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bongloads

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Join date
10-Jul-2005
Last activity
17-Sep-2006
Posts
51

Post History

Post
#149776
Topic
Original Trilogy.com in the Press
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/149776/action/topic#149776
Time
Originally posted by: THX
Did anyone worry about the potential ramifications of a newspaper article pointing to the site?



If I was Zion, I might be a little concerned. The rest of you all work with outdated material. Zion, however, is widely known for his version of *a certain telesync*, which is the bane of LFL's existence right now (pre-releases). You might want to keep a tighter grip on your anonymity in the future when considering projects that are within the popular realm of prosecution by legal bodies
Post
#148621
Topic
~~~Segaflip's Newsgroup Posting List~~~
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/148621/action/topic#148621
Time
Originally posted by: segaflip
Originally posted by: wertyqa
i hope you post those blax2x titles to an "easy" group - like a.b.starwars or a.b.superman - tia

I have made the choice to post all non-star wars dvds to a.b.dvd and a.b.superman.



I'm gonna have to agree with that choice. I keep both starwars and dvd updated, but there is a place for everything on the newsgroups, and it really blows when something comes up in the starwars group that is non-starwars related, wasting headers and bandwidth for those users that are there for - surprise! - Star Wars related things I don't know the policies of attachments for these forums, but it would maybe be possible to attach NZB files to threads for the lazy usenetter, such as the above poster asking the absurd. Again, big ups for all your hard posting work, you are a true blessing to the Star Wars community and the Usenet community as a whole. Thanks again. Looking forward to those ADM DL posts!


"It is better to die for the Emporer than live for yourself."
Post
#137960
Topic
.: The X0 Project Discussion Thread :. (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/137960/action/topic#137960
Time
I don't know about your service, but UNS only keeps logs for 48 hours (for spammers). And if it's really a concern, you can always up at a university or bounce your pings off someone else. And you think Sony didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they started offering DVD burners? Without "piracy", there would be no DVDR sales, burner sales, high-speed connections, etc. And they know this, which is why you will likely never see the light of a summons. Your ISP is also well aware of the fact that people are downloading massive amounts of data, and the reason you do - thus, they will go to any means necessary to protect their customers. Because without us, they have nothing. Look, if you want me to drive down to wherever and personally pick up a copy of the raw capture, I will do it. Because there is simply no way I can create a better one without very expensive hardware, like the HLD-X0. And the other captures that exist cannot be made any better, because, well, you can't put back what ain't there. And according to your gospel, there is nothing "up-and-up" about the Project, so let's just be honest with ourselves here and understand that it is the best thing that's gonna happen to the Star Wars OOT until George dies and someone enters his fantastic vault to make the real-deal. If this project is not going to be made available, then let's stop talking about it altogether, because I don't like to be teased with something I can't have.


"I am the instrument of His will."
Post
#137931
Topic
.: The X0 Project Discussion Thread :. (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/137931/action/topic#137931
Time
Allright then, let's just call it :

"For Evaluation Purposes Only, must be destroyed within 24 hours of reciept."

There is a number of ways to usurp the legalities in whichever country you reside, hence they market duplication hardware in the first place. Not to mention the fact that an anonymous post to newsgroups is completely untraceable to the originator, making you safer than an armoured car




"It is better to die for the Emporer than live for yourself."
Post
#137840
Topic
.: The X0 Project Discussion Thread :. (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/137840/action/topic#137840
Time
Karyudo,
I couldn't disagree more. I think Lucasfilm would have popped our dear friends Dr. Gonzo, TR47, Rikter, and the like, long ago if the Laserdisc transfers were a concern. Just because they're doing it the best, means nothing. A Laserdisc transfer is for backup purposes only. Specifically, for the people who own them but either cannot play them on current hardware, or desire to have an archive version in case of loss or damage - which is perfectly legal. What's illegal is owning transfers and not owning the originals. Plain and simple. So if anything, they should be going after recipients, not creators - and that's highly unlikely. George Lucas doesn't give a hoot about us fans of the OOT (as he's made perfectly clear), nor does he care about the Laserdiscs. Generally, he doesn't care about his masterpiece in their true form. A raw cut of the transfer would be completely within the scope of a personal backup, probably even more so than an actual DVD, as it does nothing to affect DVD sales of the current version(which is total garbage).


And p.s : Laserdisc is anything but a "lame" form. In fact, many laserdiscs are known to contain higher video bitrates, and naturally, higher-quality audio than their DVD counterparts. As well as the fact that Laserdisc data is written via frequency modulation (like an LP), as opposed to the lackluster digitally-encoded video on a DVD, where the dreaded encoding problems can cause quality loss and significant errors in the video stream.



