yoda-sama

Wait, you actually found official VHS tapes for AOTC and ROTS?

ilovewaterslides said:

Teeceezy said:

All jokes aside, I do have a VCR and it would be fun to transfer to VHS and see what it looks like on the old format. Although I'm not sure whether letterbox or fullscan would be better.

Believe it or not, i am actually making this right now!

I converted the movie to PAL 25fps with a 4% speed up. French audio/French crawl. But it's still quite interesting. I've created a DVD and i'm capturing it on a VHS. I will upload a sample here as soon as possible ;)

Edit: I'm using the V2.0 and i'm doing it in letterbox.

It would be funny if you could convince someone that your tape was dubbed straight from a pre-SE official widescreen VHS release.  (And to further the joke, starting at the beginning of the credits see if you can explain and get them to believe the true source of the video before the custom credits at the very end come up.)

And be kind, rewind.

Happy to see activity on this thread again.  It is a shame you're having to deal with such issues getting the source material you need.  I do agree it would be nice to have what is already completed, and heck, improved episodes like this floating around could (who knows) stir up some extra interest and resurface more sources (kind of like how OT.com brought Mexican episodes out of obscurity).

Might I inquire which specific episodes are being held back?

AntcuFaalb, rest easy, I think your TV is quite safe from us.

As for burning 2.1 on a mac, have you tried running imgburn through WINE?

I was emailed that there was activity on this topic and got excited for a minute...  :-(

Still, he should focus on getting better source video than buying TV's based on gimmicks that make his bad transfers look better to him.  Making the TV show colors correctly so the v2.5 looks the way Harmy intended is the part of his question that is related to this thread.  Once he gets his TV looking right, then he'll need to address his bad looking DVDs, not muck up calibration settings.

animemaakuo said:

Honestly, I'd love to get a new Panasonic, but the reason I keep my Samsung is because of the "flesh tone" option. I have old animated DVD's that were never remastered (aged film put onto DVD), which, the flesh tone option seems to color correct to where it looks like the proper colors are back (restored for the most part).

It's just that I thought with a proper calibrated TV, that flesh tone option would be even better! 

 

I also don't think Panasonic has a flesh tone option. =/

I think you're seriously missing the point of proper calibration, which is to have your screen correctly portray images as intended.  Using anything to monkey with the image after that completely flies in the face of logic, since perfect picture is perfect picture, regardless of brand, and applying consumer hardware level gimmicks like "flesh tone" only serves to misrepresent the intended look.  You have to decide if you want what seems good to you now (having most likely never seen a properly calibrated screen) or if you want what looks like it is supposed to.

Teeceezy said:

Leonardo said:

Now that we have the technology, why not send the video signal to the vcr squeezed all the way to 4:3, and unsqueeze it during playback using the tv's aspect ratio options?

As I mentioned before, I like the idea of both, so I might make a squeezed 4:3, and a letterboxed 4:3, maintaining the black bars in the source video of course. Now, I need to check if my VCR does NTSC, or is PAL only.

Perfect timing, we've now got just the thing for you to put the audio on for the deepest, warmest sounding effect... http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/13/03/25/187200/direct-to-vinyl-recording-makes-a-comeback-video

Hey, you asked, and the answer just happens to be complex.  But if you just want to get your TV into at least the right ball park, grab a THX certified DVD and see if it has an option in the menu to run the THX optimizer.  It is a far cry from perfect, but it'll get you in the right direction on the cheap.  Also, make sure your TV isn't set to overscan the picture (often a 16:9 mode isn't what you want, everyone calls it something different but look for something along the lines of 1:1, Full, or Just Scan, etc.), and turn off any and all motion compensation.

So, Harmy you have a first gen dual core i5 with hyperthreading...  If you're not trying to do anything else on your computer while you have the encoding going, I have to wonder if you'd get better performance if you turned off hyperthreading in BIOS.  Hyperthreading has some benefits for a user trying to multitask on a less than fully utilized CPU in that you don't have to wait as long for something you're doing to get some CPU time, but if there's something that you want give full CPU usage, hyperthreading can be bad in that it will forcibly take CPU access away from a busy process so it can let a less important process have some CPU.  By impeding the CPU intensive processes, the whole thing could take longer.  It is not usually a problem, but in the right conditions it can be.

Chyron, you could go with "Theatrical Reconstruction" or "Re-creation" if "Restoration" doesn't sit well with you.

Also, if you want it to look a bit more professional, I'd suggest trying to fit the credits text within the middle black area, as it is noticeably more legible there than once you get into the fancy grey sides.

I think the latest XBMC is supposed to be able to play DTS HD-MA, though under Windows I don't have the slightest clue if it'd work out of the box or if you'd have to find the right codec first.

