g-force

msycamore said:

Chewtobacca said:

Why don't you convert to RGB to perform your color correction and then back for encoding? The quality loss is minor, in my opinion, and more than worth it.

Yeah, some parts might be in need for it.

Thanks for all the comments! Will try to make it more presentable then. The battle against the red continues in the Jundland Wastes: http://www.sendspace.com/file/a5fnir

Anyone got any theory what could have caused a frame to go missing like that in my previous encode, a bug in HC Enc? it still baffles me.

That looks great! Chewtobacca is right, if RGB is easier for you to work in, use RGB. YUV can be a bitch, but I actually think it is MORE intuitive once you've used it a while. Check out LaTo's SmoothAdjust for Avisynth if decide you want to stay in YUV and keep some YUV color charts handy while making your adjustments. I've also seen some excellent skin tone corrections by others here, so hopefully they'll weigh in.

and, I hope your missing frame is not a problem with HCenc, that's my favorite encoder!

-G

bkev said:

OK, I'm downloading this as we speak. But I have to bite. What makes this remastered vs. the official release on the blu-rays? Does it lack the obnoxious border (this is a trend I REALLY REALLY HATE by the way, digitally released oldschool games do this all the time)?

I know comparisons may be difficult, so I'll confess.

Stabilization, anti-aliasing, sharpening, levels, and fixing of some DVNR'd frames. And yes, no borders. Sorry, these are the only tricks I have!

-G

AntcuFaalb said:

timdiggerm said:

Oh man this should be useful in the HOLIDAY SPECIAL SPECIAL EDITION

The quality of this will be so high compared to the rest of the Holiday Special that this portion will melt the 35mm film when it's being printed.

The original production quality difference between the cartoon and the rest would have done that anyway!

DJ's snide comments in the post aside, I look forward to seeing this!

-G

Probably won’t stay up long, so get it while you can.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/oe8oul

***Warning***Make sure to only click on “Click here to start download from sendspace” as all the other links are redirects.

-G

Andrea,

Don't give up, a lot (if not all) of the people that are here are doing amazing things without being professionals. You can obviously write an avisynth script. That's a great start. And, you need to get some of those LDs captured with some of that equipment you have laying around. Just suggesting to take people's comments to heart, especially if they are all saying the same thing. AND, be more transparent. Share some scripts, share some captures, whatever, but don't just show us what WhiteMagic does, tell us what you hope to accomplish and how it does it, and maybe version XX you will hit on something.

-G

hey _,,,^..^,,,_,

Just a few suggestions. 1. when showing off your script, you should really compare before/after using the same source material, otherwise it's really difficult to see what is the result of your script, and what is the result of the other transfer and primitive upscale technique. 2. You've received a lot of maybe too polite criticism here, and showing off some old clip that didn't address those concerns isn't going to change the criticism. 3. You are clearly on the wrong track concerning colors and sharpening, and I'm seeing trails in your processed video that haven't been commented on yet. If you would like to post your script, maybe someone would be able to steer you in a better direction. 4. Your passion cannot be discounted, I hope you stick with this.

-G

As ArnieD's seems to have all the detail, and none of the stripes, I would just adjust the brightness of ArnieD's capture and use 100% of it's luma, and use Dark Jedi's chroma.

AntcuFaalb said:

Simple frame-blending can be undone...

Yes, but it has to be pretty simple. Most cases of frame blending involve decimation as well (i.e. NTSC to PAL) where you have only 5 frames for every 6 original frames. The blending effects can be improved, but you can never get the original 6 frames back. The analogy in audio is that you apply a low-pass filter and downsample. You can mitigate some of the low-pass filter, but you can never get the information above half of the new sampling rate back.

Not entirely relavent, but just pointing out that you are USUALLY screwed. ;)

-G

it's actually a combination of a temporal smoother and median filter (like clense). If I had to guess, from what I remember, it's probably:

median(current frame, average of about 12 previous frames, median(current, previous,next))

Median filters are non-linear, and cannot be undone.

-G

Hmm, a challenge!

-G

point5 said:

Looking forward to seeing the finished product!!!! By the way, I have raw DVD transfers of the UK Droids VHS series from tapes that were in mint to near mint condition. If these may be of any use to the restoration let me know. Only problem is I'm fairly sure they are in PAL format.

 I can't speak for retartedted, but I'd love to have them!

-G

Bump. Any news? My daughter loves the Droids series, and it would be nice to have them all someday. Here's hoping this project is still on track!

-G

Harmy,

Wow. Great work. Love the colors, you did a great job with the added grain and the gate weave that was added in the parts where you needed to add it (starfields, subtitles, static shots from other sources, etc.) is spot on.

I think you also got the drab look of the droids leaving the escape pod on Tatooine just right!

I'll download this version, the next, and version 99999 and every one in between.

