Biden has held less press conferences than former presidents suffering from mental decline...
Lefties: Stop comparing Biden not having press conferences to Regan and other presidents during their mental decline.
Biden now has the least number of press conferences by a huge margin, he's at a 1/4 of Drumflers total conferences and less than half the monthly average.
I got the last two BGC laserdiscs in the mail today (7 and 8). Now I have them all (except Hurricane 2032, 2033, and "Holiday in Bali," of which only Hurricane 2032 has any additional new animation to interest me).
Rest in peace, my wallet. After I factor in shipping, I might have spent more on these LD's than I did to acquire the limited edition blu-ray+CD box.
Still less than they cost new (between 6420 and 9800 yen apiece... total for all 8 was 69,414 yen. Probably over $500. I am not doing the conversion rate and inflation adjustment). And three of the discs were new (1, 2, and 6).
These (7 and 8) were the only two that had that smell about them that paper gets when it's in a smoker's house for a long time. Pretty surprising, given that they are from Japan in the 80s and 90s. Only one of my discs (5) doesn't have the obi.
That smell is honestly a little nostalgic for me because I associate it with the 1990-1993 nintendo power magazine issues that i got from my neighbor, who smoked a ton.
I will of course be doing captures of all of them, and hopefully domesday duplicates (where you read directly from the laser, bypassing almost all of the internal circuitry responsible for turning it into a usable video signal, and then can play the disc back by emulating the demodulation and audio/composite video stream creation circuitry of a laserdisc player in software) some day. This operates on the theory that software can do a better job than 30 year old analogue electronics at decoding and comb filtering composite video, and that less will be lost in the propagation of signals through the circuitry and crosstalk/interference. It also allows for time base correction in software for things with lousy time bases like VHS.
There are also projects to do the Domesday technique on VHS and Betamax tapes.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Apr 25 2023, 10:53
Is there a quality advantage over the current rips available?
If you want quality i have lossless rips of the limited edition 35th box (blu ray set).
I am doing this LD rip for myself mostly, but I am doing it as autistically as I can (calibrating capture card to color bars, not deinterlacing (to let the viewer decide on their preferred deinterlacing algorithm), etc.).
Quality might be better for my LD's; IDK. I'm doing digital audio rips rather than analogue and have a nice comb filter in my player.
There are a handful of effects on the LD's that are absent from the Blu-rays, like a pixellation effect when Largo is realizing the Quincy in front of him is a doppelganger.
Also the credit reels are different on some of the episodes, and there's some bonus content on some of the discs that I haven't seen elsewhere. Like a music video for Konya wa Hurricane at the end of the first disc.
I also don't know if any existing LD transfers are of Japanese pressings like mine are.
Also, the moment I'd finally gotten all of them the asshole seller on ebay who'd said they'd "accept [my] offer if [I] could pay immediately" and then took down the listing when I said I could because they thought they could get more for it asked if I still wanted the laserdisc box set (which they put back up after a month).
I did (for the booklet and extras), but not at that price when I already have all of them now except the Hurricane 2032/2033 discs. You had your chance, buddy. You fucked it up.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: Apr 30 2023, 10:30
VHS/Laserdisc subtitles, here i come. Was challenging to automatically convert a modern subtitle format to JACOSub format, but I managed to mostly do it and just had to fix some overlapping timestamps and re-apply positioning afterwards.
Also found some old ones from fansub groups that didn't get lost to time (mostly due to archive.org).
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 1 2023, 00:31
Genlock decided to catch fire when I turned it on.
Oh well.
Got parts on order to try to fix it, also another of the same genlock that I found cheap. If that one also dies then I know my Amiga is probably killing them.
Just remembered that there's a filter in ffmpeg specifically meant for removing three-two pulldown (which is what you do to make a telecine of 24fps content for a 60Hz system without actually losing any frames). Better than using a generic deinterlacer.
Next episode 8, then the Dirty Pair movie because I have it.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 5 2023, 07:02
Is there a quality advantage over the current rips available?
