[Released] Harry Potter saga - open matte

[spoRv]

Thanks guys!

First post updated with short description of work done and some screenshots.

[nightstalkerpoet]

I hate to mention this, but couldn't HP3 be completely rebuilt from the BD with better quality since it is Pan and Scan only?

[spoRv]

Even if HP 3 is pan&scan - or, more correctly cropped, as I think there are not too many actual pan&scan shots, at least if it is like HP 7 with about 3% p&s - the HDTV still has more lines on top and bottom; that's the contrary of HP 7, where the HDTV has less lines top and bottom (on cropped shots), and, as the source is only 720p, the BD with its 800 lines has a better quality.

I should make a directo comparison, and probably BD would still have a better quality... but the aim of the project is to retain a good quality AND the fullscreen image... hence, I "can't" discard those few line!

Today I worked hard on HP 6; there are FOUR different sources to work on - 2x 1080i, 1x 720p, 1x 576p; the bad thing is the only source without logo has missing frames, and residual logo; that is, "of course", placed in the same corner as the other 1080i and the 720p...

Long story short, I finally found a way to get the first complete logo-less version; hope to get another or, better, other two, to get a better final version. By the way, this time 720p is better than both 1080i, so resolution isn't everything!

[spoRv]

HP 6:
the so-called logofree first version was only apparently logo free... there were a lot of brief moments - from just one to few frames - when logo reappeared; also, a single mask for any version was not enough, as Freeform have at least three variants of its TV logo, with animation when change from one (or none) to another, plus rating logo, plus pop-ups... a nightmare, in few words...

Well, this is the method I've followed - hard, but rewarding; ready to read?

1. I made four temporary versions with all the sources (Space 1080i, CTV 1080i, Freeform 720p upscaled, THT 576p upscaled) in sync with the blu-ray, replacing missing frames with blu-ray ones
   
2. now I have four in-sync sources - still with logo and temp blu-ray frames
   
3. I took the version with almost no logo (Space) and used other HD versions (CTV and Freeform) for the missing frames, discarding the blu-ray ones
   
4. to get rid of residual logo, I used carefully chosen masks and different kinds of overlay for each shot, using the fourth temp source (THT) as logo-free base
   
5. sadly there was one instance where all the sources have a logo on the same place, so I ended up using the blu-ray for just that shot - that lasts around four seconds, and is very similar to replaced shot (frankly I'm studying a way to use the blu-ray just as logo-free base...)
   
6. now I have the main logo-free version
   
7. I produced the second logo-free version replacing the blu-ray frames of second temp with the ones from first logo-free, then I used a mask to get all the other frames logo-free
   
8. then I used a median to get the final version using logo-free versions 1 and 2, and final Freeform source, not logo-free, but with blu-ray frames replaced with main logo-free version
   
9. the result is an average of the three HD sources, and for the parts of the image with logo from Freeform, only Space and CTV are merged
   

Got the point? Simple (enough) in theory, hard (a lot) in practice!

Final rendering will take more than three days and, because I'm not 100% sure (yet) every single frame would be perfect, I'm rendering a simplified version to check everything will be fine!

Wish me luck, I need it... next, HP 7 - another PITA!

[OogieBoogie]

I am just blown away by the level of dedication you guys put into this kind of stuff, hats off to you all. & good luck to you with your endeavors.

EDIT BY ADMIN: I just deleted the quote - entire quote of the previous post is useless IMHO!

[spoRv]

HP 6:

wow... this  is really the most difficult project until now... the avisynth script I'm using - that I've been forced to divide because so heavy that can't be rendered without errors - is several hundred lines long!

Well, the median test clip shows that work is, more or less, finished; some misaligned frames here and there - that was expected, with three different sources at 200k+ frames each! - and I fixed that shot that used blu-ray, so now, apart obviously final credits - that were missing, sped up with blended frames, or reduced in a small window in the HDTV captures - I can say that we have a "pure" open matte version!

I've improved the final version a bit - remember, median used two logo-less and Freeform with logo; now, median would use the two logo-less and as third another median, this time of almost-logo-less Freeform, each version using a different mask to get rid of the logo; this will give a bit more image parts to be median-ed - not a huge improvement, I know, but here "every pixel counts"!

