- Post
- #1620613
- Topic
- [Info & Discussion] The Little Engine That Could - LaserDisc Restoration
- Link
- https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1620613/action/topic#1620613
- Time
The Little Engine That Could was a joint production of Siriol Productions (formerly The Dave Edwards Studio) and Kalato Studios, co-financed by Universal Studios (under the MCA Home Video label) and S4C in Wales; released on VHS on November 22, 1991. It was based on the popular children’s book of the same name by Watty Piper, and the adaption took inspiration from the 1976 reissue with illustrations by Ruth Sanderson.
With its surprisingly nuanced direction, familiar casting and beautiful music, it was deemed a cult classic for children in the early 90s, as direct-to-video media was becoming a mainstay on the market. The film even holds up for adults, whose fandom of the already popular Thomas & Friends series also grew a fondness of how the film greatly expanded the original story with a steady pace and an inspiring moral of determination and not letting doubters get the best of you.
As technology progressed in digital media however, for a long time, the film never sought a release on DVD or Blu-ray other than VHS and LaserDisc. And the only time it would gain a digital release was on streaming services such as Amazon and Peacock. However, that transfer suffered from severe aliasing, dot crawl and compression issues, as it was directly encoded from a poorly de-telecined LaserDisc.
Another master that faced a similar issue was a PAL composite of the Slovenian language dub (with translated voice credits at the end); where the brightness and color saturation override in some areas compared to the NTSC master’s lush color grade. Maybe that was how the colors were intended for the film’s original broadcast in Britain and Wales, but that’s besides the point.
While it would take nothing short of a miracle to find an existing film print, one viable method I can think of (which may not be ideal for restoration purists), is to undergo a remaster of the NTSC LaserDisc, using an ESRGAN-based upscaling GUI called “chaiNNer” with proprietary models to enhance the details and linework based on the original production cels that were sold online.
Now before I go further, we get it. AI upscaling is always controversial, especially in communities that pride themselves on archiving the genuine article. But the thing to consider here is that it’s extremely unlikely we’ll rediscover the film’s original negatives for a proper rescan EVER (Seriously Universal, hit us up! We can scan and clean using the latest methods, no AI required!). The LaserDisc and Peacock masters are what they are, and this isn’t intended to replace those, but the dot crawl, aliasing, coloration issues, compression… There are always issues with the animation’s visual fidelity that made us feel we could do it justice with a little ESRGAN love, and with a few model training techniques and a little effort, we could be able to achieve something that’ll bring new life to an average kids film that very few in the entertainment industry rarely gives the recognition it deserves. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
As of December 2024, a user named Titan91 uploaded an RF capture of the NTSC LaserDisc, decoded using LD-Decode Python tools in Linux with the Domesday Duplicator on a modified Pioneer CLD-S250 LD player (URL: https://archive.org/details/the-little-engine-that-could-laserdisc-rf-capture). The transfer, while in very good condition, is still plagued with a few LD tracking artifacts and moderate aliasing from its deinterlaced result. But the most glaring artifact in the transfer centers on a vertical scratch line located on the right edge of the frame. While it isn’t greatly noticeable as others, it’s what caused the Peacock master to hide it by cropping the right and bottom edges of the frame.
It is here that the transfer requires further work on cleaning up dirt and scratches before we can proceed the ESRGAN restoration. Most AviSynth users may take filters such as RemoveDirt as an easy fix, but if you’re passionate on removing film dirt and would take the laborious route, then film restoring tools such as Diamant DustBuster and Filmworkz Phoenix are the way to go. Alternatively, Photoshop users may also use the AI generative fill and brush tools to remove those elements (though we should be aware of how inaccurate that tool produces at times).
Now I’m not ruling out work being done on it (there’s a chance we can salvage it depending on what tools we bring in), but truth be told, the most ideal solution would be a rescan of the original film master from Universal and Kalato. But despite the rapid disadvantages of AI companies use for today’s film remasters, and businesses conspiring to force physical media into an early grave, restoring an already perfect kids film from an obscure home media format and gear it towards new generations with the use of AI would do no harm in accomplishing it if being done carefully.
Film doesn’t last forever, and this is a piece of animation history I hold near and dear to me. I would love to see Little Engine being rescanned in the future, even if it’ll make this work obsolete. If anyone would like to take part in the project or share some advice on how to restore the LaserDisc master, please discuss in the comment section. I will greatly appreciate it.
Test Screenshot: https://imgur.com/PDmo7kL
