spoRv

The conversion was finished this night; this morning before I quickly checked it and the quality seems good.

Now I found a literal transcript of the italian dialogs, and currently I'm "cutting & pasting" from that to the italian subtitles, (the italian subtitles, taken from the DVD, is completely wrong!) Now I'm about at 70%; hope to complete it in a few hours.

Now some help will be kindly appreciated!

Is there anybody who can confirm that the english,french, german and spanish subtitles (from the THREEPIO project, used also on Harmy's Despecialized Edition) are right?

About the audio: here you are a file containing a short sample (the title crawl) of all the five audio tracks (Sendspace, 68MB); I'm trying to figure out which one has the right pitch and which has not; then I want to convert them from 25 to 23.976.

Waiting for your help.

Wow, how many comments!

So, at the end, which are the most important titles to restore to start with?

The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast for their original unaltered version;

Fantasia primarily for its laserdisc PCM audio track;

Snow White, Pinocchio and Cinderella box sets for their original mono mixes on the analog tracks;

Cinderella for its original colors;

anything else?

About Roger Rabbit PAL: if I rembember well (because I watched it several years ago) this version is uncensored... but maybe I'm wrong; I have to check them, when I'll have time.

AntcuFaalb said:

Do you have Song of the South?

I was awaiting this question? (^_^)

Sorry, I have not that movie...

4 - Beauty And The Beast (Letterbox - DS)

would came best (as "double feature") with

3 - Beauty And The Beast - Work In Progress (Letterbox - DS)

I know they are both on DVD and BD; what are the difference between them and the laserdisc version?

@Anthony: they are (almost all) NTSC laserdiscs.

The only PAL ones are Rox et Rouky (The Fox and The Hound) - french language, never released in US as laserdisc - and Who Framed Roger Rabbit - english, which contains three short cartoons that, AFAIK, were not available anywere in laserdisc format.

@Jetrell: my daughter too loves "Nightmare Before Christmas", but the italian version - which was dubbed by Renato Zero, an italian singer who I usually hate, but I liked him very much in this movie!

Today I was looking at my laserdisc collection, in particular at cartoons and animation; I wondered which of them may worth a preservation... like if there are no DVD or Blu-Ray editions; or, if present, there are alterations (like cuts, reanimations, wrong audio or aspect ratio) etc.

I'm quite sure some of Disney and Who Framed Roger Rabbit shorts have alterations.

So here you are my little animation collection:

Disney feature films

• 1 - Aladdin (Letterbox - DS)
• 2 - Aristocats, The (Full Screen - Stereo)
• 3 - Beauty And The Beast - Work In Progress (Letterbox - DS)
• 4 - Beauty And The Beast (Letterbox - DS)
• 5 - Cinderella (Box Set) (Letterbox - DS)

• 6 - Fantasia (Full Screen - DS)
• 6b - Fantasia Box Set
• 7 - Hercules (Letterbox - AC3)
• 7b - Hercules (Letterbox - DTS)
• 8 - Hunchback of notre dame (Letterbox - AC3)
• 8b - Hunchback of notre dame (Letterbox - DTS - Thx)
• 9 - Jungle Book, The (Full Screen - DS - CAV)
• 9b - Jungle Book, The (Full Screen - DS - CLV)
• 10 - Lion King (Letterbox - AC3)
• 10b - Lion King Box Set (AC3)
• 11 - Little Mermaid, The (Stereo)
• 12 - Mickey Mouse B&W Box Set (Full Screen - Mono)
• 13 - Pinocchio (Box Set) (Full Screen - DS)
• 14 - Pocahontas (Letterbox - AC3)
• 14b - Pocahontas (Letterbox - DTS - Thx)
• 15 - Rescuers Down Under, The (DS)
• 16 - Rescuers, The (Stereo)
• 17 - Rox Et Rouky [The Fox And The Hound] (Full Screen - DS)
• 18 - Sleeping Beauty (Letterbox - AC3)
• 19 - Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (Box Set) (DS)
• 20 - Sword And The Stone, The (DS)
• 21 - Three Caballeros, The (Stereo)
• 22 - Toy Story (Letterbox - AC3)
• 22b - Toy Story (Letterbox - DTS - Thx)
• 22c - Toy Story Box Set (AC3)

