Star Wars Conversions-Hit me with your best shot...

[Karyudo]

[O]ther than actually burning a DVD, is there any way to check the quality of the 24fps conversion?

Sure. Use AviSynth and VirtualDubMod. You'll be able to check everything about your efforts before you render to MPEG-2.

Is this as good as it gets?

Not even close. No offense intended, but this is about as bad a couple sample frames as I've ever seen. So you should not quit here! Keep going until you sort the problems. I wouldn't even worry about rendering MPEG-2 until I had everything looking good as an AVI.

BTW, those two sample frames should look like this:

[Eandtc]

Holy S***!!! Those pics look sweet! What did you use?!? My pics are from my MPEG., but yours look like they are from the AVI. I'd love to be able to view the finished AVI like that.

(BTW, no offense taken - like I said, this aspect of capturing the LD's is brand new to me. )

[EDIT]

//sigh of relief



Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. 8) Thank you, Karyudo.

[Karyudo]

Holy S***!!! Those pics look sweet! What did you use?!?

My workflow:

LD --> VirtualVCR (FlyVideo 3000 w/ Phillips SAA-7133 9-bit chip) --> HuffYUV YUY2-encoded 720 x 352 AVI --> quick AviSynth script --> VDubMod --> "Save Source Frame As..."

I'd love to be able to view the finished AVI like that.

The two tools you need are AviSynth and VDubMod!

(BTW, no offense taken)

Oh, good. I just didn't want you to settle for something less-than-decent.

Thank you, Karyudo.

Hey, my pleasure.

[Sillyname]

It'd be neat if there was a laserdisc ripper. A friend of mine's dad has a recordable laserdisc deck. They are in cartridges. Just basically a big ole magneto optical drive but no digital input on it...

[Eandtc]

Okay, just a little thing here. I found out that "null transform" will let me crop my AVI's, so I wanted to make two different sets. One set would be cropped 24fps, which turned out fine. The second set was supposed to be a cropped copy of the originals (still at 30 fps), but with the extra "false start" minutes edited out.

On the "Frame Rate" tab, I clicked "No Change", but there's no apparent way to keep from taking off the "Progressive" tab. Now, the resulting 30 fps files, cropped and with several minutes of extra footage cut out, are 1/10 bigger, and are labelled "Progressive Order" in Vegas, rather than "Lower Field First" like my masters. What gives?

BTW, my 24fps cropped versions look perfect, but Vegas says they are 19 fps and progressive. Is this right?

[NamPla]

You know, something just occured to me as I was going over this project: Why am I converting to 24fps in the first place? Isn't DVD at 30 frames per second, or am I missing something in the process?

I'm just trying to figure out what the advantage to IVTC is, and also, should I render the resulting MPEG at 30 fps, or 24 fps with 3-2 pulldown?

Sorry for butting in here. No I'm not involved in this admirable project, but let me say that I LOVE the original trilogy - (actually the 1st one, woops Episode 4, is the only best) - and I HATE the remixes (and Eps 1,2,3). Those "bantha transitions" with "jawas" falling off etc etc make me wanna spew.

But, I am asking the same question as Eandtc here. Why IVTC? Doesn't your DVD player just telecine back to 29.97 anyway? Why do this unnecessary step? Why not just capture at 29.97 & encode at 29.97? Because the DVD player doesn't play at 23.97, does it? Doesn't it telecine anyway? (Besides the "bitrate" reason, I mean).

I'll reiterate, though, great work you guys are doing. Lucas is a stubborn idiot. You guys are rad!

[dphirschler]

So, can anyone tell me what is a good procedure for doing 2-3 pulldown frame by frame? Is there a program that can help find the correct sequence?

Check out the avisynth script on my webpage

http://pigseye.kennesaw.edu/~dhirschl/starwars/

If you start it on the same frame, you will have no trouble. It completely and perfectly inverse telecines it.


