jerryshadoe

@ suntech - Thanx for the offer, but it turns out I won't be needing the LD audio after all. I have been doing LOTS of research on the matter and according to :
http://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?t=1897&p=24841
AND, especially this:
http://forum.lddb.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=517&hilit=The+last+of+the+mohicans

the consensus is that the R2/R4 audio is the SAME as the Laserdisc transfer.

@ Andrea - Thanx for the private e-mail session and the help there;o)

@ ALL - Finally, after a nearly 70 hour (!) encoding time, the video is complete and I now have 10 screenshot comparisons to share with you wonderful people (all in the same link) :

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84555/

For this second encode, I managed to properly de-interlace the video and applied the REAL 35mm film grain at a slightly higher percentage rate where, now, I'm happy with the way it looks.

Within the next couple of days I plan on taking the DTS-HDMA audio from the BD and re-cutting it to fit this Theatrical Cut. Granted, there will be about a minute or so of audio from the lossy 5.1 sourced from the R4 DVD (due to a couple scenes being cut from the BD edition) BUT nearly all audio will still be from a lossless source and re-encoded back into lossless DTS-HDMA. I will still include the 5.1 audio sourced from the R4 DVD, but my aim is to provide the best video AND audio possible for this release. I know that there were a couple sound FX that were changed for the BD release, so I will have to go through it VERY carefully as I want to retain ALL of the original audio, using the lossless audio as much as possible.

As always, ALL comments/suggestions are welcome ;o)

Well, I guess it's time for some more tests...

I suspect that it's a de-interlacing issue (or at least I hope it is, as the slight sharpening that I applied really does help.

As far as grain is concerned, I will do some test there, after I fix the de-interlacing issue, and see what results I get. You're right that it's MY project, BUT I'm relying on the opinions of users here that have a LOT more experience then I do in doing this and YOUR opinion matters.

UPDATE: I have resolved the problem with the de-interlacing and have adjusted the level of grain by a little bit (as before it was a little "soft" on the grain side) and now I just have to wait ~45 hours for the encode to complete.

As soon as it's finished I will post new, updated, screenshot comparisons between source/my encode. Still hoping that someone can share the laserdisc English audio for this project;)

Peace

@ Andrea - Thanx for the kind words;)
Do you suggest that I use a different setting for the grain overlay and maybe boost it by a couple percent?

If you look at the screenshot comparison:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84013

you will notice that the letters in the subtitles in the source are round when they need to be, whereas on my encode, it appears that the letters are a little jagged if you look closely.

This "jagged" effect can also be seen in this:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84012

where you can see this also in the hat of the soldier standing behind the blue uniformed soldier, and it's noticeable in the red uniform of Col Monroe in the yellow stripes on his arm.

Furthermore, I'm not sure whether this is due to faulty de-interlacing or whether this is caused by the slight sharpening filter that I applied:0

@ BDgeek - thanx for the kind words. The bluray, aside from NOT having a theatrical cut, is indeed an atrocious transfer and whoever approved it for release is blind. I was not aware of the fact that the Brazilian TC DVD is a 5.1 remix. It sounds better than the slowed-down R2 DVD mix.

@ kk650 - yeah, it's a damn shame that we don't have a better source for this. Read on and you will see screenshot comparisons;)

I am wondering if any of you wonderful people would be willing to share the Laserdisc English 5.1 AC3 audio with me for this project. For now, I have the Brazilian Portuguese 2.0 audio, the English 5.1 audio (from that Brazilian DVD), the isolated-score track, Italian 5.1 audio (thanx for sharing Andrea), finally got the French 5.1 audio, German 2.0 audio (there is a 5.1 but all links I found are dead), Polish 5.1 audio (which is still downloading but I should have it by end of day), and Russian 5.1 audio. Also, I have the R2 DVD English audio (which is probably useless for this project as I would have to slow it down and re-encode a lossy into a lossy format, but I do have it too).  For subtitles, I know I have English, Italian, Portuguese, and others I can find online so that should not be a problem. For now, as I'm still working on all of this, none of the audio is synced yet except for the audio I sourced from the Brazilian DVD.

Anyway, after watching this twice, I have to say that I'm happy with it but... This is where I will be waiting for feedback from others, as I think I could have boosted the saturation just a little bit more than I did. In fact, there is almost no visible difference for the most part, except in skin tones (and even that is not present in all scenes) so... well here they are:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84007

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84008

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84010

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84012

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84013

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/84015

Am now anxiously awaiting any comments and hoping that someone is willing to share the laserdisc audio. Peace

UPDATE: upon closer inspection, it appears that some of the screenshot on "my encode" are not de-interlaced properly and I will definitely have to do a second encode, however before I do that I am waiting for comments about the brightness/colors/grain first.

