spoRv

[spoRv] special project of Restored version

Mission: restore a movie to be closest to the theatrical version as could be possible at the moment of the release, using the best video sources chosen from all the various available versions; adding the best original and remastered audio soundtracks in different languages; whenever possible, including english, french, german, italian and spanish languages, along with the related subtitles.

[ruLes] restored using Laserdisc editions

WARNING: there will be no other [ruLes] projects in the future; further eventual projects based (all or in part) on laserdisc as source will be released under the [spoRv] trademark; this list are left here only for historical reason.

Mission: restore a movie to be closest to the theatrical version as could be possible at the moment of the release, using laserdisc as video source(s), and as main audio source; whenever possible, including english, french, german, italian and spanish languages, along with the related subtitles, from any sources is allowed.

_,,,^..^,,,_  hardware and software setup

Hardware:

• Pioneer HLD-X9 MUSE/NTSC laserdisc player
• Pioneer DVL-909 PAL/NTSC laserdisc/DVD player

• Pioneer LD-V4300 PAL/NTSC laserdisc player
• Pioneer CLD-D925 PAL/NTSC laserdisc player
• Pioneer CLD-600 PAL laserdisc player

• Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder
  
• Pioneer DVR-320S DVD recorder
• Yukai DVD-A100 DVD recorder
  
• Panasonic NV-FS88B S-VHS recorder 

• Sony MDS-J520E MiniDisc recorder (as analog/digital converter)
• Pioneer SP-D07 Dolby Digital decoder
  
• Pioneer RFD-1 AC3 RF demodulator

• Sony Playstation 3 used as BD Player
  
• Philips BD-7100 BD Player
  

• Sony Vaio VGX-XL202 PC Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz, 3GB RAM, 2x250GB + 320GB HDDs, BD burner
  
• AverMedia BDA A16C internal video card (with Philips SAA713x chipset)
• Western Digital Elements 1TB external USB HDD
  

• Monster Cable S-Video 5pin cable (very high quality)
• LINN composite RCA video cable (very high quality)
• Audison stereo RCA audio cable (very high quality)
• SONY optical S/PDIF cable (very high quality)

Software - ONLY freeware:

• VirtualDub for audio/video capture
• VirtualDub and AviSynth for video editing
• Aften for AC3 encoding
• Foobar2000 for other audio conversions
• Audacity for audio editing
• GDSMux or AviDemux for demuxing
• tsMuxeR or AviDemux for (re)muxing
• Subtitle Edit for subtitle editing
• MSPaint and Fotographix for cover and disc design
• EasyBD Lite for BD authoring
• MultiAVCHD for BD authoring with menus

FUTURE PROJECTS (provisional list):

[spoRv] - special project of Restored version

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (BD ColourMatch the LD or DVD + LD soundtracks)
  
• Alien (Director's Cut - D-Theater + LD soundtracks)
• Alien (Theatrical Cut - BD ColourMatch the LD or DVD + 70mm AC3 soundtrack)
  
• Aliens (Special Edition - HDTV + LD soundtrack) --> eventual ColourMatch to be investigated <--
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) (BD ColourMatch the LD or DVD + LD soundtracks)
• Back to the Future (DCP video + LD soundtracks)
• Edward Scissorhands (open matte)
• Evil Dead (BD ColourMatch the LD or DVD + LD soundtracks)
  
• Independence Day Extended Edition (BD + DVD for extended scenes + LD soundtracks)
  
• (Indiana Jones and the) Raiders Of The Lost Ark (HDTV + LD sountracks)
• Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom (HDTV + LD sountracks)
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (HDTV + LD sountracks)
• Mad Max 2 (BD ColourMatch DVD or LD + LD soundtrack)
  
• Lord of The Rings (Extended Edition - BD ColourMatch DVD + italian soundtrack correction)
  
• Ransom (extended cut)
• Robin Hood (Theatrical Cut - HDTV + LD soundtracks)
• Suspiria (BD ColourMatch the DVD or LD + LD soundtrack)
• Total Recall (Mind Bending BD ColourMatch DVD or LD + LD soundtrack)
  
• True Lies (D-Theater + LD soundtracks)

 titles in red are new entry

For my projects I need soundtracks and subtitles in the following languages:

• english
• french
• german
• italian
• spanish

from LD, BD, DVD, HD-DVD, HDTV... even from VHS if there are no better sources! Your help will be highly appreciated.

