RU.08

TV's Frink said:

RU.08 said:

crampedmisfit1990 said:

Why not? Do they get all twisted-up about it or something? haha

 Because it's not scanned in 4k. Read the thread.

 That's not what we were talking about.  Read the rest of the forum.

Http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/4K-restoration-on-Star-Wars/post/770625/#TopicPost770625

Team Olie

 How does that change the fact that the Negative 1 project isn't scanned in 4k?

The best way to think of SR is that it widens the scanlines and distributes the picture information across them. Where you once had a scanline of 1 pixel thickness, after SR you have a 2 pixel thickness scanline. This itself reduces aliasing - but the aliasing can be reduced further by using an interpolation method designed to de-interlace or reduce aliasing - like EEDI (enhanced edge directed interpolation) and/or NNEDI and/or QTGMC (and/or possibly even SR again). EEDI widens your scanlines, except by keeping the exact information present in the original scanlines and interpolating the information for the new ones. Your 1-pixel scanline is now 4-pixels, and depending on what you've done the width is either doubled or quadrupled. You then resize down to your output resolution.

crampedmisfit1990 said:

Why not? Do they get all twisted-up about it or something? haha

 Because it's not scanned in 4k. Read the thread.

g-force said:

Okay, let me ask you this. How much of the improvement is from the temporal combination? How much is from all the other things that the script is doing? Scientists usually publish their methods, I have yet to see what the script is actually doing. I guess I just fundamentally have a problem with applying a bunch of denoising and spatial filters and claiming that it's all SR.

-G

Earlier in this very thread you agreed that SR is able to recover detail from the sub-pixel level on this source:

g-force said:

As AntcuFaalb correctly pointed out, and as you can see from every example in that paper, you need to have plenty of aliasing for this to work. Fortunately, the GOUT has plenty of that, at least in one dimension! For most sources that are scanned well however, the best you can hope for with such methods is just noise reduction.

-G

Then, in the previous comment, you said that SR contributes almost nothing:

g-force said:

I stand behind what was stated. Only a very small percentage of what you are considering improvements here are due to SR. What you have is a denoiser that leaves a sheet of slowly moving grain, oversharpening effects (sorry, de-blurring artifacts), and shimmering residual aliasing.

In answer to your question, SR is a plugin that (given the right source) can recover detail lost in a single frame. So whereas an avisynth script may look like this:

Source > Denoising > Anti-aliasing > Upscale > Sharpen > Downscale

SR slots in and does most of the anti-aliasing and up-scaling for you:

Source > Denoising > SR > [Further upscaling > Residual anti-aliasing > ] Sharpen > Downscale

And that's just plucked out of the air I'm not suggesting this is the exact order of filters used by DrDre, but just using it as a visual representation of where SR fits in the Avisynth script. It literally takes the place of the anti-aliasing filter. So compared to previous methods that were based on EEDI or NNEDI for the anti-aliasing it provides more detail and a more organic anti-aliasing.

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

I have the remaining cartridges, and my plan is to telecine all of them and make a DVD of all of them.

 You should ask if Lucasfilm will exchange your outdated cartridges for the Special Edition!

g-force said:

I stand behind what was stated. Only a very small percentage of what you are considering improvements here are due to SR. What you have is a denoiser that leaves a sheet of slowly moving grain, oversharpening effects (sorry, de-blurring artifacts), and shimmering residual aliasing. What's happening here does nothing to restore the rivets on R2, actually blurs Obi-Wan's hair into a solid mass where individual strands were once visable, turns most objects into oil paintings, and only fakes out one into thinking there is more detail through edge enhancement.

 What utter bullshit. "Only fakes out one into thinking there is more detail ..." Of course there isn't more detail, but rather the detail that is present across several frames is recovered. The net effect is that each frame contains more detail than it did previously.

SR has quite limited use, obviously, but this is one source that clearly benefits from it.

If you watch it in motion the window glare is a clear difference - the main difference in fact that you'll notice. And as for the "shadow" I think the z-vcd speaks for itself:

There are some minor differences in frame count between it and the LD (speaking generally), as I've previously indicated I'll be syncing to the LD.

Yeah, as you mentioned there are a couple of differences in such an ordinary shot. The windowpane placement is slightly different, there's glare/reflection in the windows, and that "shadow" looks to be a part of the window-frame, and is gone for whatever reason in the bluray.

Also, this is one shot where the difference in quality between the HDTV and the bluray are quite obvious, in most other shots this is not so much the case.

Well, if all he used was the SR plugin with no additional enhancements, then it would look like shit. Precisely because that's how the GOUT looks anyway. What's interesting is DrDre has done (essentially) the same thing that I did with SD footage I wanted to upscale, and YouToo and others as well. And that is to find the right method to enhance the detail in the source, to make it look as good as possible. He has found quite a good way to filter out the noise present to prevent it from being enhanced to the same degree as the other detail.

