Mango

Myself, and the judgment of strangers.

This is a project that along with my Weird Al and Devo projects is something I’ve been planning for years. As I continue to experiment with the world of AV restoration, I learn new things everyday. One thing I’ve learned is that it mostly results in failure, and due to my admittedly unrealistic expectations, I often get frustrated and abandon my projects only to come back to them once I’ve gotten more practice. This is one of those projects.

I’ve learned that in reality, this, the Weird al and Devo projects may never be released at all, at least to my standards. perhaps I put too much trust in Topaz AI and expect it to do all the work for me. Either way, I’ve started and abandoned all of my projects more then I can count. But since people seem to appreciate my work, I fell that I have to at least try. I pray that maybe by the end of the year, all of my projects will have some form of release. Maybe they wont be as grand as originally envisioned, but something is better than nothing.

Either way, this project, if ever finished will include:

Musik Films:
Radio-Activitat (1975)
Antenna (1975)
Trans-Europa Express (1977)
The Robots (1978)
Taschenrechner (1981)
Showroom Dummies (1982)
Das Model (1982)
Tour De France (1983)
Musique Non Stop (1986)
Der Telefon Anruf (1986)
Expo 2000 (1999)
Tour De France Étape 2 (2003)

TV Apperances:
Ruckzuck (Organization) [German TV Appearance] {1970}
Rücktoss-Gondoliere (German TV Appearance) [1970]
Koln II (German TV Appearance) [1970]
Tanzmusik (German TV Appearance) [1973]
Autobahn (Roger Mainwood Film) [1975]
Autobahn (UK TV Appearance) [1975]
Autobahn (US TV Appearance) [1975]
The Robots (Italian TV Appearance) [1978]
The Robots + Radioactivity (French TV Appearance) [1978]
Pocket Calculator (Italian TV Appearance) [1981]
The Model (German TV Appearance) [1982]
The Robots (German TV Appearance) [1991]
Expo 2000 (UK TV Appearance) [1999]
Areo Dynamik (US TV Appearance) [2003]

Bonus Videos:
Autobahn (Roger Mainwood Film) [1975]
Trans-Europe Express (English Version) [1977]
Ohne Maulkorb (Austrian TV Special) [1981]
Pocket Calculator (English Version) [1981]
Dentaku (Japanese Version) [1981]
The Model (English Version) [1982]
Tour De France (German Alternate Version) [1983]
Tour De France (French Alternate Version) [1983]
The Robots (English Remix) [1991]
The Robots (German Remix) [1991]
Radioactivity (Remix) [1991]
Expo 2000 (Remix) [1999]

The pilots and season 1 are complete. PM me for a download link.

Starting work on season 2 ASAP.

Gonna start work on this sometime soon. I don’t know of any HD release of any of these films, so I’ll upscale them to 4K from the DVD, (with color correction too). If there are any sources better then the dvd out there, please let me know.

Criterion recently announced a blu-ray of this film. Unsure if it’ll be the uncut version, but since it’s Criterion, its safe to assume that it will be.

Work is starting on version 2 again. More info soon.

Work had halted on this project while I waited for the new 4K restoration to be released. It’s an improvement, as it has the mono track, but it’s still missing the blue tint and high contrast. Working on this tonight, might even be able to upload tonight too.

Here’s another preview. This one has the regrain. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPSvpI2y7q4

WXM said:

Ah. Then I’ll say your results look great then! 😃

Thanks!

WXM said:

A lot of it looks great, but the “chorus shots” of our boys, their faces, sometimes look over-processed…

https://youtu.be/yfBIsug4XOw?t=37

But I don’t know the source so perhaps that’s to be expected with those shots? (Is this an artifact of de-noising…?)

Mango said:

I finally found a good blend of denoise that retains the detail.

Is noise really that much of a problem in the source?

I’m not out to poo poo on your results. They do look good! 😃 Just throwing out thoughts from looking closely at things as you seemed to say you wanted.

The noise in the source is absolutely atrocious. I’ve come to the conclusion that no amount of work will ever make these look “perfect”. I’m happy enough with the result, and I forgot to mention that these are being regrained to reduce banding. The version I posted had not been regrained yet.

Here’s a little preview. Let me know what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfBIsug4XOw

Moiisty said:

what is jp2 and jp3?

I’m guessing by the profile picture that they’re referring to the Jurassic Park sequels.

Yeaaah, so those last previews were really shitty. But I finally found a good blend of denoise that retains the detail. I’ve been working on this project several hours a day for about a week. Thank you to everyone once again for their incredible patience. I promise the end result will be worth it.

New screenshots.

