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Alvin and the Chipmunks (1983 - 1989) Complete Series Preservation (Released)

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 (Edited)

EDIT 2021: Project complete! Upgrades could be made with better sources but with what’s available, all work is finished. Working on an extras set but that’ll come a bit later. DM for more info!

Hey, everybody! Kinda new here, was here a while back but never really said/did much. Anyway, I’m currently working on a preservation/restoration project for the 1980’s cartoon incarnation of “Alvin and the Chipmunks”. The show ran for 8 seasons, which would sound like a lengthy process, but the first five seasons are readily available in consistently solid quality. I’m mostly working on seasons 6 - 8; I may work on the early shows a bit later, but the later stuff is the worst in quality/availability so that’s where I’m starting.

What I’ve already completed:

s06e12 - Dave’s Getting Married (DVDrip)
s06e13 - No Chipmunk is an Island + Babysitter Fright Night (DVDrips)
s06e14 - Alvin’s Summer Job (retail VHSrip)
s06e15 - Once Upon a Crime (DVDrip)
s06e16 - Mad About Alvin + The Phantom (NBC broadcast)
s06e17 - Vinny’s Visit
s06e19 - Theodore and Juliet + Quarterback in Curlers
s06e20 - The Wall + The Amazing Chipmunks (NBC broadcast audio/Italian retail video)
s06e22 - Psychic Alvin + A Special Kind of Champion (retail VHSrip/DVDrip)
s06e23 - Alvin’s Obsession + Alvin’s Not So Super Hero (NBC broadcast audio/Italian retail video)
s07e01 - Cookie Chomper III (DVDrip)
s07e02 - Home Sweet Home + All Worked Up (UK VHSrip, not mine)
s07e05 - Like Father, Like Son + Dr Simon & Mr Heartthrob (NBC audio+Italian video/DVDrip)
s07e06 - Too Hip To Be Dave + Hearts & Flowers (NBC audio/Italian video)
s07e08 - Unfair Science + Shaking the Family Tree (retail VHSrip/NBC broadcast)
s07e11a - The Return of Uncle Adventure
s07e12 - Alvin in Neverland (LOW QUALITY NBC AUDIO+Italian video)
s07e13 - Merry Christmas, Mr Caroll (DVDrip)
s08e09 - Irrational Buffoon’s European Vacation (Australian Broadcast - thanks to jordan200 for this one!!)

As for s08 (Chipmunks Go To The Movies), I have everything done in high quality, except two episodes.

s08e08 - S.T. The Space Traveler
s08e11 - Gremlionis

Kong (s08e03) is my own personal VHSrip, but the rest are DVDrips from the US discs.

Only episode I’m entirely missing in English is s07e11b - The Princess and the Pig. However, I’m still looking to upgrade the audio on some of my English episodes:

s06e18a - Uncle Adventure
s07e04 - Bye, George + A Day in the Life
s07e07a - Maltese Chipmunk (worst one I have)
s07e09a - Inner Dave
s07e11 - The Return of Uncle Adventure/Princess and the Pig (11a sounds pretty bad, 11b is missing entirely in English)
s08e08 - S.T. The Space Traveler
s08e11 - Gremlionis

These in particular vary from not great to nearly unbearable. The s08 episodes are nearly unusable, but better than nothing. If anyone has access to any of these episodes in English (or any other languages, as I could always benefit from upgraded video), please lemme know, as they may be of great value to the project!

My main sources right now are Retail Italian VHS tapes for the best video (sadly the only Italian rips are on YouTube so they’re sorta compressed, but still better than the US off air recordings I have, for the most part), English audio from original NBC broadcasts (some sound great, but others are from third generation tapes so they’re not ideal), and retail VHS/DVDrips, almost all from my own discs. There’s also a UK tape I’m looking for (it has Home Sweet Home/All Worked Up on it), but I can’t really afford to buy a PAL VCR for transferring, so I’m stuck on that regard.

The Chipmunks Go To The Movies (season eight) did air on the USA Network, on the USA Cartoon Express block in 1994 and 1995, so if anyone has some of that, that’d be amazing top priority stuff.

I’m not entirely sure where I’ll release these when I’m done, but definitely on Myspleen and via my Twitter (which would be the public alternative for them; I’ve already started offering them there).

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I have old copies of four and a half segments/episodes from those seasons that may have audio useful to this project. I sent you a PM MrColeslaw.