Many thanx for the mono 1.1a track. It's outstanding. Can't wait to listen to your Mondo synced mono track;)

@ Video Collector - I'm looking forward to this being finish as well and will be posting it on my internal organ, LOL ;)

@ Andrea - With the amount of sync work on my "winnie the pooh" project, I have gotten pretty good at doing that, especially since I can match it by waveform using Audacity, so syncing the audio for this would not be an issue and if you would like me to include those extra tracks I would be happy to do so if you would be willing to share them with me for this project.

@kk650 - I wish there was a new higher quality mpeg transport stream of this version but, alas, it's sourced from the 1080i Sky-HD broadcast rip that has been floating around for a while and even though it's at a lower bitrate, it's a very decent source as it's encoded using the AVC codec and MediaInfo for it is (ONLY posting video section here):

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : Main@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 1h 47mn
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 6 411 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 40.0 Mbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 50.000 fps
Original frame rate              : 25.000 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.062
Stream size                      : 4.81 GiB (89%)
Language                         : English
Color primaries                  : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
Transfer characteristics         : BT.709-5, BT.1361
Matrix coefficients              : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

For now, it's the best source available for this project, as ALL 1080i copies floating around, regardless of languages attached (as I've found a German edition that has dead link already, a French version on some private tracker site name t411.me where it's hard to build up ratio as a new user so I haven't been able to download this to include the audio from it, the Russian version which I'm sourcing the video from, and a Polish version on a polish torrent site but it has no seeds) and their video is all remuxed from that original SKY-HD broadcast rip. Then I looked at all 720p HDTV copies and they are ALL sourced from the 1080i. So, for now, that is the ONLY source in HD.

The BIGGEST problem with that 1080i source, aside from some compression artifacts that overall are actually not that often or that bad, is the nearly complete lack of grain (which is why I'm applying real 35mm film grain). Not saying that it's the infamous wax-o-vision that we see in "remastered" blurays due to too much DNR, it's just that the bitrate was too low to retain the grain. However, the bitrate was high enough to capture all of the film artecfacts such as dirty, occasional scratches on some frames, etc. (which are also visible, but barely, on the R2/R3(the Korean release)/Brazilian R4/ DVDs so I know that the HDTV broadcast was sourced from the same transfer)

I realize that this project can easily end up having a version 2.0, the moment a new higher quality source becomes available, but ATM this will be the best HD edition of the movie, as anyone that has the DVD edition mentioned above or the NTSC custom DVD sourced from the R2 release can watch the theatrical release now but only in SD. I just wanted a proper looking HD source and am working with what's available :o)

The encode has just under 11 more hours to completion and I will be posting source/my edit screenshot comparisons shortly after...

HUGE thanx to Andrea (yet again, LOL) for all the advice and suggestions in the e-mail exchange we had. It turns out that, yes, the blu-ray release has completely crushed blacks regardless of scene, even in the daylight, bright, outdoor scenes, and the footage there is absolute garbage, on top of the fact that it has a WAY different color-timing from the OTR. So even though it may have a higher bitrate and slightly better detail and sharpness, it's still unusable. So, keeping that in mind, I ran numerous tests on different settings for the HDTV source that I'm forced to use. After a few hours, and a broken cup I threw at the wall from frustration, LOL, (just kidding, but the urge was there)... anyway... I finally got a very nice result where I applied a very slight filter to decrease brightness/contrast (where, now, the blacks look black, but not crushed, and the whites are not too bright to the point of being blown out), I applied a very slight, selective, saturation boost, where the skin tones look more vibrant now and some of the "washed" out scenes look better without over-boosting ANY of the colors. I, also, applied, the slightest (literally) sharpening to the video (where I used the first change to the right of no sharpening at all, a level of 1.1%, as anything more looked like sh*t and no sharpening left the image a little soft, so used that as a happy "medium" and in many test I concluded along with a few other viewers here, both on an 1080p HDTV 46 inches in size and the 100 inch projected image onto the wall from my projector, that it looks better this way.... bla,bla,bla...LOL) WOW, side-tracking, sorry guys but I'm trying to cover all the steps I had to go through... I found out why there were some 10 frames more than the DVD OTR that I'm syncing the audio from. There are a couple of scenes where the last 3 frames and first 2 frames where either doubled on the HDTV release or missing, depending on scene. I managed to fix these transitions, by means of cutting and, in two cases, dupping one frame as I wasn't going to upscale a slightly more cropped DVD sources frame (BOO, no way!) Then I applied a REAL 35mm film grain plate and am now encoding it, using the AVC codec, at a bitrate of 27000kbps(which, apparently, is the max that sony vegas will allow me for the project and codec) and am nearly the middle of finishing the final rendering...

