I think you're on to something with the color sampling, but unfortunately Reinterpolate411 didn't work. You make a good point about needing to cut this in 24p--makes me glad I did all the extra work, even if I'm stuck with these artifacts. And no worries about the wrong link, it happens
I tried Doubleweave again, and strangely, both Doubleweave and Decomb yield IDENTICAL results. Both are of lesser quality than the source (29.97) frames. Still, when I stare enough at the source frames, I can see the artifacts there as well. See for yourself:
Originally posted by: Moth3r Have you tried manual IVTC; i.e. use DoubleWeave().Pulldown(x,y)?
Originally I did, but Decomb was more highly recommended and I figured it could automatically keep up with the changes in the 3:2 pattern that arose each time an extra scene was cut into the original film. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll try manual IVTC again.
Originally posted by: Zion Mostly it's to save space and allow you to encode at a higher bit rate.
That's a good enough reason, considering compression is going to be 25% better.
Originally posted by: Zion What kind of artifacts are you getting? Macro blocks or something similar? That shouldn't be caused by any IVTC process but perhaps somewhere else in your workflow.
Here are some pics from all of my different TV caps:
It happens in areas of motion, so I picked a shot with a lot of motion. It is evident, though extremely subtle, in almost all shots. It is most evident on the Telemundo cap, and least on the USA. I thought it might be the station compressing the broadcast as MPEG2, but the artifacts are horizontal lines, which leads me towards IVTC as the culprit. The lines are non-existent on the source (29.97) captures, except, of course, for the two interlaced frames. The artifacts on my IVTC'd version are present on all frames, though barely noticable on any but the frames derived from interlaced frames. I used Telecide and Decimate in AviSynth, and no matter what "post" setting I use in Telecide, the result is the same.
There's not much else in my workflow that I can think would be causing this. The caps are DV, I have to convert the colorspace, and then decomb. That's all so far.
I just finished synching up the Sci-Fi cut with the Bravo, USA, and Telemundo. LOTS OF WORK. Now I'm waiting on ReverendBeastly's Encore version for uncensored audio and to fill in for the few shots that are over-logo-ed in the Sci-Fi version.
Also, does anyone have any old magazines with Waterworld articles? I'd love to include scans of pre-release articles and pictures with the DVD. Perhaps I'd make a good hi-res photo into a DVD cover.
I use Media Player Classic (File, Save Image) although for some reason it plays MPEGs too dark and saturated, unless I open the MPEG once, minimize it, and then open the same MPEG in another Media Player Classic window. So watch out for that. Any media player or editing software should be able to export stills.
shepp74--We'd love to see some screens from your capture to compare. In particular, I have a shot that's partially covered by a Sci-Fi ad on the bottom. The shot takes place when we come back from a commercial and Helen wakes up on the Atol right before the smokers attack. Does anyone have that shot, sans ad? For most of the "Sci-Fi ad" shots I have alternates from other sources, but not so with this scene.
I may have other corrupted shots (I haven't gone through the whole thing yet, not even close) that I can post later. Worst-case scenario, ReverendBeastly's VHS should be able to fill in audio and picture gaps. There is a LOT of editing going into this version--besides the deleted scenes you've read about, there are a number of one-shot additions that nobody ever noticed. In fact, it seems like I don't move more than 60 SECONDS DOWN in the timeline before I need to add another random clip. Lots of future-slang and stuff establishing the environment that ended up on the cutting room floor. In the interest of completeness, I'm including everything I can to make this the longest version of Waterworld. That means anybody who wants to make their own "Definitive Cut" can take out what they don't like.
Originally posted by: Jabbitt Sorry, I've missed something here. Is this project just to preserve the extended edit? Or is it going to be matted to fit the dvd and then create the ultimate extended edition. I ask because won't the sci-fi channel version be edited for violence and swearing? I know the UK version normally is.
I'm doing an extended cut which uses a number of broadcasts to include all deleted scenes and scenes which were censored or edited out for content. I'm not using the video from the DVD because it's cropped, and this edit will be 4:3. I'm doing a good deal of cleanup work to get my footage looking as close to the DVD quality as possible.
