Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987)

[jerryshadoe]

So as I'm working on my WATWD project, I ran out of HDD space and realized that I have a few projects half-way done. They were taking up a lot of space because of the lossless intermediary files and I decided to finish some of them up to make room on the HDD. The first of these projects is a childhood favorite of mine, a Filmation "Classic:"
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night from 1987.

Here's the release.info.txt file copy/pasted from my "official release:"

Pinocchio.and.the.Emperor.of.the.Night.1987.NTSC.DVD9.Shadoe

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093743/
wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinocchio_a..._the_Night

Synopsis: Pinocchio and his friends, a glow worm and a marionette, search for a magic music box. However, so is the evil Scalawag and the Emperor of the Night.

Tech Details:

Video: MPEG2@720x480(4:3AR)@23.976fps(with 2:3 pulldown flag)@~8400kbps

Audio: Multiple AC3 language tracks

-English AC3 @ 384kbps

-German (Deutsch) AC3 @ 192kbps

-Greek (ελληνικά) AC3 @192kbps

-Polish (Polski-lektor) AC3 @192kbps

-Russian (русский-MVO) AC3 @192kbps

-Swedish (Svenska) AC3 @ 192kbps

Subtitles: NONE

Extras: NONE

Can be found on MS...


Project notes:


Ok, so about a year and a half ago I released a PAL DVD5 of this movie in English only on public-trackers. At the time I only had the Russian DVD release that I synced the English audio to from a dvdrip of the film that I found online. Well, I hated the PAL speed-up and wanted to have better audio. I LOVE this film and it is my preffered version of Pinocchio. I consider it a Filmation "Classic." I still have the SVHS tape recording of the network television premiere on KCOP-13 (TV-station in Los Angeles) from 1989 which I taped and have loved ever since that first viewing. (it doesn't contain commercials, has audio tracking issues-even though it was recorded in Hi-Fi Stereo, and I will not be posting that recording)

Anyway, I wanted the best possible quality copy for this movie and after doing some research, realized that the best option is to just purchase some of the PAL DVD releases. The reason I decided to purchase more than one is because (even though they are ALL struck from the same master as I could identify by certain film scratches and a film burn) they are encoded at various different bitrates, have encoding glitches in certain frames, and have the occasional blended frame. I purchased the UK, German, and Russian DVDs. The video bitrate on the UK DVD was average ~6500kbps. The German DVD had an average video bitrate of ~7000kbps, while the Russian DVD had a very solid video bitrate of ~7500kbps.

I ran into some weird issues while trying to de-interlace this footage. Using TDeint (regardless of settings) in avidemux, I got a properly de-interlaced, nice looking BUT a little soft image.  Using yadif (regardless of settings) I got a nice, razor sharp image BUT on occasion during fast-motion scenes there would be visible "scanlines" where the image was interlaced. My whole workload was being done lossless, so I know that re-encoding here wasn't the issue. Anyway, this was the case with ALL three DVDs. I decided to use both methods for each one and ended up with six lossless files. I then took the two de-interlaced differently sources for each DVD and layered them 50/50. This brought out a LOT of detail and smoothed out the jagged "scanlines" that yadif created. I now had the best of "both worlds," LOL.

Next, after I slowed the video down from 25fps to 23,976fps, I opened up Sony Vegas and threw all three resulting lossless files (one for each DVD) on my project timeline. I layered the three sources on top of each other which helped "smooth" out any of the noise on each one DVD source and also helped really make the image "pop" to the point where you can actually see some grain here and there now. I made sure to cut out any frames that have glitches or any other problems from whatever source that needed it. I also cut out the blended frames when needed, but there are still TWO blended frames that were blended in ALL three DVD sources (It's during a shot of Puppetino when he's getting ready to turn Pinocchio into a puppet the first time) I did what I could to clean these up as much as I could and most people won't notice.

I also wanted to include (probably out of nostalgia for the above mentioned SVHS recording I have) the "New World Video" logo at the beginning of the film and the "New World International" logo at the end (the one with the shimmering blue sea and the catchy little tune). I looked all over the place for the logos and what I found on youtube (and other places like that) was absolute shit quality. I finally captured the first logo from my SVHS tape, but added the sound from another source due to the audio-tracking issues of my tape. The second logo I couldn't rip from the tape because that part got eaten by a VCR at one point and although it still plays, it's just a fuzzy white mess during that part. Anyway, I found the logo in a few places, all sub-par quality IMO, but I also layered them and got an "ok" result for that.

I wanted the quality to be as high as possible on the DVD, include the few language translations I have and keep it all within DVD spec. So I encoded the video at a bitrate of ~8400kbps and it looks very nice.

The audio is a whole different story. EVERY English copy of this film has the same shitty audio. It sounds the same on my recorded SVHS tape, my bought VHS release a couple years later, every tv broadcast I've seen and every DVD release (including in voice-over translations where you can still here the English master in the background) The sfx and music sound "ok," but the real problem with the audio is the vocals during music and ALL dialog. It sounds like it was mastered at too high of a volume. I'm not saying that the DVD's contained clipped audio due to encoding and levels were -3db max, just that the original mastering was done wrong. It sounds like someone had two tape-decks next to each other, output the audio from source one to high (thus distorting it a little bit) but lowered the levels on the second deck out of the red so it doesn't record distorted a second-time over. Plus, the treble is at WAY too high of a level.

