Michael Jackson's GHOSTS: restoration by "RΔҒΔΣL"

[pipefan413]

I'm as impressed as I am confused. What the hell could the source for this possibly have been if not film? (He says in the description it's a "video transfer"!)

It got a LaserDisc release, but as far as I can tell only one with French subtitles; I suppose it's perfectly conceivable that those could've been removed, given the quality of the upscale, noise removal, and colour correction job. But holy crap, how?!

This is pretty much a load of nonsense whereby Michael has some fun getting Stan Winston to go nuts with makeup effects and the like, but it's exactly the curiosity that I think is important to preserve. I wish I knew what the hell this guy did to achieve results like this.

[spoRv]

Probably just an upscale of HDTV? Or of my project? https://forum.fanres.com/thread-1681.html

[pipefan413]

Could be. However, apparently the actual MJ channel also put a version of it up for Halloween and it's recently been taken down again; I wonder if he started with that. The timing seems too coincidental otherwise so I'm guessing that's probably it.

[jonno]

Would this be a good place to ask if a decent copy of Thriller has appeared anywhere?

This is done with the help of a neural network with artificial intelligence of learning, she is very good at drawing and improving video. Try it yourself Topaz Video Enhance AI 1.7.0

[pipefan413]

Would this be a good place to ask if a decent copy of Thriller has appeared anywhere?

I've got the making of LaserDisc en route but it's a beaten up copy that might be rotted to hell, won't know until I try to play it.

As for Thriller itself, I have this on the way: https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/23092/MLV...-on-Film-2 and I have the PAL DVD version, not sure how the PAL was done (was shot on film so would think speedup but presumably the audio will not be pitch shifted so maybe they just duped frames?)

This is done with the help of a neural network with artificial intelligence of learning, she is very good at drawing and improving video. Try it yourself Topaz Video Enhance AI 1.7.0

I guessed it probably was Topaz but even so if this had been from LaserDisc it would be crazy. But no, I think it's probably sourced from the YouTube upload that has since been removed.

[pipefan413]

Would this be a good place to ask if a decent copy of Thriller has appeared anywhere?

So I had a quick look at what I've got.

I have the NTSC LaserDisc versions of HIStory and HIStory volume II en route, and I have the PAL DVD versions of both. I figured that since these were shot on film, the PAL discs would theoretically be good sources to have, since *theoretically* it would be sped up from 24 to 25 fps, interlaced, and potentially duplicate whole frames or maybe just fields would be added to keep sync without having to speed up and pitch shift the audio (which seemingly is fine for films but unacceptable for music videos).

But looking at the Thriller from the PAL DVD copy of HIStory, there are combed frames all over the place. Not only that, but it also has that characteristic analogue video noise look that I get from my LD captures off my newest player (the one that I like the least for that very reason). Just about every damn frame has combing throughout. I'm wondering, therefore, if this PAL DVD might be a conversion of a capture of the NTSC LaserDisc, or perhaps of the PAL LaserDisc but the PAL LaserDisc was previously converted from NTSC (badly). I guess it wouldn't be wild to shoot something like this on film but then edit it on tape, so the master may not have been the film scan but rather the edited tape master, which would logically have been NTSC with a 60/1.001 field rate.

So... I guess now I'm looking for the NTSC DVDs to see if they're a more viable source.

Sometimes I wish I had less expensive hobbies, you know that?

[BDgeek]

Pretty impressive, thanks for the Links!


I used to have the HIStory and Dangerous US LDs and DVD. Sound was absolutely fenomenal on LD and even though the DVD had PCM tracks, it was not even close. The DVDs 5.1 were ok.

If I knew better back then, I wouldn't have given away my full LD and DVD collections (many gems there), oh sigh.

There is even a Blu Ray. Probably homemade, but the bitrate is higher and the file without encoding settings, I looked briefly, the quality is about the same, it should be compared with the hybrid that was done here.

SpoRv version looks better than homemade Blu Ray it is just enlarged from the original HDTV channel WOWOW