csd79

iirc Mike’s always said that the stabilization had to be done by hand. I think he used the image registration software to fix warping.

He now says (at 21:32) he had to register all elements of each frame by hand.
https://youtu.be/G3W_O-tp0_g?t=1253

But what he describes after this is manual gate weave reduction. If you want to align every feature of the frame, you need something like a grid-based transformation, which is very hard to do consistently by hand over 1000’s of frames.

Maybe his tool did automatic registration, but with the option to override the transformation when the program does something wrong. That would mean he actually had to really verify it frame by frame and make corrections before composition.

I might be mistaken, but it seems in this new YouTube video he contradicted himself on a couple of things. Before he said the alignment of sources were performed with a semi-automatic software using the method of image registration - there even was a video demonstrating it on the SW logo. In this latest videocast he said he did the alignment manually. Also, earlier he seemed sure that he couldn’t get any additional detail from the o-neg, but now he seems to think otherwise.

Also, the difference between the raw scan of the crawl and the restored version wasn’t just ‘stacking sources’, he used a cleaner version of every line of text from earlier in the sequence to fix those deteriorated top lines.

I believe the JSC contained the theatrical audio for TESB and ROTJ, and the 85 remix for SW. I didn’t want to include more versions of the same mix as it would’ve used to much space.

Back when I did the bulk of the work, I was planing to include subs, and then I forgot about it. Obviously all the discs had subs for the alien language bits.

Update: I upgraded to a more spaceous Google Drive account, and now all my captures are available from there. Also, althor1138 kindly offered to put them on Spleen & Resilio.

ZigZig said:
I love the idea of being able to switch from one version to another, it is soooooo niiiiiice! Thank you very much!
About the capture, is it still based on a CLD-2950, or have you upgraded your installation since 2014? What post-treatments (comb filter, IVTC, etc.) do you apply?
Cheers!

Hi! At the moment, only the Technidisc track is uploaded, as I don’t have enought space on Google Drive for the whole thing (but I will soon). As for your other questions, check out the text file under the last link to learn how the sausage was unmade. 😄

So, this project silently evolved into an obsession with different transfers of the trilogy. I ended up buying one issue for every transfer that ever got released in the US - 5 for SW, 3-3 for the sequels. The I got a different capture card, re-captured the whole collection at least once, some versions twice…

I had the idea of synching the different versions to the most complete one - that is, the Faces LD - and muxing them into a single file as video tracks. So you can switch between the different captures while watching the movie. Then, when I was almost finished synching the audio tracks I ran out of gas somehow, and the project lay dormant for almost two years. Then I moved to another country…

Now the whole thing is finished, but I don’t know how to share it yet. My home connection is crappy, so P2P is not an option. But meanwhile, I figured I’d upload the Technidisc version to Google Drive in case anyone’s still interested. All my captures are filtered so sorry if it’s not your taste. But anyway, PM me if you want the whole file (1.4GB). The audio track is the '85 home video mix.

Sample: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xYc4tLIQ4fu6T0wzR4wLzrroAbYg9UoV

And just to give you an impression of the multiple video track-thing, here is a sample from what I call sw-gsd (Star Wars in Glorious Standard Definition): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TQYd9pNwRJTInFU4qLvfBOC8lYWMDcMR
MPC-HC has great support for multiple video tracks.

Details: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aS_v-Dm0ZDALD1eHTCvOYGSqfbeicUg2

puzosep said:

A birodalom visszavág narrátoros(!) változatából egy részlet!

Videó: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEtohIff5lc

Strangely, the narrator recites the exact same translation that was made for the dub they did for the original hungarian cinema release.

Please could you add me to the list as well?

Do you plan on watching the movie with an open mind? I’m getting an angry old man, yelling at sky vibe here.

The funny thing is, I was thinking about the movie during the whole day and by now I am softened up and ready to see it again. So I guess whatever JJ & Co. is doing, it works! People want to see this thing, yeah!

But this time it’s gonna be 2D.

Just got home from a midnight screening (in the UK). I was ready to fall in love with everything SW again, but actually this movie got me angry more than anything. There are many great moments in it, but then it constantly switches back to meh.

The whole story is not designed to make all that much sense, good luck for the authors of the sequels to tie everything up. Some basic things are just left hanging in the air (if there is a new Republic now, how the First Order and the Resistance came to be etc). First I thought that Rey was a Jedi student as well and after Kylo’s turn to the dark side she was placed on Jakuu with her memories suppressed to hide and protect her, and the Falcon was there as sort of an escape option in case she gets in trouble. But no, it’s all just a coincidence.

All in all it felt like scenes from a never-before-seen SW movie cut into a long episode of Dr Who. After every good moment there comes a letdown. Can I have my money back? Also how is that OT restoration comming?

Could you post another comparison with a frame that contains facial details, like a close shot of LUHs face?

Here is the archive of my work files: link.

The files 'thx-a.avs' and 'thx-b.avs' contain the averaging of 5 sources, IVTC, rainbow reduction and global stabilisation (by G-force, actually). 'thx-stage2.avs' contains the rest.

My only real regret is that I couldn't figure out a good way to reduce ringing.

Regarding the sharpening, I don't think it looks good at all. But I did the MKV with a high bitrate so anyone who wants to alter it or convert it to DVD or whatever can have a good starting point. So if you want to sharpen it... :)

So how does NTSC-Japan's IRE 0-100 (0-235) fit into this laserdisc capture for NTSC-US IRE 7.5-100 (16-235)? In the capture or post-processing?