Waiting for the latest temp file to be rendered, then I'll know if this latest fix would be feasible - as said before, all-in-one script doesn't work, so I've break it in two parts, let's see if it works - touch wood. I've updated the first post with an image to show where logo was places - carefully chosen worst case scenarios for each capture, to incread the dramatic reactions... actually, the first (Space) was almost all without logo, second (CTV) got a bit smaller logo, while third (Freeform) has three bigger logos over the small Freeform text (promoting Harry Potter, Stiches, Shadow Hunters) while big pop-ups lasts few seconds, for a grantotal time of maybe two minutes...

EDIT: final script is ready, it should take "just" a day to encode lossless...

HP 5:

Still got to put my hands on it (again), now that I have the HDTV capture (thanks to babouin) in the vault; what I can say for sure, is that it has some grain (and noise) not on WEBdl, but along that it has also more details, in places where the other has not... after HP 6, I'm even more convinced that using two or more different versions, possibly with different coded, almost always improves the quality - more details, less noise and blockiness (in particular when captured from HDTV).

It would be a breeze to make this, though, in comparison to HP 6!

Now, waiting for HP 3 - it should be captured within few hours.

[nightstalkerpoet]

Hey Andrea, I think you should start releasing these 2 at a time.

I have two reasons for this:
1. I'm impatient
2. If you release all 8 films at once at 50GB a piece, you're going to have to upload (and we're going to have to download) 400GB of movies all at the same time. I have pretty good download speeds and unlimited, but I know for some people, 400GB is more than their monthly data allowance, and their internet speeds would make trying to get these all at once nearly impossible

[Clutchins]

I like this idea a lot.

[nightstalkerpoet]

I'm happy to encode the final copies if you send me a lossless file with the audio tracks included. I'm running an AMD 8350 overclocked at 4.3ghz with 32gb of 1600mhz ram and a gtx960 4gb gddr5 gaming edition (using it as a frame server with DGDecNV.) Encoding from lossless files on an ssd.

I know they're huge, but might be easier to make a private torrent and I can download them from you directly.

[spoRv]

Clutchins: thanks!

nightstalkerpoet: thanks for the offer, but it would take more than a week to upload just one film - it will be around 180/190GB with audio tracks! so I'd prefer to wait a day or two (max) to encode one film, while others would take "just" ten hours or so... that will take me to the release dates: as I wrote before, I prefer to finish the work on all chapters before release even one film... think if, for example, if I have a problem with a later episode, that will take days, if not weeks, to solve it - don't want to let people wait too much, so I'll release them all one after the other - provisional upload would be around two days per film, so more than two weeks; and, hopely, the downloader would leave them seeding for some time to let everyone, even the ones with download limits, to get them all.

---

HP 7:

the previous film was the hardest until now, but this is close second... a lot of different combinations (masks and color adjustments) were needed, but, after two days fighting with it, I *probably* have the final version - encoding right now latest test, that *should* be definite, I hope; luckily, this contains "only" 22 minutes of open matte shots, so I had to watch not the whole film for several times, but, again, "only" one sixth of it!

So, blu-ray upscaled and carefully cropped shots as in the original fullscreen version - but with more details top and bottom, and consequently on the sides - are about 83% of the movie, so the rest is around 17% - excluding last part and end credits; of these 22 minutes, I can say most part, maybe around 20 minutes, uses the higher quality Freeform as main source (excluding of course those frame parts needed to replace the logo); the latest five minutes are from Space, which is 1080i hence the best source - sadly there is the only available part...

This is the only film which has open matte end credits - actually, few frames about the spinning Deathly Hallows symbol; this is preserved, with the rest of the credits from blu-ray - previous ones because in higher quality, next ones because missing from any HDTV source.

Final quality is very nice, quite similar to blu-ray, if you take in account the main sources are 720p; finer details are preserved in almost all shots - take a look at this: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/211956 - final result has a bit more detail, and residual logo traces should be completely eraticated; if someone would get a test clip of the open matte shots to carefully check and see if some traces of logo are still present, it will be of great help! 

So, I repeat myself, I know, but it's a long thread, so it could be buried somewhere; until a complete 1080i HDTV capture would be available, this is the best version up to date; in the case it would be available in the future, a remastered version will be released.

Time to work on the last chapter... later  then get back to HP 3 and 5 to put them in sync with a the second source.