I believe I should pull them from the spleen then and try to set this right before moving forward. Terribly frustrating. :( I guess the good news is that the NR issue can be better dealt with the second time around.
That is correct. I never tried to demux the file. I just encoded it and set the frame rate at 24fps and never stopped to think that the encoder would do something like this to me :(. It seems that I had blu-ray checked as target playback device when I encoded and this seems to have (once again) applied pulldown on my behalf in the background.
I'm sorry I didn't check that before releasing it. Should I fix it and re-release the file? If that is the case I could just redo everything and take everybody's advice on the NR and try to improve the 720p stream as well.
I kind of expected that some people would not like the denoised 720p stream. I will definitely take your ideas into account in the future. I'll probably still apply some denoising to the 720p stream in ROTJ though. There is always the untouched 480p for people that want a "pure" transfer. I'd like to hear some methods for doing this without introducing an unwanted amount of artifacting.
I am excited to see what the Technidisc is going to look like. I hope I don't have to capture it 5 times like the last guy!
g-force said:
my 2 cents... the noise reduction looks like ass, as all noise reduction does, but this one looks particularly bad (smearing, warping...).
On the other hand, the SD version is one of the most beautiful captures I've ever seen. I had to demux though, as I couldn't figure out how to play the second stream otherwise. For some reason it plays back with interlacing artifacts though, is it still interlaced?
May I suggest an in-between version with no noise reduction but IVTC'd?
anyway, you've set the bar pretty high on video caps. Nice work!
Are you referring to both releases or just SW? I tried to avoid that as much as possible in ESB because it was a bit much in SW. I used QTGMC in the SW release and I believe that is where the problem arose. For ESB I used only a spatial denoiser.
I can imagine that when you demuxed it to an elementary stream it lost information like aspect ratio and FPS and then when you muxed it the program probably assumed 29.97fps or maybe performed a pulldown. It happened to me when I was trying to mux this to blu-ray. Could you tell me which scene is exhibiting interlacing? It is possible that I missed a cadence change somewhere. I know the title card looks a bit weird when it recedes into the starfield but I thought it was just part of the mastering or something. Other than that I am nearly positive that the frames are progressive as they should be.
When I watch it on the PC I use VLC and right-click while it's playing, then click on Video-->Video Track and then you can choose to display the 480p stream.
penguinofgreatness said:
Can anyone post screencaps of these? It seems pretty interesting.
There are some you can check out over here.
Chewtobacca said:
OmegaMattman said:
By far, your 480p stream is the best "pure" transfer of the JSC Star Wars I've ever had access to.
I couldn't agree more.
Althor1138, this looks very, very good. Great work! It's fantastic having 720p and 480p versions. An MKV version really was the way to go. Many thanks for doing this!
althor1138 said: What is the consensus on the denoising used on the 720p stream? I'm open to suggestions to make it better.
It looks fine to me, but I'm easier to please than most folks when it comes to denoising. What did you use, by the way?
Thank you to the usenet uploader as well.
Thanks! That is great to hear and is good motivation for me to start on ROTJ :). I'll post the script that I'm using for denoising in the next day or two.
I'm not sure. Somebody offered to up it there for me last time so perhaps it will happen again.
ESB is available now.
OmegaMattman said:
By far, your 480p stream is the best "pure" transfer of the JSC Star Wars I've ever had access to. It's so refreshing to have access to a source other than GOUT to mess with (since my own LD system is subpar to say the least).
Thanks! I hope somebody can do something with it. That was my main goal with the preservation so I'm glad that people are looking at it.
djchaseb said:
Any progress on Empire and Jedi?
Yes. IVTC, audio sync, and 480p stream are finished for ESB. I still have to do the chapters and encode the 720p stream. I'm messing around with trying to remove the right-side halos so I might play with some settings for a day or 2.
What is the consensus on the denoising used on the 720p stream? I'm open to suggestions to make it better.
I believe somebody was planning on putting it on a.b.sw if they haven't already. I have no other plans though.
CapableMetal said:
djchaseb said:
Need some help guys, I'm using TSMuxer to try and put the 720p stream to AVCHD format, it works but it doesn't recognize the PCM audio. Any other programs that I can use? Or plugins to download?
Thanks!
AVCHD doesn't support audio at 44.1KHz. You will have to perform a sample rate conversion to 48KHz. Audacity should be able to do this and its free.
I'd like to thank you for this, althor1138. Your capture is nice and clean and well worth the download!
Ah, that is exactly why I provided some specs in the post above because I thought it might have something to do with the way I muxed it. Well, as a raw file it was 44.1khz so I packaged it that way. Should I, in the future, convert to 48khz? It would no longer be the raw audio but I mean it doesn't really affect things much by doing a sample rate conversion does it?
I'm glad you like it. I'll be starting the IVTC on ESB sometime soon. I hope it's not as much of a nightmare as Star Wars was!
I believe if you extract the audio with mkvextract and then enter the 720p stream and the extracted audio into tsmuxer separately and then mux them together it should work.
All I know about the audio file is that I exported it from audacity as a lossless wav file. It is sampled at 44.1khz, has 16 bits per channel, and is 2 channel stereo.
djchaseb said:
Thanks! Will grab this tonight! Any plans for Empire and Jedi? Looking forward to watching this weekend!
Yes they are already captured. I hope you enjoy it!
It should be available now on the spleen.
Yes, pretty much. I used Megui with crf=16, preset=slow,target playback device=blu-ray. Everything else was default. Btw, I muxed the 720p anamorphic,480p letterbox, and audio into 1 mkv file and it works pretty much like I expected. In MPC you can switch between video streams mid-play and in vlc when you select the other video stream it opens up a comparison window. How does this sound for a release format?
Chewtobacca said:
I understand that you want to preserve quality, but the numbers are confusing you a bit, I think. Just because the lossless AVI is 24GB doesn't mean that you need a similar size after encoding to a delivery format to have something that looks like a raw capture on the disc. After your current encoding is finished, try using a CRF of 16 (which is absolutely sufficient to make something look like the source) and let us know the file-size. I bet it will be something like 3GB.
It's just under 4.5gb without the black borders cropped away and it does look fine to me. I'm glad you guys educated me on this.
CapableMetal said:
If you're keeping quality at a maximum, why not keep the audio as uncompressed PCM instead of encoding it to Dolby Digital? You should still be able to get a bitrate around 7Mbps with the 8GB limit of DVD9 if you really want to. Even 8Mbps seems quite high for 480i when encoding to h264/AVC, so you should easily manage the quality levels you're hoping for. ;)
I've synced it with the audio files from schorman13's project. I can easily release it uncompressed. It is around 1.2 gb if I remember right.
OmegaMattman said:
I really hope you'll consider still releasing unaltered 480p transfers as well. Based on what you said about leaving it unfiltered, if any other users hoped to make cleaning attempts on your transfers (with your permission and credit), it would be easier to work with something that has not been resized and is more representative of the true, raw form.
I believe I'm going to change from a blu-ray release to an mkv file release. It seems that most people interested in this would have the knowledge to demux and put it into whatever format they want anyway. If I understand right I could mux in the 720p and the 480p videostream and the uncompressed audio file into the same container file and it should all be about 12-13 gb. Since I'm upsizing to 720p now I will be denoising it but the 480p would be raw(as in no filtering).
Chewtobacca said:
althor1138 said: You would lose the japanese burned-in subtitles at the bottom.
While I am interested in your release, I have no desire to watch a non-anamorphic video with Japanese subtitles. If you did go down that route, I would have to recompress it before I watched it. If your concern is that the JSC should be preserved "as is", be aware that it has already been done: one of dark_jedi's early releases had the Japanese subtitles.
Yes, I've gotten that feeling from everybody lol. So, it seems the logical thing to do is simply crop it and do an anamorphic resize to 720p. I've applied the resizing method that Antcufaalb talked about in the other thread as well. I'm fairly happy with the results so far.
EDIT: Nevermind I found version 7.
Can somebody send me a link to an older version of resamplehq? I'm having very strange issues with version 8.
It sounds like I should just make a dvd-9 and be done with it then. I mean if the extra bit rate isn't going to help at all there is no sense whatsoever in blowing the file up to 20 or so gb. The only thing I don't agree with is chopping off the black bars and making it anamorphic. You would lose the japanese burned-in subtitles at the bottom. I like the idea of putting all 3 on a bd-25 though. So maybe each individual title should get a dvd-9 and the trilogy can be put together on a BD-R?
CapableMetal said:
I'll be interested in seeing your results with this, having recently backed up my JSC copy of Star Wars to DVD.
As you are leaving it as raw as possible, are you leaving the set in the original letterboxed format or resizing to make the films anamorphic?
I won't be resizing or cropping if at all possible.
Chewtobacca said:
althor1138 said:I'd really like to keep it at 480p with a high bit rate and let the electronics do the scaling though. If I encounter more problems with compliancy though I will do it. What is the best way to upscale without losing any detail?
Keeping it at 480p is understandable. Are you still putting two versions (filtered and unfiltered) on one disc or have you given up on that idea? I just can't get over how massive the overkill involved in what you are doing is. If I were you, I would simply make a DVD (a DVD-9 if you are worried about quality). I could show you exactly how to do it, but I know you have your heart set on the BD idea, so...
If upscaling does become necessary, there is a thread on it here. The method that Antcufaalb outlines is basically the one I use, and I don't know of a better one.
I decided not to do a filtered version because I'm not the guy to be doing that kind of stuff. The longer I stare at my attempts at denoising the more I hate them lol.
I really want the highest quality possible is the reason I'm encoding at such a high bit rate. I realize that it's just a laserdisc but I want it to look just like the raw capture. The raw capture ends up being around 24gb when compressed to lagarith. The x264 or mpeg2 encode ends up being around 21-22 gb so it's basically like having a raw capture of the laserdisc that can be popped into the blu-ray player.
The x264 encode will be finished in about an hour so I'll mess with trying to put it into blu-ray format tonight and if it works I'll definitely go that route instead of mpeg-2.
Well, your knowledge of this is far greater than mine so I will take your advice. I'd really like to keep it at 480p with a high bit rate and let the electronics do the scaling though. If I encounter more problems with compliancy though I will do it. What is the best way to upscale without losing any detail?
EDIT: I'm beginning a test encode at 480p now so I'll be able to compare directly between the mpeg and x264.
Well I was having problems getting the 480p video encoded with x264 and still be compliant. I eventually figured it out thanks to your helpful advice but then I was looking into it a bit more and it seems that with a bit-rate over 15mb the advantages of x264 drop off. Besides, 480p encoded to mpeg-2 just simply works when putting onto blu-ray format without having to jump through any hoops to make it compliant. Also, it only takes a little over an hour to do a 2 pass mpeg2 encode.
EDIT: It is also possible to encode in 4:2:2 colorspace.
This post will be updated as I finish individual releases.
The list below is what I currently own and plan on preserving.
| USA | USA | USA | USA | USA | USA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pending | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| MKV | MKV | MKV | |||
 |
 |
 |
| JAPAN | JAPAN | JAPAN | JAPAN | JAPAN | JAPAN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Pending | Pending | Pending | Pending | Pending | Pending |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| MKV | MKV | MKV | Pending | Pending | Pending |
 |
 |
 |
 |
||
| Pending | Pending | Pending | Captured |
| France | France | France | France | France | France |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV |
| Germany | Germany | Germany | Germany | Germany | Germany |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
— | — | — | — | — |
| Capped | — | — | — | — | — |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV | MKV |
| UK | UK | UK | UK | UK | UK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
 |
 |
— | — |
| Capped | ROTTED | Capped | Capped | — | — |
| SPAIN | SPAIN | SPAIN | SPAIN | SPAIN | SPAIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
— | — | — | — | — |
| MKV | — | — | — | — | — |
| THX | THX | THX | THX | THX | THX |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
 |
— | — | — | — |
| MKV | Capped | — | — | — | — |
Thanks to Antcufaalb and Mavimao for helping me track down some of these.
Thanks to Darth Mallwalker for assisting with ivtc scripts when they were above my paygrade.
Thanks to Chewtobacca for encoding/resizing assistance.
Thanks to Schorman for providing us all with the laserdisc audio archive which I used a lot in these projects.
Thanks to Capablemetal for providing the DTS files along with video files for syncing the Special Editions.
I'd like to see the original trilogy be restored and released to the public. As far as new movies being made, I'd like to see a real world portrayed with a gripping plot and characters I can relate to. For me this means having real model ships and an actual shooting location and a little bit of effort from the people making the film. If they can't bring back the "used universe" look to Star Wars then they are wasting everybody's time imo.
Actually, I kinda think what I'm seeing is inherent to this laserdisc. I went and found a couple of these instances and played with a few settings and it seems like they are just cadence changes that last only a couple frames but the strange part is that the first frame or two is shifted down a couple lines and then it pops back up. I think since the frame jumps up and down you have to be careful not to throw away the wrong field or it looks like this. After a correct trim and pulldown applied it plays out progressively without a problem, other than the fact that the frame instantly jumps up and down by a few pixels for a couple of frames. I checked this against all 3 captures of this title and they all exhibit the same thing on the same frames.
Here is a clip. It happens around the 4 second mark. This one jumps down for 3 frames and then back up. I've corrected it with the proper pulldown so it plays progressively. What do you think? I hope it's not the capture card lol.
PW=OT