Bladez636

Oldfan said:

Okay, sounds good. Definitely looking forward to this one. A great series. I own the UK DVD set but it's a shame they look so bad compared to the remastered versions.

The UK version to my knowledge was always kept on 16mm prints which explains the quality. Plus the masters being left alone for near 20 years probably didn't help the quality. Compared to the VHS rips that have been online, the quality doesn't differ that much, just the DVD masters look better only since they don't have VHS compression and the usual issues with tracking etc.

The main thing that bugs me with the UK version is the inconsistency with the tones. Like one episode will have an orange-ish tone to it while another one will have a blue-ish or neutral color balance to it.

Oldfan said:

Any news on how this is coming along? Just curious if there are any new developments.

I don't have much to really share. I'm still waiting on my translation guy to get the four Japanese episodes I plan as extras for this project to finish. I'm really considering contacting someone else to help me as well, only problem, I haven't a clue where I can find anyone...

Here, I'll just leave this link to a comparison between the original 16mm masters used on the 2009 DVD and the French DVD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5gGK5woVo

Oldfan said:

I am very interested in this project. I imported the UK DVD set a couple years ago as I live in the US, and I would love to see what you end up doing with this. I think it was an amazing production and deserves more attention. Those comparison shots look amazing. The French DVD set looks far better from what I've seen in your comparison video. Shame they didn't include an English audio track.

A suggestion - please go gently with the grain removal. Removing too much grain will remove much of the fine detail, as the grain holds the detail. I always prefer grain and detail as opposed to a cleaned and "waxy" look.

Is this the French remastered edition your clips come from?:

http://www.amazon.fr/Bomber-Int%C3%A9grale-r%C3%A9%C3%A9dition-Go-Nagai/dp/B004618D3U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390135357&sr=8-1&keywords=x-bomber

Because there seems to be another edition but I think the remastered edition is the one I linked to above. Here's the other release:

http://www.amazon.fr/San-Ku-Ka%C3%AF-Int%C3%A9grale-Collector/dp/B002DPQ3JM/ref=pd_sim_d_3

I don't really plan to go overboard, but given that I'm not 100% videophile I'm unsure I quite know what going overboard on that is. Most episodes have a rather small amount of grain, but there are a couple where the grain is overwhelming --- mainly on Episode 7 where I think it is almost distracting how grainy it is. I'm investing in a grain removal plug-in for Adobe Premiere that keeps the detail pretty well, at least compared to the built in ones that blur the hell out of it, removing the details.

The top one I have, the bottom one---I'm pretty sure you posted the wrong link there because I'm unsure what that is... But I'm sure I know which one you're talking of, and I'm fairly certain there is no difference in quality between the two.

The reason I can give for there being no English track is because the intro/outro is different for each dub of "Star Fleet" -- The French version also lacks the cliffhanger previews for the next episodes.

Oldfan said:

Turisu said:

I'm also very interested in this. But please, please keep the grain.

 

I gotta agree. The grain really should be left alone honestly. The grain is what contains the detail. I hate when studios use excessive DNR and ruin their blu-ray releases. It happens all the time. Thankfully, some studios know enough to leave the grain intact.

Question to Bladez636: Will you be retaining the DVD quality of these episodes? Will they be in DVD format or smaller compressed files? Of course this is your project but personally I always prefer going for the highest quality possible. When working from DVD it's always best to keep the project at DVD quality rather than compressing to avi or other file types.

I plan on rendering them in MPEG format so yeah. I work from a Mac so putting them on avi format wouldn't really work anyhow.

Sorry for the inactivity here, but here's a side-by-side comparison of the quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ5gGK5woVo

Hello to all,

I am Bladez, who has been lurking in the deep on these forums for some time without doing much else but commenting. I have put much of my sweat and blood into a DVD project since 2011. I do hope posting this is not a breach of any rules, please inform me otherwise.

This project is a fan remastered edition of the English version of the Japanese 1980 puppet series “X-Bomber”, otherwise known as “Star Fleet” in the Western English Speaking Countries. The show aired on ITV from October 1982 to April 1983 in the United Kingdom.
 

 
This is the description from wikipedia:

X Bomber (Ekkusu Bonbā) is a marionette tokusatsu TV series created by manga artist Go Nagai, and produced by Cosmo Productions and Jin Productions. The show aired on Fuji TV from October 4, 1980 to March 28, 1981, with a total of 26 episodes (including the pre-series pilot episode), and was billed in Japan as being filmed in “Sūpāmariorama” (スーパーマリオラマ), a puppeteering process similar to Gerry Anderson’s Supermarionation works.