Darryl

[ntrprs]

So, can anyone tell me what is a good procedure for doing 2-3 pulldown frame by frame? Is there a program that can help find the correct sequence?

Check out the avisynth script on my webpage

http://pigseye.kennesaw.edu/~dhirschl/starwars/

If you start it on the same frame, you will have no trouble. It completely and perfectly inverse telecines it.

Yes, I can categorically say that this script DOES work. However, beware that if you are doing the entire movie at once, the 3:2 pattern does change at the various points throughout the movie (for both the DEF COLL and the 'Faces' Sets). (This was mentioned earlier in this article in during approx July 2004 - Thanks Darryl )

Dave

[Eandtc]

"But, I am asking the same question as Eandtc here. Why IVTC? Doesn't your DVD player just telecine back to 29.97 anyway? Why do this unnecessary step? Why not just capture at 29.97 & encode at 29.97? Because the DVD player doesn't play at 23.97, does it? Doesn't it telecine anyway? (Besides the "bitrate" reason, I mean). "

As was stated, the DVD player will either play at 29.97, or convert from 23.97. Since both framerates are possible, you might as well use the version with the smaller framerate. Fewer framerates means higher bitrate per frame. Think of it as the same picture in a smaller package (and actually, the 24fps is closer to the original framerate than 29.97.)

dphirschler, where can I find the VirtualDub "Dot Crawl filter" mentioned on your website?

[dphirschler]

Give me your email address and I will send it to you.


Darryl

[Eandtc]

Well, I finished my initial compilation. With bitrates at 8/6, I got an MPEG of 5.6 GB's. That's fantastic! I could just drop the average, and probably get an MPEG under 4 GB's.

[ntrprs]

Well, I have come across something interesting in IVTCing the first movie. Using Darryl's script I got the first section to manually IVTC the first side of the DC of SW. Now looking at the second side, the pattern is really different. I loaded my DVAVI into VD and deinterlaced by unfolding the fields side by side (resizing so I can see them).

In particular I was looking at the scene with Luke and the lightsabre in Ben's house. There is a distinct pattern of the following:

AtAb,BtCb,CtDb,DtEb,EtEb,FtGb,GtHb,HtIb,ItIb.....

(note both A's are the same frame, but the subscript t and b refer to top and bottom field - the top field being the the left-most one after unfolding)

From the above the pattern, there is a extra half-frame (or field) that is inserted in every group of 5. This may be a factor of the after-addition of SPFX on film-to-video? This was discussed by 'vcdhelp ' a little while ago here.

My intended approach is to remove that field (ie Bt, Ft) as they cannot be matched. and adapt the 'Darryl scripts' to fix the pattern. I will let you know how I go with it.

It may be an artefact of using an ADVC-100 capture box? BTW, I am capturing from NTSC LD.

I have attached a couple of sample frames - F2 and the first field is the extra one added.

Dave
F1 F2 F3

[Karyudo]

This may be a factor of the after-addition of SPFX on film-to-video? This was discussed by 'vcdhelp ' a little while ago here.

And vhelp was wrong then, too. There are no SPFX added after telecining.

[ntrprs]

Well, I have come across something interesting in IVTCing the first movie.

My intended approach is to remove that field (ie Bt, Ft) as they cannot be matched. and adapt the 'Darryl scripts' to fix the pattern. I will let you know how I go with it.

Well, it looks like I was playing with an incorrect AVI. The AVI had already been processed (albeit incorrectly) using one script, and I saved it, and proceeded to process it again!! "One Little Mistake!!"

I will try the same method with a 30fps AVI! Now that I'm getting the hang of the fields vs frames and IVTC, it should make it easier.

As usual, as soon as you post, you find an answer yourself!

Dave

[dphirschler]

Hey Dave, while you are going frame by frame... check out the lightsaber battle between ben and Vader. You can spot some effects errors. When they clash, sometimes their colors are swapped.


Darryl

[vhelp]

Hi all.

This may be a factor of the after-addition of SPFX on film-to-video? This was discussed by 'vcdhelp ' a little while ago here.

