Added complete transcript for "Let's Get Ready to Rhumba".
Added screen captures for Let's Get Ready to Rhumba to the website. It's a spoof on "Dirty Dancing". Great episode. I tell ya, just when you think 'The PJs' had jumped the shark, they pull out a couple of doosies like "Survival" and "Rhumba". Too bad this was the next to the last episode. I would have loved to have seen more.
Added screen captures for Survival: In tha Hood to the website. I just watched this episode (on my new DVD) for the first time in years and it has got to be one of the funniest ever! It's definately one of the best made episodes. Watch the use of "hand-held" cameras and the extreme camera angles. Very nice! It is even a bit profetic! After all, Richard Hatch got convicted for tax evasion after winning.
Also added screen captures for It Takes a Thurgood. See them in the 'images' section.
DVD-302 is finished. This completes season-3 and is officially the first complete season set to be put on DVD. I'd like to get a better source for A Race to His Credit, but for now this will have to do. It is watchable; it's just not at the level of excellence the others are. The other episodes look awesome! Here are the episodes on this DVD.
DVD-302
"It Takes a Thurgood"
"Miracle Cleaner on 134th Street"
"Survival: In tha Hood"
"Let's Get Ready to Rumba"
"A Race to His Credit"
I am eager to jump back into season-1 and start making DVDs.
Added screen caps from Miracle Cleaner on 134th Street. Again I am astounded at the level of quality I was able to get out of this tape. I could barely get it to play!
I encoded the last episode A Race to His Credit last night. It's not as nice as the others because I just don't have a very good tape of this episode. It's a real shame because I once had a friends' pristine master in my hands and I chose not to do anything with it. I was still working on season-2 at the time. I was planning on borrowing it later, but little did I know that the tape would accidentally get erased! I am hoping for a better copy of this episode. If you have one to loan me, please contact me.
Screen captures for Red Man's Burden have been added to the website. See them in the 'images' section.Miracle Cleaner on 134th Street has been re-encoded. The audio was also redone. It looks so much better than the last effort (made just a few days ago). Now I need to find a good source for A Race to His Credit.
I found a patch to put in for the missing piece from National Buffoon's European Vacation. It was less than a second, and it was only a fade-in from black. But it is important to me to include that. I will be working to patch this piece in in the next few days, including reworking the audio and adjusting the chapter stops.
Lastly, I worked on the first DVD (301) a little more. I added some credits to it and made tweaks to the chapter stops. I am still on the fence about adding a mini-menu for each episode.
Good news! I bought a master video tape from a "video archivist" and it had a nice copy of Miracle Cleaner on 134th Street on it. It wasn't perfect though. The recording was decent, but the tape was in poor shape. However, I was able to save it. My JVC VCR worked miracles when I turned on the image stabilization, but it could not save the audio. However, I was able to play it on my Panasonic VCR and get good audio from it. So now I am re-encoding the video for this episode and I have to work on the audio a bit. Overall, I am amazed at the outstanding quality I was able to pull out of this tape. It took some work though!
Website renamed to reflect the new focus on DVD. It was always the goal anyways. Also, cosmetic changes to the website have been made. There is now an 'images' section where you can find all the screen caps.
Progress has been made on the second DVD, DVD-302 (season-3, disc 2). So far, I have capped and encoded It Takes a Thurgood, Miracle Cleaner on 134th Street, and Survival: In tha Hood. And I have capped Let's Get Ready to Rhumba.
Lastly, thanks to my friend Bernt I have some exciting news! I now have the German broadcasts from Super RTL. Only season-1 was broadcast, but I got them all. The visual quality is outstanding and the effort put into the German localization is beyond expectations. They hired good quality German voice actors (Randolf Kronberg plays Thurgood Stubbs). The dialog was mixed with a fresh sound effect/music track instead of on top of the American soundtrack. Even certain visuals were redone. I plan to make a special German DVD set with this.
The first test DVD is done. It took me a while to perfect the audio sync and I had a couple of the chapters wrong at first, but all is well now. It looks great! This DVD has the following episodes:
DVD-301
"Clip Show"
"Red Man's Burden"
"Smoke Gets in Your Highrise"
"National Buffoon's European Vacation"
"Cruising for a Bluesing"
So far, it is no frills. Just a simple menu and the episodes. Each episode has a chapter where the commercial break would've been. I will probably make a mini-menu for each episode and call it finished.