As you can see, this is a slow process and after 17 hours, I still have nearly 24 hours left to go. Once the video is finished, I will verify that it all looks good, mux the English audio from the R4 Brazilian NTSC DVD, mux the isolated-score track (that came as an option ONLY from the extras menu of the DVD, which is a 5.1 AC3 file at 384kbps, which is a cool extra) and since I have it the Brazilian Portuguese track from that same source, and then... well, I'm wondering if anyone has other languages of the OTR that they would like me to include. I looked at my R2 DVD but it's cracked and useless now :(

So I guess I'm asking if anyone has other language tracks they could share if they wanted me to include. I will also include the English subtitles from the R4 DVD, that I'm using as my reference point and am open to anyone sharing others for inclusion of the release. Once finished, so far the release is ~19GB so it will fit nicely on a BD-25. Screen shots before/after, and more news to follow after encoding finshed.... peace... :0)

I have searched all over the internet and the only copy I have been able to find is the 1080i SKY-HD broadcast copy or re-encodes of that 1080i copy;(

SIDE-NOTE: I have been trying to fix the broken links on the screenshot for the last 30 minutes and everytime I fix one of them another one messes up. I don't know what's going on there... I gotta take a nap right now, but when I wake up I'll re-update those links after I find a better image-sharing service. Any suggestions for that are welcome;)

Yeah, the Brazilian NTSC R4 DVDs is an interesting thing...

You can read up more about it here (although wiki is confusing) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M

And explained better by others, as far as DVD format and such:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/dvd-authoring/71031-what-dvd-standard-brazil.html
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/227967-PAL-M-and-NTSC

where that last link probably has the most extensive info about the subject. Long story short, Brazil had to be different, LOL ;)

Here's an example of a store selling the Brazilian DVD (not specifying whether it's PAL or NTSC but does specify the NTSC runtime of 112 minutes):
http://dvdworld.com.br/dvdworld.hts?+ZP12619+acha

Anyway, back to topic...

I was thinking along the same lines as you were Andrea. I'll see if I can regrade the BD, but I doubt that it will be a "perfect" match and I might have to end up using the HDTV footage as many scenes are just so dark on the bluray that the blacks are completely crushed and, thus, the detail there is gone. I agree that the HDTV footage needs a very slight saturation adjustment and just slightly darkened in some scenes, but not all. I will be running some tests on this now and see what results I get. I'm really mad that they changed the color-timing on the bluray. Why are so many movies getting this treatment? Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to change the look of, damn nearly, every movie released on bluray. It's like rebuilding an engine in a car and then driving with no oil - what's the point? YAAY, I have better sharpness and detail but colors/blacks/whites/etc. are all messed up... Booo, not cool.

The R4 is a Brazilian R4 NTSC DVD. I am using that video and audio as my timing reference points for the HD footage I am using for the video assembly however there is an interesting development here...

You are probably right about the extra frames being at scene change, thus they are not really too important and I'm not worried about cutting 10 frames throughout an entire movie.

Thanx for the MultiAVCHD suggestion, Andrea. I do have the app, just have never used it yet. I guess now is as good of a time as any;)

While trying to align the footage in Vegas, I discovered something interesting though. Apparently, the color timing of the DVDs and the HDTV broadcast are struck from one master, while the Bluray has been SEVERELY altered.

The best way for me to illustrate my point is with screenshots, so here we go...

SHOT 1 (DVD/HDTV/Bluray):

SHOT 2 (DVD/HDTV/Bluray) :

SHOT 3 (DVD/HDTV/Bluray - notice in this shot how the HDTV is actually sharper than the Bluray which looks like the frame is blurred to the point where even the DVD has more detail and there are other shot like that in the movie as well) :

SHOT 4 (HDTV/Bluray - no more DVD shot as I've already illustrated that the DVD and HDTV are from the same master, just slightly different cropping) :

SHOT 5 (HDTV/Bluray) :

SHOT 6 (HDTV/Bluray) :

So as you guys can see, not only is it a different color-timing, but it also appears that the bluray has been substantially darkened. Interesting, also, is how they changed the font for the subtitles of the foreign parts.

Hmmm... what am I going to do with this now??? I'm open to suggestions, even though I have an idea of how I'm going to go about this, would love some input from others first...

So, while I'm working on my pain in the arse "new adventures of winnie the pooh" restoration project, I decided that I need something to distract me from the tediousness of seeing that every night. That's where this project comes to play...

