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Tugs VHS to DVD Preservation (Released)

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 (Edited)

Greetings all. I’d like to present my VHS to DVD preservation of all 13 episodes of the classic British children’s program “Tugs”. As per Wikipedia:

Tugs (Stylized TUGS) is a British children’s television series first broadcast in 1988. It was created by the producers of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, Robert D. Cardona and David Mitton.<sup><span></span></sup> The series dealt with the adventures of two anthropomorphized tugboat fleets, the <span>Star Fleet</span> and the <span>Z-Stacks</span>, who compete against each other in the fictional <span>Bigg City Port</span>.

I used to love this show as a kid. I bought the old VHS tapes off of eBay years ago intending to convert them to DVD. I only just got around to it in the last couple of weeks, so I thought I’d share the result here for others to enjoy and hopefully share with their kids.

It’s only been officially released on home video once in the late 1980s, although clips from the program made their way onto DVD thanks to the American kids’ show “Salty’s Lighthouse” which had re-purposed the footage. I did not have access to those clips however, so all the content presented on this DVD are straight from the VHS tapes.

I’ve cleaned the episodes up a bit with AVISynth to reduce the VHS noise and stabilise the image (although some warping remains). I’ve also cleaned up the audio a bit to reduce the humming and overly powerful bass. Finally, I created a set of basic menus for episode navigation in Adobe Encore.

Technical details:
Format: 6.49gb PAL DVD-DL
Video: 720x576 @ 25i, 4:3

Audio: 224Kbps AC3 English Audio

Available now on MySpleen:
http://www.myspleen.org/details.php?id=18362

Screenshots:
http://imgur.com/a/e7xxC/all

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Nice work! Like most Brits who grew up during that era, I of course remember Thomas but yet I don't recall TUGSDid ITV only broadcast it once?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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Being a HUGE Tugs freak, I really appreciate you doing this restoration. I personally tried with my tapes which looked really nice, but these transfers are just over the roof. Brilliant work, keep up the good work! :)

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I believe it aired in 1989, and then reshown in 1990. Could be wrong though, I'm one of the American fans haha! :P

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Cool, maybe I was watching something else at the time. :) What's the source of your avatar, btw?

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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Hello there,

Sorry for the very late reply, been busy with schoolwork. Anyways, I got my avatar from the front cover of an extremely rare Japanese coloring book of the show. I have a pretty big collection, full of Japanese and British Tugs things if your interested in seeing any.

~StarSwitcher :)

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Yeah, definitely, show me. Do you have an online gallery? 

“Logic is the battlefield of adulthood.”

  • Howard Berk
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thats another show I used to watch, like shining time station availability is limited. On unstable vhs images, a timebase corrector might help with that on capture, (assuming your not already using one, and budget isnt an issue).

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How did you capture the VHS on to the DVD? I tried to do that for a SW project a while back and it never worked.

.

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I used an “EzCAP 116” USB capture device connected to a TEAC VHS player.

http://www.ezcap.tv/usb-video-capture/ezcap116-capture-card

They work with any RCA Composite or S-Video input and they’re very easy to use. If you’re looking to inexpensively capture analogue sources such as VHS tapes and Laserdics to digital, this is one of the better options in my opinion.

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Hi,

I know you posted this some time ago, but do you still have any DVDs I could purchase?

Many thanks.

Bill