pittrek

Which software are you using ?

OK I probably used an incorrect term (English is not my native language), what I was trying to say is that there are parts of the logo, which are transparent (you can see the background through those parts) - at least according to the screenshots you uploaded. That's the type of logos which can be removed almost perfectly

The semitransparent watermark can be removed quite easily, e.g. with the DeLogo filter for VirtualDubMod, so that's not a problem

Dammit, they cut out 7 of 22 minutes ? I know that TV stations use to cut the shown material to be able to show you more of the "more important" stuff (= commercials), but this is ridiculous.

The timecoded version was a crappy low bitrate avi if Iremember correctly, nothing exciting. But it looked good :-)

Dunedain said:

Oh wow, look at what Mike seems to have access to.

http://www.starwarslegacy.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33

What wonders of restoration could be done if the tech guys here had access to a source like that... :)

Is that a 140mm Star Wars version ? :-)

ringwraith1973 said:

Pittrek,

I am not using deinterlacing I am doing an inverse telecine which can be achieved with Avinsynth.  I played with deinterlacing a couple times and it left a "step effect" on curves, it irritated me to no end so I have been researching how to get rid of that effect.  These cartoons were originally shot in 23.97 fps (frames per second) .. NTSC adds dummy frames for American tv at 29.97 fps and PAL adds dummy frames to 25 fps... if you don't at least deinterlace them (which i don't recommend now) though you will see a "comb" effect on monitors if you ever watch them on a computer screen...tvs compensate and re-interlace them.  Doing an inverse telecine restores the frames back to the way the animators did them at 23.97 fps...yes I have learned alot over the last month just because of me wanting to get it right.

Sorry, I didn't understand you correctly originally. Of course, IVTC is absolutely necessary

Yes, combination of various (colour-corrected) sources seems to be the correct idea.

BTW I just found the original comic books, both Droids and Ewoks :-)

Video Collector said:

ringwraith1973 said:

  We can see about putting them in 1080p but I don't know how to do that or how long that would take.  I didn't realize you guys had a deadline in which you wanted this done but we can certainly see what the time frame would take.  Just let me know what I can do to add to this.

Let me be clear, I think upscaling these to 1080p would be a bad idea, very bad idea. The only reason I asked you about it is you mentioned storing on Blu-Ray. I can see no advantage to upscaling anything to 1080p (or i), ever.

Regarding the timeframe. Projects like these never have a deadline, but everyone would like to have them available yesterday, know what I mean? If your process ads 6 months to a year (those projects that peetered out ususally suffer this), then we may just settle for "good enough".

Like I said, when people aim too high (adywan excluded) they usually find themselves losing interest in a project long before they're able to finish. So What I'm asking is, are you in for the long haul? I'm not prejudging you here, only you yourself know how much work this would entail and if you're capable of seeing it through. Be honest with yourself and with the forum members. The last thing we want is to be left hanging.

Fritz

I have to agree with Fritz. Remember, you are starting with a VHS source. I don't believe that upscaling the image will produce a "watchable" video

ringwraith1973 said:

Hi,

I am new to the forum and signed up after reading what you guys are talking about.  I am trying to do a Droids and Ewoks restoration also... I do have all the episodes but I am missing good copies of the opening and ending credits for the just second season of Ewoks.  After downloading the torrents available on line (which were ugly as hell with all the "digital artifacts" in them which you can see in the examples in this forum) and then buying a "complete" set which was available on an auction website (which were just as bad) I sent out on a hunt and found a guy who had video taped them back when they were on the scifi channel. These aren't the vcd copies. They are much, much cleaner, complete episodes with the openings, and recap lead- ins.  They were expensive but definitely worth it in my opinion.  I am in the process of cleaning them up even more using avisynth and reading cartoon restoration forums. I am converting them to progressive format instead of the interlace that is shown on video and will be much cleaner and smoother for LCD TVs and monitors.  I can post a couple shots when I figure out how to do it on this forum.  It takes a while for the restoration but I am very happy with the results.  Ewoks on the other hand are a little bit more difficult there is an very, very slight image echo from frame to frame that is noticeable on rapid movement shots and I am driving myself crazy with my perfectionist mentality.  Video Collector, we don't need to resort to the ugly AVI episodes to fill in the missing episodes just so you know, maybe we can work together to get this done.  If we can clean the raw video footage from your PAL copies it could look really good.  My goal is to be able to burn these on to blu ray for storage eventually when they are done.  

