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

[borghe]

well, I haven't posted to this thread in well over a year, but my first disc is finally done.

I took a little over a year break because I was finally tired of trying to squeeze every last bit out of my video. I was tired of compressing my commentary and easter egg track to under 96Kbps. I was tired of trying to fit everything onto a single layer DVD. I toyed with authoring the disc for dual layer and merely having it pressed (could have done $1/disc minimum 1500 units) but decided I would have an impossible time convincing a pressing plant to do it for me..

well, with the advent of cheap double layer burners, it motivated me this week to go back and finish up Episode 4. and the result.......

I couldn't be happier. I recompressed the video at 7Mbps average bitrate. Recompressed the audio commentary at 192Kbps. Recompressed the easter egg soundtrack at 192Kbps. Total size is around 6.5GB. Not only that but scenarist placed my layer break like a champ, gave me the correct sector offset which when entered into DVDDecrypter worked beautifully. Not the greatest layer break in the world but given the constraints it is possibly the best one I could have placed. The only realy fade to blacks in star wars on a chapter break would have left me with either more data on layer 1 or more than 4.25GB on layer 0. Anyway, here are some fun disc stats for those interested.

Total disc size: 6.5GB
Total chapters: 81 (all chapters from the DC duplicated to the frame)
Video encoding: 16x9 anamorphic, 300/7000/8000, I and P frames only
Audio encoding: Dolby Digital 2.0 Pro-Logic 192Kbps
Layer break: right at chapter 39 (before the Falcon is searched on the death star)

The feature I am most proud of is the included audio commentary. For owners of the Definitive Collection, you know that it wasn't a running commentary. It only occured in certain chapters. Well, my commentary system (which works on 7 out of 8 players tested), when selected, will display a small rebel symbol in the bottom right corner of the screen right before a commentary. You hit the enter button at that point and it will switch to the commentary track, along with a subtitle showing you who's talking and what they are talking about. After the commentary is over (and this is what didn't work on the one player), a button will fire (if the commentary feature is selected and the commentray track is active) that will switch back to the primary audio track and reset the system for the next commentary.

I have also included the obligatory 11-3-8 special feature on the main menu which will give out some thanks and play a fun little soundtrack I dug up.

Yeah, I know, a lot of work for a disc that I won't sell and will never get out further than my friends. Heck, the only way to burn the disc is double layer. To single layer it the video would have to be transcoded. But still, it was my goal that I embarked on almost a year and a half ago and the first episode is done. The even better news is that work on the second two should be done within the next two weeks. Now I can just insert my I frames and let it rip at 300/7000/8000.

Anyway, just thought I would share, and to tell you guys who are putting discs together of the original theatricals, Don't Give Up! It is by far the most fullfilling thing I have ever done with DVD authoring. It won't look as good as the discs coming out next week, and won't have all of the cool extras that I genuinely like about the SE's, but it will be the way the movies were shown in the theaters 20+ years ago.

Eventually I am hoping to get the special features from the DC, but right now I am just happy with the movies.

Thanks for the support and I'll be sure to offer you guys still not done the same.

[Mythos2002]

That's awesome Borghe. That was a lot of work. Thanks for the update.

As far as layer breaks go, I placed mine right after Tarkin says, "She lied to us. Terminate her immediately.". It's not actually a layer break since I split each film up on two single layer discs, but it seemed to be a good place. The best place I found for ESB was right before Luke pokes his head down in the hole of the Magic Tree. I'm still trying to figure out the best place for Jedi. What I did, was put the film on the first disc up to the point where Han tells 3PO, "And hurry up. We haven't got all day.". I started disc 2 where Luke goes to Leia and tells her she is his sister. Breaking the first two films at those points worked out well and pretty much divided the films equally between the two discs they were put onto. I may need to work more with Jedi, because disc one has something like 1 hr. 15min. and disc two has only 1 hr. or a little less.

I hope that information helps.

