Video Collector

Regarding my ESB bootleg.

I have here, sitting on my computer, the unprocessed video files for that. Would anyone be interested in getting those files and making a better attempt at correcting the aspect ratio, IVTCing, colour correcting, noise reduction, image stabilization, encoding etc?

There's nothing particularily wrong with my DVD release, it's just that someone more skilled could probably wring more out of the transfer.

Are you guys as excited as I am about the new Puggo Strikes Back project?

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

 I cheat on the scope, adjusting the aspect ratio in post and then setting the anamorphic flag to fake scope projection (same as I did for the PG).  I also will use the pulldown flag rather than doing pulldown in post. The final product will be SD, DVD-5. 

Puggo! A big thank you to Jaxxon and yourself for doing this. (I'll bet Jaxxon has a Jedi print also, right? I wouldn't be surprised.)

The way you handle the aspect ratio is not "cheating" by any means. I believe the results will be much better if you adjust the aspect ratio in software, rather than introducing another optical step into the transfer process. Better to let your camera capture the frame unsqueezed, which will leave you with more resolution to work with later.

My assumption is that this print is also cropped at the bottom? Standard procedure for 8mm and 16mm scope, that. (Except for the Swedish print that had to crop off the top to preserve the subs at the bottom, of course.)

I fully understand not going to HD for this, but would you please consider making a DVD9 version available? I'm sure many forum members would gladly forward some blanks.

retartedted said:

Just the same SciFi channel rips.  I never got ahold of the ontherun DVD's for The Ewoks.  The watermarks just disgusted me too much.

I take it the Sci-Fi Ewoks are edited as well?

Hmm.. We really should get some good sources for those two Ewoks as well. Watermarks be damned :-)

How about combining the Sci-Fi version of Coby and the Starhunters with the one from Ontherunvideo?

The watermark on the Sci-Fi channel version isn't half as annoying, and plug in the missing scenes from the Ontherun. Colour-correct to match. When Pittrek runs his logo-be-gone filter on it, this should leave a pretty clean episode, no?

The Mexican tape remains elusive, so this may be as good as we can make it. Still a helluva lot better than the torrents.

Ted, do you have good sources for the missing Ewoks as well?

LexX said:

Who's making the color correction on these? Fritz? pittrek? I can PM links for reference regarding it.

Well, it certainly isn't me :-)

Pittrek has first dibs, but I believe Ringwraith will make a major contribution to the process.

pittrek said:

Dammit, they cut out 7 of 22 minutes ? I know that TV stations use to cut the shown material to be able to show you more of the "more important" stuff (= commercials), but this is ridiculous.

 

Ha ha, no, in this instance they cut 7 minutes out of 48! The Great Heep is the "hour long" special episode.

LeeThorogood said:

If anyone is interested in making DVD covers for this project that would be greatly appreciated I would request however that you base them on the following VHS covers as these are the ones I grew up with. :)

Star Wars:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vanhuk1994.htm

The Empire Strikes Back:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vesbuk1994.htm

Return Of The Jedi:
http://www.swonvideo.com/vhs/vrotjuk1994.htm

Many Thanks :)

Thanks for linking to my site. But thanks to me using bl**dy frames, people can't click themselves back to a main page :-)

I have High-rez scans (300dpi) of those covers and would gladly email them to anyone who wants to use them for the DVD covers. PM or e-mail me from my site.

retartedted said:

 

Because as I am sure you guys have noticed, the Sci-Fi channel versions are edited.  There is about a good 2-5 minutes missing from each episode.  Not always a bad thing as they sometimes just edited out the groan worthy "comedy" bits.

 

Indeed, The Great Heep is a whopping 7 minutes shorter in the Sci-Fi channel version.

Would the Mexican tapes be dubbed? We could use the torrented version for sound, though. Do you know what the tape looked like? If I know what to look for I'll scour the net and buy it! Money is no object.

skyjedi2005 said:

I believe that when this was done Video was incapable of 24fps.

