towne32

yoda-sama said:

vfxhooker said:

I finished the BD .iso of SW Despecialized 2.5 with menus. I was not able to make the DTS-MA files work. I ended up using the AVCHD. It still looks and sounds great. This, I think, will be a good stop-gap for anyone that wants to watch a blu-ray with menus prior to the release of the 1080p 3.0 releases that are supposed to have all the bells and whistles. I have uploaded a multipart .rar to mega. I need to know what the proper place to post the links is.

If I get a positive response to this setup, I’ll go ahead and modify the project for TESB and ROTJ.

First, I don’t think burning a Blu-ray without available lossless audio tracks is the most attractive proposition. What really confuses me, though, is when you say you used the AVCHD, do you mean that you used the AC3 audio from the AVCHD and used the Blu-ray worthy/ready v2.5 MKV’s video, or did you make a “Blu-ray” from purely AVCHD sources? If the latter, I don’t see how that is any sort of acceptable “stop-gap” alternative to a full-quality DeEd without menus. If you want to tout it as an AVCHD release with menus, that’s one thing, but calling it a Blu-ray with menus will only cause confusion. Besides, I’ve already seen a menu’d v2.5 BD with a subset of audio/subtitle tracks on the spleen already, not to mention there’s plenty of talk on this thread about a forthcoming BD menu for v2.5 which does not omit any tracks.

If I read what you said wrong, enlighten me, and also please detail what your version does include.

He’s talking about the audio from the AVCHD.

I’ve actually been trying to get the DTS audio working for him (helping him via PM), since I had the exact same problem at one point. H_h’s DTS files do not load properly into Encore (or other programs), and show the run length about 3x longer than it should be. It needs to be patched up with multiavchd. Doing so works fine for me, and for whoever told me how to do it. But this user has an issue with multiavchd re-encoding everything and building him default blank menus he doesn’t want, discarding his own menu in the process. I can’t replicate the problem, so I can’t help him.

Williarob said:

towne32 said:

Lasz said:

maybe one could make a blu ray with both options…

Unless TN1 has some great insider secrets, not a single person on this forum (or indeed, apparently, the internet) has gotten homebrew blu-ray seamless branching to work, despite many efforts. If you want to read about it I can try to find the threads and PM you, since it will take us far off topic here for the sake of discussing (so far) completely fruitless efforts.

But yes, it would be fantastic if it would work.

Our Blu-rays will have the 77/81 crawl as a seamless branching option. Here is a preliminary test:

part 1: http://we.tl/4xP7y4t4dq
part 2: http://we.tl/e2yo3mPb4Z

A few notes:

• Yes, I know the audio needs some tweaking to make it more seamless - the volume of the 81 is higher than the 77 and remainder of the film, and there is a brief moment of silence between the 77 opening and the main film. Both of these are issues with the audio tracks and will be fixed. The important thing is that the video transition IS seamless and those of you who care to reverse engineer it will see that the seamless branching flags are set.
• Also this is NOT an indicator of the final Blu-ray quality / menus / layout / or contents!!! The menu and buttons were created purely for this test because we had to have some way to choose which version to play.
• The video and audio tracks were both re-encoded from the content already distributed - not from the masters - so please don’t whine on about how the quality hasn’t improved at all or the encoding settings need more tweaking. (The audio for the 81 crawl was taken from the X0 project files distributed by Zion)

I just wanted to see if I could do it, and I can, so that’s nice.

Carry on.

Haven’t watched the previews, but will later today. If there’s no hiccup in the video at the branch point, then I am indeed very impressed! I very much hope that the blu-ray release will include branching crawl options. It would be the first of its kind in that regard.

BobaJett said:

First off, Im new to this forum and I would like to give a big thanks to TN1 for their labor of passion and most definitely of patience. I cant imagine maintaining the same level of patience and discipline in restoring over 170,000 frames throughout! Thats amazing. Secondly, yalls knowledge of video authoring and what not is light years ahead of my own. Can anyone provide a link or give me a push in the right direction as to how to get the MKV file to a file type that I can import into an editor and burn to BD? Ive tried one convert and it looks horrible. I really want to have a BD with the artwork that I can watch on my projection screen. Thanks!

tsmuxerGUI.