"Heresy grows from idleness."
Post
#137591
Topic
.: The X0 Project Discussion Thread :. (* unfinished project *)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/137591/action/topic#137591
Time
Thank you Laserman. PCM audio is one of the things that makes Laserdiscs superior to DVD (in some ways, and some particular issues), and I, for one, NEED a PCM track on my Ultimate Transfer. Frankly, I wouldn't care if the X0 was 11 gigs, and could only be stored on a drive or a Blu-Ray - this is the end-all be-all laserdisc transfer of Star Wars, and if it isn't a complete obliteration of existing versions, then what would be the point? Let me also add that I sincerely hope you encode the hell out of your finished product, as a simple 3 pass just doesn't cut it when you spend endless hours perfecting a transfer, only to have it look like garbage after encoding. The higher your starting bitrate, and the more compression the video will see, the more encoding becomes really integral - as I'm sure you well know. If you don't wish to do so, I would be more than happy to run your sources through my machine with 9 passes and a completely optimized Q factor, on a frame by frame basis. Because really, what's an extra 8 hours of encoding for something that took months to create? On that note, I'd also like to know if the straight transfer, in raw form, will be made available to quality maniacs such as myself? Anyway, keep up the good work guys, and we all cannot wait to see a finished product. Maybe merry Christmas?


"Knowledge Is Power, Hide It Well."
Post
#136634
Topic
***The "Darth Editous" Episode IV DVD Info and Feedback Thread*** - a partially "de-specialed" DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/136634/action/topic#136634
Time
Um, someone NEEDS to send copies of this to "segaflip", so that he may consider uploading it to the newsgroups where many, many fans will have access to this edit. It sounds fantastic, and I would love to get my hands on it, but I think the best bet to get it distributed is to send it to segaflip. And then some of us can seed it as a torrent as well. How about it Darth Editous?



"Knowledge is power, hide it well."
Post
#136568
Topic
Idea: an actual 12-hour Star Wars movie... on HD-DVD
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/136568/action/topic#136568
Time
George Lucas is NOT a film preservationist, he says in his own words that he is an EDITOR. And that's pretty clear, judging by all the "editing" he's done to his original masterpieces. When Blu-Ray/HD-DVD does hit the market, you can be assured that he will re-release all six films in High-Definition. He likes money. However, he does not like us (the True fans). He feels that his original films weren't what they should have been at the time, and he will almost certainly not release the Original Original Trilogy on HD, or any other medium for that matter. More than likely, he will re-edit and digitize even more of the films, cannibalizing them further than even he has done currently. It will be up to us, the real fans, to do it. And without access to the original actual film media that he is selfishly hoarding, we can never do a true High-Definition transfer. The best thing we can hope for currently is the upcoming X0 Project, laserdisc transfers in their best possible state. George Lucas is a goon, give up on him - the Lucas that made the original films is long gone. We can only hope that Spielberg will take the initiative and contract Episode 0 from George, hopefully doing the OOT Legacy the respect it truly deserves. And maybe, just maybe, when Ol' Georgie Boy passes away, someone will open up his fantastic film vault and do a true OOT in HD/Blu-Ray, or whatever the standard is by then.


"I am the instument of his will."
Post
#134700
Topic
How do you rip DVDs?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/134700/action/topic#134700
Time
Absolutely , Doom9.org, Videohelp.com, and Afterdawn.com are all great STARTING resources for how to rip DVD's. I personally feel the best program to rip DVD's is DVDDecrypter (if you can still get your hands on it), as it defeats all copy-protection quickly and efficiently, and creates perfect images and backups of your DVD's. DVDShrink may be an acceptable means of ripping, but it is slow as a snail compared to DVDDecrypter. I would also sincerely recommend NOT using DVDShrink to actually recompress your backups, as it is based on an archaic encoder that leaves alot of bitmaps, blockiness, and image degradation behind. It is only an acceptable means of re-encoding if your movie will be retaining 90% or more of it's initial bitrate/quality, as it is a very fast program when it comes to encoding (hence the reason it does a half-ass job!) DVDDecrypter is the greatest thing to happen to the DVD scene ever. Not only can it create perfect .iso's of your DVD's, but also it is capable of ripping into VTS folders for easy re-encoding preparation. Last, but certainly not least, it is again, in my opinion, the best program for burning your DVD images as well, as it has a configurable buffer that out-sizes and out-performs virtually every other burning program there is. Long answer short:

DVDDecrypter is king!





"I am the instrument of his will."