The Sci-Fi capture looks and sounds great, though I haven't gone through every bit of it yet. It's a little more noisy than the USA and less noisy than the Bravo, with Telemundo (theatrical cut) still being the clear winner in the quality department. We'll see how they compare after noise reduction and color correction, but I'll probably end up using whichever Telemundo shots I have available.
Why do we IVTC if our DVD players are just going to insert pulldown so that our TVs can display the 29.97 interlaced image? Does the 24p help with software DVD playback on a PC (no deinterlacing required?), or maybe over an LCD projector? Perhaps to preserve it in its original form for the future? Or is it just to save space when compressing to MPEG-2? All are fine reasons. I'm just asking because I'm getting some artifacts with Decomb on my Waterworld edit, and I wonder if it would have been better to just leave the footage as interlaced 29.97 fps.
The noise I'm getting is clearly not film grain; it's analog video noise from the coaxial cable. The FFTD3D filter (the one RidgeShark is using on his Army of Darkness TV caps) does a great job of filtering out this noise while maintaining detail. Take a look.
Before:
After:
I'm currently searching for a similar solution for my audio noise woes.
I think my audio capture problem may be related to my camera. The coaxial cable goes into my VCR, which goes composite out to my camera, and then firewire to my PC. My camera's composite cables run through an 1/8" phono-style jack, and when I jiggle it, audio quality gets better or worse. Maybe fixable in post, but I'm happy to have alternate soures (Thanks Molly!)
According to TV Guide, Sci-Fi is airing Waterworld on Saturday, May 12th, from 5 PM to 9 PM! That's 4 hours! (with commercials) I'll of course be capturing this and crossing my fingers that the quality is out of this world. I encourage anybody else to do a cap, in case my computer explodes or something.
Unfortunately for me, I just minutes ago finished synching up the Bravo, USA, and Telemundo caps I did. I hope all that work won't be for nothing when I get this new Sci-Fi cap. It took me about 12 hours longer than I expected, but I have a few interesting tidbits:
-The USA and Bravo versions are identical, except for the placement of commercial breaks. Also, in one shot, when Helen is scarcely covered by a towel, USA added a blur. Both versions omit a couple frames from all the best violent shots. Both have not just additional scenes, but often additional shots in already-existing scenes.
-I still believe the Telemundo is the Theatrical Version (I haven't gotten around to comparing with my Theatrical DVD). It has full violence and one near-nude shot of Helen was longer in this version, while another was shorter.
Also of note is that there were a couple frames that Decomb IVTC'd differently (incorrectly) in the different caps. I had to eliminate these frames to maintain synch between the different caps. I believe I'm seeing some combing artifacts on some frames as well, no doubt because I've set post=0. I figured if it IVTC's correctly, there's no sense in deinterlacing, but I may have been wrong. I'll play around with it a bit.
I've given almost no thought to how to handle audio. I think Surround Sound may be out of the question since about an hour worth of footage is Stereo. Even as stereo, it's tough to just cut back and forth between audio tracks without it sounding jarring. I'll have to just hope that the 3-hour cap will have everything I need so I won't have to chop it up. Another audio problem is my captures always have this hiss. I don't know if that's normal for cable bootlegs, but I'll try to eliminate it.
My final release will probably be two-disc, 90 minutes per disc. I believe ABC Originally split it up into a two-night event, so I'll probably cut it at the same halfway point. I'd love to see a third, "Special Features" disc even more than the movie itself--especially if we're talking making-of documentaries. I don't have the time or any bonus materials, so I won't be vying for this project, but I hope someone does it!
Here's an example of a shot that makes me happy I have a number of sources!
"The "BRAVO" lettering looks solid black here, it looked transparent in earlier screenies. So a logo-removal filter wouldn't work worth a damn anyway."
Actually, this one: ...was an attempt I made at bringing the white of the bravo word balloon down to the same brightness as the rest of the frame. Had it worked, I would have refined it to cut out the bravo text as well. As you can see here, Bravo text is transparent:
Nevertheless, the logo filters and my home-made experiment all flopped.
"The caps of the other channels would work a lot better than the VHS caps, for the scenes they have in common."
Unfortunately, all of my DV caps have the logos in the bottom right corner of the screen. I'll try to composite with the VHS, but my edit will in the end probably be a trade-off: you get twice the resolution of the Encore version (with the exception of some scenes), but have to put up with logos.