I don't know about you guys, but I was severely disappointed with the fact that there is NO OTR on Bluray of this movie and instead we have this DEC and DDC bullsh*t to contend with. Now don't get me wrong, I like the extra footage as just that, "an extra" but the fact that we are stuck with ONLY that sucks IMHO. There are pros and cons to those releases and the fact that I had to get a PAL R2 DVD just to have the theatrical cut pissed me off. I started looking around the net for alternatives and found a "Hybrid cut," which is also not the OTR, but I really did like it, however its only an SD cut... sh*t, sorry guys, I'm side-tracking...

After some extensive research I found that I can have a proper NTSC speed theatrical of the movie if I get the R4 DVD which I ordered for $7 (including shipping) and I just received it today. I am really happy to have a theatrical cut without having to re-encode the audio, after slowing it back down to NTSC speed from the R2 DVD... but, alas, it's still only an SD copy...

So, I searched the internet, and discovered a 1080i copy of the movie ripped from a SKY-HD broadcast of the theatrical version. YAY!!! but, it too, is a PAL transfer, and to boot it ONLY has a 2.0 (despite what the torrent description says) English audio track. I have a copy of the DDC Bluray as well and then it dawned on me that I can reproduce the OTR using, mostly, footage from the Bluray with the scenes that need changing from the 1080i broadcast once I change the framerate from 25fps back to 23.976. Unfortuantely the 1080i broadcast has a bitrate of ~6400kbps whereas the bluray is around 28000kbps so there is some (lots of) grain structure missing from that HDTV copy. However, this is ok if I apply REAL 35mm grain back onto it and judging from my tests so far should be very doable.

Interestingly though, when I changed the fps of the R2 DVD and of the PAL HDTV broadcast and aligned them to the R4 DVD I discovered an interesting discrepancy in the total frame count. What I mean by that is that the R4 DVD is 2 frames longer than the R2 DVD and the HDTV broadcast is 10 frames longer than the R4 DVD. These are very subtle changes, but they are there, therefore none of the copies actually line up perfectly. This is more as a novelty information than anything else but I just wanted to mention it.

Anyway, I am ripping the (unfortunately) lossy 5.1 English AC3 track from the R4 DVD and will be timing the video to that release, as since I'm using a lossy audio source, I don't want to re-encode it and degrade the sound even more. There are too many changes and different audio for me to use the lossless DTS-HDMA track that's on the bluray, hence the decision to use the audio off the R4 DVD.

For the video editing, I am using the R4 DVD (as that will be the audio that it needs to be synced to) as a reference, where all the video will be used from the bluray, except when there are changes, where I will use the HDTV (with a REAL 35mm grain-plate overlayed onto it) edition to fill in those blanks as that's much better than using upscaled DVD footage.

All of this will be re-encoded using AVC at ~30000kbps and then...

well, if I can figure out how to author a BD-25 out of it then I'll go that route, or I will just remux it into an MKV file depending on how hard that sh*t is to figure out. I will also include the English subtitles from the R4 DVD as I won't have to re-sync them.

There are two things I am wondering though, before I finish this project (and it's easy and I should have it complete within the next few days, except for, maybe, the proper BD authoring) and I was hoping you wonderful people could help me.

First, I am aware of the fact that there was a Laserdisc edition, which some claim is the theatrical cut and some say there are minor changes, but would the laserdisc audio be a better fit for this than using the R4 DVD audio?
Second, would there be any interest in this "preservation" once it's complete?

You're welcome guys ;)

I just hope that my friends claim is true and that this movie can finally be viewed uncut, in widescreen, and in a proper HD format. As soon as I hear back from him and (hopefully) receive a copy, I will post an update.

If I may chime in on this one...

I think it's freakin retarded that they cut the footage instead of just blurring it or CGI'ing in a "555" for the prefix. That being said, I went online and started searching for HDTV rips of the movie to see if they contain this cut as well. I managed to find three different copies (a 1080i from Spanish Canal+, a 1080i from a Russian broadcast, and a 720p copy from Ukrainian/Russian station "1+1") and they ALL contain this cut as well. I was not able to find the 720p copy that TripleBHBK has a copy of and agree with Funcha that this copy is ultra-rare fan edit gold.

