CardCaptors Sakura: Restored Australian Cut? (* unfinished project *)

I’ve got access to the first 9 eps in the Australia and UK cuts, and can prolly get all the Japanese footage I need for this.

My goal here is to try to recreate the least possible edited English Dub of Cardcaptor Sakura.  The Australian cut is notable for preserving even the original themes where the US, Canada and UK cuts do not.

Unfortunately, the vobbage that exists of the English dub is spotty, and I may need to resort to, if it can even be found, VHS, or even TV rips…but I’ll at least try to pull off 1-9.

Other than the title cards, and minus fades that I didn't apply and paintovers that I don't want to apply or don't feel like applying atm, I did ep.1 as a proof.  It's still cut to hell, lost about 3 minutes of footage, but that's better than the US cut, which started with episode 8!

And eugh.  The voices are TERRIBLE.  Sakura, Madison (Tomoyo) and Kero have way too low voices esp. as Sakura and Madison are supposed to be 10! (Sakura sounds 16)  Still, for preservation's sake...

(btw, anyone ever seen the rumored Animax dub?)

I've acquired ISOs of 3 DVDs of CardCaptors with the Australian cut.

I've never been very keen on the common style of PAL conversion used with anime though which is why I want to rebuild the video track.

Sounds interesting... I frequently reread the one volume of that manga that I own.

Warning - Brain dump, this is a bit long and rambly!

I've resurrected this project using a higher quality raw as the base.

Still wondering what to do about a few things, though, as I really don't want to screw with the video or plug in 480p source (or worse, back-converted PAL) any more than I have to.  So I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with the opening title card or the episode titles.

I've thought over a couple ways to deal with the end credits and I'm not sure which approach to take there either.

Also, some eps which are only VHS source are in rather poor shape, unless someone can find better sources for them.  Especially ep.16, "The Summer House", which has frequent dropouts on the rip I have.  Naturally the BD-sourced raws from which I am working will significantly improve the video quality, even downscaled to 720p and 480p (I can't handle 1080p), but there's not a lot that can be done for the sound.

Current reports state that only the following eps (all 70 were dubbed, according to our current research, and one episode aired in NZ only) exist on DVD in English at all, even the US cut: 1-15, 17, 20, 25-26, 28, 30-33, 35-36, 39, 43-46, 53.  Also, parts of 41, 47-48, 50-51, 58 and 68.  Episodes 17-26 appear to exist on PAL VHS in the UK.

There are 3 opening themes and 3 closing themes in Japan.  The Australian cut has 2 of the former and 2 of the latter (omitting the middle of each set).  Only the first of each was committed to DVD but there appears to be good source for the last.  There doesn't appear to be an English version of "Tobira o akete" or "Honey", so that leaves only "Catch You Catch Me", "Groovy", "Platina" and "Fruit Candy".  None of this was used in the US, Canada, or the UK, and they all represent, imho, a significant improvement over the more common American theme song.

I'm not good at paintovers. :(  So right now the OP still has the original logotype.  The R4's chyron-out of the Japanese logotype is hideous!  Also, Kero's Corner still has "Kero-chan ni omakase" written in Japanese on it...though that's prolly easier to fix.

Well, here's a couple shots as I work on it... (I want to wait until I have 5 eps done before I start doing anything releasewise)

This is a result of a different cut of the same shot.

I have title cards now, but still would like to figure out a couple minor but thorny problems involving paintovers.

I tried to either mimic (my gimp-fu isn't really that good) or copypaste the new writing, and both my attempts looked horrible.  This one's a still frame (unlike the R4, where the first shot of Kero is superimposed over the logo - like the R2, the logo disappears before Kero appears.)

Another problem is that I don't really have a good way to chyron out the CCS logo to put the CC logo on.  On the R4, the logo is very cheaply pasted over the original one, leaving a blanked-out area in its wake, which eats up part of the clouds as well as a falling sakura petal, like so:

Naturally, I'd like to have the same logo appear in place of the CCS logo on this. (I have the baseline working copy in 720p)

I did this experiment a few months ago:

but it could still stand work, as well as being redone with the "master raw" so that it's 720p.  At least 120 frames would need to be painted over and it's not really something I'm up to.

Alternatively I could continue as at present and leave the CCS logo intact.

The new episode title cards are done up to ep.17 or so and can easily be done for future episodes.

I've been asked about the possibility of "upgrading" the US OP, which would require a new series-title card and 2 other shots made up (the first shot, with the bookstand in the middle of the mahojin and the Clow Book on the stand; the second shot, with the "parade of the cards").

Although I have ruled out the possibility at this time, I would like to do it, but it might need some new 3D work.

[Ugh.  Narutrash ad on the forum.  Well, it is the anime of anime for some people, as DBZ was 15 years ago.]

Now that I've pretty much completed the first 5 episodes, I have been making VOBs.  And together with vobs I've been trying to design a menu, something that I'm...not very good at. :/

Still, I got a rough design:

I'm not sure where I want to put the selections, and how I'll handle "captions on/off" or "scene select" ... or the technical details of building the iso with something other than tmpgenc dvd author, which really is NOT up to the task. :/

Still interested in the project, just don't have much to comment on.  So don't think no one's following this!

LOL

I put the initial release of 1-5 on my tracker a few days ago but have been adding previews to them based on the US/Canadian cuts.

Here's the stuff I know I have and don't have [access to] at this point.

I know I can get:

• Previews and main episode body for any episodes which I can obtain on R1 DVD (i.e., Season 1), i.e., 3, 7-9, 12-13, 17, 20, 25-26, 28, 30-33, 35, 36, 39, 43-46).  I at this point only have R1s containing 3, 8, 12, 17, 31-33, 43-44.
  
