SpacemanDoug

yotsuya said:

As a Star Trek fan and as someone who took the time to rip the BR disc into my streaming collection with the original soundtrack and FX, here are my comments on the originality and quality.

First the series was indeed messed with, but this first happened back in the 60’s. There are records of what opening titles each episode initially had and several of them have been changed. But that was not a new change and it was done to the original negatives.

Second, a must have for anyone looking into this is the soundtrack box set. It has all the original recordings as well as the new titles recordings. From that it is clear that all of the BR original soundtracks have the original music. None of them have been updates with the new recordings.

I’ve been watching Star Trek TOS faithfully since 1984. I am very well acquainted with what we had back then vs. what we have now. The colors prior to the recent scans are horrible. The command uniforms wash out to gold from their original avocado yellow-green. That happened in some FX shots anyway, but most of the shots should show a distinct green tint. That is how you know you are looking at a good scan. This was confirmed by James Cawley who was friends with Bill Theiss and secured a sample of the original uniform material which verified that it had a distinct green tint. Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II and Star Trek Continues fan productions used the correct colors for their uniforms.

The remastered versions corrected many small inconsistencies in the episodes and those are NOT reflected in the original cuts. Some are very subtle and would be easy to miss, but they definitely are not there in the original versions included in the blu-ray set.

Prior to home video release, we were subjected to edited versions on TV. 4 minutes was cut from each episode. the first time most people saw these (who had not collected the VHS or LD releases) was when the SciFi Channel aired the extended versions with commentary in 90 minutes slots. They aired the episodes twice, once with Shatner introducing and once with Nimoy. While the episode cut is the same, those versions had incorrect colors.

I am satisfied that the episodes as delivered on Blu-Ray, when played in their original form, are indeed original. In order to create the remastered version, they went back to the original negatives and scanned them. This represents the best version of the episodes. If you want to undo how clean they made them, add some film grain, but there was no release prior that is as good. I’ve seen them all. My understanding is that was the first time they went back to the negatives so in terms of picture and sound, they should be the most authentic to how they were aired originally.

Now, The Cage. That is a different story entirely. Gene owned the negative and a B&W print. Both complete. I do not know what transpired exactly. I’m sure NBC viewed a color print, but no one has mentioned it. But when it came time to do The Menagerie, Gene brought in the negative for them to use. He expected them to copy it. Instead they cut it up. I’m not clear on the sound, but I think the sound was a separate element. The original sound appears to be lost. Gene’s B&W print made the convention circut and received some damage over the years. One section of dialog, which was captured by an in room audio recording by a fan, was lost. When they went to do the first VHS release, he wanted The Cage included so they made the hybrid one. They took the audio and video from The Menagerie and created the first mixed cut. This was the first most fans had seen this. Then a miraculous thing happened. The cut footage was found. So the next video release (The mixed version came out as episode 1, the restored version came out as episode 99 - I had both VHS tapes and was very pissed off that people thought 99 was colorized). And you can tell where the footage changes because it was not the same scan. They literally scanned the missing parts and edited them back in. But that missing dialog was not included. When they released the DVD version, both parts were scanned the same way so the footage was more consistent. When the BR came out, they had rescanned it again and you can’t tell the difference. But in each case the edit where there is missing footage is noticeable because the video is different in each edit. But really only in that one spot.

Now I can’t speak for the quality of the audio tracks on the LD vs. the DVD vs. the Blu-ray. I have not looked at those. But my experience with Star Wars indicates that those old LD AC3 tracks are as good as any modern soundtrack. The analog ones likely have more noise, and given the copy history of these episodes, probably has a lot more noise which is not original to the episodes. Until the remastered, they were using a film print as the source for all the home video releases. So the Remastered (and hence the original version on the Blu-ray) went back to the negatives and is made from the best sources. It should be the most faithful to the original you can get and I am satisfied with that. No, some of the episodes are not totally original as to how their originally aired, but they are faithful to their first rerun (Which is when some of the opening titles were changed).

But that soundtrack box set for TOS is a must for anyone investigating the sounds of TOS. It is full of information and glorious music (not just the often repeated tracks form previous TOS soundtrack releases).

Ok so from what it seems like you’re saying, the mono tracks on the BDs of TOS are not downmixes

Do they still have the new sound effects the remixes have anywhere?