I then researched info on editions that had this uncut edition and, apparently, only the initial CBS Fox Productions VHS release from 1985 and the Laserdisc (unfortunately those are both full screen) were uncut and all subsequent releases were edited including all airings of the movie on cable. However, there is some dispute when it comes to the cable airings, as the first airing of the movie on HBO in 1985, according to some, was also an uncut edition. I spoke with a friend of mine in Arizona, who is a nerd/film buff with a treasure trove of older movies, who claims to have an edition of the movie in 720p that is uncut and contains audio commentary (on a secondary track) by the director during that scene explaining how that scene came to be cut from most releases. He also claims to have a properly digitized copy from Beta of the 1985 HBO airing of the movie. My friend is rebuilding his RAID array (as most of the drives are giving out and he shut the system down to make sure he can back it up before the drives completely crash) and said he will have access to his collection in a couple of weeks when he can afford to replace the drives. Once I have received those from him and verified their authenticity, I am happy to share either one with anyone that would be interested.

On the note of sharing, I am wondering if TripleBHBK would be willing to share his 720p copy, for a quality comparison to the 720p copy that my friend claims to have. Also, it would be awesome to have an HD source to work with (regardless of who it comes from) to re-cut those few seconds back into the 1080p bluray because the cut there is so abrupt that it seems like an "...oops, I pressed the stop button on the VCR by accident and then pressed record immediately after but there's a couple seconds missing there" kind of thing, LOL

I have been following this thread since creation and would like to ask a question concerning the 720p HDTV copy of the movie that has been floating around since circa 2007-08. I just found a torrent that is still active (although really slow and I won't have it for another 48-50 hours) for that release and am wondering if anyone here has seen it and how it compares to the Bluray release as far as the color grading is concerned. The release is of the extended cut, and contains an Italian, Spanish, and English audio tracks and weighs in at 7.56GB. Is it even worth it for me to wait for this release to finish downloading or should I give it a rest?

If no one on here is familiar with the release, I'm happy to post screenshots once I have the complete file.

On side note, massive kudos to everyone involved in bringing this back to the wonderful awesomeness of the original;)

poita said:

35mm footage won't be too far away now, 6-8 weeks hopefully.

 This is awesome news!!!

Can't wait to see the 35mm footage in its entirety. Combine that with the Cinema DTS and watch it on the wall from my projector will be as close to seeing it in the theater as I can get.

Finally, we will have a "theatrical edition" without all of the non-sense of the green-tint and all of that and it only took 15 years and fans to make it happen, LOL... shame on the studio for messing with a great movie and many thanx2 ALL involved in restoring this back to the original.

Sample sounds awesome!

Great work and would love to hear the entire thing, so if you could share, that would be awesome.

Thanx in advance ;)

The test clip looks pretty nice, but on the screenshots I noticed a couple of things. In the third shot, on the DVD you can actually see the background through the blueish blast, where as on the BD and the new CM the whites are completely blown out there and you can see nothing through that blast. In the last shot of the agent, you can actually see the agents face on the DVD, where as on the BD and the newCM his face is completely white and seems to disappear in the background white of the sky. Also, in that shot there are major artifacts that you can notice in the buildings to the left of the agent in the bottom of screen.

until the 35mm footage is available, I think the open-matte version, with the proper color-grading, even though wrong AR, would be a wonderful addition to the collection. I actually like the open-matte version better, not saying that the theatrical AR is wrong or looks bad, but I like being able to see all that extra image there. This is just my opinion though;)

@ hofverberg - I still am hoping that you will be able to provide the Swedish dub audio tracks for this project ;)

@ ALL - I realize it's been a while since there has been an update posted here. I haven't been able to work on the project as much as I wanted to due to some family stuff popping up in my life. Now, not only am I taking care of my daughters (ages 4 & 2) but, my parents are getting older and need my help with certain things here and there as well.

This is a VERY time-consuming project. The "patching" method being "easy and fast," as I stated in my last posts, is only PARTIALLY true. With certain episodes, yes the process takes me 6-8 hours for an episode and with other episodes, it takes 4-6 sessions six hours each (so, yes, a total of ~24-35hours!) to finish. The reason for this is... well actually there is a couple reasons. First, the "patch" source in certain instances does NOT match in color/chroma/contrast/brightness/etc. at all. And since the "patch" source episodes are a very low bitrate xvids, there is a LOT of information that is just missing and doing any colormatch scripts yields garbage. Also, in cases where I have a Disney-logo episode that was PROPERLY converted to PAL, the PQ is noticeably lower (even though it's the second highest quality source I have to work with) compared to the incorrectly transferred logo-free encode. Here's an example of what I mean:

The LOGO-FREE version

And the exact same frame from the Disney-logo version (which in this shot is "patched" but incorrectly as it doesn't align perfectly because this was a quick sample shot I took, whereas with the actual "patched" frames I align them properly)

the difference is VERY noticeable, especially in the trees right behind Piglet's right foot and in the pattern of the curtain on the right side of screen where is lacks detail and looks a little "smeared." (NOTE: this is actually one of the better frames as some of the scenes are so much lower quality that it looks like a pixelated mess, especially in rapid-motion scenes)

