Spaced Ranger

@ Harmy & msycamore

GL "tinkering" and "responsible"? That's a great big affirmative!

George Lucas is a third-world-like dictator with communist-like revisionism (and smaller ambitions, fortunately). He has that right, of course (but so have we ... to say "the emperor has no clothes" when he walks around naked). What he says at Lucasfilm, gets done at Lucasfilm -- if he doesn't do it himself, it gets done by others to his approval.

BTW, I don't know him personally, just from his public statements and the biography Skywalking: The Life And Films Of George Lucas by Dale Pollack, journalist & film writer for the L.A.Times.  ;)

@ msycamore

I hadn't checked the other extras. My interest at the time was in the original production material, this trailer specifically, not "Director's Cut #2" extras, so that was a far as I went. If you'd like me to look into something specific that you can't, let me know. (But I'm guessing your preservation project, too, is limited to the earlier "DC1" releases & sources.)

msycamore said:

... my internet has been down for a few weeks and I have been very busy with the boring "real life."

I just hate when that happens! :D

Did you ever post a statement of exactly what was going into the final build of your project? I only ask because of something I recently stumbled across that may suggest it's inclusion (if you originally weren't thinking so).

I've been considering George Lucas' incessant tinkering (which I thought was limited to Star Wars but now see it's across all his works) -- he just can't let go and move on. In quick compare of his "Director's Cut" releases of THX 1138, I noticed that the same 1971 trailer is different in the Blu-ray from the DVD (stop it, George)!

                              2004 DVD region 1                                                2010 Blu-ray region A/B/C

These 720x480 caps, from both releases (here reduced 50% w/ black-bars trimmed), show that not only did Lucas crop the 1971 trailer from "Cinemascope" (2.35:1) to "Widescreen" (16:9), but also added insult to injury by turning up the brightness and blowing out white detail! Not only that, he's changed the playback speed -- I can't play them in sync!

Why, George, why? Was it just to make your new Blu trailers look better?
:O

Thanks for the capture clarifications.

frank678 said:

... if theres a way to undo the red-infused colour mix of the widescreen versions, back to less uncontaminated colours like on the 82 laserdisc. ... (if red shift is the result of missing blue and green information- can this be added/painted back in using an earlier source to gauge the right levels?)

                 GOUT                                             '82 LD                                    70mm

I can't say any of these "graded" versions strikes me as being "right", but, if you wanted less "red" in GOUT, for example, adjust the red channel gamma downward (I used 0.8 to emphasize the effect):

If, instead, you had added more "green" & "blue" (gamma upward), you'd get the same color result but with a lightened picture.

If you like the '82 LD color in the GOUT, that is an easy adjustment, too -- a decrease in the red gamma and a greater decrease in the blue:

This way, you should be able to regrade the entire movie to your liking with a minimum of effort.

Excellent post! Thanks for all this info ... all in one place!

Some (many?) games today don't have an "in-game recording mode" -- that records the network stream and uses the game engine for playback, allowing for detached & adjustable Point-Of-View and frame-by-frame (any frame size, any frame rate) capturing. External (to the game) recording is the only alternative and these digital recorders are great solutions to that problem.

frank678 said:

... I've found making one frame with the contrast set far apart and one with the contrast in the mid range and layering as transparencies then I get a composite spread of the different information I could'nt get from one set of settings on one frame.

I, too, have tried using such "presets" (for lack of a better term) -- techniques for area-targeted adjustments. snicker mentioned the Colorama tool in After Effects for such adjustments. As I don't have that, my paint program must suffice with it's Layers settings:

They are fun and produce interesting effects. But, ultimately, it's all manipulation of the R/G/B either individually and/or locked together (luminance). I've found that Historgram settings does a man's job of correction or just plain alteration:

One really learns how picture colors work with these controls -- compress / expand; progressive increasing / decreasing [gamma]; min / max / low / high limits -- and, judiciously used across both locked & unlocked R/G/B, can produce almost everything you'd like to do.

Once you know what's going on there, then Curves adjusting does "the impossible":

As you can see, one can do anything to the curve (with enough control points) to do anything to a picture or to parts of a picture. Dangerous territory. :)

For an example, see my post over in the THX 1138 preservations (Italian Cut available, see 1st post) thread -- http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/THX-1138-preservations-Italian-Cut-available-see-1st-post/post/590208/#TopicPost590208
The curves are not pictured but the control-point numbers are there for an amazing result in color restoration.

frank678 said:

This is trying out the idea of taking a snapshot of a still in vlc, then changing the settings and taking a second snapshot, then merging the two together. The idea behind it is to increase the range/depth of a single image by adding additional information to it.

