Superman (1941) (Mild-Mannered Edition) (Released) — Page 4

davextreme said:

Friends, I could use some help. I’ve noted before how often the closing of these videos doesn’t have the right audio. I’ve found, I think, that none of the versions of “The Mummy Strikes,” which I’m working on this week, has the right audio. Each of them has a different issue. There’s more info and a video here:

https://mmsuperman.tumblr.com/post/163565872645/the-mummy-music-mystery

If you have a copy of this particular short that has different closing music, please let me know on Twitter by replying to this tweet: https://twitter.com/davextreme/status/891340819076198400

I have some of these cartoons from a Greek Public Domain VHS from the 80s that I have transferred to DVD. I checked there for that ending. It contains the same ending with Warner. The only difference is that the final card appears before the end of the horn line, but it’s obvious from the merging point that it doesn’t belong to the original form of the film, there are some white spots and the black after the fade-out of the main cartoon jumps to dark blue after that point.

I also checked for the line “for women” at “Superman” that is mentioned by some users. My copy doesn’t contain it either.

I think that you have done a great job restoring these cartoons to their original form! I wonder why their official release by Warner doesn’t have them fully restored. I 've found your restorations only at youtube. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to find a download link for a better quality of the files yet - neither the links for the m4v files that exist, as you said, at your site. Is it something I 'm doing wrong?

Thank you for checking your copies of the movies. My guess about the Warner editions is that there simply wasn’t motivation, time, budget, and/or interest in doing the job thoroughly. It’s possible some of the prints have been damaged over time and there wasn’t a budget for restoring them, so they just decided to re-use segments that were in good condition. Not every restoration project gets the same amount of love that, say, Nolan devoted to the recent 2001: A Space Odyssey prints.

As for the downloads, I changed to a new web host and they came down at that time. I’ll see if I can put them back up elsewhere.

davextreme said:

Thank you for checking your copies of the movies. My guess about the Warner editions is that there simply wasn’t motivation, time, budget, and/or interest in doing the job thoroughly. It’s possible some of the prints have been damaged over time and there wasn’t a budget for restoring them, so they just decided to re-use segments that were in good condition. Not every restoration project gets the same amount of love that, say, Nolan devoted to the recent 2001: A Space Odyssey prints.

As for the downloads, I changed to a new web host and they came down at that time. I’ll see if I can put them back up elsewhere.

I suggest you to try megaupload or mediafire. Their capacity is muck larger than dropbox.

As for the restoration of Warner, I don’t think that the time and the cost for searching and restoring the original details of the films, or for just watching the older editions that already existed in Bosko’s productions of LDs and DVDs in order to indicate any missing bits from their videos, would be comparable to the duration and the cost of the re-coloring procedure that they held. Maybe they just didn’t really care, as the missing details don’t belong to the main part of the cartoon.

I 've noticed that the PAL DVDs of the Superman boxset have larger frame, with more bits in it. Moreover, their sound is in better quality. Of course, they have been sped up at the rate of 25 fps (vs. 23.973 of the original NTSC video) and the pitch of the sound is higher, but these problems can be corrected very easily.

Personally, I prefer the sound at Bosko video because it has more frequencies of the voices and more natural sound. It’s just in less db than WB and it has some noise that can be cleaned easily. At the WB’s version, the high frequencies must have been boosted, but the result is very sharp.

These days I 've started to edit these cartoons from the PAL DVDs, slowing them down (it’s just an option at a program) and adding the sound from Bosko. I 've restored their original openings, as you did at the mild-mannered version. In other words, I do almost what you have done, using the video from the PAL DVDs for their larger frame and the sound from Bosko. If anyone is interested in the result, let me know!

Except from your actions, in order to use as much of the image from the WB as possible, I 've managed to synchronize the opening of the Eleventh Hour from there to its original duration and I 've added the part “more powerful than a streak of lightening” etc from another cartoon, as it is the same.

You 've said that, at the “Showdown”, the part “more powerful than a streak of lightening” etc couldn’t be synchronized, as you have already said. It was the first cartoon using this exact introduction and I 've noticed that the lightening has a different animation: it’s stable and the effect is presented with variation at the intense of the brightening. At all the proceeding cartoons, the lightening changes its shape at each cel. The animation of the pounding surf and of the roaring hurricane is the same, but these sequences fade to each other at a different time.