The audio was a NIGHTMARE to work on. First, I had to slow down/pitch correct every single language track. Then, I did everything I could with the English audio to try and fix it a little bit. It took me over a week of work to get it to something that is "half-way" acceptable but by NO standards would I say that this audio is good which is a damn shame because it ruins the musical parts of the film. Nevertheless, compared to the original, it's a MASSIVE improvement, where I was able to bring some subtle sfx back out that were practically non-existent in the "original." I gave it a little bit more depth, as the it sounded rather flat. I did everything I could to correct the ridiculously high treble levels, and did what I could to try and fix some of the distortion damage in the vocals/dialog but... like I said, it's better and it might strike you at first but you ears get use to it after the first couple minutes, and it's still an improvement.

German audio is from the DVD but seems like it was a re-encode of an already lossy track. It was weird, I looked at the spectral analysis and it clearly looked that way. Maybe an old master. I did have slight problems syncing it, which was weird since the video was the same master. I did notice that the German audio is a dual-channel MONO track. The end credits contain the instrumental version of the song "love is the light inside your heart" unlike the English version that contains the actual song.

Greek audio is from a TVrip that I found online. It sounds pretty decent, was pretty easy to sync, although was missing some brief parts around commercials which I had to substitute with the English track (only music, never any dialog) This audio was also MONO, so I downmixed the English track before "patching" the missing parts. IMHO the Emperor of the Night sounds f*ckin bada** in Greek. They chose an excellent voice for the dub and I highly suggest that people check it out just for the "wow" factor because it's really impressive.

Polish audio is also from a TVrip that I found online. Here, it's a voice-over so patching any missing parts around commercial breaks was very easy (including about 10 seconds of dialog that was missing around 1:03:00)Pretty easy to sync and is in Stereo.

Russian audio is from the DVD was is also a voice-over version but with multiple voice instead of one like the Polish version. This synced very nicely and very few adjustments had to be made. This version is also in Stereo.

Swedish audio is from a PAL VHS tape, is dual-channel MONO, and was a little bit more tricky to sync, but the rip was done using a VCR with TBC and it was obvious. There were a couple of glitches in the source (due to poor encoding) where I had to "patch" it with downmixed English audio, but NEVER during dialog, only a couple parts with some instrumental music playing.  it also contains only instrumental during the credit like the German dub.

I also tried to sync a Portuguese track from a mono VHS tape and a Spanish track, also from a VHS tape, but the sources I found were VERY low quality and were impossible to sync. They were ripped using a crappy VCR and the audio was sometimes 3-4 seconds ahead of the English "master" and then withing less than a minute it would be 5-8 seconds behind. And it was like this through-out the entire tapes so I dropped those because there was just no way I could get them to sync which helped me be able to do a slightly higher bitrate for the video.

I created proper chapters (as ALL dvd releases had timing that was WAY off for the chapter placement) and then found an image for the menu that isn't from the PAL dvds so that it could be unique. I found an awesome image of a ceramic painting on a wall that has a copyright from 1986(!) a year before the film came out! Thought this is appropriate and used it for the menu, after I enhanced the image a little bit, fixed it perspective (the angle was a little off and I had to straighten the thing out) and then re-sized it for the menu. I google the proper spelling of each of the languages in their native writing and then authored the DVD. It came out to 6GB.

I did NOT include any subtitles as NONE of the releases contain any and I didn't feel like transcribing them. I also didn't include any trailers, as there are NO extras on the PAL dvds and what I found on the internet was on youtube and looked like sh*t.

Hope you enjoyed the rant... Now go watch this Filmation classic and don't forget to share this with others...

P.S. Here are some screenshots that were done quickly using PrntScrn and resized to ~720x540...

Main Menu:

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Audio Menu:

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Chapters Menu (1 of 4):

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And shots of actual film:

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Feel free to share this anywhere, just leave the release.info.txt in-tact...

[spoRv]

Another great project, Jerry!

[zwallo]

Thank you for your hard work!

[jerryshadoe]

You're very welcome. I appreciate you registering just so that you could post that comment

Feel free to look around the forum as there may be other things that will peak your interest

[caritoons]

You're very welcome. I appreciate you registering just so that you could post that comment

Feel free to look around the forum as there may be other things that will peak your interest

i cant find the download link

[Valeyard]

It's on Myspleen (what is meant by "Can be found on MS..." in the OP), however invites are closed there at the moment so if you don't have an account you're out of luck right now.

Anyway welcome to FR.

[jerryshadoe]

I might "re-release" this temporarily somewhere else, since MS has closed invites atm.

Any suggestions of places?

[spoRv]

blutopia! If you need an invite, I have one with your name printed on, ready to ship!

[jerryshadoe]

Haven't even heard of this place, so yeah I'd be happy to check it out...

PM me, my friend.

[jrs1a]

Thank you