I chose to start the DVDs with season-3 because those episodes seem to be the rarest and hardest to replace if I ever lost my VHS tapes. So you can guess which will be the next DVD I will work on...
Screen caps from the Pilot episode added to the site. I also added a partial transcript. If anybody has more information about this demo tape, please contact me. It's fascinating.The search for better sources has beared some fruit in recent months too. Both the UK Bravo satellite network and the US Trio satellite network have aired several episodes, and I was able to get tapes and DVDs from these broadcasts. The Bravo recordings are in PAL format, so we get just outstanding quality from those, but the Trio ones are beautiful too. They look brand new! Another beautiful thing about these broadcasts is that all episodes have complete original credits (the white text on black background) with them. I'd still like to get copies of the BBC broadcsts and the Australian broadcasts. If you have them, please contact me.
The Bravo network aired all of season one and two. I've managed to secure recordings on both DVD and PAL VHS. Additionally, I found quality torrent downloads of several episodes (also from the Bravo broadcasts). Aside from a prominant "BRAVO" logo superimposed in the frame in the upper right corner, and ocassional advertisement for what's up next, the episodes are perfect! The superior resoultion, progressive frames, and better color offered in the PAL broadcast makes them almost good enough to slightly upsample and make 720p HD-DVD from. I've done some tests and I am blown away! I gotta learn how to encode HD now.
I also got recordings from the US Trio satellite network. They aired all the episodes from season one. The quality of these are perfect except for the large "Trio" logo in the lower right corner. They also put a fairly large "funny but cancelled" ad across the bottom of the screen when returning from commercial breaks.
I wonder if I am skilled enough to remove the "BRAVO" logo by covering it with a segment taken from the Trio broadcast? I will try it, but I don't think I will succeed.
VCD-12 is ready! Finally season three is well underway! Here are the episodes on this VCD:
VCD-12
"Smoke Gets In Your Highrise"
"National Buffoon's European Vacation"
"Cruising for a Bluesing"
The only hiccup was a short missing segment after a commercial break. If anybody can loan me their tape of National Buffoon's European Vacation, I can fix that. It's only about a second and no dialog was lost, but I'd still like to complete it as best as possible.
Aside from that, the quality is outstanding! I've learned a lot about video restoration through the years and it's great to be able to apply my knowledge to restore these great episodes.
With the completion of Scarthroat comes VCD-11 which has the following episodes:
VCD-11
"Parole Officer and a Gentleman"
"Boyz Under the Hood"
"Scarthroat"
That officially completes season-2 VCDs and starts season-3. I don't foresee any problems with the next three episodes, so I am hoping for smooth sailing with the next VCD.
Scarthroat VCD and SVCD are done. This one was quick, but it's not perfect. The broadcast had some ghosting present. I was able to correct it somewhat, but not completely. I would be interested in getting a better copy tape of this one.
At long last Boyz Under the Hood is finished! The VCD and SVCD are done. The journey has not been easy for this one. I started off with a borrowed tape of good quality, but missing small segments around the commercials. Also the audio was not great. I was able to patch in the missing segments from a PAL formatted mpeg that I got. The problem was the audio. Although it is somewhat trivial to slow the audio down about 4% for NTSC, WB speeds up their framerate slightly. I was unable to match the speed. Then I lucked out and found a PAL formatted VHS tape of the episode. So all my work was scrapped and I worked now with the PAL VHS. The end result is one of the best quality episodes yet!I finished Parole Officer and a Gentleman for both VCD and SVCD. Also, I have it ready for DVD when I finish the VCD project. This one had a lot of noise in it, but it cleaned up rather nicely. I think I am getting better at this. Captures coming soon.
I may be stalled again until I get a better quality copy of Boyz Under the Hood, so I may concentrate on improving the website. I have to add screen captures for several episodes and I could also stand to add the transcripts. Also, each episode needs its own page like Rich Man, Porn Man.
Well, it seems I am back in gear, for now anyways. I just finished VCD-10. That makes thirty episodes done. Below is a listing of the episodes on this disc. These episodes are also on SVCD. Screen caps coming soon.
