Futurama - Season 5 (or 6) DVD Preservation (* unfinished project *)

I know the title doesn’t make sense, but bear with me.

As you can tell from my avatar, I’m a huge Futurama fan.  With Comedy Central’s announcement that a new season of Futurama (production season 6, aired season 7) consisting of 26 episodes will begin airing on June 24, I’ve decided to start this project.

So what does that have to do with this project?

The four DVD movies (production season 5) were split up into 4 episodes each and aired on Comedy Central as aired season 6.  These episodes use different opening title cards, added “Previously on Futurama” segments, and different edits of the episodes entirely.

But since the movies themselves were released on DVD, I don’t foresee these versions ever being released, doomed to air occasionally in reruns while they’re forgotten otherwise.  I believe that season 5 (or 6, depending on if you go by production seasons or aired seasons) deserves to be preserved the way it aired, just as seasons 1-4 (or 1-5) were in the four DVD sets.

So here’s the plan:

First, I need to find TV recordings of the Comedy Central aired versions of Bender’s Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender’s Game, and Into the Wild Green Yonder (they advertised them as TV-movies, and aired them in 2-hour timeslots, but they aired them as 4 back-to-back episodes rather than the unedited movies).  This is probably going to be the most difficult part, so any help in finding TV recordings of the movies would be greatly appreciated. 😃

Then, I’m going to use Blu-Ray/HDTV rips of the movie versions I’ve been able to procure, and basically treat this whole thing like an online edit.  I’ll lay the TV rip in the timeline, then over the top of that, make the DVD/Blu-Ray/HDTV rip match the TV rip’s video track exactly.  Any shots that are missing from the DVDs (there are a few) will stay in fromt he TV rips.  The TV audio will be used.

Planned disc-by-disc contents (English Dolby 2.0 Surround Audio, menus that probably won’t be animated, though I may surprise myself):

Futurama - Volume 5DISC ONE

• _Bender’s Big Score: Part 1
• Bender’s Big Score: Part 2
• Bender’s Big Score: Part 3_

DISC TWO
_- Bender’s Big Score: Part 4

• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 1
• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 2_

DISC THREE_

• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 3
• The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 4
• Bender’s Game: Part 1_

DISC FOUR

• _Bender’s Game: Part 2
• Bender’s Game: Part 3
• Bender’s Game: Part 4_

DISC FIVE

• _Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 1
• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 2
• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 3_

DISC SIX

• Into the Wild Green Yonder: Part 4
  - Bonus Features:
    - Everybody Loves Hypnotoad Episode 3H312: Amazon Adventure (maybe)
  _  - Futurama: The Lost Adventure_ (video game cutscenes edited to make an episode) (maybe)

I’m splitting them up that way because I want to use single-layer discs to make it easier for people who don’t have dual-layer burning abilities.  Spreading them out to 3 per disc means there’s only about an hour per disc, which should prevent any loss in quality from compression.  I may do an alternate 3-disc dual-layer set as well, but I haven’t decided yet.

But of course, in order for any of this to work, I need to find TV rips of the broadcast versions of the movies.  So if any of you can help find them, I’d greatly appreciate it.  😃

As I said in my initial post, the TV airings were pan & scan, so the widescreen DVDs show more picture.

And I'll be re-creating the credits as best I can using credits from older episodes, but with the new names and episode numbers and such.

And there are short "Previously on Futurama" segments at the beginning of Parts 2, 3, and 4 of each respective "movie" (and the beginning of The Beast with a Billion Backs: Part 1, since Bender's Big Score ended on a cliffhanger).

--edit--

Just discovered that The Beast with a Billion Backs: Parts 1-4 will be airing on Comedy Central on Monday, June 15 at 9 PM Eastern time (at least I assume it's Eastern time).  I'll be able to record it myself, I'd just hoped that others would be able to locate recordings of the TV versions that were already online.

So, I guess TBwaBB will be my first attempt at this.  Which is good, since my copy of Bender's Big Score is fucked up.

The UK broadcasts on Sky1  of the Bender's Big Score and The Beast with a Billion Backs were shown in 1.78:1. Obviously  that included the "previously on Futurama" recaps. This might negate your need to pan & scan from the DVD's. Of course you'd still need to obtain copies and they would be in PAL for Standard Def. I'm unsure if they were broadcast in HD in the UK.

