Nov 16, 2019, 17:14 pm
(This post was last modified: Nov 16, 2019, 17:44 pm by Riffling. Edited 2 times in total.)
Basically the point is to create upgrades using Blu Ray and high-def sources while still preserving the "shadowrama" we know and love. Here is the basic concept and an actual screenshot from the episode linked below (right click and select open original image to see the full size):
![[Image: CQEsG81.png]](https://i.imgur.com/CQEsG81.png)
MST3K Remastered - S06E04 - Zombie Nightmare (1987) 1080p [1.99 GB]
This was achieved by using a high-quality QTGMC deinterlace filter as well as the xBR upscaling algorithm and some Adobe Premiere effects. I'll provide some more specifics later so others can create the same if they so desire.
Now some huge thank yous. First, Readandjudge: About 2 months ago I created a post saying 'hey, this would be cool if only it were possible' and I would have left it at that if not for him. He reached out and said 'let's see if we can do this' and we went through dozens of attempts, methods and iterations together to get to this point. He deserves just as much credit for this effort, I'm guessing we put in 150 hours of work and another 200 hours of compute time during the experimenting and development. Also big thanks to Herod0237, he's also been killing it in the VOD upgrade department which means I didn't feel bad about spending time on this and I also had to do something big to try and keep up with his great work.
In the not-too-distant-future I also plan on creating a new set of MST3K encodes. Using what we've learned, we can create even higher-quality versions than what is out there now and restore it as well to the original broadcast and DVD frame-rate of 59.94 FPS. Also, if there's enough interest, I could create another version of the remastered episodes and put the satellite of love scenes back in, upscaled.
Last thanks to those who share here, not only to those who upload RiffTrax and MST3K stuff here (especially you most-awesome people who upload HDhigh stuff, you are my heroes), but to everyone who shares their enthusiasm, fandom and own thanks as well. Let's keep this community positive and great, and as always: keep circulating the tapes.
PS - I Chose Zombie Nightmare because it was super-dark and I thought that would provide more of a challenge (which I think it did). Also as a note, in the first few seconds it seems like the puppetry is off from what the trio is saying but that's exactly how it is on the DVD. Unfortunately some of the worst Shadowrama capture is in the beginning when you are most likely to notice it (the baseball scenes), but it does get better. There is a very fine line between having false-positive-artifacting all over the place versus creating some holes and the edges of the shadowrama getting eaten away.
I'm ~85% happy with the shadowrama - I think it could be improved with more-advanced image processing but am not sure what to do at this point. We'll keep experimenting though to improve automation and quality. Not available in this file but one thing I thought was especially cool was I was able to create a toggle-able shadowrama using PGS (Blu Ray subtitle format which are actually just PNG images with timing information) so you could turn the Shadowrama on and off and not have to re-encode the video and burn-in the Shadowrama BUT it's almost as if the makers of the spec didn't expect to change subtitles 24 times a second which causes issues with a lot of players...
. VLC valiantly displayed the shadowrama with this method with only a few slow downs (guessing there's no hardware acceleration for this). Plex web player choked and couldn't handle it at all and Plex Media Player was probably running the shadowrama at ~10 FPS so it was super-choppy. If anyone knows how to do a video PiP that most players support, I'm all ears, I know the BD spec w/ M2TS has the ability but not sure that players commonly support it. The other issue with the PGS method is that it's almost 2GB which is about the same size as the entire encode provided today!
MST3K Remastered - S06E04 - Zombie Nightmare (1987) 1080p [1.99 GB]
This was achieved by using a high-quality QTGMC deinterlace filter as well as the xBR upscaling algorithm and some Adobe Premiere effects. I'll provide some more specifics later so others can create the same if they so desire.
Now some huge thank yous. First, Readandjudge: About 2 months ago I created a post saying 'hey, this would be cool if only it were possible' and I would have left it at that if not for him. He reached out and said 'let's see if we can do this' and we went through dozens of attempts, methods and iterations together to get to this point. He deserves just as much credit for this effort, I'm guessing we put in 150 hours of work and another 200 hours of compute time during the experimenting and development. Also big thanks to Herod0237, he's also been killing it in the VOD upgrade department which means I didn't feel bad about spending time on this and I also had to do something big to try and keep up with his great work.
In the not-too-distant-future I also plan on creating a new set of MST3K encodes. Using what we've learned, we can create even higher-quality versions than what is out there now and restore it as well to the original broadcast and DVD frame-rate of 59.94 FPS. Also, if there's enough interest, I could create another version of the remastered episodes and put the satellite of love scenes back in, upscaled.
Last thanks to those who share here, not only to those who upload RiffTrax and MST3K stuff here (especially you most-awesome people who upload HDhigh stuff, you are my heroes), but to everyone who shares their enthusiasm, fandom and own thanks as well. Let's keep this community positive and great, and as always: keep circulating the tapes.
PS - I Chose Zombie Nightmare because it was super-dark and I thought that would provide more of a challenge (which I think it did). Also as a note, in the first few seconds it seems like the puppetry is off from what the trio is saying but that's exactly how it is on the DVD. Unfortunately some of the worst Shadowrama capture is in the beginning when you are most likely to notice it (the baseball scenes), but it does get better. There is a very fine line between having false-positive-artifacting all over the place versus creating some holes and the edges of the shadowrama getting eaten away.
I'm ~85% happy with the shadowrama - I think it could be improved with more-advanced image processing but am not sure what to do at this point. We'll keep experimenting though to improve automation and quality. Not available in this file but one thing I thought was especially cool was I was able to create a toggle-able shadowrama using PGS (Blu Ray subtitle format which are actually just PNG images with timing information) so you could turn the Shadowrama on and off and not have to re-encode the video and burn-in the Shadowrama BUT it's almost as if the makers of the spec didn't expect to change subtitles 24 times a second which causes issues with a lot of players...
. VLC valiantly displayed the shadowrama with this method with only a few slow downs (guessing there's no hardware acceleration for this). Plex web player choked and couldn't handle it at all and Plex Media Player was probably running the shadowrama at ~10 FPS so it was super-choppy. If anyone knows how to do a video PiP that most players support, I'm all ears, I know the BD spec w/ M2TS has the ability but not sure that players commonly support it. The other issue with the PGS method is that it's almost 2GB which is about the same size as the entire encode provided today!
Thanks to everyone for the countless hours of work put into this...I'm very excited about the future!!