Fullmetaled said:

SpacemanDoug said:

No, it’s been confirmed Nick lost the original uncut masters

Then how was overseas dvds mostly uncut?

Probably from international masters that were not in Nick’s hands, if it’s true what you say at least

It’s a lot better than a lot of Paramount’s 4k releases

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fUwZ-MBRDT0

No, it’s been confirmed Nick lost the original uncut masters

Beavis lee ray said:

Does anyone know if later versions of the king turd collection corrected the welcome to the jungle baby your going to die line that was missing from the original on lawn and garden? Also did they use a broadcast version of patients patients with the try talking out of your mouth instead of your butt line which was also missing from the original version because the Mike judge collection cartoon segments were used for much of it with videos and scenes spliced in.

For the Jungle line, I think a v2 version fixed that cause I know a version I saw had it

silverwheel said:

AdmiralWasabi10191 said:

SpacemanDoug said:

AdmiralWasabi10191 said:

timemeddler said:

interesting, there’s a 480p transfer on the spleen claiming to be the 1973 version, is that from this print? Perhaps it could be used as the source to created a despecialized version of American Graffiti.

The Spleen can go suck a fuck.
35mm print would be best. 1080p or 4K scan. Would it ever happen? That’d be neat.

The one on myspleen is a 35mm scan, it’s just 480p

That’s fucking hilariously stupid that it’s 480p, not 1080p or 4K.

Considering that the scan was made almost 40 years ago, I’m not sure what more you’d expect. Certainly don’t know why you feel so committed to shittalking it.

How do you know it’s a 40 year old scan?

SpookyDollhouse said:

I feel if this actually got off the ground he’d inevitably reconstruct his 4 hour cut as it was before Fox went in and did their own thing. Cuz as we know they pushed him around on set but he did what he could in the editing room before the top dogs went “nope.” I don’t think anything SFX would get changed really. Lynch isn’t super into that sort of thing to be honest.

Minor correction, it was Dino De Laurentis and Universal, Fox had no involvement in this movie

Fullmetaled said:

SpacemanDoug said:

crissrudd4554 said:

Dream Weaver was always a different recording. Gary Wright re-recorded it specifically for the film.

Apparently to restore Stairway, Paramount used a pre-theatrical mix with the OG Dream Weaver, so this replacement isn’t anything new necessarily

Why did this happen in the first place this just seems very odd.

Paramount likely used an element that happened to be the pre-release audio which not only had the original Stairway notes but also had the OG version of Dream Weaver so it was simply an oversight

crissrudd4554 said:

Dream Weaver was always a different recording. Gary Wright re-recorded it specifically for the film.

Apparently to restore Stairway, Paramount used a pre-theatrical mix with the OG Dream Weaver, so this replacement isn’t anything new necessarily

AdmiralWasabi10191 said:

timemeddler said:

interesting, there’s a 480p transfer on the spleen claiming to be the 1973 version, is that from this print? Perhaps it could be used as the source to created a despecialized version of American Graffiti.

The Spleen can go suck a fuck.
35mm print would be best. 1080p or 4K scan. Would it ever happen? That’d be neat.

The one on myspleen is a 35mm scan, it’s just 480p

PsyKovic said:

SpacemanDoug said:

The “best” is the US 2009 BD even though it’s slightly windowboxed for overscan, it doesn’t have the DNR issues though and has the original Japanese stereo mix (however it also has dub titles rather than proper translation subs)

The re-releases from FUNmation use the same master iirc but exclude the original mix, which is significant because the remix has many changes

The true Theatrical Mix Was Never Released On Home Media for what I’ve heard

If that’s true then idk how the current stereo track would be any different, seems original to me

I’m interested

Charbelsadness said:

Hey. I accidentally stumbled on your thread. Would you be able to tell me what the difference is between your version of Sabrina and the DVD? are the episodes extended?

The DVDs have various edits due to music rights and so using different sources he restored the missing scenes and music where needed

RU.08 said:

We have the opportunity to borrow and scan a Cinderella IB Technicolor print in the US. The cost of scanning this is $370. Total scanning costs are about $600. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you guys that’s a bargain, we don’t have to purchase, rent, or even ship the print.