Post
#133582
Topic
How many passes?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/133582/action/topic#133582
Time
Moth3r,
Ok, first, way to rip me apart for the term "overall bitrate" - I mean, of course, overall image quality. Which I will tell you again and again that the more passes you do, the better your DVD image will look. It might "seem" to you to be an excessive waste of PC resources for no additional advantage, but have you actually put that theory to test? Well I have, and I have the discs to prove it. Check out my post to a.b.starwars - I presume you own the original - and tell me that a 9 Pass isn't silky smooth. Note the aliasing of text in the reduced quality menus and the relative lack thereof in the introductory scroll and end credits (which is absolute HELL on an encoder). And I did a 2 Pass on the extras disc, and it looks like shit in comparison - with a much lower starting overall bitrate, I might add. Clearly not a waste of "PC resource". In fact, how long does a 3 Pass take really? Maybe 3 hours, sometimes 2. My 9 Pass discs usually take from 8 to 10 hours. Set it up while you sleep, let it run all night, get up in the morning to a beautiful encode. Really, what is your computer doing at night anyways? Take a look around the scene and notice that all the DVD release groups use 6-9 passes, why do you think that is? You think Cinema Craft Encoder does all those extra passes for fun? No. It's an option for a reason, most people are just to lazy to do some tests and find out. Now granted, laserdisc copies of Star Wars maybe don't have the highest bitrate to begin with, but when does it really count - STAR WARS, that's when. If I spent endless hours perfecting a laserdisc rip, you can bet I wouldn't cheap out on the encoding. What if, just what if, you would have "wasted" a few more hours of your pc's precious idle time and gone all out on the encoding? It would have looked even better, I guarantee you. Iron F'n Clad.



-Bongloads.


"Knowledge is power, hide it well."

Post
#133040
Topic
***The Official FAN CREATED DVD Reviews and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/133040/action/topic#133040
Time
Originally posted by: Arnie.d
ungodly low 3 PASSES
certainly hope the X0 guys do AT LEAST the max 9 passes in CCE's SP version, hopefully the max of 14 or whatever is allowed in the corporate, or regular CCE version.


As Moth3r already said quality improvement reaches its limit at 3 ~ 4 times of encoding.
I bet you can't show us some clips that shows us the difference!

Besides the maximum is 99 passes. Bongloads, you really encode a lot yourself, right?


No, I can't show you any clips, because I would never waste my time encoding at less than 5 passes, let alone pass a movie twice. And "Moth3r", the official Cinema Craft Encoder Manual DOES NOT SAY "image quality slightly improves each time encoding is repeated, but quality improvement reaches its limit at 3 ~ 4 times of encoding" (you probably pulled that from someone's extremely uninformed guide). But it DOES state that "image quality improves with each additional pass". Albeit a small increase in overall bitrate, it IS an increase. And when working with a high-bitrate video to begin with, every Mbps counts. Also, while the manual does state that the maximum passes is 99, DVD-Rebuilder only allows 9 passes on CCE-SP (10, including .VAF). And yes, I do ALOT of encoding - over a hundred movies to date. So I can say from extensive personal research, that the more passes you do, the better your "backup" will be. Take a 7GB DVD9 and run it through CCE 5 times, then take another 7GB (same filesize) DVD9 and pass it 9 times. Then compare original bitrates at any given moment to the new "backed-up" copies on each - you will certainly see a difference, numbers don't lie. Again, you may need a High-Definition television or a high-resolution monitor to actually SEE the difference, but I assure you it's there. I have seen many a 2 or 3 pass CCE encode that still exhibits blockiness or artifacts that could have easily been avoided by more passes. Think about it - if you looked at a page of text for one second, and then tried to recall all of the text you saw; and then looked at the same page for 10 seconds, would you remember more? Yes. And that's precisely what CCE does on multipass VBR - every pass is comparing the original to the "backed-up" video over and over - in an effort to increase overall bitrate and image quality. Basically, if you have never used an encoder extensively, then you have no idea what you're talking about - and no amount of Google-searches will cue you in. Now being that we've gone completely off-topic here, that's all I'm saying about that. You go ahead and encode your movies with DVDShrink or 3 Pass VBR, and I'll do mine 9 pass; and when all anyone has is HDTV's in the near future, and you have to throw away all your backup's because they look like poo, don't come crying to me Why don't you call Pixar and ask them how many variable bitrate passes they do? You'll be shocked.

