Something Evil (1972)

[jerryshadoe]

For those that don't know, this was a television horror film directed by Steven Spielberg that premiered on CBS on January 21, 1972. For some reason Spielberg has tried to "bury" this film in the "sands of time" and, therefore, this film has NEVER had an official release in any format. There is a low-quality VHSrip floating around from a TV airing on Starz!Family that is in a WMV format. A few months ago, the UK tv station "Horror," broadcast this film a couple of times and Mass5160 (on OT) was kind enough to capture both airings and has provided me with the files. They have a small "Horror" logo in the upper-left part of the screen and towards the end there is an "up next:..." banner on the bottom-left part of screen, very briefly, for about ten seconds. The files are at a resolution of 544x576, using the MPEG2 codec with a bitrate of ~1600kbps and ~1800kbps (very weird that the two broadcasts have different bitrates) and have very decent sounding clean audio (especially in comparison to the vhsrip copy that has a LOT of hiss and was encoded at a crappy 64kbps using WMA) that was encoded using the AC3 codec.

Of course, I'm doing all editing, clean-up, etc in lossless format using Huffyuv. I just got done de-interlacing both "Horror" sources. Now, I am encoding a video where I am overlaying one on top of the other to get a slightly better "final" picture. This helps nullify some of the noise and artifacts a little bit. Once this is done, I have to work on patching the logo, which will have to be done using the VHSrip source as there is no other source available. I already IVTC'ed the VHSrip source to use for patch on the "Horror" source once I slow it down from 25fps to 23.976fps. Of course, I will have to correct speed/pitch on the audio as well. Once all of this is done, I plan on re-sizing this to 720x480 using the SuperResolution technique and then I will author it as a DVD5 (anything more than that will be overkill considering the sources I am using) I will add English subtitles (which I already have put together) and probably the Russian subtitles since I have those as well.

This will be posted on MS

Regardless of response here, I am finishing this project and releasing it and I hope some will enjoy it. Will be posting comparison screenshots between the VHSrip/tvrip and the "Horror" sources soon, as well as comparison screenshots between sources and "final" result. This project is 80% finished already, as I started working on it last month (one of the reasons, besides HDD space, that my WATWD project has been temporarily on hold)

Is there any interest in this or am I doing this one mostly for my own benefit?

[PDB]

I'm very interested. I have always wanted to see that film but never have had the chance.

[spoRv]

Jerry, the fact they have different bitrate is normal; indeed, the DTV channels "share" their space with other channels, and they get their bitrate dinamically allocated; overlay them is a good thing to "extract" as much details as possible - that *should* be a bit more than a single capture.

Said so, I'd try to upscale to at least 720p, to not lose the extra vertical resolution of PAL Vs NTSC - at least, I'll give it a try doing some test clips... my 2c!

[jerryshadoe]

@ PDB - It's a typical 70s, made-for-tv, B(maybe even C, LOL)-rated "horror," that's cheesy, but very fun to watch on a Saturday afternoon while munching on some popcorn after a doobie

@ Andrea - I didn't realize that this is the case about bitrate allocation. I am aware of the benefits of overlaying thanks to some of your work It really does help, as I have seen in numerous test that I've done for myself. As far as upscaling it to 720p... I did some tests and honestly there's not much detail there (due to the low bitrate of an MPEG2 video) and it actually looks worse. I even tried to apply a 35mm grain plate on it (once upscaled) and it still doesn't help. I suspect that the "master" that they aired comes from an old tape source. Granted, it's MUCH better than the available VHSrip, but it's still pretty soft overall.

One of the reasons I really like working on my projects in Sony Vegas is because I can see all of the frames instantly in a preview window and outputted onto my 52" HDTV via the HDMI cable. Any changes/edits I make, I also see instantly which greatly reduces the time spent on editing as I don't have to wait to render anything. Also, if I have the video stream "zoomed in" enough on the project timeline, I am able to see every frame there too. I can easily edit on a frame-by-frame basis, which comes in VERY handy when working with two video sources. I am instantly able to see the differences and spot problem frames in either source. The reason I bring this up is because I noticed something interesting due to this "preview;" at scene/shot changes (about 50% of the time) there will be chroma-bleed of the last frame into the next or vice-versa, interchaning at random. This is partially due to the de-interlacing process, and partially due to the fact that MPEG does this a lot, especially at lower bitrates. This got me to thinking... "What if, just if, I reverse the field order when de-interlacing?" So I did just that and then "threw" the deinterlaced "top-field first" and separate deinterlaced "bottom-field first" videos on the timeline inside of Vegas. What I discovered, is that now these chroma-bleeds happen exactly opposite of each other in respect to each other. What this means, is that at every scene/shot change where deinterlaced"TFP" has a problem - the deinterlaced"BFF" does not and vice-versa. The rest of the frames actually look better, as half of the horizontal resolution is not missing since both fields are present in the progressive frame. All I have to do, is "cut" out those individual frames, in either video, at every shot/scene change and I have a "perfect" result. I am wondering if this technique could be used with other things that might have this problem.