And, the print is in EXCELLENT CONDITION. Probably better condition than my print. And, unlike mine, it can be scanned as soon as NEXT WEEK!

As some of you know I have a print as well and it can be scanned in the future. But this is a limited opportunity to get a print that’s in top condition scanned, and that may end up making scanning mine (which will cost more) unnecessary.

And more great news, after this is scanned we can rent Lady and the Tramp from the same source for scanning. And after that is scanned we can rent Sleeping Beauty too. And more!

Begin your pledges/donations, please!

Current list of generous donors:

• slumberdore
• Anonymous
• pleasehello
• ahughes03
• Soupdrinker0
• titanic
• Anonymous
• Anonymous
• hombredesilla
• Warstorck
• FrankB
• freedomland
• MWilson

Donations so far: $550 / 600

An exclusive early release will be made available to donors, hopefully followed by a wider “myspleen” release at some point later this year/early next year.

Short test scan done on the first couple of minutes of Reel 1:

It’s heavily compressed, but hopefully shows the condition the print is in. Remember that heads and tails of reels are where most of the wear usually is.

Screenshots:

Cinderella is a two-phase project. Only donors will be given access to the phase 1 release.

Phase 1:

• The borrowed print will be scanned.
• Early access release will be made available exclusively to donors.

Phase 2:

• My print will be scanned.
• Wider release on Myspleen.

Are donations closed?

Also regarding the missing music cues, does that apply to only the 5.1 track?

They included a mono track on the BD

Mango said:

SpacemanDoug said:

American Movie is getting an official blu-ray from Sony

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/American-Movie-Blu-ray/322631/

Excellent news. Sad that it doesn’t include Coven though…

Yea it is sad

What about the hour long version of Sabrina Gets Her License?

American Movie is getting an official blu-ray from Sony

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/American-Movie-Blu-ray/322631/

CannonShy said:

Can confirm that apart from the missing “previously on…” S06E01 + S06E02 on the NTSC DVD is exactly the same as broadcast including the “Moon logo” end-credits.

The two part version on streaming has both parts run 43 minutes, I examined it next to the 89 minute movie version of the episode and determined all of the cuts to the episode in the two part version were in part 1

Part 2 had nothing cut from it but one of the scenes from part 1 was moved to part 2

towne32 said:

SpacemanDoug said:

Class316 said:

SpacemanDoug said:

I do know for a fact the episodes won’t be in their original form

A lot of the early episodes after the fire controversy had their original masters altered to remove fire references

It’s also possible Judge himself won’t allow certain moments to be seen again or entire episodes

Some of the new eps have fire references. Why would they remove from the old ones?

it has to do with the episode Comedians, when it aired a family claimed their son set the house on fire because of that episode he saw on TV (though this turned out to be a hoax) and MTV freaked out and censored prior episodes removing fire references or scenes for future broadcasts and apparently they destroyed the uncensored masters, meaning that they “officially” only exist censored now supposedly

since Sporting Goods is its censored version on Paramount+ (iirc it only aired uncensored once), it seems like that certain edits are baked in to the early episodes now

Or at least the majority of tapes out there contain the edit, and are more likely to be transferred by someone who isn’t particularly aware.

10 episodes were added this week, by the way.

yep I saw, all of them for seasons 5 and 7

any edits to them?

Class316 said:

SpacemanDoug said:

I do know for a fact the episodes won’t be in their original form

A lot of the early episodes after the fire controversy had their original masters altered to remove fire references

It’s also possible Judge himself won’t allow certain moments to be seen again or entire episodes

Some of the new eps have fire references. Why would they remove from the old ones?

it has to do with the episode Comedians, when it aired a family claimed their son set the house on fire because of that episode he saw on TV (though this turned out to be a hoax) and MTV freaked out and censored prior episodes removing fire references or scenes for future broadcasts and apparently they destroyed the uncensored masters, meaning that they “officially” only exist censored now supposedly

since Sporting Goods is its censored version on Paramount+ (iirc it only aired uncensored once), it seems like that certain edits are baked in to the early episodes now

CannonShy said:

SpacemanDoug said:

But I will say for the season 6 premiere, that one aired as a two hour episode and part 1 has a lot of small bits cut from it in the two part version

The streaming version does have a “previously on” segment but it’s shortened compared to the original version

The US DVD at least has that episode in its original format despite editing out that segment

Yup S06E01 seems to have been messed around with quite a bit.
– The broadcast starts with a series recap that lasts about 1:35 beginning with "Previously on Buffy the vampire Slayer: You are the chosen one, you alone can stop them… ".
– The streaming starts with “Previously: I know you never loved me…” and recaps the events of season 5 and lasts about 0:45.

