Laserdisc BEST source (PAL vs NTSC)

[johnmeyer]

Once I used four different versions of Star Wars on laserdisc for one of my projects; it was pretty easy to align them, both temporally and spatially, and result was rewarding. Probably using tapes will be not that easy, though!

The ease of alignment depends on what you were trying to do. If you really were using four different scans of the same film, then there is no way you could possibly have aligned them well enough to do noise reduction averaging. That technique will only work if you capture the exact same source multiple times. However, if all you need to do is cut between them, then you can be off by a frame or two and it generally won't matter much.

The other problem you would have if you actually tried to take, for instance, a 1/3 average of three videos of the same film, but taken from different scans, is that they almost certainly would not register because the Cintel scan would be different for each one and, because of gate weave (which you have even with a Cintel or Spirit scan) each scan will be offset (and possibly rotated) ever so slightly. When you average these together, you lose detail, thus negating any benefit you might get from noise reduction.

[spoRv]

The laserdiscs used were all THX PAL (German, French, French with English audio and Spanish) non-special edition; they used all the same master (same spots in the same frames etc.), so it was *relatively* easy to align them; temporally, they have the same frame numbers, apart few differences at the end/beginning of a given side (that I replaced with the ones from another version, so the diminishing result is only in these moments, and last for few frames, probably less than one or two seconds).

So, no rotations at all (I'm aware that sometimes it happens), and, spatially, after the alignment (that had to be checked for every side), they matched perfectly, erasing all the noise. Can't remember what I used - it was few years ago, but IIRC a mix of median and average. Result was really, really good - given the fact that even the best PAL laserdisc is just mediocre, in comparison to the best NTSC (and MUSE) ones. But at least PAL Star Wars have not that much DNR found on US and JP THX versions!

Another way (a lot much easier) is to use the same player, and three different copies of the same edition, or the same copy with three different players, or three copies and three players, for a total of nine (!) captures...

[KarMa]

Guess you go after the Laserdisc version cause they don't have any of the added effects added to Start Wars over the years?

[johnmeyer]

Guess you go after the Laserdisc version cause they don't have any of the added effects added to Start Wars over the years?

Yes, I transferred the original-cut 1977 Star Wars from laserdic many years ago. I have it on a DVD somewhere here. I guess it is historically interesting, but other than that, the newer transfers, even without the additional material and FX is so much better that I cannot imagine ever wanting to look at the old version (which I had to IVTC and correct) ever again.

[orsetto]

I transferred the original-cut 1977 Star Wars from laserdic many years ago. [...]I guess it is historically interesting, but other than that, the newer transfers, even without the additional material and FX is so much better that I cannot imagine ever wanting to look at the old version (which I had to IVTC and correct) ever again.

Interest in the "original" SW versions has never really waned, so the unrelenting opposition of otherwise-money-grubbing George Lucas to properly releasing them is mystifying. His brief, grudging release of them some years back as "bonus discs" as part of a remastered set was insulting: they were literally the 4:3 letterboxed vhs versions duped to DVD, in transfer quality that was likely worse than what many devotees accomplished at home. This was inexcusable, obviously a personal slam from George against fans he considered "ungrateful" in their disgust with revisionist history. Rather idiotic of him, because that half-assed offering just inflamed resistance to the remasters even further. All that jackass needed to do was minimal cleanup of the original versions, formatted in 16:9 anamorphic, and he could have charged a premium price over the revised versions to the die-hards that prefer the originals. For that matter, I don't for one second believe he went to the expense of remastering only the non-effect portions of the films, while leaving the original FX scenes untouched: somewhere in the vaults, fully restored versions of the original cuts exist, which could be sold at little to no additional expense. He's just being a recalcitrant prick about it.

Similar issues occurred with the first two Star Trek films, whose inexplicably botched revisions predominate on home video. One still needs to cobble together "original" versions from the old laserdisc releases. At least in this case, the originals still circulate on premium cable, so one can capture them that way as well.

[clashradio]

[QUOTE=jagabo;2472759]

So even though the captured AVI has a frame rate of 29.997, you can render it @24? that will improve quality?

Yes. Film is usually converted to video by duplicating fields turning 23.976 fps frames into 59.94 fields per second (packed as 29.97 frames per second). You can restore the original film frames with an "inverse telecine". Doing so will get you better compression in the end. And your playback device or TV won't have to deinterlace.

I have Sony Vegas Pro. Could you direct me to a link to read up on how to do the inverse telecine? I just bought the Japanese laserdisc of THX-1138 and would like to get the best possible transfer. I plan on outputting to BD-25. Not that I'm expecting HD or anything. It's so I won't have to cram it on a dvd-5, or have a layer break change on a dvd-9