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The Brave Little Toaster - Restoration (WIP)

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 (Edited)

Hi y’all. Just joined the site but I’ve already taken on a fairly difficult project. One of my favorite movies as a kid was the brave little toaster. I think I wore out at least two VHS copy’s. I’m such a big fan ive collected the original book, a vintage sunbeam toaster and a Kirby dual sanitronic 80(I plan to get them all). However back to the topic at hand, without a nice blu ray copy the best we are left with as a really crappy dvd. It’s the same transfer as the VHS. Lots of camera shake, frame flick, more artifacts than in a museum and all kinds of other things. The one good positive is it has a fairly descent dolby digital 5.1 track. My goal is to rip the film, convert to 1080p and clean it up while improving or keeping the decent 5.1 track. Stay tuned!

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Well my first rip didn’t go quite well. I Tried to deinterlace the film but it made it almost unwatchable. So after another rip(this time with deinterlace turned off) I’ve got a very good 1080p base. I’m now running it through Final Cut Pro to reduce noise and add a small amount of sharpening. If anyone has any ideas on how to stabilize the picture without zooming way in, id appreciate it! Sound wise, I ripped it in at the highest bitrate possible. Playing it from a flash drive on my PS4 vs playing the original disc, I was blown away with the extra level of depth and weight to it. Granted, this could be a placebo effect but it certainly felt like and improvement.

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So Final Cut Pro has been a real pain in the ass. At one point it had rendered the original file from 2.94gb to 356gb and about crashed my computer. I think I’ve finally got it sorted out now though. I’ve added a vintage Disney intro from the late 80’s and the modern Disney animation studios closing logo. Think it makes it feel much more like an “official release”. Currently rendering the file now with moderate noise reduction and low levels of sharpening. Considering how low the memory and processor of my 2012 MacBook Pro is, it will probably be a week till it finishes the render and then another week till I can export it before I can give it a test viewing.

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I’m thinking of sending over an ITC Entertainment logo to also appear in your restoration, if that won’t delay anything.

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Charles Threepio said:

I’m thinking of sending over an ITC Entertainment logo to also appear in your restoration, if that won’t delay anything.

Sure, I can add it for a UK version. Do you have a version from 1987? And if so what condition is it in? They were the distributor for it over there, correct? Disney themselves took care of it here in the states. I really only know about ITC because of their work with the muppets, I’m assuming they were pretty big at one point. It will add some delay, just because my Mac is so out of date(struggles with FCP) but it’s no big deal for me. Would be kinda cool to have a US and UK version.

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Here it is, in full 1080p and open matte, from the Amazon Prime print of Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael, albeit silent and without its closing counterpart, as even if it did appear on that film, only the opening logo appears on international prints of The Brave Little Toaster.