jongraeme

I’ve encountered someone who has explained a little more of the origins of the different edits. From what I understand:

They first produced a master ‘international’ edit, which runs to about 25m30s. These featured three fades for commercial breaks; one after the opening titles, one mid-show and one just before the end titles. The titles were centred. I am told these should be considered the definitive versions.

From these, a second set of masters were produced that cut a further 2m, reducing the running time to around 23m30s, this was to allow more advertising. These are the ‘short international’ edits, and PAL->NTSC standards converted copies of these were what were originally broadcast in the US.

The ‘UK domestic’ edits were similar in length to the full ‘international’ edits, but with the commercial break fades removed - replacing these with straight cuts, sometimes wipes, sometimes shortening sequences by a few seconds in the process, and occasionally adding brief linking shots to make the transition flow better. These had the left justified credits that included a credit for the guest star.

[There also appear to be a handful of master tapes out there of ‘short UK domestic’ edits, which are the ‘UK domestic’ versions shortened (as per the ‘short international’ edit) to allow an extra couple of minutes of adverts.]

The ‘German domestic’ edits are very close to the full ‘international edits’, but with the opening and closing credits replaced by German language ones. They retain the original ‘international’ cut advert break fades for the most part, and don’t contain the changes made for the ‘UK domestic’ versions. There are a few other changes, an entire extra guest in one episode, a different Waldorf and Statler balcony scene at the end of the Harry Belafonte episode, and possibly other differences.

[There are also other ‘… domestic’ edits in French, possibly Spanish and others, but these have rarely seen the light of day since original broadcast. As with the ‘German domestic’, they are largely based on the ‘international’ cut.]

…. Then Henson acquired the rights and the master tapes. And put together a syndication package. It’s the syndication package that forms the basis of everything that has been seen since.

There is speculation that many of the master tapes had been misplaced at this point, or who knows, it may just be a case of picking up the first tape off the shelf by someone who didn’t know any better. But, the syndication package ended up consisting of approximately 15 ‘uk domestic’ edits, and 105 ‘International’ edits.

[The German market is the only exception, where the episodes are still largely from the original ‘German domestic’ edits. While a bunch of re-mastering work was done for the syndication package, none was done for the German masters, which is why the quality of the German DVDs is not so good]

However, more master tapes than that clearly did survive, as the commercial releases over the years have occasionally thrown in an episode that is not one of the edits that was part of the syndication package.

So, for example, the ‘Season set’ DVDs feature the ‘UK domestic’ cut of the Elton John episode, but the ‘Best of’ DVD sets feature the ‘international’ cut. Most DVD releases of the Charles Aznavour episode feature the ‘International’ cut, but the French DVD used the ‘short UK domestic’ cut.

Another interesting example is the Chris Langham episode, which is one where the syndication package featured the ‘UK domestic’ edit with left-justified titles and edited ad-breaks, and the full ‘international’ edit has never been seen… however the ‘German domestic’ (which should be largely the same as the ‘international cut’) preserves the original ad-break fades… and an extra reaction shot in the ‘shuffling a pack of sausages’ sketch, that would likely be what was seen on the original US broadcast.

… Then, just to complicate things further, Disney acquired the rights and master tapes.

The Disney+ versions appear to be based on the syndication package, which had been extensively cleaned up and remastered for the DVD releases, therefore presenting an eclectic mix of ‘international’ and ‘UK domestic’ edits…

However, there seems to have been a decision to attempt to standardise on the ‘international’ end-credits, as only 4 of the 118 episodes on Disney+ have the ‘UK domestic’ left-justified credits. But rather than switch to the ‘international’ version for the whole episode though, they’ve taken the syndicated ‘UK domestic’ version, and patched on just the titles from the ‘international’ cut, to create a kind of hybrid. (I’m guessing because it avoided more substantial re-mastering of those 11 episodes).

So, from the known high quality sources, approximately 17 episodes are available (or can be reconstructed) of the ‘UK domestic’ versions. 117 (I think) either exist (or can be reconstructed) of the ‘international’ versions.

There are vanishingly few off-airs of any other ‘UK domestic’ cuts beyond that 17 that I’ve been able to find. If they do exist, they’ve largely been pushed out by more recent recordings of the syndication package (likely considered preferable as they would be higher quality).

For anyone interested in more detail… (you’d have to be crazy!), I’m putting together a spreadsheet of episodes, versions, releases, and differences. At least for the stuff I know about.

