Good luck! I'm a big fan of Thomas the Tank Engine! :)

This is sweet!  I was obsessed with TtTE (that initialism looks weird...) when I was a kid.  I'd love to have the proper episodes to show to my potential future kids down the line.

Moth3r said:

Pfft, you kids...

Johnny Morris on my Decca albums pwns all.

lol  You've just made me feel old.  I completely agree. 

Good luck with this preservation though, Krakatoa!

Since we're on the Railway Series, anyone up for preserving the long out-of-print "Island of Sodor" reference book as an ebook? ;)

For now I've been going through Series 3-5. They're generally the cleanest and most consistent of the earlier episodes.

Series 3 - Lots of color noise and a greenish tint, plus inconsistent framing

Series 4 - Less noise, but most episodes have a prominent gold tint to them, and the same framing issues as Series 3.

Series 5 - Fairly clean overall, but the colors can seem washed out and slightly yellow.

Here's a comparison frame taken from an episode of Series 5. The brightness is barely changed, but it looks like the blacks might be crushed a bit. However I tried to fix up the hue by lowering the red levels and upping the blue. How's it look?

Also, I'm trying to plan out the episode order ahead of time, but can't seem to find out how much runtime I'll get from a 720p video on a Dual-Layer DVD-R. I'm guessing 1 "Playlist" of 6-10 episodes should run from 32 to 52 minutes, and knowing how many of these I can fit on a single piece of media will help.

Krakatoa said:

Here's a comparison frame taken from an episode of Series 5. The brightness is barely changed, but it looks like the blacks might be crushed a bit. However I tried to fix up the hue by lowering the red levels and upping the blue. How's it look?

Absolutely wonderful! :)

New title (appropriate railway reference, I think).

Also, found a consistent color balance for all of Series 5 (one of my favorites), so that's out of the way right now.

Pics look great!

Series 3 is proving to be a mess, needing a lot of filter work in order to look presentable.

While better than the US releases, the UK release looks like it was transfered to video or something. I'm using a filter to drop damaged frames. While deinterlacing is new to me, I've been playing with the settings of Avidemux's "Decomb Telecide" filter, and so far the pros have outweighed the cons. Some noise reduction filters have also improved things considerably (the picture isn't terribly sharp to begin with).

My last problem is with finding the correct color balance. So far the episodes have looked pretty good on TV, but the blacks have turned out too light and blue, so I'm trying to find some sort of balance.

And well, so far here's a shot of Series 3 in progress, deinterlaced and with a reduction in chroma and temporal noise (this balance I've yet to test on TV, so feel free to point out any glaring problems).

Also, here's a peak at Series 4 (which has turned out to be the easiest so far:

I said it twice and I'll say it again; Great work!

Series 2
Cleans up pretty nicely. Needed a lot of noise removal, plus colors would occasionally change frame-by-frame, which I fixed. There's some artifacts, but I kept the settings low so they wouldn't be too bothersome. Again, it can be a good trade-off. 

Series 3

There's a noticeable jump in quality once you start playing with the colors, but I'm still trying for the right luminosity to make the dark sections look right without crushing them.

Series 6

Cleanup becomes easier in the recent series, down to making the colors pop out more. Plus with the widescreen, this is where the upscaling really starts to make a difference.

Series 9

My first attempt at one of the digital video series. It's a fairly easy fix, actually. The colors are basically the same fix: red down, blue up, saturation up.

Again, great work!

One other bit I'm working on is the nameboard scenes that were used as bumpers between episodes on the older videos. In the UK Series sets, each episode replays the main title and credits, which gets a little repetitive (especially since Series 8-12 have about a 3-minute introduction).

I started out with the Series 4 shots, of which I think I'm only missing one (the post van from "Mind That Bike"). I also fixed a 15 year-old goof that swapped the faces for two of the narrow gauge engines (try and guess):

I've also been looking at Series 1, which is an odd case because it turns out the US release (our only set) is the one with the restored film (and more consistent color, meaning an easier fix). But there's still a few scenes that need fixes from the R2 release (including an embarrassing goof that has Henry crashing into a wall and running away in "Coal").

And for the lulz, here's some mockup covers I took a few minutes to whip up (don't even think I'm planning this far ahead, although I am looking forward to tuning up the 2008 special with Pierce Brosnan):

The covers look great.

I've started playing with the YUV values. While trying to find a solution for Series 11's turgid yellow color scheme, the RGB filters weren't doing much good.

Not perfect, but closer in appearance to the more natural-looking promotional photos. This was made in 2008 and promoted as the introduction of HD, there's no excuse for why this went to air looking so terrible! If the writing's going to get more and more pedantic, it should at least be pleasant to look at...

I've made some similar adjustments for Series 4, looking great in some shots, but with kind of a cyan tint in others.

Another great job well done! :)

Any updates?