LeeThorogood

Its a real shame that both the TB and G'kar release seem to have disappeared into the ether :(

I miss Golden Grahames in the UK!

irn-bru said:

Finally a pal version of the 97 s.e. editions .Its looking good my son :-). Any thoughts on doing a preservation of the original trilogy laserdiscs  ?

captainsolo said:

Darn. I only wish these were NTSC.

As George likes to do the opposite of what us fans want you should have suggested he didn't change the name to LucasFAIL Ltd or perhaps suggest he change it to LucasSucceed Ltd *sigh*

I am more then happy to boycott this release, mainly because its neither the Theatrical or '97 SE release of the OT, I don't care for the Prequels and it also helps I suppose that I don't have a blu-ray player.

Hopefully I will be able to get the releases I want on blu-ray some day.

I have searched the web high and low and been unable to find them. :( As far as I am aware however some of the members of this board do still have them. It would be really cool if these could be made available once again. :D

Interesting! It also confirms how my original colour correction was overly dark. Thanks to Moth3r for prompting me to go back and take a second look at the colour correction.

At one point I did think about making these as dual sided DVD-RAM discs simulating the LaserDisc experience. Ultimately I decided not to as I assumed most people would prefer a single sided dual layer DVD release.

Thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in this project, I hope to have all 3 films completely finished by the end of September! If anyone has any suggestions for improvements please voice them!

Cue 20th Century Fox Fanfare...

I have finally finished the ROTJ DVD. It's a dual layer DVD, using a VBR of 7.2Mbps with a 16:9 anamorphic main feature and 4:3 special feature segment. The Audio is 2 channel Stereo encoded as AC3 at 192Kbps. As previously mentioned other than the hard coded alien subtitles there are no subtitle tracks.

Here are the up to date inserts for all 3 films and the cutout for the outer box/shell.

[ IMAGES REMOVED ]

If anyone wants to do some DVD sized case artwork for this project be my guest, ideally it should be along the same lines as the LD/VHS '97 SE artwork & design.

Now as promised screenshots from the DVD encode of ROTJ.













I'm not sure how I am going to make this release available yet, if anyone is interested in helping me out in this area please PM me. 

I agree, now that I have done these comparison shots I can see just how overly dark things were before, the latest filter settings are much better.

I'm going to leave it a few more days, but if no one speaks up about wanting the full English subtitles on the DVDs I am not going to bother which means I should have ROTJ finished by Sunday/Monday :D I'll post some snapshots from the final DVD encode when its done.

Here are some comparison shots showing how I 'toned down' the blacks.








Let me know what you think.

captainsolo said:

Was noticing that smearing on the Revivax and DJ's test clips. It really isn't present on the LDs. (from what I recall)

BTW: what method did you use on Mac for this? I used one while at school with an old LD player and FCP-which didn't work out well at all...the captures looked awful no matter what I did to them. Not to mention that trying to add the 5.1 ac3 was a nightmare b/c FCP does not accept ac3.

Hi EvilSupes,

4-6 weeks if I don't bother with full English subtitles, probably twice or three times that if I do, but only because matching up the 2004 subtitles is a time consuming process not to mention mind numbing. Assuming I don't run into any problems.

I am in two minds when it comes to the subtitles, on the one hand the LDs didn't have them, and I don't really need them as I should know these films inside and out by now, but at the same time ideally I should include them for completeness sake. I dunno, what does everyone else think? If people aren't bothered about the full English subs I won't bother.

In the meantime here is the cover/artwork I have for ROTJ, its based on the PAL LaserDisc covers and is meant to fit in a standard CD Jewel Case.

Click the thumbnail to see the bigger version.

Hi Moth3r

Unfortunately I don't have the test captures anymore, the difference was as I said slight, my face had to be about 2 inches or closer to my iMac screen to see the difference. I think the only thing the composite had going for it was it had again slightly less dot-crawl. If you like when I get onto ESB I will do some test captures again to show the difference.

When you say "There is no need to deinterlace" whats the reasoning behind this? I will confess I know very little about interlacing and progressive scan, however I have tried to look this topic up on the web. I read online that when scaling video the process is quicker when the source is progressive rather then interlaced, is this a load of rubbish? I know DVDs can be either interlaced or progressive so I realise there is no advantage in this regard. I know Compressor can convert this ProRes master to H.264 a lot quicker (about 5 hours) when its progressive compared to say 2-3 days if its interlaced! 

To do the colour correcting I cropped off the black borders (letterboxing and overscan area) leaving a clean black background generated by my video editing software. I then used a space scene to carefully adjust the blacks until the space background matched the black borders. Talking of blacks, has anyone else with the PAL '97 SE LD set noticed that ANH seems to be darker then ESB and ROTJ or have I got a duff set?

All these snapshots are on their way over to imageshack ;) the current host is a temporary solution!

To A B C I'm not going to let the Blu-Ray release put me off doing this or any other preservation project, mainly because while the video and audio quality in theory should be outstanding assuming LFL can exercise some quality control this time! The actual movies will be based off the 2004 versions which I personally dislike, so unless things change and he at least gives us the OUT on Blu-Ray which I doubt he will this time around, I wont be buying.

As promised here are more snapshots which show the rest of Jedi. I just wanted to mention that the colour correction filter I am using is only doing some very basic things, restoring blacks, fixing washed out colour, nothing to fundamentally alter the '97 SE look.

Hi EvilSupes,

Thanks for checking out my thread! I was worried no one would be that interested especially as Dark_Jedi is about to release his Take2 Trilogy based on the DVB releases.

I have moved the snapshots to an external server so they should load as quickly as possible now, if they are still slow its because they are between .25 and .5 of a MB in size.

