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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
#82395
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/82395/action/topic#82395
Time
After saying I was going to leave the video settings as they were, I've since found out that if I reduce the contrast a little I can increase the colour saturation without clipping the strong reds.

I guess I didn't realise how washed out my version looked until I compared the skin tone in Shot 4 to the others. (But I feel that some versions, e.g. DrGonzo, may actually be over saturated.)

Updated screenshots coming soon...
Post
#82290
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/82290/action/topic#82290
Time
Yes I've also noticed that this source seems to be slightly more cropped than the NTSC versions, particulaly to the bottom. If you do the calcs the aspect ratio is actually 2.4:1 instead of 2.35:1.

Also bear in mind that pixel-for-pixel, non-anamorphic PAL is closest to the "natural" aspect ratio; not stretched as much as anamorphic NTSC and not squashed like non-anamorphic NTSC. It will look different to the other shots.
Post
#82270
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/82270/action/topic#82270
Time
When I first started this project, it wasn't intended to be a dual-layer DVDR. But considering how the length of time I thought it would take has multiplied dramatically, by the time I have a finished video that I'm happy with, dual-layer media may have become more affordable!

I wasn't considering multi-angle, as the French discs have the crawl in English but with subtitles in the lower black bar. Presumably I could do the same but with German subtitles.

My current plan is to finish an English, non-anamorphic, movie-only (no menus), single-layer DVDR set. I'll make these available for feedback purposes, and you could put your own soundtrack to my video if you want to have a go.

When I've finished this initial "taster" set, I'll go back and look at enhancing the set with multiple languages, anamorphic widescreen, menus and maybe make it dual layer then. Unfortunately this "final" set looks to be a long way off at the moment!
Post
#82200
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/82200/action/topic#82200
Time
Thanks to Zion, you can now see my latest screenshots on his updated pages Here.

Good:
- sharper picture, nice level of detail (the starfield in Shot 1 is nicer than any of the others - even the official DVD! - and you can see the engines of the blockade runner quite well).
- Whites aren't overblown and blacks aren't crushed, see shots 6 and 8.

Bad:
- doesn't show up on screenshots, but quite a lot of "speckles" or drop outs in the video. Discs need a thoroughly good clean.
- colours are not as saturated as the other versions (shot 4)
- still a presence of halos/ghosting/edge-enhancement/whatever-you-want-to-call-it (shot 7)

I think I'm going to leave the video and concentrate on other things for now, i.e. splicing in the screen wipes and syncing the English audio. I've realised you could play with the settings and post-processing for months and still see things that need fixing - regarding the colours, if I increase the saturation then colortools plugin detects some of the reds (e.g. in shot 10) are too high. Instead of messing about with reducing individual colours, I will use the video as it is now and go on to make a non-anamorphic DVD5 "screener" version to use as a baseline for future enhancements.
Post
#81760
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/81760/action/topic#81760
Time
Yes it would be useful to see the raw source directly off the DVD; I noticed someone had complained in one of the feedback threads that the black bars were not pure black (not sure which version) and a shot directly off the DVD would show this.

Although I still think that cropped and AR-corrected images are the best way to directly compare the overall image quality of versions with differing vertical resolutions.
Post
#81585
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/81585/action/topic#81585
Time
I can't tell any difference in quality between the 470KB lossless PNG and the 150KB highest-quality JPG, so that's good, and if you can host that many shots without any bandwidth problems that's even better.

I have had an idea for something I would like to try; instead of putting all the images in a vertical line on a page, to display just one image and use an HTML form with radio buttons and a Javascript function to switch the image. Also it might aid direct comparison if all the cropped images are resized to their natural aspect ratio (i.e. NTSC 4:3 stretch vertically by 112.5%, 16:9 squash to 84.4%, PAL 4:3 squash to 93.75% etc.) and preloaded so that the change takes place instantly.

Perhaps also for selected shots that contain high detail, an enlarged area of the main image would help to show the differences between each version?
Post
#81277
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/81277/action/topic#81277
Time
Well Zion, it's nice to have more of a variety of screenshots, i.e. dark scenes, light scenes, colourful scenes and scenes with fast motion, and you hard work is appreciated.

However - this is just my personal opinion - 36 may be a bit too excessive. I would prefer to see fewer shots but higher quality jpegs; the pictures have been compressed a little too much for my liking, this is most noticeable in the shots from the official DVD.
Post
#81162
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/81162/action/topic#81162
Time
wadetv, yes, I've been round the block a bit on this one.

First I tried playing the "THX Optimizer" on a DVD player connected via s-video to my capture card, and adjusted the settings so that the captured images were almost identical to the images copied directly off the DVD. However, my laserdisc player's output is darker than that from my DVD player, so the actual caps were coming out too dark.

Then I tried a video calibration laserdisc (see this post) and set up the capture card with that. However, the disc was NTSC (I don't know of any PAL calibration discs) and again the captures from my PAL laserdiscs were too dark.

