Koopa Luath's test/demo releases

[deleted user]

Only reason I'm doing pan-and-scan for the Dollars Trilogy in the first place is so I can do an open matte presentation of the Fistful of Dollars network prologue via seamless branching.

So you would rather crop an entire movie to 4:3 instead of adding black bars to the right and left of a network logo? Or am I getting something wrong? 

If you want Blu Ray compatibility, I believe you need to keep 16:9 ratio (of the video stream) anyway, and since your source likely doesn't have any higher resolution than letterboxed 1080p, you may just keep it that way and add the prologue in pillarboxed fashion.

[Koopa Luath]

What I'm saying is I'm trying to get a consistent aspect ratio no matter how it's presented. For the OAR version, I'd crop the network prologue to match the rest of the film; for the 4:3 P&S version, I'd crop the film itself to match the network prologue; and for the 16:9 version, I'd crop the network prologue somewhat less than for the OAR version and selectively crop the film itself from there. For obvious reasons, I'm not in any hurry as far as the whole cropping business is concerned; it does take time and effort to get anywhere close to a decent crop no matter which way you crop it, after all.

[Koopa Luath]

After giving it some thought, I've decided not to include any trailers until I am certain the project(s) in question are close enough to completion. Instead, I'll also include on Test No. 2 a somewhat spruced-up version of the pilot episode of Are You Being Served?, one of my Summer projects (as far as I know, regular releases of that series are a certainty up to Winter 2019; the release I'm planning for this Summer will consist of the first season, comprising six episodes). Otherwise, the content list for Test No. 2, release date still to be determined, remains unchanged.

For the third test, which will be sometime next month, I'm going to practice upscaling and Blu-ray authoring, hence Test No. 3 will be a Blu-ray. As I continue work on Test No. 2's original main feature (which I'm already 3.5 minutes into, approximately), I will teach myself how to use said program in preparation for the Blu Test.

[spoRv]

I must confess I did a p&s with HP7, to get a better open matte version - where more than 80% was just cropped - and it was a pain in the... neck to do the right cropping; I'll never do the same again! And I did ONLY because I wanted a complete open matte saga- so, it counted for about 10% of the whole saga, I thought it was "fair enough"...

Still can't understand why someone should bother to do a pan&scan version of a movie in 2018 (I did HP7 last year, so I'm safe! )... maybe it's just me, but I don't see the point... please, follow the hints given to you by anybody, don't waste your time and efforts on p&s, and focus on something more important!

[Koopa Luath]

You're right. The first thing I need to do is prepare the master itself, and Avisynth and NNEDI are my friends in that regard (I intend to upscale the file to be used for the master print to the point where it looks indistinguishable from the average film print, down to the grain, and to do that I believe the solution would be to upscale by two as much as necessary, then downscale to the desired resolution, right?).

[spoRv]

Happy to hear that!

Well, there are so many upscale algorhythm, with pros and cons, none is perfect; you should test, test, and... did I say test? A 2x/4x upscale then downscale seems a good method, try it first!

[Evit]

...and test seamless branching first of all, before you even start doing anything at all, which is something I reccomended you to do a year ago. Takes you a couple of minutes to do it with 1 minute videos. You might find out that seamless branching is not possible, don't you want to find out before proposing it as a center piece of every project of yours?

Anyway I re-read the thread and still don't understand the advantages of pan and scan, you said there were some. The admins of FanRes might think that you're trolling us.

[Koopa Luath]

You'll understand what I meant when I get out my first full-length project, which I will reveal once it's close enough to completion. (That, and I'm kind of an old-school guy.)

And yes, I do intend to practice the fine art of seamless branching at some point. I'm thinking of using The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as my test subject for that one, the aim being to make a disc containing both the Italian theatrical and international theatrical versions, and do the latter more accurately than Kino Lorber did. As usual, I won't be doing very much in terms of visual enhancements, I merely want to ensure I got seamless branching down pat with the resources I have.

ETA: I just remembered that the way to do it on Blu-ray involves playlists. I'll look into how to achieve that, needless to say, and it'll be for my fourth test release. Additionally, I'll be dedicating at least an hour or two every day to working on these test releases, and an unspecified amount of time each day to looking into Avisynth scripts and how to use them for video encoding.

[Colek]

I really think you should focus on one project and finally release something though, rather than starting a ton of projects and teasing everyone

[Koopa Luath]

True, that. Course, testing my capabilities beforehand wouldn't hurt; after all, I don't yet know what I'm capable of. I am, at least, capable of making a DVD with basic skills. Right now, I'm working on adding subtitle tracks. Course, sometimes you gotta make a subtitle track before you can add a subtitle track, and that's precisely what I'm doing for my second test release, via Subtitle Edit 3.5.5, as we speak (BTW in the span of half an hour today I've advanced approximately two minutes to around the 5.5 minute mark, so nearly a quarter of my way through that one!).