Zion

Happy Life Day, everyone!

Just wanted to chime in here and say I'm glad one of us was able to acquire that LD. I probably would have bid on it as well had I known about the auction.

I first heard about this last week from one of the news stories that popped up about the facebook page. Then earlier this week, I had two different people come up to me and ask if I'd heard about the long-lost Star Wars LD of old footage and blooper reels that had been found (clearly they'd gotten the news from CNN or some other outlet that also had the facts mixed up).

Anyway, I'm just glad to see all the news I've been hearing about the past week originated with someone connected to the OT community. :)

Go for it.

Take a gander at the last few pages of this thread. The short answer is that the consensus is yes, but the GOUT still wins vs. a single raw capture.

Just to clarify, I'm not trying to contact him in regards to this project.

This is good news, if for no other reason than to know that he is alive and well. While I doubt he's still interested in working on the X0 Project, I will attempt to contact him.

I can confirm that he told us he did work on that film, among other things previously. The Black Magic system was something he was able to borrow from work for a time.

Pretty sure Laserman wrote that article. I don't remember exactly what we were using back then with AviSynth, but it's pretty much the same idea I wrote about in this thread: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Fun-with-Photoshop-Denoising-an-LD-capture/topic/10460/

Sadly,  the original WBBM source is from a transfer done on one of those VHS-to-DVD machines (not by me) and the resulting mpeg2 file was a constant moderate bit rate. I believe it was only 3.2GB in size or something along those lines. (I can't pull up the file to confirm because my drive is corrupted at the moment.) I could still output my final video at a high vbr for DVD9, though I don't know how much better it would be.  What the hell, I'll do it anyway.

Upscaling to 1080i/p might be laughable. I'll see how 720 looks and decide whether HD is even worth it.

Thanks to everyone involved in getting my version up on myspleen and all the seeders.

Here is the nfo file for my Holiday Special release last year (copied and pasted, sorry the formatting is a little crappy):

---

Star Wars Holiday Special - Hybrid Edition

______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
  .:: Release Information ::.                                                
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
                                                                             
  Release Date....: 17NOV2010                                                
  Air Date........: 17NOV1978                                                
  Source..........: WBBM 2nd Gen. VHS tape with commercials taken from the   
                    WMAR version posted on Google Video                          
                                                                             
  Format..........: DVD5 NTSC                                                
  Image...........: ISO                                                      
  # of Disks......: 1                                                        
  Size............: 4.28 GB                                                  
                                                                             
  Video Format....: MPEG2 (3-Pass VBR)                                       
  Resolution......: 720x480                                                  
  Aspect Ratio....: 4:3                                                      
  Frame Rate......: 29.97fps                                                 
                                                                             
  Audio Format....: Track 1 (Original): Dolby Digital 2.0 (384Kbps CBR)      
                    Track 2 (RiffTrax): Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kbps CBR)      
                                                                             
  Subtitles.......: None                                                     
                                                                             
  Menu............: YES/Custom                                               
                                                                             
  Genre...........: Black sheep of the Star Wars franchise                   
  Run Time........: 01:57:35                                                 
                                                                             
                                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
  .:: Group News ::.                                                         
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
                                                                             
  Secret-Shadow Ninja Pirates                                                
                                                                             
  Are you a pirate? Have you always wanted to be a pirate?  Do you talk like 
  a pirate?  We are currently looking for more 1337 pirate types to join our 
  super-awesome team.  So grab your eye patch and fake Scottish accent and   
  get with it!                                                               
                                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
  .:: Synopsis ::.                                                           
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
                                                                             
  Art Carney and a bunch of muppets waste time waiting for Chewbacca and Han 
  to show up for Life Day. Luke experiments with makeup. A stoned Leia sings.
                                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
  .:: Release Notes ::.                                                      
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
                                                                             
  This DVD is mainly a cleaned-up version of the original WBBM transfer,     
  taken from a 2nd-generation VHS copy. I added the commercials from the     
  WMAR version posted on Google Video in order to sync up with the RiffTrax  
  audio. This is far and away the best quality version of the Holiday        
  Special currently in circulation, IMHO.                                    
                                                                             
  VIDEO                                                                      
  The original WBBM video was already pretty damn good, but I took it one    
  step further by adding some sharpening and color correction filters. I     
  also added some fades to make the transitions to and from the commercials  
  a little smoother. The fades match up to the WMAR version for the most     
  part.  The quality of the commercials is substantially lower, but          
  unfortunately I don't know of any other source that's better.              
                                                                             
  AUDIO                                                                      
  The original audio was sharper compared to the other versions, though      
  quite noisy. I used a noise filter to get rid of most of it. The quality   
  of the commercials is substantially lower.                                 
                                                                             
  MENU and CRAWL                                                             
  The DVD menu is an original creation. Star Wars "Disco" tune originally by 
  Meco, with some added sound effects. The crawl was taken from the WMAR     
  version on Google Video, but redone by me to more closely match the films' 
  crawls.                                                                    
                                                                             
