The Hi-Line (1999) Rachael Leigh Cook (576p QTGMC TVEAI H264 9203Kbps DVD)
A scam artist convinces a naive young woman in Whitman, Montana, that she is to be given a job by a major Chicago discount store. However, her dad and mom see through the ruse and tries to have him run out of town. At this point, the man confesses that he has a letter from a man who recently died in prison. The letter indicates that the young woman was fathered by him and a woman named Estelle and was placed in this couple's care, which they are forced to admit. This leads the young woman into a search for her real mother, who it turns out is a Blackfoot woman living in the "Hi-Line", a desolate area in Montana.
Screencaps:
Because it seems we're not going to get a Bluray or decent quality web stream, I gave it my best shot making a better than DVD version. This is the first release I've used Topaz Video Enhance AI. After some encoding tests, it's not as good as they hype it to be, but it does add some detail with material like this movie. The Gaia-CG model at 278% gave the best results, later downsized in Virtualdub2 with Lanczos3.
I started with the letterboxed 480i DVD. With the DVD, you can barely follow along with the story, as there's so little resolution and no subtitles.
After IVTC, deinterlacing with QTGMC, and cropping, I was left with 706x346p video at 23.976fps. At this point I could see lots of dirt and hair from the film to DVD transfer. They did no digital cleanup for the DVD. To keep Topaz lossless, I set it to output a bunch of numbered .tiff images, which I cleaned up with Photoshop (949 frames edited).
This release is 1116x576p and that is all you can get with Topaz, which I still consider quite remarkable. I did try a 720p encode, but it didn't look good.
Just so you know, I had to cut the last scene with Vera staring at the hotel invitation. The lighting wasn't good, and Vera's left eye was totally black (very spooky...). I changed it so it's showing an extended edit of the invitation. Also, there's a scene with Vera and Sam sitting on a bench outside Estelle's house. If you watch closely, the wall becomes alive. It's like that on the DVD. Not much I can do about that.
I created English subtitles, which I think helps a lot with following the story. There's one line in the bar with Clyde speaking that I didn't understand. If anyone figures it out, please note it in the comments.
Mediainfo:
General
Unique ID : 186027597496895378824749225077637258902 (0x8BF39CAF51E1FF4C8D78586732821E96)
Complete name : The Hi-Line (1999) Rachael Leigh Cook (576p QTGMC TVEAI H264 9203Kbps DVD).mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 5.94 GiB
Duration : 1h 32mn
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 9 203 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2020-10-29 14:54:20
Writing application : mkvmerge v10.0.0 ('To Drown In You') 32bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.4 + libmatroska v1.4.5
DURATION : 01:28:40.718000000
NUMBER_OF_FRAMES : 700
NUMBER_OF_BYTES : 19862
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Video
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Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 8 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1h 32mn
Nominal bit rate : 8 742 Kbps
Width : 1 116 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 1.938
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.567
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Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Matrix coefficients : BT.601
Audio
ID : 2
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Codec ID : A_FLAC
Duration : 1h 32mn
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Writing library : libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
Language : English
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Text
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