And vhelp was wrong then, too. There are no SPFX added after telecining.

I'm confused What did I say anyway ??
-vhelp

[Karyudo]

I think you speculated that the reason there was some seemingly-un-IVTC-able stuff in the OT was because of special effects added to the video, after telecining. Which isn't the case. But no worries -- it was a long time back, and you'd made it clear it was just a guess at that point, anyway, so not a problem.

[vhelp]

TGIF everyone :P

hmm.. I don't remembere saying that (or whatever) but.. Ok. Anyways

Yeah, actually.., as long as you know for sure that the source is PURE film,
(Telecined to 29.970 from Film) then AND you have no frame drops
inside your captures, then almost all IVTC methods should work.

However, as I've pointed out in previous thread here, and other Forums,
(after that your source is Pure Film and no Frame Drops) you also have to
factor your source. I.E.,

* Did the source swap fields somewhere's ?

* Did the source have bad cuts or edits..,

* Was the source poorly Telecined (even though Film in nature) you can
... not IVTC perfectly w/out having to blend a few fields every n'th frame.

-vhelp 2617

[vhelp]

EDIT ..Sorry, I posted a response in the wrong thread.
FWIW.. the above post was intened for this thread topic
-vhelp

[Eandtc]

Okay, I'm playing with the filter thingy in VirtualDub mod (I hope I don't go blind :P ), and I was wondering....if I was going to de-interlace, should I do it before or after ITVC? (And if so, what's the best filter to use? And yes, I know that de-interlacing can cause more problems than it solves. I was just curious.)

Also, how does DECOMB play into this? (Though it appears this is only a Avisynth filter.)

Also, should I convert to 24fps before applying other filters (denoise, dotcrawl, etc?)

[Karyudo]

if I was going to de-interlace, should I do it before or after ITVC?

You aren't going to deinterlace, if you're going to IVTC. Material that's been telecined is made progressive by IVTC; there is no need whatsoever for deinterlacing. If you deinterlace before, IVTC will not work. If you deinterlace afterward, it's completely pointless.

Also, how does DECOMB play into this?

Decomb gives you some tools to do a high-quality, adaptive IVTC. It is highly configurable to both Telecide and Decimate a clip, regardless of what the source is. The Star Wars stuff is very clean (i.e. no 30i stuff anywhere), so it's almost trivial. But Decomb can handle really, REALLY messy telecine patterns.

If you're interested in learning some cool and useful stuff while working on this project, I'd read the Decomb guide. Donald Graft is very good at writing filters that are super-robust, and guides that are complete and readable.

Also, should I convert to 24fps before applying other filters (denoise, dotcrawl, etc?)

If by "convert to 24fps" you mean IVTC, then yes, I'd get your material progressive first. Otherwise you'll mess up fields with denoising stuff. If it's already progressive and just some other framerate (using AssumeFPS(), for example), then it shouldn't matter.

[Eandtc]

Pretty much the answers I expected, just wanted to get confirmation.

Another one popped up as I was typing. Is there a rule of thumb regarding how many filters to run at once? (Does each filter run on a different pass, or are they applied simultaneously? Is it better to run one at a time, or are there only some filters that should be run on different passes, or should I just throw them altogether?)

So many variables....//sigh

[Karyudo]

Is there a rule of thumb regarding how many filters to run at once?

As few as are necessary! There is a complicated order of filter completion if you use complicated AviSynth scripts, but in general they're applied one after another, per frame. Some people are obsessed with fast processing speeds (presumably because they're ripping several DVDs a week, maybe?) but I figure for a one-off project like this, who cares how long it takes? No combination of filters will make it slow to much less than a frame a second, so as long as you've got several days for processing, you're good.

AviSynth is very adept at letting you see the results of your filters as you add them (StackVertical is nice), so you can play around, get everything set, and then only have to process everything once.