[spoRv]

Jerry, it's too late to understand what you are talking about interlaced... stuff! but the idea seems promising; just start a new thread, with examples, please!

[PDB]

@ PDB - It's a typical 70s, made-for-tv, B(maybe even C, LOL)-rated "horror," that's cheesy, but very fun to watch on a Saturday afternoon while munching on some popcorn after a doobie

Well its nice to see the roots of a filmmaker and Duel is amazing. And hey I like a cheesy movie every once in while too. So its win-win.

I'm looking forward to this. Like I said always want to see it

[jerryshadoe]

Ok, I have a nice file with the two sources from "Horror" channel, de-interlaced, overlayed, and ready to be "patched" to get rid of the logo...

In trying to be a "completest," I started googling "Something Evil" and figured out what some of the foreign language titles are. Once I figured this out, I started looking for them and discovered that there are THREE other sources for this film

- A French dub (with French title-cards) ripped from "Chanel 5" - ~400MB mp4 - has large logo in bottom-right corner, very faded colors, very low quality, will not be used for the video, but I now have a French dub that can be synced to final video encode

- A Spanish Dub, ripped from a Finnish TV station - ~800MB mp4 - VERY decent detail, very solid colors (better than the "Horror" copy, but not by much) has burnt-in Finnish Subtitles, parts of it may be used for video overlay to bring out some detail on-screen

- A German dub, ripped from a German TV station - ~4GB DVD5 - aside from the small logo in left-hand part of screen, this is the BEST looking copy of the film. (Will post screenshots tomorrow, as it's late right now) Has very solid, vivid colors, decent amount of detail and will be used for a video overlay, prior/post (not sure yet) to "patching" the logo. What's interesting about this recording, is that (according to the info I found on it) it's sourced from a Super Betamax tape. The quality of the recording suggests that this is true. Very excited about this addition to the project.

Granted, this means that I have a little extra work ahead of me (compared to what I thought needs to be done) but the final result will be highly superior to what I would have "produced" if I hadn't found these extra sources...

[spoRv]

...welcome to the world of patches&overlays...

[jerryshadoe]

Thanx Andrea

Finding these extra sources (especially that German-dub) is creating a lot more work, but I think it will be worth it. I dropped all the sources on a project timeline in Vegas, and (for the most part) there is a temporal alignment and the spatial alignment will not be hard to achieve. Since this is the case, this will actually be relatively easy to assemble. All I have to make sure of, is that everything is "patched" properly when needed.

Now that I have these sources, I may in fact try to do a SuperResolution upscale to 720p (now the detail should be there) and if overlayed with a REAL 35mm grain plate, might produce a decent result. Will keep the thread updated as I make progress. Can't wait to finish this one, free up some space on my HDD, and get back to my WATWD project since I finally have a "home" to release it at BT

[jerryshadoe]

Status Update:

I am in the process of using the SuperResolution technique to upscale the sources I will be using for assembling the final video. Did many tests and the final resolution will be 960x720p as there isn't enough detail there for a 1080p upscale. I have about 60% of it upscaled so far (with about another 8-10 hours of processing before that done) and should be able to start working on the "patch" sometime tonight or tomorrow morning.

Assuming no major issues arising as I work on this, (as some of us know, like to happen from time to time) I should have this all assembled within the next few days.

Funny, that when I started this, I had less sources and only an English language audio track. Now, there is more to work with, plus it will have the German, French, and Spanish dubs included as well. Wondering if I should find translators for the foreign languages to make proper subtitles too. I already have made the English subtitles, have Russian subtitles, and need to transcribe (from the Finnish TV broadcast I have with the Spanish audio track) the Finnish subtitles.