If you think a movie should receive a [spoRv] treatment, post your ideas here, using BOLD for each movie title, and explain why and how it should be preserved or restored; as you can see, I much prefer sci-fi and horror movies, but I like action too!

PROJECTS IN PROGRESS:

[spoRv] - special project of Restored version

• The Arrival (BD video with correct contrast & grain plate applied + LD commentary)
• Gladiator (Theatrical Cut) [spoRv]
• No Escape (1994) [spoRv]
• Minority Report (BD color regraded using DVD as color reference)
• Waterworld (HD-DVD video regraded)

Latest entries in bold

RELEASED PROJECTS

[spoRv] - special project of Restored version

• [spoRv] 0004 B - Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem (Unrated)
• [spoRv] 9001 B - Disney's Beauty and the Beast
• The Matrix
• The Thing (1982)
• [spoRv] 0002 B - Escape From New York
• Halloween
• [spoRv] 0005 B - Supernova (2000)

[ruLes] - restored using Laserdisc editions

• The Lost World: Jurassic Park
• Jurassic Park
• Star Wars: A New Hope [SET] - Special Edition Trilogy
• Guerre Stellari [OUT] - Original Unaltered Trilogy
• Star Wars: A New Hope [OUT] - Original Unaltered Trilogy

WARNING: there will be no other [ruLes] projects in the future; further eventual projects based (all or in part) on laserdisc as source will be released under the [spoRv] trademark; this list are left here only for historical reason.

Someone has defined me "one man army"... but, even Rambo had some support for his operations... (^^,) - so, here you are my

"Partners in crime" (in alphabetical order):

• CapableMetal
• Chewtobacca
• DocSap
• DoomBot
• ilovewaterslides
• Jedeitor
• Jetrell Fo
• Jonno
• kk650
• Leonardo
• marvins
• nirbateman
• spielt mit
• The Aluminum Falcon
• zeropc

each of you has helped me with my projects, a lot, in a way or another, and I could call you friend now! Without your invaluable contributions, all my projects would not have been possible... THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

If someone else would join the [spoRv] creek, or gang, you are welcome!

In particular, I'm eagerly looking for someone who are able to do proper Blu-ray menu... anyone?

I want also to say

"thank you" to the following members (in alphabetical order):

AntcuuFaalb, althor1138, Asaki, BDgeek, Belbucus, bigrob, bkev, Borisanddoris, captainsolo, CatBus, CSchmidlapp, Dark_Jedi, Darth Mallwalker, darth_ender, digitalfreaknyc, Doctor M, DragoonClawNZ, drngr, dvdmike, Eldonante, Flexicon9, FreaQ, FremenDar007, g-force, Hairy_Hen, Harmy, Matt_Stevens, Molly, Moth3r, msycamore, Namtar, OmegaMattman, Papai2013, PDB, penguinofgreatness, pittrek, poita, puggo, rockin, SilverWook, skyjedi2005, Spaced Ranger, SS4DarthPayne, Stamper, StarThoughts, StarThoughts, stretch009, tranzor, trp, TServo2049, Turisu, Video Collector, You_Too

for supporting, hints, comments, thoughts, advices, inspirations, ideas, works, scripts, etc... your help is really appreciated! If I have forgotten someone, please let me know!

I have any of those players, but it's a general consensus that the CLD-97 is one of the best non-MUSE laserdisc players ever built!

A line doubler could be useful, but if you have a PC with a capture card, try DScaler first: it's good, and free!

DJ, I'd like to know something more about your "True Lies" project. As a long time passed by the first time you mentioned your intention of working on it in its proper thread, and the last post is dated more than 2 and half months ago , I thought no one will do it... so I managed to find out the D-Theater version, and as I have also the PAL and NTSC laserdiscs, I thought about to add their soundtracks (PCM, DTS, AC3) plus the italian AC3 from DVD.

But, reading this thread, I saw your intention to release it soon. In that case, if you need some of those laserdisc soundtrack, let me know. Plus, I really love the idea of the italian AC3 soundtrack added to your project.

I don't want to "steal" your project idea!

Congratulations for all your new projects!

done!

Thanks a lot! It's really appreciated.

I ask you a favour, if possible: to seed it for a while, as my (restricted) band is used to seed The Matrix.

RELEASED!

You could find it in the usual place...