"You said you used: DoubleWeave() Pulldown(1,4) But you didn't say which IVTC filter."
I thought that WAS the IVTC filter! After doing some more reading, I've found that most people recommend Decomb, so I've been learning that and the results look good. Decomb can't handle RGB, so I had to convert the chroma to YV12 before IVTC. At first I had the same chroma problem in areas of motion, but then I converted to YUY2 instead, and the problem is gone.
"DV codec could cause some color weirdness."
I'm aware that I'll lose chroma information going from DV (my source captures) to MPEG2 (for DVD), but it's my opinion that the quality loss of capturing MPEG2 and recompressing to MPEG2 is more visually significant. I hate those MPEG blocks!
"DVs' chroma needs to be translated to mpeg2's chroma sampling, before any other filter."
I'm not sure what you mean. I'm currently converting to YUY2, then IVTC, then de-noise, then frameserving to Vegas, where I'll edit, color correct, make the colors broadcast safe, and render out the MPEG2 and burn in DVD Architect. Is there a problem with that workflow?
"Wow! More scenes! Those have to go in. You could get the theatrical audio from the dvd, assuming it's the theatrical cut."
I wouldn't say there are more scenes, since I can only confirm the "peeing in a cup" scene so far. But I think if they didn't cut that for Telemundo, they probably didn't make any edits for content.
I'd like to show some screenshots of my de-logo trials:
None of these methods really satisfy me. They either leave remnants of the logo, or blur away all the detail. One more thing I'll try is to composite the logo out by replacing the lower right region with the same image from one of the VHS dubs (I believe Jaiman Tuckuh came up with that idea a while back). I'm skeptical that these logos can ever be killed to my satisfaction, but if this is anyone's specialty, feel free to take some of the stills from earlier posts and see what you can do with them.
P.S. I've got a lot more to talk about in another post, but I'd like to mention the fourth still (above) is from a TMC broadcast I captured. You'll notice it's a little over-saturated. TMC broadcasted the theatrical version, and left in some material cut from other broadcasts (The Mariner urinating in the cup). The audio won't be usable, since TMC is a Spanish channel (imagine my surprise when the Narrator announced "Mundo Aquatico!") I also did a capture from USA, which looks the same as the Bravo version, except a little less noisier and brighter. There are no major quality differences between these, but it's nice to have options for those shots when a huge animated Bravo add pops up and covers half the screen!
Thank you, RidgeShark, for your advice. I've started working on a composite edit of Waterworld, incorporating extended footage from TV cuts, and I've been spending the past several weeks familiarizing myself with AviSynth (and the FFTD3D filter), and VFAPI for frameserving to Vegas. I've had a few bumps in the road, but everything seems to be smoothing out fine.
I have much to reply to, so I'll tackle it all in one post--
Tweaker Said: "I think you should lighten up on the color levels a bit. I'd have to dig out my DVDs to check, but is he really that red?"
No, I'm going to do some serious leveling and color correction once I get everything cut together in Vegas. The pic I posted was when I was figuring out how to set black/white levels in Avisynth, and I actually just stole the levels right out of X0's Star Wars guide. Thank you, X0!
Also, if you could post your HD screenshots of any of the frames I've already posted, I'm sure we'd love to compare the cropping with the R2 DVD and TV caps. On the other hand, that HD is so pretty it's going to make me sob when I have to watch deleted scenes from VHS
Jaiman Tuckuh said: "The color artifacting looks like it might be a sync timing problem from the broadcast chain. There are filters for those color problems, but I don't know much about them, offhand."
Here's a sequence of screenshots that leads me to believe it's an IVTC problem: The two frames on either side of this cut still show field blending.
...and the same goes for anything with high motion, like the guard's head: (although it's harder to see)
Unfortunately, this may be the least of my 3:2 problems. Since I need one project frame rate (I can't mix 24 frame and 30 frame sources), I either need to IVTC all of them or none.
"Did you capture from Encore directly to DV, or was is from a tape?"
DV, directly to my Hard Drive.
"I wonder if there's anyone with a PAL vcr, a TBC, and a good capture setup, who could recapture from Lorang's tape, if he's willing to send it to them?"