Post
#132917
Topic
***The Official FAN CREATED DVD Reviews and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/132917/action/topic#132917
Time
Ok folks, I also own a perfectly normal 27" Sony Trinitron, and actually WATCH most movies there - where you can't tell the difference between a DVD and a newer VHS. But I PREVIEW some movies on the 1680x1050 wsxga monitor on my laptop - because it's incredibly high resolution allows me to see the difference between a 3 Mbps DVD rip, and a 7 Mbps retail DVD9. And anything in between. What I've clearly stated is that most of you cannot see all the blocks of backround colors blending together and the erratic edges of allegedly round objects on the screen on your conventional set, and neither can I (mostly). But when you pop in say, Dr. Gonzo's "slightly soft" DVD's, or the first "TR47" set, and then pop in this cut on your pc, you'll see what I mean - even if you can only get 1024x768 (which, incidentally is the most common resolution for most so-called "High Definition" televisions and LCD projectors - poop). Put any of them on a normal television, and they all look pretty much the same. All of this is the byproduct of a combination of Laserdisc player shortcomings, poor capture devices and cables, and what I suspect mostly on this release - encoding, encoding, encoding. There is no substitute for more quality-enhancing passes when it comes to a software encoder. Most professional DVD rendering facilities use hardware encoders, or even the Pro version of our beloved Cinema Craft Encoder.

And "Grinder" : There's a very important reason why games and apps look so much better on a pc monitor, and video usually looks fine on conventional sets - Think about it, shows and movies are sold with those little RBG squares on your tv in mind (go ahead, get close and look.) And games and applications are made with itty, bitty, little pixels in mind - capable of displaying ANY color, and being much smaller than a television "pixel" if you will. Try routing your computer display to your regular television one day and you'll really see what I mean. Then play a DVD through it, and it looks absolutely the same.

What I'm getting at, is that I feel that the image quality of this Cowclops V.2 : Episode IV, does not hold a candle to any of the other "major" backups out there. And only the creator could tell you why. I've seen people use an ungodly low 3 PASSES for their Star Wars LD backups!!!! - And if you've ever used CCE extensively before, you would know that the more computing time you put in, the better your backup will be. The old addage about "you get what you put into it" universally applies. But if all you own is a 19" RCA from 1986, with component inputs, then you shouldn't even care about what I think, because you'll never see the difference (nor could you be reading this!). But if you own a nice, newer 1280x or 1366x HDTV, then you're gonna want to get the first "TR47" or the Dr. Gonzo set, because you will DEFINITELY appreciate the clarity and/or overall quality of those releases much more.

Post
#131948
Topic
***The Official FAN CREATED DVD Reviews and Feedback Thread***
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/131948/action/topic#131948
Time
Title : Cowclops Version 2 : A New Hope Transfer

I just previewed the Cowclops V.2 Episode IV disc, and I must say.......
Poopoo.

I completely disliked it, hated it, couldn't watch it. This is a personal opinion, so please nobody get offended here:
Besides the way-too obvious off-black bars (which you can get past by adjusting contrast as Rik stated), I was seriously taken aback by the amount of blockiness on motion AND still scenes. After seeing other people hype this as the best thing next to the X0, I expected alot more. I don't know if it was Cowclops' encoding, or maybe a rotting LD player, but....very bad. I see they used CCE for the encoder, and it is hands-down the best encoder out there. But I think maybe they didn't do enough passes, or possibly the Q factors were set wrong, or the VBR bias...whatever it was, movies encoded with CCE should definitely not be blocky. I much prefer any other set, because, again, I seriously could not watch this. You know, props for trying, but...whatever.

I certainly hope the X0 guys do AT LEAST the max 9 passes in CCE's SP version, hopefully the max of 14 or whatever is allowed in the corporate, or regular CCE version. Because it sure is a shame when your encoder screws up your meticulously edited and transferred video

Video Rating : * (okay maybe a two)
Audio Rating : **** (nice and loud)
Viewing Equipment : Asus z71v WSXGA 1680x1050 resolution monitor (yeah, that's right, I see ALL video faults).

Needless to say, I will not be wasting any more time or bandwidth downloading the remaining two discs of this set, so if they are awesome - too bad.
Post
#131947
Topic
~~~Segaflip's Newsgroup Posting List~~~
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/131947/action/topic#131947
Time
Segaflip - you are a pimp! Thank you SO much for taking the initiative and posting these many, many, Star Wars discs to the groups for all of us with quick connections and premium accounts to dl (I really hate Torrenting). You are now in the ranks of Darth Osar, Starkiller, and Darth Mallwalker - congrats and mad props to you, my friend. I can't wait to see all the new goodies you'll be adding to a.b.starwars!!! It's good-hearted people like you that make all these rare discs available to those of us not fortunate enough to already own them. You are a blessing to the newsgroups, the Star Wars community, and most of all you keep the Darkside E-Dealers down! Pimp, pimp, pimp-mode-5000.

-Trigger