Now, some of the episodes are proper DVD transfers (where the NTSC to PAL conversion was done right) and some of the episodes only have the disney-logo proper transfer version, where for the DVD transfers it's just a matter of de-interlacing and then going through it just to make sure all is well (as sometimes there is still an occasion frame blend) and then slowing them down to NTSC and adjusting the audio. The Disney-logo transfers are NOT all that much lower quality, but about half of them are and in the case where I have the two sources they are usually lower quality than than the logo-free source. Still, I have to "patch" those and replace Russian title cards, etc. BUT then there are episodes (about 25% of the entire series) that have a proper transfer disney-logo version and the field-blended (and I'm using that term correctly as the blending is down at the field level) logo-free editions that are the highest PQ. For these episodes I try to use as many frames as possible, correcting everything FRAME-BY-FRAME, from the logo-free version, ONLY using "patched" frames from the other source when necessary, HOWEVER I only do this for ENTIRE scenes (as in same background for the few seconds its onscreen) because otherwise it's too obvious that there are switches between sources for TWO reasons. First, the difference is PQ, second, the disney-logo version is slightly cropped on the left and bottom sides (about 16-20 pixels varying on scene) So, in certain scenes, I had to clean up the logo-free version of the blended frames by dupping the frame before or after, depending on when the blend occurs, but this is NOT always possible as certain frames are unique and this mainly happens when the scenes is panning across a certain background or during zooming sequences. Because of this, sometimes it seems like the zooming portion lacks smoothness a little bit. At times like this, I have to make a judgement as to whether to use the lower quality source or clean-up the better one as much as possible. So I have to do some test encodes for certain sequences to see how it looks in-motion because when looking at something frame-by-frame you don't see if it plays smoothly.

By the time this is all done, it looks decent when it all is playing in "real-time" and it's funny how some of the "defects" of the sources that I see when working on the project frame-by-frame I don't notice when it's playing. All in all, once I complete the entire series it will be the BEST transfer of the series BUT it will NOT BE PERFECT. There is only so much you can do when the sources you are working with are inferior. I am a little disappointed with this announcement as I was hoping for being able to reconstruct a perfect transfer. Either way, I'm completing this project and am still very excited about it, as it will be the closest to the original that will be available until Disney releases this properly (and for that I'm not holding my breath, LOL) For those that this will not be good enough, they can always "enjoy" the crappy xvid release that's still "floating around" on the net.

Sorry about the monolog, LOL... 

Peace

Feallan said:

Sure, thanks. :) I know that there are at least two Polish voiceovers, one by Gudowski and one by Szydlowski. I think I prefer the first one, but the translation is very similar in both of them.

 If you prefer the first one, then I'm sorry to inform you that it's the voiceover by Szydlowski. I just sent you a PM with the link that includes two different sets of subtitles, enjoy;)

Feallan said:

Tego sie nie spodziewalem. o.O

 Maly swiat. Sluchaj, wsadzam to na MEGA i za 20 minut bedzie gotowe, ale ja mieszkam w stanach, jest pozno i musze sie na moment zdrzemnac bo cala noc siedzialem pracujac nad moim projektem Nowych Przygod Kubusia Puchatka, wiec wysle ci link za jakies 6 godzin ;)

Ok, don't want people to feel left out so I'll stop with the other languages, LOL

Feallan said:

Jerryshadoe, could you PM me links to Polish subtitle and audio? I know at least one official sub is fucked up.

Nie ma sprawy, wysle ci link za moment gdy sie upload skonczy.
Not a problem, I'll PM you a link in a moment when I'm finished uploading ;)

@ Andrea - I understand. I'll release an "audiophile edition" once I'm done with my other project. On side note, can't wait for the 35mm edition to be released as I've seen some of the screenshots/samples over on AMPS and "WOW!" is all I can say...

