caligulathegod

User Group: Members
Join date: 22-Dec-2005
Last activity: 2-Mar-2024
Posts: 298

Post History

Post: #272425
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/272425/action/topic#272425
Time: 17-Feb-2007 12:13 PM

It will be announced here. Depends on how fast the mail is. It went out of here a week ago.

Post: #271193
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271193/action/topic#271193
Time: 11-Feb-2007 2:04 PM

Yeah, and for the four or five commentaries (usually Mark or Carrie) that were already at correct speed on PAL (hence slowed down now on NTSC), I spot corrected them back to correct pitch.

Post: #271047
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/271047/action/topic#271047
Time: 10-Feb-2007 10:46 AM

Not yet. I mailed it out to Jambe on Friday, so it has to get from Ohio to the UK. I was also going to send a copy to DigitalFreak to help with distribution. Hopefully it will spread from there.

Post: #270529
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/270529/action/topic#270529
Time: 8-Feb-2007 11:04 AM

I've been snowed in the last couple days and will be making the post office later today or tomorrow (haven't even made it to work). I took the opportunity to scrub through the audio to ensure better synch throughout (subtracted a frame or two of audio here and there). It was odd, a scene in the beginning would be in perfect synch, as would a scene at the end, but a scene in the middle would be out of synch. Then the scene next to it would be in synch, and so on. I suspect the piecemeal structure of all the multiple sources must have thrown my software off. Anyway, I scrubbed the entire film twice (whereas I had only spot-checked it before) and then I took the newly synched wav and used Audition spectral frequency and scrubbed away imperfections such as gaps and pops and abrupt cuts. There was a short gap in the soundtrack on the recreated scene of Han and Leia in Bespin (just before he says "Sit down") I fixed, and Jeremy Bulloch's comment was sharply abrupt, so I smoothed it. I did them one at a time as i heard them and saw them on the spectral frequency display (an undesired pop would show up as a spike that hit the top of the scale, while a desired pop would not). I also went through and individually pitch-shifted the four or five commentaries that were slowed down (usually Carrie and Mark) that sounded awful. I was using pitch bender and I made it through an hour and a half before I noticed it was lengthening the wav, so i had to start over using pitch shifter, which didn't. I didn't do that for voices I wasn't familiar with, just Carrie and Mark since they sounded the worst.

Despite all the trouble, I'm very glad I did it progressive. On my TV, there's none of those interlacing artifacts such as combing or double images. As big a pain in the ass it was, I think I did it right. It's a true NTSC rather than an IFO trick that may not work on everyone's system. There's also no frame skipping or judder from repeated frames.

The only thing I'm not as happy with is that audition does those nice transitions between menus and they look good on my computer, but there's the ever so slightest pause when I watch it on TV. I don't think you want me to delay it while I teach my self DVDLab Pro, so I'll have to live with it.

Anyway, the slight delay here will help not steal any thunder away from Jambe's Jedi release (which I had pledged not to watch until I finished BE). I hope you guys all like it.

Post: #269841
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269841/action/topic#269841
Time: 5-Feb-2007 12:37 PM

I have big news. Pending approval by Jambe (since it is going to represent his work), I have finished. I'm burning a test disc now and will watch it tonight, then it's going to Jambe and NYDig for distribution.

Thanks ever so much for all of your patience. I had some major glitches with damned near every step but I perservered and got it fixed.

Post: #269296
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269296/action/topic#269296
Time: 1-Feb-2007 8:56 PM

Originally posted by: Sojourn
Would it be possible to make the soundtrack as long as the video (i.e. add some noise to the beginning or end, wherever it's missing), sync it up, and then cut off what you had added once it was synchronized?

Take care,
Sojourn

I'll try that in the morning. Right now it's rendering the actual DVD. I'll take a stab at that in the morning and see if I have better results.

Post: #269280
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269280/action/topic#269280
Time: 1-Feb-2007 7:18 PM

That's been my problem. Obviously, that's the first thing I did but it didn't work. Turns out the soundtrack isn't the exact length of the movie. It's a few seconds short. When you start talking about being a couple frames out of synch then it gets kind of tedious. Plus, I don't want to completely remux the soundtrack and video every attempt, so I plug it into Womble to check synch. That finally looks pretty good. I put it back into Encore, and I'm seeing the slight off synch. I'm actually doing the chapters now, then I'm going to render while I'm at work tonight. Hopefully it will be complete in the morning when I get home, then I'll check it out to see if it worked.

