Pendell

1. I did not know DS9 was released on laserdisc. For some reason I always assumed western TV shows just Didnt Happen on laserdisc? Guess I was wrong? According to the internet only about two and a half seasons made it to the format, so no matter how good this could be it's never gonna be a Complete solution.

2. On the other hand, it makes sense that the mioring and chroma noise would be able to be significantly reduced, given laserdisc is natively composite, so with something like domesday you could manage and filter that stuff out really effectively. DVD is a natively component format, so the composite artifacts in those are basically irreversible - bad comparison but it's like the difference between digitizing analog audio tape to a 24-bit 192khz PCM .wav file vs digitizing it into a 44.1khz MP3. With the PCM you can do all sorts of work to fix up any issues, but with an MP3 you're pretty restricted. Obviously film and video are way more complicated than audio, but I think you get what I mean.

3. This uses goddamn motherfucking AI to "upscale" the video GOD can we have anything untainted by LLM garbage. I don't need to see artificial pores smeared over Sisko's face please. Take the AI out of the workflow and I'd be a lot more impressed with this. What is it with Star Trek fans wanting to Park Road Post the hell out of DS9 and VOY?

A photo of a 35 mm film print featuring all four audio formats (or quad track)- from left to right: Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) (blue area to the left of the sprocket holes), Dolby Digital (grey area between the sprocket holes labelled with the Dolby Double-D logo in the middle), analog optical sound (the two white lines to the right of the sprocket holes), and the DTS time code (the dashed line to the far right)

I never realized that digital audio is encoded optically onto theatrical film prints. The image and caption comes courtesy of the Wikipedia article on the Dolby Digital codec.

I'd always assumed once film projections moved to digital audio, that it was always just a timecode signal on the film for syncing with a CD. While this was done, it was only done for DTS, which used CDs to achieve higher bitrates than was possible with Dolby Digital, which was limited to 320kbps - not surprising at all, given the tiny amount of space it's afforded on the print. Also according to Wikipedia, it works exactly as one might hilariously expect - a CCD image sensor is taking a picture of each block of Dolby Digital code for processing. Interestingly, it can use the analog audio track as a fallback if the DD block is unreadable - I wonder if it would switch between analog and digital audio seamlessly, on the fly, and if the effect would be noticeable?

So here's the 87 gigabytes of Y2K-era Digital8 NASA footage of cool NASA people doing tests with parabolic zero-g simulation flights. Tapes graciously given to me by @kapn a few months ago but I'm very good at procrastinating.

Panasonic AG-1980P "Desktop Editor" S-VHS VCR, one of if not the best VCR ever produce that doesn't have to be mounted in a rack (though I'm sure these could be mounted in a rack if you so desired). The primary innovation here was Panasonic decided to go 150% and make the video head drum able to physically move and tilt to accommodate much wider variations in tape quality, signal strength, and tracking irregularity. It also have a built in TBC which assist massively in digital conversion, and a host of other wild features, making it a favorite for tape capture nerds. LordSmurf over on Videohelp will gladly sell you one of these for like $800 or something, but this one - according to the customer, pulled out of the valley view stadium in Dallas - and most other used units go for around $400-500.

The customer didn't seem to know what it really was and was surprised he's been able to sell it for $450, and I insisted he pay the extra money for fragile packing because I don't think I would've had it in my soul to poorly pack something like this. I personally ensured it was securely bubble wrapped on all sides and packed firmly in the box so there was no play at all. Of course, if the drivers or sorting facility people decide to play football with it, it'll still be screwed, but I'm hoping it makes it.