God Save Pop Punk

I haven’t yet gotten in touch with him about it; I hope so, but it’s entirely up to him.

The Monster Zero reconstruction is available now!

The 1080p HD reconstruction of the original US version of Monster Zero is completed and available to download! Have a look on the spleen or send a private message for details.

Notes on this release:

• The Toho transfer had its contrast and saturation boosted to alleviate its flat appearance.
• This version was synchronized to the Simitar widescreen DVD to ensure accuracy, but uses the Classic Media audio (synchronized to the Simitar audio) to avoid some volume and balance inconsistencies in the Simitar audio.
• The opening Henry G. Saperstein/UPA logos, most of the opening credits, and the Lake Myojin/Washigasawa location titles were carefully digitally recreated.
• The expository text at the beginning, the English newspaper headlines, the English insert of Namikawa’s letter to Glenn and the end title card are presented using a combination of the Simitar DVD (to retain the entire image) and the Classic Media DVD (to reduce artifacting around the text itself).
• The Toho transfer is typically missing a handful of frames at the beginning and end of each reel. Where the missing frames couldn’t be compensated for in a satisfactory fashion, the sound/sync reference was trimmed to match what was there.

Original post:

Well, now that Ghidrah is out and hell year is over, looks like it’s time to move on to Monster Zero! So far all I’ve done is create the project file, add a rip of the Simitar DVD that I’ll be using as my guide and possibly the source for certain parts, and create usable rips of the Classic Media DVD and the Japanese Blu-ray. I’ll probably be approaching this in much the same way I did Ghidrah, only the syncing process will probably not take nearly as long, since only minimal edits were made to the film for the US version.

After this project’s done, I may take on a couple simple projects before moving on to the others I have planned. Depending on the level of interest, I may also undertake the recreation of the export version of this film, titled Invasion of the Astro-Monsters, which features a slightly different soundtrack and a few bits the Monster Zero version cuts out. (I’ll be working from an SD reconstruction provided by ultrase7en from Toho Kingdom, so I can’t really vouch for the absolute accuracy of what I’ll be creating, but it’ll be an interesting side project.) I’ll probably open up a poll on that one when I finish this first version. What I’ll almost definitely be doing is creating a new, more accurate version of my AIP Destroy All Monsters reconstruction based on some info provided by Space Hunter M - specifically, I’ll be taking a different approach to the splices in the reference copy and correcting some other small errors and issues with the old version.

But first, there’s Monster Zero. I’ll be starting by syncing the HD Japanese footage to the Simitar DVD, which is the best source available that’s actually taken from a US film element (unlike CM’s DVD). Then there’s the matter of recreating the logos, title and credits in HD in as many cases as possible. There are a few spots where I’ll have to revert to SD sources, but since the title and credits mostly appear over static backgrounds, I’ll be able to recreate the vast majority. There are also a couple of unique visuals during the film proper in the US version; I predict I’ll be able to recreate some of them, but others (I’m thinking of Namikawa’s note and possibly the newspaper headlines) will have to be left in SD. For the final touch, I’ll be comparing the quality of the Simitar and Classic Media audio tracks, and if the CM track is any better I’ll probably sync that up to the film.

Video Collector said:

Having just seen the finished project in its entirety, all I can say is thank you once again for all the effort and attention to detail you put in. The editing is seamless, the colours are wonderful and the amount of grain is just right. Apart from a single sound dropout (at 15:37) the sound was perfect, preserving some of the wonderfully analog crackly nature of its 16mm origins.

Also, thank you to all of you who contributed your resources and advice. Truly this is the work of a community working together and pooling its resources. It’s a great time to be a Godzilla fan!

Oh, and once again, thank you for the shout-out in the credits 😃

I’m glad you enjoyed it! And yeah, that sound drop-out is probably where I had to adjust the synchronization. There’s a skip there that’s present on both the video master used for all the US VHS releases (and the CM recreation) and the Siren DVD, suggesting a damaged audio master. After that skip, the audio runs a little under half a second ahead of the picture for (I think) the rest of the reel in every legit copy of the US version.

Faithwyn said:

Wow! I just stumbled on this thread! I have the first 5 Godzilla films
but my copy of GHIDRAH is just awful! Is there any big difference between
the .MP4 & .MKV versions?

A screen from my old copy:

The MP4 version is a different encode at a slightly lower bitrate (avg. 20mbps video and 192kbps audio as opposed to 25mbps with DVD quality audio). The MKV is also 1920x1080 with black bars at the top and bottom, as opposed to the 1920x818 MP4 which just has the actual frame of the movie itself, and has chapter stops and comes with Blu-ray artwork (it’s meant to be easily remuxed to the Blu-ray format but can also be watched with VLC).

