WXM

(For anyone interested in this kind of thing, this post is just my blab and pics of clean up of…)

I’d never seen this movie and thanks to Hal 9000’s posting the above screengrabs I decided Octorox’s new version seemed like an “It’s now time” opportunity. 😃 Octorox was nice and gave me his version…but in an above post you see him say “As for the dirt and scratches, I think that would require some level of manual cleanup, which is beyond my time and abilities right now.”

When I started watching the film, I found what this was referring to, and it was a shame. The opening of the movie (but NOT anything after!) — the first almost two solid minutes of this print — was afflicted by damage ala a dancing line, and it was definitely an attention magnet, rather ruined the opening of the movie for me, which is a bummer because this film has a quite neat, atmospheric opening. 😦

But I can see why Octorox didn’t try to fix this damage. Indeed, it would have to repaired by hand, frame by frame (photoshop or similar) and it turns out we’re talking around 2400 frames!!! Who would subject themselves to that kind of insanity?

Long story short, I told Octorox I would dive in to take a shot at this crazy task, as both a challenge of sorts and to give full life back to this movie’s opening that was being robbed of its cinematic artistry/immersion. Could I actually do this whole thing without burning out? I gave myself a week and a half or thereabouts to see how much I could get done. Perhaps I’d end up only finishing the most crucial bit (the first minute), or maybe I’d pull off some miracle.

A big difficulty was that most of the the work required patching. I’d initially hoped I could just quite quickly airbrush away the dancing line in each frame, but that turned out not to be possible without looking terrible. So except in a very small percentage of the frames, I had to add many steps to each frame’s clean up to get something that had a chance of not being just a different kind of attention magnet.

Here we are a week and half later and I’m finished with everything (even if all is not at Hollywood-level perfection). I can’t believe it really. 2309 frames photoshopped in ten days. 😮 (Note that in addition to eradicating that #&^%ing dancing line I also cleaned up hundreds of obnoxious specks, as in things that are present for only a frame or two: dirt bits and white spots/blotches.)

Thanks for reading if you made it this far. I obviously wasn’t paid for this work and it was a lot of effort and I wanted to let the world know about it in this little spot, even if in the grand scheme of things in the world this is rather a nothing accomplishment.

Thanks to Octorox for making his fantastic home release version of this film, surely the best one ever available on home video to this point in time. 😃

Images to show…

One of the more grungy frames, before and after… (Grab/slide center bar left&right)

original vs. end result compare 1

The frame with the most specks in the project…

original vs. end result compare 2

Short vid if anyone wants to see a compare of the things in motion…

https://mega.nz/file/30AnzSTa#1fr8aPFR5fgSsTL4l3vpGPsknxk4zUkkER3YZuVvb4U

Wow, weird. I was just thinking about Earth - Final Conflict a couple of days ago out of the blue, hadn’t thought about it in years, and suddenly this mention of it…!

(Upscaled to 4K from DVD)

I can’t help but ask about that huge leap (to 4k). You surely have good reasons as all your results thus far have been great and well thought-out…but to 4k from a DVD, wow! Does the DVD source have some extra clarity (not present in your others) that benefits using up that extra time processing power?

I don’t have an answer for your main query, but

PsyKovic said:

I heard The bad things About The 4k Transfer.

It appears the 4k is a case of too much DNR and edge enhancement applied, to the point his skin here looks like it’s peeling all over the place and the subsurface scattering is gone (giving a “waxy look”) as you can see

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=614&y=302&d1=16927&d2=16944&s1=185107&s2=185498&l=0&i=16&go=1

Around and under her ear here doesn’t look right, does it?

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=147&y=295&d1=16927&d2=16928&s1=185109&s2=185147&l=0&i=13&go=1

Also in that last compare and this one you can see a brownish dinge to the 4k, which is another mark against if for some people…

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=531&y=179&d1=16927&d2=16944&s1=185169&s2=185505&l=0&i=8&go=1

You likely know about/tried such, but did you try a scan with un-delete software such as Recuva? If not, remember you need to do so immediately, before you start overwriting things.

