Thomas the Tank Engine: Heritage Edition (* unfinished project *)

This being a childhood favorite of mine, I want to give it a better presentation than it’s been given on home video so far.

The Region 1 DVDs are honestly a mess. The pre-2000 episodes look like they’re taken from aging VHS masters, the chronological order is all kinds of messed up, some episodes are missing, and some versions (particularly Ringo Starr’s early episodes, before George Carlin took over) aren’t available. None of the post-2000 episodes are presented in their original 16:9 ratio, and those shot on digital video have too high a framerate for the models to look terribly convincing.

The Region 2 DVDs are better, having every episode in order, but still have problems. Each series has color issues - some look muddy, some have horribly distracting yellow/pink/green tints. They lack features like the show’s musical segments, and most importantly, Series 1-4 don’t have George Carlin’s narration as an option.

THE PLAN:

I don’t have much experience editing, but since one Series of Thomas has the runtime of about a 2-hour movie, I don’t think it should be hard. To approach one at a time.

Source / Packaging:

<span style=“white-space: pre;”></span>I’ll be using the PAL DVDs as a source because of their quality compared to the NTSC releases. Also, since they’re a higher resolution to begin with, I’ve considered permanently upscaling them to 720p, which would mean trying to make some AVCHDs (don’t know if I’ll need to buy software to make menus and encode, but I think the end result’ll be worth it).

Audio:

<span style=“white-space: pre;”></span>There’s a few different options for audio, too, which will affect how the series is ordered. In the end there should be multiple audio tracks, preserving each version of the episode.

• Ringo Starr (UK): All 52 episodes of Series 1-2
• Ringo Starr (US): 25/26 (Series 1), 17/26 (Series 2)
• George Carlin (US): All 104 episodes of Series 1-4
• Alec Baldwin (US): All 52 episodes of Series 5-6
• Michael Brandon (US): All episodes Series 6+
• Michael Angelis (UK): All episodes Series 3+

I’ll need to go back into VHS to rip some of the missing audio. In some cases I’ll be tracking down old recordings of Shining Time Station (Keep Circulating the Tapes!), meaning a noticeable drop in quality.

Order:

The episodes will be ordered both according to the availability of narration and the actual order of the stories (avoiding having characters appear before introduced, etc.) So it’ll largely be based on the order of the original US releases, with a “playlist” of about 7 episodes back-to-back (usually making up a complete story arc), but a handful of episodes from Series 1 & 2 will be mixed.

Video:

In general the picture is manageable. The biggest problems are a particular series not being bright enough or having some sort of garish tint (especially apparent in Series 11, with which the switch to HD Digital Video gave everything a toxic green look). In Photoshop it’d pretty easy to adjust the picture and average the difference, but what’s the best way to remove that difference in a video editor?

All the series shot in digital video (8-12) should keep their native PAL framerate, since it looks closer to film than the NTSC releases (which look too high and reveal too much motion).

That’s what I’ve got so far. I’ve done some experiments with editing but nothing to commit to a final product. I also have to ask what the best programs are for applying titles and creating menus. And if anyone has any tested methods to edit color, I’d like to hear them.

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! :)

doubleofive said:

I love that someone is doing a serious restoration of Thomas the Tank Engine. Not because I thought it needed to be done, but that someone did.

This.

Any updates?

Hit a bit of a snag in the editing, with some jumpy outputs, so I stepped back for a while to take a fresh look at it. I'm also experimenting with a few different programs at the moment to try and stabilize some jumpy pictures in the first two seasons.