Hi all. I’m new too. This thread spurred me to create my own attempt at a reconstruction of A.D. I have posted the first episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/VhuSnvj_Oos
I used what appears to be a rip of the German DVD for the vast majority of the runtime. I think this is the best image quality available at this time. The original mini series ran somewhere between 9 and 10 hours without commercial breaks I believe. The German DVD runs about 8 1/2 hours, so it is most of it, but not all of it. It’s much more complete than the current DVD published by a Christian publisher, which is supposed to be about 6 hours and edits out much of the Roman-centric story lines.
I then used various other sources to fill in the missing scenes. There is a low quality, English-language VHS rip that runs 9 hours and 10 minutes. It has most of the missing scenes, but not all of them. In other VHS rips fro other countries, I found even more missing scenes. In episode 1 at least, there was an extra scene of Sejanus and Livilla in bed. I included that scene with the foreign-language audio.
My own personal theory is that the complete broadcast version of A.D. was never released in America. If it was always released by Christian publishers, it is possible they cut the most salacious material from even the longest VHS releases. Just my own theory.
I have ordered a copy of the German DVD set, and I will see if it looks any better than what I already used. I could theoretically also try to source a copy of the US VHS release for a slightly better capture of the missing scenes.
I think Jesus of Nazareth looks spectacular in HD, and I wish we could get a complete HD release of A.D. too. It’s a shame so many of these mini-series from the 80’s aren’t being properly preserved. I’ve been Watching North & South in HD, and I’m loving it.
One more thing. I could use some help. I’ve been publishing to youtube for various compaies for years, but I can’t make my A.D. reconstruction video show up in the search results. What am I doing wrong?