The other difference I noted was S02E10 - which begins differently: “Last week on buffy the vampire slayer” vs “Previously on …” Streaming vs UK broadcast. I don’t have a copy of the US broadcast of that episode, so I’d need to validate against the PAL and NTSC DVDs.

However, in general, the “previously on” segments on streaming seem to line up with the broadcast segments (I spot checked S01E07, S01E12, S02E06, S03E21, S04E22, S05E05, S06E06, S07E01 ) - are you aware of any others that differ ?

there are at least three different versions of the season 6 premiere I’m aware of:
-the original US broadcast version (which is on the US DVD minus the “previously on” segment), which runs about 89 minutes without commercials (86 minutes without the segment)
-the UK DVD version, which is a widescreen version of the same episode but it has the “previously on” segment restored, however the deer sacrifice scene has two shots cut from it
-the two part version which is on streaming services, it has various small cuts throughout and one scene is moved to another portion of the episode

narth said:

CannonShy said:

Hey - long time lurker.

I’ve just gone through the local copies I have of Buffy - I was interested in Buffy back in the day, so I acquired various scene releases of the US broadcasts (#buffy-unlimited on EFNet), some of these were C-band satellite feed captures of the masters as they were fed to TV stations. I got busy with other stuff during the later seasons, and I made the mistake of lending my only copy of some of the material to someone who was more than a little flake-y. Lesson learned, but as a result: there are some pretty big holes.

I’ve compiled the following spreadsheet of openings over the past few days (csv format): https://pastebin.com/sKi7TGbt

Regarding the data in the sheet: Where I’m less than 100% sure I’ve put a “?” in the “Intro” column. The material I’ve checked to draw the conclusion is in the “Notes” column. I use the term “Cold open” to describe no opening - it’s not technically the right term - but you get the idea. “US Master” refers to a scene release that ripped the C-band TV station upload and includes master header, these would be the same as the station subsequently aired, so the relationship between the master and the broadcast should be 100%.

Key things:

• The PAL DVDs are not necessarily 100% reliable at determining how an episode opened. For example: S01E06 “The Pack” has a cold open on the DVDs - but I have a copy of the original US broadcast which has the boiler plate “In every generation…” at the start.
• Double episodes that were broadcast on a single night may be tricky: i.e. S06E01-S06E02 and S06E21-S06E22 skip the “previously on…” on the second episode - but streaming includes it. S01E01-S01E02 were broadcast on a single night, and I’m not clear if they had a “In every generation” intro on S01E02, but the US DVD includes it.
• “Last week on…” vs “Previously on…” on S02E10 Streaming says one thing - but the original UK broadcast says something different
• S06E01 “US master” also has a different ‘previously on…’ to streaming - with an entire series recap similar to the one on S05E22
• S01E01 had some WB specific intro bits that might be worth preserving - copy available here (is it canon?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvDbvHsqiOc
• I haven’t gone frame-by-frame comparing the “previously on…” between Streaming, broadcast and DVD, so it’s possible there are further differences, but I’ve called out where they are obvious to me.
• Later seasons seemed to have a “previously on…” for every episode - the last episode with no recap (excluding part two of double episodes) was S05E16, 50 episodes before the end of the series.

The WB specific bumper “Tonight’s WB presentation is intended for our adult and teen viewers, and is not recommended for younger viewers.” is kinda fun and it would throw it into the ring consideration for inclusion.

Would welcome feedback - it’s very possible I’m wrong in places. I may make some edits over the next few days - I’m trying to review the PAL DVDs, but it’s slow going.

The original OP is no longer working on this project, so I’ve taken over. That’s awesome to hear that you’ve put alot of research into it and if you’d like to help out, I’d love to get a PM from you!

