Yesterday we wanted to watch a "different" movie - not the "usual" sci-fi, horror, zombie, action etc.
So, took my 1€ Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and rewatch it after a lot of months...
A strange (in a good way) film... comedy, videogame, music, comics, everything melted together in a final product that is fun to watch and never boring; if you haven't watched it yet, you'll be amazed - and don't forget to watch also deleted/extended scenes, it may lead you to think about an extended restoration project!
Last millennium - a looong time ago I was an early adopter... every new audio video technology was so exciting that I can't resist... few examples? Minidisc (luckily I skipped DCC), DAT, DVB, 16:9 TV, DVD recorder...
What I learned is, despite the fact that is still cool to have some new "tech" thing others don't even know it exist, often it's a waste of money... I mean, MD was a flop, DAT was just a professional format, DVD recorder first models were faulty, DVB... well, here in Italy we had a kind of "government discount" and I got it almost for free, so this is the exception to the rule... 16:9 was actually a good bet - indeed, I got a 16:9 TV set since 1995, almost ten years before all the other "normal" people discovered that it was a good thing - before the discover, my TV was "faulty"
Then, grown old and thanks to a bit of experience, and less money to spend in useless tech, I discovered to be a "late adopter"... wisely, I waited the winner of Blu-ray/HD-DVD war - even if I bet on Sony since the beginning, try to spell "H-D-D-V-D" instead of Blu-ray and tell me it's easier to pronounce... laserdisc also was adopted late - 1995 along with 16:9 TV set - a good move at the time, as DVD was mainstream some years later, and I got "high resolution" video, twice better than VHS, way before the others... got my first flat panel TV, a plasma one, on 2005, not so late but enough to spend 1/10th of what it costed few years before... then it broke, and I was tempted by a full-led local dimming TV - yes, another quite new technology, but at half the price because it was an year-old model, was a gift I made myself...
Now, it broke (again), even if I must admit the use was more than "normal"... so, it's time to buy a new TV set, and, apart the lack of money, I decided to wait... for what? UHD is what I'm looking for, but still not standard enough like the next UHD-BD... so, I'm going to buy an used "classic" HD LED TV from a friend, barely used and still a good model, waiting to know the future of television technology... meanwhile, I'll continue to use a good technology like HD because UHD is still too young...
glad to be on board!
I really appreciate all the work done here and think it's a great idea to give some classics the restauration they deserve. :cool:
Hello to eveyone, I think it's time to share the "perfect" settings to use with x264, to obtain a BD compliant file; what you will get is a .264 file that could be used with any authoring software - I use MultiAVCHD; also Easy BD Light is a good software, but the latter doesn't allow you to make menus... I must admit lately I'm using only TSmuxeR, that, even if it doesn't make menus, it seems to produce good compliant files.
Thanks to many OT members, in particular Chewtobacca, that helped me to find out these settings!
replace 25000 with the desired average bitrate, 24 in the keyint with the video framerate (24 would do for 23.976 and 30 for 29.97), Input_File.avs with an AviSynth script (or a video file), and Output_File.264 with the final x264 file.
You can use them directly with the x264 command line - just copy and paste pass 1 settings then, when finished, copy and paste pass2 settings - or save as .bat file (thanks to Feallan for the idea), or use them inside some GUIs - the best so far IMHO is Simple x264 Launcher, but using any software that is not the original x264 command line could add some further setting that could lead to have a not-compliant file, so be aware, you are warned! And, do NOT delete any temp files you get after pass 1 (.stats and .stats.mbtree) because they will be used by pass 2!!!
HINTS:
these settings are good for 1080p video
pay attention to the BD size: actual ones are 23.3GB for BD-25 and 46.6GB for BD-50
allow about 7% overhead for the .m2ts container - for example, total file size (video+audio+subs) excluding eventual menus would be around 21.75GB for a BD-25, and 43.55 for a BD-50
to retain grain, better to not go under 20/22mbps for 2.35:1 and 28/30mbps for 1.78:1/1.85:1
max bitrate allowed for BD (video+audio) is 48mbps, so if audio tracks total bitrate is over 8mbps, you should lower video bitrate accordingly, in particular pay attention to --vbv-maxrate
to improve speed, you can use for pass 1 a "simpler" version of the final file, for example without noise reduction, grain plate, color grading, but it should be otherwise identical - same frame numbers, same resolution etc.
Hope it will help some user here; any feedback is really appreciated!
Mission: to release Cube 2: Hypercube on BD Video source: HDTV Audio sources: HDTV, DVD Subtitles sources: Various.
Project info:
Cube 2: Hypercube is not available on BD; the only HD version found is a 1080i HDTV, but it has a big logo... so I took a 720p HDTV version, used it to fix the logo problem (plus added some few lines on top of the image).
Audio is taken from several DVD.
An extra disc will follow, gathering bonus material from various DVDs and from the net.
