How to curve distort an entire Cinerama DVD image (Convert Letterbox to Smilebox)?

[simonhowson]

Recently the film How the West Was Won (1962) has been reissued on DVD. This film was photographed in a format called Cinerama, which was filmed using three cameras to create an extremely widescreen and wide-angle image. It was then projected using three projectors on a deeply curved screen. For an exhaustive history of Cinerama, see here. (http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/Widescreen/wingcr1.htm)

Warner Bros have made a great new transfer of this film, and on blu-ray have presented it in both regular letterboxed widescreen, but also Smilebox, which is a distorted format designed to simulate the curvature of a Cinerama screen. See more info about Smilebox here (http://www.cineramaadventure.com/smilebox.htm)

Unfortunately they have not released a Smilebox version on regular (standard definition) DVD. It has only been released in an extremely wide 2.89:1 letterboxed version.

My question is, how would I go about converting the entire DVD from Letterboxed widescreen to Smilebox in order to get the simulated curved look of the blu-ray version?

Can I use some blu-ray captures as like a 'template' so I know what degree to distort the image? How do I actually use AviSynth to distort the image in this way?

Any help in achieving this would be appreciated. I'm not quite ready to make the leap to blu-ray at this stage (I'd need to buy a new TV, because my HD TV is so old it does 1080i, but not 1080p)

Here are some screen captures from DVDBeaver showing the difference between the letterboxed and smileboxed versions:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews40/how%20the%20west%20was%20won%20blu-ray/800%20large%20how%20the%20west%20was%20won%20%20blu-ray823.jpg

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews40/how%20the%20west%20was%20won%20blu-ray/%20smiley%20800%20snapshot20080911190312.jpg

There are more images here (http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews40/how_the_west_was_won_blu-ray.htm)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Why would you have to buy a new TV if you wanted to do BluRay? 1080i is perfectly fine!

~MiSfit

[mikeytown2]

Try
http://avisynth.org/vcmohan/Perspective/Perspective.html
http://avisynth.org/vcmohan/DeBarrel/DeBarrel.html
with
http://avisynth.org/vcmohan/Grid/Grid.html

[simonhowson]

Why would you have to buy a new TV if you wanted to do BluRay? 1080i is perfectly fine!

~MiSfit

Even over component? I thought blu-ray downscales if sent over component?

[Comatose]

Maybe in the future. Right now, nope.

You can always upgrade later, right?

[simonhowson]

Maybe in the future. Right now, nope.
So do you mean the downscaling 'feature' is determined by how the discs are encoded?

You can always upgrade later, right?
I'll get into blu-ray eventually, but until then I just wanted to see if distorting the image in this way was even possible.

[Blue_MiSfit]

So do you mean the downscaling 'feature' is determined by how the discs are encoded?

I'll get into blu-ray eventually, but until then I just wanted to see if distorting the image in this way was even possible.

The mandatory downscale DRM bit is enabled on a disc per disc basis, and to my knowledge no discs have it enabled yet.

So, you should get full 1080p out of component.

-Derek

[Sagekilla]

Even then, if the source was downscaled to 720p or something of that sort I highly doubt you'd see a tremendous difference, especially if you're not sitting 3-4 feet away from the TV. It's an investment either way, in preparation for when you do have a 1080p set ;)

[vcmohan]

My question is, how would I go about converting the entire DVD from Letterboxed widescreen to Smilebox in order to get the simulated curved look of the blu-ray version?

I have tried with following script using debarrel plugin.
imagereader("D:\images\letterbox.jpg", end = 20).converttoRGB32()
lanczosresize(700,320)
addborders(50,65,50,65)

DeBarrel(im1,a = 0.00005, b = 0.0005, c = 0.20,pin = false)
The above gave a near fit to what you desired. There are still some issues.The quality of interpolation in debarrel needs to be improved. The parameters need to be further tweaked. Since I am busy working on another project it will be a week before I modify debarrel for improved interpolation. Then tweaking parameters will take a little time.May not get perfect fit but almost near fit.
One thing that's bothering me is when I compare the letterbox original to the smiley ( in the link page given), I find the smiley image sides are sharper than in original.
May be some other input used for smiley?

[simonhowson]

I have tried with following script using debarrel plugin.
imagereader("D:\images\letterbox.jpg", end = 20).converttoRGB32()
lanczosresize(700,320)
addborders(50,65,50,65)

DeBarrel(im1,a = 0.00005, b = 0.0005, c = 0.20,pin = false)
The above gave a near fit to what you desired. There are still some issues.The quality of interpolation in debarrel needs to be improved. The parameters need to be further tweaked. Since I am busy working on another project it will be a week before I modify debarrel for improved interpolation. Then tweaking parameters will take a little time.May not get perfect fit but almost near fit.
One thing that's bothering me is when I compare the letterbox original to the smiley ( in the link page given), I find the smiley image sides are sharper than in original.
May be some other input used for smiley?

Thank you very much for your reply (and your email).

Perhaps the Smilebox version looks sharper because the letterboxing is so extreme (2.89:1 aspect ratio!) that it has reduced the resolution compared to the Smilebox version (which I believe is meant to be 2.59:1, even though it is difficult to actually measure it? This is just my very uninformed guess.

NOTE: I just read that the curvature of a Cinerama screen was 147 degrees. I don't know if this makes it easier to make a more accurate distortion:

After about two months of testing, and trying several things, including projecting the original 3 panel Cinerama focus charts on the Seattle Cinerama 146 degree screen checking for horizontal and vertical distortions, we came up with the SmileBox process for the documentary. We needed to take full advantage of the standard HD 16 x 9 frame and fill it edge to edge and yet have a 146 degree effect that would approximate what people saw in Cinerama theaters.


Thank you very much for taking the time to look at this. I look forward to trying out your script very soon.

[vcmohan]

DeBarrel now has a more precise Lanczos 6 tap interpolater.

[simonhowson]

DeBarrel now has a more precise Lanczos 6 tap interpolater.
Excellent. Thanks very much!