I do really appreciate the folks who obtain and share these rare sources and share them with the rest of us. There’s you with these VHS captures, there’s Echo3 fixing me up with a copy of the MHD Godzilla 1985, there’s a guy on Toho Kingdom who’s actually gone and bought a new capture card and LaserDisc player for the sake of creating a new LD capture of Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, there’s folks like Space Hunter M who, aside from posting things on the Spleen and so on, operate YouTube and DailyMotion accounts that are an utter goldmine of material from rare alternate versions of these films. Modest as I try to be, I am quite proud of what I’ve done with these projects - the actual editing and so on is basically always a solo effort - but I couldn’t possibly have even gotten started if there weren’t other fans out there willing to share resources.

Echo3 said:

God Save Pop Punk said:

The reconstruction is available from all the usual platforms; I hope you all enjoy it!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

It looks amazing. Honestly, the opening logo and title are almost too clean… they need film grain or some gate judder… 😉

I deliberately kept the grain low on this project to try and keep it relatively consistent with the Toho transfer - I only added it to scenes using still images/digital recreations (so just the opening and the end title card). I think the level here was 84%, whereas Godzilla 1985 had it set at 100%. Maybe I’ll try low-to-mid 90s next time.

Jetrell Fo said:

I was very surprised to see my name in the credits along with all the other great nods you give. Thank you kindly for allowing us to participate in any way we could for the reconstructions. You’re work and care are very much appreciated.

😃

I’m glad you liked it! The VHS rips you uploaded over on the Spleen look fantastic; Son of Godzilla in particular will be incredibly helpful once I get around to that one. The copy of that I had before was really awful.

ray_afraid said:

Watched this last night. Great job! I haven’t seen this film in anything close to HD, so this was really eye popping!
I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: Red Menace deserves to be a name known by all kaiju fans!
Thanks everyone who contributes anything to these projects!

Thanks! I was really impressed by how nice the HD transfer for this looked; it had some of the usual issues with Toho’s HD transfers but it was still head and shoulders above the DVD. I really didn’t do much of anything to it, just enough contrast boosting to improve the black levels and a little nudge to the saturation.

The reconstruction is available from all the usual platforms; I hope you all enjoy it!

Merry Christmas, everybody!

That’ll be quite the haul. Though a lot of the movies are being shown multiple times, so odds are you’ll have a complete recording of the first movie from later in the weekend.

I’m personally curious what sources/transfers are being presented - I imagine the movies are dubbed, but do they use the current DVD masters? The old TV masters? Are they in HD? It’ll be interesting to find out.

I’ve just finished rendering both the MP4 and the MKV and am uploading them to my usual spots; they’ll be on the Spleen as well!

Good to know. I might go back over that project one of these days; I believe I still have all the raw materials I’d need except for the Blu-ray rip, which I deleted to free up hard drive space.

I thought it might be. I may go back sometime and do a corrected version of this where instead of recreating the splices (and covering one up as I did here), I just leave a gap in the audio. For some reason that approach didn’t occur to me while I was making this.

Also, I suspect a couple other cuts might be splices, except that I could also see them being intentional edits - cutting out the sign outside the emergency headquarters in that shot of the ruins of Tokyo, for instance, since most of the US audience wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.

Just bumping this with a little update - I’ve just uploaded both the MP4 and MKV versions of this project to a private tracker that’s popular 'round these parts, so head on spleenwards if you’re interested! I’m hoping to at least get one other seed on each by sometime tomorrow, since I’ll have to disconnect from the internet for a bit in order to render my newest project without my laptop crashing, so grab them now or there’ll probably be a couple days where they’re not available.

Just bumping this with a little update - I’ve just uploaded both the MP4 and MKV versions of this project to a private tracker that’s popular 'round these parts, so head on spleenwards if you’re interested! I’m hoping to at least get one other seed on each by sometime tomorrow, since I’ll have to disconnect from the internet for a bit in order to render my newest project without my laptop crashing, so grab them now or there’ll probably be a couple days where they’re not available.

I really enjoy the different aesthetics on each cover! The Japanese poster variant looks like something we might get on an official release, while the US poster version really replicates the sort of low-budget look of the actual poster perfectly. I love how well you can use and manipulate the original text, too - I’ve had to do similar things for my other projects, but this is really on another level entirely.

