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zxthehedgehog said:

DC Universe has these shorts in HD on their streaming service. They aren’t well cleaned, but I’ve had some decent results with screenshots with those transfers and an HD grain plate.

DC Universe is only available in the US… Are they transferred directly from the films or they are the up-scaled and badly de-noised versions of GAIAM?

Finally, in my project I decided to use WB sound where available and I 've noticed some more differences from Bosko and the other video releases.

• “At Electric Earthquake”, the music of the introduction is the right one, but it’s not synchronized correctly. It has to start almost 0,5 sec. earlier. The fact that the other versions are correct is proved from the sound effect when the letter Q of the word “Earthquake” is cracked. In the WB it isn’t connected with this sequence. From “faster than a speeding bullet” and on, it’s synchronized correctly.

• At Volcano, Bulleteers and perhaps other shorts (I haven’t checked all of them yet), the music of the introduction is wrong. The first music phrase is played once and the ending of the introduction is the longer one. At the other versions, the first music phrase is played twice and the ending is shorter.

I 've noticed that the PAL DVDs of the Superman boxset have larger frame, with more bits in it. Moreover, their sound is in better quality. Of course, they have been sped up at the rate of 25 fps (vs. 23.973 of the original NTSC video) and the pitch of the sound is higher, but these problems can be corrected very easily.

Personally, I prefer the sound at Bosko video because it has more frequencies of the voices and more natural sound. It’s just in less db than WB and it has some noise that can be cleaned easily. At the WB’s version, the high frequencies must have been boosted, but the result is very sharp.

These days I 've started to edit these cartoons from the PAL DVDs, slowing them down (it’s just an option at a program) and adding the sound from Bosko. I 've restored their original openings, as you did at the mild-mannered version. In other words, I do almost what you have done, using the video from the PAL DVDs for their larger frame and the sound from Bosko. If anyone is interested in the result, let me know!

Except from your actions, in order to use as much of the image from the WB as possible, I 've managed to synchronize the opening of the Eleventh Hour from there to its original duration and I 've added the part “more powerful than a streak of lightening” etc from another cartoon, as it is the same.

You 've said that, at the “Showdown”, the part “more powerful than a streak of lightening” etc couldn’t be synchronized, as you have already said. It was the first cartoon using this exact introduction and I 've noticed that the lightening has a different animation: it’s stable and the effect is presented with variation at the intense of the brightening. At all the proceeding cartoons, the lightening changes its shape at each cel. The animation of the pounding surf and of the roaring hurricane is the same, but these sequences fade to each other at a different time.

davextreme said:

Thank you for checking your copies of the movies. My guess about the Warner editions is that there simply wasn’t motivation, time, budget, and/or interest in doing the job thoroughly. It’s possible some of the prints have been damaged over time and there wasn’t a budget for restoring them, so they just decided to re-use segments that were in good condition. Not every restoration project gets the same amount of love that, say, Nolan devoted to the recent 2001: A Space Odyssey prints.

As for the downloads, I changed to a new web host and they came down at that time. I’ll see if I can put them back up elsewhere.

I suggest you to try megaupload or mediafire. Their capacity is muck larger than dropbox.

As for the restoration of Warner, I don’t think that the time and the cost for searching and restoring the original details of the films, or for just watching the older editions that already existed in Bosko’s productions of LDs and DVDs in order to indicate any missing bits from their videos, would be comparable to the duration and the cost of the re-coloring procedure that they held. Maybe they just didn’t really care, as the missing details don’t belong to the main part of the cartoon.

davextreme said:

Friends, I could use some help. I’ve noted before how often the closing of these videos doesn’t have the right audio. I’ve found, I think, that none of the versions of “The Mummy Strikes,” which I’m working on this week, has the right audio. Each of them has a different issue. There’s more info and a video here:

https://mmsuperman.tumblr.com/post/163565872645/the-mummy-music-mystery

If you have a copy of this particular short that has different closing music, please let me know on Twitter by replying to this tweet: https://twitter.com/davextreme/status/891340819076198400

I have some of these cartoons from a Greek Public Domain VHS from the 80s that I have transferred to DVD. I checked there for that ending. It contains the same ending with Warner. The only difference is that the final card appears before the end of the horn line, but it’s obvious from the merging point that it doesn’t belong to the original form of the film, there are some white spots and the black after the fade-out of the main cartoon jumps to dark blue after that point.

I also checked for the line “for women” at “Superman” that is mentioned by some users. My copy doesn’t contain it either.

I think that you have done a great job restoring these cartoons to their original form! I wonder why their official release by Warner doesn’t have them fully restored. I 've found your restorations only at youtube. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to find a download link for a better quality of the files yet - neither the links for the m4v files that exist, as you said, at your site. Is it something I 'm doing wrong?