I'd love to see screenshots comparing Llorang's to ReverendBeastly's. We established earlier that Llorang's was best, but then found out ReverendBeastly's screens were from a poor quality dub, and his current one is comparable to Llorang's.
"If you don't want to delay things by doing the compositing bit, or if it turns out to be a lot of work, due to color-correction, or whatever, then you're the boss. But I hope you might give it a try."
I will. No logos would be ideal, but I'm skeptical that it would work. I just tried it with my DV cap and the scene Llorang posted from his VHS, and his version is zoomed in a way that would require me to zoom in on my DV image to composite them together.
EDIT: I needed to slow Llorang's down to 98% to sort-of match cap, which means Llorang's is actually FASTER than mine (as PAL should be). My bad.
I would be most appreciative if you'd mail me your copies. I could capture VHS (as DV) if you're comfortable sending the original tapes. If not, DVD it is.
I've been spending the last week or so learning Avisynth and VDub to tackle this project. Here's my plan thus far for a composit edit of the extended Waterworld footage:
ASPECT RATIO I agree with ReverendBeastly that we should keep this in 4:3. I downloaded an R2 DVD as a reference, and it had a number of shots where key parts of the image are cropped, as compared with the TV version. This is Waterworld, so I don't want shots like this where the water is cropped out: TV Capture: R2 DVD: (NOTE: I don't have any screenshots of the R1 version, so I can't say that the TV cut is truly "open matte").
SOURCES The sources will be my DV capture off of Bravo, ReverendBeastly and/or Llorang's full VHS TV captures, and the official VHS.
3:2 PULLDOWN Being TV cuts, these sources need for each added scene to be IVTC'd separately from the film (correct me if I'm wrong here). I did a test of the hydro addict deleted scene and managed to get a smooth 24p, albeit with some strange chroma artifacts: I used this in Avisynth: DoubleWeave() Pulldown(1,4) The artifacts are barely noticable, but if it's a problem with my IVTC method, I'd rather get it right. If anyone knows of something I'm doing wrong, let me know. In the case of the VHS sources, if Jaiman Tuckuh is correct, it may not be possible to IVTC. Cross that bridge when we come to it?
NOISE I've also tried out the Avisynth FFT3DFilter recommended to me by RidgeShark (he's using it for his Army of Darkness extended cut) and the initial trial is encouraging: Bravo TV Original: Bravo TV w/ denoise, levels:
LOGOS Logos will have to stay. I don't like the blurry logo "removal" tools. Unless anyone knows of a filter which can truly remove the logos, I say just leave em and ignore em.
EDITING Here's what I haven't gotten around to testing: Once the Different scenes are all individual 24p .avs files, I need to find some software to frameserve to Sony Vegas, where I'll cut everything together, color correct, and render out to DVD Architect.
I'm used to editing in Vegas, but have never followed this workflow before, so if anyone sees any potholes before me, feel free to point them out. Otherwise, wish me luck!
I could have sworn there was a page here with screenshots of an automated color correction process. You take the color information from one shot, and the software automatically matches the next shot to the first. It was probably an avisynth script or Virtualdub plugin--does anyone have a link to it? Do these how-to pages get deleted after a couple months?
I'd like to do the composite edit if the Reverend and Lorang approve and can offer their versions. My source is a DV capture directly to my hard drive. At the very least, the final product will be a composite of my capture, lorang's for the extra deleted scenes, and Reverend Beastly's for the uncensored audio. I'm also open to incorporating VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, HDTV, or HD-DVD (does anyone have access to facilities to rip that?) The problem I have is that it's such a big film, I want the best quality possible, but I don't want there to be jarring gaps in the quality of the different scenes.
Also, aspect ratio is an issue. If I pulled from DVD or HD, I'd need to crop all the bonus material, and I'm tempted to just leave it open because, once again, it's a BIG film and we want to see as much of the open ocean as possible. I'd like to hear everyone's suggestions, and screenshots if you have any of the versions listed.
I did a capture of Waterworld from the Bravo broadcast, which includes about half of the deleted scenes (it's a three hour cut WITH commercials). I think it could be used for a coposite edit, provided it looks better/ fits better than other sources. The quality is, of course, much nicer than the sci-fi VHS:
I think the official DVD would be better but not the same aspect ratio, and official VHS may or may not compare. I'd love to see screenshots if anyone has either of those.
