@ x5gb - I'm sorry I didn't respond to your post... Somehow when the page loaded I didn't notice it... Happy to see that there is someone else out there that has been looking for this in HD, besides me, for a long time
Ok, so... my damn power company... yeah... hmmm, sorry this one just makes me mad. Within the last two weeks, the power in my entire neighborhood has gone out 6 times, from 10 seconds to 3 hours depending on which time, resulting in my encoding of a "next" step in the project "crashing and burning." This means that after hours and hours of encoding (sometimes 30 hours in, at 80-90%) the power would go out and I would have to restart the encoding from the start. I lost about 4 days of time due to having to restart encodes from scratch. Grrrrrrrrr!!!! Very mad about this...
Anyway, now that I got that out of the way, LOL, it's actually a good thing that the last encode got f'd up by the power outage. Reason?? Well, it turns out that when I aligned the two video sources (one at 25fps converted from "original" 50fps source and one at 25fps converted from source that had first frame "dropped" and subsequent result is it gives me the "alternate frames of first one)... ok, yeah, when I aligned the sources, it turns out that (let's say, since frames are doubled at 50fps that the first of the double is frame A and the second frame B) that the frame A's have a slightly different colortiming (slightly less saturation, mainly red's) than that of the frame B's. Overlaying them with each other, creates a very nice "final" result in terms of colors, depth of shadows, gamma. (and yes, both are the same color space as original at 4:2:0) BUT!!!....
There is a problem I noticed with the source, which I dismissed incorrectly on my initial going through the material as "motion blur" that there's a lot of in this film, that there are in fact some blended frames here and there, especially in the first 3-4 minutes in some of the darker footage. Since each frame is doubled, but you can see that this was a de-interlacing using blending when necessary, I was able to notice the problem. There are occasions where frame 2A will have blending with frame 1B, and frame 2B has blending with frame 3A, subsequently making the "unique" frame 2 a mess. Here, I have to choose which one gives smoother motion and less artifacts/ghosting and "compromise" on a choice. Some of the frames I can fix manually in PSP, some of them aren't really noticeable due to actual motion blur in the shot, and some I can manipulate by overlaying adjacent/alternate frame due to the nature of shot/frame. However, there are a few I can't do anything about. Most people won't notice, but once you do - you can never "un-see" it.
I will see if I can replace some of the frames only partially, in the obvious part of the blending/ghosting, with SRupscaled/colormatched/tinkered footage from the DVD, where the frame is clean. The problem with this method is the fact that there are frames where I will be able to match it closely and no one will notice because that shot just happens to be excellent clarity on DVD, but there are shots where it would be too noticeable due to low quality on the DVD and there, I will have to leave the blended frame. The quality of the DVD is also a problem I will be facing as far as aligning the frames of the different sources for an "open matte" presentation. Here, some of the shots will be genuine "open-matte" and some will be mostly cropped HDTV footage. Fortunately, even though the HDTV copy is supposedly "director's approved" 2.0 AR, the actual dimensions are closer to 1.91 AR for most shots, which works to my advantage.
Anyway, I am going through the HDTV footage at a much slower pace now, because I'm having to go through it frame-by-frame, because as it turns out, there are also some glitches in the video and I'm glad it's at 50fps, where frame 1A has a glitch but frame 1B is fine and I have to drop those. There are also some anomalies I found in the video of incorrect frame order on the "doubled" frame where frame 1B is a duplicate of frame 2A and frame 2B is a duplicate of frame 1A. I know, weird... maybe this is due to my conversion, but when I looked at the source video, frame after frame in MPC (love that step function) I noticed this problem as well. This broadcast is just riddled with issues. Most of it all is salvageable and should still produce a nice final result but it will take a bit of work on my part.
Right now I am on frame 24650 (out of 157652) and I started on frame 0 yesterday, LOL. Yeah, it will take me a couple of days. At least I will have the "piece of mind" that the resulting encode of the HDTV is the best that can be achieved from the source and is usable for the next step in the project. Then, I can finally get back to framing the DVD to match the HDTV. Yeah, this is turning into a lot of work but I'm having fun with it. Freakin love this movie and want to enjoy it in open-matte.
One more thing... I am still "split" on which color-grading looks better - the HDTV or the DVD. To me, some shots look better on the HDTV and some look better (mostly the aerial and orange skies) on the DVD. I might end up doing a "hybrid" color-grading, using one or the other as base, on a shot-by-shot basis. I know, it's a lot of extra work, but I don't care. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it once and do it right, otherwise; what's the point?
This project is kind of a birthday present to me, LOL... My b-day is at end of next month and I want to enjoy this film on that day with my father. When I was 5 years old, in 1987, I remember my old man getting the VHS tape of this film and letting me stay up late to watch it with him and my mom. It was an awesome night and a great memory from my childhood. A couple of years later, in 1989, my father got a Pioneer LD player and bought a nice Technics surround sound system with nice Technics 250W each speakers, and shortly after got the Top Gun LD. What an experience! We tested the surround sound with that LD and is was incredible. Happy memories
Hearing this film on a surround sound system, at so young of an age, was what "turned me onto" surround sound in films, in general. That feeling of "immersion" into what's going on, especially with a film like this, is what drew me towards working with audio and 5.1 mixes (when I got older) from a very young age.
Anyway... yeah, back to work
