2016-10-02, 02:11 AM
I have to put my foot in my mouth on the "guarantee" I made in last post, LOL 
Turns out, that some of the episodes (including the pilot[!]) are MISSING footage on the English masters that I have. For that matter, all English sources I have found (which are either old NTSC VHS rips or PAL DVD rips from the UK, Germany, or Russia) ALL miss this same footage. So, "how did you figure out there is footage missing?," I hear some of you asking...
Well, for all episodes but one, I have an additional TVrip source from Poland that is dubbed into Polish. I also have over half of the series (nearly 40 episodes) sourced from French VHSrips. On those two, the "missing" footage is PRESENT and it's funny because apparently my memory (even after 25 years[!]) wasn't failing me when I thought that some of the scenes "jump" forward, skipping over something. I don't believe this was intentional censorship, but merely a f*** up on the part of whoever oversaw the transfers.
So, now I have to splice in the footage from those sources (both video and audio) and for the parts that contain dialog (and almost all of them do) create subtitle tracks and translate the dialog from Polish (which I can do) back into English. This has extended the time that I am having to put into this project, because it's not a matter of just syncing the English audio to the DVD/DVB footage anymore... Fortunately, all of this is simple sh** except for the editing of the spliced footage. The footage that I have to splice in comes from the Polish TV broadcasts and contains not one, but two different logos:
- an age rating on the top-left part of screen that is a green triangle with a "7" in it
- a TV station logo on the top-right part of the screen that is kind intrusive
None of the clips that are missing are any longer than 3-5 seconds, so there isn't a lot of frames for me to go through and have to correct, but still this adds time to completion of this project. I am having to color correct the footage to match the rest so that the switch isn't too jarring. I am also having to patch the logos, with color corrected footage from the French VHSrips which are only of good enough quality to be used for logo patches. So far, the spliced in video looks pretty good and although you can tell that it's spliced in (the cropping is slightly different, as in more, so you notice that) it's not too distracting and by the time your brain catches on to the fact that the video changed sources, it switches back to the better one.
The translations for the missing bit should be simple since I'm fluent in both languages. I debated on whether to hard-sub the missing bits and decided against it because this would destroy the video that I already had to fix due to the logos and I thought this would make the switch in sources even more jarring. And, in the event that I track down the English audio for the missing parts (highly doubt this one though) it would be pointless... and... it's unfair to those that will be watching the Polish version (since I'm including the audio because I have it, so why not?) and even more unfair to those watching the Russian version, which I will include too for the same reason as the Polish audio. I will NOT be including any other audio tracks. The reasoning behind this is... well... there's two reasons... the first is that I have too many other projects that I need to finish and each extra audio track is that much more time I have to spend on completing this project... BUT, the MAIN reason why I won't include other audio tracks is because I simply haven't been able to find the entire series dubbed into another language. I found over half in French, about a third in German, a few in Brazilian Portuguese and a few in Latino Spanish that had CAM audio (! - it was obvious someone used a mic next to the speaker of the TV))
As I move on this project, I will post more updates if there's anything substantial to note. Also, within the next week or so (don't quote me on this, because I'm hella busy lately) I will post some screenshots comparing the available footage for the English copy that's available freely on the internet (even on youtube) and the awesome quality copies that I'm using for the video
Turns out, that some of the episodes (including the pilot[!]) are MISSING footage on the English masters that I have. For that matter, all English sources I have found (which are either old NTSC VHS rips or PAL DVD rips from the UK, Germany, or Russia) ALL miss this same footage. So, "how did you figure out there is footage missing?," I hear some of you asking...
Well, for all episodes but one, I have an additional TVrip source from Poland that is dubbed into Polish. I also have over half of the series (nearly 40 episodes) sourced from French VHSrips. On those two, the "missing" footage is PRESENT and it's funny because apparently my memory (even after 25 years[!]) wasn't failing me when I thought that some of the scenes "jump" forward, skipping over something. I don't believe this was intentional censorship, but merely a f*** up on the part of whoever oversaw the transfers.
So, now I have to splice in the footage from those sources (both video and audio) and for the parts that contain dialog (and almost all of them do) create subtitle tracks and translate the dialog from Polish (which I can do) back into English. This has extended the time that I am having to put into this project, because it's not a matter of just syncing the English audio to the DVD/DVB footage anymore... Fortunately, all of this is simple sh** except for the editing of the spliced footage. The footage that I have to splice in comes from the Polish TV broadcasts and contains not one, but two different logos:
- an age rating on the top-left part of screen that is a green triangle with a "7" in it
- a TV station logo on the top-right part of the screen that is kind intrusive
None of the clips that are missing are any longer than 3-5 seconds, so there isn't a lot of frames for me to go through and have to correct, but still this adds time to completion of this project. I am having to color correct the footage to match the rest so that the switch isn't too jarring. I am also having to patch the logos, with color corrected footage from the French VHSrips which are only of good enough quality to be used for logo patches. So far, the spliced in video looks pretty good and although you can tell that it's spliced in (the cropping is slightly different, as in more, so you notice that) it's not too distracting and by the time your brain catches on to the fact that the video changed sources, it switches back to the better one.
The translations for the missing bit should be simple since I'm fluent in both languages. I debated on whether to hard-sub the missing bits and decided against it because this would destroy the video that I already had to fix due to the logos and I thought this would make the switch in sources even more jarring. And, in the event that I track down the English audio for the missing parts (highly doubt this one though) it would be pointless... and... it's unfair to those that will be watching the Polish version (since I'm including the audio because I have it, so why not?) and even more unfair to those watching the Russian version, which I will include too for the same reason as the Polish audio. I will NOT be including any other audio tracks. The reasoning behind this is... well... there's two reasons... the first is that I have too many other projects that I need to finish and each extra audio track is that much more time I have to spend on completing this project... BUT, the MAIN reason why I won't include other audio tracks is because I simply haven't been able to find the entire series dubbed into another language. I found over half in French, about a third in German, a few in Brazilian Portuguese and a few in Latino Spanish that had CAM audio (! - it was obvious someone used a mic next to the speaker of the TV))
As I move on this project, I will post more updates if there's anything substantial to note. Also, within the next week or so (don't quote me on this, because I'm hella busy lately) I will post some screenshots comparing the available footage for the English copy that's available freely on the internet (even on youtube) and the awesome quality copies that I'm using for the video