I’m not positive this is the correct answer, but perhaps it’s David C. Fein? This link ahead says, “Producer David C. Fein has shared with StarTrek.com an exclusive peek behind-the-scenes with first look images and details directly from the sound mix”

ST:TMP is 1979 and SW is 1977, so maybe this is an area of specialty for him?

https://www.startrek.com/gallery/updated-go-behind-the-scenes-of-the-restoration-of-star-trek-the-motion-picture

I don’t really know (for sure) though, just guessing for you.

You have a good eye and handle on all of this, I agree with all you said. In regards to the color and similar you pointed out, it seems it’s been a trend for a while to crank up contrast and saturation (OR kill saturation with adding some horrible blanket tint). I remember Mike Verta talked about that waaay back when he was starting efforts on his Legacy Star Wars work, pointed out even back then this idea that studios just seemed to love cranking up contrast and sat, details in the shadows be damned.

As I think I’ve brought up here in the past, I myself am a LightWave (<- software used for the effects of the first seasons of B5) artist and man is it frustrating to know that the scene files and meshes and maps are sitting out there in the world but not able to be implemented for the likes of this! I know a bit of work would need to be done to those files (namely, oh, turn them into 16:9 shots!) but if a mass of people can pool together and spend a zillion hours finding the seed of a thumbnail image in Minecraft, ya’d think with the effects shots files of B5 there’d also be a push for the end result needed with the likes of this project. Oh well, enough of my whining about this.

Black Alert, your earlier observations are correct IMO. The live action wides looks great (of course), better than noisey and off-colored 4:3 live action shots (and that’s putting aside the shame of losing the information on the sides). using the 16:9 is a no-brainer IMO.

However, me personally, with the effects shots I just can’t hang with things being stretched, planets looking like pumpkins, etc. (Your up-resing looks fabulous as always though!😃)

I haven’t watched a version that jumps back and forth from 16:9 live action and 4:3 effects as you said you have, but I can easily imagine you being correct that it’s just jarring and annoying. I’m pretty sure I would get yanked out of immersion all the time with that happening. I mean, if anything the outer space stuff is supposed to really reach out to one’s peripheral vision, no?

Ugh, this is a mess (that is NOT your fault). As always, YOUR work on this up-resing is great! Sadly for B5 with current materials it seems there’s going to be some issue that you can’t overcome. Sorry the sources have made this so difficult. 😦 It would be so much easier if the base of 16:9 live action footage was much worse than the 4:3.

I guess I’ll end by saying you are doing great work on these projects. I’m envious! 😃 But with B5 here, I just don’t know. I’m tempted to just say do DS9 and Voyager first and we all pray that some people with the effects files suddenly find a way to start cranking those out in 16:9 for you to use, and hope that happens just as you finish the other two. This is only my thoughts though.

While there are shortcut ways that can give you something kind of passable, capturing feature films on VHS at high quality is often pretty work intensive. My personal method of VHS capping is to do a minimum of four captures and “average” or median them as simultaneous (natural) noise reduction and detail enhancement. My equipment is down right now, but this list of steps is to give an idea of what generally might be considered a VHS capping method people would use for the high standards we expect these days (as in something that might by up-res’d with Topaz and other AI software)…

1. Carefully set up then losslessly cap the full movie from the VHS tape four or more times (must all be done at 1x playback speed). The output file of one capture can easily be over 80GBs; for long movies over 100GBs. So for this whole thing you should have 1TB+ free to be safe…for getting just ONE movie onto your computer. 😮
2. Scan each of those capture files for dupe frames, which though automated, still means the software going through hundreds of thousands of frames. Also, anything else that keeps the cap files from being perfect frame-by-frame matches with each other needs to be corrected. (E.g., a glitch spot of six repeating frames will need a patch inserted from one of the other captures, and this kind of thing is not uncommon and is a time-consuming repair.)
3. Save out a new version of each capture file with those fixes made (dupe frames removed, patching, etc.)
4. Collapse those files all “on top of each other” (the averaging) into a new output file, which may process-chug along at like only 6fps (unless you have a great rig), resulting in yet another HUGE file, and one that could take many hours to “render.”
5. Enjoy your sense of relief at finally having this capture done!