The year is 2999 and the Earth is at peace following the Space Wars. The safety of the human race is ensured by Earth Defense Force (EDF). Shortly before the turn of the fourth millennium, the peace is broken by the appearance of a gigantic alien battle cruiser. Powerless to defend itself, the EDF’s Pluto base is completely destroyed and the evil Commander Makara reveals that the same fate awaits the Earth unless the mysterious F-Zero-One is handed over to her.

X-Bomber was renamed Star Fleet and dubbed by English speaking actors for broadcast in the UK on ITV. The show was broadcast there on Saturday mornings, first airing on October 23, 1982, the day before Star Wars UK TV Premiere.

The screenplay was adapted for English by Michael Sloan, who in later years would create the popular TV series The Master and The Equalizer. Actress Denise Bryer (“Commander Makara”) and editor Tony Lenny both went on to collaborate with Gerry Anderson and Christopher Burr making another memorable sci-fi series, Terrahawks.

A DVD set of Star Fleet was released in the UK on February 9, 2009 by Fabulous Films. Included in the DVD set are all 24 episodes, remastered, and restored to their original UK broadcast format. Beyond the episodes, the set also includes stills and a double-sided poster, as well as a comicbook and a comprehensive ‘making of’ documentary, which includes contributions from series creator Go Nagai, Dr Benn voice artist Peter Marinker, Brian May, Paul Bliss and Gerry Anderson.
 

So Why am I doing this? The 2009 DVD by Fabulous Films is restored-but that’s different from remastered meaning it was in worse condition and cleaned to the point it resembled the masters as they were. The transfers for the English version of “Star Fleet” were always fairly bad condition, being stored on 16mm transfers of the 35mm used for the original Japanese. There’s really little difference between the DVD masters and the US VHS Volumes aside from compression. In addition to that, the episodes vary in terms of color tone-one episode might be rusty looking whilst others might have a blueish hue or greenish hue. The Japanese episodes had a consistent hue of blue in each episode.

Another reason is that the series has only ever been released in Region 2 and 4 - Fabulous Films seems to believe that there’s no market for the series DVD release in the US.

In 2010, the French edition of the series was released by Kaze Entertainment-these editions contained slightly cut but mostly complete sharp and fresh looking masters from the series.
 

There left me with the idea to sync the footage with the English version. The missing footage from the DVD would be patched up from scenes available on the Japanese DVD with color adjustments and contrast upping, along with unfortunately some edited bits of the 16mm English. In addition, some grain removal techniques will be edited in, given the one flaw of the French DVD being-the grain is immensely overbearing.

I’d like to see if anyone is interested in seeing my progress. Much of it is done at this point-I spent much time custom remastering both via Adobe Premiere and frame by frame in Photoshop. I want to bring this generally forgotten Non-Gerry Anderson Supermarionation production a better presentation. I will post picture progress and the DVD cover so on if there’s interest. My progress since 2011 can be seen at the sfxb forums: http://www.sfxb.co.uk/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi

I can give some pointers that there are remastered Season 1-3 episodes floating out there, but a good lot have logos (but some are clean). Remastered, but with many errors/alternative scenes, one that comes to mind is in "Coal" where Henry backs into the siding at Wellsworth and just goes forward again from a blooper real, instead of the final master with Edward moving out as the sound effects sure as hell imply.

I myself have been converting the unreleased Thomas tapes for DVD. These being mainly the third, fourth and fifth VHS Volumes all with Ringo's re-narrations - "Tenders & Turntables & Other Stories", "Thomas Breaks the Rules & Other Stories" and "Better Late than Never & Other Stories". I've also done the compilation "Thomas' Christmas Party" tape with narrations by George Carlin. I've only "Thomas Meets the Queen" left to do. A bit off topic on what you're doing.

I look forward to the final results on your project. What the US gets is a sham, but we screwed Thomas up all together, so do we deserve much else? Of the original series, yeah....

EDIT: I noticed that you touched base on the remastered editions before. I foolishly posted before looking, so nevermind about me... :P

Yeah, I'd like one myself. Or if you don't want to sell it, could you perhaps send me the VHS rip if you've saved it.

I'd like to track down good condition VHS Rips to burn to my own DVD, as a better substitute for the lousy 2007 DVD One Media Entertainment managed to butcher.