Sounds like a great project.  I'm definitely interested!  I picked up a DVD set a couple years ago and the prints looked pretty nice, but for some reason they decided to stamp the year the film was released in the beginning of the cartoon... Seemed like an intentional screen bug.

pufnstuf said:

I picked up a DVD set a couple years ago and the prints looked pretty nice, but for some reason they decided to stamp the year the film was released in the beginning of the cartoon... Seemed like an intentional screen bug.

Yeah, that's the Bosko Video set.

Here's a bit of a log of what I worked on:

Superman (aka the Mad Scientist): Fixed the "true justice" (or "truth justice"?), patching in voiceover from the Bosko audio.

Billion Dollar Limited and The Magnetic Telescope: entire videos use Bosko's audio.

The Arctic Giant and Electric Earthquake: unchanged from Warner Bros. edition.

The Bulleteers, Japoteurs, Eleventh Hour, Destruction, Inc., Mummy Strikes, Underground World, Secret Agent: prologue uses Bosko Audio.

Showdown: prologue uses Bosko audio. "Streak of Lightning" etc. sequence uses Bosko video as well, as Warners video isn't timed right (I think it's taken from a different cartoon).

Eleventh Hour and Jungle drums have entirely the wrong opening sequences. They now use Bosko's audio. I was able to cut up parts of the video to keep from having to use much of Bosko's video, as the colors are way washed out (especially the reds on the Superman logo).

In Eleventh Hour, when the film's main sequence starts, the Warner Bros. version cuts out several frames and fades in the music too late. I would normally here use the Bosko video, but that set superimposes a title over the start of the video with the date it was released, so there are a few seconds that use lower-quality from the archive.org set. It transitions back pretty quickly and I'm fairly happy with where I hid the change.

Destruction, Inc.: the archive.org version has a police siren that plays when the bad Superman is on the roof and he looks over and sees the police cars pull up. That part is silent in the Bosko and Warner Bros. editions. I know there was an edition that added sound effects, so maybe the archive.org version is that one, but since I have two sources that agree, I'm using the silent version.

All shorts except Superman, The Arctic Giant, and Electric Earthquake use Bosko's audio for the ending sequence. The Warner Bros. set in the other 14 shorts will fade out the music abruptly and then throws in a musical tag over the Paramount logo. Usually I make the soundtrack switch when the scene changes back to Lois and Clark for the epilogue.

Does anyone know how this compares to the DVD that was released by Image Entertainment?

One thing I read about these which I couldn't verify was that, in the original first cartoon, Clark's line at the end of the first scene is, "Chief, don't you think that's a dangerous job for a woman?" On all the editions I have, it's just "dangerous job." I'd be curious to see if that's true.

Here's the Max Fleischer's Superman 1941-1942 (Warner Bros 2008) set I used for most of the video.

I used to have this version:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/6305078955/

It had the original mono soundtracks and predates all the releases that started adding extra sound effects and cheap stereo effects.  My brother had the Bosko versions on VHS and I recall it having better picture quality then those with a few scenes intact that were missing or altered due to extra fades and wipes added to the Bosko version.  Beyond that I don't remember enough about the picture quality.

I was looking at my collection. I have the Fleischer series on 2 disc. The discs come from Platinum Disc Corporation, and they were released in 2004.

There are lots of problems with this release.

1) The audio was "digitally enhanced" in 5.1. Bleecccchh!!!

2) The distributor's logo will appear in the bottom right corner for a few seconds during each episode, like you see with TV station logo's.

3) The picture looks pretty soft.

From davextreme's posts, heseems to be working on looks and sounds like it will be far superior to what I have.

The set that's on YouTube is also for sale for fairly cheap on iTunes. The iTunes copies bundle two shorts per "episode" (and the last three together) which is a bit annoying if your kid wants to watch a specific one. Wanting to break those apart is how I got started on this whole enterprise.

I wonder what it would take to do a really good 1080p upscale of these shorts.  Something that didn't have jaggies other issues due to excessive DNR and EE, a soundtrack that's not constantly going out of sync, and no stupid company logo in the corner throughout every short.

Space Kaijuu said:

I wonder what it would take to do a really good 1080p upscale of these shorts.  Something that didn't have jaggies other issues due to excessive DNR and EE, a soundtrack that's not constantly going out of sync, and no stupid company logo in the corner throughout every short.

That's what I'd like to see. As I said, editing isn't my job and I don't have the experience necessary to really do this right. I think I could probably do a more thorough job given some more time, but it would have to be as a low priority hobby as my day job is requiring lots of time at the moment. (Also my trial of Final Cut Pro has expired, so I'd have to pony up for the full version but want to see if the new version coming out with the new Mac Pros is just a point bump or a true new version.)

What I'd like to look over are these questions:

1. Is the Bosko Video version definitive with respect to completeness of the films? No missing or shortened scenes, etc. (Like, can it be considered this project's GOUT?)

2. Is the Bosko Video's audio really superior start-to-finish? I'm not an audiophile to the degree necessary to judge it as compared to the Warner Bros. set.

3. Aside from the places where the Warners set just simply uses the wrong scenes, is its video superior in all cases, or are there places where the Bosko video is better?

4. What other versions would be useful sources?

From there, the question would be, should the whole thing be synced up to Bosko's audio? Are there places where Bosko's video should be used, perhaps with new color timing to match Warners?