Mythos

[borghe]

well, the problem between a layer break vs. a disc break is that you can IMHO a disc break interrupts things less.. it's the end.. time to get up and change discs now. this is how I always felt with laserdisc and the only disc change on laser discs that I couldn't believe how bad it was was interview with a vampire.. otherwise they were always pretty decent.. also the amount of data you can have on both discs is unrestricted. you can have more than 4.25GB on a single disc and the second disc can be longer than the first one.

here it is kind of obnoxious.. it's like the movie hiccups.. the two places I wanted to place the break were either one of the times obi-wan was searching the death star or when 3PO is getting his oil bath. both are fades to black and both have no sound or music. unfortunately obi-wan would have been two much data on layer 0 and 3po would have been too much data on layer 1. you only get 4.25GB per layer and the second layer has to be smaller than the first.

but regardless, I am relatively happy with my layer break, on future players with buffers it will be seamless anyway, however I will definitely take a look at the suggestions you've made for empire and jedi. though I want to keep the chapter stops from the DC so hopefully that will work.

thanks guys, and good luck.

[Eandtc]

The feature I am most proud of is the included audio commentary. For owners of the Definitive Collection, you know that it wasn't a running commentary. It only occured in certain chapters. Well, my commentary system (which works on 7 out of 8 players tested), when selected, will display a small rebel symbol in the bottom right corner of the screen right before a commentary. You hit the enter button at that point and it will switch to the commentary track, along with a subtitle showing you who's talking and what they are talking about. After the commentary is over (and this is what didn't work on the one player), a button will fire (if the commentary feature is selected and the commentray track is active) that will switch back to the primary audio track and reset the system for the next commentary.

I did something similar to that. Here are my menu pages. The images indicate if there is a commentary track. If you click down to the bottom of the main menus, its jumps to the appropriate commentary menu - and automatically switches to the commentary soundtrack as well. When you click on the link, it will play the scene and the corresponding commentary. When you choose the main menu, it automatically switches back to the PCM soundtrack.

Menu 1

Menu 2

Menu 3

Menu 4

Menu 5

Menu 6

Menu 7

Menu 8

Menu 9

Commentary Page 1

Commentary Page 2

Commentary Page 3

Commentary Page 4

I also fiddled around with the ending. I wanted to see if my idea was possible, and it was.

My new ending for Star Wars.

(It's 2.6 megs, and you have to change the "jpg" extension to "mpg" )

[dphirschler]

Mebe Jedi?

Nice menus. VERY nice. I don't know about some of your titles. For instance the one called "Look sir, Droids" makes me think of the Tatooine desert, but in fact they are still on the ship. And some of the humorous/cute titles seemed out of place, like "Total recall" and "Bring your daughter to work day".

One other criticism... your font at the top is very plain. Looks fine for the rest of the page, the for some reason looks too plain for the title at the top.

[Eandtc]

"Mebe Jedi?"

That's my Star Wars screenname.

"Nice menus. VERY nice. I don't know about some of your titles. For instance the one called "Look sir, Droids" makes me think of the Tatooine desert, but in fact they are still on the ship."

Yeah, I know. It just came to mind. Hey, after spending a year on this thing, I got bored! :P

"And some of the humorous/cute titles seemed out of place, like "Total recall" and "Bring your daughter to work day"."

Well, the "Total Recall" is an inside joke, referring to the fact that Owen apparently doesn't remember C3PO. And I liked the "daughter" one. (Though it's a bit of a spoiler )

Believe me, these can be easily changed.

"One other criticism... your font at the top is very plain. Looks fine for the rest of the page, the for some reason looks too plain for the title at the top."

You know, I tried looking for a "Star Wars" font, but never could. If you could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

[geek rock]

You know, I tried looking for a "Star Wars" font, but never could. If you could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

http://www.google.com/search?q=star+wars+fonts&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[Eandtc]

...smartass... :P

[grimby]

I like your commentary menu idea, Eandtc. I may have to try something like that with mine. "MEBEJEDI" eh? I think I've seen you around on another board.