Not Disney interesting titles:

• 23 - All Dogs Go To Heaven (DS)
• 24 - All Dogs Go To Heaven 2 (Letterbox - AC3)
• 25 - Anastasia (Letterbox - AC3)
• 26 - Balto (Letterbox - Surround)
• 27 - Betty Boop 1 (DS)
• 28 - Betty Boop 2
• 29 - Bruno Bozzetto: Animator (CAV)
• 30 - Cats Don't Dance (Letterbox - AC3)
  
• 31 - Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island
• 32 - Daffy Duck's Quackbusters
• 33 - Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (Letterbox - DS)
• 34 - Fievel (Letterbox)
• 35 - Fievel Goes West (Letterbox - DS)
• 36 - James And The Giant Peach (Letterbox - AC3)
• 37 - Nightmare Before Christmas, The (Box Set) (Letterbox - DS)
• 37b - Nightmare Before Christmas, The (Letterbox - DTS)
• 38 - Pebble And The Penguin (Letterbox - Surround)
• 39 - Road Runner Vs. Wile E. Coyote, The (Full Screen - Mono)
• 40 - Secret Of N.I.H.M. (DS)
• 41 - Thumbelina (Letterbox - DS)
• 42 - Tom & Jerry - The Movie
• 43 - Wallace And Gromit: Grand Day Out/Wrong Trousers (Stereo)
• 44 - We're Back! (Letterbox - DS)
• 45 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit (PAL - Side 3 (CAV) Contains The Following Bonus Roger Rabbit Short Cartoons: Tummy Trouble; Roller Coaster Rabbit; Trail Mix-Up)

short cartoons and other:

• 46 - A Disney Christmas Gift
• 47 - A Goofy Movie (DS)
• 48 - Beauty & The Beast: Enchanted Christmas (Full Screen - AC3)
• 49 - Chip'n'dale Rescue Ranger: Danger Rangers/Super Sleuths
• 50 - Darkwing Duck: Darkly Dawns The Duck/Birth Of Negaduck (Stereo)
• 51 - Darkwing Duck: Justice Ducks Unite!/Comic Book Capers (Stereo)
• 52 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Donald & Daisy/Pluto & Fifi
• 53 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Happy Summer Days/Fun On The Job!/The Goofy World Of Sports
• 54 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Pluto
• 55 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Scary Tales
• 56 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Silly Symphonies!/Animals Two By Two
• 57 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Silly Symphonies: Animal Tales
• 58 - Disney Cartoon Classics: Starring Mickey & Minnie/Starring Chip'n'dale
• 59 - Disney Favorite Stories: Three Little Pig/Paul Bunyan
• 60 - Disney Mini Classics: Ben And Ma/Bongo
• 61 - Disney: Goof Troop: Goin' Fishin'/Banding Together
• 62 - Family Dog Collection
• 63 - Jetsons: First Episodes
• 64 - Jetsons: Jetson's Millions/Astro's Top Secret/Microchip Chump
• 65 - Jetsons: No Space For Sprockets/Elroy's Mob/Las Venus/Good Little Scouts
• 66 - Jetsons: The Movie (Surround)
• 67 - Superman Cartoons Of Max & Dave Fleischer, The (Full Screen - Mono)
• 68 - This Is America, Charlie Brown Vol. 2
• 69 - This Is America, Charlie Brown Vol.3
• 70 - Tom & Jerry Classics (Full Screen - Mono)
• 71 - Tom And Jerry Cartoon Festival Volume 1
• 72 - Winnie The Pooh: Making Friends/Sharing And Caring
• 73 - Winnie The Pooh: New Found Friends/Great Honeypotrobbery

Adult animation:

• 74 - Akira (Criterion Collection CAV) (Letterbox - DS)
• 74b - Akira (Criterion Collection CLV) (Letterbox - DS)
• 75 - Beavis And Butthead Do America (Letterbox - DS)
• 76 - Cyber City Oedo Data One
• 77 - Ghost In The Shell (Stereo)
• 78 - Heavy Metal (Letterbox - DS)
• 79 - Spawn: The Animation Season 1 (Full Screen - DS)
• 80 - Spawn: The Animation Season 2 (Full Screen - DS)
• 81 - Tokyo Babylon 1

Found lately:

• 82 - Alice in Wonderland
• 83 - Aladdin and the King of Thieves
• 84 - Aristocats, The (CAV)
• 85 - Bambi
• 86 - Dumbo (PAL CAV)
• 87 - Oliver and Company
• 88 - Pagemaster, The
• 89 - Pinocchio (CLV)
• 90 - Return of Jafar, The
• 91 - Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs (CLV)
• 92 - Space Jam
• 93 - Toy Story (PAL)
• 94 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit (CAV)
• 95 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit (CLV)

(numbers are provided for comments reference)

(striked titles: there is DVD and/or BD with same content)

(bold titles: there is DVD and/or BD with different content)

(bold and italic: there is no DVD or BD)

I'm most interested in Disney and non-Disney feature lenght film - for some of them, I could think also to use my Pioneer HLD-X9!

Waiting for comments from users more expert than me.

AntcuFaalb said:

I like those burn marks! :(

Me too!!! I don't know if I have to erase the burn mark in the first frame, or restore the second one!

At the end, I managed to let the subtitles works, and... I discovered that the italian subtitles are not "word by word", as I expected... I'm working to recover them, also if I have to listen to the whole movie in italian and write down any single word!

So you have to wait some time, as my job takes a lot of my time this month... hope to have time soon to:

• extract some audio clips to let ilovewaterslides to detect the correct pitch of the tracks;
• convert them from 25p to 23.976p;
• synchronize the subtitles;
• mux all together in a single file...

And, because I think I should be offline for a day or two, and the new "softer" version doesn't work so well as the "harder" previous version when watched onto my TV, I started another conversion, this time with a sharpening version between them - (a new) hope this time will the right one!

I promised a release before Xmas and I'll maintain my promise. Stay tuned.

Anthony,

sorry, I have not the PAL P&S LDs... if only I could get them, I think it will be possible to improve the resolution of the central part of the image of letterbox LD captures!

About the Tantive Corridor: as written in the post #13, the first glitch is still visible, while the second is erased, but I didn't fix it manually... the script I used found the way to erase only the second one.

@Moth3r: good job, the screenshots looks really similar; mine is more sharpened... a bit TOO sharpened... infact, today, after the conversion was finished, I briefly checked some scenes and decided I used too much sharpening, in the wrong way... so, after adjusting the avisynth script, now the new conversion is on its way... meanwhile, I'll try to let the subtitles work...

@ilovewaterslides: thanks for the help! Please post here which soundtracks bits you want to hear to determine if the speed is right or not, and also the method you will use to convert the right pitched tracks and the wrong ones from 25p to 23.976p - if possible using avisynth with soundout and/or sox plugins. So if someone else would hear them too, I'll receive a second medical opinion... (^_^)

For the record: at the beginning of the capturing phase, I discovered a frightning thing: the capture, any capture, ALWAYS had 4 frames lost, everytime... I ask myself why not 3, or 5, or any other number, but always 4... I started the captures with the PC only dedicated to VirtualDub in capture mode, to not disturb the process. But, at least I have to wait for a CAV side 30 minutes, so what? I switch to TV (I use my hidef 55' as monitor too) and after, say, 15 or 20 minutes, I switch back to PC to see if all goes well, and here you are the 4 lost frames... everytime...

I then discovered that the switching from TV to PC (and not viceversa) made the PC to "forgot" those 4 frames, just in the moment I changed the source... I repeated that action, and so it lost 8 frames, 12 frames etc... it seems there is something with the HDMI, and I'm sure is a driver problem, as before the complete reset of my computer, the problem was not there... at the end, I started the capture "blind", just hit the F5 when the laserdisc side starts, and hit ESC when the side ends, and that way no missing frames!!! It makes me crazy for a whole week to find where the problem was...