Welcome to the forum. Your versions would be a great source for the missing elements, if you join us and don't mind to be a member of the team :-)

Can I ask you what are you using for the cleanup ? I planned to use NeatVideo if necessary.

Also I'm not sure if it's a good idea to deinterlace 80's TV material, what do you people think ? I used to deinterlace EVERYTHING but many "video fanatics" hate me for it :-)

Video Collector said:

Here are the images Ringwraith sent me, along with corresponding captures from my tapes (Some are lossy JPGs, so let's disregard compression related issues for now):

Ringwraith:

PAL VHS:

Ringwraith:

PAL VHS:

It appears to me that the VHS tapes could benefit from some mild brightening, maybe some slight noiserduction (but NOT too much).

OK a few comments to the screenshots.

The Ringwraith pics look too bright, but the "VideoCollector" pics are too dark :-) Finding the perfect balance will be a tough task.

Anyway the PAL VHS captures seem to be slightly "squeezed", I wonder how will they look when you crop the black bars and stretch it to full PAL resolution (720x576 instead of 704x576)

Still the Ringwraith captures will probably nead some logo filtering, or what is that little "UFO" in the bottom right corner of the second picture ?

Fritz, did you chose the correct frames for the comparison ? I'm asking because if you check the first set, the "beam" on the first picture ends much earlier than on the second picture.  I wonder if you actually used a different frame or if the PAL and NTSC sources are "positioned" differently ?

I found out that Ulead doesn't make VideoPaint anymore, it's all part of some Corell crap now.  What alternative can I use ? Which software allows me to directly "paint in a video" ?

I know I can always save a series of frames as bmps, edit them in Photoshop, load them into e.g. VirtualDub, render them as video and put it back to the original video, but I try to avoid this if possible :-)

Great work, Harmy

Well since you're good at Avisynth, have you tried

DirectShowSource(".....")

AssumeFPS(23.976, true) ?

Or did I missunderstand the question ?

The DVDs have only a couple of episodes edited together into "movies"

So ... boys and girls, what do you prefer ?

To have a clean transfer of the VHS tapes, and putting all the rest as a "bonus feature" or to have all episodes properly re-created to their original broadcast state from best available sources ?

TV's Frink said:

pittrek said:

Is it too late to become a donor ?

Nope.

Never to late to offer up your organs after you pass on. :p

I plan to live forever

Is it too late to become a donor ?

Your captures look MUCH better than I imagined, Fritz !

In fairness, the MPEG2 caps are the raw captures at 9 mpbs, they will be slightly more compressed on the DVDs Pittrek will author, I'd imagine. Still, this should a be better alternative to the +/- 170 MB .avi files.

I think most of the people here will prefer quality, and will have no problems with more DVDs than originally planned :-)

Will you guys be keeping these PAL or will you make them NTSC? if not I guess I can do it myself, I would love to get these for my little boy to watch, hell I will watch them with him.

Well, if enough Americans will like this, it shouldn't be a problem to make both PAL AND NTSC versions.

Video Collector said:

I've found sources for the missing episodes from Droids and Ewoks. They are AVIs from taped broadcasts and markedly inferior to the ones I'm transfering.

Anyone have any opinions on wether these should be included for completeness sake, or left out because they are not part of the original tapes and therefore not a "preservation" per se?

I have also reconstructed an OK (not great) version of the original season 1 intro from Youtube sources. The same quandary applies.

It IS possible to reconstruct these episodes to approximate the way in which they were originally presented, but is it necessary? Do we add the same opening and closing credits to every episode just for the sake of it?

I would personally prefer to include all episodes, and to use the best source for every single episode

Hey LexX, since you claim to have it recorded, could you transfer at least the opening/recaps/ending for each episode you have ? It would be some help :-)

I checked those Droids DivX files I mentioned earlier, and some of them DO have the opening song, and/or the closing credits, some of them even "recaps".Which means that in the case we won't find any better source, these avis can be used for some episodes. But I of course want to keep it for the worst possible case only :-)

The same goes for the Ewok series

OK, please don't forget me :-)

OK, a small update.

I've been contacted by Video Collector and the good news is, that we'll work on this together. Check this space in a few weeks :-)

Any chance it will appear on fanedit.info one day ? :-)