Damn, lots of activity since I last checked the thread!

Space Hunter M said:

The “splices” are just the physical glue marks that were used to edit the negative together. They’re just visible in the HDTV transfer because of how much picture information was saved. There is nothing unusual about them and erasure is not a good idea (The Blu-Ray does this anyway).

Also, any restoration of Monster Zero using a Japanese source is a fool’s errand because all Japanese film sources of the uncut version are inherently INFERIOR to the domestic U.S. elements (which are in desperate need of a re-scan a la the Classic Media Gargantuas).

The uncut camera negative of Monster Zero doesn’t exist anymore. The uncut version Toho uses for video is a foreign element several generations removed from the OCN and it has stabilization and fading problems.

Using the Classic Media reconstruction of Ghidrah is a fool’s errand as well (I realize you acknowledge the sync errors, but there are unnoticeable visual ones as well). It’s not very accurate and pretty clumsy at times. If you want to carefully re-create Ghidrah, use an original 16mm source like I did for my SD reconstructions. Also, the best (incomplete) source for the audio is the 16mm print on the Australian Siren Entertainment DVD since it’s not an old 1 inch tape master.

Ghidrah also has a shot that’s longer than in any existing Japanese source (a shot of Infant Island when the Shobijin summon Mothra).

The end title you did is pretty good (nice work removing the “Owari”), but it’s not accurate. The 8mm Ken Films 'scope version of Ghidrah shows that the end title is supposed to be stretched to widescreen:
https://s30.postimg.org/gnizs8k4x/vlcsnap_2016_12_17_09h02m32s183.png

I made that mistake myself when I did my reconstruction. I’ve since corrected it:
https://s29.postimg.org/qrvkj7vc7/vlcsnap_2016_12_17_09h05m34s217.png

BoxMonster and I collaborated on a version of the opening credits in 720p with fake gate weave and grain for the freeze frames and a font that’s very similar to the original. I still have the .mov he sent me.

I’m aware any reconstruction of these films using the Toho masters is only ever going to be as good as those masters, but seeing as a new scan is a little beyond my means, it’ll have to do. That a new scan of actual US elements would inherently be better is pretty obvious; we just haven’t got one yet, which is why I’m doing this.

As for the glue marks, I figured the Blu-ray didn’t have them as I’ve watched a bootleg copy and didn’t recall seeing them; I just second-guessed myself as it had been a while and I didn’t have that copy on hand to check (I was out of town).

I had a feeling there might be some errors I’d missed, though. The synchronization in the scene at Shindo and Naoko’s house was egregious enough for me to notice it pretty much immediately, but if there were any less obvious ones I wouldn’t really have any way of knowing (unless someone pointed them out to me, like when the newscast comes on in the cafe).

I appreciate the tip regarding the Australian DVD - do you happen to have a rip of that? (Also, you say it’s incomplete - do you know offhand what’s missing? I understand the WRO logo is omitted from most if not all copies, but is there anything else?) Also, I’ve seen that reconstruction of the credits; I actually used it as a reference/basis for my own version. I think I found the exact font you used, too.

Anyway, seeing as I’ve still got a week before my target release date anyway, I’m more than happy to try and revise this project to make it more accurate. If you could send me a copy of your reconstruction, or if anyone could point me to a VHS capture or TV recording of a 16mm source, I’d be extremely grateful.

(I appreciate your dropping in, by the way. Always good to hear from an expert.)

EDIT: He hooked me up with a Spleen invite, I’ll be at a friend’s place tomorrow to download a VHS rip without getting banned from my university’s wifi.

Huh, I got the same message three times from someone, and tried responding to two of them before just sending a new message, but got that error on all three tries. At least we know these posts/messages are getting through I guess.

Ah, those splices? It’s not the only one of these films that’s got that going on; the same thing shows up on the Toho transfers of Godzilla vs. Megalon and Godzilla 2000, possibly others. Wish I could do something about that. Might be fixable in relatively static shots, we’ll see.

Here’s a quick look at how I recreated the last shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdVtvW1bqYE

It may be a bit short on explanation, but all of the components of the recreated shot are covered.

Well, I’ve finished recreating the opening credits and added the finishing touches to the whole project. All that’s left now is rendering and testing. I’m planning to approach the actual release in a slightly more organized fashion this time around; I plan to render and upload both the MP4 and MKV versions between now and Christmas, then publish the download links on Christmas morning. (I’m also waiting on some Blu-ray art from Video Collector; I’d like to be able to include those with the initial release this time, which is another reason I’m not just putting this project up right away.)