The font used on the TPM and AOTC dvd's is called Trajan. The "Episode I" font by Bobafonts is a free alternative, though not as good.

[Eandtc]

"I think I've seen you around on another board."

I'm a forum-whore.

You're not grimby_the_hutt, are you?

[grimby]

That would be me. I'm also zion at MF.com.

[Eandtc]

That's funny. I won't even bother posting at TF.n anymore. There were too many gushers before the official DVD release. I can only imagine what it's like now.

[ntrprs]

On the subject of versions, does anyone have a copy of the original credits of the first release of the movie (ie without the Episode IV on the title?) In first release back in 1977 it was like this (I can confirm this as I saw it then) but I think after a few months (or was it a year) all copies were replaced with the Episode IV versions....
Dave

Well, Once again I seem to be quoting myself.

They screened the cut-down version of the Empire of Dreams DOC on Cable TV here over the weekend and it DOES have a clip of the original intro of the release of SW (ie no episode IV text) !! This I taped and will extract the clip for the extras disc - "the extras are now complete" !! Unfortunately they did not make mention of any deleted scenes in ANY of the movies (eg with the original Jabba etc), so these will still be needed on my compilation.

Dave

[grimby]

I did a capture of Empire the other day. Here are the goods:





More images

Here is my workflow:
Definitive Collection LD on Pioneer CLC-V2600 --> Virtual VCR @ 720x480 w/tweaked color settings --> Avisynth script for cropping/filters --> Virtualdub for IVTC --> Save to new AVI

And my AVIsynth script:

crop(0,104,0,-102)

undot()
DeDot(20,20,15,5)

jdl_UnfoldFieldsVertical(true)
Convolution3D(0, 4, 5, 4, 5, 2.8, 0)
jdl_FoldFieldsVertical(true)

I decided to go in and tweak the brightness, contrast, and saturation in Virtual VCR. The results look 10 times better than my last capture IMO.

Thoughts?

[mh2360]

This thread has got to be pretty much redundant now that the boxed set has been released...

So the original series (pre-SE) isn't going to be released on DVD... so what! For all you you (sad? ) fans of the 1977+ releases, the solution is simple! You buy the boxed set, you rip the DVDs, extract the MPEG2 files and re-edit the movies with your captured "old bits". You now have the original series with 96% top audio/visual quality...

[MJPollard]

This thread has got to be pretty much redundant now that the boxed set has been released...

Nope. Even those of us who like the enhanced versions still want to put the originals on DVD, if for no other reason than to preserve them (especially in the face of laserdisc rot). Thus, this thread is still a very useful resource, plus many of the issues discussed here are applicable in a more general sense (i.e. any kind of conversion from VHS or laserdisc to DVD).

So the original series (pre-SE) isn't going to be released on DVD... so what! For all you you (sad? ) fans of the 1977+ releases, the solution is simple! You buy the boxed set, you rip the DVDs, extract the MPEG2 files and re-edit the movies with your captured "old bits". You now have the original series with 96% top audio/visual quality...

Ain't that simple, but thanks for coming into the thread and insulting people anyway.

[Eandtc]

"extract the MPEG2 files and re-edit the movies with your captured "old bits". You now have the original series with 96% top audio/visual quality..."

Man, some people just DON'T get it, do they?

I guess you're not as happy with these DVDs as you wanted to, since you apparently still have some resentment for those who don't want them. A shame, really.

I'll go your quote one better, Pollard. It's better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

[MJPollard]

I'll go your quote one better, Pollard. It's better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Well, yeah, there is that, but that saying's old. I made mine up myself.

Anyhow, there's obviously room in this world for both versions. Why some people have to be nasty about it is beyond me. I swear, you'd think we were discussing American politics or something.

[Eandtc]

Wait-a-minute...you are voting for Kerry, right?




:P

[grimby]

I could be wrong, I usually am...

[Eandtc]

Ah, the dreaded Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Too bad.