Well, assuming that Andrea ever decides to make a "version 2.0," I think we're still waiting for the 35mm footage to be available but not sure, then the original theatrical DTS, provided by JetrellFo/Doombot, will be encoded directly to a DTS-HDMA track. Also, the complete isolated score track will be available to that, as well as all the various dubs that I have mentioned in one of my previous posts. If Andrea chooses not to pursue this project anymore, than I might release a "version 1.0 - audiophile edition" which will contain Andrea's video from version 1.0 and all of the language/subtitle tracks that I found (all audio tracks are in perfect sync so I won't have to re-encode any of them)

Just to make this clear, I am NOT hijacking Andrea's project, merely helping with extra audio/subtitles and the complete isolated score track that I put together (well, it's not finished yet, about 90% done because my winnie the pooh project is taking up all of my time and computer resources ATM) The decision as to whether there will even be an "audiophile edition" I leave up to Andrea ;)

ok, I know I'm double-posting... please forgive me;)

the reason for this post is simple... I know that if I saw a thread somewhere about the preservation of this series, I would be excited and await with anticipation, as I'm sure some people that have read this thread feel themselves. I appreciate everyone's patience with me, as this is my first preservation project, I'm learning as I go, and this is a HUGE project. There have been certain problems that I encountered as I have worked on this, and most of them have resolved themselves with the addition of new sources. In my TEMP folder for this project I have ~250GB of data with a total of 7 "unique" sources. Two, very high bitrate Russian sources (the no-logo blended source, which is mostly garbage and the disney-logo proper transfer version), 4 xvid sources (2 German, 1 Polish, and 1 English) ranging from horrible to ok (~800-1800kbps) and a AVC source (also Russian, ~1500-1900kbps) that is decent. I just finished going through all the sources and realized that from the high bitrate "editions" almost HALF of the episodes end up having the Disney-logo in them. However, ALL the episodes are now proper transfers (I haven't finished the conversions yet, but I did verify my sources first) and a simple de-interlacing, slowing down to 23.976 and syncing the audio will do the trick. So this is turning back to any easy project. NOW, I HATE the logo and agree with Andrea that this should be taken care of. So, just to see what I can do in terms of a "patch" for the logo (and animated sequence that I mentioned in previous post) I realized that one of the German xvid releases is also a proper transfer to PAL and once slowed down to 23.976, aligns PERFECTLY with the Russian Disney source. Now it's just a matter of syncing the color/contrast/brightness/gamma/slight sharpen and I end up having a logo-free version. Because of the fact that it's from an xvid release, however, there are occasional frames "in-motion" where there are certain compression atrefacts presents inside the "patch" but this is very seldom and most of the video ends up looking fine. I do HAVE to go through it frame-by-frame, but this really only needs to be adjusted scene-by-scene, NOT frame-by-frame, (for the most part, at least) so the "patching" takes about 4-5 hours of editing per episode which is reasonable and very doable.

So, I feel like I'm back on the "proper" track with this preservation and am pretty sure that in about 6-7 weeks it should actually be finished. This would be a great time to get the Swedish dub so I could sync that as well, as I now have 16 episodes, ALL "logo-free", completed and this is really moving forward now. In the last couple of weeks it doesn't really seem like I moved forward a lot, if people have actually read my posts, but now that there are no more "problem" episodes, this really will move forward reasonably, even with the "patch" work that has to be done. The only part of certain episodes that I will NOT be able to "patch," due to lack of sources, is SOME of the end credits, where I will leave them as-is because I don't believe in blurring of logos.

Again, thanx2ALL that have helped with suggestions/advice and, also, thanx2ALL4the patience.
Please trust me, it will be worth it ;)

So, before I posted any reply, I did numerous tests and tried to figure out how to proceed.

@ Andrea - the "patch" method seems like a viable option, thanx4suggestion

@ Moth3r - for the most part it is a static logo, except for 8-10 seconds at about half-way through episode where it turns into an animated sequence that takes up bottom 1/4 of screen (where it says is Russian: "you are now watching 'the new adventures of winnie the pooh'"). most of the logo is alpha-blended, but parts (including the letters "Disney") is opaque

@hofverberg - you are right that the Disney logo is a "pest" to get rid of and any script that I used ( trying: DeLogo, DeKafka, InpaintFunc, rm_logo) ALL leave very nasty artifacts for the parts that are opaque and definitely during the animated sequence. As far as using the blended/no-logo source, it's not a matter of time/patience on my part, but I have noticed that in scenes where the frame changes (due to rapid movement/zooming) from frame-to-frame there is a lack of smoothness (the scenes become jagged) and the result, IMHO, looks like sh*t.

