spoRv

I've done a fast test with ColourLikeRGB, making the histograms every 1000 frames (last time I used it on YV12, I made every one frame).

Well, I don't know if it's because I wrote the histograms every 1000 frames, or if I've done something wrong with the script, or with my PC... but here you are the result - not really different from the ColourLike I've used until now:

and here you are my script:

bd .ConvertToRGB32().WriteHistogram("histograms\bdRGB.txt",1000)

dvd.ConvertToRGB32().WriteHistogram("histograms\dvdRGB.txt",1000)

CLRGB=bd.converttoRGB32.ColourLike("histograms\bdRGB.txt", "histograms\dvdRGB.txt").converttoyv12

stackvertical(\
bd.subtitle("BD",size=60),\
dvd.subtitle("DVD",size=60),\
CLRGB.subtitle("ColourLikeRGB",size=60)\
).spline36resize(960,1200)

You_Too, can you help me, please?

poita said:

The best demodulator is this one: Yamaha APD-1

I agree that is a good AC3 RF demodulator, but as I investigated a lot before buying one, I discovered that all AC3 RF demodulators use the same chip (licensed from Pioneer)... so, it's not possible to assume that this is the best (nor the worst): the all do the same jobs, quality-wise, while others have some interesting features, as the Pioneer RFD-1 has 1 AC3 ins, two digital ins and two digital outs (two optical and two electrical) and could act as a switch... I actually have both of them, along with the Pioneer SP-D07 DS&AC3 processor, and, apart features, sound quality is the same...

And 249US$ seems a quite high price, as you can find the same at 1/3rd of the price...

You_Too said:

I can't help but think you must have done something wrong when you tried ColourLike. (Maybe you didn't run it in RGB32?) 

Ehr... should I run ColourLike in RGB32? As it is compatible with YV12, and I prefer to avoid color space conversion, I didn't... well, as you proved it could be done with very good results, I'm pretty sure it could be possible to use it for the whole movie, but I have not time now to test it - I'll do it on Sunday and, as there are two movements (blue pill and red pill) I thought to do the restoration using the ColourLike (or the best alternative) to match colors as close as possible to the DVD, and make a fanedit using ChromaRite; in the future, if it turns out that the DVD is not valid as color reference, we'll see...

"The Matrix recolor day" is almost finished, and I've made a lot of tests... we all know that the BD colors are wrong, and DVD colors are better... but are they "right"? After I spent all the night trying to reach the closest colors to DVD, I realize that in many scenes they are wrong too (IMHO), in particular, the "off the matrix" scenes were way too dark and blue/violet, while often "in the matrix" faces were too "sunburnt", and sometimes still yet a bit greenish...

Then, I thought to give a chance to an old script I made during the color correction of my SW:ANH (SET ruLes); at that time, it worked not so well, but now I have fixed it; what this script make is trying to match two clips and extract the right colors. I think the results you can see below are difficult to replicate using another tecnique with only one color correction setting for the whole movie... obviously, this is far from perfection, but a good compromise, retaining the most "character" of the DVD colors, while correcting the worst scenes. It worked in 99% of the scenes, and failed only when a super bright scene is present (like in the scene where Morpheus explains to Neo what is the Matrix)... if this method - called ChromaRite, just to remeber it when I will use it again - is, well, "right" enough, I will start "The Matrix" preservation project, using it for the whole movie, apart the 1% when it doesn't work - there I'll use the DVD uspcaled or another color correction script.

At the contrary, if you don't like it, I could always use the ColourMatch method; I refined it in the morning, and now in more than 90% of the scenes, colors are almost exactly the same of the DVD, while the other 10% are close enough. I have not posted ColourMatch screenshots here, as I personally think ChromaRite method is better, but it's up to you. Choose your pill... (^^,)

I've made a sample clip - inside, there are some seconds from the DVD, upscaled, where ChromaRite failed - the eventual project video quality will be the same.

Sample Clip (40sec. 14Mbps, 69.4MB): http://www.sendspace.com/file/l8uvt5

Waiting for your comments as usual.

Learning new techniques have taken me to new goals... is not that I don't think SW:ANH [ruLes] is not good, at the contrary, is very good, considering the fact that video is from laserdisc... but now I know that I could improve it a bit - let's say that, as it is, I think it's about at 90%... I'm after other projects right now, but I'll complete EP5 and EP6 using new techniques, and then redo EP4.

Thanks a lot, darth_ender; I'm happy someone has appreciated my work, and write about it - even if with some delay, don't worry, I'm still happy! (^^,)

And I would add a thing: I deleted the original captures of my old projects to make room for the new ones... but from SET [ruLes] (that was only my second project) I learnt a lot, and I'm thinking to re-do it from scratch (along with the EP5 and EP6) applying new techniques... what do you think?

stretch009 said:

[spoRv]?