Back to dropouts, as laserdisc is prone to them, when I realigned all the captures, I use an avisynth script to zoom near the borders to find better the alignement, and when zoomed, the video dropouts are more evident. There seems there are no missing frames, but I will have nightmares for years if I have to check all the four captures, frame by frame... something like 720,000 frames, more or less... (_O o)

I haven't used yet TOOT just because using the captures from four different sources - in theory identical, but they are not, from the missing frames (in the source, due to side changes mainly) to the fact the luma and chroma are different - the TOOT doesn't work well. Where it works very well, is when using the captures of same disc taken with different players, or different discs (same catalog number of course) with same player, or better different discs on different players!

So, to improve a bit the video quality, next step will be to use TOOT, different discs (where available, like french and spanish discs) and different players(I just used (one of my three) Pioneer CLD-D925, I think to use the next time the industrial LD-V4300D, mainly for its direct motor and the lack of any digital gadget, and the Pioneer CLD-600, also noted for its simple but clean video path, digital free) to eliminate those annoying drop-outs (basically, to someone who can't figure out what we are talking about, drop-out are small errors present in the image, usually as black lines few pixels long, but could be also colored).

I'll do it if there is some interest in my project, as it seems nowadays everyone hate laserdisc capture and think they are crap; but as I stated in my first post, the mission of this project is to provide a good alternative to GOUT, mainly (almost) DVNR and smear free, using only analog source - a real and unusual challenge - and I think I accomplished the task - you'll be the judges.

At the end, do you like the name of the project, or should I change it? If you like it, the next one, 1997 SE, will be named "SET ruLes (Special Edition Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions)" - after that, maybe there will be also "TPM ruLes". If you don't like it, the alternative I will use will be "LOUT (Laserdisc Original Unaltered Trilogy)" and "LOSE (Laserdisc Original Special Edition)".

To whom it may concern: the conversion is going on, it's at 67% now; tomorrow morning will be finished; after I'll figured out how to show subtitles (forced and not, in all the same languages as the audio tracks - thanks 3PIO!) using TSmuxer, and after I have synchronized them, I'll release the first complete version.

It will be a .m2ts file, video 720p 25fps 16:9 @7400kpbs; five audio tracks (english, french, german, spanish, italian) AC3 5.1 @448kbps; five subtitles forced + five full.

PM me if you are interested - maybe there are three or four fans here who are waiting for this first release! (^-^)

***

HELP NEEDED!

The main goal of the project is to obtain a 23.976fps version - the most similar to theatrical release, but for that I NEED someone who knows perfectly the SW soundtrack and who help me. How? Just listening some audio clips from the different PAL tracks (could be only music, just tell me which part is needed) to determine if that track has the right pitch or not!

If someone would take the responsability to finish the restoration, yes, I'll be happy to capture it - also three times, with different players, for TOOTing, averaging, median...ing?

But please let me some time to do it, as I'm deeply involved in my own project at this time... maybe at the beginning of the next year, if the world won't finish... ;-)

CapableMetal, don't worry, I didn't take it as a negative critic, but a comment about the sound you have the right to do.

I also thought to compress the tracks at 640kbps, but I know there are few DVD players that "don't like" AC3 tracks at that bitrate... maybe the next time I'll convert them so, but for the moment, 448kbps is the right compromise - in a dual layer DVD, thay take about 1.8GB, and leave just the empty space for a decent video compression for AVCHD...

For the DVD, I don't know if I must use the tracks as they are, or use a lower bitrate to leave more space for the MPEG2 video - but maybe compressing at 7400kbps, the quality of MPEG2 @ 720x432 will be the same than I used for the AVC @1280x544, if not better, don't you think?

@ilovewaterslides: thanks for the offer, but I'll make them myself soon.

still "only" 23 hours of compression... after that, I must find the way to make the subtitles work!