In the meantime, I’ll probably be uploading a couple more BTS-type videos, so keep an eye out for those!

It’s been up and available a while now; the download links are in the same place as those for the rest of my projects.

You’re right about the MHD version having some differences from the theatrical/video version; however what that last post is referring to is the fact that Kraken Releasing’s Blu-ray adds the dialogue track from Toho’s export dub to the music/sound effects from Toho’s 5.1 mix of the Japanese version, as opposed to using the existing mono mix. There are also two different mixes of the music/effects for the Japanese version, the most notable difference being that death cry.

I might eventually revise the audio track on my reconstruction to match the theatrical/video version, but for the time being I’m moving on to other projects, seeing as the current version is already almost completely visually accurate.

I’ve finished syncing the HD video; I also recreated the ending title card last night.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/l-LY0KEMdCU

Now all that’s left to do is recreate the opening credits, render and test it.

The Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster reconstruction is available now!

The 1080p HD reconstruction of the original US version of Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster is completed and available to download! Have a look on the spleen or send a private message for details.

Notes on this release:

• The Toho transfer had its contrast and saturation boosted slightly in order to alleviate its rather flat appearance.
• While a “first draft” of the project was prepared using the Classic Media DVD recreation of the US version as a reference, it was revised using a VHS rip, meaning that the numerous errors in the CM version are corrected here.
• A sound synchronization error, present in all available versions of the dub, that affected much of the scene of Naoko and Shindo at home and extended into the What Are They Doing Now?/”Call Happiness” scene, has been corrected.
• The audio for the US version was largely sourced from a PAL DVD released by an Australian company called Siren. This DVD featured an original scan of a 16mm TV print, meaning it had higher sound quality than any other available source, all other releases being made from an old videotape master. However, the Siren version is full of splices and gaps in the audio as well as some audio distortion, so many small portions of the soundtrack had to be carefully patched using the audio from the Classic Media DVD.
• The Walter Reade Organization logo was reinstated before the title card. The version used here was in effect a collaborative effort: The icon and text were recreated by Video Collector, and placed/scaled using an actual image of the logo. The recreation made by goji1986 from Toho Kingdom for his Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster reconstruction was used as a reference for the starfield; I made the background.
• The original “The End” title card was recreated using the Siren DVD as a reference; its “stretched” appearance (similar to the opening credits) is apparently how it really would have appeared in a scope print.

Merry Christmas, folks!

Original post:

I’m currently working on an HD reconstruction of the re-cut, dubbed US version of Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster, released by Walter Reade-Sterling. I’ll be using a bootleg copy of the Japanese Blu-ray as my primary video source and using the Classic Media DVD recreation of the US version as my primary reference and audio source, while also correcting a couple of editing and audio sync errors in that version.

I managed to get about halfway through syncing the HD video before Vegas became unusable due to repeated freezing, crashing, and misreading the file I remuxed the Blu-ray video into for editing, so I muxed a new file with a different program and started over. I’m just shy of a half-hour into the movie at this point, though thanks to the shuffling of scenes in the US version it’s not always possible to be precise about how far through it I am. After that, I’ll have to recreate the English credits (including reinstating the Walter Reade-Sterling logo in place of the Toho Scope logo that Classic Media haphazardly inserted at the beginning), which ought to be relatively simple.

I’m hoping to have this out by Christmas, and given how simple the project is overall and how it’s going so far, I’m reasonably confident I can manage that. After that I plan to do an HD version of Monster Zero for release hopefully sometime in January, then reconstructions of Godzilla vs. the Thing, Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, the US TV version of Son of Godzilla and finally (for shits and giggles, since someone sent me the Simitar DVD) Godzilla’s Revenge throughout the rest of 2017. There’ll probably be more after that; that’s just all I have planned at the moment.

I’m glad you like it! If you’re interested, I’m working on an HD version of the US dub of Ghidrah the Three-Headed Monster that I’m hoping to have out by Christmas. I should probably go make a thread for that, actually.

I actually ran into this issue a few times working on my reconstruction of Godzilla 1985; sometimes a shot in the copy of the (edited) US version I was recreating would go on a frame longer or begin a frame earlier than the same shot in the HD copy of the Japanese version I was using to upgrade it to HD.

(There’s also the fact that the US Blu-ray of the Japanese version uses the Japanese HDTV master as opposed to the master used for the Japanese Blu-ray, meaning that there are some missing frames around reel changes.)

The MKV is now up as well!