Furthermore (though I know this is really getting ahead of things):

Do you think you will wait for the IB scans from either TN1 or elsewhere, or do you plan on putting the LPP based scan to use instead? The IB quality just looks like such a great improvement, and should come closer to matching the BD material. It also has the benefit of being in line with your intended colors.

Discostu said:

It’s really a matter of taste. I like it better if Blu-rays have grain and show that the movie was shot on film and therefore I prefer the TN1 version.

I like grain on blu-rays as well. It’s a shame when it’s all scrubbed away. But I tend to prefer the more mild grain of the negative to a theatrical print. Plus TN1’s is one generation after that, as a dupe. Their IB version and other SW films have grain that’s a bit better for my eyes. But there are tons of different opinions and options, which is great.

SpilkaBilka said:

The thing that’s actually worse than them breaking forum rules is that people constantly feel the need to call them out on it, thus clogging up threads and wasting everyone’s time.

If you have a problem with the account, please just report it to the mods and leave everyone else alone.

Hello, fellow clogger.

Williarob said:

towne32 said:

That certainly would have been nice to know a long time ago, and would have probably cut down a lot of the animosity if people thought of the account as Team_-1_Representative or something.

It was assumed otherwise due to:

1. Not being stated (or if it was one time, it isn’t generally repeated or emphasized).

2. The posts will spontaneously be in negative_1’s poetic format for a short while.

3. The possible assumption that as admins have IP logs, they wouldn’t have raised any fuss if it was all from one person.

If Team_Five_Guys ends up registering, I hope we can let them slide in exchange for some good coupons.

In hindsight I agree with you. But it is really only an issue because certain people made it such an issue - bringing it up over and over again, year after year. If they had just moved on, would anybody really care?

I almost added to my post that the IP logs should support this, but I’m not so sure that they will: while ISPs will occasionally change the IP address on your connection, it remains static most of the time, but people don’t. They can now log in from anywhere using their phone, often on Wifi at a coffee shop or anywhere they happen to be, so there are probably multiple IP addresses associated with everybody’s account by now.

I agree that they would not give an entirely robust answer. But they would indicate whether or not IPs were flickering between New York and the Netherlands in one day, vs. being variable Comcast IPs (or even school/work in the same city).

I do agree that the whole thing is a bit overblown, and that both ‘sides’ contributed to that. I’d probably be entirely on the Team’s ‘side’ if it weren’t for the bizarre authoritative knowledge that ‘We’ has with regards to things like blu-rays, the future of 4K, the 4K restoration itself, Lucas’s reference materials, etc. There’s no reason that their posts necessarily need to suck when they enter other areas of the forum. But, somehow, they do. And so it’s much more preferable for me to see them in threads like this where they know what they’re talking about, and people are happy to hear from them, and they aren’t banned.

That certainly would have been nice to know a long time ago, and would have probably cut down a lot of the animosity if people thought of the account as Team_-1_Representative or something.

It was assumed otherwise due to:

1. Not being stated (or if it was one time, it isn’t generally repeated or emphasized).

2. The posts will spontaneously be in negative_1’s poetic format for a short while.

3. The possible assumption that as admins have IP logs, they wouldn’t have raised any fuss if it was all from one person.

I’m definitely not the biggest hater of the whole team thing. Though certain posts from the account have a kind of attitude (inconsistently, again making it seem as though there are multiple users) that can be unpleasant, but that itself isn’t against the rules. I’m just finding it strange that this wasn’t clarified earlier. Also, if Team_Five_Guys ends up registering, I hope we can let them slide in exchange for some good coupons.

Swazzy said:

There’s no news yet about where fans could see the movie, or whether a public screening is even legal, but there’s no rest for the weary, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. They also just announced ways other fans can take it upon themselves to clean up their original version of The Empire Strikes Back as well.

