logo Sign In

calamari

User Group
Members
Join date
11-Apr-2005
Last activity
14-May-2021
Posts
77
Web Site
http://kidsquid.com/

Post History

Post
#225136
Topic
Star Wars DVD Covers
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/225136/action/topic#225136
Time
Originally posted by: boris
What are some of your favourate covers that others have made?
My favorite covers are these by Lord Phillock (originally posted on page 118). They have a simple and clean design that appeals to me:
http://img61.imageshack.us/img61/7396/swtrilogynewkind33qv.png
Unfortunately, it seems that he decided not to share them. My goal is to recreate them (except the spines, my current design better matches ep's 1/2/3) and offer them freely.

Also have you tried TFN?

No, I hadn't. Thanks! I found the ROTJ poster, but its resolution is too low. If anyone has a bunch of poster artwork/logos/etc, please let me know. I can prepay for a CD or DVD and shipping. Of course, I'd probably offer the source images for free on my website, so keep that in mind
Post
#224551
Topic
Star Wars DVD Covers
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/224551/action/topic#224551
Time
Does anyone have a source for poster art and logos? I'd like to do something more with my cover, but I need to move the "Return of the Jedi" text from off the image, and of course I don't want to clip any more of the top off. I also noticed that the saber color had been changed to green (nice job Falle, I didn't even notice until I looked at another poster and saw a blue saber!) I found some covers on page 100 with an untouched poster, but the jpg compression artifacts mean that I can't do much with it.

Unfortunately, since I am just starting to mess around I have very little artwork to trade (and all that I have created is available on my website). However, I can offer free webspace to host other peoples covers. I'm happy to host covers, even if you don't have artwork to offer. And, please, if you have source material (logos, posters, etc), let me know so I can host that too.

Thanks a lot!

Edit: I've posted my source material on the wiki. I hope it is useful in future projects:
http://kidsquid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=covers
Post
#224213
Topic
Star Wars DVD Covers
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/224213/action/topic#224213
Time
Originally posted by: Falle
Originally posted by: calamari
Here is a cover I assembled:

http://kidsquid.com/images/covers/rotj-60dpi.jpg

For those familiar with Falle's excellent covers, you'll notice some similarities, because I borrowed some of his graphics to make my cover: the "Digitally Mastered" logo, the ROTJ poster art, and the spine graphic (from a different set). I manually removed the stars from the spine using the GIMP (this took quite a while!). Then, I imported the graphics into Inkscape and arranged the graphics and text. I used the shareware Panther font for the credits, and spent quite a while tinkering with the alignment, font sizes, and spacing; I think I finally got it.

I was somewhat hesitant to post the cover, as it isn't really all my work. But, if I had access to the artwork and fonts, I would have done it all myself. I decided to post because I figured that people are more interested in variety than copyrights (since pretty much every cover here is a copyright violation anyways). But, if these types of fan edits are unwelcome, please let me know.

Return of the Jedi is my favorite of the trilogy, so I did this cover first, but I plan to finish the other two when I have time.

For a 300dpi PNG version and Inkscape/plain SVG's, please visit my website:

http://kidsquid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=covers

I welcome any feedback. In particular, do all the colors go together okay, or would you suggest any adjustments? I'd like to scan my prequel spines to try to get a closer match with ep. 1/2/3, so that part may change soon.

Thanks!



If you want, I also have the spines for the PT with the same style.. I decided not to make the covers.....


Thanks. I might do the PT sometime, but right now I probably won't.

I've uploaded my 2nd version. Now the only things from Falle's covers are: the "Return of the Jedi" text bitmap, the "VI" bitmap, and the artwork bitmap (btw, is there a source for this art besides scanning VHS tapes?). Now it should match the end of hte PT fairly well. I was not able to scan the 20th centry fox logo in great enough detail to capture the "Home Entertainment" text properly, so I left that off. I also left off a couple (R)'s and a TM. I'd like to include the year and running time, but haven't decided how to do it yet.
Post
#223846
Topic
Star Wars DVD Covers
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/223846/action/topic#223846
Time
Here is a cover I assembled:

http://kidsquid.com/images/covers/rotj-60dpi.jpg

For those familiar with Falle's excellent covers, you'll notice some similarities, because I borrowed some of his graphics to make my cover: the "Digitally Mastered" logo, the ROTJ poster art, and the spine graphic (from a different set). I manually removed the stars from the spine using the GIMP (this took quite a while!). Then, I imported the graphics into Inkscape and arranged the graphics and text. I used the shareware Panther font for the credits, and spent quite a while tinkering with the alignment, font sizes, and spacing; I think I finally got it.