I viewed briefly the test video done yesterday, and - as I suspected - some dropouts are still present... next version, I'll capture any laserdisc two more times with different laserdisc players (I have only the benefit of choice); then use the TOOT to eliminate dropouts... maybe as I have four captures, I could do this right now: stating that a,b,c,d are the four aligned captures, I could TOOT a,b,c, then TOOT b,c,d, then TOOT a,b,d, THEN a,c,d, and use them as the four starting point for median and average instead the pure captures...

The .m2ts file works perfectly; all the five tracks are there and working - apart subtitles that don't show up...

I must test better tomorrow.

I'm not converting simple stereo files, but Dolby Surround encoded stereo files... I could also convert them to stereo AC3, but as AC3 is not perfect as someone still say ("don't worry, a simple stereo track, Dolby Surround encoded, at 192kbps will be THE SAME as the PCM tracks..." - sure... as I am Napoleon the Emperor, and I'm NOT him!) so I prefer a better 5.1 AC3 @448kbps than a simpler stereo @192kbps... maybe I'm mad, but I leave this kind of track just for commentary. I want to add that, if someone will be interested in my project (apart me, of course) maybe I'll release a BD-25 version with all the PCM tracks (just re-encoded at 48khz to be standard), stereo 16bit... only those ones weight about 6GB (including the italian track too).

I have eac3to, but maybe I'm too lazy to work with it... ;-)

I found the subtitles I needed; I'm testing the muxing of all the audio tracks and subtitles with TSmuxer, using the first test version I did... and I confess I'm enjoing to be a "producer" ;-)

If it works well, I'll start the encoding soon - it will take more than two days with my poor old computer...

Thanks.

For the video, it seems I've reached a good compromise; surely it is not HD, but I like it way most than GOUT... I'll convert the upscaled output @1280x544/25p to obtain an AVC coded file @1280x720 anamorphic, with a bitrate of 7000kbps, obtaining a good video quality, to make an AVCHD that fits inside a dual layer DVD.

So, let's start the other job, audio.

I captured all the laserdisc digital tracks in various language (english, french, german, spanish - this one is unique as the initial crawl is narrated... I think no other version is like that) directly via SPDIF optical cable, stereo Dolby Surround PCM @1441kbps 44.1khz. For the italian, as there is no laserdisc (sigh!) I captured the audio from the HiFi VHS passing the input through my MD deck, which have a very good A/D converter, to the PC via the usual optical cable, at the same quality used for the laserdiscs.

I must admit my VHS sleeped on a shelf for almost 15 years, and I watched them (at the time) just two or three times, so I was sure the quality were pristine, but that was not the case... the video has severe dropouts (but who cares) which afflict sometimes the audio - not so badly, but few times there are some pop&click. I tried some freeware audio declicker, but nothing works well. I decided to use it anyway, as it seems that this track is better than the GOUT PAL AC3 stereo @192kbps. As soon as I'll find a better copy of another VHS, I'll capture again and change that track alone.

Well, after that, I used Foobar2000 and avisynth's SoundOut to convert the tracks, first from stereo Dolby Surround PCM 44.1khz to 6 tracks PCM 44.1khz, using a fantastic Foobar plugin, FreeSurround, that works very well; then from that 6 tracks I used SoundOut to convert to AC3 5.1 @448kbps 48khz. I haven't used AfterGUI because it didn't convert from 44.1 to 48 khz (or at least I haven't found the way to do it); "WAV to AC3 encoder" do it, but the result is a completely mess of noise... at the end, the results are good using my method. If someone knows how to do it in a single passage, using a better Dolby Surround encoder, please let me know.

Next move will be to convert the video from 25p to 23.967p - this is really easy, but the problem will (maybe) audio... yes, because there is some tracks which has the right pitch, other are simply speeded up at +4% as usual PAL audio tracks... I must find out which one has the right speed, which has the wrong speed, and then convert them - I'd like to use avisynth and SoundOut plugin, but I'm not sure how to do it.

Is there anybody out there who knows very well the SW soundtrack, and want to listen so brief extract to understand which tracks has the right speed?