Unless you are merging frames from different sources (for a particular reason), you will get nothing more than if you adjust that single frame. The problem is ... adjusting it by eye will not produce anything definitive. You must have a reference to guide you. For example, here are some numbers for luminance / red / green / blue (graphed, of course) for this capture:

The capture looks good, the graphs look good (nothing crushed or blown-out) ... but it's wrong. (BTW, has this snapshot been pre-edited? If not, the gapping in the R/G/B graphs indicates a capture problem.) Compare it to the 2006 DVD (or any other version of your preference) and let's start with the luminance:

                              '82 LaserDisc                                                                               2006 DVD

The LD capture is significantly brighter. From the graphs, it looks like a gamma adjustment is needed:

Sure enough, here, after using a 0.6 gamma adjustment to pull the brightness down (note it's new graph), it looks amazingly good. Further work (color correction -- green looks a little strong) should be much easier now.

Suggestion -- it would be better if you could start your capture with luminance closer to your target image (if possible). That means a lot of sample caps (from all over the movie), graphing, settings-twiddling, and recapping to find the sweet-spot(s) for your capture settings.

Excellent, _,,,^..^,,,_ !

Thanks for this full & working capture of that classic site. I can click on all the links throughout the saved site and everything works like it was live on the Internet. XØ lives again!

I nominate you as the new & improved archive.org!  :)

I came across a couple more links of interesting information (if you haven't already discovered them):

Doom 9's forum: Recover image from shutterless 16mm projector capture
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1531961

"I have posted here before about the unique way that I capture film from a shutterless 24 fps 16mm projector."

"I remove the shutter from the projector; I then point an NTSC interlaced camcorder (it HAS to be NTSC, and it has to be able to capture interlaced video -- 60p would also probably work) at the projector and set the shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second. It turns out that doing this absolutely guarantees that the camera will capture two successive fields from each frame of film. The video camera and the projector are not synchronized, so as the capture proceeds, sometimes you get two good fields in a row, with the next field all blurred because the film is captured during the moment the projector is moving the film to the next frame (remember, the shutter has been removed)."

He includes samples of his raw-captured and post-processed efforts. Crisp. Clean. Impressive.

And I think he mentioned using the "reverse lens" trick for capturing from a projector. If not him, it still is a useful technique and described well here:

Reverse-Lens Macro Photography [tutorial]
http://stephenelliot.com/2007/05/15/reverse-lens-macro-photography-tutorial/

SEN 5241: "You know I have a way with the computers.  I can clear myself for any area."
(Oops, this isn't a THX 1138 thread. I'm mixing my metaphors.)

Privacy at eBay is a myth.
(There ... that's more in keeping with Fantasia.)

The eBay auction's Bid History shows the bidders (obfuscated by periodically changed anagrams). The links from the bidders shows their Bid History Details with a 30 Day Bid History. That's where you extrapolate their interest based on their submitted/pending bid-categories.

eBay's feedbacks are listed with user handles in the clear. Once the exchange has been made between seller and buyer, feedback left/received will reveal the user's actual handle. From there, you may be able to send an eBay message to that handle through eBay's Advanced Search of a buyer/seller. (I've never had occasion to go that far, but that's the procedure.)

ww12345 said:

Ooh, a Mylar print. That would be a great thing to preserve, especially the audio...

There was a little bidding action on that auction. The guy who won it showed a distinct interest in other movie & film auctions, where he had pending bids.

Wikipedia's entry Fantasia (film) indicates this 1977 print maybe one of the more complete releases of the full Taylor narration & Stokowski orchestration. You presently have most of the narration? Perhaps contacting that auction winner, for an audio recording from his new film, might help in your project ...

CatBus said:

I thought crappy old 4:3 letterboxed DVDs would be hard-telecined, but maybe they just have the pulldown flag just like modern DVDs.

Unfortunately for the buying public, hard-letterboxed DVDs aren't an age issue, but are a shoveling-slop-to-the-hogs one.

