I'm considering a project for which I would need someone to record something out onto a VHS tape and then capture it again. Even better, but not obligatory: A second pass with a VHS-to-VHS copy and then capture that, and maybe even a few more times, to get samples for various depths/generations.

I haven't prepared anything for this yet, I would only do that if there's any way to actually do this.

My idea is to train a neural network to upscale VHS content of variable generations (copies of copies) to HD. I have some very high quality Prores material archived, from all kinds of sources, that would be perfect for training this. So basically, I would cut together useful snippets, maybe some 20 minutes of material or so, then send that over for copying to VHS in lossless format (or ProRes), and then it would be captured again (ideally with multiple different generations) losslessly, and I would then apply various typical compressions (MPEG-2, DivX, Xvid) to the lossless capture and would create a dataset with a big variety of source qualities, but always the same reference HD image. I've done a similar thing for just normal XviD/MPEG-2 material; it's not awe-inspiring, but it's pretty neat, and with VHS it would probably give the added advantage of maybe reducing some of the VHS artifacts, as reduction and detection of artifacts seems to be a side-effect of the training.

Of course it wouldn't end up being all too mind-blowing, seeing as VHS is a really limited format, but even if it can get there just a few steps that would be nice, and could allow a bit of a restoration of some old workprints and such. Some of them look really rough, with all kinds of color bleeding, obviously low resolution, low saturation, weird colors etc. Would be nice to at least have some mild improvement. The final output wouldn't have to be HD of course, it could be downsampled to DVD quality, but for the training I think it would be a good idea to use the highest possible destination resolution.

Now, I could of course just try and take a Blu Ray and a VHS of some movie, but the problem is that for this to work, the sources need to be pretty much aligned perfectly and that would be a hell of a lot of work to achieve, if not impossible. So going from a fixed HD source to VHS and back seems like the best option.

If anyone is interested in helping out, let me know and I'll start thinking about assembling the footage.

I've just recently run into an issue I'd never seen before.  I had an old Dolby Digital 5.1 track from a DVD that I wanted to use for a project.  I did some very minor editing in Premiere, and then exported to six mono wav files.  I then encoded the files with DTS Encoder Suite.  The resulting audio seemed to contain some sort of volume limiting when I played it back on my receiver.  Sudden loud noises seemed to get quieter, and then louder again once they stopped - sort of like my receiver's "late night mode" was cranked up to 11 or something. I'm trying to sort out why this may have happened, so here's what I've attempted thus far:

1. DD5.1 > Premiere > six mono wavs > DTS Encoder Suite
BAD FILE

2. DD5.1 > Premiere > 5.1 LPCM (w64)
BAD FILE

3. DD5.1 > six mono wavs (eac3to) > DTS Encoder Suite
GOOD FILE

There seems to me to be two possibilities at this point: either Premiere needs to be removed from the workflow, or eac3to needs to be added to the workflow (seeing as both of my bad results involved Premiere, and my one good result involved eac3to).  DTS Encoder Suite was involved in both good and bad results, so I'm sure that isn't the issue. eac3to IS removing the dialnorm encoded into the original DD5.1 track.  I'm wondering if that might be the culprit.  So for those who understand this, I have a question...if a DD5.1 contains dialnorm, will it be read incorrectly by a receiver if a) dialnorm is not stripped and b) the file is then put in a different codec (LPCM or DTSHD-MA 5.1)?  My theory is that the dialnorm information is not being read/decoded correctly by my receiver, because it's not seeing a DD5.1 file once I throw the audio in a new container.  So I'm thinking that when I strip that out in eac3to, it's allowing me to use those alternate containers without screwing up the decoding at the receiver's end.

Any help on this? My next test will be to run the DD5.1 through eac3to and then import/export via Premiere to see if removing dialnorm is fixing this issue or if Premiere is introducing it.

Bit of a long shot but does anyone have the official blu ray release of the Adventures of Robin Hood 1938? I already have the video, I now have the PCM from the laserdisc thanks to Bronan I just need the commentary track. If anyone has it and can rip the commentary I'd appreciate it.

Hi all,
Research has indicated the workprint possibly has an alternate ending with Morbius and is also timecoded. If anyone on here used to trade in the 1990's and would be interested in trading then hit me up at moviecritic1990@hotmail.com

Got tons to trade.

Hi all,

Been a while. Purchased a new PC as my old one was in the process of dying, couldn't use many of my favoured programs for a while. I don't yet have a blu-ray drive in this PC (I'll fix that ASAP) but started working on a simple recolour/correction of the 2k remaster of Eastern Condors (1987) as released by Eureka.

It's a great release in terms of specifications. Visually, the print quality is good but a little dark and heavily blue filtered. To the point where night scenes look like this:


I hopefully won't need to do much to fix it up, and I'll have progress screenshots incoming soon.

Terminator 2 Theatrical Cut (Open Matte Upscale v1.0)

This project started out in my upscale project, of which you can see examples here:

https://fanrestore.com/thread-1071-post-...l#pid58807
https://fanrestore.com/thread-1071-post-...l#pid58825
https://fanrestore.com/thread-1071-post-...l#pid58874

I'm now spinning it off into it's own thread. Basically, the premise behind this is to preserve the increasing rarer open matte version of T2 and use various tools to make it more presentable in the HD era. Furthermore color grade the project to closely match the accumulated 35mm pics avaible throughout the net.

Video:
The open matte DVD was upscaled in Gigapixel AI and processed with filters to reduce macro-blocking and edge enhancement/halos. The resulting image was further processed and then re-grained with a real grain best matching the BD version. The video was then color corrected with a 35mm LUT(s) and color matched to some 35mm frames.

Audio: (Tentative)
1. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the US widescreen LD 68952-2WS-CDS Mix)
2. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the Japanese widescreen LD PILF-0001-CDS Mix?)
3. PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround (from the Japanese SQZ widescreen LD PILF-2187-CDS Mix?)
4. PCM 2.0 Dolby Mono (from the Japanese SQZ widescreen LD PILF-2187)
5. Dolby Digital 5.1 (from the US Artisan DVD-CDS Mix)
6. DTS-HD MA 6.1 (from the 2015 BD-Rydstrom Remix)

Commentary?

Sync:
2015 US BD via a couple subtracted and dupped frames

Pics:

Temporary Pics


DVD/Upscale




Thanks:
BusterD
MrBrown
Chewtobacco
Jonno
Doombot
Tservo
Soundman

Hi All,

I wondered if anyone could confirm what this is and if anything can be done to fix it? I've seen this on a couple of different LD captures - see below - the green/red coloring around the tree branches and shrubs?

Thanks

Finally makes it's Blu-ray debut and it comes to £10.70 shipped to the UK. Quite a fan of the story and absolutely love the 1963 film (even have an original vintage cinema poster in my collection) and loved the Netflix adaption recently. the 1999 film wasn't as great but it's entertaining.  

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/haunt...99-blu-ray

the DTS DVD was my demo disc. The audio was a real powerhouse. Shame the BD only has 5.1 audio as this was the second film to be mixed in Dolby Surround EX

small bug that I should make you aware of

using google chrome on my android device and whenever I press last post to see the final page of the thread i'm reading (this is either form the forum index or the thread itself), it only goes to halfway through the thread an di have to keep pressing last post to forward through the pages

An interesting interview with Criterion's Technical Director Lee Kline talking about how they approach restorations etc., can't help but read it as a defense of some of their previous 'tealed' releases.

Visiting Criterion Collection