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DrFrag
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Postby DrFrag » 21 years ago

I had a go at capturing the broadcast, after a VirtualDub filter and compression I got this quality:

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Not bad, IMO. I used a blend deinterlace with crop, 20% increase in colour saturation, 2d cleaner threshold 4 area 7x7, and a sharpen of 10. Compressed to DivX 4 at a bitrate of 2000 (! ;) gave me a 320MB file and a quality better than the original analog broadcast. Not as good as the TV Nihon fansub. Took about 7 hours on a 3GHz PC.

Something interesting to note is there didn't appear to be any interlacing in the original. So they must have used a different video source than the US version because normally it gets converted from NTSC. Anyway, the quality was fantastic.

I didn't mind the dubbing, but I was a bit thrown when Astro started to talk. I thought it was the little robot bird toy! I prefer it to the subbed versions. As much as I like hearing the original, also I like to sit back and be entertained without having to concentrate on reading at the same time. I understood what was going on a lot better. Anyway, I didn't think it was toooo messed up.

As for the editing, they cut 3:50 from it. 1:50 was edited from the opening/closing/preview alone, about another 40 seconds from Astro throwing the girl's dad around.
It's interesting though, they didn't just cut stuff. Like after the edited handshake part, the English version has a second or two of the energy core's eye (before the cables detatch). The Japanese version doesn't have that scene.

Overall I was really happy with the translation. Can't wait for the rest!
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Haruka-chan
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Postby Haruka-chan » 21 years ago

Hmmm i wonder if the conversion on one episode stuffed up... or Cartoon Network were just having problems. In the episode where mirco Atom is created after about halfway thru the sound began to lag behind the picture :lol: At first i laughed and thought they were really worse dubbers than i first imagined.....but by the end of the episode when it was about 3 seconds behind the animation i decided not ^^; Reminds me of a few VCDs/DVDs i have seen where the sound starts to lag. I'm waiting to see this on ABC to see if they have the same problem or it was just CN (the rest of CN's broadcast was running fine btw)
Kimi no kokoro de, catch the future!

Loüßëãr
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Postby Loüßëãr » 21 years ago

Originally posted by Haruka-chan@Apr 16 2004, 09:48 PM
......about halfway thru the sound began to lag behind the picture :lol:

It reminded me of Monkey Majic & those D grade japanese flicks that keep getting mimmicked.... More like ROFLMAO
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miss_spite
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Postby miss_spite » 21 years ago

I am dissapointed with the new series as well.........its like the old episodes didnt exist.....old faces with new names, ..no more astro theme song......i miss the old astro boy.......... :cry:

GIR
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Postby GIR » 21 years ago

Sounds like good plan Danny, I'll send you another PM after I get my YIM sorted out :)

I dunno compared to the sub Astro's voice just doesn't seem right to me, and the Intro music compared to the True Blue song is just bad, what the hell happened to it :cry:

7 hours sounds a bit little long for a 3ghz machine DrFrag, you probably should have skipped the blend deinterlace as the picture was progressive and not interlaced at all, mine only took 2hrs and 8 minutes for 2 passes (2.2ghz) and that was with a 2D cleaner as well as a brightness and saturation adjustment, plus the usual crop & resize. Saved it as a 640x408 DivX-5 (1400k) and came out at 208mb

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BTW your aspect ratio is a little off :)

DrFrag
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Postby DrFrag » 21 years ago

It was setting the 2D cleaner to 7x7 that took all the time. At 9x9 it was going to take 12 hours. Deinterlace doesn't add any noticable time for me. I usually just deinterlace and resize and get through 20 minutes of footage in 7 or 8 minutes. Oh yeah, and I was doing 3D modelling while it was running. Sweet, sweet hyperthreading! :D
I didn't resize anything, which left me with a resolution of 696x488. The PAL signal was 704x576, with the black top and bottom cropped (44 pixels each) and a black strip of 8 pixel on the right cropped. I didn't touch the aspect ratio, but it's high enough quality that I can resize or change it later. I use TV capture as an alternative to the space and cost of video tapes so this is no DVD substitute for me. Audio was 192k MP3.

Your pictures are interesting ... what was your signal source? Analog/digital? NTSC/PAL? It's a lot sharper than mine. And what's the correct aspect ratio?
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GIR
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Postby GIR » 21 years ago

I see 704x576, there's your problem, capture @768x576 which is the proper 4:3 (or 1:33) aspect ratio, then there is the crop the black bars to consider to as it was broadcast on HDTV too, ABC and other stations seem to use an intermediate res that once you crop the black bars gives you an aspect ratio of 1:55, and that is directly between SDTV (1:33) and HDTV (1:77), because of this practice you'll notice if you compare the shots to the subbed one that there is a wee bit missing from the bottom and top.

You can tell the aspect is a little off in your picture, if you draw a true circle inside Astro's arm canon you can see it's more like an oval, no big deal though, in fact you don't even have to re-encode it, in the future if you convert the file to Matroska you can set the aspect ratio to 1:55 and the video will be resized automatically on playback, yes it is magical :)

My signal source is analog (PAL, unless broadcasters suddenly started using NTSC :P ) but I captured it live, I'm not fortunate enough to own a DTV tuner card yet.

Danny
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Postby Danny » 21 years ago

I have no idea what you guys are talking about..

But I dearly with to one day!! :D

I have a vivo card in my pc with a VHS plugged into it, but thats as far as I have gotten.

hey.. this is sounding very familliar?? Have I mentioned this before? I think I have.. OK.. will shut up now cos I dont want to repeat haha..

Continue your discussion. Nothing to see here. Move along..
three and a half years.. for what?


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