When I worked onto my SW project, I used four laserdisc soundtracks (plus one VHS HiFi stereo); of the LD ones, two were "right", while the others had some problems (really can't remember which kind). So, at the end, I had two couples of similar soundtracks that could be used to extract the dialogues (one couple right, one couple wrong)...

So, it is possible to use, let's say, the english and french soundtrack (or german and spanish) if they match all except the dialogues? If so, how? Can I use Audacity to do that? At the end, as "side effect", it could be also possible to extract the isolated score, right?

Update:

It seems that, finally, the video is ready (touching wood)... I'm going to mux it right now, this evening I'll watch it (again) just to be sure everything is OK, so this night I should start the seeding!!!

If someone has the german soundtrack, and want it to be added to this project, this is the last chance - send a PM ASAP.

Further info could be found in the updated first post.

Video Collector said:

Andrea, it would be great if you could work your magic on those Laserdiscs.

Perhaps the Criterion DVD could be used as a third source in a mixture with both the LDs?

I thought about it, but I read somewhere that the DVD has some compression artefacts... any hints about this problem?

What about a laserdisc upscale of the Criterion laserdisc?

I have the two versions, CAV and CLV, that could be overlaid to get rid of drop outs; as the DVD is not anamorphic, the vertical resolution is the same of the LD; laserdisc has a better chroma vertical resolution; the DVD (AFAIK) has some compression artefacts problems; the LD has the uncompressed PCM soundtrack; both have the 1.66:1 AR; the LD has a lot of extras, but I don't know if they are all on DVD as well.

Plus, they will be captured using the HLD-X9...

Opinions?

If you can find a Pioneer CLD-97 for under $200, go for it!

Try to avoid Sony and other non-Pioneer brand, except Panasonic that is pretty good; any hi-end company produced usually Pioneer clones with better audio hardware, but I don't think you are so lucky to find one at that price...

Take a look around, find three-four models at the right price you think could be OK, and post them here; I'll try to give you some further tips.

Overscan! I completely forgot about it! It's so many years I have digital display with no overscan...

By the way, the image is 16:9 so it SHOULD be projected with the black bars too - unless someone set his video projector to 21:9 and chop those black bars, along with those "poor" subtitles...

Well, it seems I should leave them as in the original BD, untouched, wherever they will appear!

Maybe I'm the only one that prefers subtitles over the black bands instead than over the picture...

... but I'd like to have them ALL over the black, and not "protruding" over the image... I thought to move up slightly the picture, so the resulting height will be 132 pixels top black bar, 796 pixels image, 152 pixels bottom black bar... what do you think? Or should I leave the image centered, and subtitles "invade" it a bit sometime?

At the moment, no one is seeding it, and, as I'm releasing another project, I could not seed it myself... if you need a myspleen invite, though, let me know!

Or... wait until I'll release a new, improved version, but you have to be very patient...

@zeropc: happy you agree with me!

@CatBus: the DTS soundtrack is a "simple" 16bit/48KHz lossy, and takes "only" 1.5GB; but thanks for the offer, if I need such conversion for a future release, I hope you will help me as well!

Well, don't know if the difference is "dramatic", because the DTS level is so higher than AC3, so to be safe, I'll leave it in.

about languages: according to Wikipedia's latest estimates, two out of three say that there are more french and german speakers than japanese, while just one say that italian speakers are more, but you know... I'm from Italy, and italian soundtrack is a "must" for me! (^^,)

Still hoping to find out the german soundtrack, much more preferred against four commentaries (and because I will leave in the fifth one...)

I don't speak german, but I like to include the most important five languages in europe (english, french, german, spanish and italian) whenever is possible; think it as a "world release"... infact, if you count speakers all around the globe that speak those five languages, according to the best estimation based on wikipedia, about 2.5 billion people could enjoy this release... the fact that only few dozen will watch it in reality, is another matter! (^^,)

About bitrate; there is not an universal method to follow to obtain the best absolute quality (I'm studing about it); but, according to the Kush Gauge (one of the most famous, I think), here you are the equation to calculate a bitrate for a very good quality result:

Frame width * frame height * frame rate * motion rate (1,2 or 4) * constant (0.07) / 1000 = target bit rate in kilobits per second (kbps)

1920 * 796 * 23.976 * 4 * 0.07 / 1000 = 10280kbps (giving motion rate the max for high motion)

So, 17000kbps is about 70% more than what could be considered very good quality; it should be enough to not see any compression artefacts, and indeed its quality is really good; don't know if a couple of PSNR dBs more would worth doubling the bitrate (and the disc space)... I think the difference will be negligible - read: really few viewers will see it, and the ones who could see, will see very low quality improvements... but, as usual, this is only my opinion, as the "video compression science" is also an art form.