DC Universe has these shorts in HD on their streaming service. They aren’t well cleaned, but I’ve had some decent results with screenshots with those transfers and an HD grain plate.

zxthehedgehog said:

DC Universe has these shorts in HD on their streaming service. They aren’t well cleaned, but I’ve had some decent results with screenshots with those transfers and an HD grain plate.

DC Universe is only available in the US… Are they transferred directly from the films or they are the up-scaled and badly de-noised versions of GAIAM?

Finally, in my project I decided to use WB sound where available and I 've noticed some more differences from Bosko and the other video releases.

• “At Electric Earthquake”, the music of the introduction is the right one, but it’s not synchronized correctly. It has to start almost 0,5 sec. earlier. The fact that the other versions are correct is proved from the sound effect when the letter Q of the word “Earthquake” is cracked. In the WB it isn’t connected with this sequence. From “faster than a speeding bullet” and on, it’s synchronized correctly.

• At Volcano, Bulleteers and perhaps other shorts (I haven’t checked all of them yet), the music of the introduction is wrong. The first music phrase is played once and the ending of the introduction is the longer one. At the other versions, the first music phrase is played twice and the ending is shorter.

I’ve had a number of requests for the master files for these and have finally gotten around to putting them in Dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aq1ot6nc3yiy9wv/AACf5vCgcGBctqV5zDGacWJca?dl=0

Does anyone know were I could find the Bosko Video versions online? I want to compare them with the Warner release in terms of print debris/scratches.

davextreme said:

I’ve had a number of requests for the master files for these and have finally gotten around to putting them in Dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aq1ot6nc3yiy9wv/AACf5vCgcGBctqV5zDGacWJca?dl=0

Wow, thanks!

Edit: Unfortunately, skimming through the shorts, the audio on Arctic Giant has a double echo effect, which is definitely not on the YouTube version, not to mention a nasty click right at the end.

Hope that gets fixed!

I’m enjoying these very much!
For me the main issues are uneven sound and color variations. Mostly noticeable if you see the episodes back to back.

As the previous user mentioned, Arctic Giant has a delay effect.

I’ll look at Arctic Giant when I get a chance. Won’t be until next week, though. ++I was able to find a second to do it tonight. New version is in the Dropbox.++

I agree about the sound and color. This was all an editing exercise so I didn’t do any color changes and such that you might make if you were wanting to make them all more consistent. And as I’ve said before, the right way to do this would be to get actual prints and restore them from that. (Or, better, for someone to get the original prints from whatever studio has them and do the restoration properly.)

Decided to have a go at editing the Warner video to replace the Bosko intro in “Eleventh Hour”, as I thought it stuck out, being the only Mild Mannered short to not use Warner video throughout the whole short.

Using the MM edition as a guide, the opening credits were shortened to match, and the prologue (“streak of lightning”/”pounding surf”/”roaring hurricane”) was flown in from the next short, Destruction, Inc., which matched up perfectly. From the title card card onwards, the short is the same as the Mild Mannered Version, as is the entire audio.

Let me know what you think.

https://youtu.be/MjF--LAWNxE

Found a nice article about the first short, and was surprised to find it contained a video of the often mentioned trailer for the short! Anyone know if they did anymore or if it was just this one?

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-first-fleischer-superman/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wssI3N8g7VY

True HD versions of all the Superman shorts were available for a while on WarnerMedia’s DC Universe streaming service. After the service went down in early 2021, they were no longer available. They have yet to reappear on WarnerMedia’s flagship streaming service HBO Max.

Funny you should mention it, I actually recently got a copy of them but haven’t had time to set aside to playing with them. In theory I could use them as a base for an HD version of these combined I guess with upscaled versions of the other shorts. I’d need to see how well they mesh together. I’d also probably want to match the colors of the various sources better but I’d have to learn how to do that. All things I hope to get to at some point but it’s not a near-term possibility at the moment.

In other Fleischer Superman news, Mezco Toyz has a cool set of classic figures coming out in the next few months. They’re still available for pre-order:

https://www.mezcotoyz.com/5-points-superman-deluxe-boxed-set