Macross DYRL field blend elimination

[Doc Sane]

Hi there,

I've searched through the forum on the subject already, but the past methods don't seem to work for me. I have the original region 2 DVD of the Macross Movie, which appears to have been badly processed as quasi-anamorphic video from its original laserdisc master. This apparently led to the bad interlace artifacting it shows on playback. Now, I've tried to IVTC the footage, but it seems field blended, and all my attempts at processing it result in jerky pans and zooms. Has anyone found a way to fix this disc? I even tried Restore 24, but VirtualDub keeps crashing every time I try to use it.

Thanks!

[Mug Funky]

aargh! Macross is nothing but trouble. though the remasters of the series do look pretty good (too bad the american re-edit of it "Robotech" didn't get access to these remasters and had to work off their own crummy film - license politics...).

restore24 and Tdeint will be your best bet. the good news is that any blur caused by deinterlacing will most probably be less than the blur caused by poor resolution in the source.

try reading through the restore24 thread for inspiration on how to get it working - it's probably something to do with plugins...

[edit] btw, i assume you have an NTSC copy there. PAL could be pretty difficult to handle the blending, because most likely the original NTSC telecine will be blended, and the conversion to PAL will give even more blending, essentially depriving restore24 of good frames to work with. if this is the case, it's simpler just to encode it as interlaced xvid and give it a bit more bitrate.

[Didée]

Well, perhaps I could give some tips about technical aspects of R24, and scharfis_brain probably even more about the used conversion techniques. But regarding the movie, I've no clue what you're talking about ... a short sample with intact field structure would be of help.

[Doc Sane]

I'll try to post a clip in the next couple of days. I'm visiting my mother for the weekend, and I can't exactly do much on a 19.2 dial-up connection. :scared: The basic problem with the Macross movie is that they took a regular telecined transfer of the movie and processed it to be 16:9, which has resulted in bizarre interlace artifacts when played back. You'll understand when you see it.

[Didée]

Originally posted by Doc Sane
I can't exactly do much on a 19.2 dial-up connection
Ouch! And I thought I was running slow ...

a regular telecined transfer of the movie and processed it to be 16:9, which has resulted in bizarre interlace artifacts when played back. You'll understand when you see it.
Oh, in case someone was dumb enough to apply progressive resizing to a combed stream, then there's nothing left to do. Lets hope you mean something other ...

[Mug Funky]

oh god... not that... anything but that.

if there's "blurred fields" as opposed to "blended fields", then there's not much you can do do fix it... in fact there's probably nothing.

if that's the case, then return your DVD to where you got it, and contact the company that put the disc out. although, the production chain is so long in the DVD world, that it probably wasn't the authoring house that made the mistake, but the people who provided them with the master. this kind of thing happens all the time, but a good authoring place will take notice of customer's complaints... (some even have forums like this one for customers to either air their concerns or just talk about their releases).

[lamer_de]

I have the original region 2 DVD of the Macross Movie, which appears to have been badly processed as quasi-anamorphic video from its original laserdisc master.Just for information, R2 here refers to the original Japanese release. It's not available comercially neither in Europe nor the US on DVD. So "contacting the company" is most probably out of the question here ;) My bet: hop on IRC, enterthegame, join #animecentral and pester nekodar. He encoded the movie for a fansubbing group.

CU,
lamer_de

[zilog jones]

If it's this dodgy and not a PAL->NTSC conversion, it's probably originally done with some old-stylee mechanical telecine, which are supposed to also be a pain to work with. Someone here had similar problems a while back with Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (or some old 80's Dic cack).

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84299&highlight=jayce

Is this similar? You seem to know more than me on the subject though, Mug Funky.

[Leak]

Originally posted by lamer_de
So "contacting the company" is most probably out of the question here ;)

Well, since Neil is a professional translator I don't think contacting the company is the problem - more like "getting the company to fix the errors they made in the first place", which is probably out of the question... :(

np: Luomo - Tessio (Vocalcity)

[Doc Sane]

Okay, I've posted a clip from the beginning of the movie. It's cut from the actual MPEG and shows both a vertical pan and character motion in a static scene. Please grab it from the following link:

http://neil.anime-translator.com/Macross_Movie_clip.m2v

As I've mentioned before, I'd try Restore24 on it, but it keeps crashing VirtualDub when I try it. And yes, I've moved all the autoloading plug-ins out of my AVISynth folder. If anyone could suggest a good way of processing this film, I'd really appreciate it.

[Mug Funky]

hmmm. my restore24 doesn't seem to be working either. probably easy to fix, but it's nearly 3:00 am here so i'm not quite up to a plugin-empty-out.

btw, that's a damn good source right there. field-blends aside, it's actually very sharp and detailed. consider yourself lucky :)

[Doc Sane]

Bumping back to top. Anyone able to suggest anything to help?

[Didée]

Perhaps try getting R24 to work:

your sample, R24'ed (http://home.arcor.de/dhanselmann/_samples/R24MacrossMovie.avi)

That's just a basic test, done with a not up-to-date version of R24 (on my weak PC at work, which usually has a "random setup" ;) ).
Deinterlacing probably could be improved as well - I just took some basic settings for everything.

Script:

SetMemoryMax(64)
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\mpeg2dec3.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\MaskTools.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\TDeint.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\warpsharp.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\avisynth_c.dll")
LoadCPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\SmartDecimate.dll")

import("D:\!temp\restore24~someversion~.avs")

mpeg2source("D:\!temp\Macross_Movie_clip.d2v")

assumetff()
crop(24,20,-24,-20,true)
o = last

a = o.bob()
b = o.TDeint(mode=1,type=2,order=1)

restore24(a,b, 24,60)

bicubicresize(640,480, 0.0,0.5, 2,2,666,437)
# LClense(2) # some weak NR

[Doc Sane]

Originally posted by Didée
Perhaps try getting R24 to work:

your sample, R24'ed (http://home.arcor.de/dhanselmann/_samples/R24MacrossMovie.avi)

That's just a basic test, done with a not up-to-date version of R24 (on my weak PC at work, which usually has a "random setup" ;) ).
Deinterlacing probably could be improved as well - I just took some basic settings for everything.

Script:

SetMemoryMax(64)
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\mpeg2dec3.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\MaskTools.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\TDeint.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\warpsharp.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\avisynth_c.dll")
LoadCPlugin("C:\Anwendungen\AviSynth 2.5\SmartDecimate.dll")

import("D:\!temp\restore24~someversion~.avs")

mpeg2source("D:\!temp\Macross_Movie_clip.d2v")

assumetff()
crop(24,20,-24,-20,true)
o = last

a = o.bob()
b = o.TDeint(mode=1,type=2,order=1)

restore24(a,b, 24,60)

bicubicresize(640,480, 0.0,0.5, 2,2,666,437)
# LClense(2) # some weak NR

Fantastic! It works, although the odd thing is that I have to close VirtualDub and then reopen it if I wish to reload the AVISynth script. Weird, but Restore24 is no longer crashing on me. I'll try a test encode of the movie today. Thanks so much for your help!