I like acronims... for the moment, it stands for Special Preservation Of Remixed Versions - as it will take BD for luma, DVD for chroma reference, and DTS theatrical soundtrack (Jetrell, you got a P.M.)

I'm waiting to receive the HD-DVD video for "The Thing [spoRv]" where it will be used for luma, LD for chroma (maybe merged with the PAL DVD), and different DVDs and LDs for soundtracks...

I know it's not the best one, and I'm open to new acronims; any idea? It must mean something about preservation and/or restoration, possibly from different sources... I've got an idea into my mind about SPORV, but I'll reveal more about it in the next days...

You must have a bit-perfect audio capture card; just enable capture audio,set the right frequency under raw capture format (stereo 16bit, 44100Hz for PCM and DTS, 48000hz for AC3). set the S/PDIF input, and then you could start to capture. Obviously, if you capture DTS, you must decode it with some other software, or use SoundOut plugin for AviSynth.

I strongly suggest to resurrect this thread when you have your laserdisc player back, as it's better to post your requests (and receive answers) "near on demand".

D_J, I always used AviSynth to capture video from laserdisc, along any kind of audio (PCM, DTS, AC3); then you could use any software to manipulate the captured soundtrack. If you need further info, let me know.

I jumped into the HD-DVD bandwagon few days ago, and now you came into my realm... "Welcome to the world of the analog video disc!" (^^,)

If you just want to play the file into your computer, you could simply play the 00001.m2ts track with VLC or Media Player Classic - you can always rename it to whatever you want.

If, at the contrary, you need an MKV for any other use (TV, PS3 etc.) you could always use AviDemux to do it, without any loss, and it's simple and fast.

Spaced Ranger said:

I never found an Avisynth plug-in that accepts a paint program's histogram functions numbers. However, in the Song Of The South thread, I noted that VirtualDub with a plug-in (Gradation Curves v.1.46b by BBugBunny, A.K.A. Alexander Nagiller) allows for a manual reconstruction of the histogram graph:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Song-Of-The-South/post/641915/#TopicPost641915

I know it's cludgy but that's the best I could find.

IIRC, I found that script where I was following some of your posts (can't remember in which thread, maybe THX1138?), and I used it with my SW:ANH '97... it was really hard to achieve a good result, took a long time and a lot of tests, and I was not really satisfied with it... hope the new tests with this ColourMatch method will be even better than the current ones.

Nien Nunb said:

My dad even complained about Neo's green beard the last time I lent him the BD.

... at one moment, I thought to be crazy, but now that someone else noted it immediately, there are two options:

1. me and your dad are good observers
2. me and your dad are mad about wrong details

at least now I'm not alone anymore... (^^,)

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***

About a preservation project: it seems there is some interest showed in this thread, and I definitely like the idea to do it, along with theatrical DTS soundtrack. Leave me one day to test further, post new screenshots, and if they will be better than these ones, BAM! "The Matrix [spoRv]" could be reality! Should I dare to do it?

ColourMatch is simply a "codename" for my messing tests on ColourLike mixed with RGBMatch... tomorrow I'll do further tests, and, as it seems results are quite good, I think I could start a restoration program - what do you all think? I'll test it even on "The Thing" to see how it looks...

Here you are the "green bearded Neo" and two "out of the Matrix" live scenes - this time I added a ColourMatch version with 0.75 saturation, and it seems the best compromise:

(this is going to be the tallest forum thread ever made...)

Spaced Ranger, could you elaborate an avisynth script for your method?

I'm testing further, and here you go the last results:

Tomorrow will be "The Matrix recoloration day...

AntcuFaalb said:

Let's discuss this one-on-one in a web-chat sometime soon. It'll be a lot easier (and faster!) than trying to do this on the forum.

OK, you are right.

Meanwhile, if someone want to take a look at the test clips (10 second and 20MB each):

Blu Ray untoched

ColourLike (DVD chroma applied to BD)

Although I don't like the "green beard" of Neo, it is worst on the untouched BD, so maybe ColourLike can't fix it completely; in other scenes, the results are really good, often better than DVD chroma applied directly onto BD luma.

darth_ender said:

So I burned and deleted my copy of this, and now I can't find the DVD I burned.  Would someone be willing to seed this place over at MyPancreas so I can give it another go?  Thanks :)

MyPancreas... GREAT!

Sorry, I deleted the AVCHD after I released the BD version; try to ask on MyPancreas (I can't resist...) for a reseed.

AntcuFaalb said:

You might not have write-access to the directory Avisynth is running from.

Try changing "hist1.txt" and "hist2.txt" to something like "C:\<...>\hist1.txt" and "C:\<...>\hist2.txt".

Replace the "<...>" with a directory you know for certain that you can write to as the current user.

Alternatively, you can try running whatever program is executing the script as an administrator.

