Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda

By the way, the "hair" that's visible on the left side of the frame in some of the scenes is not from my film gate, it's actually embedded in the film!  In fact, it's present on most of reels 2 and 3 as well.  I spent about three hours trying to chase it down in my WorkPrinter, until I looked very closely at the film itself and discovered there was going to be no getting rid of it.  That, plus the over-cropping, gives you an idea of how much care went into producing these 16mm prints (or at least this one).

Octorox said:

looks nice but it still needs to be set to anamorphic. switch the aspect ratio to 16:9 in VLC and it looks right. By default the video doesn't stretch to 16:9

Doh!   I can't believe I made that mistake.  Oh well, you get the idea :)

Ok, dudes, I figured out how to do curved borders in Vegas.  It was easier than I thought it would be... I simply had Vegas generate a large rectangular white frame, then used the "deform" filter, which includes independent controls for curving top, bottom, left, and right.  Disabled "stretch to frame", and adjusted pan as needed. I then rendered that out as a mask, which I chroma-keyed in a second pass.  The whole thing only took a couple of hours (for a small sample clip).  Now that I know how to do it, future masks will be quick to generate.

I've posted a new clip, so you can all compare straight borders versus curved borders, scene-by-scene.  It's about 30 seconds long and includes about 8 different scenes.  There has been no pulldown yet, but I have resized it according to Mothr's suggested dimensions.  I have also done modest color correction, removed the yellow corner, and done a little bit of spot removal.  A link to the clip is found at the bottom of the Grande pictures page:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

Scroll down and right-click on "border comparison", and save the resulting .avi file.  Close comparison shows advantages of each... the curved border shows a tiny bit of more content, the straight border is - er - straighter.

Thoughts?

Jonno said:

I have a feeling that After Effects might offer the best toolkit for the manipulations required, particularly in terms of resampling quality

What resampling are you referring to?

Moth3r said:

Crop(0, 10, 0, -12)
Spline36Resize(720, 310)
AddBorders(0, 85, 0, 85)

Awesome, I'll give those settings a try.

Moth3r said:

Side cropping is a matter of taste - it is true that overscan will cover the edges on nearly all displays (even the official Region 1 GOUT has some garbage to the RHS if I recall). The only case where this is an issue is if using an upscaling DVD player, or HTPC, with a digital display set to 1:1 pixel mode (aka 'just scan', 'PC mode', etc.)

Hehe... indeed, "just scan" is what I was testing it with.

Seeing Jonno's sample feathered border, I agree that it probably isn't the way to go.  I'll try the other barrel filter, and assuming that doesn't work adequately, I'll next try both a slightly curved border and a hard straight border.  When I have samples of each, I'll post them here for perusal.  They probably won't be ready until next week (ski trip this weekend!).

ThrowgnCpr said:

If you do end up creating a mask externally, I don't think you would have too many problems with a jagged or stairstepped edge.  How would you render from Vegas?  You could save it as a lossless AVI, or frameserve directly to something like CCE for a good DVD render (I usually do not render to DVD straight from Vegas).  Either way, I think that the result would be fine.

I would probably use avisynth/virtualdub to do the resize, then - and this presupposes that I am using Vegas to do the curved border instead of avisynth - I would take the resized .avi file and open it in Vegas to add the curved additional border.  I'd render that as an avi, and use TMPGEnc to encode the final result for DVD.

Octorox said:

wow that's unduly complicated. There's no built in edge feather in Vegas?

There is, sort of.  Making feathered boarders is really easy in Vegas... just use the built-in mask filter, run it out to the edge, then repeat for the other three edges.  There's a feather slider right in the filter settings.  I think there's a border tool too, but I don't remember if it has a feather slider.  The mask approach is a bit slow to render, but it works great and is very easy.

A curved border, however, is going to take a bit of thought.  It may be possible with the mask filter, if it will let me generate oval masks that are BIG enough... I fear that the maximum size is going to be to small to do it that way.  So it may require building a mask externally.  As ThrowgnCpr said, that's actually not particularly hard either.  The hardest part may just be playing with it and verifying that it is good quality after encoding, that it doesn't get all jaggy.

OK!  Lots to report, and two more questions....

I made some rough test encodes and the results were great.  The anamorphic flag works perfectly, and I now understand the resizing procedure as described by Space Ranger and Mothr (thanks for your patience, and for all of the detailed information!!  I'm slow, but eventually I learn).  The downsizing for encoding to 16:9 works fabulously even with crude resizing in Vegas, and I haven't even tried Spline36 yet.  Although the film is full of noise, grain, and scratches, it is very watchable on my 58" screen, in anamorphic widescreen.  My first impressions are that it is considerably more enjoyable to watch on a large screen than the GOUT, despite the myriads of grain and blemishes.  I'm more excited than ever with how this is turning out.