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 (Edited)

Thanks to the grateful contributions of jordan200, I can remove these episodes from the wanted list:

s07e05a - Like Father, Like Son
s07e09b - The Legend of the Sleeping Brittany (I’m still missing the first second or two of audio, but this isn’t apparent enough to keep looking for another source, in my opinion)
s08e09 - Irrational Buffoon’s European Vacation

I’ve also finished editing the following episodes:

s06e17 - Vinny’s Visit
s06e19 - Theodore and Juliet + Quarterback in Curlers
s07e11a - The Return of Uncle Adventure
s07e12 - Alvin in Neverland
s08e11 - Gremlionis

I’ll keep the problematic ones on the list of wanted episodes, as the audio on them still isn’t very good; better after cleanup, but improvement would be ideal. I seemed to have not mentioned it before, but international (non English) broadcasts are also of major help, as I can use them for better video/cutting the higher quality English songs (songs were undubbed in almost all countries, only Germany dubbed those) into the low quality English audio. I have decent quality song sources for every episode except Uncle Adventure and ST The Space Traveler, but upgrades to any extent, regardless of the episode, are welcome!

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 (Edited)

Recieving a higher quality copy of Alvin in Neverland from someone offsite, removing it from the wanted episode list.

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Took a break for a few months for the holidays and personal affairs, will be back to finishing a set after Christmas 😃

Still looking for anything on the above list, just a small fyi.

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Man, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’m glad to say I’ve finished compiling all of the Alvin shows with what resources I’ve had available to me. Took until two weeks ago to finish the project, 2020 was a busy year. Obviously I won’t be posting links in this thread, doesn’t seem like it’d be allowed. However, feel free to DM me and I’ll happily send you the shows.

I’m keeping this project open for the future, if better sources happen to pop up online. As for what could be improved…

s06e18a - Uncle Adventure
s07e04 - Bye, George + A Day in the Life
s07e07a - Maltese Chipmunk
s07e09a - Inner Dave
s07e11 - The Return of Uncle Adventure/Princess and the Pig (11a sounds pretty bad, 11b is missing entirely in English)
s08e08 - S.T. The Space Traveler
s08e11 - Gremlionis

These are all have pretty poor audio quality; I’ve done my best to clean them in my copies, and synced it to Italian sourced video, but it’s still not great. If these episodes appear anywhere and are an improvement, I will recompile them with said better sources. Or heck, if any episodes get improvements available, I’ll do them. But for the time being, the project is complete.

Major thanks to those who offered me both support and resources, it was greatly appreciated. 😃

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Thanks for doing this, dedicating much time and resources 👍👏

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To those who already got links and are downloading episodes, this week I had to fix a few minor issues with episodes.

s06 - Alvin’s Obsession + Alvin’s Not So Super Hero: Second segment had a splice where I forgot to apply color correction so the colors shifted for a few seconds; I’ve now fixed this. Also did some volume equalization I didn’t do back in 2019 (this was one of the first episodes I worked on).

S07 - Home Sweet Home + All Worked Up: My source for this ep was a shoddy UK VHS transfer that had gone through a few conversions and wasn’t great because of it. Figured there wasn’t much I could do when I got to it, so I left it untouched. Discovered recently that the original file was missing end credits so I went in this week to add those, and ended up touching up the video and audio a bit.

S07 - Alvin in Neverland: Vegas had a weird rendering issue in where the credits were placed, so they started abruptly, slashing the last second off the episode; I’ve fixed this.

S08 - Batmunk, Star Wreck, Funny We Shrunk the Adults: These were DVD rips simply lacking credits; I’ve attached them.

I’ve uploaded the new versions so feel free to redownload 😃

I’ve also been considering working on an extras folder, with all the random goodies I’ve compiled the past year or two working on this. Nothing too major, not sure if there’d be any interest.

I’d also eventually like to pick up any s08 episodes released officially on VHS (Funny We Shrunk the Adults, Daytona Jones, Star Wreck) and splice in the VHS audio; for whatever reason, the DVD masters use a very compressed down audio track, nearly mono I own the Batmunk and Back to Alvin’s Future videos and the stereo sound is far more open; however, that’s more of a nitpicky side thing I’ll get to down the road. As is, they sound perfectly fine.

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One more upgrade for the time being:

s08e08 - ST, The Space Traveler

Upgraded video quality! My old source was an ancient Spanish VHS rip that’s circulated online for nearly a decade now. There was also a German broadcast available online, although I had no access to it myself until last night. Someone I asked about it months ago came through with a copy, and while it’s not perfect (it’s an AVI encode circa 2009 with hardcoded frame blending from NTSC>PAL conversion), it’s a definite step up.