It certainly isn't SR on its own that brings the source to life - its his Avisynth script that implements SR in his own uniquely designed way.

Ditto to all the above comments! :)

Here's a quick compare of a shot that was changed slightly for the bluray. More endless tinkering from Lucas.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/133266

Yikes! That sucks. Hopefully you don't have to wait too long for surgery.

Harmy's trilogy and Adywan's Ep1 are reconstructions of an approximation to the theatrical cut. They still contain considerable differences (especially the OT films). Branching from Ep1 Theatrical to the DVD version is possible, as there are less differences than in the OT where virtually all opticals were re-done for the 1997 SE.

I can give you an Avisynth script that enhances Althor's LD rip without losing the unique characteristics of the source (contrast, colour, etc). It's watchable and only slightly below DVD quality.

And what about 5tb drives? Segate's numbers improved the higher the density...

The Blu-Ray format is good enough to be shown in a cinema projected onto a 20 foot (or larger) screen. Obviously the quality of the BD itself would determine whether you would show it in a cinema, but many cinemas do show BDs when DCPs are unavailable. DCP has better colorspace, better contrast, etc. But it's still limited - the video is limited to a maximum of 250 Mbit/s. On Bluray the video is limited to 40 Mbit/s. If you have a Dolby Digital TrueHD track than the maximum video bitrate is 29.36Mbit/s. However, it's important to note that Blu-ray can use H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, and VC-1 video encoding. DCP cannot use any video encoding - DCP files are made up of thousands of Jpeg2000 images, the images are in a container file but they're still just images. That is to say, they can't use information from other frames to represent information in the present frame the way that video encoding works.

I saw a movie last year in a cinema, and for one scene it was pixelated as if it had been up-scaled from a standard definition source. What was even stranger was the fact that the shot was non-continuous (there were a couple of shots breaking it up) but that entire specific shot, and only that shot was horribly pixelated. Obviously that can't be a result of Jpeg2000 compression, so I thought it must be in the source. Yet when I saw the Blu-Ray there was no pixelation in that scene at all. Somehow the DCP had a problem in it!

Audio is another matter. Blu-ray arguably has better quality audio than is presently possible on DCP. DCP only allows LPCM audio, the maximum sampling rate is 96 kHz. Yet the maximum Blu-ray sampling rate is 192 kHz.

Now with that said, Blu-ray has other limitations. You can have a 24fps, 25fps, 30fps, 48fps, 50fps or even 60fps DCP. Blu-ray only supports interlaced for frame-rates other than 24/23.976fps and full HD. So you have some films like Wallace & Gromit that are available in full HD, but play at the wrong speed. Thankfully all of these issues have been addressed with the Ultra-HD BD specs. It also has a maximum bitrate of 100 Mbit/s, so video quality should at least equal what is possible with current 2k DCPs.

Yes it will be a niche format compared with Digital. But high-end audio/video is always a niche format.

Parody or not, they still transferred the video from the toy.

I shared this over on AMPS, but it belongs here too. Some guys on Youtube took apart a children’s toy which contains a “rare format of unusually high quality” (Super 8mm) sequence of frames, and then transferred those frames by telecine. They also transferred audio from a record (because the 8mm film did not have a soundtrack) - and it sounds pretty good. See what you think:

https://youtu.be/oSXsvC4ZUHk

Not bad at all considering it came out of a toy!

Ah, fair enough.

What about Umart, IJK, MSY? MSY looks cheaper than Newegg (slightly)...

Potia, where do you normally get your HDDs from?

team_negative1 said:

Blu-ray has failed, because it has not replaced DVD's, or become the primary format for most releases. Digital releases have, and will overtake it.

Team Negative1

Bluray was never going to replace DVD. Had the HD-DVD format won the war then perhaps it may have, but Bluray couldn't for the simple fact that it requires publishers to use AACS encryption. I have a number of DVDs from small publishers that are not encrypted. This makes it less financially viable for a small publisher to release an obscure title on the format. This was a clear oversight, but one brought about because of the clear influence from the Hollywood stakeholders who only care about their interests and not the interests of the smaller publishers.

Digital releases are not the same quality as Bluray. It's like Laserdisc vs VHS - most consumers were happy with VHS, and those who really wanted the best quality invested in Laserdiscs. Same thing with Bluray vs Digital. Just because most consumers may prefer Digital doesn't mean that Bluray has "failed", it simply means it fits a different purpose. Whether it is fit for that purpose, however, is debatable because it will be faced with lower sales and the mandatory AACS encryption is a barrier to smaller releases.

Cheers Althor, hope you're enjoying the vacation!

Althor, you have a PM. Also... good work, carry on. :)

Ah. All good, I'll pursue this disc. Carry on!

And I agree completely about his film-making with it, it was a worthy sequel to the originals!

Yes special thanks go to poita for the posting.

And might I say thanks to the -1 team for all the preview they've shared thus far as well!! I don't always keep up with them, but we all appreciate it. Best of luck from me with the work ahead. :)