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Moth3r

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Join date
26-Oct-2004
Last activity
16-Jul-2017
Posts
4,892

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Post
#301701
Topic
Barely an Edit
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301701/action/topic#301701
Time
Rebuilder is fine for converting 4:3 to 16:9. Does it have an option to put an alternative audio track on the new disc?

The easiest way to edit the sound is to convert the 5.1 Dolby Digital track to 2.0 WAV, and splice in the alternative audio for the section with the song you want to change (assuming the timings are the same). Then encode the alternative track back to AC3 and mux with the converted video.

If you want to keep the 5.1 mix, you will need software that can edit multi-channel audio (e.g. SoundForge 9).
Post
#301335
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301335/action/topic#301335
Time
Originally posted by: zombie84
You can see this in the composite shots--as soon as Luke turns on his lightsaber in Ben's hut the grain level doubles. Thats because there is an optical composite for the saber glow, so the film was exposed twice, once on set and then once in the optical printer. It's worth noting that this multiplication of grain is why ILM developed special effects and optical printers based on VistaVision - the 35mm format "on its side", which gave a larger exposure area. Standard 35mm would have ended up just too grainy with the multitude of elements required for some of the shots.

Still, even using this process, if you have 10 or more separate optical elements you're going to get significant grain. Perhaps the standard 35mm shots were "pushed" to enhance the grain and make them match the optical effects shots?
The GOUT looks like it has an extra layer of grain on top of the actual image--this is how the ridiculous "digi-grain conspiracy theory" started. That theory is of course bullshit, not the least because it makes absolutely no sense. I was unfair to mverta to refer to his comment as a conspiracy theory, and it shouldn't be dismissed as bullshit. What he actually said was:
"I'm willing to put some serious money on the fact that grain has been added to ANH, at least."
This is from someone with industry credentials and years of experience in visual effects. I'm not saying I think he's right, I'm more inclined to believe the excessive sharpening theory...Thats why it looks so grainy--it looks more like what one might have seen in a theater screen.
Are you saying therefore that the GOUT video is representative of a theatrical presentation? And if so, are you happy watching the GOUT without any grain filtering? ... in an effort to make the GOUT look better they sharpened the image
Or, as Laserman suggested, the LD pressing master was sharpened because LD video is notoriously soft, and it was this pressing master that was used as the source for the GOUT.
Post
#301295
Topic
Info & Info Wanted: GOUT film grain
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301295/action/topic#301295
Time

A few days ago I was discussing the level of grain in the GOUT DVDs with a couple of people. Looking round on teh interweb, I saw a statement on the Doom9 forum: “many cinemaphiles adore heavy grain these days”. This got me questioning the preconceptions I had about “film grain”.

I always knew that there are some benefits in having a bit of grain in the image:

  • it reduces the appearance of macro-blocking in backgrounds
  • it breaks up any banding or false contour compression artefacts
  • it gives the illusion of increased detail and texture

There are also some occasions where artifical film grain is digitally added to video, for example, to match CGI sequences with live action film.

The problem is that grain, due to its randomness, is difficult to retain when compressing video - you either have to increase the bitrate or reduce the overall quality. This is why, generally, most people who encode video perform some grain reduction or removal as a matter of course. These days, we have highly developed motion-compensated grain reduction tools at our disposal. Viewers have become accustomed to the “smooth” look.

But it doesn’t have to be that way any more. There’s now an AviSynth filter to optimize grain so that it’s efficiently retained by encoders without having to increase the bitrate. There are developments in film grain technology for h.264 and HD DVD.

Now: about the GOUT DVDs. Notwithstanding all the other defects present on these discs, there are three schools of thought on the heavy grain issue:

  • the “artificial grain has been added in post” conspiracy
  • it’s a side effect of sourcing the DVDs from the LD pressing masters - sharpness and edge enhancement were cranked up for the LDs which emphasises the grain on the DVDs.
  • the films were always that grainy, and the image on the GOUT DVDs is consistent with their theatrical presentations (as demonstrated by the 70mm film cell scans)

So, I want to hear your opinions. Do you consider the grain to be excessive or authentic? Given the option, would you prefer to watch a grainy GOUT or a grain-filtered GOUT?

