" in the first 3 takes, since it contains a little "intro" note. (maybe even a montage of all 5 different takes might work, by just playing the first few secons of each version, each starting with a different logo design... ah, well, just brainstorming here).
Post
#284404
Topic
Making of Star Wars (New Book) Discussion
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/284404/action/topic#284404
Time
Originally posted by: Fang Zei
Well that's nice to know but I'd appreciate a source. Also, I heard they already did "Making of" books for the other five films to coincide with their respective releases.

HERE'S your source:

With the 300-plus page tome now completed and readying for release, Rinzler already has designs on several other "making of" books fans can look forward to, including upgraded versions of the original Making of Empire and Jedi books printed in the early '80s. "If we're able to do it, the basic idea would be to take the existing texts and add text to fill in the gaps," says Rinzler. "Then we'd throw in tons of the photos and documents that have never been seen before. Those would be fun to do."

First, however, Rinzler is busy researching a second set of books chronicling the making of another famous trilogy -- or rather quartet -- of films. "That's the number one priority for the moment," he says.


Post
#279163
Topic
Young Indiana Jones... a preservation (* unfinished project *) - a mass of info & ideas
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/279163/action/topic#279163
Time
Hey there.

I was wondering if anybody knows who did the paintings used for the VHS-covers of the series. I always though it was poster-god Drew Struzan who did them (the style was very similar to the movies' posters), but according to The Drew Collector Page Struzan only did the basic drawings that he was going to use to paint over, until the project got canned for a while:
Drew painted this beautiful advertisement as an introductory ad to the series, which advertisement ran in a number of magazines. Years later Drew was called on by George Lucas to paint all the box covers (12) for the video release of the series. Drew conceived, designed, got approved and actually did all the drawings over which he would complete the original paintings when, alas, Paramount canceled the project. For two years the drawings sat in Drew's storage. Unfinished, unpainted but too good to dispose of.
Then, from out of the blue came the request to finish the paintings in one month after having been a dead issue for two years. Well, kind of a shock. Drew wanted to do them for two years and had quite a bit invested in them. Drew was booked! He couldn't meet the deadline to do twelve paintings in a month when they came out of nowhere wanting them. Nothing to be done since they wouldn't budge on the deadline. So Drew's beautiful designs, drawings and ideas were handed over to another artist to paint on.

Not everything is as it should be in the land of art. Everything is not as it appears. Do not be deceived when looking to collect the video covers for Young Indiana Jones, they are not wholly Drew's work.


I would just love to get hold of high-res, textless versions of these, since most of the European versions of the covers have the "Young Indiana Jones"-logo placed recklessly on the artworks, the "Mystery of Blues"-one being the worst of them all:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004U8J0.03._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Actually I would just love to have these painitings in some artbook (I was hoping to find them in Drew/Oeuvre, but since he didn't do them after all, no luck).The artist credited on the paintings on the soundtrack-covers is Matthew Peak, but the style is somewhat different from the "posters", so I don't think he did them. Oh, and before you suggest the "International Movie Poster Database", the high-res images there are only scans of the spanish covers, which are identical to my German covers, which I can scan myself.

Does anybody have any info on these?