Seems that they got the public website link and are just writing based on what’s there.

yoda-sama said:

but with all the film scans he’s been getting, it likely makes putting any more effort into the rendered credits (released version or error corrected) a moot point.

Yep. I think Harmy was actually hoping to get film credits in 2.0, but didn’t get them in time. And has stated that it’s not worth correcting the typos because it will indeed be a film scan next time.

Lasz said:

maybe one could make a blu ray with both options…

Unless TN1 has some great insider secrets, not a single person on this forum (or indeed, apparently, the internet) has gotten homebrew blu-ray seamless branching to work, despite many efforts. If you want to read about it I can try to find the threads and PM you, since it will take us far off topic here for the sake of discussing (so far) completely fruitless efforts.

But yes, it would be fantastic if it would work.

Asaki said:

team_negative1 said:

1. Base of the project is from Technicolor
2. Missing frames and scenes will be from an Eastman Kodak print (Crawl, etc)

Just my opinion, but I think the Technicolor preservation should be exactly that, instead of replacing its '81 crawl with the original from '77. Was really cool to see it included in the Extras folder with SSE.

If it has an 81 crawl, it has already physically been replaced and is not Technicolor.

But it would be nice to see a fully restored 81 crawl, stabilized with the starfield visible, either as an extra or whatever.

Interesting. It’s the end of the film, so ‘R-7’ means reel 7 presumably.

But you mention the cities. So it sounds like an unfinished animatic for the 1997 release of return of the Jedi. If it’s not already available, I’m sure someone here would love to make a digital copy of it for others to see.

Editroid said:

I can’t decide on whether I should download the Despecialized Edition of A New Hope, or the Team Negative 1 restoration. Which is better to any of you?

Get both and decide.

TN1’s is a preservation. If you want to see film grain and reel markers and a few remaining scratches as if you were in the theater, that’s the best version. If you want something more like what the blu-rays should have been, Despecialized would be better. Though a few of the non-HD sources still stick out in Harmy’s SW 2.5, and the color is as times not as good as TN1’s preservation. For ESB and RoTJ, neither the color nor the image quality is really a problem at all. They’ll hold up well even against TN1’s upcoming releases, in part because they incorporate these film scans themselves.

Hal 9000 said:

Towne32 is right. The upscaling is just for the deleted scenes. They will never look as good as the rest of the film no matter what we could possibly do, but they blend in better than the flat upscale I had used before.
And I’m probably going to use the BluRay for Episode III, since to my eyes it looks pretty good and won’t have any encoding mistakes that I might not spot from schorman’s V1. Episode II on the other hand looks waaaaay better than the BluRay, so I’ll use schorman no matter what mistakes might be there. Episode I was the BluRay color corrected similarly to KK650 (though not as far), and with added grain to counter the overuse of DVNR.

By the way: Did you use shot-by-shot corrections for TPM, or is there any chance you’ve got decent correction settings that can be applied to the majority of the film?

Density said:

I gotta agree that ROTJ has by far the worst changes. To make the SE of the original at least watchable all you really gotta do is splice out a few frames to make Han shoot first. Yeah, the Mos Eisley stuff and CGI Jabba is pretty bad, but they pale in comparison to “Jedi Rocks.” And Empire isn’t really harmed at all by the changes. I certainly don’t think any of them help or were at all necessary (the original is a perfect film as it is), but the worst is changing the line “Bring my shuttle.” Hardly Earth shattering. For the most part the changes were neutral. Had no positive or negative impact on the film. If only those types of changes were made to the other two as well, I wouldn’t complain too much.

The SE of Jedi, on the other hand, is totally unwatchable. “Jedi Rocks” is one of the worst things I have ever seen, without exaggeration. Absolute cringe. I have no idea what Lucas was smoking, but I hope I never inhale any of it. The Little Sarlaac of Horrors is terrible too, and don’t even get me started on the “Noooooooo” and Hayden Christensen with his creepy ghost smirk. What little was left of Vader’s dignity from the prequels was robbed by those changes.