Is not video closer to 29 or 30 frames per second ?

I mean on Beta or VHS of the time period.  Of course with Blu ray you can have 24fps.

Yes, 24fps video was, I believe, first used experimentally by ILM in the late 70's for preview of their stop-motion Tauntaun animation.

I never meant that the video device capturing the telecine was 24fps, that would still be 25 fps (PAL). I'm not sure how telecines of the day operated, but they only captured the original 24fps somehow, and stored it at 25fps, resulting in the sped-up playback. Maybe the film was run at 25 fps to accomodate PAL storage? I don't know. There are no extra frames interpolated for PAL, I know that.

My argument still stands, if this was camcorded there would be no PAL speedup on the bootleg. But we're all in agreement that this was telecined, so what am I arguing for? I'll stop now :-)

ringwraith1973 said:

I stand corrected....

Ha ha. Welcome to the OT forums! Here, the sum of all human knowledge is at your fingertips. Rest assured, if you are wrong, someone will set you straight. They always do with me. :-)

ringwraith1973 said:

Pittrek,

I am not using deinterlacing I am doing an inverse telecine which can be achieved with Avinsynth.  I played with deinterlacing a couple times and it left a "step effect" on curves, it irritated me to no end so I have been researching how to get rid of that effect.  These cartoons were originally shot in 23.97 fps (frames per second) .. NTSC adds dummy frames for American tv at 29.97 fps and PAL adds dummy frames to 25 fps... if you don't at least deinterlace them (which i don't recommend now) though you will see a "comb" effect on monitors if you ever watch them on a computer screen...tvs compensate and re-interlace them.  Doing an inverse telecine restores the frames back to the way the animators did them at 23.97 fps...yes I have learned alot over the last month just because of me wanting to get it right.

Oh, okay. You said in your original post you were making them progressive, that's what's called de-interlacing. Inverse telecineing is not the same thing, but no matter. Good of you to make your process clear.

The fact of the matter, these were animated on two's, so they actually only animated 12 fps, doubling that to 24 by shooting every frame twice onto film. IVTC'ing to 24 frames from an NTSC master does make sense.

However, being a PAL native, I must take umbrage with the claim that PAL ads a 25th "dummy frame". It most certainly does not! It just plays the original 24 frames at increased speed (25 fps), resulting in the world-famous "PAL speedup". Anyone mention dummy frames and PAL in the same sentence again will face my wrath! :-)

So, If you're going to be IVTC'ing my PAL captures, that's a different process to the NTSC procedure.

If you've researched this thoroughly, I am sure you're aware of the dangers when noise-reducing animation. Outlines are very easily mistaken for dirt and rubbed out with the rest of the garbage. Even the pros eff that up. (Warner Bros. anyone? http://www.lyris-lite.net/dvnr_lt_castles.html )

Is that also what happened to the laser bolt in your first image? A before/after will tell.

Here's a before/after Ringwraith sent me:

Sci-Fi airing:

Ringwraith's frame:

My PAL DVD frame (with videotape glitch :-):

Actually, my Droids tape had some rolling damage in this section, maybe a good idea to replace portions with another source?

pittrek said:OK a few comments to the screenshots.

The Ringwraith pics look too bright, but the "VideoCollector" pics are too dark :-) Finding the perfect balance will be a tough task.

Anyway the PAL VHS captures seem to be slightly "squeezed", I wonder how will they look when you crop the black bars and stretch it to full PAL resolution (720x576 instead of 704x576)

Still the Ringwraith captures will probably nead some logo filtering, or what is that little "UFO" in the bottom right corner of the second picture ?

 

Fritz, did you chose the correct frames for the comparison ? I'm asking because if you check the first set, the "beam" on the first picture ends much earlier than on the second picture.  I wonder if you actually used a different frame or if the PAL and NTSC sources are "positioned" differently ?