Post: #269276
Topic: Notes on converting Building Empire from PAL to NTSC
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269276/action/topic#269276
Time: 1-Feb-2007 6:52 PM

Are you sure? I'm listening to it right now, and all the characters sound like chipmunks. It doesn't sound pitch corrected to me.

Post: #269275
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269275/action/topic#269275
Time: 1-Feb-2007 6:49 PM

I'm back to work on it. I'd taken some time off because it was driving me nuts. I was waiting on Dig's conversion to see if it was better that what I've got.

I have had no problem with a straight conversion. Procoder did it very well. My issue is that we WANTED to change the frame rate and sound, not just make it play PAL frame rate and speed on NTSC sets. I'm watching it again and the PAL speedup drives me nuts, as it does others. It took me about a day to completely reauthor the DVD from scratch. I took on the challenge of converting the sound, too, and that's been the issue. None of those links really mention how to do it. They are all methods for just getting the NTSC to accept PAL. After I started, I just didn't want to accept failure. I got a nice frame rate conversion, finally, but then the synch would drift. A simple convert of the sound to the 24.976 speed just doesn't work, either.

Anyway, I'm rendering now. If this doesn't work, then I'm going back to my regular speed version just so it will get out there. We'll know soon.

Post: #269163
Topic: //RETURNING TO JEDI\\: NTSC & PAL DVD
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/269163/action/topic#269163
Time: 1-Feb-2007 8:03 AM

I had the BE done over a month ago but we were wanting the PAL speedup corrected. That's what was causing the problem. Every technique I was able to find info on used methods that didn't alter the sound. Anyway, it was driving me nuts, so I stepped away briefly to come at it again fresh.

Can't wait to see this one.

Post: #268340
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/268340/action/topic#268340
Time: 28-Jan-2007 1:12 PM

That IFO edit doesn't alter the sound which was the reason behind this delay. Plus, I wanted to ensure compatibility with the largest number of players. I'm not sure if that will work in everyone's player.

Post: #268084
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/268084/action/topic#268084
Time: 26-Jan-2007 4:47 PM

Cool. I'll compare it to what I've got.

Post: #267992
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267992/action/topic#267992
Time: 26-Jan-2007 6:45 AM

It's pretty much done, but if there's a better way, I'm all ears. I want it as good as I can get since the wait has been longer than I expected.

It's PAL 25i. Multiple sources so I'm not sure what was originally NTSC. I wanted to simply convert to 23.976p with the sound stretched to correct the PAL pitch and tempo to NTSC. If possible, I wanted to remain in MPG2 and keep it progressive (I've used DGPulldown to set flags to make the player do the 2:3 pulldown).

Here's where I'm at:

The original video is at about 3.5 kbits/sec and sound is AC3 192 kbps. I used TMPGenc 2.5 to deinterlace the 25fps to about double the original bitrate, then ran it through again to convert to 23.976fps and back to 3.5 kbits/s. I then used DGPulldown to flag it so that players will see it as 29.97i. For some reason, TMPGenc seemed to have rounded it up to 23.98 so the soundtrack I'd converted on an earlier attempt using VirtualDub (HuffYUV) didn't work anymore. Converting the soundtrack from 25fps to 23.976fps caused synch to drift. It was like it was too long. I had decompressed the AC3 to wav and used GoldWave to stretch it to the exact length of the movie, which caused the same issue. I then tested a demuxed copy of the original PAL version and noticed that the soundtrack didn't quite line up with the video in the first place, even though the synch stayed perfect. I then went back to my NTSC version and stretched the wav to the same length as the video, minus a few seconds, which seemed to help. I have about 4 or 5 test scenes (beginning, pre-middle, middle, post-middle, and end) marked in Womble that I use to check synch, so when I finish a new wav I plug it into the timeline and test it. I got it to within a few frames (I wish Womble had a visual wav line so I could see peaks rather than listen for them) and then would tweak it a few thousandths at a time to get it closer and closer.