So there are LD rips already? Or did you mean on other formats. Regardless I still am doing them all myself. I have an NTSC Pioneer reference disc I've used to calibrate everything (capture card included).
Sample of 7. Used the 2:3 pullup filter on it to recover the original frames instead of doing generic deinterlacing. Worked well. Going to be a lot of fun once I have a working genlock. Already prepped JACOsub-compatible subs for half the series. I knew laserdiscs were better than VHS/betamax, but i had rarely had an opportunity to compare one piece of media on multiple formats before. Still feels remarkable that LD's didn't quite catch on in the States (let alone Europe/Australia). I guess the players cost a lot and the consumer media wasn't recordable. [files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/ozz34h.webm
So there are LD rips already? Or did you mean on other formats.
Yes.... but no... looking at one archive site, the LD rips were poor so they have been replaced by the DVD conversion and three different bluray conversions.... Seems most of the laserdisc direct rips were replaced as they were poor rips from a decade or more ago.
VHS >> DVD 480p (removed) LD 425 removed LD >> DVD 480p DVD >> BD 720p LD >>> BD 720p LD?? >>> BD 1080p upscale
QUOTE(dragontamer8740 @ May 5 2023, 16:43)
I knew laserdiscs were better than VHS/betamax, but i had rarely had an opportunity to compare one piece of media on multiple formats before. Still feels remarkable that LD's didn't quite catch on in the States (let alone Europe/Australia). I guess the players cost a lot and the consumer media wasn't recordable. [files.catbox.moe] https://files.catbox.moe/ozz34h.webm
I was reading that there is potential to get better rips from laserdiscs now as they were analogue and uncompressed, depends on how they were mastered though.
Probably not as good as a new 4k transfer though but that is not always possible.
Yes.... but no... looking at one archive site, the LD rips were poor so they have been replaced by the DVD conversion and three different bluray conversions.... Seems most of the laserdisc direct rips were replaced as they were poor rips from a decade or more ago. VHS >> DVD 480p (removed) LD 425 removed LD >> DVD 480p DVD >> BD 720p LD >>> BD 720p LD?? >>> BD 1080p upscale
Probably not as good as a new 4k transfer though but that is not always possible.
My 35th anniversary Blu-rays are 1080p transfers (from the film). I would guess my LD rips are similar or better. Also my LD rips are of Japanese LD's, not sure if those are.
QUOTE(EsotericSatire @ May 6 2023, 07:22)
I was reading that there is potential to get better rips from laserdiscs now as they were analogue and uncompressed, depends on how they were mastered though.
Yes; Domesday Duplicator is a potential way to get better rips. I have plans to convert my player into one at some point when I have the money for the PC-side hardware to interact with it. The way it works is that you read the FM signal straight off the laser pickup, and do all the conversion into a composite video signal and picture/color decoding/sound decoding in software later, so you can bypass all the old comb filters and DAC's inside the laserdisc player and get as good of quality as the quality of the software's implementation. A software defined laserdisc player, if you will. So if someone makes some brilliant discovery regarding better ways to separate color and luminance information in composite video signals, for instance, you can just play your Domesday-ripped LD file through an updated version of the player/decoder to create a better quality video file, instead of having to hope your physical LD player still works and depend on increasingly older hardware and rotting discs.
Might still not be possible to perfectly separate the color from the luminance signal, but we can get very close.
I feel like, were I to adjust the hue control scene by scene, I could probably get close to the BD's colors most of the time. But it's not consistent between scenes.
I can say, based on my teeny tiny little 35mm film strip, the blu-rays appear to have pretty accurate color to the film. I like both versions and am happy I have both.
This post has been edited by dragontamer8740: May 7 2023, 08:17
I couldn't tell the difference between my VHS copies and many of my early DVD copies of series... then I found out they were mastering from the VHS copies...
The US is dying, anime is dying, and this thread is no longer dead, Racist gay mods need to stop touching threads
Apr 13 2023, 16:20