I was somewhat hesitant to post the cover, as it isn't really all my work. But, if I had access to the artwork and fonts, I would have done it all myself. I decided to post because I figured that people are more interested in variety than copyrights (since pretty much every cover here is a copyright violation anyways). But, if these types of fan edits are unwelcome, please let me know.

Return of the Jedi is my favorite of the trilogy, so I did this cover first, but I plan to finish the other two when I have time.

For a 300dpi PNG version and Inkscape/plain SVG's, please visit my website:

http://kidsquid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=covers

I welcome any feedback. In particular, do all the colors go together okay, or would you suggest any adjustments? I'd like to scan my prequel spines to try to get a closer match with ep. 1/2/3, so that part may change soon.

Thanks!
Post
#216955
Topic
Info: found - Revenge Of The Sith in 1080i
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/216955/action/topic#216955
Time
Originally posted by: kmcherry
Apologies for not knowing much about tech--but knowing enough to know how much better the picture is at this ratio--would I be able to burn this to a dual-layer DVD? And would the improvement be noticeable on a regular television?


I doubt that it'd look better on DVD, because you'd still need to convert to a standard DVD resolution and bitrate (so the real DVD probably wins here). Also, TV's aren't really that great for displaying high resolution images. I'd say my Sony Wega is at the higher end of standard TV sets (I love its anamorphic line squeezing feature) but it really struggles on 800x600 from my computer's TV out, 1024x768 is just horrible. Perhaps that is just a limitation of my GeForce4 card tho.

My recommendation: Watch it on your computer monitor. If your computer can keep up, it'll look way better than any standard TV set.
Post
#216395
Topic
Have you sent your letter to Lucasfilm yet?
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/216395/action/topic#216395
Time
Dear Lucasfilm,

Thank you for releasing the original unaltered trilogy on DVD. I have been hoping for a DVD release before my laserdisc player died, and I'm excited to have this opportunity for an upgrade. I hope you see the demand for the theatrical versions of these movies. I'd love to see a high quality HD-DVD or Blu-Ray release when the time comes.

Sincerely,
Jeffry Johnston

p.s. Of course I'm not sending this, but yes, please quit whining already.
Post
#215866
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/215866/action/topic#215866
Time
Originally posted by: boris
I can think of another unresolved detail - though you may have thought of it - the video may not line up between the theatrical and 04 discs. For instance the exact position of the movie on screen may not stretch all the way to both sides... in "patching" you may want to resize the video from one of the DVD's to match the other (it would also be good to give people a choice about which way to do this, for instance splicing the 04 disc into non-anamorphic resized to match the theatrical discs - or splicing theatrical disc into anamorphic resized to match the 04 disc). I only suggest this because if people are wanting to apply relatively "few" patches to the theatrical disc they may not want to have the rest of the theatrical disc re-encoded ... but those using the '04 disc as a base to be patched probably would want to resize the theatrical disc instead.

I hadn't considered using the OUT disc as a base, but it won't be hardcoded, so it shouldn't be a big deal: I will have a configuration file for each movie (so 3 of them, using 2004 as a base). You could make 3 more, using OUT as a base. This will make it possible for others to use the tool in future projects unrelated to Star Wars. It would just be a matter of configuration and project set-up.

Originally posted by: boris
Oh and adding "burnt in" subtitles would be something I'd like to offer as a suggestion for a patch.


