Orinoco_Womble

Many thanks mate. Will give that a go  :)

I finally managed to get the 2-disc version and ran the script on it which looks mightily improved.  Many thanks Satanika.  I'm impressed with how much more film like it now looks running at 23.976 fps progressive.

Any idea on the best way to encode this to run on a DVD player?  Scenarist tells me that 23.976fps is illegal for the DVD standard.  Do I need to start over and re-encode to 29.97fps again?

Thanks guys.

EDIT: I've been searching and searching the net and 50% of pages mention that 23.976fps is outside the DVD standard, the other 50% say that you can simply set the 3:2 pulldown flags for DVD playback.  Now I'm even more confustered :/

SilverWook said:

A lot of what we remember is also dependent on the acoustics of the theater we saw it in, and what the gear was set at too. Not every theater cranked it up to eleven like they do these days. But, this was also the era of Sensurround, which was legendary for causing plaster to fall from the cieling!

I saw Logan's Run in 1976 at a theatre that was probably converted into a twinplex. It was nearly drowned out by Midway's Sensurround soundtrack playing next door. Also the last time I ever got into a theater while the previous showing was just ending. Something Star Wars put an end to, as theaters didn't want people sitting in there watching the movie five times and only paying once!

My main memory of seeing Empire in 70mm was being amazed that noises on Dagobah were coming from behind me! But I recall feeling things like the first snowspeeder flyover as much as hearing them.

Front row in the balcony seemed to be the sweet spot too. Something I remembered three years later when seeing Jedi in a honest to goodness movie palace. The Speeder Bike scene was an IMAX like experience in that place. I've never been able to find out if that was 70mm though. I regret selling all my local newspaper SW clippings to a collector in the 90's now, as it would probably settle it.

I just did a bit of a search and it turns out the Cinerama Theatre in Auckland where I saw Star Wars was also Sensurround equipped.  Crikey, that explains a lot!  When I look back on it, I guess I'm pretty lucky to have seen SW in that theatre at the time.  I wish I could go back and experience it again, that was truly awesome.

Bring back 70mm Sensurround I say!

You the man Moth3r!  That's a heck of a lot more than I could find when I did my search.

I'll definitely investigate this further.  Many thanks again mate.

Thanks for the info Moth3r.

Basically the situation is this: A mate of mine has graciously offerd the loan of a (bloody heavy) JVC-pro S-VHS deck to allow me to do some tape transfers.  The deck itself is labelled Y/R-Y/B-Y on it's outputs, which according to wikipedia and almost every other site seems to be different from the home component system of Y/PB/Pr.  They mention different scaling factors involved or something like that.

My current cheap capture card doesn't have component inputs so I was thinking of upgrading to the sweetspot and thought it best to find out if it will work with the JVC before I pay the money.  I emailed pluggedinTV guys, but so far haven't had any response so far. Bummer :(

I've had a good look around the net already and can't find anything much on this, so I guess the only way to find out for sure is to buy the sweetspot and hope for the best.  That is unless someone could recommend a mid price capture card that they know will capture Y/B-Y/R-Y please?

The only other alternative is to just capture S-video from the JVC.  The only problem there is that JVC-pro decks use some weird proprietry S-video plug/lead which is very hard to find and quite expensive.  I would prefer to capture component if possible though because the s-video output will just be a recombination of the component signals.

Any ideas please guys?

Cheers.

Hi all.

Can anyone please give advice on the component video inputs on the PDI Deluxe/Sweetspot capture cards?  Basically, I want to capture component video in Y/B-Y/R-Y PAL/NTSC format, but the Sweetspot only lists being compatible with RGB or Y/PB/Pr component analogue video.  I've had a look on the net and have found conflicting information about these two component formats.  Some sites say they are exactly the same thing, but most sites agree that Y/B-Y/R-Y and Y/PB/Pr are quite different (this is what Wikipedia says).

Can anyone please confirm whether the Sweetspot will capture Y/B-Y/R-Y successfully and correctly?

Many thanks guys.

Hi Jetrell

From what I can tell on the net, the AG-1980 is really a very good deck and uses a very similar  chasis as the PAL FS100/FS200 machines which are also rated very highly.  Sweet.

Sorry to tell you that the TBC/DNR stuff on the VCR only works on tape playback and will not fix an incoming signal.  This means that looping the video from your LD player through the VCR will not have any effect WRT TBC/DNR etc.  It may even degrade the signal, but you'd have to try it to find out.  You may find that the best option is to capture the LD signal as clean as possible and do some post processing with Avisynth to lower noise etc.

As far as upgrades for the DVL-90 machine goes, I'm not aware of anything specifically mentioned for this player.  Alek talks about some interesting things to have a go at for improving the over all picture quality of LD players in his thread here (very interesting and definitely worth a read).

From what I can tell from the reviews of the DVD/LD combo players, they all compromise on both DVD and LD playback.  If you are unhappy with the quality of picture from the DVL-90 then it may be simpler and cheaper just to go for a better dedicated LD player.