I believe the frames are spot-on. I couldn't find any other that matched better. I think maybe Ringwraith's noise reduction has taken a bite out of the laserblast?

The UFO is the old "planet" logo from the Sci-Fi channel, where these episodes were taped from.

Pittrek, my good man, I leave any post-processing of my captures to you. You may crop them and resize them as you will. :-). I too think they may look more correct when expanded to full PAL resolution. See, that's why I just want to be an external content provider on this project. Stuff like that, fiddling around with it, will take you forever. Ha ha.

Let's just give Ringwraith a sample of our captures to work his magic on, eh? He'll go to work and report his results back here, agreed?

Ring, reagerdless of going forward with your clean-up or not, would you be willing to send me the files for the episodes we're missing?

"Coby and the Starhunters" from Droids

"The three lessons" from Ewoks season 1

"Prow Beaten/Baga's rival" from Ewoks season 2.

As well as the opening credits from Droids and any recaps you may have from both series?

ringwraith1973 said:

  We can see about putting them in 1080p but I don't know how to do that or how long that would take.  I didn't realize you guys had a deadline in which you wanted this done but we can certainly see what the time frame would take.  Just let me know what I can do to add to this.

Let me be clear, I think upscaling these to 1080p would be a bad idea, very bad idea. The only reason I asked you about it is you mentioned storing on Blu-Ray. I can see no advantage to upscaling anything to 1080p (or i), ever.

Regarding the timeframe. Projects like these never have a deadline, but everyone would like to have them available yesterday, know what I mean? If your process ads 6 months to a year (those projects that peetered out ususally suffer this), then we may just settle for "good enough".

Like I said, when people aim too high (adywan excluded) they usually find themselves losing interest in a project long before they're able to finish. So What I'm asking is, are you in for the long haul? I'm not prejudging you here, only you yourself know how much work this would entail and if you're capable of seeing it through. Be honest with yourself and with the forum members. The last thing we want is to be left hanging.

Fritz

bkev said:

I actually prefer yours. Certainly it could use a tiny bit of brightening, but his look too bright. Then again, this is coming from someone who's never watched the show - so take this with a grain of salt if you remember otherwise.

Bkev, what Ringwraith is proposing is to apply his clean-up process to MY captures. Those were just examples of what he's accomplished with the Sci'Fi channel airings.

I just noticed that 3PO looks slimmer on the PAL tapes (first comparison). Wonder which is correct? Actually, R2 looks more correct in the "fat" version.

Ringwraith, did you crop of any noisy edges and expand to fill the frame? (The black edges on my caps are part of the original image). Is this common on VHS? Or did they just slightly windowbox the transfers to combat overscan?

Here are the images Ringwraith sent me, along with corresponding captures from my tapes (Some are lossy JPGs, so let's disregard compression related issues for now):

Ringwraith:

PAL VHS:

Ringwraith:

PAL VHS:

It appears to me that the VHS tapes could benefit from some mild brightening, maybe some slight noiserduction (but NOT too much).

Ringwraith.

Good of you to step forward, man.

It's wonderful that you have great sources for the episodes we're missing and that the recaps have surfaced. I take it your Sci-Fi channel tapings are NTSC? Do your Ewoks eps also come in good quality?

Are you saying you would like me to send you my raw captures for clean up? I am willing to do that, no problem, but...

It's just that Pittrek and I were so close to the finish line with this project. The captures are done, most of them very good, but they certainly can be improved upon.

I like what you're proposing, to clean-up in Avisynth (Somewhat sceptical about deinterlacing, it almost always leaves artifacts in motion. I remain cautiously optimistic, however). You mention storage on Blu-Ray, surely you're not uprezzing these to 1080p video as well?

But here's the thing, I have seen so many projects on this forum evaporate, because they aim too high. I am not saying what you're proposing is pie-in-the-sky, but there's over 15 hours of video to contend with here (Ewoks and Droids). Are you positive you can apply your process to all this within a reasonable time-frame? Your perfectionist mentality might just trip you up.