Possibly.  I seem to remember one particular shot in Bender's Big Score that was clearly panned & scanned rather than just zoomed in - it literally panned from right to left to follow the action.  But that may have been before Comedy Central had an HD channel - I don't think I've watched any of the films on CC since then.

Well, I'll know on Monday, since I'm recording it both on our SD DVR upstairs and our HD DVR in the basement.  I have a feeling I missed Bender's Big Score this week, since Bender's Game is on the following Monday.

hm, I think i'd be most interested in the differences beween the film cuts and the broadcast eps.

I'm really excited in this project I too am a huge Futurama Fanboy and have been looking for something like this on the torrent sites.

I'll help in any way I can.

Okay.  I just finished recording The Beast with a Billion Backs: Parts 1-4 from Comedy Central, both in SD and HD.  General notes:

- Fuck you, Comedy Central.  Stop putting the fucking end credits over the opening credits of the next episode - it makes recreating the opening "tagline" things nearly impossible.
- The Infosphere claims, under "Film to Episode Edits," that "The bulk of the introduction sequence is replaced by a summary of the previous part of the movie, this section is introduced by Kif; he sighs and says "Previously on Futurama", then his head inflates and pops." (for Part 2, which is what I've linked to) - The problem is, this isn't true, at least on the Comedy Central airings.  So where does this footage exist?
- Comedy Central did indeed broadcast them in widescreen in HD, so the episodes on my preservation DVDs will remain in widescreen
- I'll need a good way to replace the credits for Part 1 and add credits for Part 2, 3, and 4 - which means I'll need to do one of the following:

METHOD ONE
- Somehow manage to erase all opening credits for Part 1
- Get the font used for the opening credits
- Recreate the opening credits for each part

Method One would yeild the highest quality.

METHOD TWO
- Replace the relevant portion of the screen on the DVD with the relevant portion of the screen from the HD broadcast

Method Two would yeild lower quality, and has the potential to create very obvious "seams" in the video between the broadcast and DVD versions.  On the plus side, it's a lot more plausible and easy to do than Method One would be, and it would be 100% faithful to the broadcast version, while the first method would just be simulating it.

At any rate, I've got a lot of work ahead of me, especially if I want to try to recreate the "Previously on Futurama" segments that apparently exist (which I would like to do, if anyone knows where I can find them).

Fantastic - thanks!

I approve of this edit! :)

Although 3 of the 4 films were pretty disappointing to me.

I had entirely forgotten about this project!  I'll take a look when I get home after the semester's over, and I'll set it to record those episodes.  As long as I can get the title card at the beginning with a clean lower third for all 16 episodes, I should be able to do this project fairly easily.

Well, first, the problem with that is getting the "clean" opening, which the 2-hour "block" versions of the films don't provide for every episode.  That's why I want to get the "individual" airings, now that they're (apparently) showing them that way, too.

--edit--

Plus, I don't have access to cable right now (or any way to record anything at all off of TV), as I'm living in my dorm for the last two and a half weeks of the semester.  So I won't be able to do any recording until the last 2 weeks of the month, anyway.

Oh, that's brilliant!  Thank you so much!

Now I've just gotta get Comcast's ass over to my apartment before then ...

So, in the event that Comcast continues to be huge assholes, would anyone be able to record these and upload them somewhere/mail them to me?  I'm gonna try to cap everything myself, but in the event that isn't possible, it'd be nice to have a backup plan.

ChainsawAsh said:

With Comedy Central's announcement today that a new season of Futurama (production season 6, aired season 7) consisting of 26 episodes will start production soon to begin airing mid-2010 (Fox still retains the option to air the episodes first if they choose, but it seems likely that they'll air on Comedy Central first instead).

Sorry to take this off topic, but has the new season air date been announced?

Stupid Frink, look before you ask...June 24!

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/futurama-makes-a-triumphant-return-to-our-planet-the-all-new-season-of-futurama-premieres-on-comedy-central-thursday-june-24-at-1000-pm-2010-06-02?reflink=MW_news_stmp

It's now set to record!

Speaking of which, does anyone know how to get DVR recordings off of an AT&T U-Verse box without re-encoding?  That would help keeping the quality high for the shots that are exclusive to the TV versions.