So I resorted to what I should have done in the first place; capture some scenes from the actual discs, and adjust the brightness/contrast settings until the darkest pixels (in the actual picture, e.g. Vader's cloak - the black bars seem to be darker than the main image) are coming out as black and the brightest (e.g. the roof lights in Tantive) are white. The waveform monitor in the colortools vdub plugin is very useful here. Assuming that the levels remain consistent throughout the disc, this is the best way I think to get things right.

MeBeJedi's philosphy was to black set a bit higher and white a bit lower, to capture all the detail possible, then to adjust the settings during post-processing. His thinking may hold some weight, but it makes more sense to me to capture the full range and leave alone rather than capture a reduced range and then extrapolate.
Post
#80965
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80965/action/topic#80965
Time
Update:

I'm still playing around with the capture settings - I strongly believe it's better to capture the video correctly in the first place than to apply filters to correct it during post-processing.

With reference to the screenshots I posted in the "official" thread, I think that the brightness (aka "black level") and contrast ("white level") are set pretty close to the ideal. Vader's cloak is black and the roof lights are white. (I should make spot checks to ensure that all the discs are all consistent with each other).

Using the vdub plugin here to analyse the video, it turns out that the colour is slightly over-saturated. Where Artoo wakes up in the sand crawler, his red light is too "hot" and will clip on a TV.

Also I dislike the edge enhancement effect I'm seeing in my screenshots - this isn't caused by the sharpening filter as I first thought, it's present on the source video. Again I'm going to have to look at the capture card drivers, and if there's nothing I can do there then maybe look for a filter to reduce the effect.
Post
#80916
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80916/action/topic#80916
Time
Originally posted by: Moth3r
I agree with eros, that DrGonzo, TR47, Farsight and the early MeBeJedi versions are all too bright - that is assuming the shots are accurate representations of the video and that no alterations occured when BadAsh took the screen grab.
I've just checked the video on DrGonzo's DVD, and it does appear that the contrast - or white level - was inadvertantly increased when the screen shots were made. (This was actually mentioned earlier in this thread).

Check out this comparison:

correct:
http://img103.exs.cx/img103/6720/drgonzo6nl.png

incorrect (as shown in the "official" thread):
http://img26.exs.cx/img26/2739/DrGonzo_000.jpg

Post
#80886
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots feedback thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80886/action/topic#80886
Time
I've posted screenshots from my version in the "official" thread, it's extremely useful to be able to compare my project to others. I identified straight away problems with the contrast and saturation that I've hopefully now fixed.

My shots most resemble the ISOMIX version, although with a slightly more natural balance in levels, and less colour bleed. Unforunately my video seems to suffer from some sort of edge enhancement (look at the bright edge to the left of Vader in Shot A). I need to look at the sharpening filter to see if that's the culprit. [Point to note: the region 1 retail version of TPM suffered from terrible EE as well!]

I agree with eros, that DrGonzo, TR47, Farsight and the early MeBeJedi versions are all too bright - that is assuming the shots are accurate representations of the video and that no alterations occured when BadAsh took the screen grab. I believe my capture is now correctly calibrated, and it doesn't suffer from the "overblown highlights" thing that tellan was talking about.

Zion's picture quality looks very good, but I must say there seems to be a blue cast to his screenshots that is not present in any of the other versions.
Post
#80804
Topic
***The "official" Screenshots thread ***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80804/action/topic#80804
Time
Here are my efforts for comparison, note that:
- It's an ongoing project, so is going to change [already changed them once since the first posting!]
- These shots are from the processed video after the filter chain but before encoding to MPEG, so it's not really fair to compare them with shots taken from compressed video as above (but I think the detail looks better, hehe )

.: Latest shots now hosted by Zion HERE :.
Post
#80597
Topic
STAR WARS: The Torrents thread
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80597/action/topic#80597
Time
Originally posted by: Itchy
Question about torrents for you guys..

I have a file that's downloading suuuuuuuuuuper slow and it appears only one seeder. If someone else begins seeding the same file somewhere else, do i have to quit the current torrent and leach onto the new torrent? Or does it automatically connect? Will my partial file begin redownloading at the same point because it's the exact same file?
If someone else starts seeding the file through the same tracker, then you don't need to do anything, you will connect to both seeds.

If someone else creates a new torrent that uses a different tracker, and you want to use that instead, then you will have to stop your current download and grab the new torrent. If you set the download location to the same place as the old one then it should continue from where you left off.

I don't know if you can have two torrents writing to the same file at the same time.
Post
#80036
Topic
.: Moth3r's PAL DVD project :.
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/80036/action/topic#80036
Time
OK I've had a play at splicing the "screen wipe" frames capped from the VHS tape between sides 1 and 2 of the laserdisc.

In terms of quality, there's not that much difference - they're both noisy analogue sources, however the brightness, colour saturation and screen centring are completely different between the two clips.

So what should I do?
  • Spend time trying to get the picture from another source to match as close as possible that from the PAL laserdisc (but it'll never be a perfect match)
  • Leave the audio as it is and just insert a few black frames into the laserdisc capture where this wipe is missing
  • Skip those frames completely, and have a jump in the audio at that point