Ok, so I kinda spilled the beans about this project in a different thread, so I might as well make a thread for this. THIS WILL NOT BE COMPLETE UNTIL MAY/JUNE 2016!!!
Anyway, thanx to the fact that Fox Kids Worldwide was bought in July 2001 by Disney, who already has a Peter Pan franchise, this has been thrown into the Disney Vaults to probably never see the light of day again
There are French, German, and some Spanish episodes out there, but they are all sourced from poor quality VHS rips (although I have seen a couple German TVrips that were better) The English language episodes that are available of this are almost non-existent. Yes, there have been a couple of episodes (I, literally, think it was 5 episodes) that were released on DVD in the UK about 10 years ago, but that's it. What's floating around on the net is a series that contains only TWO DVD sourced episodes (out of 65) with all of the rest being sourced from low quality VHS rips of the re-runs of the series in the late 90s. Because of this, they do NOT contain the original intro/end credits sequences (intro is half as long, same runtime for end credits) and some of them (sh*t, like half of them) are practically unwatchable because of awful PQ. BUT...
... then I stumbled upon two Russian DVDs of the series, (containing a total of 46 episodes, although with no English audio) a bootleg set of Russian DVB/SATrips, (containing 62 episodes, also no English audio) and a bootleg set of Polish TVrips (containing 63 episodes, also no English audio) Between all of them I can make a complete set that has video sourced from digital sources (instead of VHS)
:victory:
BUT... there are still two massive problems:
1) The audio for 63 of the episodes will have to be synced from the English VHSrips available. BOOO!!
The audio is not of the best quality, is nearly all mono, (all episodes had Stereo sound and the DVD copies in English and all of the Russian/Polish audio is stereo) has clipping issues, was encoded at a ridiculously low bitrate/sampling rate, will require a lot of work to get it sounding better
2) ALL PAL transfers of this series have field blending due to incorrect NTSC to PAL transfer. I have verified by means of comparing an NTSC US tv broadcast, an NTSC US broadcast in Spanish, the UK/Russian DVDs, French/German/Spanish/Polish VHS/TVrips that the runtime on ALL (for any particular episode I compared) versions is the same. This means that some of the frames are permanently damaged. There will be nothing I can really do about these. The ONLY part I can restore to a much better state (although some frames will still not be perfect) is the original intro. Because the episodes were transfered in full (in some cases in other series, I have seen a single instance of the same intro would be used for an entire series but not here) from different sources, with different start points, the damage to the frames occurs at different times. Between 5 different video sources (all from different episodes on the Russian DVD set) I am able to pick the best frame for each frame. The damage occurs on different frames and at various levels. I am half-way through the intro which is about 1600 frames and it takes me about 4-5 hours to get through 100 frames (!) (this is due to the fact that because they are different transfers, they are all slightly differently framed, have to be color-matched to each other, are slightly different quality and have to be slightly filtered to match each other, need some clean-up to get rid of field-blending damage, etc... - kinda reminds me of the work I'm still doing on my Winnie the Pooh project which has similar problems; although there I have even more sources to work with which is a good thing for restoration, but a bad thing time-wise because it takes that much longer)
IF ANYONE has audio that is NOT sourced from the set that is floating around (most of the set is also on youtube) that would be a HUGE help and greatly appreciated. (although if not, I will make due with what I have because it's all still useable)
Similarly, if there are any digital NTSC sourced captures I'm not aware of, please let me know via PM
By no means can this be considered a restoration project, but it is a preservation project of the best sources available for now...
Any and all comments are welcome
Anyway, thanx to the fact that Fox Kids Worldwide was bought in July 2001 by Disney, who already has a Peter Pan franchise, this has been thrown into the Disney Vaults to probably never see the light of day again
There are French, German, and some Spanish episodes out there, but they are all sourced from poor quality VHS rips (although I have seen a couple German TVrips that were better) The English language episodes that are available of this are almost non-existent. Yes, there have been a couple of episodes (I, literally, think it was 5 episodes) that were released on DVD in the UK about 10 years ago, but that's it. What's floating around on the net is a series that contains only TWO DVD sourced episodes (out of 65) with all of the rest being sourced from low quality VHS rips of the re-runs of the series in the late 90s. Because of this, they do NOT contain the original intro/end credits sequences (intro is half as long, same runtime for end credits) and some of them (sh*t, like half of them) are practically unwatchable because of awful PQ. BUT...
... then I stumbled upon two Russian DVDs of the series, (containing a total of 46 episodes, although with no English audio) a bootleg set of Russian DVB/SATrips, (containing 62 episodes, also no English audio) and a bootleg set of Polish TVrips (containing 63 episodes, also no English audio) Between all of them I can make a complete set that has video sourced from digital sources (instead of VHS)
:victory:BUT... there are still two massive problems:
1) The audio for 63 of the episodes will have to be synced from the English VHSrips available. BOOO!!
The audio is not of the best quality, is nearly all mono, (all episodes had Stereo sound and the DVD copies in English and all of the Russian/Polish audio is stereo) has clipping issues, was encoded at a ridiculously low bitrate/sampling rate, will require a lot of work to get it sounding better
2) ALL PAL transfers of this series have field blending due to incorrect NTSC to PAL transfer. I have verified by means of comparing an NTSC US tv broadcast, an NTSC US broadcast in Spanish, the UK/Russian DVDs, French/German/Spanish/Polish VHS/TVrips that the runtime on ALL (for any particular episode I compared) versions is the same. This means that some of the frames are permanently damaged. There will be nothing I can really do about these. The ONLY part I can restore to a much better state (although some frames will still not be perfect) is the original intro. Because the episodes were transfered in full (in some cases in other series, I have seen a single instance of the same intro would be used for an entire series but not here) from different sources, with different start points, the damage to the frames occurs at different times. Between 5 different video sources (all from different episodes on the Russian DVD set) I am able to pick the best frame for each frame. The damage occurs on different frames and at various levels. I am half-way through the intro which is about 1600 frames and it takes me about 4-5 hours to get through 100 frames (!) (this is due to the fact that because they are different transfers, they are all slightly differently framed, have to be color-matched to each other, are slightly different quality and have to be slightly filtered to match each other, need some clean-up to get rid of field-blending damage, etc... - kinda reminds me of the work I'm still doing on my Winnie the Pooh project which has similar problems; although there I have even more sources to work with which is a good thing for restoration, but a bad thing time-wise because it takes that much longer)
IF ANYONE has audio that is NOT sourced from the set that is floating around (most of the set is also on youtube) that would be a HUGE help and greatly appreciated. (although if not, I will make due with what I have because it's all still useable)
Similarly, if there are any digital NTSC sourced captures I'm not aware of, please let me know via PM
By no means can this be considered a restoration project, but it is a preservation project of the best sources available for now...
Any and all comments are welcome