Of course. This should be covered by the partial frame re-encoding feature I hope to include. I did some reading on the subject, and this technique is mentioned on the doom9 boards, with a hardware device given as an example that it can be done (it put studio logos/overlays on digital footage, etc). It is very encouraging to me that someone has been able to pull this off. I wasn't sure it was even possible.
Post
#215673
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/215673/action/topic#215673
Time
Just wanted to mention that I've made a little progress on the decoder. Currently it can decode the program stream and pack header/pack. It is able to determine SCR and the type of packet (audio/subpicture, video, padding, etc). It is also able to work with a group of VOB files and move to the next when needed. This is good because then we don't have to worry about file size limits.

So, not very much progress, but it's a start. The next thing I need to do is calculate PTS and DTS and figure out the timing of things. I did an initial test where if the SCR moved backwards, it threw away packets until time moved forward again (to see if that would fix the scroll), and it sorta did, but also other big chunks of the movie were missing, so I have more to learn about timing. Also, there were picture artifacts at the transitions, so that worries me. I was hoping that packets were complete pieces of the movie (I-frame to I-frame for example), but it appears that isn't the case. Anyhow, it was just a quick test to see what would happen... we wouldn't want such a brute force method anyways, because it eliminates choices. If the user wants to keep streams etc, that should be no big deal.

The decoder is written in python: the language is readable, portable (Linux, Windows, cygwin, OSX, etc, we are covered), and doesn't have to be compiled. The program is mostly doing I/O operations, so the tiny bit of interpreted processing happening isn't slowing things down. It takes 2 1/2 minutes to run through each 1GB VOB file on my system (at the same time writing that modified VOB).
Post
#215284
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/215284/action/topic#215284
Time
Time will tell if it is "much better then the laserdisc" but who cares? This is not 10 years ago, and I don't own a laserdisc player...I own a DVD player....


On the last page (I know, what a pain to read back a page, hehe), it was brought up that Spaceballs wasn't an anamorphic transfer and was from the laserdisc master. Sure enough, it isn't anamorphic.. I decided to watch it to see what I thought. While the movie isn't perfect quality, it looks great (and definitely better than any of the laserdiscs I have, you can see the black scan lines on them, this you cannot). The Spaceballs DVD was released in 2000. Star Wars will look at least as good as that thing.. it has to!

IMO, you guys cannot be satisfied.. even if Lucas had the discs pressed in gold, you'd be complaining it wasn't high enough karat.

The quality will be fine. I for one am very glad for this release and will be snatching it up ASAP. It will rock. After December, anyone who didn't buy it will be wishing they did.
Post
#214954
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214954/action/topic#214954
Time
I have not actually seen the 2004 SE's, just the 1997 SE's, and even those only 1-2 times each. I don't remember any color problems, in the theatre I was too distracted by super-mario sarlaacs and explosion rings. A friend of mine has the 2004's, I should borrow them just to see what I think... my icon shows why I could never fully enjoy the 2004 SE's .

Now that I think of it, I have seen parts of the 2004 SE's from the Episode 3 soundtrack bonus DVD... but often clips like that are of lower quality.

All: I've updated the wiki.. it should have pretty much everything discussed so far. If anything is missing or you'd like to change things, I encourage you to do so: SPOT wiki
Post
#214879
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214879/action/topic#214879
Time
THX,

You bring up some very good points. Since I haven't done film editing, it is very helpful to hear what kinds of problems arise and how they are currently being fixed. Thanks!

One step of MPEG-2 encoding (and I guess JPEG as well?) is a DCT, which results in frequency information (and some of that information thrown away, for the compression). What I'd like to try when I get there, is to manipulate that frequency information and see how it affects the image. If I can cause a color change, then we might be in business. If that doesn't work (and of course, it's pretty unlikely to work) I see two options: 1) Match the OUT scenes to the SE (results in less re-encoding, since the OUT scenes will have to be re-encoded anyways), 2) Re-encode afterwards, as you say. I'm also hoping that I can pull off the idea of a partial frame re-encode. I'm still decoding program headers at this point, so I'm pretty far off from decoding frames.