VCD-10
"Robbin' HUD"
"Cliffhanger"
"The Last Affirmative Action Hero"
"Action Hero" was an interesting project. Since I had two copies of this show, both taped from the same broadcast, I decided to see how it would look if I combined captures from both sources. The result was a great reduction in VHS (and possibly broadcast) noise. There was one bad spot in the broadcast (on both tapes), but I was able to use a clip from another tape to patch in there.
Cover artwork for the VCD collection binder is complete. Still to do are the disc labels which are in progress.
It's been a while since my last update. A lot has happened! I've been slack at reporting it though. Three more VCDs are now done. I am especially happy about finally finishing VCD-8. Thanks go out to Mike for supplying the credits for Who Da Boss.
The episodes on these discs are:
VCD-7
"Haiti and the Tramp"
"Smokey the Squatter"
"Weave's Have a Dream"
VCD-8
"Let's Get Ready to Crumble"
"Who Da Boss?"
"Fear of a Black Rat"
VCD-9
"Ghetto Superstars"
"What's Eating Juicy Hudson?"
"The Jeffersons"
The HJs is finally on VCD and SVCD! It looks and sounds great. Screen captures coming soon. With the completion of The HJs, VCD-6 is finally ready! The episodes on this disc are:
VCD-6
"The Postman's Always Shot Twice"
"The Preacher's Life"
"The HJs"
I finally got a near perfect copy The Postman's Always Shot Twice. The VCD and SVCD turned out great. Screen captures are coming soon!
Here is an update on the status of the redone VCDs. The following VCDs have been re-captured and re-encoded for superior quality both in audio and video. Some were captured from new source tapes.
VCD-1
"Hangin' with Mr. Super"
"Bones, Bugs, and Harmony"
"The Door"
VCD-2
"Journal Fever"
"Rich Man, Porn Man"
"Bougie Nights"
VCD-3
"A Hero Ain't Nothing but a Super"
"He's Gotta Have It"
"Boyz N' the Woods"
VCD-4
"Operation Gumbo Drop"
"U Go, Kart"
"House Potty"
VCD-5
"Haiti Sings the Blues"
"How the Super Stoled Christmas"
"Home School Daze"
Completely redid He's Gotta Have It using new source tapes. It is much improved. The video came from five different sources and the audio came from three. I had to painstakingly patch them together. The result is the best looking version of this episodes yet! An SVCD of this episode is finally possible! Thanks to Chris for loaning me his master tape.
New website up. So far, only Rich Man, Porn Man page is ready to be seen. Look for the others to be completed in the coming weeks as well as the broken links.
In case you are wondering why the lack of updates lately, I have been busying myself improving some things about the way I am encoding the eposides to mpeg. I am actually going back and re-encoding several episodes and for some of those it means re-capturing them. I am also making uncompressed digital backups of all episodes. Furthermore, I am putting the pieces in place to start putting them on DVD soon. Stay tuned.
Smokey the Squatter at long last is now on VCD and SVCD. It was quite difficult making the patch fit in with the existing capture. It wasn't as clear and needed a little work. But I think it turned out great.
Thanks to Lee for sending me a good copy of Smokey the Squatter. I can now finally finish that episode which has been on my harddrive since about May! Also, finally got the credits for Ghetto Superstars.
Robbin' HUD is now on VCD and SVCD. Looks great. I love this episode!
The Jeffersons is now on VCD and SVCD. Looks gr-
I started using smaller screen captures today because I needed the space on my server. Instead of 640x480, they are now 480x360. I believe they still show enough detail to understand how they will look on the TV.
Fear of a Black Rat is now on VCD and SVCD. It was captured from a satellite TV broadcast. I just had to tweak the saturation and levels and the picture is perfect!
Haiti and the Tramp is now on VCD and SVCD. It was captured from a satellite TV broadcast. The credits featured some depressing news story "coming up at 11:00", so I cropped it off the left side and changed the audio.
Let's Get Ready to Crumble is now on VCD and SVCD. It was captured from a satellite TV broadcast. The picture was a little pale and dark, but I was able to correct that by fiddling with the levels and saturation filters. The picture is rock solid! It looks and sounds great.
Weave's Have a Dream is now on VCD and SVCD. It's from a WB broadcast that I taped myself at SP. It looks and sounds great.
The Preacher's Life is ready. This episode is so funny! I was just howling as I watched it on the computer. I just captured it tonight. It was captured from a satellite broadcast. All I had to do was tweak the saturation and brightness a bit. The picture is rock solid! The SVCD looks excellent.