I followed your instruction and, despite the fact that this time the two histogram files were written (but are small, 5Kb, it's normal?) I continue to have the same error messages...

Turisu said:

Forgive my ignorance but can chroma from an SD source really be combined with luma from an HD source without any perceivable loss in image quality?

Chroma is less "noted" by the human ey ethan luma... for example, a full HD luma resolution is 1920x1080, while chroma is 960x540 (1/4th) while VHS is 350x480 luma (NTSC) and 30x480 chroma(1/12th)!

Consider that PAL DVD has only 720x576 luma and 360x288 chroma, but when upscaled it will reach the same HD resolution, and, as chroma is less "important" (to the human eye) than chroma, the eventual artifacts given by the upscaling process will pass unnoticed.

I found this comparison really interesting, take a look at it, it's worth time to read it all: http://notonbluray.com/blog/comb-tb-tests/

Here you are my test using your script - what is wrong?

return ColourLikeFBF(bd,dvd)

function ColourLikeFBF(clip c1, clip c2)
{ # Color-matches c1 to c2, frame by frame.
  # Assumes c1 and c2 are the same length and are
  # both compatible with ColourLike.
  global c1 = c1
  global c2 = c2
  return c1.ScriptClip("""
    ca = c1.Trim(current_frame, -1)
    cb = c2.Trim(current_frame, -1)
    ca.WriteHistogram("hist1.txt", 1)
    cb.WriteHistogram("hist2.txt", 1)
    ca.ColourLike("hist1.txt", "hist2.txt")
    """)
}

Watching frame by frame, I got the following errors messages appearing at the top of the screen, one frame every when colourlike doesn't work and display the original BD colors:

Evaluate: System exception - Access Violation
([ScriptClip], line 4)

or

Evaluate: System exception - Access Violation
([ScriptClip], line 4)

the histogram files are not written, too. Can you help me, please?

AntcuFaalb said:

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

What's the difference with my script?

Yours generates a single histogram for the entire clip and then uses that.

Mine generates a new histogram for every frame.

Interesting... I must add that I've made a test, using only one frame to generate histogram, but resut is the same... but neverthless I'll give it a try; shold I use it as this?

ColourLikeFBF(bd,dvd)

What's the difference with my script?

###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###

### next two lines must be run once ###
dvd.WriteHistogram("dvd hist.txt", 1)
 bd.WriteHistogram( "bd hist.txt", 1)

bd.colourlike("bd hist.txt", "dvd hist.txt")

###   ###   ###   ###   ###   ###

I tested it, and, in many scenes, beards are greenish - maybe because the BD is all green-tinted, and ColourLike doens't work properly... at the contrary, when DVD is cropped as the BD - I know there are few pixel shift - results are pretty good... and really bad when cropping are different...

At the end, to achieve a perfect result...

when DVD cropping is almost the same of BD, I could crop a bit (few pixels) the BD

when DVD cropping is really different, there are different choices:

1. crop (a lot) the BD, but the resulted image loose lot of information, and the aspect ratio is heavely modified
2. use the ColourLike, but there will be appreciable color differences between a scene and another, that could be easlily noted when scenes are one after the other.
3. upscale the DVD to BD resolution

solution #3 seems the best (between the worst...)

Comments are welcome.

zeropc, thanks a lot! I'm downloading them right now, and updated first post with credits to you and to The Aluminum Falcon - thanks to you too, of course!

Here you are some test I've done; sources used are BD (the italian Blu-Ray - image is identical to US BD); DVD PAL (italian); ColourLike is an AviSynth script that tries to take the colors from a clip (from DVD in this case) and apply them to another clip (to BD in this case). From top to bottom:

1. BD
2. BD retimed by KingKong650
3. DVD PAL
4. BD ColourLike
5. BD luma + DVD chroma

Here ColourLike script did a good job; as you can see, as in this scene the DVD is more cropped, in the last image (BDluma+DVDchroma) the colors "bleed"

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***  

Here, BDluma+DVDchroma is better than the Colurlike script.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***  

Here ColourLike did a bad job, while BDluma+DVDchroma is good.

***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***   ***  

Using one of these two methods (ColourLike or BDluma+DVDchroma) it's possible to retain the BD resolution with DVD color timing; now, if the DVD color timing is right, this methods could be used to do a proper restoration.

The BD has clipped whites too... comparison screenshots (BD top, DVD bottom):

The italian PAL DVD seems a lot similar to the Signature Collection US LD: it has the original "Superstitious" cue heard in the original movie - as the french soundtrack, while the italian and german has "the other music" (frankly don't know the title...)

So, if someone with the US DVD would like to share his english DD 5.1 soundtrack, I could avoid to do the conversion from 25fps to 23.976fps - and avoid some kind of audio quality loss too!

I've read somewhere that "Silent Hill" is better in HD-DVD.