Judith on 26/8/2014 at 14:29
Well, I went through most of the cutscenes, they had all sorts of problems: flicker, noise, banding, compression artifacts, you name it :/ It would take professional editing plugins and careful work to fully restore these.
I tried using my photo editing skills, some details had to go away as a tradeoff... I took the liberty to change a few things, e.g. I decreased the green color in to hide banding flickering problems, so the video is more blueish now.
Some comparison shots:
(
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1280x720q90/631/lX3eA2.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/280x200q90/631/lX3eA2.jpg(
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1280x720q90/539/sRwovP.jpg)
Inline Image:
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/280x200q90/539/sRwovP.jpgNot sure how it's going to work with other videos, but it seems the restoration is doable, at least to some extent.
Muzman on 26/8/2014 at 16:48
Yeah I think it was interlaced at some point for TV and converted back again.
There's some noise or grain on it, but that's often a good thing with this sort of 2d composition. It does play havoc with the compression though.
Surprisingly Neat Video does a pretty good job with it at a 150% rescale.
It can't really fix those crawling edges though.
I'm fiddling with a few things to see if anything works there.
A frame by frame effort with Alien Skin's Blow Up might be interesting if anyone has it.
Muzman on 30/8/2014 at 17:24
I did a bit of a test.
I didn't do much of a job really. Just a 150% blow up with some neat video and an unsharp mask. I should really test a full 720 frame with the letterbox removed, but hey...
It looks...ok. The worst bits are the edges of the human elements and some other stuff. Something like this might be serviceable though.
(
http://members.iinet.net.au/~ragtag/ThiefTrailerNoESRB_engl_none_30_bit.mp4)
Blastfrog on 1/9/2014 at 03:31
I wonder if the versions on the Xbox disc are any different. There's a chance they might remain in a purer form and could then be deinterlaced more carefully to preserve detail when converting to progressive scan. How easily can they be ripped? I don't have the Xbox disc and can't check myself (also not sure how exposed the contents are and if it'd take a special tool to view).
If no one else will do this, I suppose I could swing down by the local used game shop in the hopes that they have a copy and get one for myself to extract its video files. If I identify and upload them, they'll be in their original form so that those more experienced in video editing than I could have a clean slate to work with.
It's at least worth checking out before wasted effort is spent on these (apparently butchered) PC versions.
Judith on 1/9/2014 at 08:16
I think restoration would be a good thing, but it's a secondary issue now. Original videos take up 650 MB of HDD space, restored version would be like 1.5 GB, maybe a bit less. I'd leave it as an optional download.
New Horizon on 1/9/2014 at 15:55
Quote Posted by Judith
I think restoration would be a good thing, but it's a secondary issue now. Original videos take up 650 MB of HDD space, restored version would be like 1.5 GB, maybe a bit less. I'd leave it as an optional download.
Has anyone attempted to contact Dan Thron from Rustmonkey to see if original uncompressed versions of these videos might still exist on a hard drive or DVD somewhere? I can't imagine they would destroy them completely.
Beleg Cúthalion on 2/9/2014 at 09:38
This should be worth a try. I've never been involved in contacting the devs, so how would you get started? Or can I shamelessly ask you to knock on Dan's door and ask for us? :p Speaking of original material, I always wanted to get my hands on one of the ten-times-bigger-than-in-the-game maps about which Krypt spoke some years ago.
New Horizon on 2/9/2014 at 15:51
Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion
This should be worth a try. I've never been involved in contacting the devs, so how would you get started? Or can I shamelessly ask you to knock on Dan's door and ask for us? :p Speaking of original material, I always wanted to get my hands on one of the ten-times-bigger-than-in-the-game maps about which Krypt spoke some years ago.
I have corresponded with Tim Stellmach a couple of times. I could drop him a line to see if he was still in touch with Dan and if he would be able to get him to contact you.
Beleg Cúthalion on 24/9/2014 at 06:08
As mentioned in the bug fixing thread, firing up the briefing videos works great. I haven't found a solution for Rutherford Castle yet but all the other proper missions are ready to get their own briefing video. Any volunteers for the Hammer and Pagan Intros for a start?
snobel on 6/10/2014 at 19:46
Did you manage to get the Inn briefing started by editing the Entry map?
Small status report from me: The tweaker tool needs polish but is feature complete (for some definition of complete). So I decided to take some time out to try and get H.264 support to the proof-of-concept stage at least. Unfortunately I couldn't resist writing my own ffmpeg based player, which of course has turned into a bit of a project in its own right. :rolleyes:
Strangely H.264/AAC in an MP4 container works well but some other formats, including Bink, have problems. If I can't figure those out soon I'll return to the original idea of recasting the Newdark player as a fake Bink DLL. (It handles Bink just fine.)
