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Genesis
Shepperton
Studios, The 16mm Film
Borehamwood, UK
30 & 31 October 1973 [Pro-shot DVD]
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Track
Details [63.27]
1. Opening Credits
2. Watcher of the Skies
3. Dancing with the Moonlit Knight
4. I Know What I Like
5. The Musical Box
6. Supper's Ready
7. Closing Credits
Plus Colour Test [1.03]
Pro-shot film, footage digitised frame
by frame direct from 16mm master reel to PAL 25fps.
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Credits:
Source: King Lerch and the members of MeeksGenesis
Video Transfer: Source Clean Up, DVD Authoring and other general
extreme hard work : King Lerch
Audio Remastering: SAB (DanLore)
Artwork: RH Productions
Adam's Production Notes:
Summary
I originally
thought I should not create an essay like this as it
is rather pretentious and long-winded. I certainly don't
expect most people to read or even be interested in
it. But I know that if I don't write down the process
when I am able to remember it, I most likely won't be
able to remember it at all when someone does ask something
about it.
As a quick summary, this source
was not perfect and suffered from some damage. Also,
this is a dark 16mm film not Hollywood film quality.
I did the best I could, learned a lot about the process,
and never took shortcuts. A big thanks to Gunnar Thalin,
the Swedish video expert who helped with great information.
Several times I went back to the first step all over
again to compare and get the best possible final product.
Test versions were sent to 4 testers in different parts
of the world. Their suggestions were some of the best
I've ever received and I was able to incorporate almost
all of them. As one of the testers said, "This may not
be the holy grail…but it is his older brother."
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Auction
It was over 6 months ago when I noticed a 16mm Genesis
film was being auctioned from a NY estate sale. There
was no way to be sure of the contents, quality, authenticity,
or value. After discussing it with some collectors I
know, I was prepared to make a high bid. But adding
the costs to do a proper transfer, I didn't know if
my bid would be high enough to win.
Then I read that a small group wanted to pitch in and
buy this film. Rather than bid against each other, we
thought it was much better to join resources. We were
able to come up with enough to make a substantial bid
and help pay for the transfer as well.
It was explained that no one had any idea of the film's
condition. It could be damaged, worse than existing
copies, untransferable, etc. We all took a risk in hopes
we could benefit from a great film, or reduce the losses
if it was not good. We won the auction, sent a huge
money order, received the film, packed it up again,
sent it fully insured to the lab, and hoped for the
best. |
Sound
The sound from this and most 16mm films is printed along
the side of the film like waveforms. This is read by
a bulb in the projector so the quality is not great,
somewhere around a 8.5 kHz spectrum. The sound remastering
was done by SAB so I don't know all of the specifics.
I know he was able to get a great result from a mediocre
16mm source. It has a stereo simulation and increased
low end which adds great depth. I corrected the sound
for speed and pitch, the first time for this concert
that I know of.
Color
The first major task was to correct the color. The amount
of red in the film is simply ridiculous. It washed everything
else away. The color red is also the most difficult
for compression and encoding software to deal with.
It causes unnatural lines, compression artifacts, almost
all video problems show themselves in the color red
(lucky us). To see just how red the original film was,
look for the DVD Easter Egg.
It appears as if on previous film transfers that this
red was reduced, but much of the image details reside
in the red so it cannot just be turned down. I struggled
with the color for a long time and did several comparisons
to A History video to get it as close as possible.
Also, the film is not 100% consistant. Some parts are
redder than others, some are brighter than others, etc.
So certain corrections could not be applied to fix one
scene without adversely affecting another scene. And
as a general rule, all changes have at least one side-effect.
So a happy medium had to be reached between redness,
detail, noise, brightness, darkness, etc. All color
was changed with TMPGEnc.
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Filters
I used a few filters with VirtualDub and AVISynth. Each
filter was applied with only lossless compression (averaging
10-30GB / 15 minutes of video) so more filters did not
reduce image quality. I won't go into every filter but
the most major improvement was from the Temporal Smoother.
Most films are 35mm (4 times the size of 16mm) or even
larger. So when this 16mm film is expanded on large
TVs, the film grain can be seen in the form of dots
or blobs of color. When watching the raw film, it looks
as if non-moving objects are bubbling or crawling or
something. The Temporal Smoother looks for these spots
that show up for only one film frame and smoothes them
out. The image and structure are more visible but the
effects of video noise or grain is significantly reduced.
Sound Sync
Because of the slow film transfer, sound had to be added
afterward. This was a long process for several reasons.
One reason is that two transfers are never exactly the
same. Even a small change in speed would lose total
sync by the end of the film. The other problem with
this film is that it was recorded over 2 days. While
the sync may look good during one part of the song,
it may not exactly match another part of the song from
the other day.
The first sync pass was done entirely by sight. As a
double check, I examined sound frames from other real-time
16mm film transfers to verify accuracy. It should also
be noted that at 25 fps, each frame of film covers 40
ms of sound. While this may not seem like much, being
off by only a few frames of film can be very distracting.
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| I
used Pinnacle Studio for the syncing and also the credits.
This program is great in both features and bugs. Still
I really like it. Over 100 of my rare photos were scanned
to create interesting credits. |
Compression
In order to work with the DVD standard, the film had
to be compressed into MPEG-2 format. To do this I used
the trusty TMPGEnc at a constant bitrate of 8000 MBPS.
This compressed the film for DVD while retaining the
closest possible result to the source. Also note that
the total maximum bitrate allowable for DVDs is 9800
MBPS, more than 1500 MBPS of which is taken up by the
uncompressed PCM audio. So 8000 MBPS is the true maximum
for the video.
As a test I ran TMPEnc see what it "thought" the ideal
bitrate would be before compression would begin to alter
the image. It calculated 6500 MBPS so any differences
from the DVD compression should only be a result of
the MPEG-2 or TMPGEnc limitations, not bitrate.
Authoring
There are many programs to author DVDs and although
I know it is not the best, I use DVD Workshop because
it is very compatible and I am used to using it. I created
a great custom menu with motion buttons, film motif,
and background music to go with the credits. |
NTSC
Because many people cannot use PAL DVDs, I thought it
would be best to create an NTSC version too. This will
have slightly lower quality at 720x480 and a converted
frame rate of about 30 frames per second, but using
the source video transfer will get the best possible
result, much better than converting the PAL DVD later
and compressing twice.
Converting from 25 to 30 frames per second is not easy.
Most hardware and software that simply duplicate frames
make very stuttery video. So for the PAL -> NTSC transfer
I used Canopus ProCoder. This is a highly respected
transfer program that converts the frame rate, blends
frames when necessary, and creates very smooth running
film.
However, my personal opinion is that the MPEG-2 tools
in ProCoder alter the source too much so I again sent
the lossless result from ProCoder over to TMPGEnc for
DVD compression at 8000 MBPS. |
Conclusion
I have worked on more than 15 film transfers and countless
video transfers. Honestly, this project has taken much more
time than I ever expected and had many more film problems
than any I have seen. But my goal was not to have a perfect
DVD nor is this possible. There are 1000 ways to do things
and it would take years to explore them all. What I wanted
was a film transfer that was significantly better than any
that came before and one where I didn't say, "I wish I would
have done…" So I read a lot, did everything I knew how to
do, and talked to several experts. I give you the Holy Grail…'s
older brother.
- King Lerch |
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