(Note that I’ve still left PITA stuff out of that list.) So, imagine doing this for a VHS of Barry Lyndon with its running time of over three hours. Just step 1 you’re talking (well) over twelve hours and a lot of babysitting. Everything together you’re talking possibly days of work off and on (but still needing focused attention), and a huge amount of hard drive space, just for the end result of one solid (final) file made from a from a VHS tape.

Compare with ripping a DVD or BD where you more or less just have the computer and software do 99.99% of the work getting the image and sound to your hard drive, 1:1 bit perfect (unlike VHS where there are no bits), and this might happen with just one read/passthrough of the movie data at half the playback speed of the movie. So, getting Barry Lyndon to you computer from a DVD takes 85mins. of you just going out and running errands while the computer does all the work, while getting it from a VHS tape takes three days of you babysitting if not doing a lot of work keeping things solid and straight, double checking, patching, wrangling the different capture files (to keep them from being too different from each other since you need to merge them all together), etc.

Summing up, if you don’t get people responding here, don’t take it hard or personally. Capping in higher qualities requires a pretty good and specific set-up, a lot of time and devotion, a lot of hard drive space…

Black Alert said:

Be advised: …I did no manual corrections on the CGI/VFX (usually I replace the scenes that are a bit wonky with the NTSC scenes, but this was just to take a “general look”.

For me anyway, a slight irony is that the only fault I have is not with the VFX shots but with the shots of Sisko’s and O’Brien’s faces. There’s noticeable…delay? Lag? I don’t know what to call it. It’s like parts of their faces are lagging behind or frozen for a few frames, take a little while to catch up with the motion of the rest of their movements. It’s pretty subtle though, is from looking at things closely.

In general, as always with your work, very impressive results! The VFX shots look pretty darned good considering your starting points. I continue to be in general awe of your upscaling achievements.😃

KokoNigel, a lot of that was actually covered (with some back and forth) in this very thread, pages ~7-10.

Here’s a quite damning comparison. The blu-ray literally has a lot more detail than the 4k, lots of detail turned to mush 😦

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?d1=5240&d2=15006&s1=48928&s2=156526&x=665&y=172&i=16&a=2&go=1&l=1

And the more famous “detail death by DNR” compare that people were sharing

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/8656

Corellian Sailor said:

Since neither of us are English native speakers we had the English subtitles checked by a friend of mine who was born in the US - Thanks a lot for that

You may know of him, but member CatBus here is the Star Wars subtitles master (and surely just a full subtitles master in general with his juggling 50 languages worth of…!) I don’t want to speak for him, but since yours is rather a short piece, something tells me he wouldn’t mind watching it (since you have such an exclusive and interesting item here) and giving you suggestions polishing your subs to perfection.

Or maybe not, I don’t know 😃 Here’s the link to his incredible thread, that he’s still fully on top of after almost a decade 😮

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Project-Threepio-Star-Wars-OOT-subtitles/id/13794/page/1

My rassoodock was harried with worries you’d dislike my perhaps too-oomny raskazz, so your reply was quite the relieving veshch of radosty for this malchick’s malenky glazzies to viddy.

(Okay, I admit I had to look many of those nads up for this post 😃 )

TheHutt said:
Also, there is a curious addition to the following credit: the English version only lists one Production Assistant (Andros Epaminondas), whereas the German version lists the credit in plural form and adds another name (Margaret Adams).

Not that curious actually after you hear the explanation…

As we all know from the documentary Room 237, SK didn’t like to spoon-feed his messages to us. He put the final piece of this hint — that is pre-Shining — only in the German version so that people wouldn’t pick up on it immediately; they’d have to sleuth it out as they did with The Shining. This image shows you what he did…

He left the needed bits out of the English credits so that only those who noticed the curious discrepancy could get the pieces and see what’s ultimately rather plainly obvious in regards to the message.

So, yes, as with The Shining where good sleuthing of its hints makes it clear the moon landings were faked, he also gave us the same message via the German version of ACO a full decade earlier (though not figured out until now). Hope that clears this up for you, TheHutt, and everyone else.