I also wonder if the end result will be better than the OUT disc. But, "I have to try". If none of the MPEG tricks end up working, at least everyone can choose the patches they want, which I hope is a welcome benefit.
Post
#214769
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214769/action/topic#214769
Time
The Linux mpeg-2 editing tools I've found so far aren't capable of doing what we need (for example, they get confused by the episode 3 scroll). I've located the ISO13818 (documents describing the MPEG2 standard), and I'm slowly writing my own decoder, with the goal of understanding MPEG-2. This is going to take a while: MPEG-2 is extremely complicated. But, the documentation is well written and hopefully the knowledge I gain will make advanced editing possible, beyond what we could hope for with standard programs.

I envision a customized film editing program. This would solve several problems at once:
  • Eases editing: Those creating patches won't have to worry about details like numerical offsets, lengths, etc.
  • Cut, join, etc are now a lot easier, because the video/audio can be shown and matched.
  • Edit history can be recorded and "played back". This will hopefully keep us legal? What this means is that rather than store a frame or video, it just stores a list of instructions of things to do (the edit history), so applying a patch plays back the history and the film becomes edited as if the original did it themselves. So, no portion of either video needs to be saved in patches. This should keep the patches small.
  • Should make it possible to do special edits where the video isn't re-encoded, or only the modified portions of the sequence are re-encoded (subject to the restrictions of MPEG-2).
  • The editor would understand the MPEG-2/DVD format so it won't be confused.
  • Editing would be done at the GOP level, so the whole sequence (and changes) could be seen at once.

This may be somewhat unlike a normal paint program. Only certain frames might be editable and editing those frames will affect the others. And, certain effects might be possible while others may not (it all depends on how the compression is done, which I have not even begun to explore). I'll be able to tell more as I learn more. Additionally, the tool set will probably be quite limited compared to common paint/sound editing programs, but that's okay, because we don't most of that stuff anyways. Also, we can go beyond and provide specialized tools as needed.

Anyhow, the first goal is to understand the spec better, then I can see what to expect from there. At the very least, I need to make cut/join tools that work.
Post
#214360
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214360/action/topic#214360
Time
It doesn't make sense to me that if they had a cleaned up copy on film that they wouldn't scan that. They do that sort of thing for DVD's all the time now, so I can't imagine it being that expensive. So, I concluded that they must not have a cleaned up film copy. If that's wrong, then that's pretty lame to stick us with the 1993 master. But, in any case I will be happy to get this thing on DVD, because my laserdisc versions look great and these versions will be even better.
Post
#214358
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214358/action/topic#214358
Time
Originally posted by: Darth Lars
The .edit-files would also be able to contain video sequences, but these should have to be encrypted with DVD data as decryption key (XOR algorithm = simple, superfast, yet totally secure).


Great idea, thanks! I missed this when I first read your post. I kept wondering how I could lock the patches to the OUT DVD, and this is the way. Only someone who actually has a copy will be able to decrypt the patches.

I've reconsidered my boot cd idea. I don't think it is really necessary, and will cause problems (for example, networking setup, USB, lack of NTFS write support, etc). We can hopefully port to Cygwin for Windows users. I have no way to personally port to OS X, but we can deal with that later when the time comes.

I'm glad to see some interest. I've created a very poor (at this point) wiki page, which will hopefully improve as we map things out. I am pretty tired now so I'll have to work on it more later:

http://kidsquid.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=september.personalized.original.trilogy
Post
#214235
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214235/action/topic#214235
Time
Please go back and re-read my post. The expensive part is not pressing a DVD, it's the process of restoring the film again (restoring lost footage, removing rot, etc). They simply cannot release a rotted out anamorphic transfer (which is what we'd get if they used the film in the archive). It is unprofessional and will not be received well. And dollars equal dollars. Dollars don't equal pennies. Again, they are not a charity.
Post
#214224
Topic
ORIGINAL STAR WARS TRILOGY OUT 09/2006 BY LUCASFILM
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214224/action/topic#214224
Time
Perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly, but when they pulled out the film to start making the 1997 Special Editions, didn't they find it all rotted and faded? I remember hearing that they had to undergo a huge cleanup effort to recover the film. They probably did a lot of that cleanup digitally, and at the same time added the "extra special" features. They could probably provide an anamorphic transfer, but it would most likely look awful. What consumer is going to put up with that? Not many.. we would, because there is amazing talent on this board that could fix the flaws, but we are a special group here. They probably viewed the 1993 version, realized how much better it looked, and used it instead.