  RIFFTRAX                                                                   
  If you intend to watch this DVD with the RiffTrax commentary (which is the 
  only way to watch it IMO), please take a moment and donate a few bucks to  
  RiffTrax for their awesome work:  http://www.rifftrax.com/donate
                                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
  .:: Thanks ::.                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________
                                                                             
                                                                             
  Thanks to SKot for all the expert info on the Holiday Special, Rikter for  
  the original inspiration to create my own DVD version, and of course the   
  RiffTrax crew for making this DVD watchable.  Also a big thanks to Jay,    
  Moth3r, and everyone at OriginalTrilogy.com.                               
                                                                             
______________________________________________________________________________

---

Looking back at this project, I realized that I could have done a much better job on the video. I actually used Adobe Premiere for the sharpening filters and color correction, which I now wish I hadn't done. However, at the time I was a little rushed on this project and I chose the quick and easy path, rather than going all out and using avisynth.

Obviously, we now have a much higher quality version of the commercials, so I'd love to go back and add those in as well. I have a new and improved version in the works (as mentioned earlier in this thread), but it's been stalled for months due to the many other projects I have currently involved myself in. I also managed to screw up the 2TB RAID10 partition all my video projects reside on, rendering the entire drive unreadable, so there's that problem as well. Here's hoping I can recover it and get back to working on some of my video projects in the near future.

Er, I was talking about the HS cartoon, but yeah, ANH seems much better too.

Wow, congrats SilverWook.

If nothing else, the audio on the blu-ray seems to be very good quality. I watched it last night in a private theater and didn't notice any pops or hissing whatsoever.

I believe I was the first mod Jay ever appointed, so no.

none said:

*cough*

Termoil has engulfed the

Original Trilogy Forums. 

The moderation of talking

channels to outlying threads

is under a new gaze.

 

I've lost track of where this

PT parody Anchorhead won't

get should go so

*cough*

 You forgot to add something exciting like an upcoming senatorial vote or trade routes being in dispute.

I still have moderator status, Warbler. Though I assume it's more of a formality at this point. But, you now, don't be acting all DanielB or AdamwanKenobi in here or I'll be forced to go all ocpmovie on your ass. That is, if Anchorhead doesn't beat me to it.

Congrats dude.

Correct, not all of the files were finished uploading until yesterday.

Not counting the NZB file, there are 789 total files. Though, you can probably get by just fine with downloading only one or two of the PAR files and skipping the rest unless you find a lot of parts missing and you absolutely need them.

Also, it looks like my upload finally completed yesterday. Binsearch shows that no parts are missing, but I'd appreciate if someone could post here to confirm once they've successfully downloaded it.

And therein lies the reason why we were aiming to combine all these different sources via Black Magic. The GOUT is great for a lot of things, but as you can see it's got some detail loss in certain areas. The Japanese SC is very grainy, but IMO the colors are more accurate.

Asaki said:

So does Zion have the JSC captures too, (or whatever else they were sourcing) or is it only the '93?

We do have a very good quailty JSC capture of ANH captured with the PDI deluxe card, but it was not captured from the X0 LD player. It was not available to us at the time, unfortunately.

It's worth a shot trying to contact her I guess. I'll see if I can dig up that email address.

TooT may or may not work, depending on how different the video is. It doesn't actually average the sources together, but rather compares all three sources and outputs the information that's consistent in at least two out of three sources. So like if there was a rot spot on one of the captures, it would take the information for that area from the two sources that don't have the rot spot. If all three sources differ, then I think it defaults to the first one.

The other avisynth filter you might try is Merge, which actually does average the two sources together.

Ah yes, I do remember that now! Did L ever manage to get you that lost side of ROTJ by chance?

I did not send your LD yet. Couldn't find anything I trusted shipping it in as a matter of fact.  I used to have these sturdy boxes that fit like a glove, but I can't seem to find them anywhere. Any suggestions?

If they're all from the exact same LD release (i.e. they're all from Star Wars Definitive Collection LDs) then look up an avisynth filter called TooT (stands for Two out of Three). It will essentially take your 3 captures and combine them into one good one that's free of any rot spots or other imperfections not on the original LD. I'm sure there are other avisynth plugins out there as well.

If they're not from the same LD release, good luck and let me know if you come up with something.

RedFive said:

So the upload is the raw capture of the XØ?  Something like 40gb?

Are these cleaned up at all, or completely raw?

What will be done with them (if anything)?

This is the raw capture, yes. It's the exact same set of files Laserman sent the rest of us after the capture was done. I would assume he IVTC'd them himself before sending to save on disk space, as the frame rate is already 23.976.

If someone wanted to prep this for outputting to DVD or Blu-ray or whatever, I would recommend a quick and dirty avisynth script with at least the following:

• Combine the 8 files into one
• Crop and resize to 16x9
• Adjust video levels (set black and white points)
• Upscale and sharpen

At this time, I have no plans to do anything other than release the raw captures to Usenet. If you want them uploaded somewhere else, burned to blu-ray, or converted to your favorite video flavor, you're better off asking someone else.