Another thing to check out is if "pyramid" LD soundtrack is the same of THX PAL laserdiscs, or different, and if it is the same, which one has the better quality.

Last things are the subtitles: still not haven't found the forced ones nor the complete ones; I could extract them from my PAL DVD (english, italian, french) but I need spanish and german ones... can't locate C3PIO subs...

For AVCHD menu, I want to do it myself, but I don't know if my skills will help me to do it...

Hope to release at least one version, multi language, right as a Xmas gift, but without subtitles I'm stuck...

Let's try now.

I finished to re-align all the four captures; I changed their ratio on median&average script; I lowered the sharpening (maybe too much?)

If someone is just curious to see some scenes - two with no (apparent) DVNR or IVTC problems, just take a look... here you are four test clips I uploaded on YouTube - as they are short, 8 seconds, and without audio, maybe they will stay there for a while... ;-)

Tantive Corridor

Look Sir, droids

Mos Eisley "no legs"

Light saber

Just don't forget (as I did...) to set the quality at 720hd... and don't forget they are taken from laserdiscs!

msycamore, thanks! Someone who appreciate my work is very welcome, and keep me on focus.

Indeed, you are smart (but we all knew that...); infact, I did that! First four median of three, then average of the four median...

Yoo_Too noted that vertical sharpening was more pronounced than horizontal, and I suspect something was wrong... infact, some parts of the captures were slightly off alignment (just 1 pixel)... as they are YUV2, avisynth forbid to crop just 1 pixel, but I find a way to do it: I upsized with pointresize (basically a 1:2 resize without interpolation), so I can crop only 1 pixel if I have to, then I made the opposite, and pointresize 2:1, without any loss; I could also use converttorgb without resizing, but I'd like to keep the colorspace as long as I can, and I think the former method is lossless... Am I right?

So now I have to realingn all of them... last four hours I realigned just two of them, but I'm tired now... hope to finish the other two tomorrow morning. About the sharpening, I'm working on this too.

What I really need soon are the subtitles - at least the forced one, in english, italian, french, german and spanish. Someone could help me?

@Yoo_Too: I found some NTSC GOUT frames at http://aptirrelevance.com/otscreenshots/frames.php; I used them as comparison with my work (but I don't understand why they are 720x306...) - the difference between NTSC and PAL were not huge, but some are noticeable... if someone want to see them, let me know - 720x306px x2frames x36pics... will be a long long post, but if I'm allowed to do it here, let me know!

"A picture is worth a thousand words"...

As you can see, the first frame is normal. After few frames, the image is pinkish, like someone put a pink filter on it... during the whole movie, the picture shifts from normal scenes to pinkish scenes and back for many times...

I'd like to use some scenes for my project, but I don't know how to restore proper colors... I tested the avisynth filter Colourlike; the results are good but not perfect.

Is there someone who could use the overlay function of avisynth (or another method) to "de-filter" the pinkish scenes? I mean, take the former picture (PNG not compressed), split the two frames, overlay the two frames (taking the right part of the picture as reference), find the color difference, and use the results as a "negative filter" to defilter the pink-shifted scenes...

SS4DarthPayne said:

I'll be the first to admit that this project is not for me, but I think it's great how much you care about what you're doing. I think you hit the nail on the head, talking about how you've done this with comparatively simple tools and free software, as compared to Lucasfilm and all of their resources. I must also admit I am quite surprised at how well (more or less), it holds up to the GOUT.

Thank you, SS4DarthPayne, you hit the point... today is possible to restore a movie at home, using free software and really cheap hardware, with really high quality results - see Harmy's work and many others.

My project isn't perfect, but I started it for two reasons: I wanted a better GOUT version (also with italian language) AND I wanted to prove myself that I could do it. Maybe more for the second reason than the first one...

If only GL wanted to do something like this, with only a small fraction of the devotion of all the fans of his movies found here... with his money, he could reach top results... but instead... he spent dozen million $$$, and what we have is BD version, at the end! /_xx/

You_Too said:

Yeah it looks good compared to the GOUT there, but for the comparisons it would be even better with the NTSC GOUT for SW, since it's got more detail preserved than the PAL version for some reason.