The rest of the DVD material, I just used either Procoder or NeroRecode, which both give smooth non-jerky playback while allowing use of the original sound. I didn't want to alter Jambe's work in the extras at all. I only wanted to convert the main film with sound to NTSC speed and pitch. Only real issue is that a couple scenes of commentary were not sped up on the original PAL, so the Empire Strikes Back sound is good, but then a couple times a slowed down Mark Hamill or Carrie Fischer will make a comment. It's an unfortunate compromise. When I get the entire thing encoded, I'll check out both versions and see which is better: Chipmunk movie or normal movie with the occasional s-l-o-w-e-d down comment.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. If there's a more efficient way, I'd genuinely like to know. I couldn't find any guides online that did what I wanted it to do. Most used methods that jerked, or didn't alter the sound.

Post: #267946
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267946/action/topic#267946
Time: 25-Jan-2007 9:44 PM

Is he doing the sound conversion? I was able to easily do it where I didn't have to alter the sound. Took a little over an hour and it looked good. It's trickier doing it with the sound conversion. I researched it as much as I could, and nearly everything I found recommended what I had done without altering the sound, or doing AVISYNTH scripts. Other methods caused a stutter which was unacceptable. Or there were methods that tricked players by the use of flags. I'm sure I've seen threads with guides in the past, but I couldn't find any that did what I wanted.

Post: #267896
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267896/action/topic#267896
Time: 25-Jan-2007 6:20 PM

I had tried a straight 25 to 23.976 convert and it was off. When I did it for the AVI HuffYUV file, it did work exactly. For some reason, it didn't when I discarded that and used TMPGenc.

Post: #267781
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267781/action/topic#267781
Time: 25-Jan-2007 12:01 PM

I demuxed the AC3 and converted it to WAV using Besweet, then I used GoldWave's timewarp feature to stretch the sound to the same length as the converted movie, setting it so that it did not correct pitch. For some reason, the synch was drifting. I could remove a few frames worth of sound every ten minutes (which I really didn't want to do, anyway), but it kept drifting. Then I took the demuxed version of the original PAL soundtrack and noticed that it wasn't the quite the same length as the PAL movie, so I knew where my error was. The soundtrack ends before the end of Jambe's production credit. So, I took the original sound and would stretch it out to the NTSC length, minus a few seconds, and then test it. It finally got close enough that I started making more minute adjustments (always to the original wav, so I wasn't reprocessing the same file multiple times) to get it within a few frames. I'm only working on this part a few minutes a day lately because I'm in training at work, so I don't have as much free time. It's looking pretty close right now. I'll probably be done tonight. It sounds more painstaking than it is. I used TMPGenc to get it to a true 24fps progressive, then ran it through DGPulldown to set the 3:2 pulldown flags. I really didn't see the point in interlacing it to 29.97i. Then I worked on the sound. If I ever do it again I've got all my trial and error done, and figured out what seems to work.

Post: #267754
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267754/action/topic#267754
Time: 25-Jan-2007 6:49 AM

The soundtrack doesn't seem to be as long as the video. The video is 2:16:43.40 and the audio is 2:16:42.76. The original audio was 2:11:05.34ish. So that's a 5 minute adjustment plus that throws it off by almost a second if I had put them at the same length. It will be finished this evening, I think.

Post: #267720
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267720/action/topic#267720
Time: 24-Jan-2007 6:48 PM

Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
Caligula,

Any luck?

Digi

Yeah, I think I finally did. I got the sound pretty close, then I've started adjusting the sound a milisecond or two at a time. I might be a frame or two off now, so another run or two should do it. I swear, I love this GoldWave. It's so much easier than Audition and more precise. Much quicker, too. Takes 3-5 minutes to render, plus another 5 minutes to save. I then take the saved file and plug it into Womble to test synch. I have about 4 scenes I use to test the sync. One even has a clapper board. It's actually almost good enough but one scene with Imperial officers ("No ship that size has a cloaking device") seems to be less forgiving than other scenes when it comes to the synch, so I want to get it right on.

Post: #267119
Topic: Ep 3 death star !
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/267119/action/topic#267119
Time: 21-Jan-2007 6:32 PM

First one took 20 years, second took 4. Two words: Learning Curve.