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/10894/

Screenshots 3 and 4 are actually comparative of the original 1990 NBC broadcast (which was very low quality) and the German source, as those scenes were entirely missing from the Spanish transfer. Until now, all I had for those scenes was the NBC broadcast, so I’m grateful something much better turned up.

I’ve also entirely recleaned the songs in the episode! A lot of songs from the last three of seasons come from Italian broadcasts, where they weren’t dubbed. I try to pull from the best sources, and a lot of English episodes tended to have inferior audio to the Italian recordings. However, I have no Italian broadcast for ST, only Spanish and as of recent, German. When doing the original cleanup, I spliced the NBC broadcast and Spanish together; the Spanish capture was done far too loud, the audio constantly peaking and destroying the bass and background music. NBC had the opposite problem, far too bass-heavy and entirely lacking higher frequencies. Felt the best case scenario was to put them together, it was all I could really do.

Sadly, Germany dubbed the songs, so I figured there was no real use for the audio; late into editing, I decided to try something kinda off the wall. I manually removed the vocals from the German songs, and spliced the instrumental underneath; the NBC/Spanish versions both lost almost all their instrumental from degradation so it brought a lot back to the sound immediately. I then equalized and cleaned the vocals the best I could, and I think it’s certainly a lot better.

https://streamable.com/4lfjmk [First half is the original mix, the second half is newly cleaned]

I had had to splice back in the proper English title card; the German one removed it, but thankfully the Spanish broadcast did not. I’ve spliced that to the best of my ability, and it’s serviceable.

V2 of ST is now available in the Alvin folder, so if you already downloaded it, feel free to upgrade to the new one!

I’m also working on a soundtrack compilation of all the show’s songs, as a bonus. I have seasons four through eight finished, only the first three to go. I’ll make that available to all who’ve already downloaded the episodes and anyone else who asks for them.

As for the last handful of episodes with very low quality audio…

s06e18a - Uncle Adventure
s07e04 - Bye, George + A Day in the Life
s07e07a - Maltese Chipmunk
s07e09a - Inner Dave
s07e11 - The Return of Uncle Adventure/Princess and the Pig [11a needs an upgrade, 11b is missing entirely in English]
s08e08 - S.T. The Space Traveler [video is better but the dialogue is still pretty miserable quality]
s08e11 - Gremlionis

There’s not much I can do without better sources, which I doubt will appear anytime soon. These shows only aired once in the US so it’s unlikely at least. They did air on BBC in the UK until at least 2003 however, and for many years in the 90s in Australia, so there’s hope. If new sources appear, I’ll definitely update the set. Still, I am incredibly thankful for the wonderful people on originaltrilogy who have helped me upgrade quite a few episodes with better sources, and with any luck, one day that’ll happen again with more episodes.

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MrColeslaw said:

One more upgrade for the time being:

s08e08 - ST, The Space Traveler

Upgraded video quality! My old source was an ancient Spanish VHS rip that’s circulated online for nearly a decade now. There was also a German broadcast available online, although I had no access to it myself until last night. Someone I asked about it months ago came through with a copy, and while it’s not perfect (it’s an AVI encode circa 2009 with hardcoded frame blending from NTSC>PAL conversion), it’s a definite step up.

https://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/10894/

Screenshots 3 and 4 are actually comparative of the original 1990 NBC broadcast (which was very low quality) and the German source, as those scenes were entirely missing from the Spanish transfer. Until now, all I had for those scenes was the NBC broadcast, so I’m grateful something much better turned up.

I’ve also entirely recleaned the songs in the episode! A lot of songs from the last three of seasons come from Italian broadcasts, where they weren’t dubbed. I try to pull from the best sources, and a lot of English episodes tended to have inferior audio to the Italian recordings. However, I have no Italian broadcast for ST, only Spanish and as of recent, German. When doing the original cleanup, I spliced the NBC broadcast and Spanish together; the Spanish capture was done far too loud, the audio constantly peaking and destroying the bass and background music. NBC had the opposite problem, far too bass-heavy and entirely lacking higher frequencies. Felt the best case scenario was to put them together, it was all I could really do.

Sadly, Germany dubbed the songs, so I figured there was no real use for the audio; late into editing, I decided to try something kinda off the wall. I manually removed the vocals from the German songs, and spliced the instrumental underneath; the NBC/Spanish versions both lost almost all their instrumental from degradation so it brought a lot back to the sound immediately. I then equalized and cleaned the vocals the best I could, and I think it’s certainly a lot better.

https://streamable.com/4lfjmk [First half is the original mix, the second half is newly cleaned]

I had had to splice back in the proper English title card; the German one removed it, but thankfully the Spanish broadcast did not. I’ve spliced that to the best of my ability, and it’s serviceable.