I personally like the '97 SEs just as much as the OOT. I personally feel George Lucas went too far with the 2004 release, and the less I say about that release the better!

I'll try and post some more snapshots of ROTJ tomorrow.

I originally started this project back in April 2010, after finding the originaltrilogy.com and learning that their was a higher then VHS quality release of the 1997 SE, namely LaserDisc. The project started as an attempt to preserve the UK PAL LaserDisc box set. To get me started I brought my player and discs from a well known auction site for £200 shipped. Then I purchased the ADVC-55 for about £150 shipped after some failed attempts at using a cheap £40 USB solution. Since starting I have been on a steep learning curve, having spent many hours reading online forums for advice, help and information, not to mention the months of trial and error using different configurations, settings and filters.

It is now 6 months since I started this project and I have successfully completed Version 1 of my 1997 SE preservation, with Version 2 about 66% complete. I am also considering expanding this project to include a preservation of the 1995 PAL (French) THX OUT LaserDiscs, using the English audio from the PAL GOUT DVDs.

From the outset I had planned to release this preservation on DL DVDs using an Anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratio and including the special features from side 3 of Return of the Jedi. Originally I had planned to use the 2.0 stereo audio from the PAL LaserDiscs however I have since been supplied with the DolbyDigital 5.1 surround sound audio for each film from the NTSC 1997 SE release, which I have retimed and synced to the PAL video.

Technical Details:

Source Material
Video from the 1997 Special Edition UK PAL LaserDiscs.
5.1 Dolby Digital Sourround soundtrack from the 1997 Special Edition US NTSC LaserDiscs

Hardware
Pioneer CLD-D925 Laserdisc player
Canopus ADVC-55
Belkin Quad Shielded Firewire (IEEE 1394) cable
Belkin PureAV Quad Shielded 24k Gold 1.2m Composite RCA Cable
2007 20" iMac 2.4ghz Core2Duo 4GB Ram 360GB Hard Drive
Lacie 1TB Firewire 800 External Hard Drive

Software
Capturing: Final Cut Pro using miniDV Codec
Post-processing: Final Cut Pro using Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) Codec
Encoding: Compressor 3
DVD Authoring: DVD Studio Pro 4

Project Log:

UPDATE 3/9/2010: I am now using segments from the Widescreen (Letterboxed) VHS versions of the 1997 Special Edition to bridge the gap between changes in the LaserDisc sides.

UPDATE 15/9/10: Thanks to Darth Editous and Jetrell Fo I now have the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio from the 1997 Special Edition NTSC LaserDiscs and will now be using this audio instead.

UPDATE 19/9/2010: Version 1 of this is project is close to being finished, with V2 in the planning stages.

UPDATE 23/9/2010: Version 1 of this project is now complete, any one interested in a copy should PM me.

UPDATE 24/9/2010: Planned changes between Version1 and Version 2 of this project;
1. Use of Belkin PureAV Quad-Shielded 24k Gold S-Video cable.
2. Use of Belkin Quad-Shielded Firewire 6-pin to 6-pin cable.
3. 5-Capture averaging to reduce any random analog noise.
4. Use of Apple ProRes 422 (HQ) codec.
5. No longer using automatic Gamma Correction in ProRes codec.
6. Changed the filter chain to just use the "G Chroma Sharpen Interlaced" filter, set to anti-alias only.
7. Droped the Color Choker filter as previously used in V1 ESB & V1 ROTJ from the filter chain.

In addition to these changes I am thinking about doing an NTSC release.

UPDATE 25/9/10: Just did a quick compare between using the Belkin PureAV Quad Shielded 24k Gold S-Video and Composite Cables, and I think the composite has come out on top, so I will be using this now instead of the S-Video.

UPDATE 9/10/10: The DVD image for ANH V2 is completely finished, it just needs burning and testing in a DVD player.

UPDATE 10/10/10: The DVD image for ESB V2 is completely finished, it just needs burning and testing in a DVD player.

UPDATE 13/10/10: The DVD image for ROTJ V2 is completely finished, it just needs burning and testing in a DVD player.

UPDATE 14/10/10: V2 of the 1997 SE release is now completely finished, having successfully burned to Verbatim DL DVDs and played successfully in a number of DVD players.

Irn-bru, a few months ago I brought the exact same LD player but with the 97SE Trilogy for £200 off ebay, so I would say £75 is a good deal. That said I brought mine with the intention of capturing the 97SEs onto my PC and then reselling the player and discs once I was done.

When the CLD-925 first arrived I tried it out on my Parents 40" Toshiba HD TV to check it worked, etc. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised as to the picture quality. I wasn't cringing like I do when I watch a VHS on the same TV.

Like dark_jedi said it down to you to decide if its worth it or not. I hope this helped.

Hi Moth3r,

Thanks for the reply, I will try your advice and let you know how I get on.

Lee

Hello,

I was wondering if I could get some advice on the best practice to capture my PAL 1997 SE LaserDiscs. I have the following equipment

2007 20" iMac with FCP on Snow Leopard
ADVC-55 brought in the last month
Pioneer CLD-D925 LaserDisc Player

Unfortunately I can't afford the equipment needed to capture the Dolby Digital audio track, so I will be capturing the stereo track instead. I don't have a surround sound system so I wouldn't get the benefit of 5.1 surround any way.

I just want to make sure I am keeping quality loss to a bear minimum. I plan to output these to both DVD and MP4 for viewing on my media centre attached to my 26" 720p TV, in both cases I would be looking to crop from 4:3 letterbox to 16:9 letterbox.

Any advice on which input to use (Composite vs S-Video), best practice for capturing with my set-up and any recommended filters / effects in FCP would be a massive help!

Many Thanks

Lee