Yep, I decided if one person is already doing it, unless you have better sources it’s pointless to do them simultaneously

But I will say for the season 6 premiere, that one aired as a two hour episode and part 1 has a lot of small bits cut from it in the two part version

The streaming version does have a “previously on” segment but it’s shortened compared to the original version

The US DVD at least has that episode in its original format despite editing out that segment

As for the season 6 finale, it likely just aired as two episodes back to back because it’s presented that way on the US DVDs

SpacemanDoug said:

Moiisty said:

SpacemanDoug said:

SpacemanDoug said:

the Paramount+ versions are mostly intact afaik content wise, bizarrely though the “welcome to Jackass” segment in the first episode is replaced with the one in the second episode (which results in a repeat intro whenever you watch the second episode) and the entire Willy Wonka parody from the same episode is cut out as well, not sure if anything else is edited out of the series but I wouldn’t be surprised, and pretty much all of the music is changed as well

if I was given rips of the Paramount+ versions then I could do some restoration work here and there considering the quality of them is much better than the TV rips

I was DEAD wrong about this, it turns out the edits vary wildly from episode to episode

some episodes just need music restored and others need entire stunts restored (I’ve also encountered a couple episodes where all music was intact but a couple of pranks or stunts were still missing), it seems MTV several years ago censored various episodes by removing “dangerous” stunts and to pad out the runtime replaced them with a repeated stunt from either a previous or future episode (in one instance I saw a stunt repeated twice) and Paramount+ used whatever masters were available, even if a few of the episodes ended up being full on butchered in the process

I’m having to do more work than I thought I’d have to initially but surprisingly, this is still less work than if I was working off of the DVD versions, at least in a lot of instances the episodes were returned to their original format somewhat and I don’t have to search every single file for a single stunt in most instances

I did find a few months ago a fanedit called Turd edition or smth but how would it differ to yours

Not sure cause I’m using at least four different sources to do this with

They also appear to use a PAL framerate because they converted everything to 576p which isn’t in their native NTSC, resolution, they also claim to have de-noised and deinterlaced the picture which I chose not to do

Also I’ve noticed that a couple of the sketches that required upscaling from TV sources are present on the Paramount+ masters

ok so I managed to get ahold of the Turd collection and it’s actually not as faithful as he made it out to be and I’ll state why

1. all of the “coming up next” segments that happened before commercial breaks are still missing along with the bumpers that were used for fade ins coming off of commercial breaks
2. the first season had a different “WARNING” variant compared to the one used for seasons 2 and 3 and he used the seasons 2 and 3 variant for the season 1 episodes, I restored the original in my versions

in my versions I’m restoring all of this

Moiisty said:

SpacemanDoug said:

SpacemanDoug said:

the Paramount+ versions are mostly intact afaik content wise, bizarrely though the “welcome to Jackass” segment in the first episode is replaced with the one in the second episode (which results in a repeat intro whenever you watch the second episode) and the entire Willy Wonka parody from the same episode is cut out as well, not sure if anything else is edited out of the series but I wouldn’t be surprised, and pretty much all of the music is changed as well

if I was given rips of the Paramount+ versions then I could do some restoration work here and there considering the quality of them is much better than the TV rips

I was DEAD wrong about this, it turns out the edits vary wildly from episode to episode

some episodes just need music restored and others need entire stunts restored (I’ve also encountered a couple episodes where all music was intact but a couple of pranks or stunts were still missing), it seems MTV several years ago censored various episodes by removing “dangerous” stunts and to pad out the runtime replaced them with a repeated stunt from either a previous or future episode (in one instance I saw a stunt repeated twice) and Paramount+ used whatever masters were available, even if a few of the episodes ended up being full on butchered in the process

I’m having to do more work than I thought I’d have to initially but surprisingly, this is still less work than if I was working off of the DVD versions, at least in a lot of instances the episodes were returned to their original format somewhat and I don’t have to search every single file for a single stunt in most instances

I did find a few months ago a fanedit called Turd edition or smth but how would it differ to yours

Not sure cause I’m using at least four different sources to do this with

They also appear to use a PAL framerate because they converted everything to 576p which isn’t in their native NTSC resolution, along with them claiming to denoise and deinterlace the episodes which I chose to not do, leaving it as is

Also I’ve noticed that a couple of the sketches that required upscaling from TV sources are present on the Paramount+ masters and moments that were incomplete on the DVD releases are complete on Paramount+, so not as much work is needed