BIG NEWS! The screener for Operation Gumbo Drop arrived in the mail today. I am capturing it as I type this. Screen shots coming soon. Stay tuned!
Thank you, Tino, for loaning me your tape.
I have been expecting some better quality tapes of season-2 episodes to arrive in the mail for the past month, so I've been delaying working on anything. Since nothing has arrived yet, I finally decided to work with a mediocre quality tape I had just received of The Postman's Always Shot Twice.
It was a lot of work, but I have finally finished the VCD. The quality was not good enough for a SVCD, but compared to the original VHS tape I had to work with, the VCD is nothing short of stunning! I used 'Frame Tweaker' to correct over 282 frames. I had to view the episode frame by frame to identify the bad frames out of almost 40,000 frames.
UPDATE: I fiddled with the video filters in Virtual Dub and I think I now have results good enough for SVCD. It's amazing what digital filters can do! One mistake I was making earlier was that the HLS filter was too early in the chain. So what was happening was that the noise in the luminance channel was getting amplified. I put a few filters in front of it and now it looks pretty good.
UPDATE#2: Although the picture was greatly improved, the SVCD did not turn out. There is just too much noise for the limited bitrate of the SVCD format. But hey, we still have a very nice VCD!
Great news! U Go, Kart VCD and now SVCD have been redone. It was captured directly from the screener! Needless to say that this is a major improvement over the previous VCD. Thanks to Ken for letting me borrow his screener. This video did not even have the Will Vinton logo superimposed on it.
How the Super Stoled Christmas is now on VCD and SVCD. It looks great!
How about this? Two in one day! Home School Daze is now on VCD and SVCD. This set was captured from a copy of a VHS tape recorded off satellite TV. The satellite broadcast was so sharp, it looked like a master. The sound is also better than usual!
Finished transcripts for Rich Man, Porn Man, He's Gotta Have It, and Bougie Nights are up.
Haiti Sings the Blues is now on VCD and SVCD. This completes the first season for the VCDs. However, I still need quality copies of U Go Kart and He's Gotta Have It to complete the SVCD colletion. The credits on this are from a borrowed tape. Thanks, Maria!
Drafts of Rich Man, Porn Man and He's Gotta Have It transcripts have been added. I will edit them further as time permits. Bougie Nights transcript is just about finished too.
A draft Bougie Nights transcript has been added. I will edit it further as time permits. In the mean time, enjoy.
Rich Man, Porn Man is now on VCD and SVCD. This set was made directly from the screener! Needless to say, it is the best SVCD yet! A HUGE thanks goes out to Maria who let me borrow her tape, and to Will Vinton Studios. It seems that nobody had a tape of this episode except them.Bougie Nights is now on VCD and SVCD. My copy was missing credits, but I captured the credits from a borrowed tape (thanks Maria). My tape was also missing the first few seconds of the opening sequence, so I spliced in the opening from Hangin' with Mr. Super.
The Boyz 'N the Woods transcript has been edited for readability and also to add credits. Big thanks to Tino for his help! Also added was the first draft transcript of Operation Gumbo Drop. Check it out in the transcripts area.
The first transcript, Boyz 'N the Woods is now online! Check it out in the transcripts area. It is straight capture from Closed Captions, with minor editing (by me) for readability. I may go back in and add the names in front of the lines.
Capturing Closed Captions was more of a hassle than it should've been because of the problems my capture card was giving me. Perhaps there is some better software out there for capturing Closed Captions.
I also have a partial transcript of Operation Gumbo Drop captured. It will go online as soon as I can get the rest of it done.
Journal Fever is now on VCD and SVCD. It was an uneventful transfer. Everything was easy and straight-forward. It looks fantastic!
Recaptured Hangin' with Mr. Super so I could add the credits from another video tape. I also corrected the audio. Burned a new VCD and SVCD.
Harddrive problem solved good enough. I am now capturing again.
Installed the new 60 gig harddrive today. It works great, but I am having problems capturing now. I didn't count on having to trouble shoot it. Apparently, it can't write to the harddrive fast enough.
Bones, Bugs, and Harmony audio and video has been redone for both the VCD and the SVCD. I spent more time on this one than I planned on, but I had to do it right. It looks and sounds great.