As my experiments with upscaling software continue, I realize more and more that denoising removes far too much detail. I am making a promise to release this project before spring, (along with my Weird Al project) and I hope you guys appreciate the results. No amount of work will ever make these look “brand new”, but all I want is something marginally better then the DVD’s that are available. New versions of the upscales are being done, and the minimalist approach is the way to go. Screenshots of the new versions coming soon. Thank you for your unbelievable patience with me.

~ Mango

I should point out that this project will NOT include, “The Worst Of FOD” compilation video, or any of the documentaries like “Fact Or Fiction”. This project will only include films 1-4.

stwd4nder2 said:

Mango said:

They were shot on film, but transferred to video for VHS and DVD. A lot of the stock footage sources however, were originally on video.

Did the blu-ray of the first film go back to the film elements? You could probably get better results for the filmed segments color correcting and overlaying it on top of the upscaled DVD.

That would be tricky. The dvd is fullscreen, but the blu-ray is widescreen. There would be a huge quality difference on the top and bottom of the image.

stwd4nder2 said:

I for one am looking forward to seeing how this turns out. Been awhile since I’ve seen any of these, but weren’t they all shot on video? An upscaled version is probably the best we’ll ever get.

They were shot on film, but transferred to video for VHS and DVD. A lot of the stock footage sources however, were originally on video.

This is a project that may get me some flak, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. Since the only FOD thats available in HD is the first one, and its the shorter theatrical version rather then the extended home video cut, I thought it might be interesting to make a collection of all the FOD films in HD. The first one is on blu ray, but the color timing is all wrong, and it’s been cropped from fullscreen to widescreen. The audio has also been messed with to create a 5.1 surround track, whereas the dvd is fullscreen and has the original mono track. All of the films will be sourced from the DVD boxset.

This is strictly a project I’m doing for myself as I doubt there is any interest, but it will be available via pm once finished. For obvious reasons, I won’t be able to show any previews.

For the record, the majority of the footage in these films is fake.

Project Poster:

Images from my upscale of S1E1 Door-To-Door. The music video segments are being upscaled from VHS bootlegs, so they’re admittedly a little rough. I might be able to find some better sources with the help of the fan community.

Moiisty said:

how will yours differ to king turd v2/3

Well for one, it wont have the music videos for the pilots. Those will just be the uncut originals. 2nd, it wont include the movie or really any bonus features. 3rd it wont have the videos for alternate versions that only exist in low quality. It will however be completely uncensored with every known edit for later airings and DVD’s removed. They will be exactly the way they were on their first airing. The folks behind KingTurd V3 are going for a far more grand approach, and possibly still in SD, whereas my project will be 1080p upscales. Some fans were against the idea of upscaling, but that’s why I’m sure to clarify that my collection will NOT be KingTurd V3. KingTurd was a legend. I’d never be able to do what he did. The only real problem with the KingTurd collections is that there’s a lot of logos and still a few things missing from earlier episodes. I’ll try to correct that with my project. As fa as I have seen from countless fan uploads over the years, there are logoless versions of every episode.

Season 1 is already done btw. It only has three episodes. 😛

Using countless sources from official dvd’s to bootleg fan recordings, I will restore every episode of Beavis & Butthead seasons 1-7 (not season 8 from 2011) in HD. Keep in mind, some of the early episodes had multiple versions with alternate sets of music videos, (known as versions A, B, C etc) however for this project, they will all be restored from the original version A as they first aired on MTV. All will have original title cards, be fully uncensored and be upscaled, color corrected, and with remastered sound.

I should point out that a group of fans are working on a Version 3 of the infamous KingTurd collection from years ago. This project is NOT related to that one. This is just my own thing.

i thought the new year would re-energize me with a happy outlook on life. so far, nothing has changed since my last post. if anything, i’m even more paranoid then i was before. why does it feel like everything i say or do is wrong? its like no matter what i do, people still hate me. i dont know what the world wants from me. what is my purpose? why am i here?

Due to technical issues trying to save virtually unsavable material, the bonus features will be restored in SD. I will try to improve them somewhat, but the quality on some of them is atrocious. I have also decided to cut a few of the bonus features (The Compleat Al, The Weird Al Show, Al’s Home Movies) as they are readily available in good quality. I may do proper upscales of some of them later, but the main purpose here is to make a simple but fun collection of things that are somewhat rare.

Thanks for the feedback on the new versions btw. More screenshots, and progress reports coming soon. We’re moving along very nicely with this project. 😃

~ Mango

I actually found a bootleg VHS of the Behind The Music special on eBay, so I’ll use it as my source for it. The versions online are quite poor quality.