No, I DO get your point, I just don't see more true detail, I just see the illusion of detail by increased micro-contrast in the grain structure. Give de-graining>>processing>>re-graining a shot, you might be surprised as to the difference. ;)
In my opinion, it's pretty pointless to use super resolution without doing a proper degraining first (and a proper RE-graining afterwards). SR only works really well in restoring detail on very clean material, as soon as grain is there, all you'll do is enhance the micro-contrast of the grains themselves. Also, that needs to be done on a scene by scene basis. Neat Video or Dark Energy Anti-Matter come to mind for the degraining. And THEN do a comparison. Don't be discouraged by the lack of detail on the degrained images, once you introduce the grain BACK into the footage, it will seem a lot sharper and more detailed. My experience with SR is that it does work well with VERY "un-shaky" sources, however, I think the median with regular, reverse and nnedi3+sharpen sounds genius to me, I gotta try this myself.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HARMY! And thanks for all the hours you've put in!
Using for instance tsmuxer's "append" to join multiple h264 streams into one mts-container is absolutely fine, as long as the number of encoded frames per part is a multiple of the GOP-size. Then it'll be a "clean" h264 stream. If it's not, certain hardware decoders MIGHT have a problem, although I doubt that anybody will actually run into one that can't handle it.
I had the same problem with a couple of video projects. Some frames just didn't make it error free into the final master lossless file. Problems like these are, in my opinion, the reason why it's never a bad idea to render an image sequences out of After Effects in the first place, and only go to a lossless codec "master archive file" after an initial test encode. Although, I never bother to, I just keep the image sequence as the master. It's easier to archive to DVDs too, I just divide them into chucks of 4.2GB and use the rest of the disc space for parity (PAR2), just in case the DVD fades away after a few years.
I just rewatched DeSp_SW 720p on a 40" - perfectly enjoyable experience! This is Star Wars for the 21st Century. Glad I bought the BluRays, so I don't have to feel bad for stealing.
Thanks again Harmy for all the work you put into this, this will probably be my go-to version until Lucasfilm itself comes out with a restoration (which I believe they will after the old insane guy bites the dust).
The ones that are on Usenet right now, I take it they're all v1.0 ? Just wanted to make sure.
You know what? I agree with not releasing the restoration too. Now, what WOULD be interesting is information about the techniques used to do it, for OTHER, maybe non-SW related restoration efforts. ;)
I agree. The only thing I don't quite get is, what good does a restoration do anybody if it's just lying on someone's hard drive. It can get lost again quite quickly.
I'm not gonna do LD-DVD transfers, that's not what I was shooting for. What I COULD do is capture the Laserdiscs I already have and post the raw captures on Usenet for OTHERS to use in their projects. My current pet project is not SW related, but I love this community and I wanted to contribute somehow.
Plus - I'm afaid I can't capture AC3, I don't have an RF modulator.
Harmy, I'd love to watch your work as well. Judging by the screenshots, this might well become my "go to" version of the OT.
althor1138 said:
If you live in Europe and are trying to get ahold of the JSC you can try tradera, I believe the set is up for sale there right now.
SilverWook said:
Hey Resonator, there are SC LD's of ESB and ROTJ on ebay right now if you're still looking for these.
I'm not sure, but they might have actually shot this on 2-perf Super35 to save money on film stock. If they did the actually size of the negative that is used is hardly bigger than a regular 16mm neg. The grain levels that look very 16mm sometimes would point to that too.
I will have ALL available Laserdiscs by the end of June. I found a really nice guy on a B5 board who was willing to sell them.
For now I have a few I got off lddb and Ebay (which I'll probably sell again later), and I've done some tests with my own player (a CLD 1850). The transfers are solid, a little noisy though. I'm planing to do multiple captures later when I borrow the HLX.
The most interesting things I noticed were:
- Even this first-gen master had many of the film defects the later scan of the live-action-non-sfx footage, and there's dirt there too. They probably didn't do a wet-gate telecine or something.
- The framing as shown here
http://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/Img/LiveHiResBoxes.jpeg
doesn't seem to be correct. The top and the bottom of the frame look as if they are exactly the same in both the 4:3 and the 16:9 versions. It's just "open-matte" to the sides. I'll try and get some screenshots up later to confirm this.
What this means is that a lot of the DVD footage could be used for a 4:3 reconstruction, it just needs some cleanup work.
The Evil Dead "1" Treasures aren't seeded anymore. There is an 841 day old version on Usenet, I suppose that's not the latest version?
I will start downloading amd afterwards seeding tonight. Seems awesome!
Lazying in the spring sun with an iPad. ;)
Bought it. Thx.
Moth3r said:
Anyway, why "10-bit TBC"? Does it matter how many "bits" a Time Base Corrector uses? (A 10-bit ADC would make more sense, but surely that's built-in to the Intensity Shuttle?)
Hey there!
I was just wondering if anybody still needed an LD captured. I’ve acquired some gear for capturing some (Non-SW) discs that I want to archive, a Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle, a used Sony 10bit TBC and I will be able to borrow a Pioneer HLD-X9 as a playback device.
I do have the Definitive Collection as well as the SE box sets lying around. Are there any discs still worth capturing, or are the GOUT-based projects better anyway?
I've bought an (almost) entire set of NTSC VHS tapes off Ebay, as well as a few Lasers. I'm curious if I can get some version off those tapes that's at least watchable.
Darth Hade said:
Ask walkingdork for a free invite through PM. He's been giving them out.
Great job! Are these available anywhere else other than on Demonoid? I don't have an account and registration is closed...
Oh yeah, your're right. I noticed that too. Each time there's crossfade into a "regular" shot, the footage is still the 4:3 master cropped to 16:9. And the way the show is framed makes 16:9 pointless most of the time. All the action is in the center. And in two-shots, the actors are way too close to each other, there's a lot of dead space on the sides.
The best way to watch this show would be a DVD mastered from a clean 4:3 NTSC master. And that probably will never happen.
I ordered a set of NTSC DVDs off Ebay (for basically 90 Euros, thank you weak US$), as well as a Season 1 Laserdisc. I'm gonna try out a few things. A lot of the cropped CGI can probably be fixed right off the DVDs anyway, by using some Avisynth and After Effects filter magic.
This seems promising: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1423489
I need something to do while I'm at work and waiting for the phone to ring anyway, if you know what I mean. ;)
Babylon 5 Laserdisc Episodes Available
Season 1 (22) episodes. On laserdisc.....22
Season 2 (22) episodes. On laserdisc.....12
Season 3 (22) episodes. On laserdisc.......0
Season 4 (22) episodes. On laserdsic.......6
Season 5 (22) episodes. On laserdisc.....22
In the Beginning 1 TV Movie........................1
The Gathering 1 TV Movie...........................1
Thirdspace 1 TV Movie................................0
The River of Souls 1 TV Movie....................0
A Call to Arms 1 TV Movie...........................0
Even if one could track down all of these, there'd still be about half of the show left. Man...
Thanks for the VHS offering, though I doubt you could get anything out of it that's any more watchable than the DVDs, especially since the EP mode has even less lines than the SP (~200-230) as well as the typical headaches with VHS, chroma bleeding, ghosting and things like that. I can't see that holding up on a 32" HDTV, you know what I mean?
Now SVHSes, I'd take them in a second. ;)