I thought also one thing: I'll release it as I wanted to be - really hoping someone could provide me the german soundtrack; then, if you and/or other people will like it, I could always release a "superbit" (^^,) version, including only the english DTS cinema soundtrack - that will take the video bitrate around 22/23000kbps; what do you think?

Maybe because they could master just one disc for both europe and japan, and let the player decide which sountracks are available... indeed, I think few people in europe set their BD player's main language to japanese, and vice versa...

Ah, they are really smart... any opportunity to spare some cash is welcome... after all, they recycled the whole trilogy from the HD-DVD, so...

About dropping sountracks: as I discovered some imperfections, I should re-render (again? yes...) the whole movie, so I will drop all the secondary commentary tracks only if I could find the german soundtrack.

About bitrate: I calculated it so well, that it's really close to the original one, so it's useless to increase bitrate over the original one, don't you think? And final result is really, really good! In comparison to the BD, in nearly perfect; in comparison to the regraded version (that is very good, by the way) it's better.

Japanese people, please forgive me! (^^,) ...at least, I'll leave the japanese subtitles...

Once I tried to align both the PAL french and NTSC japanese laserdisc captures, without success... don't know why, I quit after some days of trying - it was enough for me, at least at the time! (^^,)

So maybe the french has the same treatment of the UK tape - and it will be a good thing, as it will be easy to overlay them - or I didn't take in account the fact that the japanese has mixed content (progressive and interlaced)...

By the way, the french version of "From Star Wars to Jedi" is "Les Coulisses D'une Légende", and could be found on the so-called "pyramid" set.

PROBLEM!

As I calculated the bitrate taking in account all the soundtrack except japanese, now the resulting muxed file is too big to stay inside the BD-25... warning: I dropped the TrueHD english soundtrack because it was too big to fit inside a BD-25 along with all the other soundtracks, and because I wanted a decent bitrate for the video.

So, these are some solutions:

• redo the video conversion at lower bitrate
• drop the english AC3 soundtrack, mantaining only the DTS Cinema for english
• drop ALL the commentaries
• drop the japanese soundtrack

I think the last is the "less worst" solution, as I don't want to decrease the video bitrate further, and I'd like to mantain the english AC3 soundtrack for whom have not a DTS decoder, and/or want to make comparison between it and the Cinema DTS soundtrack.

Opinions?

UPDATE:

The x264 conversion if finished, and the final video looks pretty good!

Now I should only mux all the soundtracks and subtitles files, but I have some problems to identify .sup files - to discover which file is which language, I'm muxing ALL soundtracks and subtitles together right now, and then when this test mux will be ready, I hope I'll find which is which...

The most challenging task will be to discover which commentary soundtrack is, as there are five of them! At least, I will mark each with english, and put them after the other languages.

Last thing: I discovered, with surprise, that there is a japanese soundtrack between the others... the fun fact is that is not listed anywhere, not in the cover neither in the BD audio menu...

I love it, but, even if I like almost everything about Japan, for this project I'll prefer to get the german soundtrack, as I promised myself to use five main languages for my projects if available (english, french, german, italian, spanish); and german is the only missing for "The Matrix"... if someone have it, and want to share, I'll be really grateful! And I bet there are many german speakers here who will really love to hear one of their preferred movies dubbed into their main language!

I'm after so many projects now, that this was left behind, but still thinking about it because I love very much these trailers.

IIRC, the EP1 pod race was just a short snippet of the movie, and if it's it, I will not include it into my project, as I'd like to have only DTS/DD/THX trailers et similia... so, the DCS Cubes trailer will be included too - it should be just inside the project folder, but it's onto another external HDD now, I have to check; if it's not, I'll ask you for that, ok?

A laserdisc tranfer of the WOW? Well, I have not that disc, but if anybody wants to borrow it to me, I'll use the Pioneer HLD-X9 to capture it, and so it will be the second best capture in the world - after the HLD-X0, but really really really close...