It's easy to tell native from telecined. Just check any fair amount of movement, like in this comparison of the DVD (24fps) to a broadcast (30fps), again from 2010:

The overlapped-frame fields of 30fps is always distinctive.

CatBus said:

I'd like to convert a 4:3 letterboxed DVD to 16:9 anamorphic (all NTSC). 

Commercial and professional NTSC DVD releases from film (movies & TV) are 24fps 720x480 on disc, with flags to instruct the player how to show it:

* The pull-down flag is for 24fps to telecine it to 30fps for television.
* The anamorphic flag is for anamorphic DVDs (which you are trying to make here) to stretch the width for a 16:9 "widecreen" TV, or to squash the height for a 4:3 "standard" TV.

These flags can be set in your DVD authoring software. Nothing more needs be done -- the player handles it from there.

You are working on the full frame. There is no need to process fields of the DVD-extracted source for this conversion. Aside from any noise reduction or edge enhancement or color/levels correction, your basic script need only be your original script with the field-functions removed:

import("TempGaussMC_beta1.avs")

directshowsource("input.m2v")

# crop top and bottom from the 4:3 frame
crop(0,72,0,-72)

# stretch to anamorphic ntsc frame
spline36resize(720,480)

You might want to experiment where in your script to clean/adjust the picture as cropping and resizing also affect the end result.

And keep ConvertTo calls to a minimum. Multiple converting between color-spaces distorts the color. Be mindful, too, of how ConvertTo's "matrix coefficients" affect the image (see Avisynth docs for the function description).

BTW, your cropping should be 60 lines for top and bottom instead of 72:

4:3 is 1.33 ratio for TV (but the display is different between PC and TV).
4:3 is 1.5 ratio for PC (720x480).
16:9 is 1.78 ratio for TV.
16:9 is 2.0 ratio for PC (720x360)
The vertical difference is 480-360=120, which is divided in half for top and bottom -- crop(0,60,0,-60).

So, on this letterboxed frame from the 2010 DVD,

the cropping removes 60 lines on top and 60 lines on bottom

and resizing the resulting 720x360 back to full 720x480

creates an anamorphic image ready for the DVD anamorphic flag for proper display on both standard and widescreen TVs.

AntcuFaalb said:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070808031012/http://www.x0project.com/articles.php?i=00012 ... archive.org didn't even archive the images! :-(

These must be the droids you are looking for (and so much for almost.archive.org) :

click for complete image

This is an intriguing technique. One must know how the whole optical-to-digital process works (not just the computer's end of it) to create something this clever. But it's only a "pixel-point recovery" application for rebuilding a shot. I don't see it as a general Avisynth-stream solution.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

As you can see, the first frame is normal. After few frames, the image is pinkish, like someone put a pink filter on it... during the whole movie, the picture shifts from normal scenes to pinkish scenes and back for many times...

This might be a very tedious fix if each shot is fluctuating across it's frames. The only semi-automated fix for such a case that I can think of is over at g-force's New colormatching script thread:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/New-colormatching-script/topic/15002/
It would mean finding a "reference frame" in each shot and applying it across the rest of the frames of that shot, for all the shots that need it.

For your above example, it is clear to see that the Blue channel is overly bright -- which results in the shadows going blue and the highlights moving towards pink (R+B where G is weakest). So, reducing the Blue channel brightness (dropping the max=255 to max=200) gets it really close to your reference shot. See the reference-frame Blue graph and the pink-frame Blue graph -- the pink frame's adjusted Blue (overlayed in red) now matches (roughly) the reference Blue:

ww12345 said:

I was able to get a copy of the 1982 Kostal recording of Fantasia, and would like to mix it back into the video from the new Blu-ray. ... If anyone has Deems Taylor recordings, that would be great as well.

This showed up on eBay and I was expecting someone to mention it ... so I guess that'd be me:

FANTASIA - DISNEY - 16MM - EXCELLENT+ FUJI ORIGINAL!! MYLAR!!
http://www.ebay.com/itm/FANTASIA-DISNEY-16MM-EXCELLENT-FUJI-ORIGINAL-MYLAR-/150969697438
* I started collecting film in 1973. Out of the 4 Fantasia prints I have owned, this one is by far the best.
* This 1977 FUJI print clocks in at around 116 min. In all these years, I have never seen a 125 min. roadshow print in 16mm (extra commentary by Deems Taylor). I have been told that the roadshow version was never printed in 16mm.
* Original Deems Taylor narration. This print includes Deems Taylor's own voice instead of overdubbing by another actor as later versions do.