And the sharpening in your version seems a bit too strong maybe. And why is it only vertical sharpening? At least that's what it looks like.

I'm still thinking what results can be achieved nowadays, using a simple laserdisc as source... some years ago, these kind of results were possible only for production houses, and mere mortals could only dream about them!

You_Too, sorry, I live in Italy, one of the PAL lands... I have not access to the GOUT NTSC, but if someone could point me to the m2v file I'll be happy.

By the way, also if the NTSC GOUT has more details, at least the PAL GOUT *should* have more lines of resolution...

Yes, the sharpening seems too strong, but when seen in action is better; download the clip and tell me what do you think. On my 55' LED, it's good.

I'm thinking about the next step... making the same treatment I've done until here, but using the NTSC captures of the Definitive Collection (US, two copies, and Japanese) plus "Faces", and the Pioneer HLD-X9 as the laserdisc player... (using all the scenes not affected by the DVNR, of course) and then merging the result with the result of the PAL captures... what do you all think?

GOUT Vs OUT ruLes - screenshot comparison

Comments are referred to OUT ruLes in comparison to GOUT, using GOUT frame numbers for reference.

GOUT direct copy from PAL DVD; then resized with the same method used for OUT ruLes.

1570 - Initial crawl: as the Spanish, English and French LD versions has this crawl, I decided to use it instead the one used on GOUT; because EP V and EP VI has the episode number as first line, and because the project will include also both of them, this choice seems logical to me, also if some purists will disagree.

2833 - More stars in the sky, but the space is lighter than GOUT, due to the script I generally used over the whole movie; I'm thinking about using a less aggressive detailers for the initial crawl and some outer space scenes, to leave black blacker.

3724-5 - Tantive corridor orange error: the first frame needs correction, while the second seems it was "auto corrected" with the median&average process... image is a lot cleaner than GOUT, but the corridor is pinker...

4249 - ...but few scenes later, the GOUT corridor is pinker instead!

10398 - more stars out there, and a little fewer lines of resolution on the bottom of the image.

11331 - Leia's face and shirt color are better.

11381 - Darth Vader is black and not blue-ish.

11313 - Sky and sand have better colors; sky has not white clipping.

14943 - Better sky, and the darker band on the right side is almost vanished.

19734 - R2-D2 is white (light gray, actually, because is so dirt ;-) and not pink-ish like in GOUT.

22036 - no more four-eyes stormtrooper! colors are more real.

36613 - Sunset is less violet, and the right "bloom" is less noticeable.

36726 - Binary sunset has completely different color timing... don't know if it's perfect, but it seems more close to the original film than GOUT.

38066 - binoculars' digits are green instead of red... which is the right color?

38067-8-9 Binoculars green&blue error... the green and blue frames are present in all the THX PAL laserdiscs and VHS... I thought delete those two frames, take the third frame and repeat it three times; the result will be less distracting than the actual scene.

47121 - no DVNR problems on Luke's face!

60865 - the image is shifted more than usual, compared to GOUT.

61356 - White droid, blacker stormtrooper's accessories.

62163 - The most (in)famous scene ruined by high DVNR, here is intact! "Look ma', I have legs!"

63180 - The DVNR blurred the guy's face (on the right side); now it is more recognizable.

66577 - Obi Wan's lightsaber is not "bleeding" light anymore, but the scene is darker than GOUT.

70648 - lighter scene and better colors.

70848 - better colors - note the green on the wall is not there anymore.

73276 - stormtroopers are white and not pink-ish

86978 - The Death Star interiors are dark grey and not blue-violet...

95409 - ... but here the opposite is true! Maybe the soldier is surprised for that?

96557 - here the resolution of laserdisc is visibly lower.

96722 - "Obi-Wan is not blind anymore!"

102113 - now the Death Star's interior is again dark grey...

103741 - Stormtrooper is white and not pink, the wall grey and not violet.