Thanks for your invaluable service. You have done a great job.

BTW, I'm all for reducing the brightness of the Obi-Wan meets Luke scene.

-G

AntcuFaalb, any chance of getting these up on MySpleen? I recently deleted my usenet account.

-G

might want to compare a TOOT or median1 with median2 on a short section, just to make sure that median-of-five is really needed before you kill yourself over the 5th capture.

-G

AntcuFaalb said:

I'd like to apologize for the comment I made regarding others' interest. It was both stupid and passive-aggressive of me to say such a thing. It's no excuse -- rather, an explanation -- for me to say that the last week of my life has been terrible. As of today, things are improving.

Sorry to hear that. Glad things are getting better, and I hope things continue to improve for you.

<p>No way, it seems a lot of people are interested in this, and it will be a VERY important reference. I'm sure people will come forward to help with whatever you need.</p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><span style="color: #ffffff; font-family: verdana, geneva, arial, helvetica, 'sans serif'; line-height: 17px; text-align: left; background-color: #484e5e;">No way, it seems a lot of people are interested in this, and it will be a VERY important reference. I'm sure people will come forward to help with whatever you need.</span></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

AntcuFaalb said:

OK, I went all-out and did captures 2-5 last night. I'm exhausted, but I think it was worth it.

I will do one more capture tonight, as VirtualVCR reported 0 "Dropped2" frames for all captures except capture #2.

Observation: The Leitch DPS-290 sometimes (rarely) sends out duplicate frames to catch up to the genlock'd signal. This would be fixable in hardware if the Panasonic AG-1980P had an EXT SYNC-IN, but it doesn't. I believe the duplicates are exact duplicates, so I should be able to use pass 1 of MultiDecimate to identify them and manually replace them with non-duplicates from one of the other five captures.

Observation: The temporal luma variations mostly happen at scene changes. Furthermore, they're most disturbing when moving from a bright to a dark scene; e.g., Tatooine scene -> Sandcrawler scene. I believe that splitting the film by groups-of-scenes-that-should-have-similar-brightness and applying DeFlicker to each group will fix this issue.

Question: Does anyone have any idea as to why the big ugly lefthand-side curve changes in size and shape throughout the entire film?

Question: What is the correct size? Someone mentioned in an earlier post that all I need to do is double the width. Is this correct? If so, please explain further, as I'd like to know!

about the duplicate frames, IF 4 of the five captures always have the correct frame at any one time, the median-of-five script will take care of it for you automatically. The method you describe sounds like a LOT of work (you will get false positives that you will have to weed through, or you will miss some due to noise and other fluctuations)

about the luma variations, sounds like brightness AGC. If so, deflicker won't touch it. 

about the left-hand curve, does it change based on overall brightness (i.e. change on scene changes)? Just thinking of power supply issues old CRTs had, maybe something similar in the capture equipment.

about the size - msycamore for sure would be able to help you with this, as would a bunch of other people here, but he comes to mind because he's been doing so much aspect-ratio analysis on his transfer.

If you post some raw video that exemplify the problems you are describing, SOMEONE here will have an answer for you.

looking forward to seeing the results of your hard work!

-G

Okay DJ, calling a truce here. Please provide an update. I'm looking forward to seeing the colors you guys have somehow managed to dig out of this thing!

AntcuFaalb said:

You_Too said:

You mean like matching the colors of the 97 SE with an older version?

Like you say, no home video release seems to match the original nicely, but from the versions I've seen, I think msycamore's SWE technidisc looks pretty good with it's colors.

The problem with the Technidisc SWE is that the colors are inconsistent due to a post-processing issue (msycamore's working on correcting this ATM).

Is this 1982 Video Rental Library VHS close to the original? I find the 1982 LD to be too bright.

 You might want to check with msycamore, but it sounded to me like the colors/brightness/contrast issues were on the original, and may have been compounded by his settings, but not DUE to his post-processing.

BTW, AntcuFaalb, looking forward to seeing the final results of the various projects you are working on! Keep up the good work.

-G

msycamore,

finally downloaded some of your recent clips. The colors are looking great! I can't wait for your next realease!

-G

Jetrell Fo said:

g-force said:

Anyone know if the Laserdiscs suffer from the heavy DVNR that plagues the digital broadcasts?

-G

I hadn't heard that the Digital Broadcasts suffer from DVNR....I've got 3 versions of the S.E. on LD, the U.S. Black Box and 2 Japan Boxes.

I believe I like the Japan ones better.....I'd have to see if there is a difference between those 2 picture wise.

 Yeah, it's really unfortunate, because they actually look pretty good otherwise. Report back on your findings!

-G

I didn't realize the significance of this recording until I saw the audience reaction notes above. I don't need it, but it's nice to know it exists. Great share Protocol Droid!

-G