We might all wish that they'd do the cleanup again, but I doubt they'd break even. They were able to pay for the last time with the theatrical release and then VHS and DVD sales. Remember, if it is too much of a risk, the higher-ups aren't going to go along with it. Releasing the 1993 editions is quick, easy, and doesn't cost nearly as much. As much as we hate it, I think it is the wise business choice. No matter how much money they might have stockpiled, they aren't in the business of losing money. They aren't a charity.

Besides, the laserdisc copies I have (faces) are excellent. And I guess they aren't even the best LD's (Definitives are sometimes better?) So, I'm happy to get the 1993 editions in a timeless digital format than nothing at all. And, it will be a much better transfer than any before possible.. even better than my crazy plans of reading directly off the laserdisc and decoding the signal digitally. We get a digital picture and digital sound. Isn't this what we wanted, even just a month ago? Yes! As an extra bonus, we get the 2004 editions. As much as we personally hate them, a lot of people like the 2004 editions better (really!), so why wouldn't Lucas want to release them on DVD? If you bought them before, then that is your own fault, not Lucas's. Sorry to be harsh, but it's true.

People change, Lucas changes (he had that divorce, has kids growing up, is just growing older). And Lucas is a great film pioneer. He has always been at the bleeding edge of film technology. So, if anyone was going to go back and tinker, why not him? I think he has more than earned that right. If he didn't like to experiment and try new things, we wouldn't even have these films we love today. So you have to take the good with the bad. We are stuck in the past and are resisting change. It's not a bad thing, but we have to put up with the consequences of that choice. That they are even throwing us this bone is wonderful, and sending nasty letters is not going to help things.

Oh, as far as predictions go, here is mine: There will of course be a Blu-ray/HD-DVD release if these formats take off, but it will be the special editions. After that horrible cleanup, they'd have to be idiots not to have stored it digitally in a high resolution. They might make a few more fixes.. but only to the special editions, because that's what they'd have. We won't be seeing them go back to the original films again.
Post
#214205
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214205/action/topic#214205
Time
There were two major problems:
1. The legal issue of breaking DVD copy protection. There are no 100% legal DVD players on Linux that I know of. There is no public DVD-API on MacOS. I don't know about Windows.

I've thought about this. I see two options: either the user can rip the DVD's to their hard drive themselves using whichever program they have, or the disc can download DeCSS from the repository and install it automatically (it wouldn't be stored on the disc anywhere). After the patches are applied, they can either have it burn automatically, or just have the ISO (or the other options I mentioned, Divx, etc). So the Mac user wouldn't need DVD access if they ripped the discs beforehand, and then burned from the generated ISO.

2. For realtime playback, the computer and DVD-playing subsystem has to be fast enough to decode two streams in realtime. If you circumvent DVD copy protection, do you still get hardware acceleration? Does hardware acceleration support multiple streams and cutting in the middle of a GOP?


My system doesn't aim at realtime results, rather choice in edits and high quality results. The patches would be applied and output (and will probably take some time), then afterward you could burn the ISO, convert it to a computer format, etc. So you'd have a copy of your personal edit, generated by the tool. The disc would be running in a text console, so playback wouldn't be possible anyway (well I guess there's always SVGAlib). Playback isn't one of my goals for this project... that is handled better by other apps or hardware players.
Post
#214195
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/214195/action/topic#214195
Time
Originally posted by: zombie84
OCP's Classic Edition might be done well to be remade using the September disks, since the quality will be much closer. Will be interesting to see how close they match up to see if this is viable.