117182 - metal seems more real, white is whiter, some lines of resolution more on top.

120140 - Chewbacca's fur color is better, lights are white and not pink, a little more resolution.

127631 - Vader's lightsaber is "cut" on top, Obi-Wan's one is too light, and his cap is black(?!?)... this time GOUT is better!

127881 - ... but few frames after, it's the opposite: Obi-Wan robe has the right color, and his lightsaber, also if too light, at least is not green... but Vader is not as black as it should be; in GOUT, he's better.

146944 - I don't know which forest has the right color... the top could be a young forest after the rain, the bottom could be a very old forest without rain for years... but the bottom has white clipping problems (look at the cloud under the planet).

147238 - This time GOUT has white clipping problems... look inside the green; in GOUT some details are lost.

151933 - The ship is white and not blue, but the stars are better on GOUT.

165769 - R2-D2 is really dirt here, but at least is white(ish) and not pink(ish)...

168485 - Seems there are some details more; for sure, some lines of resolution more on top.

*** *** ***

Conclusions: the truth is GL doesn't care much about the original unaltered trilogy, and so the related DVD has not the best qualities (poor video quality non anamorphic taken from the laserdisc master, simple stereo soundtracks). But neverthless the production cost of this DVD was surely very high. So I'm proud to have started this project, with a quality sometimes better than that DVD, using only a PC, a laserdisc player, some laserdiscs and free softwares like Avisynth and Virtualdub. And obviously all the help found here, given by really precious people.

Tests are going on; for the moment, the only thing I must add to release some version are the forced subtitles.

If someone want to see some other screenshot(s), post here the frame number(s).

I'm waiting for your comments.

Thanks for your comments.

As I wrote in my first post, I'll do an AVC coded file at 720p - initially at 25fps, then at 23.976fps, then an AVCHD disc. I also wrote that I'll do a PAL DVD...

I know that upscaling is a bad idea, but because AVCHD @ 720p (or 1080p) is the only format I could make a progressive version at 23.976, it is just necessary. But I (roughly) calculated that using five AC3 soundtracks @448kbps, the video at 1280x720 (really 1280x544) could be compressed at around 7200kbps, quite good for the AVC codec.

Eventually, I could also release a file-only version at 576/23.976 (not standard, but no resize necessary).

I used a simple ResampleHQ as Anthony suggested, and the result is not that bad. But could be better; I'll use the best resize method you all will suggest. I also thought to resize the four captures with different resize methods, to have "slightly different" starting points for median & average; I don't know if this could be useful or it is better to upsize the final clip.

About Youtube links, that's right, it's offline... they send me immediately an advice "... it seems you use some FOX material blah blah blah..." so I preferred to delete the video to avoid any problem; here you are the clip on Sendspace

Sorry for the delay...

Harmy did a very good job with his Despecialized version, and I think he's one of the best restorer around here, so after downloading Harmy's test clip, I decided to use the same footage for my test clip, so I could compare myself my version and an HD version not from GOUT.

The video is 1280x544 (in a 1280x720 frame); I used AVC @ 1400kbps, roughly the same Harmy used with his clip; the audio is AC3 5.1 @ 448kbps, italian, converted from the original Dolby Surround VHS HiFi; subtitles not yet set.

I make a script for noise reduction and sharpening (maybe too much?) but not color correction (also no gamma, contrast and brightness touched).

here you are the test clip:

Youtube (bad conversion, just for preview)

Download (155MB - will be online only for 7 days!)

Any advice is welcome!

The Jabba scenes actually have TWO subtitles... english in white, and french in yellow right above them!

There is a french version ("Les Coulisses D'une Légende") on the fourth CLV side of ROTJ, in the french "pyramid" box set.

The resolution is not that high, but the colors seems correct (better than the many pynkish scenes found on ANH in the same boxset); there are some french subtitles (in yellow, mainly when showing some of the movies scenes) but I bet they are on the screen for less than 5% of the time, and maybe could be erased using the japanese counterpart, if in the same frame there are no japanese subtitles...