V2 of ST is now available in the Alvin folder, so if you already downloaded it, feel free to upgrade to the new one!

I’m also working on a soundtrack compilation of all the show’s songs, as a bonus. I have seasons four through eight finished, only the first three to go. I’ll make that available to all who’ve already downloaded the episodes and anyone else who asks for them.

As for the last handful of episodes with very low quality audio…

s06e18a - Uncle Adventure
s07e04 - Bye, George + A Day in the Life
s07e07a - Maltese Chipmunk
s07e09a - Inner Dave
s07e11 - The Return of Uncle Adventure/Princess and the Pig [11a needs an upgrade, 11b is missing entirely in English]
s08e08 - S.T. The Space Traveler [video is better but the dialogue is still pretty miserable quality]
s08e11 - Gremlionis

There’s not much I can do without better sources, which I doubt will appear anytime soon. These shows only aired once in the US so it’s unlikely at least. They did air on BBC in the UK until at least 2003 however, and for many years in the 90s in Australia, so there’s hope. If new sources appear, I’ll definitely update the set. Still, I am incredibly thankful for the wonderful people on originaltrilogy who have helped me upgrade quite a few episodes with better sources, and with any luck, one day that’ll happen again with more episodes.

***I also have episodes that I download from a YouTube channel, I still remember when it was broadcast on Mexican television

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkGCl4fHkFw2T-iluPV8Xiw/videos


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MrColeslaw said:

To those who already got links and are downloading episodes, this week I had to fix a few minor issues with episodes.

s06 - Alvin’s Obsession + Alvin’s Not So Super Hero: Second segment had a splice where I forgot to apply color correction so the colors shifted for a few seconds; I’ve now fixed this. Also did some volume equalization I didn’t do back in 2019 (this was one of the first episodes I worked on).

S07 - Home Sweet Home + All Worked Up: My source for this ep was a shoddy UK VHS transfer that had gone through a few conversions and wasn’t great because of it. Figured there wasn’t much I could do when I got to it, so I left it untouched. Discovered recently that the original file was missing end credits so I went in this week to add those, and ended up touching up the video and audio a bit.

S07 - Alvin in Neverland: Vegas had a weird rendering issue in where the credits were placed, so they started abruptly, slashing the last second off the episode; I’ve fixed this.

S08 - Batmunk, Star Wreck, Funny We Shrunk the Adults: These were DVD rips simply lacking credits; I’ve attached them.

I’ve uploaded the new versions so feel free to redownload 😃

I’ve also been considering working on an extras folder, with all the random goodies I’ve compiled the past year or two working on this. Nothing too major, not sure if there’d be any interest.

I’d also eventually like to pick up any s08 episodes released officially on VHS (Funny We Shrunk the Adults, Daytona Jones, Star Wreck) and splice in the VHS audio; for whatever reason, the DVD masters use a very compressed down audio track, nearly mono I own the Batmunk and Back to Alvin’s Future videos and the stereo sound is far more open; however, that’s more of a nitpicky side thing I’ll get to down the road. As is, they sound perfectly fine.
Where can I see the download links?

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I just discovered this site. You haven proven your noble intentions to preserve the original SW trilogy and other works for future generations. I am 100% in support of this work! Thanks!

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I found this site looking for Alvin and the chipmunks. It was one of my favorite shows growing up. I would like to share this show with my kids, is it possible for someone to send a link my way?

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Snake Eyes said:

I found this site looking for Alvin and the chipmunks. It was one of my favorite shows growing up. I would like to share this show with my kids, is it possible for someone to send a link my way?

To acquire this or any other “Edit” from this forum directly; you must PM the content editor. (I think links are not permitted in the forums.) In this case PM MrColeslaw.

BTW…THANKS @MrColeslaw! I’ll be PMing you someday for your amazing release!!!

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Hey! DM’d you about this, I’ve been looking for a resource that had the complete series but couldn’t find any. I’d love it if you could shoot back a response! Thank you 😃

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is it possible for someone to send a link my way?

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Would love a link if possible, great work on this.

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Hello! My kids are obsessed with the new Alvin and the Chipmunks, which I think are garbage. I want to show them what I grew up with. Can I have the link please?

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I’m definitely interested in these as well. Sadly it looks like MrColeslaw has been away since June 3rd of 2023, so if anyone still has a functioning URL to obtain these, please send me a PM.

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Perseverant said:

I’m definitely interested in these as well. Sadly it looks like MrColeslaw has been away since June 3rd of 2023, so if anyone still has a functioning URL to obtain these, please send me a PM.

Are you be able to get any URL?