In answer to pittrek's question in another thread: yes, Astraweb can be used by non-USA customers.
I am in the UK, I use Astraweb to supplement my ISP's Usenet service (that only has a week's retention). I signed up and paid nearly two years ago, and I still haven't used all my GB yet. Definitely recommended.
Stay on topic please.
You can use this thread if you want to discuss Usenet providers.
Surprisingly, the page on Wikipedia is actually quite a good resource for information on the different versions of Blade Runner:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versions_of_Blade_Runner
hairy_hen said:
...
I can tell you right now that putting the mono mix in one channel and a fold-down of the stereo mix in the other won't give you a completely accurate comparison, because all the surround effects in the stereo mix will phase-cancel themselves out, and thus be inaudible. ...
Yes, this was noted by Belbucus at the time.
TServo2049 said:
Moth3r said:
TServo2049 said:
If you want to come up with actual sound comparisons, go ahead. I like your stereo-in-one-ear, mono-in-the-other approach. It's just that I don't have the time to do that myself.
This has already been done (and, IIRC, the audio file is synced to the GOUT video).
Know where I can find it, perchance?
According to this post it was posted to a.b.starwars five years ago, obviously it's gone now, and I can't see any reposts on binsearch.info.
I'll have a look for it. Or you might want to ask Mallwalker, who has a more organized system for archiving these types of file than I have.
^
This guy gets it.
TServo2049 said:
If you want to come up with actual sound comparisons, go ahead. I like your stereo-in-one-ear, mono-in-the-other approach. It's just that I don't have the time to do that myself.
This has already been done (and, IIRC, the audio file is synced to the GOUT video).
Was this ever posted?
The footage in Empire of Dreams didn't come from the same source as the Def Coll LD/GOUT DVD.
I don't think it was ever resolved exactly where it came from, prev. thread was here:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/What-is-the-source-of-Empire-of-Dreams/topic/13538/
Although the footage is anamorphic 16:9, it appears to be an upscale from a native 4:3 source, and I recall Harmy saying that there are no complete shots present so it was no use in his De-specialized Edition.
I don't like to hear Harmy's projects being referred to as "fan edits" - that term, rightly or wrongly, carries negative connotations to some people.
A fan edit is a new, alternative version of a film, whereas "fan restoration" would be more accurate to describe Harmy's project; he is attempting to rebuild a specific pre-existing version.
As for your other questions, your DVD player will not play AVCHD discs, if you want to watch these in high definition you will need to hook your PC up to your TV, or buy a BD player.
LexX said:
RoboCop was one of the coolest things in 90s when growing up, I remember the NES game and all, good times.
90s? You're older than you think.
The film was released 1987, the arcade game 1988 and the Spectrum version in 1989.
When watching DVDs, the extreme left and right edges will be cropped if the display is upscaling strictly in accordance with standards. That's because the first and last 8-9 pixels in each line are part of the nominal analogue blanking and should be assumed to not contain picture information.
If you are seeing the entire image on your computer monitor, the upscaling is being performed incorrectly.
HD content on the other hand does not contain these blanking regions and can be shown at 1:1 pixel mapping.
SilverWook said:
Yeah, but if they don't know it's film when they're looking right at it. *sigh*
But if they're looking at it on Youtube, it is video (it's an electronic capture of the original film).
Don't get me wrong, I share your OCD tendencies about people using the wrong words (especially those who confuse "cement" with "concrete"), I'm just saying I can understand why there is confusion in this case.
Anyway...
I remember the Challenger disaster, news broke here in the UK just hours after the event. Contrast with the Chernobyl disaster that happened the same year, where we slowly received information and reports bit by bit over the following days.
SilverWook said:
Does it drive anyone else up the wall that people who should know better can't distinguish between film and video anymore?
The original Huff Post article is more accurate in this respect than the Yahoo News article you linked to, but still slips up occasionally.
Although you can appreciate why the confusion exists. I've still got an old Video8 camcorder in a cupboard somewhere.
Can't be bothered with another merge.
Just go here:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Topher-Graces-prequel-edit/topic/13998/
none said:
Yeah makes sense to be in that part of the forum. Merge or delete.
