I have a featurette that's been framed incorrectly and it's really annoying me so I want to fix it. Unfortunately, it's:

1. Very low res (it's 4:3 SD in NTSC standard, 720 x 480)
2. Interlaced MPEG2

I've tried several ways of getting this de-interlaced for editing purposes but it always looks fairly awful. I've not really dabbled with Avisynth yet, but I think if possible it might be better just to leave the footage interlaced instead. Maybe if I explain what I'm trying to achieve, someone will be able to suggest the best way to go...

The bit of the video that I want to keep is a roughly 704 x 396 frame in the middle, because there are thin black bars on either side (~5-8px, some tape distortion so subjective) and much larger black bars on the top and bottom letterboxing from the 4:3 full frame. I want to keep it compatible with Blu-ray as it currently is but I'm not sure how to get it into an editable format without deinterlacing it first, and obviously 704 x 396 is not a BD compliant resolution either so I'm probably also going to have to upscale it to something like 720/1080 (704x396 upscales to either 1280x720 or 1920x1080 without any black bars).

Do you reckon I'm going to have to convert it to progressive to do the crop without it looking like crap? I know I can use ffmpeg to feed it through deinterlacing (but I think the only option is yadif, which is iffy in my experience) before cropping and upscaling, so it looks horrible even if I do all 3 in a single command. I think ideally I'd rather keep it interlaced, but I'm not sure how to retain interlacing in ffmpeg while also doing the crop and upscale.


Note: I just realised that the reason it's 720 x 480 interlanced but the actual image is only about 704 pixels wide is probably because 16/720 samples are used for horizontal sync/blanking when transmitting 720x480 digitally with rectangular (taller than they are wide) pixels. Therefore, I'm wondering if this video might have been encoded with the image squished horizontally. A newer encode is actually available but that looks much worse overall due to several aliasing issues. I imagine it probably isn't as simple as just stretching the image horizontally to correct this, but I can do that if that's all it needs. The older source is interlaced with the usual "one then the other" line arrangement but the newer one uses interleaved fields instead and seems to look worse for it.Basically, it's a horrible mess regardless of which encode I source from.

Need some help from a more tech minded person. I was using Dre's program the last few days just fine. I wake up this morning and now getting:

Initialize component instance failed

and then

Could not access the MCR component cache.

when I hit the CM 1.2 exe. I removed everything and reload (even as admin), still doesn't work. Changed the directory from the default Program File (x86) and still no go. There were no updates last night to Windows, no Matlab updates.

When I look up the MCR error I see a bunch of different solutions that don't seem to work.

Hey,

just wanted to introduce myself briefly..

I have been doing "some videostuff" since I was a kid - went all the way from analog tape stuff to nowadays AI Upscaling interests, tweaked old Celeron motherboards "back then" for realtime MPEG Encoding, hacked my DVD Player to support SVCDS, still have some capture cards lying around (pinnacle DC... anyone?) and had some routes into the professional domain. Mostly its hobby and is flanked by a strong interest in computers in general as well as Audiorelated stuff...

At the moment, my focus is on "what to do with all this old stuff" So I found this forum... I am investigating AI-Uspcaling, doing some betatests for some commercial products, would love to find time to get my capture rig out again and I am thinking of trayning my own models for restauration... Had some Linux machines back then, I am able to fiddle Win7Pro on a Server by tweaking the install media, so I know my way around, but it´s not daily business, so some things just take time...

Let´s see what can be done with "the old stuff".

Thanx for having me here!

Hello

does anyone have the movie on LD and can provide a capture of it? Preferably with video to make the sync easier

Thanks

An upcoming project is a special edition of Mortal Kombat and I'd love to include the DTS track from the laserdisc - as the blu ray has a different DTS track. Unfortunately it's very expensive - I don't suppose anyone has it and can capture it?

The 1994 Mini Series of Stephen King’s The Stand was released on Blu Ray with a 1080p remaster, much to the surprise of the Director who did not think it was possible. The video is a huge improvement over the DVD but unfortunately the audio is the same AC3 track from the DVD, likely to keep the disc space low to maximise the video bitrate. I managed to get hold of the laserdisc and sent it to williarob who kindly captured the uncompressed audio (massive thanks to williarob!). In order to fit this onto the discs I have had to compress the video slightly. 