It's $500 starting bid may not be worth it for this preservation, but there it is.

INv8r_ZIM said:

I don't think so.  It would of course give you a definitive idea of what the colours on set really were, but SW was shot with a variety of filters, lit specifcally, and, as has been pointed out, intentionally graded after the thing was assembled.

Maybe not. Back in 1976, movies put as much as they could in front of the camera lens. Their post-production "grading" was nothing like today's (where everyone does it and much of it is done wrong). And Lucas wasn't 20 years older with allot of time on his hands to toy with it:

"... George recalls. 'I really just wanted to get done with the damn movie and I didn't  care what it turned out to be.' " -p.176, Skywalking: The Life And Films Of George Lucas, by Dale Pollock

.

CatBus said:

Yeah I know this is a week late, but wow that's really nice.  AFAICT it's mostly desaturating the orange and leaving the rest about the same.  I wonder what this process would do to 3PO though.

It was a 50-50 blend for this frame. Others may look better more one way or the other. And still others may look fine untouched. This was just a way to quickly exemplify for Harmy my observations ("too orange" is too obtuse).

michaelkirschner said:

Did anybody notice that the Blu-ray insert for Star Wars says "two unforgettable droids RD-D2 and C-3PO"? Blu-ray insert

Nice catch! Apparently, no one else did. Harmy likes feedback to catch such mistakes.

Sorry for being off topic ...

No need ... you're completely on topic. Some don't "noodle it" (like checking the first post of this thread to verify):

Printable covers and disc art can be found here:
http://uloz.to/xSSTDNW/deed-v1-0-covers-rar
Last edited on November 14, 2012 at 10:07 PM by Harmy

;)

Jetrell Fo said:

The above image is from ... an 80's print of Empire. Picture was taken off screen from a cellphone.

Cool! Would you (or anyone) post a few of the Star Wars caps (if available), with info on it's condition (sticky, warp/curl, etc.)?

.

Brooks said:

... a generation of films will disappear because of crappy film. Did the film industry not know any better during that time?

It's just to sell "soap" to them. Something to get your attention to sell their soap (and so the nickname of day-time TV dramas). When ratings (or ticket sales) drop off, make another drama (or movie) ... to sell the soap.
"Art. Heh! Preservation. Heh! A Hollywood studio craves not these things." -[with apologies to Yoda]

.

ww12345 said:

... and let me tell you that VS symptoms are not pretty. Film pretty much starts curling immediately, leading to focus problems and more.

Short work for a laser scanner ... anybody got one?

An interview with a transfer technician, working on the Star Trek TV series remaster, mentioned that their scan was so precise, it could focus exclusively on the emulsion layer, thereby bypassing all the wear and damage on the film base:

YouTube - TOS Remastered: Star Trek The 40 Year Mission
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv3D1oylw6E&t=30s

and more how the pros work; you can, too (if you've got the money):

YouTube - Spacelift Transporting Trek into The 21st Century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdUJOL1Ummw&t=53s

@monks19

Thanks for the extra link. Too bad not much info there either (as regards methodology, which is what I seek).

.

@ww12345

It looks like you are well on your way with your 16mm transfer machine. I just wanted to point out (hopefully not too late) some informative discussions I've come across. johnmeyer over at Doom 9 has gone through the process and made insightful comments of his experience. Here are some particularly salient ones (search for more of his posts there):

Doom 9's Forum: High Speed Film to Video Transfer Machine -- Need IVTC Help
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=106837

"I have talked to Roger Evans (Moviestuff) .... The problem is that Roger is a "hardware" guy and has never felt comfortable with the software side of things. ... This is too bad, because I can capture frame-accurate, like his Workprinter, but at full 24 fps, and I can capture to a cheap HDV camera, whereas if he is going to do HD, he will have to use a camera that can export individual frames in HD, or will have to use a still camera (which of course would produce exceptional results, but would once again be very slow)."

"As to the advantages of using a still camera, I am agree that they are better in ALMOST every way. Resolution is only one of their advantages: Better lenses, as you point out, but also MUCH better dynamic range, better sensitivity, etc. However, the big downside -- and this is why Roger started out using camcorders and still does -- is that they take discrete pictures (rather than continuous) and therefore you have to slow the projector (or whatever you use to advance the film)."