So, for now, I am going to process all the episodes: de-interlace, slow back down to NTSC, insert English title cards/end credits, sync ALL language tracks (except for Swedish dub, as I don't have the source audio yet, but this will be easy and fast once the rest is done) AND then, after all of that is finished, I will attempt to "patch" all of the episodes that have the logo with the blended sources. When I first started this project, as the first episode has a logo, I tried to do the "patch" method with mixed results. First of all, the video sources are different in the fact that the logo version contains what appears to be 100% of original frame, where as the episodes without logo are zoomed a little bit (only 97.5% of original frame is there) AND it seems like the no-logo version is slightly warped because no matter how hard I tried to match the frames, there would be one part that would match perfect (i.e. top left part of where i'm covering logo), where as other part (i.e. right part of where i'm covering logo) would look like it's a degree or two off. Also, the level of zoom/warping is different from scene to scene. I sat there and tested different settings for three (yes, THREE) days and no matter how close I got, a little bit was ALWAYS off. Granted, to most people this would NOT be noticeable (as some of my last results where VERY close) but, either way, it bothered me. Unfortunately, during certain scenes it became obvious that there was a "patch" there due to the frame blending present in the no-logo version. And then I got half-way through the first episode, with what was 95% decently reconstructed video, and I hit a brick wall when the logo changed to the animated sequence and took up ~25% of ENTIRE bottom of screen. The frame blending in that sequence is very nasty on the no-logo version and that was when I gave up on trying the "patch" method. This was before I learned about certain avisynth scripts, where I am able to get a lot "cleaner" result and now, after all episodes are processed, I will go back and try to pick up where I left off with that.

If removing the logo (especially the animated sequence) by "patching" gives me nice results I will go that route, but if it ends up looking worse than just leaving the logo in tact, then I will leave it as-is. I also have the problem of the fact that some of the episodes with the logo do NOT have a high bitrate blended counter-part source, where in those cases the ONLY source that there is to do the "patch" with are one of the xvid releases (which I have in four versions as well, but none are better than 640x480 @~800-1200kbps (depending on episode) and most of those are actually sourced from VHS tapes, so there is that issue as well. In those cases, the "patch" is extremely obvious as the "patched" part looks really blurry ("smear-o-vision") compared to rest of frame.

On side note, (I know, I'm hijacking my own thread, LOL) working on just this project, mentally, burns me out, so I'm simultaneously working on a couple more things now too. I have, finally after searching forever, located a very high bitrate 1080i HDTV copy of "Innocent Blood", also known as "Bloody Marie" from 1992 and am looking at doing a BD25 release of this and have located two different sourced 720p copies of "Desperate Measures" from 1998, as well as numerous extras for that movie (including a featurette and numerous interviews) that deserves a proper BD25 release as well. the first one will be easy as it's just a matter of de-interlacing, the source is nearly flawless in terms of transfer, and the second one I will try to do the method that Andrea used on Supernova, as the two different sources have similar issue as what Andrea delt with there (if you could PM me with what script you used there, that would save me some time and would be greatly appreciated) This keeps things interesting and my mind fresh, because looking at just the frames of winnie the pooh for too long makes me feel like a zombie, LOL. Anyway, I was able to find all these lovely things on usenet and would like to let everyone here know, that there is a great 3 day trial (with 30 connections, unlimited bandwidth [my average download speed was 25-30mbps] and unlimited transfer [I downloaded 475GB within those three days]) if you sign up with hitnews. (.com) I am NOT SPAMMING here, there is NO referral service, just sharing with those who would like to try usenet but don't wanna pay for it. the coolest thing about this free trial is that it requires NO credit card info in order to get it. ALL you need to do is enter your name, e-mail address (where they send you confirmation e-mail to activate the account) and select a password. that's it !!!

Anyway, back on topic, I am going back to the editing on this project ;)

Peace

VERY EXCITING UPDATE ;)

So, I got a little frustrated working on these "problem" episodes for the last few days and started wondering if I can possibly find any other high/decent quality source for these episodes. AND I JUST DID :)

But now I face a dilemma and was hoping for some input from you wonderful people here. Let me start off by saying, SOME of the episodes (due to no other high quality sources) have a LOGO (oh, NOOOOOO!!!!) in the lower-bottom corner of the screen, as can be seen here:

and when I initially wrote about this project, I KNEW that some of them will have this logo and there's nothing I can do about it BUT now...

Well, the dilemma is this: Do I try to clean-up the "problem" episodes just because they don't have a logo (they are a b*tch to work with, as it looks like they were telecined first (23.976p to 29.97i) then improperly transferred to PAL where they still have the NTSC duration and there are TONS of garbage frames (I figured out a new script that takes care of most of this, but there is still some ghosting here and there AND some blending here and there which means some of the "unique" frames are just missing)
OR
Do I use the properly transferred (direct 23.976p to 25i, utilizing PAL speed up, so all the original frames are actually there, I'm sure as I already downloaded a couple of these episodes and verified this) for ALL the "problem" episodes even though they DO contain the ugly logo?

There is NO difference (on average) in the video bitrate between the two different sources, so that is NOT a factor in the decision and neither is amount of time I have to invest into completing this project (although I have to say, saving some time would be nice)...

Peace,Jerry