• 2 x BD25 with menus, pop up menus and resume (I went with 2 x BD25 instead of a BD50 as they tend to be much more expensive, especially printable discs)
  
• Uncompressed 2.0 English Audio
  
• Audio Commentary track
  
• English, Danish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish subtitles
  
• Vintage Making Of
  

This project started life as the one done by IcePrick, which was the Dragon Dynasty Blu Ray, deinterlaced and decimated back to 23.976 fps (thanks IcePrick!). I then ran it through some mild dust and dirt filters and combined it with the opening and closing credits from the Chinese blu ray, which themselves were run through several filters to try and get them to match the rest of the footage. The whole movie was then regraded with Dr Dre, using the criterion as the source, using over 40 different LUTs. The opening logos were also taken from the Chinese as they were cropped in the Drago Dynasty disc. Unfortunately none of the sources were perfect, so it's never going to be amazing short of a new scan and shot by shot restoration, but I'm still happy with the results.

Massive thanks to CSchmidlapp for providing me with some of the materials, giving me guidance on the different versions and for testing the final video.

• BD25 with animated menus that look and behave like the official Criterion discs, with a background video, pop up menus and resume function
• Video taken from the Iceprick project, with scene by scene colour correction
• Original chapter stops used on the DVD
• Cantonese 1.0 Mono LPCM taken from the laserdisc
• Cantonese 2.0 Mono AC3 taken from the Scandanavian DVD
• Audio Commentary by director John Woo and production executive Terence Chang
• English (based on the Criterion translation), French, German and Spanish Subtitles
• Five Deleted Scenes
• Theatrical Trailer
• DVD Credits

PM me for the links, contributing/long term members only please. Contributing means active members of the forum who post and/or make their own projects.

High Resolution cover and disc art available from @Pineapples101 Here.




























Just to clarify this is a project that I have made for myself which I am choosing to share. If you don't like the project, if you think it should have been done differently then feel free to keep that to yourself and consider doing your own project.

• BD25 with animated menus that look and behave like the official Criterion discs, with a background video, pop up menus and resume function
• Video taken from the HK Rescue project, full credit to them
• Original chapter stops used on the DVD
• Cantonese 1.0 Mono AC3 taken from the DVD
• Cantonese 2.0 LPCM taken from the laserdisc
• English 1.0 Mono AC3 taken from the DVD
• Audio commentary by director John Woo, producer Terence Chang, filmmaker Roger Avary and critic Dave Kehr
• English, French, German and Spanish Subtitles
• Student Film Accidentally
• Notes on Hard Boiled
• Guide to Hong Kong crime films
• John Woo’s Hong Kong movie trailers
• Theatrical Trailer
• DVD Credits

PM me for the links, contributing/long term members only please. Contributing means active members of the forum who post and/or make their own projects.

High Resolution cover and disc art available from @Pineapples101 Here.






















Just to clarify this is a project that I have made for myself which I am choosing to share. If you don't like the project, if you think it should have been done differently then feel free to keep that to yourself and consider doing your own project.

Hello fanresers!

I'm looking to demux an MKV file in order to separate the video and the audio tracks and import them separately into Final Cut Pro (FCP). I am currently working on a Mac (running macOS 10.13.6) and do not have access to a Windows machine.
FCP does not support MKV files when importing.

The question is how do I losslessly convert the MKV file to something FCP will import?

• I have got MKVToolNix installed, but when demuxing video, it produces a MKV file.
  
• I have installed AVIDemux, which looks promising, but I wanted to confirm the settings for a lossless extraction.
  
• I have got ffmpeg downloaded, and I understand it's a command-line based programme. I'm ok with using Terminal for programmes (although if you have a guide you could point me to, I'll take it!), I just wanted to see if anyone else recommends it, as it seems to be the most powerful tool out there.
  

Just wondering if anyone has these of LD and would be ble to capture/share the audio please?

The Shout Blu-rays have a number of issues with their mono mixes (missing parts, noise reduction, wrong pitch). I've managed to pick-up the old MGM dvd's which (I think) are free from the problems with the Shout discs but thought I would see if anyone had the LD's before I start syncing the dvd's to the Blu-rays.


Thanks
Alex