Doom 9's Forum: Hdr Agc 1.8.7 - 10.09.2006
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=868799#post868799

"Thanks first to the author and also to VideoFred. I'm using my 16mm 24fps film-to-video transfer device (which I've described in other threads) to transfer another 31 cans of film. HDRAGC is doing a MUCH better job of adjusting the gamma than what I was able to do in Vegas, a program that actually gives you pretty good control over levels, gamma, curves, and color. I'm still going to touch up levels in Vegas, and I'm going to do all the color timing (correction) there, but HDRAGC gives me a HUGE headstart."

AntcuFaalb said:

Can you post a sample? I'd love to see this.

<-- laserdisc (2006 DVD "Bonus Disc")

<-- v2.0

Harmy said:

... that's actually where the v2.0 timing comes from. ... And then I wasn't able to regrade it without causing trouble in other areas, ...

I thought it was too coincidental that 2 settings (groups) brought it so close. :)

Adobe's website for After Effects didn't advertise functions to directly manipulate the RGB graphs. Does AE hide such details from the user (as does the above paint program's "saturation" and "temperature" controls)? Also, can masking be based on color(s) [level / hue / saturation / R / G / B / C / M / Y] to, for example, affect everything except the light sabers?

Would Star Wars "clapper" clips help as definitive color references and do we have them like the Star Trek community has (the black & white board would help, but one with a color strip would be better)?

True enough, with the exception that "Possible reference?" suggests making it a Rosetta stone or disregarding all the other sources. We're all here searching and surmising because we haven't worked on Star Wars in the 1970's, either.

BTW, did you know (perhaps by your workflow?) if you applied a 30% saturation increase and a 30% strength 9300K temperature (with "remove color cast") to the laserdisc capture of that frame (from the 2006 DVD), it looks amazingly like your v2.0?

AntcuFaalb said:

Damn. It's different in almost every single shot.

Edit: Possible reference? http://starwarsaficionado.blogspot.com/2012/07/star-wars-at-35-preparing-death-star.html

Nice find! All these behind-the-scenes shots and videos are important references because of Lucas's manic revisionism and Lucasfilm's professional shortcomings on the "released" movies. It is a printed picture however (a zoom-in will reveal it), and while the Death Star walls show blue, they are slightly less so after color correction.

Unfortunately, Harmy's picture strip does show inconsistency from shot to shot. That's a lot of work to rematch them all -- thank you, George. :) Perhaps the new AE software will automate it (better?).

Harmy said:

I couldn't get rid of the green tint before without screwing up the sabres and skintones.

A test color correction on a frame from a revised v2.1 snapshot ...

... based on known grey areas (low, medium, high) in the picture ...

... as those points were greyed (R=G=B, using the highest value for this overly dark shot), produces new RGB curves and the corrected shot:

Although this looks close to v2.0, the "green tint" is reduced mostly in the lighter areas (ex: light saber, illumination panels) where it catches the eye.

(Note: RGB grey should never be exactly R=G=B, as true grey probably doesn't exist in a movie image ... but it's good enough for this proof-of-concept.)

Bingowings said:

... MKV versions of these projects. ... wouldn't play on his PC or his media player.

The MPC-HC (an open-source media player) http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/ with the Matroska Media Container (an open-source MKV container) http://www.matroska.org/ will get these files playing nicely on the PC. (Depending on the version of Windows, an earlier version of the player might be used for compatibility; see its changelog for all released versions.)

monks19 said:

Because the method I posted earlyer showed how to do an optical capture of it and re-convert it.

Is that I good link (to vimeo.com)? I looked and saw only an entrance page for a particular group (the 7 listed videos didn't include your mentioned optical capture and re-convert to audio of a film's audio track -- something which I've always thought to be intriguing and more accurate).

Harmy said:

No matter what I try, no matter what codec I use, I keep getting these rendering errors when rendering AVI.

I hate the ghost in the machine. Hope you can excise yours without too much trouble.

This may be the oft-cited monitor calibration issue, but v.2.1 seems too strong orange-hued. I hadn't watched much through v.2.0 development, but it here seems weaker with some hue-steps off in the other direction. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears' porridge, overlapping the two seems just about right: