althor1138

Is it something like this? 

I'm convinced that the settings for the comb filter don't do anything.  If you figure out how to make it work please let me know.  Can you explain the jump that you are talking about? Do you mean like a single frame jumping up or down once in awhile or a series of frames?  Have you posted any screenshots yet?

Quitting smoking was really a breeze compared to snus imo.  After a couple days of no cigarettes the withdrawal symptoms were gone and it was all psychological from there on.  When I quit snus the withdrawal lasted for almost 2 months and was very violent the first couple weeks. I felt dizzy and angry constantly.  My hands shook so bad at times I was afraid people would refer me to an AA meeting.  I've been off the stuff for about 5 months now thankfully.  So if you quit smoking I guess I just wanted to say don't pick up snus in the process. 

Thanks.  That link was like the one stop shop for all I needed to know about encoding to blu-ray.  I too believe that 22000 is overkill but I thought I'd give it a try. 

What I'm leaning towards is putting the raw version and a cleaned version both on the same disc so people can choose.  They'd both fit on the disc with room to spare even if they were encoded at very high quality.

I'm almost certain that i put it in correctly. If I'd put in 2200 instead of 22000 by accident the file would have been much smaller than 10 gb I think. The resolution is 720x480p. Is there some cap on bitrate because of the resolution?

So I'm using multiavchd to burn this to a blu-ray with x264 as the encoding format. I use the little calculator to determine that I need around a 22mb/s bitrate to fill up a BD-25 but after the encode is finished the whole folder including menu and such is only a bit over 10gb. Am I doing something wrong or is that all that I'm going to get out of it? 

Here's some comparison between cards with a capture of the CLD-D505 vs. the CLD-HF9G included this time. I think the HF9G still looks better?

AntcuFaalb said:

althor1138 said:

I'm sure it helps out in some situations but in this case it just adds layers of complication with no real benefit.

I agree. There are two options for doing capture averaging/median without artifacts or resolution loss:

1  Process the captures shot-by-shot (or even frame-by-frame)

2  Get an amazing image registration program to do the work for you

I think the best solution, for now, is to do one excellent capture and work on fixing drop-outs and speckles (that aren't on the source) manually.

I think imagej using bunwarpj or something newer would actually do a great job at registration and could be easily automated and incorporated into an avisynth script via the call command.  I think the downside to that approach is that you have to do at least 2 colorspace conversions before encoding and it would take anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 minutes per frame depending on your accuracy settings.

I think I'm about to start playing around with my cheaper cld-d505 tonight and see what results it produces.  It looks less noisy but I'm pretty sure that's because the composite is filtered and recombined.

Still waiting on the Video Essentials to arrive.  The guy pretty much lied to me about mailing it and only now is shipping it out.  If it ever does arrive I'll be posting some stuff in the Laserdisc screenshot comparison thread to hopefully get some more definitive feedback on which of the 3 players I should be using for capture. I do think the HF9G will probably produce the best results but as Moth3r said earlier the real proof will come from a captured test signal pattern or some colorbars.

I figured out why it was looking posterized sometimes.  One of my captures inexplicably shifts left or right by 1 pixel once in awhile.

I'm just going to use the first capture because the difference between one capture and an average of all 3 seems to be rather negligible in this case.  I'm sure it helps out in some situations but in this case it just adds layers of complication with no real benefit.  Of course I'll play with it as an afterthought but I think it's better that the preservation is as original as possible anyway.

AntcuFaalb said:

It's stuff like this that makes me wary of TooT'ing three captures from three different pressings of the same LD release; e.g., TooT'ing captures from three different JSC sets, like what althor1138 wants to do.

Without a bunch of safeguards in place, you have to perfectly spatially- and temporally-align each capture. This usually isn't difficult, but how would you know if one of the three sets has a quirk (like the different mastering above) without doing a frame-by-frame scan?

I wish we had a good method for dropout/rot detection. I'd really prefer to do one excellent capture and fix dropouts/rot manually in PFClean.

I am beginning to agree with you on this.  I'm not sure exactly what method toot uses for averaging the 2 "best" captures either.  Sometimes it seems to me like it gives the film a posterized look.

Wasn't there a scripted solution to replace the toot plugin?  I'd rather use something like that because you can at least tweak a script to fit your needs sometimes.  The toot plugin has no settings other than input clips.

I've uploaded a clip of side 1 here.  PW=OT.  I've cropped the picture, resized, and tried to do a sensible levels/tweak adjustment based on moth3r's advice. I've also sync'ed some sound to it.  I'd appreciate any feedback on it.  If everything seems in order I won't be far away from being finished.  I just have to sync the other 4 sides with audio and encode to blu-ray.  Soon I will start a thread in the preservation's forum.  I think we've gone over the capture workflow and this thread is turning into more of a Japanese Special Collection thread.  I still could use some advice on making a blu-ray.  My plan was to just use multiavchd. It seems like the best free choice.

AntcuFaalb said:

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

poita said:

The blackmagic Intensity is a great capture card, except for composite video.

Its comb filter is hideous, you would need to use an external comb filter before getting to the Intensity.

I want to buy a capture card with a better comb filter than mine's...

So, maybe the ATI HD 750 will be a good choice... or not?

Althor1138 seems to have obtained good results with it!

I own an ATI Theater HD 750 and can verify that the AGC issue plaguing the 650 is still present.

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/326560-Which-is-better-usb-stick-vhs-cap-or-hd-pvr-cap-convert-for-vhs-to-dvd?p=2023227&viewfull=1#post2023227

I think my eyes just aren't trained to catch it perhaps.  I thought I'd found an instance where I noticed it during the closeup of the binary suns but it's that way on my usb stick capture as well lol.

Moth3r said:

Lowered black level and increased contrast, colour saturation reduced slightly, cropped and resized:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/cyx4gp

Despite all the funky stuff going on, this looks quite nice (keep in mind this is a compressed version). 

I think that does look really good. I'd like to do something like this and sync the audio and move on to ESB.  I'm trying to follow the "less is more" mantra so that I and anybody else interested in having this will have a "raw" version without temporal or spatial filtering messing up any small detail.

Darth Mallwalker said:

Seems you have a different mastering than Arnie.d's X9 cap

I believe you are correct with that assessment.  If I understand correctly, the mint marks would be different if it were a different pressing?  These are the marks from my LD's:

SF148-1196-A53-P    15I11008
SF148-1196-B59-P    15I11003
SF148-1196-C58-P    14I11106
SF148-1196-D57-P    14I11113
SF148-1196-E52-P    13I10113
DD-3A-B66-P             13I10167

These are the set of numbers somebody posted on LDDB:

SF148-1196-A51-P   9D290057
SF148-1196-B56-P   0D060323
SF148-1196-C54-P   0D070640
SF148-1196-D53-P   0D070755
SF148-1196-E51-P   0D041095
DD-3-B56-P              9D291066

Does that confirm that at least 2 separate pressings exist?

EDIT:  FWIW, the numbers for ESB and ROTJ also do not match the marks on LDDB

Moth3r said:

althor1138 said:

Here is a 10 minute clip of the beginning of side 1.  There's been no processing other than using toot and ivtc.

Thoughts?

Is this one continuous capture or spliced together from separate files? Because there is a sudden change in the border on the right hand side at frame 3923-3924 (end of the overhead flyby shot). Maybe it's on the LD like that.

The bottom border jumps up and down by 1 pixel occasionally, too.

It is one continuous capture.  It's a part of the Laserdisc as far as I can tell.  It does some pretty funky stuff. If you watch the borders they all move around once in awhile throughout the movie. I've also run into a few of these:

which manual IVTC fails to cope with.  I thought it was just a swap field issue at first but after correcting it manually I get this:

which makes me think this is a frame with misaligned fields or something.  I've found 5 so far.  I'm almost done with side 5 though so I think there won't be anymore.