 That's a good question. The capture levels I used were set using the color bars and ramp from the Video Essentials LD. I think AfterEffects converted the image to RGB using 16 as the black level, and it looked fine. Actually I lowered the shadow blacks a bit because blacks were almost always above 0%.

One possible explanation might be that the transfer was made in the US and they reused it in Japan without conforming it to IRE 0 black.

Given the stories how they chopped off the original crawl from '77 prints, and then re-released them with the new crawl, I would say 'no'.

Spaced Ranger: 

The image resolution is 704x384, and has an intended pixel AR of 40:33 (anamorphic widescreen NTSC). So the playback image size should be 704x317. That's what I set as display width/height in the MKV file.

Also, I believe most players expect content to be encoded with 16-235 luma range by default, because that's broadcast standard. With both MPC-HT (Win7) and VLC (OS X) the colors looked fine to me. Also both player resized the video correctly.

May I ask what player do you use?

The 1995 Japanese LD seems to be the same transfer as the US one that was the basis of Angrysun’s earlier DVD. My aim was to produce a cleaner looking capture with proper color. I also made two alterations: I replaced the Warner logo with the one seen on the Blu-ray, and changed the the coloring of the opening credits to green.

The capture shows noticable ringing.

Video source … 1995 Japanese CLV LD, NJWL-11162
format … 704x384 anamorphic NTSC, 23.976fps, x264 @ 3168kbps
Audio source … Angrysun DVD
format … 1.0, 48kHz, FLAC
LD player … Pioneer CLD-2950, via s-video
TV tuner … Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1250
AviSynth … 5-capture median, manual IVTC, rainbow & dot crawl
reduction, depan, partial spot removal, noise
reduction, upscaling, additional chroma denoising
on selected shots
AfterEffects … color tweaks, manual dirt removal on opening credits,
Kinney logo

Final result is a two-part MKV file. PM me for links.

sample

And I need the Hungarian TV-Version because of the 4:3 picture and the hungarian opening crawls from the prequels.

 The hungarian crawls are included on the BD set with seamless branching, but only for the prequels. For the OT, they are narrated.

Regarding the Hungarian versions, you almost certainly will not find these recorded I'm afraid. I've never seen them on hungarian torrent sites. Some DVD versions of the 97SE (known to members of this forum as TB I think) with hungarian audio muxed on them were popular back in the days though.

Sorry guys for the confusion, probably my explanation could have been cleaner. Those bad frames occur within a ~8sec period, so I think there might be some minor damage on the disc that causes the player to loose track sometimes. The frames could be repaired completelly by shifting the right field vertically back to the right position (there was one frame where both fields needed a shift).

Here is the pattern of their occurance:

capture 1:        45714 45739, 45756,               45805, 45829, 45846 45871
capture 2: 45691, 45714 45739, 45756, 45763, 45780, 45805,        45846 45871
capture 3:        45714 45739, 45756,        45780, 45805,        45846 45871
capture 4:        45714 45739, 45756,        45780, 45805,        45846 45871
capture 5: 45691, 45714 45739, 45756, 45763, 45780, 45805, 45829, 45846 45871

(This should be viewed with a non-proportional font.)

So only capture 5 has all the bad frames. IMO this is not a difference in pressings, this is just some problem specific to my copy.

The final image size was simply calculated based on the numbers in the PAR article on Wikipedia. Before resizing there is anti-aliasing with NNEDI3, which doubles the image size vertically. I tried to do the final resize with and without keeping the side bars and since I couldn't see any difference in detail, I cropped them.

The basic color correction is inspired by Moth3r's method, but I didn't really calculate anything, except for the chroma shift, but those are both less then 1.0 so I only included them in the script as 'notes'. The rest of the tweaks were made by comparing the histogram and vectorscope of the disc's SMPTE pattern to those of the standard color bars generated by Avisynth. In the following images, the sharper readings are those of the standard bars, and the pale overlay represents my capture. Raw on the left, corrected on the right.

Both luma and chroma comparisons were made on the first frame of the color bars segment from Side C. I noticed that after the first frame luma contrast starts dropping, until a couple of seconds later it stops. Meanwhile the chroma stays the same. I did the tweaks with the first frame (highest contrast) because its white level corresponds with flash frames from the movie better. The next image shows the fall of contrast in the color bars pattern on the disc.

I made a quick comparison clip with huffyuv, to demonsrate what is lost with all the filtering. Personally the only negative I can see is the loss of percieved sharpness caused by NNEDI, but obviously everyone has his/her own preferences. With Msycamore's new version and Poita's capture, I guess eventually everyone will get what he/she likes. :)

Re-examining the avs script for this scene, I realised that noise reduction was already lower than it was for most of the rest of the movie.

dropbox

or

filedrop

And, if anyone's interested, my avs scripts:

swe-avs

ElectricTriange: Yes, that is the temporal filtering. I might try to redo the first desert scenes with lower settings. It's not an easy thing though, because those parts are the dirtiest in the whole capture (besides that speeder flyby shot in Mos Eisley).

g-force said:

This is all very exciting, csd79! Unfortunately, there is so much compression on that dropbox clip, it's hard to gauge any quality from it.

I compressed that clip with x264 crf 17, so the final DVD will not look any better I'm afraid.