(For anyone not sure, this post is just some for-laughs silliness I came up with, is NOT indicative of any real thoughts/beliefs on this matter 😃)

We all want the ideal of space and deep shadows being as black as the borders, but sometimes playing it safe via raising the image brightness/cont./etc. settings so that those areas are at least a hair above 0,0,0 can help prevent some crushing maybe. But not that big a deal. What you’re getting out of these sources as is currently is amazing! That detail…! 😮

Great stuff! Though be careful not to let your shadow detail get crushed into blackness as you’re moving along. I say that because your Unimatrix Zero clip almost seemed like it could be in that territory, but maybe it’s my monitor?

Sorry fanedit.org was that way with/for you. 😦 Well, hopefully things will be smoother for you here as you seem to seek. May you reach your goals here (that all sound good!), get all your desired changes in place such that your result is nicely seamless and makes your version of the movie a go-to version over the theatrical release for most(/all?) who see your end result. 😃

Kriss, this thread (now a couple o’ pages back), have you seen it?

https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Fleet-X-Bomber-Upscale-Project-Released/id/87046

😦

May you never lose another file again in your life for any reason, DResolve or otherwise 😃

Was it kind of the fault of DResolve that you lost the file?

JJPotter said:

The new intro includes the Dudley Redemption scene with green screens replaced. To accomplish this, I used Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI to upscale the footage to 4K and to smooth out some of the pixelation from the low res footage. This allowed for better masking of the green screen in some parts as well as allowing me to crop some of the green screen areas out completely.

Good stuff, I say. 😃 Great work on “replacing” the green screen. My only comment would be that it (the Dudley Redemption scene) seems just a tad on the pink side (a switch from the greenish when we first see them all walking to the car); most noteably Harry’s face for the closer (first?) shot seems too toward magenta. Putting that mention aside, big thumbs up to your work on this!

I know that for some the intro will be way too long and the “flow” of it will have been broken by this addition. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, including whether to like this change or not.

The point of a fan edit project is for the editor to use whatever resources that are out there to create your vision of the film as it calls to you, make all the alterations that call to you. This opening is obviously where your heart and mind currently are with it, and it all feels well produced and seamless, so with those two check-boxes ticked, yeah, go for it, do this, it’s cool! Indeed, if people want an opening more like the theatrical or your previous version then those are already there.

I also added sound effects when Hermione does the Obliviate spell as her pictures are removed from the frames. Some minor color tweaking was also done.

Nicely done!

Intricate but very cool and smart! 😃

This might sound like a noob question, but since you have this down I want to see what you use… What is your preferred way to eliminate the double frames? And I assume that the quality differs between the two dupe frames, right? Is it always that the first (or always the second) of the dupes is poorer quality so you know which of the pair to drop?..or are they just of equal quality?

A little warning to everyone: don’t watch it streaming there on dropbox, or at least if you see big compression artifacts know that it’s NOT in the file. For me at least, downloading was the way to go.

Black Alert, really nice job. The effects shots look great! It’s hard to believe you got those out of NTSC!

CaveDoctor said:
It’s a misconception that they were lost.
If you look on youtube, there are several rerenders of visual FX from the series that somehow turned up despite being lost.
Some things had to be fixed, but the scenes weren’t lost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKj-N5j0SBY&t=1s
The live action footage is upscaled to 4k for this one, but the VFX are all rerendered from original files, with replaced texture maps.

Wow, really cool (and a relief to hear)! Thanks for that info/link 😃

b5historyman said:

Since a friend of mine has a lot of actual original CGI assets he is currently working on a project reworking them to 1080p

I heard (on sci-fi-meshes I think) the originals were all lost by the studio that demanded to be the sole custodian of them. Were they found, or are there other things to the story…? Are his the assets of the old LightWave meshes/scenes or…?

Because those same-ish original LightWave scenes, it would almost be hilarious watching a modern system re-render out the same even at mere 1920x1080; I’d imagine shots that took a room of Amigas a week to render in the early '90s would be poured out in a mere minute or two on a (buffed-out) modern workstation. (Yeah, my sig gives away why I’m in this territory here 😃)

Cool your re-do gave you results you’re happier with. I love it when that happens with projects (instead of the redo work being in the end nothing but pure, grind redo).

“…then it’s finished. Yay!”

Double yay!