Preserving the...cringe...Star Wars Holiday Special (Released) — Page 25

foam said:

Hey guys I have this on VHS (pal) which I recorded from a Win TV broadcast in around 1980, The colour is more natural and not so obscene as the NTSC captures I've seen. I still have the tape and have been meaning to do something with it for around 20 years. I recently got hold of a working VHS player and captured it to my PC at 720x527 and the video quality is excellent compared to some other captures I've seen some years ago (I probably haven't seen the better ones) however I'm having a bit of trouble getting the sound across perfectly so I'll have to do it again once I get a better sound catching setup. What I also really need is a Video player with s-video out I guess. Below is a full screen capture from todays effort

Hey, that's excellent!  I have two separate recordings from Australia (screen thumbnails seen here), but hadn't found anyone who recorded the Aussie broadcast first-hand before.

What's odd about Australia is the number of times it was broadcast there. Where other countries only got it once (if they were lucky/unlucky), Australia got it multiple times from 1980-1984, possibly even up through the late 80s by some reports.

There are a good number of people here who could help you out or offer advice on your capture.  By all means, your copy is definitely a rarity worth preserving, so take care of the original and try to do the best dump of it that you can.

--SKot

foam said:

I'll try again to do the sound in a better quality, the recording is complete right from the beginning but the commercials were removed during the recording, that's ok because there's a picture of the Wookie treehouse after each commercial break so none of the footage of the special itself is missing, well maybe one second right at the end credits.  

A shame the commercials were cut as it would be great to see those Aussie commercials from the time, which would be totally different from the ones we're used to from the US broadcasts.  I believe one of my two Australian copies has the commercials intact.

So far without doing anything special and recording out of a average VHS player to an old capture card the video looks about the same quality as the WMAR 2 or KCCI screenshots I saw on page 22 of this thread, although the colour on my copy is better than the WMAR 2 because it's without the "NTSC Redness". I think the potential in the tape is better if I had better equipment.

I'm willing to loan the tape to someone than can do a proper job of capturing it if this tape is deemed worthy of the effort.

I'd say it is!  Anybody in PAL-land with some good equipment up to the challenge?  We could use a really nice PAL broadcast preservation, particularly one from Australia.

I'm sure at least in my location it only aired the one time on Channel Win TV and that was around 1980 or 1981, which was the only channel I had that aired it (I never had Channel Ten in those days)

Yes, the other two versions I have were both from TEN but in different locations and different years.

--SKot

foam said:

I'm willing to loan the tape to someone than can do a proper job of capturing it if this tape is deemed worthy of the effort.

 

Hi Foam.

What you've got there is almost a holy grail. If this looks as good as your screencap indicates, we're all in for a treat.

There is a reliable and trusted forum member here (they're all trusted and reliable, really) who has done beautiful captures of the PAL Droids tapes. His name's RetardedTed, and I'm sure he can be persuaded to take on this assignment. I'll PM him about it this instant.

Thank you for coming forward.

Fritz

That capture looks a lot better than the copy in The Paley Center for Media in New York City, that I visited last week. The copy over there looks a lot like what is already available.

There's a tiny bit missing: establishing shot of the Falcon flying through space, close-ups of Chewie and Han, more flying...and then this shot of the Imperial Cruisers.

This small segment is very commonly missing, since it's usually just the amount of time necessary to press "Start" on a VCR!

--SKot

My memory fades, and 615 posts are a lot to look through when I'm going to ask the question anyway.

Once upon a time *someone* mentioned a video that had once been on the official site of someone modeling the Boba Fett costume, possibly as reference for the SWHS animators.

Did anyone ever manage to find that video?

I've seen one on YouTube of someone modelling the all-white prototype, if that's what you mean. I think that was for the movies, though, and not the special.

I've only just recently signed up here, but I am from the UK and I have a JVC S-VHS HR-S9600 hooked up to my PC that I would be more than willing to capture this tape with, should the owner of the tape wish to send me it.

I've seen many preservations of this show myself, but as mentioned above, never one as good as this.

Very exciting find!

Mass5160 said:

I've only just recently signed up here, but I am from the UK and I have a JVC S-VHS HR-S9600 hooked up to my PC that I would be more than willing to capture this tape with, should the owner of the tape wish to send me it.

I've seen many preservations of this show myself, but as mentioned above, never one as good as this.

Retartedted: you were volunteering to capture the tape earlier; did you ever get hooked up with foam about this?

If not, maybe Mass5160 can take this over and do the capture...?

--SKot

red5-626 said:

Has any one seen this?

Star Wars: Holiday Special (1978) in 1080p HD! - (Test)

 

 

 

 Hmm...while I applaud their efforts and don't want to discourage experimenting, I can't help but think of the phrases "sow's ear" and "turd polish" here.  I wonder what copy they used as the source?

--SKot