There is also a few scenes where the last frame of a scene contains only half of the frame because the bottom field belongs in the first frame of the next scene.  I've been correcting these by cutting out the bottom field and doing a nnedi2(dh=true) so as to keep the frame in the film.

Don't know if it's your capture settings or the disc (or Vimeo), but it's all fairly washed out. Strange that you've actually got two levels of black - that of the black bars and that of the active image itself.

If it was me, I'd set the black level to that of the active image, and increase the white level by a touch as well.

Colours are nice and saturated, though - possibly even over saturated. Little bit of dot crawl evident.

More thoughts to follow.

I'd say the downside to the Theater750 card is that there aren't any settings really available other than denoising strength and comb filter adjustments. I was going to give your method of correcting captures a go as soon as my video essentials disc shows up.  If I can't get that to work I'll take your advice on the levels.

I appreciate all of the input about the rot/dropouts.  Maybe trying to average out several different sets will not yield better results.  I think I'll just leave it like it is.

I was thinking I would like to make a blu-ray out of this with a simple menu and encode the movie with as high a bitrate as possible.  If there is interest I can put it up for those who would want it when it's finished.  It would be pretty barebones.  Just a toot, an IVTC and possibly a levels/saturation tweak.

Can anybody recommend software/codecs/settings?

Well, I'm almost finished with the IVTC for side 2.  I guess I should have asked earlier but what should I be doing with these comb frames at scenechanges?  I've found 2 or 3 so far.  What I've done so far is trim the field out at the last frame and then trim to the first frame of the new scene and begin the ivtc cadence again.  I'm going to start over on the IVTC anyway because Moth3r's method is far quicker than the way I was doing it so I'd like to properly address these comb frames when I go over it again.

BTW I'm up to around 15 or 16 cadence changes and I'm not even finished with side 2 yet.  It seems to me like these comb frames at scene changes indicate that they for some reason edited the video after the telecine and were just sloppy? In 2 cases it seems to me that they used an individual frame from an entirely different print or at least a different telecine of the same print with different settings.

When I think of laser rot I think of a small white streak.  Sometimes it can even be bigger and take up almost a whole line.

When I think of a dropout it's almost the same but is a solid line of pixels and kind of matches a color near to the dropout or is black.

When I think of dirt I think it can be almost any shape or size or color.

If this is true then there are very few dropouts in the capture but there is a little bit of rot.

I really wish I had access to two more sets of the JSC at this point.  I could do a toot between 3 sets for a total of 9 captures and probably eliminate all of the rot and dropouts.

EDIT:  Actually anybody that owns the set and wants to participate can send me their set and I'll send them back to you with your raw capture saved on a stick or something.

you can try it now. I had it blocked but now it's not.

EDIT:  BTW, the clip is about as lossless as I could make it.  Vimeo has a 500mb limit and the 10 minute file ended up being around 400mb after compression with a 5mb average bitrate.  Also, you never know what happens during the online conversion process so it's definitely not a raw file.

Ah. Gotcha now.

I'm not interested in syncing to another release.  I just want a presentable digital copy of this release. If anybody wants to use the raw files I can try to make them available on a person to person basis though :).

Here is a 10 minute clip of the beginning of side 1.  There's been no processing other than using toot and ivtc.

Thoughts?

PW = OT

Moth3r said:

You may just need to force the correct field order.

Try avisource(...).assumebff().separtatefields() and examine the motion. Does it go backwards at all? If so try avisource(...).assumetff().separatefields().

That did it!  Thanks for the advice.  I'd have never figured that out on my own. 

I'm done with side 1 now.  I'd like to encode a few minutes worth and post it to get some opinions.  Does anybody know where I could post a raw file or should i just upload it to vimeo?

I'm only using the composite tooted average now because I was seeing too much dot crawl in the s-video captures.  It looks like this is going to be raw other than the toot and ivtc.

I tried that and it doesn't seem to work for me.