I've started playing around with a variety of filters, and will continue to do so.  While I want to build it primarily as a preservation (and I will of course keep the original frame grabs), I think that most people will want it in order to watch it, and watchability is noticeably enhanced by VERY conservative use of color correction, brightness/contrast adjustment, spot removal, etc.  So I will continue to play around with filter chains for a while.  As with the 8mm edition, if anyone wants the original original frame grabs to make their own edition, I can make those available.

NOW for the questions!!! -------->>>>

I've uploaded a frame grab from this most recent (and dare I say "final"?) capture to the PuggoGrande site, available here:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

You'll notice immediately that this pic includes a small amount of the border.  I'm sure you'll also notice the tiny yellow region in the lower righthand corner which I will fix in post.  Here are my two questions, ostensibly for Mothr/Speed/Octo, but really for anyone:

(1) Anyone care to do the resizing calculation on this one?  Of course I can do it myself, but dang you guys are considerably faster than I am, and probably more accurate than I would be.

(2) Notice the very slight barrel distortion evident at the lower left and lower right. What are my options for dealing with this?  The way I see it, I have the following four options:

(a) use a barrel distortion correction filter. I tried the one by Emiliano Ferrari and it added too many artifacts, particularly evident in the crawl.  I haven't tried the one by vcmohan yet.  This in theory would be the best solution, but I won't tolerate the type of artifacts I was getting from Ferrari's filter, as cool as it first appeared to be.

or, (b) leave it and mask it by cropping.  This would be the cleanest, but a few rows of pixels in the bottom and top center would be lost (in both dimensions, actually).  I'm not fond of this solution, we're missing enough pixels already.

or, (c) leave it and don't crop at all.  Unfortunately this option is probably the worst of all because there is a lot of distracting flicker at the edges beyond the border, that you can't see in this single frame.  It would probably render the movie hard to watch.

or, (d) leave it and crop with a slightly curved border.  I find this idea intriguing, and wonder what folks would think about it.  I'm not entirely sure yet how I'd do it, but it seems like it should in theory be an easy solution.  I could also pursue some sort of hybrid approach, like a feathered border.

Which option above is preferable?  Are there others?

Your post prompted me to check out TF.net.

I will never forgive you.  Good god, I'm going to require therapy after visiting that nightmare of a place.  Are there really that many insane people in one place?

Ok, I think I've figured out how to set the anamorphic flag in TMPGEnc (I already knew how to set the pulldown flag).  I'm testing it out now.  So now I have a question...

Mothr has been touting the avisynth filter Spline36resize, and has provided some numbers for using it to convert to widescreen.  On the other hand, Spaced Ranger has touted using the anamorphic DVD flag.  Am I right in surmising that the best approach would be to: (1) use Spline36resize (or something similar) to adjust the size of the content portion of the frame to 4:3, if necessary, and then (2) use the anamorphic flag, -not- Spline36resize, to allow the DVD player to convert it to widescreen?  Or am I missing something?

I'm encoding a test as I write this.

Also, I've recaptured the film (yet again), and so I should have new screen captures posted by tomorrow - with slightly less cropping.  Your highlighting really shows how much cropping was done on this print.  This, plus the hair embedded in two of the reels, and the sloppy edits, tells me that they didn't put much care into it when they produced these 16mm prints.

Spaced Ranger said:

BTW, "telecine" is film's 24fps converted to video's 30fps using one of various frame or field duplicating techniques. MovieStuff projector output is single frame in film format (24fps). In this non-telecined state, it is perfectly suitable for DVD (with added pull-down flag for the DVD player).

Thanks for the clarification!  Yes I was planning to use the pulldown flag, as I had done with the 8mm Puggo Edition.

BTW #2, the "anamorphic" format is optically squeezed image for optical expansion during projection. It is perfectly suitable for DVD (with added anamorphic flag for the DVD player to letterbox for 4:3 TV, or widen for 16:9 TV).

This shows how little I know... I didn't even know there was an anamorphic flag for use in DVD encoding.  Sounds like I will want to use it too!

Examination of your frame captures shows a noticeable color fringing. This is due to the quality of your camcorder lens? Double-checking the MovieStuff website samples shows similar fringing, only not as pronounced. If you don't mind mentioning, what camcorder are you using? Are you capturing in hi-def (note that 16mm resolution is greater than our present, consumer hi-def standard)? Perhaps you should check with MovieStuff if something may be done to minimize fringing with your equipment. Failing a solution there, it would be useful if someone has a de-prism filter for AviSynth.