It’s not quite the best he could have had though; the Polygram French DVD set, while also missing the UK-skits, does have PAL versions of 6 of the 9 Time-Life episodes, and a further 2 PAL episodes not available anywhere else. In fairness, though, the Polygram set is very difficult to get hold of, especially volumes 20-24 where most of the interesting stuff is (it was sold as a monthly subscription, and of the few that subscribed, most had tired of the subscription and cancelled long before completing all 24 volumes).

That set of logo-less S4 and S5 episodes sounds like the unofficial Russian DVD release. (The easy way to tell is to check the language selection screen; if the spoken language options are english and german, and the subtitles are russian, then it’s the russian release.)

It’s compiled from the available english language PAL DVDs of S4 and S5 episodes (all those mentioned by thatguamguy above), plus NTSC->PAL conversions of the 9 episodes from the US Time-Life collection. It also has a further 7 PAL episodes from the french LCJ DVDs with the UK skits (which were missing from the french DVDs) patched in (1 DVD quality patch from a compilation video, and 6 patched from logo-free VHS), with the english language audio taken from the VHS. The remainder (including the Chris Langham episode) are from logo-free VHS recordings. There’s some jitter in the image, some dropout here and there, but they’re not bad for VHS transfers.

It’s almost, but not quite, sourced from the best quality that was available for S4 and S5 when it was compiled. The menus are all based on the official S1-3 sets and look quite professional. I think a lot of work went into that set, it was very nicely done.

The zoot tags are all wrong… but I’ll forgive him that. They’re hard to get decent sources for.

I have the unwatermarked LCJ box-set DVD release of the Ann Murray episode with “Dancing on the Ceiling”, audio is in French but the video is the original interlaced PAL.

As noted in a post above, the show was shot on PAL videotape, so the ‘highest quality’ would be that native PAL.

The US Disney+ episodes are interesting; they’ve taken the PAL masters, de-interlaced these, then upscaled to HD, so higher quality than any previous NTSC conversions. They’re also at 23.976fps, rather than the original 25fps. Previous NTSC conversions have done fuzzy field interpolations that significantly reduce the quality of the motion to get to 29.98fps, but preserve the speed. The Disney+ conversions use a technique that is the reverse of the “PAL speedup” usually used to convert 24fps film to 25fps video by speeding the playback up by 4%; they actually slow the speed down by 4%. This avoids motion interpolation artifacts, but means that the episodes play at the wrong speed. To avoid the audio playing at the wrong pitch, they’ve pitch adjusted so that although the speed is wrong, you don’t get pitch lowering.

For my own amusement I’ve had a go replicating the Disney+ workflow, using a motion interpolated de-interlacer, a superres up-scaler, and a pitch-corrected 4% slowdown of the audio and video. Using a combination of the German series 1 box set, the UK series 2 and 3 box sets, the French LCJ box set, and the UK Best of set, I’ve created patches for the Disney+ trimmed material for seasons 1-4, and the complete Brooke Shields episode. Oh, and both versions of the Harvey Korman episode. Not got to S5 yet.

But, again as noted in a post above, the ideal restoration would be in PAL. That’s harder.

I did have a go reversing the Disney+ workflow; slowing the speed by 4%, rescaling to 576p, then using a motion interpolator to re-create the interlacing. It slots nicely back into the PAL material for the one sequence present on the Disney+ episodes that is unavailable on any season 1 DVD, and for the LCJ DVDs of Seasons 4 and 5 episodes that were missing the UK spot. Not tried this for full episodes, but plan to have a go at some point.

I’m curious if you’ve managed to get hold of the PAL DVD releases of the James Coburn, Tony Randall and Marty Feldman, as I know these are not so easy to come by. The NTSC DVD versions of these episodes are a big step down in terms of quality (though do have the soundtracks you’d want). You’d definitely want the PAL ones for the best restoration.

I have reasonably high quality off-airs from Disney Channel PAL broadcasts of the four S5 episodes you mention, a German set with the logo at the top of the screen, and a UK set with the logo at the bottom; for the short musical skits I’m having a go combining these to produce a logo free version that’s 640x480 at 25p. Not the best quality, but the best I’ve been able to find. (And by ‘not the best’, these aren’t as good as PAL DVD quality, but are definitely still better than the NSTC DVD quality of available Muppet Show episodes).

Of course for a true restoration, you’d need the extra Waldorf and Statler scene from the Joel Grey episode, the only copy of that I have is terrible quality, and the final sax note at the end of each episode that are routinely cut from every DVD and broadcast. Those I don’t have many of, and only one of the specially shot ones where the final shot was an episode-related gag. I’d love to see all those properly restored.

Interested to know what your plan is, happy to help where I can.