Just a quick update to this project.
As far as I know, I have what I need to fix the entire show. At the moment I’m in possession of THREE different languages of the show, one of which is a personal collection given to me by someone who as far as I know never uploaded it anywhere. Anything missing in one language is seemingly replaced in other versions (hopefully). There is still missing English dialogue but I have a bandage for that (explained later).
I just wanted to mention that there is no guarantee that I will restore the entire series. Well, I am having so much fun doing it that I just might. However, it’s a monster task. At the moment I want to fix the episodes that have the worst damage and/or have the most problems with them.
I’ve already fixed what are basically the absolute worst ones, imo. The rest of them are simply missing music videos and a some english dialogue here and there, which I think can be fixed. I have all the music details for every missing video - all of them - for the original 1984/85 run, including exactly what parts of songs go where. (I think) all the info missing off KV Flipside’s website has been figured out. That’s it, that’s the worst of the problems with the remaining episodes I haven’t done. There are some tricky ones that require some creative editing but I’ll figure it out. There might also be some bigger traps I didn’t see yet, but I think I can resolve them.
And actually, what might happen is I might stop or slow down when I reach the KV Flipside episodes that are already uncut but have later dated (many of those are the 1986 and later versions) music videos on them. If I do those they will be made absolutely last, if at all.
If I get to that point (before I am done with the series but haven’t done KV Flipside’s already completed eps), the show is basically “saved”. All the episodes will be out there. Anything after that will be bonus material. The point is every episode will be available to see, in english, and completely uncut. Maybe not all on my channel but all readily available and free between me and KV Flipside. As a backup, I will be uploading to archive.org.
The extremely unconventional bandage for missing English is replacing with AI generated voice clones. The results are about 80% OK imo. Good enough, but not perfect. The first episode that I did this with, Master Zapper, was super shaky, and frankly watching it now it is unacceptable. A subscriber of mine found on VHS the missing English within a day of me posting that episode. So whenever I get that sent to me, it will be updated and fixed.
However, back to AI: I tried more advanced AI techniques with Euphonius and Chameleons and the result, as I said, is not terrible! “Shockingly adequate” is the term I would use. If there exists someone that has the scripts for these shows that would be handy, but at the moment I have to depend on the foreign episodes being translated and hope they are reasonably accurate.
It’s not the original lines, which does bother me because I am a stickler for keeping things accurate. But if the goal is to have nostalgic people turn the show on and enjoy them fully in English as if it was 1984 again, this does that. I most likely will also double-release episodes, leaving the missing scenes in the foreign language and subtitling those sections, to keep it more ‘accurate’.
Here is what’s been done so far, available to watch right now:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTH5WpXtQCaF-oErwPuirzmU4uljY3jwR