Post: #266955
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/266955/action/topic#266955
Time: 20-Jan-2007 11:04 PM

Yeah, but now I'm trying to get the sound in synch. It loses a second or two or five as the film goes not matter how I adjust it. Ugh. I have to programs to fix it, but it's a tedious process. It takes 20 minutes for each recode and save of the soundtrack in GoldWave or Audition only to find it's still slightly off. If I do Returning to Jedi, it's getting the old method. This way is too much trouble. The old method took me about a good day or two and it was done. If by the end of the week, it's still causing me problems, I'm plugging in my old transfer and considering it done.

Post: #266437
Topic: Greetings from Wookie Groomer; Split Screen Project (Released)
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/266437/action/topic#266437
Time: 18-Jan-2007 8:11 AM

You're link is bad. Here's the right link:

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/guide-dallas-titles-59.htm

You've got an extra "http" in there.

Post: #265751
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/265751/action/topic#265751
Time: 14-Jan-2007 7:15 PM

Ok, after weeks of trial and error I finally got the video to be 24fps progressive. The sound is slightly off from my original, so I'll have to adjust it by 5 seconds or so. The video takes 5-7 hours to encode (on slow-high quality) each time so I'd have to do each trial while I was at work or while I was asleep which is what took so long. Turns out I was trying to do too much at once. What ended up working was deinterlacing, resizing, and making it progressive 25fps at double the bitrate first run, then a second run at converting to 24fps with no frame adjust at the final bitrate. It was originally deinterlacing and reencoding each field of 50fps as a single frame at 24fps making it print each frame twice. I'd only get half a film. That happened three straight times.

As I'd said before, my other times of tranferring PAL to NTSC used the techniques that didn't alter sound. It was quite a bit more of a challenge doing it this way without getting the stutter. I'm now going to use DGpulldown to apply 3:2 pulldown flags to the video rather than converting to 29.97fps interlaced. Hopefully it won't intruduce any judder above and beyond your native NTSC.

I'll keep the thread updated to the final step. We're almost there.

Post: #265394
Topic: ***//BUILDING EMPIRE\\: PAL & NTSC DVD - NEW EDITION NOW ONLINE! ***
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/265394/action/topic#265394
Time: 11-Jan-2007 10:07 PM

I've been doing trial and error on different applications and I think I'm close. I think I've figured out the problem that had halted my authoring and I might be close on a breakthrough on the 24fps progressive mpg encode. I've learned so much about encoding the last week or so it's scary. I know exactly what I want it to do, and I think I almost have TMPGEnc bent to my will. TMPGEnc is just so freakin' slow that it takes forever to see the results of the latest trial. Each one gets closer.

Post: #265281
Topic: The Amazing Spider-Man: A Spence Edit (Released)
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/265281/action/topic#265281
Time: 11-Jan-2007 8:44 AM

Spider-Man 1 wasn't perfect but I found it enjoyable. Raimi is very idiosyncratic as a filmmaker. It's not going to hurt it to be tightened up a bit, especially concerning the villain (although I'm alarmed at the tendency of most fan edits here to want to completely de-humorize everything. Why do we geeks want every thing so deadly serious?). They were still finding their way. But Spider-Man 2 is a masterpiece. It nailed Spider-Man almost perfectly. When I read complaints about Spider-Man 2 being too Soap Opera-ish, I have to wonder at the commentator's familiarity with Spider-Man. Spider-Man is not supposed to be a pure action movie.

Post: #265264
Topic: The Amazing Spider-Man: A Spence Edit (Released)
Link: https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/265264/action/topic#265264
Time: 11-Jan-2007 6:26 AM

I just have to comment on the "soap opera" aspects of the films. That kind of defines Spider-Man. He's always been different than other superheroes. While Thor is out fighting Loki and the Fantastic Four is taking a spin in their hover car fighting gods, Spider-Man has to worry about making the rent and taking care of his elderly aunt May. He has to worry about his girlfriend and other mundane problems. In other words: he's US. Spider-Man is not meant to be a video game where he just kicks ass and takes names. Spider-Man is the best comic hero precisely because his life reflects his readers while being a wish-fulfilment fantasy. I think the films, especially the second one, have perfectly captured Spider-Man.