The quality loss that I'm referring to is encoding quality. Ocpmovie's Star Wars: Classic Edition was reencoded to fit on a single layer. The stars look like weird jpeg block artifacts and there are other encoding artifacts everywhere. The quality of the original work done is great, but ruined by squeezing it down to a single layer disc.. also, I disagree with some of the changes, as I'm sure others here do. And, the sound quality is poor (I guess it was recorded from the laserdisc?) So the edition has some problems.

I'm proposing a system that allows choice in what edits take place, what postprocessing is done, menus/special features, and how the result is output. The idea is to give more choices, not less (so thanks for mentioning those other output formats, any format that mencoder/ffmpeg are capable of outputting would be automatically available).

Those numbers (15 frames/0.5 sec) were taken from the mpgtx man page. I admit to little knowledge of film editing, but I didn't want to spend a bunch of time figuring things in detail out for a project nobody was interested in. If there is interest, I will do the research needed to make sure it turns out well. The last thing we'd want is to make a bunch of patches then find out that cutting them in caused the sound to go out of sync, glitches in playback, etc. I remember some posts by Ocpmovie where he had trial and error time resyncing the audio for Return of the Jedi. My system will have to figure it out automatically, so there are certainly some technical hurdles to overcome.

If the loss of credit/fame for a patch is a concern: there can be a comments field for each patch for describing the patch, methods used (whatever, really), there can be a standard template, and the author of the edit will be right at the top.
Post
#213986
Topic
Idea: Personalized preservation possible with September 2006 OT DVD's
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/213986/action/topic#213986
Time

Perhaps I’m one of the few, but I’m actually glad to receive both the 2004 and OUT discs. It opens up many new possibilities for doing preservation releases. Consider this:

  • Everyone now has access to the exact same digital master copies.

  • Everyone now has access to both movies.

  • I didn’t buy the 2004 versions before (thank you laserdiscs)

Why does this matter? Well, we didn’t get the anamorphic film transfer we wanted, so IMO Ocpmovie’s approach of using the 2004 discs and splicing in original footage still seems to be the best bet. But now that we have two digital sources, perhaps it can be done with more choice! Here are the proposed features:

  • The main feature will be selectable patches. This will be applied to the 2004 DVD to improve it. We don’t need to distribute the entire movie… just the patches. This should mean a much smaller download. I’m working on a solution to this, but it is still in the early planning stages. Many MPEG/AC3 details remain to be worked out (see below). New ideas for patches will come along in the future, but the old patches still remain and are just as usable, so work does not have to be duplicated (for example, once a patch exists so that Han shoots first, it doesn’t have to ever be redone, unless a change applies to that specific scene).

  • Basing edits on patches means customized editions, based on personal preferences. For example, if you want to see a ring around the death star explosion (or like garbage mattes, Hayden Christensen, etc), you can deselect that patch… each edit will be optional. Since we can’t all agree on which changes to keep, menus, special features, etc, I propose choices for each. If it looks like something can’t be changed, bring that up.

  • Again, we don’t have to distribute the original movies, so I hope this avoids a lot of legal problems, or failing that, at least personal moral issues.

  • I envision a Linux live CD, with everything ready to go, you just supply the September DVD’s… custom made for our preservation project. Why Linux? Tools will generally need to run from command line to be automated decently, and more of these types of programs and libraries are available for Linux… also, I’ve switched to Linux so have no desire to work on a Windows version. If a PowerPC version is desired, this should be possible, although I don’t have the hardware necessary for this. I’d be willing to work with someone to port over whatever I came up with.

  • The parts that aren’t patched will not need to be re-encoded: the quality of the '04 version is preserved.

  • Post processing options can be made available (contrast/color changes, sharpness, etc). These effects would be separate so that they could be applied to scenes independently from the patches above. Of course, these would require a complete re-encode of the video, so perhaps they are not great. I bring it up because someone mentioned the 2004 versions being too bright and clean vs the originals.

  • Other re-encoding options are possible, if really desired, such as 4:3 P & S. Also export to other computer formats: Divx, Quicktime, etc.