I agree. But in 1997, RoTJ-SE didn’t seem quite so bad. Jedi Rocks was the low point in the trilogy (and perhaps film as a whole), sure. But if you closed your eyes and ears for that, and squinted a bit through the Sarlaac, it was pretty much smooth sailing for the rest of the film. Certainly not the case anymore. You think you’re in the clear for a bit and a damned ewok blinks at you.

I think this is an example of what has been discussed at length already. Not intentional, but an issue with the scan.

For video, there are 264 blu-ray presets in the dropdown list that will generally work fine. The defaults should include black bars (1920x1080, 1280x720, etc) and you should just be able to just set your bitrate and other quality settings and go. Note that if you select 264 (non-bluray) option, your default dimensions are your project dimensions, rather than full screen HD. The 264 bd preset saves unmuxed files that you can put into an mkv.

I forget if premiere does AC3. If it does not, you could export lossless audio and re-encode it from audacity.

MalàStrana said:

Hal 9000 said:

I absolutely did, and they are incredible. He’s been very patient and longsuffering with working out some kinks for the Ep2 upscales. (Episode 3’s look the best of all!)

This is teasing at its best 😃 The blu ray of Episode III is stunning, I’m really curious about a better looking picture. You’ll still use a “grain veil” on those ?

This is for the deleted scenes, where we only have rather poor quality SD video to work with. But Dre has a great algorithm for upscaling.

He’s using Schorman’s HDTV preservation, so adding grain really shouldn’t be needed (nor would it for the BD, I think). It’s just TPM that had the wax figure level of scrub done.

TheFirmament said:

FreaQ said:

TheFirmament said:

Done watching SSE35mm, it looks awesome!

I tried a test Blu-ray conversion using AVCHDCoder and the audio was out by 2-3 seconds. ouch!
It’s surprising because all previous movies I’ve converted on AVCHDCoder (inc SW-DE & ESB DE) have been in perfect sink.

Any other Blu-ray creators you guys could recommend?

All you need to do is to run the mkv through TSMuxer with output set to Blu-Ray folder.
Then burn it with ImgBurn or any other program supporting Blu-Ray.

Thx FreaQ

I’ll try that

I’m also trying Leawo Blu-ray Creator, it’s pretty good except I don’t think it allows chapters

Be careful as I imagine many other software packages will try to re-encode the video for no real reason.

I’ll probably have time to check it out as well, if you need another set of eyes.

I forget, did you manage to use Dre’s SD upscales for V4 of Cloak?

As I said I would, I’m posting a sample of my WIP of the Mos Eisley entry scene. It’s tricky as hell for some shots, and not terrible for others.

Here’s the video: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3o6a6i_special_auto

edit: and here’s a comparison video of a larger section of the film: http://we.tl/uJCZ7liTee

Chouonsoku said:

1. Full BD-50 format 1080p encode with any audio tracks planned.
2. BD-25 sized 1080p MKV, cropped, with any audio tracks planned.

Sounds like this would be a great plan. I know at least one member of TN1 disagrees with me, but I imagined the demographic with blu-ray burners but not DL blu-ray burners would be virtually non-existent. I suppose it could be the case for early adopters of the format, though.

Its not a big deal. I can see how your expectations of what this forum would be like might have been quite different from reality.

A place where Harmy and TN1 hang out and chat sounds like it must be a mature, professional environment. Lol. A lot of the frustration some members have with TN1 is actually due to the perceived major disconnect between their work and their online persona. But this apparently boils down to which member is currently using the account. If they all had individual accounts (suffixed with TN1 if they like), we could probably interpret things a bit better. But this wouldn’t allow negative1 himself the pseudoanonimity he desires on the occasion that he posts, so we probably won’t see them do this. Williarob uses his own account and posts informative, polite, sane material, so there’s a good precedent for being accountable for your own posts vs anonymous when in a team.