spoRv

AntcuFaalb said:

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Laserdisc effective chroma horizontal resolution will be (at best) around 120 lines, or about 160 pixel, when using the best SuperNTSC perfectly mastered disc, while others have less... that's at native sampling rate of 3.375MHz; when divided by four, we get 40 pixel at best... am I wrong?

You're confusing effective resolution with actual resolution.

You don't have 120 lines of chroma resolution in the file you capture. You have 360. THAT is what's getting divded by 4 here.

360 are the samples I get, not the effective chroma resolution... I mean, even at 360 pixel width, we will never get 180 pairs of yellow and red vertical lines, for example, just because... they are not there... we'll get 60 pairs of yellow and red lines three pixel wide each, more or less...

AntcuFaalb said:

I've watched an LD and S-VHS tape* (400KHz chroma bandwidth! less than half of this method!) of the same movie on my Pioneer Kuro plasma and I can't tell the difference even up close.

(* I made the S-VHS from the LD.)

 ...but I would be sad to know that the chroma isn't there anymore... (^^,)

Laserdisc effective chroma horizontal resolution will be (at best) around 120 lines, or about 160 pixel, when using the best SuperNTSC perfectly mastered disc, while others have less... that's at native sampling rate of 3.375MHz; when divided by four, we get 40 pixel at best... am I wrong?

@AntcuFaalb: thanks for the info! Actually, I prefer to use a derainbow filter that, even if is not that effective, at least leaves the chroma at its native resolution; even if I agree that we are less sensitive to chroma than luma, it's always true that laserdisc chroma is around 180 pixel (when captured at 720 pixel width) at best - probably could be reached using Happycube software and a good SuperNTSC disc; normal discs could be around 120-140 pixel, that will be reduced to 30-35 pixel with your method, too small for my tastes, and it will be really noticeable when upscaled to higher resolution, in particular 1920x1080.

@happycuber: I'm aware that consecutive frames have different phases, but that "trick" was the only one I was able to do to make an example; the picture could be found here: http://s22.postimg.org/vm22a3rn3/picture_5_X.png - hope you could see it following the link.

I wonder if it's possible somehow to reverse the chroma phase, even with some hardware; here in Italy, if the plug is reversed, the phase does not reverse...

New comparison - MagicUp V1.2 Vs V1.3:
http://www.screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125931

WOW!!! Great!

Can you explain the method to get this kind of results?

About two captures, I mean IF it's possible to switch phase, of course... like the following:

Actually is a real trick, as first and second frame are sequential, but it shows that it's possible in theory...

Danfun128 said:

Is there a cash reward for doing this?

Nope, but a lot of glory, and a mention in the project credit... (^^,)

No, thanks to you!!! Hurrah! - no such emoticons, but should be something like this: L(^^,)J

Color burst... can't help myself to use it, but I'm pretty sure some avisynth master would be able to use it to stabilize the picture, even if probably it would not need it - you have a TBC IIRC...

Resolution: as LD is analog, I think the more, the better; I mean, vertical resolution is fixed, but it could be possible to use higher horizontal resolution, to try to capture "in between" lines, a sort of sub-pixel... or maybe I'm going mad, dunno...

Is it possible to invert phase? I mean, it's always possible to eliminate dot crawls and rainbows in software, but if the inversion phase is feasible, I prefer to do two captures, and average them somehow, to get rid of chroma noise, retaining all the luma resolution... am I right?

If you process the signal in the YIQ domain, which will be the colorspace used for the final result? Just curious... can't wait to see a SuperNTSC title captured with this method!

UPDATE: added some SDTV size in the first post

Well, you could still mux those video with DVD audio! Quite *easy*, you need the NTSC DVD and TSmuxeR.

That's true, even if I must admit that, all other settings equal, the SuperResolution outputs here and there some more details, but also those hated (by me, anyway!) jagged lines; that's why I'm leaning to prefer MagicUp...

That's maybe due to the fact this shot contains frames that change little to nothing - difficult for SR to gave its best... when I'll grab some more clips, I'll test them both thoroughly!

New comparison, MagicSR Vs MagicUP (not using Super Resolution):

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125905

Hello everybody,
we found a kind member who helped us a lot, but because we have no news since a month ago, and we would like to finish this project ASAP, we need an English native speaker who could help us to transcript the dialog of The Arrival Bonus Disc, that will be used for English subs, and as base for French, German, Italian and Spanish translations.

About 40 minutes of footage will need to be transcripted, but effective dialogs will be less, of course.

This is a rather ambitious projects because, as far as I know, there is no fan bonus disc available with subtitles in five different languages; other than that, it includes material that is almost impossible to find...

Link to the project: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/The-Arrival-spoRv-Bonus-Disc-HELP-NEEDED/post/755774/#TopicPost755774Thanks in advance, from me and other project members!