  • Audio: Most of the above will apply as well. For example, I personally prefer C3P0 not to tell Obi-Wan how to disable the death star (but Ocpmovie does), so audio options need to be available. Also, it would be interesting to have alternate audio tracks such as 5.1, audio commentaries, etc.

  • Have a choice between: Dual layer, 2 disc DVD5, or Dual layer -> single layer requantization (i.e. DVD9 -> DVD5). The only reason I don’t stick with Ocpmovie versions is because the single layer re-encoding of the movie makes it look awful.

  • Choice of menus and special features.

  • Add other files to the disc (PC DVD content, jacket covers, etc).

  • Finally, burn the DVD’s, write an ISO, Divx, etc

Of course there are some problems:

  • You’d have to buy the new September DVD’s. I know not everyone is excited about that… but it is obvious that this approach requires it.

  • All the great fixes of the past will have to be redone… again. But, hopefully this would be the last time!

  • Doesn’t solve the NTSC vs PAL problem. I see no way to resolve this.

  • I’m pretty happy with the Faces laserdiscs. Maybe they are good enough?

Unresolved details:

  • How are the patches stored? As movie clips, still frames, diff’s to frames from the 2004/September discs? Is there a way to distribute patches that stays legal?

  • What about subtitles? These might be quite difficult to integrate with the movie.

  • Chapters? Do we need to change the chapter stops or are the originals fine?

  • Does it matter if the program is text or gui based? It would be a lot easier to use text/curses based dialog tools (such as seen for Debian/Ubuntu Linux installers, make menuconfig, etc). Could always go GUI later if there is a demand.

  • Editing granularity, is splitting on I-Frames okay? From what I read this means that each patch would cover about 15 frames (about 0.5 seconds of video). There might be ways of working around this… I need to become more familiar with what is possible.

  • Need to find AC3 cut/join software.

  • Anything proposed that nobody cares about? No reason to unneeded extra work…

  • Is anyone interested in this project (i.e. those that would be creating patches)?

I appreciate your constructive feedback and ideas.

Thanks!

Post
#148352
Topic
Requesting extremely technical laserdisc information
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/148352/action/topic#148352
Time
Hi,

I'm curious if anyone has technical documentation on the following topics:

1) How (exactly) the data is stored on a CLV laserdisc, including details such as track widths, gaps, etc. In other words, if I were crazy enough to try to build my own laserdisc reader, is there enough information to do it?

2) How the video and digital audio tracks are encoded in the raw stream, sync information, etc. I need to be able to figure out how to separate the audio and video.

3) How to decode an NTSC image from 2), and how to decode the digital audio track from 2), so I can do the analog to digital conversions (and hopefully digital to digital for the audio, depending on how it is stored).

In other words: I'm curious if there is enough technical information available for me to build my own laserdisc reader and decoder?

If I can digitize the analog laserdisc, and have the necessary docs, then I can write computer programs to do the rest: split video/audio, decode the NTSC stream, and do an A/D conversion. If I can pull this off, it should mean a nearly perfect copy of the laserdiscs.

I also will need to construct the physical reader. I figure I can buy a second laserdisc player and sacrifice it for the project, but I'd rather not do that until I can obtain the necessary technical documentation.

If the documentation I'm looking for is available as some sort of US or international standard, please let me know that too

Thanks a lot.
Post
#103549
Topic
Trilogy marathon (Tucson, AZ)
Link
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/103549/action/topic#103549
Time
Haha.. sorry, college abbreviation. CS=computer science. So, are there any programming jobs over where it's nice (pine trees, in Texas? )

Slightly back on topic, the semester is winding down a bit (finals still loom, but that's next week), so I've had the chance to mess with some pre-movie entertainment (slides and ep3 trailers). I've encoded the freebie Quicktime ROTS teaser and a much better quality HDTV official trailer to xVCD (I don't have a DVD burner, but xVCD works decently when given 720x480 rez and 2500k bitrate. It looks just like DVD, maybe a tad blocky with too much action). Also putting together a VCD slideshow of spoiler pics.. hopefully the soundtrack will arrive soon, and I'll be able to play that during the slides. I can hardly wait!

TTYL,
Jeff