Zion

vbangle said:

Zion said:

That aside, it'd be a shame if the X0 captures never saw the light of day. I definitely want to release something, we'll have to decide in the near future exactly what.

Not to sound incredulous but have the past 3 months been enough time to decide? Zion you still with us?

 

Not sure if anyone here noticed, but I'm the head admin on the TFN forums now. I don't get over here as much as I'd like to anymore.

That's the gist of it I guess.

I haven't heard from Laserman in a couple years now (hope he's OK wherever he is), but I'd say the two shots he sent me that were cleaned up with the Black Magic workstation are probably the only ones that'll ever get done. Unless a similar workflow can be found using Matlab, I suppose.

From the ones I've seen, the current one circulating with the RiffTrax audio is the best quality.

Duuude. This is one of the most bizarre things I've ever watched. At the same time, I can't stop watching. Excellent work none!

One problem I noticed: when I mount the image file and try to play it in PowerDVD 9, it doesn't play the DVD correctly. It basically just plays the titles one by one. I haven't tried burning it and playing it in a real DVD player yet, but I just thought I'd point that out.

"She" sent me a pic:

You guys can have her once I'm finished.

So I've just completed my own version of "Backstroke of the West" based on marioxb's guide. Mine is a little different in that I created a new DVD menu and added the RiffTrax audio track. Oh, and I redid the subs based on the original text file posted here. The subs were out of sync in a lot of places so I resynced them up. Here are my results:

Yeah, yeah, it's a fullscreen menu. The image I used fit better that way and I didn't care enough to try something else. I threw the "A Lost Hope" spoof on there as well just for good measure.

When I started this project and successfully completed marioxb's guide, I realized that I wanted to customize everything for myself, including the subs. I searched forever to try and locate a text version of the subs, and eventually by dumb luck found the link posted on that blog page. As it's been a few years since marioxb's original project, I'll go ahead and post my sub files here for your enjoyment.

• Original text subs (scroll down past the all the pics for the link)
• My re-synced (and spellchecked) .srt file
• VTS IFO file with color palette (from finished DVD)
  
• SUP file (for the lazy people)

The instructions to create this are basically the same as those found in marioxb's guide. Use Muxman to mux the subs with your ripped m2v, ac3 files, and chapter file, and you're all set. Adding menus is a little tricker and it's probably best to find a good tutorial on it using your favorite program. The way I did mine was with a combination of Mac and PC software, so I won't go into it here.

If anyone uses these files, I'd love to hear about your results.

vbangle said:

My stupid ISP is jerkin me around and has really slammed my speed....(grrrr) I wish I could download this by tonight and see it but its going to take until tomorrow night for me....

Yeah same here. Comcast stiffs me every time I fire up usenet. My download speed starts around 2000 K/s and plummets to about 765. :|

Yeah, I noticed that too. I applied the exact same level and gamma adjustments to both images (after the filtering of course). For some reason the color doesn't come out exactly right.

I did notice though that using the Auto-blend filter usually nets better quality than the mean or median stack. I'll try to post a screenshot later for comparisson.

Max_Rebo said:

The problem is this will not remove scratches and burn marks as they will be the same on every capture, theoretically a mean filter would be the best for removing analogue noise as it is a completely random effect, however the median filter would be advantageous in removing dot crawl, and the effects of laser rot which may not be the same on every capture.

I realize it wouldn't do anything at all to scratches and burn marks, but those are really separate problems anyway. Laser rot and analog noise are certainly the main focus.

My intention here was to test how effective these Photoshop filters might be when used to combine multiple captures. My samples above were just a quick and easy method to demonstrate what might be possible.

In reality, well, the results aren't as impressive. Tonight I took my trusty LD-V8000 and made 11 captures of the binary sunset shot (from the Faces LD), cropped, IVTC'd, etc. etc., and exported the same frame from each capture into Photoshop. Here is a sample screencap of the raw capture:

...and here is the output of all 11 aligned and median stacked:

Not much difference, unfortunately. If I can figure out an easier way than importing the frames into Photoshop, applying the filter, then saving as a new file, I may try to do a few seconds of video to see if there's a more noticeable difference in motion.

The 4-eyed stormies are a result of the rudimentary DVNR process, which I'm sure used some sort of temporal algorythm, but that's not really what I'm getting at here.