[grimby]

Yeah, there will be a lot of little tweaks made to the dvd's. Some of these include a more TPM-looking Jabba in ANH, Luke doesn't scream on the way down anymore, Hayden Christensen as a ghost at the end of Jedi, Boba Fett's voice redubbed by Temura Morrison (Jango Fett), Ian McDiarmid as the Emperor in ESB....

Most interesting...

I've heard various people have seen 'previews'.

What was your source? I'm just hoping that they do not change them too much - which is why we are going back to the originals isn't it?

ntrprs

I got my original information from people who got ahold of advance copies of the DVD's and posted video clips, screenshots, and audio clips online. If you'd like to see them for yourself, Jedi has been available for download for a few weeks now via torrent, and Empire has been out for a few days now. More information on the dvd's can be found on millenniumfalcon.com. That is all I'll say about this here. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions.

Now back to your regularly scheduled conversion thread....

[gshelley61]

Here's some ROTJ test frames I captured last night that I posted in the DVD Recorder forum (I didn't want to cross-post the whole thing):

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1025792#1025792

[ntrprs]

Hi all,

Well I've finally done it!
I finally have a fully frame-converted 24fps version of SWOT-EP4 sitting on my PC, with perfect audio sync and modified Greedo subtitles!!!

How did I do it? I used the scripts for manual IVTC (from dphirschler) and adapted these to work with the latest AVIsynth (V2.55 RC2) - This version eliminates the need for extra plugins for the image overlay functions. There was a little fiddling that I had to do wrt field order etc, but once that was sorted, it worked like a charm...

My first thought was to break up the film (on a side basis) and use the avisource("sw.avs", "sw2.avs"...) command in one AVS file with each called AVS script doing that one section only via AVIsynth - this was mentioned very early in this article and it sounded like a 'neat' option. This proved to be WRONG!!! When all the clips were combined, the audio sync was out like you would not believe - probably due to several instances of avisynth running concurrently and the final one not being able to combine correctly. For my alternative, I combined all the clips (one at a time) into one AVS file and the audio sync was perfect!!

I will post a script (and perhaps a guide) later this week, but so far it is looking very promising.

Have any of you used AVISynth's Convolution to remove noise from a ADVC 100 capture with good results? I have not used it very much as yet, but there is a 'small banding' effect on my video which I want to smooth out (due to either the LD player or my pressing)

Dave

BTW, a friend of mine said that we could not wait to get my conversions, so he download them - one of them we says is just OK, so I am fairly doubtful about it's quality! What a sorry boy he will be when mine are done.

[Eandtc]

Congratulations.

BTW, after watching my 24fps DVD (basic movie only, just trying out my new RW capable player), I noticed that, while most scenes looked really good, scenes with very fast motion (i.e. Tie Fighter and Millenium Falcon flying overhead to DS) looked jerky. Did I do something wrong?

[DJRumpy]

A couple of possible guesses.

You either cropped using an odd value from the top of the source video, inadvertantly changing it's field order.

You simply selected the wrong field order when encoding

Your IVTC process is still not quite right, and your dropping the wrong set of fields.

All three would be harder to spot in low motion scenes, but easy to see in panning and fast motion shots.

[tedkunich]

Also, should I convert to 24fps before applying other filters (denoise, dotcrawl, etc?)

Assuming you are going the AviSynth route, you should place GuavaComb BEFORE you perform any IVTC functions - Guava relies on the pattern of the NTSC signal to work.... sorta... cause Guava never really worked to my satifaction.... Get a plugin called DeDot from here: http://nullinfo.s21.xrea.com/ Site is in Japanese, but you should be able to find it. Works much, much better than Guava. Run it on the raw capture and then IVTC and you should be golden.



T

[grimby]

Has anyone made any DVD menus for their set yet? If so, what software are you using? At this point I'm using After Effects and Premiere to assemble the video for a motion menu.

I was messing around this weekend with a possible ESB menu and I think it came out pretty good. I'll post an .avi a little later when I get home from work.