@zee944,

I still don't get your point... if you think that SuperResolution and/or PaNup do not work, just don't use them! IIRC, DrDre has never stated that SR is the "final upscaling technique", nor do I think that PaNup is the same; what I can say is that combining different techniques leads to better results than using just one - and between them I include dehalo, dealiasing, denoise, sharpening, degrain & regrain etc.

It's a really difficult task to obtain the "right" (read: developer preferred) result - but I'm pretty sure you know it... for the ones who doesn't know, there are a lof of possible combinations to obtain a result with just, let's say, three filters... for example, we want to upscale an SD source to HD; we use a resizer, a denoiser, and a degrainer; we could put them in different order, and so we get different results; with just three filters, there are 8 possible permutations - stating that we use always the same settings... think if we will use 10 filters, each with many possible settings... that's why we spend hours, days, just to find maybe a 0.1% improvement, that is obviously never enough! (^^,)

If you think your method is better in retrieving finer details, then explain it briefly, and post some comparisons - if it will work, I'll be more than happy to use it with my future projects; can't add anything more than DrDre and others has already written before.

C'mon, c'mon... fingers crossed, wood touched...

Ooops... (^^,)

Yes, the MPEG2 HDTV versions of the 2004 SE (that should be implicit, until we'll... cough cough... find the 1997 SE versions!) are very good indeed! Can't say it them, or the AVC versions, are better than Blu-ray (mine is still srinkwrapped, waiting to be used for a restoration, maybe...), but I think they are, at least according to many projects around using them as sources!

It seems it's a new master - at least, in comparison to other HDTV versions; more info in The Abyss thread.

@Happycube: CapableMetal has kindly provided me a brief clip taken with your method, and I must say I'm really impressed!

There are two little problems...

Output is 744 pixel wide, and seems cropped at the sides; would it be possible to obtain a full wide output, and let the user decide the width?

Some residual chroma noise; is it possible to get two samples for each frame, one with chroma phase at 0°, the other at 180°, then merge them, to wipe out chroma noise? Or, if not, to let the user decide the chroma phase - something like chromaphase=true will be 0°, while chromaphase=false will be 180°.
Sorry if it seems I'm asking to much - again, your software is great as it is now, but if it could be improved a bit, it will be (nearly?) perfect!

zee944 said:

I've checked it. It is image registration and merging. What do you want to hear? It's a decent idea but reminds me of SuperResolution. The theory is much more exciting than the reality. But to be honest, I've never tried this one - if you achieve something wonderful with it, please post a comparsion. After all, if you find two *really* different copies, it should work.

About PaNup: the theory is almost always better than reality... (^^,) but sometimes - and, I repeat myself, SOMETIMES, it produces really nice results!

Here you are: http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Star-Wars-97SE-in-HD-using-super-resolution-more/topic/17781

Judge for yourself; please answer in the related thread, thanks.

Back to SuperResolution: after I read what is written in this page, now I now why the R2D2 is ridden by a lot of jagging - apart obvious "quality" of the source; even if video, that shot is like a still, with similar, if not equal, sequential frames, hence the poor result of SuperResolution; that's why a spatial resize filter works better there; the best would be to use both, dependent on the shots, but it will be a huge task, really time consuming...

DrDre, what do you think?

I can say they are very good indeed!

People think that a *mere* MPEG2 HDTV recorded broadcast has low quality, but it's not (always) true: look at The Abyss Cinemax, for example; it is gorgeous!

Finger crossed here... even if it's not the original trilogy, it would be a great discovery in the fan restoration world nevertheless!

Yes, I remember it - I even retrieved the discussion on AVS... and noted is not online since few months IIRC... maybe you could try to contact some other AVS members from that very thread.

It will be great if such recordings will surface... it will be hard, frankly, but not impossible, because "I've… seen things you people wouldn't believe…" - as the MPEG2 versions of EP2 and EP3, that frankly I was not aware they exist until I made thorough searches!

At the end, I still got my Rai Tre SE trilogy, and maybe it's the only recording still available nowadays - if only I could find a way to go into their archive and grab those pro tapes somehow... (^^,)

OK, I searched all the web, from the surface to the deep, and still not found an MPEG2 version of EP1... or, better, there was at least a small version, around 9GB, but I guess there should be another - like the Cinemax ones - around 16/17GB... if someone is aware of its existence, please let me know.

Plus, it will be great to have a confirmation that there is an HDTV of the EP1 theatrical version - as it should have been broadcasted, following few scarces sources - while it seems there were no 1997 SE HDTV broadcast record - even if there are rumors that EP4 and EP5 were transmitted in UK, while EP6 was the 2004 version.

AntcuFaalb said:

NTSC GOUT has 712 active pixels horizontally (most D-1 machines do 712 rather than 711 to make 4:2:2 work). Where do you see 714?

Check out: http://xpt.sourceforge.net/techdocs/media/video/dvd/dvd04-DVDAuthoringSpecwise/ar01s02.html

Great article - that I read years ago, but completely forgot to bookmark...

Now, you are *forced* (in a Star Wars way, of course) to write an article about aspect ratio on fanres! (^^,)