The Photoshop filters that I've highlighted here seem more advanced than any simple temporal softening or averaging filter applied in Avisynth. The median filter doesn't just average all frames together, but seems to intelligently take the most consistent information and eliminate the anomalies like noise, burn marks, etc. (much like the TooT process). I don't know if I've ever seen anything quite like it in a video filter. Most temporal noise filters tend to leave their own unwanted artifacts in the frame on anything with motion.

What I'd love to see is how these Photoshop filters stack up (no pun intended ;)) against similar Avisynth functions when merging 5-10 captures of the same source.

I wonder how well that would work compared to the results shown here. Also, I wonder if there's any way to use a Photoshop filter like this in Premiere or After Effects.

I stumbled upon this the other day while working on another project, but it may prove to be quite useful.

Photoshop CS3 and CS4 have new features that allow you to align a number of layers and blend them together. This is the same technology used to create panoramic images from multiple photos. What you can do with it though is use it to blend a number of video frames together to remove video noise. Check this out.

I just happen to have a couple SW LD captures lying around on my hard drive, and wanted to know how well this Photoshop filter worked. So I imported a couple shots using File > Import > Video frames to layers...

I imported a shot of the binary sunset on Tatooine. Here's a screenshot of a single frame...

This is a screencap from the X0 LD capture, and there's still some noticeable video noise and a few spots around the white sun. Now, if I combine all the layers into a smart object, I can set the stack mode by going to Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode > Median. There are a number of options, but median seems to work best. Here's the output (with some slight curve adjustments)...

Now tell me you've ever seen a cleaner image pulled from a laserdisc. ;) The raw quality is incredible. (The only flaw here is the trail where Luke walks in this shot. You could avoid it by only using the frames where Luke doesn't appear, but the rest of the image wouldn't be as defined.)

Now, here's the cool part. Not only can you clean up a single source, but you can combine two together. Here's a frame from the exact same shot from a capture of the Japanese Special Collection LD...

...and the output...

Now if I isolate these two layers into the same Photoshop file, I can align them and blend them together with two incredibly awesome functions. Go to Edit > Auto-align layers, use Auto and uncheck the two lens correction options. This will align the two layers and warp them into place if necessary. Then go to Edit > Auto-blend layers, choose stack and check seamless tones and colors. And behold...

...a combination of both DC and SC sources.

Now, there are some obvious limitations here. What I've done is taken a still shot and blended together successive frames to end up with a single clean frame. This wouldn't really work for moving shots. Well, unless you figured out a way to take a high number of separate captures of the same LD and blend each frame together. That would actually be a fun project to test. The other thing I didn't try was auto-aligning all the frames together before creating the Smart Object. With how wobbly the film in these transfers is, the image could probably be even sharper with an alignment and/or video stabilization prior to import.

For reference, here are my screencaps from this shot:

SC:
Original frame
Clean frame

DC:
Original frame
Clean frame

Merged

And just for fun, here's a before and after of the opening shot from the SC LD:

Original

Denoised and some quick level adjustments:

For some reason, I get an error when I try to align the SC and DC versions of this shot, and I suspect it might have something to do with the starfield.

Anyway, this is such an awesome tool I thought I'd share it.

corellian77 said:

With Zion back (and presumably MeBe's laserdiscs), does that offer a glimmer of hope that the project might continue at some point in the near future?  Or is this thing still dead in the water due to Laserman's absence?  Someone jog my memory... what, exactly, was Laserman doing that the other members are unable to do themselves?

As we've posted in the past, Laserman being unable to continue with the project has been the biggest setback of all. The things he was doing with the Black Magic system were just incredible. I've spent a lot of time in the last couple years searching for an alternate way to achieve the same results, but with no luck.

That aside, it'd be a shame if the X0 captures never saw the light of day. I definitely want to release something, we'll have to decide in the near future exactly what.

Thanks. I've been spending my Memorial Day weekend downloading the hell out of usenet to replenish my supply of MST3K episodes. I'm also working on a cutom ROTS DVD complete with "Backstroke" subs from marioxb and the official RiffTrax commentary. I definitely need to do a Holiday Special DVD next.

Hey man, I sent you a PM. ;)

I've been busy. I kinda got caught up in film school, spending hours and hours editing films and doing post sound, I got a new job, and somebody decided to make me an admin over on TFN. So things have been hectic lately. I'm probably not going back to school in the fall, so I've finally got some free time to spend again.

BTW, if anyone is still wondering where the extra funds went that didn't get spent on the project, a huge box of X0 Project t-shirts has been sitting in my closet for the past 14 months or so. I still don't know what to do with them.

Oh and hi everyone.