• Kero's Corner for episodes 1-16, and possibly other episodes.
  
• Main episode body for episodes 1-15, and possibly later episodes.
• Raw video footage through episode 40.  Possibly through 46.  (I am using 1080p video source, which I downscale to 720p.)

Kero's Corner is said to be missing from even some of the Canadian rips.  It is not a part of the US cut.  Previews, which are part of the "Doré" cuts (i.e., US, Canada/UK), are not part of the Australian/NZ cuts; but they can be fudged.

I got eps. 1-5 encoding to vob in the final encode I plan to do.  Well, final *NTSC* at least. The problem of making good caption subs and menus is the killer now.

6-8 are also ready to encode (but not transcribed); 9 needs some work, and I haven't done 10 yet.  I may need to fudge together some previews also.

I got someone hunting down some of the R1s, which have been out of print for a while (and the US distributor no longer exists).  This should provide me a guide to cut the preview for ep.9, which is my current snag since I want to be as complete as possible and this ep does exist in that format.

Some of the rips off Canadian television I've seen are just abominable.  I hope there's other rips out there.  Especially once I get into season 2 and there are practically NO dvds of the dub!

The R4s give out at episode 15.  A somewhat muffled and noisy copy of episode 16 exists as a TV rip from NZ, the only place it aired.  After that the episodes get very spotty:

* 18-19, 21-24 are available on VHS in the UK; they are not available on DVD.
* 27, 29, 34, 37-38, 40-42, and (with the exception of 53) all of season 2 are not available on home video at all, afaik. (I define season 2 as 47-70)

The other eps, i.e., 17, 20, 25-26, 28, 30-33, 35-36, 39 and 43-46, are available on DVD, but the DVDs are long out of print.  I am working on obtaining them.

I could prolly put together a quick hack of the Redux I'm making as DVDs, but they would look amateur with only limited ability to make menus.  I've had 1-5 encoded for a while now (almost 3 months), but couldn't author the discs satisfactorily.

Episodes 1-9 are done, including an alternate version of 7.  So I'll prolly do the various "mashed" episodes, when I get that far, and attach the US OPEDs to them, as I did with the alternate 7 (the additional footage, where possible, is actually re-edited; the OP, apart from 3 CG shots, and the New Card, apart from the CG bookends, are re-edited as well.)

I'm about a quarter done with the main episode body of 10, and Kero's Corner's done.  When this ep is done, I'll up another torrent on my tracker.  I still have to make the dvdiso for 1-5, though.

I'll probably omit previews for episodes not on R1 if I can't find one of sufficient quality on the Canadian TV rips.  Some of these rips are...questionable. In particular, 14-16 prolly won't have previews, and will start directly with Catch You Catch Me.  Episode 18, "A Fair to Remember", is the first of the questionable episodes - I currently have no usable copy of these episodes because the Canadian rips are broken and all available rips are derived from them.  For 18, however, Kero's Corner, at least, is intact.  Most episodes 25-46 will be fine.

You can tell I prefer making new posts instead of editing old ones (for one, I don't reread the first posts of others, so it would be hypocritical of me to expect others to reread mine!).

I torrented 6-10 last night and am psyching myself for doing 11-15.

The cardcaptors blu rays look absolutely stunning but are way too expesnive a boxset.

Can't remember the price but i remember it being like 500-600 us dollars after currency conversion.

I have seen some other stunning blu rays out there way out of my price range like the tecnhi muyo movies and ovas, though i can afford the akira blu ray now that the price on the us edition has dropped.

Other blus i have seen that are stunning are bubblegum crisis ova and riding bean ova.

The galaxy express movie boxset is an abomination though, looks upscaled and the dvnr is atrocious.

Have not seen the dragon ball kai blu rays yet since funi still has yet to bring them stateside.

I wonder did pokemon run out of steam, or will they release them on blu ray?  Not that i want them though i'm sure my nephew and nieces would like them, they just got their first blu ray player. My youngest niece would also like the old my little pony and care bares on blu ray, but i doubt that is happening anytime soon,lol.

I dunno.  It just went HD (5 episodes later than Japan), so...but at least all of Advanced (seasons 6-9 here) and the last ca. 10 eps of Master Quest animated digitally and might not be possible to render to any higher than 480p.

Work on CardCaptors is going to start getting patchy.  The audio for the ep.11 preview is distorted (I may simply redo the preview so it doesn't involve voice samples from the episode).  I run out of R4s at episode 15 (the last ep released on DVD in Australia), and then the sound quality of episodes not available on R1 DVD is going to go through the floor.  Every episode has been capped, but some rips have SERIOUS issues.  Hopefully another source will turn up (it'll require my friend in the UK who got me started on this project acquiring a PAL VCR).

Episode 11 itself is edited, and I might just churn forward and do the previews later before making the release files.

Turned out 11's preview was on a UK DVD, so that's dealt with.  12's done too.  On to 13... 15-16 won't have previews since they never aired dubbed outside of au/nz where the previews were not shown, and I don't cut previews together well. :/

After 17 I may wind up skipping ahead as there is currently no usable rip of certain eps, including 18, on account of every version being sourced from the same broken mpegs.

I burned out hard working on this a while ago but it's something I'd like to go back to.  Especially since I could theoretically give it a huge quality boost if I just gutted it and started over. :/

At the time I used Avidemux.

These days I use avspmod/megui, with sometimes Avidemux for scanning through the original video track. (This is what I was using for Robotech.)