Merged.
msycamore said:
... I just discovered (at least on my disc) that the English 2.0 Surround track isn't surround encoded at all, it's a plain 2.0 stereo track, can you please check the 2.0 track on your '99 release Jonno, want to know if it's just my disc that's faulty.
Keep in mind that the Surround property of an AC3 stream is purely a flag to tell the decoder to switch to Dolby Pro-logic decoding mode. The audio may well contain matrixed surround information but be missing the flag, if you force Pro-logic decoding you should be able to hear if there are rear channels in the mix.
Jonno said:
Great additional info! Let's see if we can summarise then:
...
1995 THX laserdisc - 5.1 AC-3 and 2.0 PCM (based on 6-track 70mm master)
Although the AC3 is stated as being from the 70mm 6-track, I'm wondering if the PCM on this LD could be based on the 35mm Dolby Stereo mix? That would be interesting.
It came direct from Mark Mangini. (If you haven't seen "Raiding the Lost Ark" yet, you should watch it - fascinating stuff.)
Chewtobacca said:
Jonno said: And it's otherwise a strong sounding track - impressive bass on the Nostromo landing sequence, particularly in comparison to the 2.0 surround track (which presumably comes from the 35mm stereo mix).
I've never understood how a presumably pure stereo track can become a 2.0 surround track. Where does the matrixed surround sound come from if the source is two channel?
The surround channel (and the centre channel) are matrix-encoded into the left and right channels. You sometimes see these referred to as Left Total (Lt) and Right Total (Rt). A Dolby Pro-logic decoder extracts the additional channel information to retrieve the 4 channels L, R, C, S.
I also don't understand why the other mix on the BD is 4.1 and not 5.1. If it comes from a six-channel mix, why is it not 5.1?
Early 70mm 6-track mixes were actually 4.2 - 3 front, mono surround and 2 LFE channels. You can't encode 2 LFE channels into AC3 hence it becomes 4.1. However, the quote in Jonno's post above suggests the mix came from the 4 channel master used to make the Dolby Surround mix (which had no LFE channel - so I don't know where the .1 came from).
Later 70mm 6-track mixes used a single LFE channel and split surrounds, the same configuration used in Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes today. According to Jambe's filmumentary, Raiders of the Lost Ark used split surrounds, but this is not shown in the list on in70mm.com.
retartedted said:
Moth3r said:
I spent some time looking at this; the best "off the shelf" solution I could find is SRestore with a target framerate of 23.976, which restores some frames, but not all.
SRestore seems to break down during scenes that pan and zoom. When the camera is stationary though it has great results. I played around with some of the parameters all with the same result. Sample 2 has some very visible pan and zooms, but if you want another example with more let me know.
Exactly right. The characters are "animated on 2's" - each drawing is held for 2 frames - effectively 12 fps. If you bob the source you can usually find two clean fields from the same frame while the "camera" is static. However, pans and zooms are rendered on 1's (24 fps), some frames end up becoming mangled in the conversion, and there are no clean fields from which SRestore can recreate the original frame.
The post directly below (here) is also concerned with the forum failing to interpret "old style" thread links.
What I don't understand is that all the links given work fine for me.
retartedted said:
Does anybody have any ideas as to how best to proceed with deblending these frames? We played around with them a little in the previous Droids&Ewoks thread but it looked a little hopeless. The frame blending is just out of control.
I spent some time looking at this; the best "off the shelf" solution I could find is SRestore with a target framerate of 23.976, which restores some frames, but not all.
retartedted said:
Here is a sample of what the completed MKV set will probably look like
Looks very good, these Japanese tapes are definitely the way to go. I can see a little of the haloing that you mentioned in a previous thread, but it's not really noticeable.
My media player (MPC-HC) played this back at the wrong AR, not sure if that's the fault of my player ignoring the aspect ratio flag, or if you didn't set it in the MKV in the first place (I didn't have time to check). Since compatibility with AR flags generally can be hit-and-miss, I would recommend you resize to 640 x 480 before encoding. Since the source is VHS which has limited horizontal resolution anyway, you wouldn't lose any detail.
Maybe consider the use of AAC instead of AC3 for audio, and MP4 instead of MKV for the container (formats that the pirate "scene" is now moving to - look up the SD x264 TV Release Standards 2012).