Pittrek will have a say in this as well, he would still be doing the authoring as this is HIS project first and foremost. I am just an external content provider. I know Pittrek was already going to assess the captures and decide wether to post-process them himself.

Listen, I'm not saying we're not going to be doing this with you, we just need to set realistic goals and a realistic timeframe. Is what we have now "good enough" or do we put everything on hold pending your involvement?

Your enthusiasm and hard work may just take this project up a notch :-)

Fritz.

Hi everyone. Let me just take a minute to go off-topic with something I wanted to share with you all.

I just received a PM from someone, taking the time to thank me for sharing my Empire and Jedi boots with everyone. This spurred me to put into words, just how special and wonderful I find this forum.

The minute I joined here, I was overwhelmed with the kindness of strangers. People shared willingly of their copies of many Star Wars projects, some even without asking. Members took the expense, the time to burn, pack and ship DVDs halfway around the world to a total stranger.

I've been lurking on this forum for a number of years, never realizing that the bootlegs would be of interest. Once I realized that, how could I not share with everyone? Why wouldn't I? For me, I feel it's only proper to share what you have if it is of any interest to anyone.

But it's a community effort, really. I had the tapes and the means to transfer them to DVD, but the distribution was left up to someone else. The people who proliferate these projects are the true heroes, the people who upload, the people who PIF, who share their serverspace with everyone who needs it. You know who you are. My hat's off to you.

On this forum, everyone is sharing their resources, time and expenses, and we give them gladly with no strings attached.

I'm just happy to be a part of it.

Fritz

zombie84 said:

You are right, but PAL speedup has nothing to do with whether it was camcorded or not.

I must, respectfully, disagree. A camcorded movie would have no PAL speedup, even if it was shot with a PAL camera.

Think about it, if a movie had been camcorded from a 24fps projection, the runtime of the recording would be the same wether it was captured on a PAL camcorder or an NTSC one.

Let me put it this way, it would take 2 hours to camcord a 2 hour movie, no matter if you were using a PAL or an NTSC camera. When played back, the recording would clock in at the same 2 hours regardless.

The Empire boot plays back at the faster framerate (4% faster than the theatrical runtime), which means, almost certainly,  that it was captured at 24fps and is played back at 25fps. Capturing 24fps for video can only be done on a telecine (or a scanner). Ergo: Not camcorded.

The Z version:

At the 30-minute mark the source changes from this:

to this, and the audio changes with it:

Here's the raw footage of the card as it appears on my betatape, followed by the one on the DVD I made of it. As you can see, there was a slight misalignment of the card too, in the original, I just cropped it off for the DVD.

Before:

After: (Windowboxed, centered, cropped off some noise, anamorphic)

It still doesn't explain how the alignment of the card and the actual film could be so different on the same reel. The Fox logo and the Lucasfilm intro are missing from my tape. Were they omitted at the telecine stage or later? I think we're missing some pieces of the puzzle.

none said:

ESB_TP Notes

On first listen thought ESB_TP sounded sped up, but then I start getting confused about the capture system. 

none said:

Why would the British Censor Board placard be centered correctly but then the opening of the film not?  Were these attached directly to the print, or played through a different projection. 

none said:

Here are some of some of the cuts: (please note others)

<span style="text-decoration: underline;">ESB_TP Cut Parts</span>
16:22 Leia "scruffy-looking nerf herder!"  Han "Who's scruffy-lookin'?"

Some of these seem like dropped frames in the capture process.  A few happened at sharp loud sections which can overload some capture systems.

none said:

1:56:30 During credit (Visual Effects Editorial Supervisor CONRAD BUFF) something interrupts the right side of the frame.

none said:

Also learned that the 'Z' version opens with the crowd cheering then shifts to a direct audio feed.

Xvid (torrent):

VCD (with Sci-Fi channel identifier):

PAL VHS (My capture):