Yes I am aware of the color "fringing".  I think it is a product of the camcorder I am using, which is a Sony TRV-900.  I am not capturing hi-def.  I know that 16mm has higher definition than consumer video formats, however this film is so rough (there is heavy grain, tons of scratches, spots, dropouts, fading, and - get this - even hairs on the borders that were printed into the film!), that I don't really see the point in investing in an upgraded camera to achieve a pristine capture of a bunch of fur balls.  There comes a point of diminishing returns.

Is there a deprism filter for AviSynth?  Yes, that might be useful here.

Does your new expanded film-gate allow the 16mm stock to be captured edge to edge (including sprocket holes and optical soundtrack)? That might be helpful if there is an film-optical-reader filter for AviSynth (optical sound without the projector amp noise!

Yes, and I just finished re-capturing the film including the frame borders and a little bit of the sprocket holes.  My intent was to possibly use that for stabilization, but whether or not that is possible, it does ensure that I am always getting the entire frame. I haven't posted any screen grabs or clips from this latest capture, but I'll try to get those up in a couple of days.

Note that the "entire frame" here does not equate to the entire frame in the original 35/70mm film.  The 16mm film is a bit cropped.

A film-optical reader filter for AviSynth???  That sounds ridiculously difficult.  My hats off to anyone who accomplishes that.

Ok, I just re-captured reel #3, zoomed very slightly out so as to grab the film frame boundaries on the outer edges of the video frames.  Although the image is ever-so-slightly smaller, it will ensure that I am not missing even a single row of pixels.  I am happy with the capture, and so I will grab the remaining two reels over the next two evenings.

Since the aspect ratio of the film is slightly different than the aspect ratio of the video (the film is more narrow), there is some leftover usable space on the sides. So I am using that space to grab the rightmost portion of the sprocket holes. Perhaps someday I will figure out how to use those for further stabilization - although if you see my thread in the technical section, it turns out that may be harder than it seems. But I did it anyways because it didn't cost me anything, and who knows if someone will come up with a filter for doing that some day.

Anyone have a favorite filter they want me to try?

Ok, no answers here.  I'll answer it myself...  I just emailed Gunnar Thalin (author of DeShaker).  He said that he doesn't think that DeShaker could be used for this, as it can't directly detect the movement of black borders.  Detecting the movement of sprocket holes would only be possible if they were very well defined -- the ones from my SW film are typically rather faint and thus appear to flicker when moving from frame to frame.  DeShaker is designed to aggregate the movement of a larger mass of RGB content.

He was kind enough to look at a small section of the test grab I did last night, and on that formed the above conclusion.

I use DeShaker (VirtualDub plugin) frequently, and with great success.  Now I am trying to use it in a different way, and was wondering if there are any DeShaker experts here who can help me...

I have a film captured in which a small portion of the sprocket holes are also included in the captured frames.  I'd like to use DeShaker to sync onto the sprocket hole(s) to stabilize the film, without using the actual film content.  It SHOULD be easy... just set the window in pass one to ignore everything except the small region of a sprocket hole.  But I can't come up with any settings that actually work for a region that small.  It just ends up not detecting any movement at all.

Any settings worth trying?

Octorox said:

I would think that would not be correct because the video is no longer 2.35:1 because part of it was cropped off, making it an even wider aspect ratio.

I will tweak the values.  Plus, now I'm mulling over the possibility of re-capturing the film (yet again), including a sliver of the sprocket holes on the left, for stabilizing in post.  If I do that, it may end up closer to the correct aspect ratio.  But I'll need to eyeball it anyways.  On the plus side is possibly better stabilization and a couple of more rows of pixels.  On the minus side is a very slightly smaller image.  It shouldn't affect my sound syncs.  I'll try to do a test capture tonight.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

Moth3r said:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

Oh I forgot to ask - what post processing (if any) has been applied to this video?

None whatsoever.  I wanted folks to see what I'm starting with and offer suggestions.

Quick clarification... I did do a simple pulldown.

Moth3r said:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

Oh I forgot to ask - what post processing (if any) has been applied to this video?

None whatsoever.  I wanted folks to see what I'm starting with and offer suggestions.

Moth3r said:

From the screenshots posted above, it looks like it's only the bottom that has been cropped. It probably wouldn't be that obvious if it weren't for the subtitles, which is disappointing. Not knowing much about 16mm film - is this just a badly cropped print or do you often find 16mm transfers that are over-cropped?