Recaptured Bones, Bugs, and Harmony and in the process discovered a bad frame which caused problems for the rest of the sequence. It was either a glitch in the broadcast or something in the VHS tape. I fiddled with it for an hour or so and fixed it to an acceptable level. Next, I will edit the audio and encode the SVCD and the VCD again. I am glad I went back to fix the audio on this one or I may not have discovered that ugly problem. After I finish with this problem, I am clearing off my work drive (5.7 gigs) so I can remove it and replace it with a new 60 gig drive.
Bones, Bugs, and Harmony audio has been corrected for the VCD, but the SVCD has been a problem. I may recapture it.
Made a major update to the episode guide. Almost have all the reruns in there now.
He's Gotta Have It audio has been corrected.
A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Super audio has been corrected. It will be a royal pain to go back and fix the others, but I have to do it. Here is what is involved:
1. Demux the audio from the VCD.
2. Convert the mp2 file to wav.
3. Re-record the sound from VHS using the 'Stereo Mixer' rather than the 'Line-IN' input.
4. Sync up and cut the new audio to match the old audio.
5. Encode the new audio to mp2.
6. Re-mux the audio with the already encoded mpeg video from VCD.
7. Do again for the SVCD.
8. Add chapter points for the SVCD.
9. Burn the disc.
I finally found what was making the audio sound distorted. I was not aware that my sound card has two logical inputs for the analog line-in (not counting the 'mic' input), a 'Line-IN' and a 'Stereo Mixer'. I had selected 'Line-IN' which was not only burning the feed (by over amplifying it), but it was inverting the wavs and possibly swapping the channels too. Now I have to go back through and fix the episodes already on VCD.
The Door now on VCD and SVCD. I was mid-way through this project when I discovered the audio problem. I was able to re-record the audio and fix this prior to encoding the mpeg. The picture on my VHS tape was so clear that a perfect SVCD was possible. It looks brilliant.
A Hero Ain't Nothing But a Super now on VCD and SVCD. This is the WB broadcast of the episode. The picture on my VHS tape was so clear that a perfect SVCD was possible. It looks brilliant.
He's Gotta Have It (original FOX broadcast) now on VCD. I had a VHS copy of the show, but it was a generation (possibly two) from the master. Thankfully, I was able to borrow a friend's master to make the VCD. The problems were as follows:
1. The better tape was recorded in EP, so the quality suffered a bit.
2. The better tape was also mono. So I had to use the audio from my gen-1 tape
3. The better tape was also chopped a bit. Missing was the entire opening and the starts of each program segment.
So I had to use both tapes to create the final product. It is now stereo and complete. The patched-in parts are not quite as nice looking, but overall it's great. It's the best product I could've possibly made given what I had. If anybody wants to trust me with their master, then I will do this one over again and make an SVCD this time.
Bones, Bugs, and Harmony (original FOX broadcast) Now on VCD and SVCD.
Hangin' with Mr. Super (original FOX broadcast) Now on VCD and SVCD. It's perfect except for the theater scene on the SVCD. The flickering causes some artifacting.Operation Gumbo Drop (original FOX broadcast) Now on VCD and SVCD. This is one of my favorite episodes.
Boyz 'N the Woods (original FOX broadcast) Now on VCD and SVCD.
U Go Kart (WB broadcast) Now on VCD. It was not possible to make an SVCD from this VHS tape. Although I taped it myself at SP, the cable company had some terrible ghosting in the signal. Using filters, I was able to remove almost completely the ghosts, but the picture suffered a little. You don't notice on the VCD, but an SVCD was simply not possible.
House Potty (original FOX broadcast) Now on VCD and SVCD. This is the first great quality PJs VCD. It easily matches VHS in quality and the SVCD is close to DVD quality!
Got a new mobo and proc for Christmas. AMD 1600 XP. Now I should be fast enough to capture high-res!
Got a new capture card. Could not resist CompUSA's sale price of $29 (after $20 mail-in rebate and instant savings) for the Pinnacle PCTV Pro. It has a stereo TV tuner & FM radio tuner, s-video input, and a remote.
Made some test captures using the Dazzle DVC-80 USB external capture device. Due to USB limitation, it can only capture at 320x240. I had to stretch it to 352x240. Looks okay, but not as good as VHS. Looking forward to making serious captures.