Thanks Colson!
Final encoding is almost finished, I hope to put it in the usual place in the next few hours.
And I added some little surprised, hope someone would appreciate them… stay tuned!
Done, thanks!
“A whole movie in a single image!” comparison between BD and LD:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=202082
After few years, an update…
Two VGX-XLs are dead… 😦 don’t know if they could be saved somehow, but I think it doesn’t worth the money spent on hardware or technical repair work; at least one (this) survived, even if it’s the one with less power (C2D E6300 1.86Ghz); idea of upgrading it with a more powerful CPU it’s still there - found a Q6600 2.67Ghz at 30€; it will improve the speed 3x; not bad at that cost!
A decade old PC, albeit capable of doing a lot of things - all my projects to date used this one, or another with slightly faster CPU, it’s umbearably slow; I was tired to wait a week for a lossless conversion, or one day or two for a lossy one; a minute to open an avs file, and few seconds to move to the next/previous frame.
So I found myself “forced” somehow to change the things. And I acted. Slowly, but firmly. Decided to go for a second hand, but good, desktop PC. AMD out of the games, i3 too slow, i5 not powerful enough, E5 Xeon too dear, so i7 was the logical choice, great price/power ratio.
Found an i7-4770 (non-K); seems almost new, very good status. Along it, great case, water cooler, 16GB RAM 2133Mhz, 600GB VelociRaptor, EVGA 760GTX.
Long story short: even if only few Avisynth plugins use multithreading, this new PC (with a CPUbenchmark score of almost 10000) is indeed ten times faster than the old one (score around 1000); so, do not base your calculations for speed improvements on single thread scores.
Hope this could help someone to decide to upgrade his CPU, or buy a “brand new used” PC as I did!
Thanks Falcon!
Just to let you know how it is the final result: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/201928
Hope you will like it!
Thanks Flexicon9; and, you got mail! 😄
Just finished to watch the movie, and guess what? It’s almost perfect, apart that shot! 😄
Found a perfect solution, now I must encode it lossless, but all my HDD are full, so I have to wait until I could afford a new HDD… 😕
Finished right now to encode it with the newest settings.
Colors… WOW! They are, like, 99% the same in 99% of the shots… except few ones - like the one you posted few posts (and many months) before. That’s because the DVD and BD have different framing.
Now I’m going to watch the whole movie, to spot these shots. Solutions? Leave them untouched, with very good colors in all the shot except small parts (Donald’s forehead, for example), or use another color matching script, with colors less closer to the DVD, and much closer to BD… in this case, no problems, but, for example, if there are similar shots before or after the replaced one, you would note different colors…
Well, meanwhile I watch the movie, think about a possible solution - even different from this! 😄
Re-working on this right now… revised version hopefully will be even closer, color wise, to the THX DVD, and I hope to remove all the residual artefacts.
Can’t remember if it’s full or wide screen… if it’s wide, probably.
Revised version is near completion… if someone is still interested, as Arrow would release another version in the next months… who knows, maybe it will have the right color grading?!?
NTSC US laserdisc for “Pilot” is noticeably better than NTSC US DVD; more details, and a bit more image on the sides; I just compared this, and the second episode, “Deep Throat”; with the latter, laserdisc is just marginally better, but still has more image on the sides. Probably all the other NTSC US laserdiscs should be the same.
…and want to add further images of Alderaan planet surface as well…
So since you are using parts of ANH:R, does that mean you’ll also use the extended Alderaan destruction?
I think so…
But the great parts of unused deleted footage are just unfinished effects or cinematics, so I think they are not interesting for many but the die hard fans, who surely had them in their collections already.
Probably you made the right decision to step back a bit on the blue.
Hope to see as much deleted footage as possible, I love extra extended editions! 😄
Base for every title is the BD - unless the HDTV has better image or bigger frame (it happens in EP1).
Adywan’s will be used for some shots; even if upscale would be not as good as real HD, the improvements in comparison to original footage would more than compensate for this.
Unused footage: as these will not be enhanced, I don’t see the point to include them, as they are available in the respective DVD, BD or ebook.
I see that your color grading is colder than the original one, right?
A split screen would be very welcome… 😄
Second youtube links (promo reel) doesn’t work.
I just ripped the uk laserdisc version of the '97SE and the color timing seems to be on point.
Sorry, I haven’t understand well… is the UK laserdisc color grading the same of the NTSC (pink tint) or like the French PAL (no pink tint)? Because, in theory, all the PAL laserdisc should share the same master…
I think you are right - as you can read into my previous post, the PAL LD (at least the French edition, but probably even the English and German one) has not the pink tint - still don’t know if it has less red, more green, or both…
Comparing the French THX PAL LD and Flunk right now; indeed, the PAL LD, with adjusted settings to look like the Flunk, seems to have not the pink tint!
I think I have all the 1997 THX PAL laserdisc around - German, English, French editions - and, IIRC, they all share this pink tint… as I think you have them in your HDD right now, may you take a look and confirm (or, hopefully deny) what I have written here?
Wazzles said:
Fun fact I learned recently: the pink-shift from the 97 LD/VHS release was toned way back for the 2000 VHS/Japanese LD/Malaysian VCD release.
May I ask you some links that point to that? Because, if it’s true, one of these edition would be a great color reference to regrade the DVB upscales I’m working on!
Yes, I think that removing the pink tint will reveal the underlying color grading, specific just for this edition; of course, regrading it using a 1997 SE 35mm as color reference will be great but, if this scan is available, will be a way better way as source for a project.
I think that, with some patience and skill, would be not that hard to find a way to remove this pink tint, using some proper reference images.
I must add this: a direct comparison with the '04 reveals that in many shots where '97 has a strong pink tint - like in the Orange Tantive corridors - '04 is better, while in some others - like inside shots of the Death Star - '97 is better… maybe a “mixed” color grading could be an idea for another project! 😄
There are stand alone TBC gears, but I suspect prices are still high, even as second hand; the DVD recorder passthrough is a cheap, yet valid, alternative; even one with a broken mechanic could be used, and you could have for near nothing…
I don’t know well the Diamond card, so I can’t say it’s good or not; I made my homeworks at the time, and the two ones I mentioned are amongst the best-for-the-bucks IMHO.
Take a look at these articles I wrote in my blog, maybe you could find some useful info there:
http://blog.sporv.com/high-end-video-capture-cards
http://blog.sporv.com/high-end-audio-capture-cards
http://blog.sporv.com/how-to-improve-video-capture-quality
Not aware of a professional transfer services, luckily, I always provided by myself, improving the quality of the captures during the years, thanks to experience, a lot of info found on the web, and better equipments.