Thanks for the welcomes, everyone!
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who cares about quality. I'm glad to have the DVDs, but I really enjoy the episodes much more on LD- the difference in color and overall detail/image depth is amazing. Not to mention the vastly improved sound.
This show was shot on 35mm film. It was made in 1989. There's no reason why it can't look spectacular. When I mention these things on the Rescue Rangers forum that I joined recently, people just listen to the theme music in MP3 format and watch the episodes on YouTube.... Bleh.... Sometimes, I forget that there are people like you all who are like me, as we seem to be a small subset of humanity because we actually give a damn about what something looks or sounds like.
I'm assuming the LD was a direct transfer of the BetaSP master for that particular episode. When comparing the LD of an episode to the DVD, I see scratches on the print in the same places, so it looks like the same master was used. From what I know about how video tape degrades, there's no way that it would push so strongly to brown/yellow. My home videos from the same period have suffered with extra graininess and a lack of shadow detail, but the color timing is the same, more or less. BetaSP is a far higher quality format than some shoddy Sears VHS EP tape we used, so I don't think the tape condition is to blame, assuming Disney prepared the DVD masters from the same source as the LD. The LDs came out in 1990, the DVDs in 2005. Any ideas as to why the two transfers look so different?
Also, does anyone have any experience with the Blackmagic Intensity series of capture devices? It's the only one in a decent price range that can capture SD/HD in an uncompressed state and has 192/24 analog audio capture as well as Toslink/digital coax. I was planning on using this to capture losslessly in NTSC, leaving everything interlaced, and then compress with HEVC. If need be, I can use my own soundcard for bit-for-bit accurate PCM audio capture and sync the audio and video streams. I don't think they should drift in and out of sync, so this shouldn't be too difficult.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/product...techspecs/
It's good to know that I'm not the only one who cares about quality. I'm glad to have the DVDs, but I really enjoy the episodes much more on LD- the difference in color and overall detail/image depth is amazing. Not to mention the vastly improved sound.
This show was shot on 35mm film. It was made in 1989. There's no reason why it can't look spectacular. When I mention these things on the Rescue Rangers forum that I joined recently, people just listen to the theme music in MP3 format and watch the episodes on YouTube.... Bleh.... Sometimes, I forget that there are people like you all who are like me, as we seem to be a small subset of humanity because we actually give a damn about what something looks or sounds like.
I'm assuming the LD was a direct transfer of the BetaSP master for that particular episode. When comparing the LD of an episode to the DVD, I see scratches on the print in the same places, so it looks like the same master was used. From what I know about how video tape degrades, there's no way that it would push so strongly to brown/yellow. My home videos from the same period have suffered with extra graininess and a lack of shadow detail, but the color timing is the same, more or less. BetaSP is a far higher quality format than some shoddy Sears VHS EP tape we used, so I don't think the tape condition is to blame, assuming Disney prepared the DVD masters from the same source as the LD. The LDs came out in 1990, the DVDs in 2005. Any ideas as to why the two transfers look so different?
Also, does anyone have any experience with the Blackmagic Intensity series of capture devices? It's the only one in a decent price range that can capture SD/HD in an uncompressed state and has 192/24 analog audio capture as well as Toslink/digital coax. I was planning on using this to capture losslessly in NTSC, leaving everything interlaced, and then compress with HEVC. If need be, I can use my own soundcard for bit-for-bit accurate PCM audio capture and sync the audio and video streams. I don't think they should drift in and out of sync, so this shouldn't be too difficult.
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/product...techspecs/