[tedkunich]

Wait-a-minute...you are voting for Kerry, right?
:P

ummm....




Sorry, couldn't resists....


T

[Eandtc]

That's a clever shirt.

[dphirschler]

I did a capture of Empire the other day. Here are the goods:

Very nice quality. Man, looking at your captures I realize that "Empire" was really a colorful movie.

I notice a slight "halo" on the edges. You can see it best on the left edge of Vader. Is that a result of the Dedot filter or something else?


Darryl

[Eandtc]

"I decided to go in and tweak the brightness, contrast, and saturation in Virtual VCR. The results look 10 times better than my last capture IMO."

I've been going back over my ANH capture, and got better results dropping the brightness and contrast to "middle" settings. (5,000 out of 10,000 - I'm not sure what numbers your program uses) Approxiamtelly what settings did you use?

[grimby]

I notice a slight "halo" on the edges. You can see it best on the left edge of Vader. Is that a result of the Dedot filter or something else?

That halo effect is there from the raw capture. I'm thinking it might have something to do with my LD player.

As far as what settings I used in Virtual VCR, I tinkered around with it for quite a while, and eventually came up with the following based on looking at both dark and bright scenes:

Brightness: 4933 (yes, lower than the default)
Contrast: 2467
Hue: 5020 (default)
Saturation: 7333 (the biggest difference-maker)
Sharpness: 3 (default)
Gama: 0 (default)
ColorEnable: on

here's a comparisson from a familiar frame:

[Eandtc]

Okay...what, exactly, does saturation do, then? It must be a lot, because in my experience, such a low contrast setting is devastating.

[grimby]

Saturation brings out the washed-out color apparent in these films. I set the contrast that low because the whites in snow and stormies were way overboard otherwise.

[vhelp]

Hi guys

If I can, I might try and post a few sample pics from my Rage Fury Pro's
Thearter chip. ( This is the card I love so much, and can't do without, that I
yanked out my NVidea card and replaced it w/ my old Fury Pro and I'm
happy like a baby again ) Anyways.

The only unfortunate part of this card is that it only have Composite/RCA
input connectors (not S-Video) But, it's not so bad. The one great thing about
this cards feature/ability, is that its overlay output replicates that of a TV set.
So, I don't see any Interlaced lines in DV cam footaging, nor TV viewing (or
anything else for that matter ie, Laserdisc, etc) Anyways.

I'm look very forward to picking up my DVD set tomorrow (I hope)
(it's my OP, that K-Mart was pulling my leg, cause I asked a few Video Rental
stores (they would know) and they said they did not hear of such a rumar,
that the DVD's have a flaw in them - from another thread on Star Wars)
Anyways.

See you all later, maybe.
-vhelp

[Mythos2002]

Hi Vhelp.

Check out www.thedigitalbits.com They mention the audio flaws there.

Here is the relevent text by Bill Hunt.

"[Editor's Note: since we initially wrote this review, we've detected a number of audio/mixing errors on the DVD version of A New Hope. They are as follows:

1) The familiar Force theme trumpet fanfare that used to play right after Red Leader says: "This is it!" and just as the X-wings start diving towards the Death Star's surface has been dialed back in volume so that it's almost inaudible - it's almost completely buried in the surround mix.

2) The audio quality varies wildly as Tarkin says the line: "You would prefer another target, a military target? Then name the system." - almost as if the master sound element was damaged. It's very distracting.

3) Possibly most critically, John Williams' entire score for the film has been flipped in the rear channels, so that what should be the left rear channel is playing from the right rear channel (and vise versa). What this means is that the rear channels don't match the front channels - instruments heard from the front right channel come from the left rear instead of the right rear. Again, this is very distracting once you notice it.

These problems are certainly severe enough in our opinion to merit a repressing/exchange of the disc. We're waiting to hear back from Lucasfilm on this issue and we'll update this review with the details as soon as we do.]"


Lucas strikes again.

Mythos