Post
#301082
Topic
Original theatrical subtitles....
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/301082/action/topic#301082
Time
Originally posted by: gwr
I still have an off-air copy of ROTJ taped from ITV in the UK in the 80s which has the original subs, so much so that some very dodgy panning was required to read the lines as they were spoken.
I had the same recording, and remember that dodgy panning. I've since lost my tape - do you have any way of recording those segments to DVD and making clips available for reference?

Funnily enough, the ITV airing of Star Wars did not have the original subtitles. The widescreen bootleg is the best reference, but it's so blurred it's hard to get an exact match. I made an attempt to approximate the original with subtitles overlaid using AviSynth:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v670/Moth3r/custom/last5.png

However, I found such an approach is not suitable for CRT displays because the extreme left and right edges extend past the "safe title" zone and might end up being geometrically distorted, or even cropped out altogether in the overscan region.
Post
#300938
Topic
Info: 16mm ESB and ROTJ films on ebay
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300938/action/topic#300938
Time
Originally posted by: Karyudo
... Film like this has been around a while (at least 1987), yet I'll bet you've never seen a transfer from film. Why not? Because it is extremely hard to manage. No professional places will touch copyrighted film, and there is no viable solution for making your own transfer that doesn't look like you made your own transfer.

It is an amazing, tantalizing proposition, but if you were sane, you'd avoid too many thoughts of improving on the LD caps with 16mm film. The potential is great; the execution is almost impossible.
(From this thread.)
Post
#300846
Topic
It's going to take a LONG time for Womble to re-encode WookieGroomer's HD Transfers, isn't it? [Plus a GOUT Question]
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300846/action/topic#300846
Time
Or AviSynth might be looking in the wrong place for the dll, for example, if you've moved the program/plugins folder somewhere else.

Try:
LoadPlugin("C:\path...\DirectShowsource.dll")
DirectShowSource("C:\path\....wmv") If it's still not working, you can check the Avisynth installation with the simplest of scripts:Version()
Post
#300582
Topic
It's going to take a LONG time for Womble to re-encode WookieGroomer's HD Transfers, isn't it? [Plus a GOUT Question]
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/300582/action/topic#300582
Time
Originally posted by: Johnboy3434
However, before I could start editing, I realized I needed to run WG's file through Womble by itself so I can separate it into an MPV and an WAV. I decided to keep the full resolution (1920x820), framerate (23.98 f/s is the same as 23.976 f/s, right?), video bitrate (7780 kb/s CBR), audio sample rate (48 kHz, if it's the same as the DVD he got the audio from), and audio bitrate (closest I could get to 440 kb/s was 448 kb/s, so I hope it comes out okay). I don't understand exactly what you're trying to do here. Use Womble to encode a high-def MPEG-2 video file? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me, you will lose quality going from VC1 to MPEG-2.
Well, six and a half hours later, Womble has reencoded less than five and a half minutes of the film. Is this inevitable, given the size and high-end specifications of the video file, or am I doing something wrong? Impossible to answer without knowing your PC specs.And it literally just dawned on me: I'm going to have to compress this onto a DVD4, anyway. Is it even worth the effort to use the WG transfer?
DVD5? Anyway, the official Region 1 DVD has terrible edge-enhancement - if you find this unbearable then it's definitely worth using WG's video.
Anyway, I was also curious: I'll be using some pre-SE shots for my ANH edit. Is the '06 DVD the best looking pre-SE transfer, or are there superior LD transfers out there? If so, which one is the best?
There's not much in it, the '06 DVD is better in some respects, but some LD transfers show a slight improvement in certain areas.