Well, this is the first time I've worked with a feature film.  All of the other films I've worked with were the myriads of small, instructional, or special films.  So I can't say if this is normal.  But it's pretty clear that at least these 16mm prints of SW were done very sloppily.  Besides the cropping at the bottom, there are missing frames, audio glitches ("thank the maker" is "nk the maker" and had to be fixed).

Moth3r said:

That's because the DV codec only supports resolutions of 720x576 for PAL and 720x480 for NTSC - however, I assume your final resolution will be 720x480 anyway for DVD authoring.

If you are going the AviSynth processing route, just add the following to the end of the script:

Spline36Resize(720, 362)
AddBorders(0, 59, 0, 59)

This will give you a 2.35:1 image letterboxed for a 16:9 anamorphic NTSC DVD. Adjust to suit your source, but note that the final resolution must remain 720 by 480 (= (2 x 59) + 362).

Wow, thank you so much!  I will be taking primarily the AviSynth route.   I didn't know that DV only supported 720x480, but that explains everything.  This is honestly the first time I will have worked with something widescreen, so I hope you'll understand my periodically asking remedial questions.

Octorox said:

Sadly, I'm on a mac rather than a PC, so you cant use the exact same software. I used Final Cut Pro for everything. The aspect ratio tool allows you to squash the video until you're happy with it. I'm sure Vegas has something similar though.

It's times like this I'm jealous of you Mac guys... not that we can't do the same stuff, but it always seems a bit more cryptic.  BTW, that was very impressive how quickly you did all that stuff ... finding the same frame from another edition, redoing the clip, and the still image, and figuring out a good proportion, all in about a half a day!

Octorox said:

It's seems like a lot of the top and bottom of the movie on the 16mm film has been cropped off, making my 853x358 comment incorrect sorry :(. 853x358 is the dimensions of a scope movie stretched anamorphic and with the letterbox bars cut off

I'd just look at the DVDs and use that to decide how much to squash the picture.

 

Here's your whole vid corrected:

http://s71.photobucket.com/albums/i128/octolink_64/?action=view&current=grandecorrected.flv

Indeed, the frames are not complete... that was clear when I noticed that the bottom of Greedo's subtitles (on the 2-line subtitle) was chopped - not just on my capture, but on the film itself!  My captures are really close to the boundaries of the film.

I will take your advice and eyeball it with the DVDs.

Your version of my vid is nice.  What did you use to change the aspect ratio?  I've been wrestling with an older version of Vegas, and not completely happy with the results.  And I tried using "resize" in VirtualDub, but I keep getting an error message that it's incompatible with the compression (it works if I do it uncompressed - I was attempting it with the Panasonic codec).

Octorox said:

looks good but the aspect ratio isn't correct. It's stretched vertically. 853x358 would be about correct

I presume you mean that an original of 720x480 should be changed to 853x358?  How is that calculated?  Thanks!!

I uploaded some frame grabs and a short sampler video:

http://www.hardbat.com/puggo/grandePics.html

The video is XVid compressed, but still in scope aspect ratio. The pictures are converted to 720x405 to bring them closer to the proper ratio.

Completed sound sync of reels 2 and 3.

One snippet of the Greedo scene is problematic... in the one portion where Greedo's subtitles comprise two lines, the 2nd line is chopped in half.  The Swedish print has the complete two lines, but they are partially obliterated by the Swedish subtitles!  The best I've been able to do so far is to grab a frame immediately prior to the appearance of the Swedish overwrite, and duplicate that lower portion of the frame to build the complete subtitle in the original. However, if you look closely, Greedo's clothing becomes partially separated in the last 1/2 second or so.  It's not a perfect solution.  Moving the frame manually also would look wierd because half of the subtitles would move and the other half not.  So I'm not sure what fix if any is possible.  Any ideas?

I also grabbed the Swedish portion corresponding to the sprocket-hole repair I had to do... it just was too jumpy.  That segment also had a Swedish subtitle, but I was able to remove it cleanly!

I also tried applying that impressive avisynth filter chain by videoFred (thanks for the link, Mothr!) to a segment of reel 1.  The results were disappointing - overemphasis of grain, especially.  But it is making me more aware of some things I can experiment with.

It's getting close to pulldown and some test burns.  But first I can't help but spend some time tinkering with avisynth to see what's possible.  There is a lot of obvious correcting to be done, and that will take some time.  In the meantime, I'll try and get some new screen caps and clips up, since I haven't released any since getting the new gate.

I just received all five movie viewer cartridges in the mail, and will start restoring the entire set.  Of course, I'm still working on the Grande... just fixed up a wobbly section last night.

Glad someone noticed the "click" at the end :)

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