As mother said, LD is a composite format and it may be that the best picture from the DVL-90 is from the yellow composite output.  You may want to just try it and see how it compares to the S-video output.  Interestingly, Moth3r did a comparison on this thread between S-video and composite output on his D925 awhile ago which you might find helpful.

Hope this helps.

Bingowings said:

Too Right!

You can't beat the sounds of VD.

No, but you could try just plain beating him.

Err, wasn't his music banned under the Geneva convention or something?

TV's Frink said:

Orinoco_Womble said:

Married Rod Stewart - nuff said.

I think you're just jealous.

As it turns out, not so much.

I prefer my aging rockers to actually rock.

Rachel Hunter

Too skinny

Too whiny

Too much air in her head

Most annoying NZ accent I've ever heard

Married Rod Stewart - nuff said.

TV's Frink said:

The real question, of course, is can anyone turn Japanese? 

I really think so.

LOL, nicely done Frink.  Great song too!

For those interested, I've been using Nifty translation for the last few years and it seems consistantly better at translating Japanese text than Babelfish.  Sometimes though it pays to use both or have a Japanese friend translate text for you as it is sometimes hard to tell exactly what is going on.

Sorry, it will only work with copied/pasted text, so no good for this situation unfortunately. Just thought it might be useful to someone.

Cheers.

Just had a reply this morning from both EZYDVD and MusicShop.com.au.  They have both confirmed that the sets they have are in NTSC format and will be updating their product descriptions shortly.  Still no other replies from the other online DVD shops that I emailed yet.  So, it really does look like there isn't a PAL release of this title.  POO!

Bingowings said:

Blake's 7

Common Sense (where did that one go?).

My Teddy.

Yes to those ones especially!

I miss intermissions at the movies, especially during movies as long as LOTR/AVATAR when you need more popcorn or need a pee.

Thanks for the positive reply Frink.  Much appreciated mate.

Yeah, I did see the musicshop.com.au listing.  It looked a pretty much generic 'this DVD is PAL unless stated otherwise' type of description, so I decided to see what EZYDVD came back with instead of emailing musicshop as well.  I've only just sent MusicShop an email just to be sure, so I'll let you know what they come back with.

Even googling the UPC listed in MusicShop seems to only come up with USA based DVD company listings.  hmmm, not looking good on finding a PAL version.

FYI, I've dealt with EZYDVD before and they seem to be pretty reliable and I was more confident that they would give a definite answer.  BTW, if you ever need to get an Aussie only release of a DVD/CD, then I can recommend EZYDVD.

Unfortunately though when EZYDVD replied they just gave me the URL for the very same page I'd enquired about without actually answering my guestion.  Interestingly, EZYDVD have the full bells and whistles amplifier set listed HERE and the regular set HERE both as region 4.  I'm pretty sure though that the amplifier set will be region 0 and most likely NTSC, so probably the other one is as well and they just got lazy on the product descriptions.  I did ask the people at ACDCrocks if they were any plans on releasing these sets in PAL but they just told me that they 'had it available in NTSC only'.  Not quite what I asked them, but at least they replied.

Hopefully my mate in Oz will find out once and for all if it is available over there.  I'll be sure to post here letting everyone know if I do eventually manage to find the PAL version.

I've also noticed that the google search comes up for torrent listing which may have PAL (can't check at work though).  I'm not insterested in downloading it and would prefer to just buy the genuine set if possible.

As for getting the set from Australia, it really doesn't make much difference than getting it from the UK because the postage to NZ is always pretty mighty.  Actually, in the past when I've bought stuff from the UK, for some reason the price and postage usually works out cheaper than I can get the same item from Sydney, even when you take exchange rates and other stuff into account.  Crazy.  NZ and Oz seem to have the highest product and postage costs of most English speaking countries for DVD/CDs for some reason.  Maybe it's because there is more competition in the UK/Europe or the size of our small local market or maybe it's because we're so far away from 'the real world'.  Who knows.

... and returns to Oz/UK are a pain in the butt.  More expensive return postage that wouldn't be covered by any retailer.  I'd like to be sure that I get the right thing and not have to return it.  Good suggestion though and I have thought about doing that.

Sorry, my posts seem to be getting pretty long these days.

BTW, did you go the the Black Ice concert?  What did you think?  Personally, I thought it was by far the best concert I've been to since Ballbreaker in '96.

For those about to rock, I salute you!

Hi guys,

Thanks for the suggestions.  To answer some of the questions; I live in New Zealand (land of the Hobbits etc), which is a PAL country.  Almost every other DVD release here is derived usually from the UK PAL masters as far as I can tell, but in this instance all of the backtracks sets are NTSC.  No one locally seems to have it available in PAL.  Most of the young sales people in video/CD stores seemingly didn’t even know there were different video formats.  All DVD players sold in NZ are stickered as region 4, but will play anything straight out of the box without any problems.  NZ has zero restrictions on parallel imports and our DVD players are open region and will play anything.  The ‘Family Jewels’ set is definitely available in PAL as are all of the other AC/DC releases that I own.