Thanks Mavimao.  Also I found this http://savestarwars.com/specialeditionfail.html which covers the audio issues to a reasonable extent, and is an overall good summary/rant of most of what is wrong with everything since the '97 SE.

Harmy, transferring between two internal drives over SATA is the optimal approach, but barring that being available to you, USB3.0 (if connected to a 3.0 port) is up there in speed with eSATA (also a good option, if available), so working between system drive and USB3.0 drive should be adequate.  Where the most disk I/O is occurring is what you'll want to have the quickest access to, assuming most of the work being done is processing on the source files and the destination is mostly for outputting the result, then you'll want the source files on your local system drive, and let the output go straight to the external disc (and its far better than processing files and writing the output within just a single disk drive, the seek time would get crazy and you'd frag your disk much more than necessary).  Location of the exe, .bat and .avs probably don't matter a whole lot, either, as they'll probably be running mostly from RAM anyway.

That link is informative, but not for my question, in it he merely dismisses the 2004 mix (and beyond) as abominable and almost completely invalid, rather than stating actual differences and deficiencies.  As CatBus suggested, if an audio guy could give a more technically accurate description, I'd like to know what exactly they messed up with the official mix.  I love to hate on the SE's and having even more specific reasons at my disposal to hate them would, strangely, make me happier.

Since we're on the subject of audio and this forum is so difficult to search, I'll ask this one question on the subject.  I keep seeing people ask if Hairy's 5.1 reconstruction is 'better' than the Blu-ray audio, to which the response is always that it blows it out of the water.  What I'm wondering is in what aspects exactly does it best it?  Outside of it avoiding obvious SE changes (effects choices, C3P0 tractor beam voice overs, blast doors, etc.), did they somehow mess up how things sound in general; are the audio channels perhaps messed up, or something sound weird throughout, etc.?

@michaelkirschner That probably comes down to preference more than anything.  If people grew up with one take ('85 mix for instance), they might prefer that, though those same people might be fed up with the years upon years of constant changes and want to experience it as close to what was original as possible.  I know I grew up with Full Frame TV broadcast recordings and then VHS, and Episode IV A New Hope in the crawl is somewhat normal to me as is the sound mix that goes with those version, but I'm happiest watching it as it was supposed to be, without revisions (and certainly not cropped to 4:3 anymore).

Also, I've heard from a person whom watched Star Wars an ungodly ~70 times in '77 in a backwater theater that only had the mono track, and steadfastly insists against anything released since then as being at all proper, he's unhappy unless it has the odd sounding Beru and all the other different bits, since he memorized the movie exactly that way.  So, watching it as remembered from experiences in '77, be it mono, stereo or the 70mm's take on surround, is another cause for preference.

In short, all tracks have merit and are looked on differently by different people; it is really nice to have all these different audio tracks available, for both viewing pleasure and the sake of preservation.

Personally, I'll stick with the 5.1 70mm reconstruction for most serious viewings, but I won't lie, I'll be checking out the '85 and the '93 as well (can't stomach much more than just spot checking the mono, though, it is just too 'off' for me).

Well, if the changes are small enough, you presumably could make a patch of it for everyone that's already grabbed 2.1 and someone make a new torrent with the updated 2.5 version AVCHD so the 2.1 stops getting served after that...

@animemaakuo As per the rules stated for this whole project, which no doubt you've read, you should own the source materials so as not to pirate its content through obtaining the 2.1.  So just pop in your official Blu-ray if you'd like to compare the two.

The right speed color wheel can do a lot to get rid of the rainbow effect, and admittedly my W1070 is 2000 lumen, but it is as bright of a home projector as I've seen, it can be seen pretty well in a lit room, and I'm throwing around 140" - 150", and could easily see this going beyond 180" without looking shabby...

BTW, which anime convention are you referring to?

@Guspaz I also disagree with the LCD vs DLP thing, at least in most part.  If you get a good enough DLP (fast ~6x color wheel, and at least Dark Chip 3 for a single chip), I'd take it any day over a similarly priced LCD.  The motion is better, if nothing else.  And say what you will about brightness, but this W1070 is nothing short of a light cannon.

Personally, I think talk about the projectors we are enjoying v2.1 on celebrates Harmy's work, and isn't entirely off topic (at least until serious 2.5 talk starts rolling in... after people watch it on their varied and awesome setups).

Ipd, I also have an Optoma HD65, it has served me well for years, and the replacement bulb was an incredible value... but I've just recently upgraded to a BenQ W1070, and the difference is very noticeable (let's face it, the '65 just isn't quite bright enough for pushing over 140 inches).  If you get a chance to upgrade to something similar, the brightness and contrast difference is a revelation.  Can't wait to do more than just spot check 2.1 on this beast.

Michael, I think he means that was the best they could do at the time and he made it look as it did then, so it can look obvious and still be acceptable.

@djchaseb  that's a pretty snazzy trilogy cover, might you have a link?