Frink: Yep, I have already had a really good look around the internet for ‘AC/DC backtracks PAL’ and still couldn’t be certain if this set was in fact available in PAL or not.  The first place I checked was Amazon UK and read the post about their set being NTSC.  I even emailed 2 UK DVD online companies and 1 Australian company just to make sure.  1 UK company still hasn’t replied even though I sent them the email just under a week ago.  The other 2 did reply with a stock standard reply referring me back to their product pages.  They seem to list this set with the stock standard ‘all DVDs are in PAL format unless specified’, but no more info was given and it didn’t fill me with confidence that what they were selling really is a PAL set.  The other sites I have looked at simply do not state what format it is in or list it as NTSC.  I’ve also emailed ACDCrocks.com directly and asked them specifically about this, but they seem to be based in the USA and will only ship NTSC discs and told me that all of the set that they have are NTSC.  I have a friend in Australia who is also going to have a look around for me in the local stores, but I haven’t heard back from him yet either.

So far I have not been able to get a definitive reply from my enquiries that says categorically that ‘YES, we have checked the box and definitely have this set in PAL, you should buy from us’.  Also given that the same set in NZ seems to be cheaper by a significant amount than the UK/US/Aust prices (not including postage costs of course), I am reluctant to take a risk of importing one from the UK just to find out that it’s only available in NTSC up there too.  In which case I may just as well buy it locally.

As you can see, I really have made some efforts to find out myself before posting to the forum.  The reason I didn’t state all of the above lengthy detail in my original query is that I guessed that the longer the post, the less likely anyone is to actually read through it.  I also thought that there would be at least a few Acca-Dacca fans on the forum who would already have bought the PAL set if available and would give a speedy and courteous reply.  Kinda like ‘yeah mate, got mine in PAL from here’ sort of thing.

Anyways, many apologies for getting snippy or out of line with Mr ‘F***ing HotRod’, but I really did think his post was pretty cheeky.  Simply replying to a thread because it has no posts yet isn’t very helpful.  Neither is stating that ‘YES here is what you asked for – nahhh, haha gota ya dude!’ isn’t much help either and doesn’t win friends.  I do however thank him most dearly for his undoubted wit and levity.

Having thought about it though, I guess Mr ‘F***ing HotRod’ did do me one favour in that he’s certainly helped spark some interest in what should have been a pretty low post thread (Yeah good on ya again HotRod).

Cheers guys.

Yeah, good on ya HotRod, thanks for your input mate.  Waste time much?

Can anybody please verify if the AC/DC Backtracks CD/DVD set is available in PAL format?

Can someone please tell me if the AC/DC Backtracks CD/DVD set is available in PAL format?  And if so, where/which country I can buy it in PAL format?

All I can find locally is NTSC unfortunately.

Kinda sounds like a simple field order problem.  Give it a go changing the field order from upper to lower maybe. 

Hope this helps.

vbangle said:

...short of that its just meaningless babble.

Funny enough, that's exactly what I was thinking of the majority of your posts in this thread.  I'd appreciate it if you could please keep your criticisms positive or at least on topic, or even better yet not at all.

-1 ... is not a number, he is a free man!

I thought you had all of the expensive stuff already (power supplies and exotic caps etc).  Just curious, what are you buying for the player that is so expensive?

I would love to have a go at doing something similar to my player as well, but this all sounds well outside of my budget unfortunately :o(

Hey, that is good news.  Good on ya Jay, I'm sure you made the right choice mate :o)

Just as a matter of interest, how does the picture compare to the D925 for NTSC discs?  What titles are you planning on doing transfers for?

Erk!  That's some nasty rainbowing!  Arr matey, I know you mentioned this before, but having not downloaded the movie, I had no idea how truly bad it was.  By thunder (arrr), nice work on the script as it seems to have made a HUGE improvement to the end video.  Could you please post the script that you used because I'd love to see how you did this?  You're right about the desaturation of the colours etc as well.  If you were to bump the saturation up a bit, do you think it would make the rainbowing more obvious in the finished video?

Ohh, and I live in the past and would love a DVD version of this if that's possible please.

Cheers,

Orinoco (shiver me timbers) Womble.

I'm in the middle of reading this book at the moment, which is a very good read by the way.  For those interested, the book can be legally downloaded at the Project Guttenberg site.

Is there any chance someone can please re-seed Joes DVD5 version?  I love the Charlton Heston version of this story and haven't seen it in many years and would dearly love to see it again.

Many thanks in advance.

Jono11 said:

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

In the interests of diversity, Han and Chewie could be a couple.

After Luke asks "how did my father die?", Obiwan could tell him the WHOLE story. It would start: "this is going to take a while, now, try not to laugh..."

"So there I was, balls-deep in a midget..."

 Hahahahah, I tink that line may have made me wet myself a bit!  Nice Jono, very nicely done!

... You could always do the trilogy as a Julie Andrews type musical.