Betty's Pub 20.1
Main Menu => Older Galleries => Topic started by: Starla on January 17, 2016, 10:07:47 AM
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In the movie "Devil Times Five" (1975), there is a brief scene in which a young boy (a then-unknown Leif Garrett, IIRC) primps in front of a mirror wearing a green dress and long black wig.
The entire movie has been uploaded to YouTube by several people, but all seem to be sourced from the same lousy, murky print. (So faded and color-shifted that the green dress looks blue in the video.) But in years past, there was a much better quality clip of just this scene, as well as sharper stills, circulating. Does anyone have these better quality files, or can point me to some site that does?
Much thanks.
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Thanks. I remember that movie but couldn't remember the name of it. I even had stills of it at our sites in the mid-1990s. My copy was also very blurry & VHS. All my VHS, Beta, CDs, & VCDS at home were lost in the fire except for those in my office that were to be used for security tapes & erased over. Amazingly, almost all my DVDs survived the intense heat & being soaked by the firemen so still play. So the most permanent safe form of modern storage is the DVD... even scratches can be buffed out or filled in. Just don't leave them in bright sunlight or in a very hot car all day.
I don't think it was ever released in a clear version. I suspect this was a made for TV or budget movie filmed on low quality 16mm film or video tape only. Many budget & amateur filmakers produced their product on 16mm film, or Betamax & U-matic tape of the 70s for TV viewing, never intended to be seen in the cinema theaters. Back in the days when a large living room TV was a 25-26 inch CRT "floor model" that you sat 10 or more feet away from, it looked good enough.
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Here's an archive of a portion of our 1996 site that has an image of it. It's the second picture. Back in those days, our pix were posted externally through Geocities hosting who later got taken over by Yahoo. http://www.oocities.org/frillypink/page5.html
I just discovered it goes by a couple other titles too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopletoys
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I just did a quick check of all sources, including DVDs & torrents. It seems even the DVD is just a copy of the low quality VHS version. If a clear version ever existed, we can assume it was forever lost, erased, or destroyed except for low quality slow-speed VHS versions saved by some, like people did with YCDTOTV, & Tom Baker/Dr. Who episodes.
VHS & Beta usually didn't look this bad when recorded from a clear copy using the high 2 hour recording speed. But before DVRs & recordable DVDs, to save on tape, & shelf or box space to store all those tapes, many recorded or archived everything on 4-8 hour tape speeds, so quality suffered at those slower recording speeds. But watching on a 19" to 26" CRT TV 10 or more feet away, in those days it was watchable.
LOL, I'm typing this on a 32" LED LCD TV/monitor 4 feet away. I got it for almost nothing last year because it needed a new power supply. A 12-15 inch computer monitor was the most common size 20 years ago. Could never get used to that, so most of my web surfing back then was done on a WEBTV plugged into a 19" TV or 48" rear projection TV monstrosity that weighed almost as much as a piano. With a wireless keyboard, I wasn't tied to a desk & tiny screen. I can lift my 32" TV with one finger.
The "Little House" video captures here were from high quality, high speed VHS, because they actually looked better than the DVDs around of the series. Fortunately I had copied those VHS tapes to DVDs before the fire, & they survived. I had a chance to borrow a box set of the series, only to find on my system, my homemade DVDs of the tapes looked better than the store DVDs. However, my VHS machines were news studio quality JVC machines with decent enhancements & line scalers built in, then the tapes were recorded to DVDs on a decent stand alone Sony DVD recorder.
But because my tapes were not 400-480p DVD quality, I put them on the DVDs on the 4 hour speed. By snipping some of the opening & closing credits, without commercials, I was able to fit 5 episodes on each DVD.
The JVC machines also recorded in super VHS at 400p, back in the day when recordable DVDs didn't exist, which was practically DVD quality. Many DVDs are released in only 360-400p anyway - - better than ordinary VHS but not up to it's full potential. Super-VHS at 320-360p at the slow speed is still better than ordinary VHS at 240p. Little House was recorded before Super VHS was around though, but was nicely scaled up with line averaging to 360p by the machines.
I restored the Sony DVD recorder after the fire, & 1 of the super VHS machines survived because it was in my downtown office during the fire. Haven't used them in years, & can't find a buyer for them. Once one could make an AVI, MP4, or MKV video in DVD to HDTV quality at only 250-400mb per hour in file size on any computer, those machines weren't very useful anymore, except for converting & digitizing old tapes directly to DVDs.
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The videos around seem to be a little better quality than YCDTOTV videos so I tried to enhance some caps of it.
Enjoy!
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More!
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More!
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More!
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More!
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I tried to enhance the entire video clip. It wasn't easy. I had to run it through a half dozen processes, with 4 different pieces of software that were extensively hacked & modified to do what I essentially do to single frame caps & pictures that don't look very good, & then compress them down to a manageable size. It took over an hour to process & enhance this 43 second clip to the max. So I don't think I'll be processing many 20 or more minute videos this way unless someone is paying a lot of money for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7kooBjXanA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7kooBjXanA
For those who missed it, visit my YouTube
Channel! (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-noN--r7_wREFSWwV0XB_w)
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Excellent job with the clip Betty, I wish I had half the expertise & patience to do something like this. I've got a few vid clips from going on 20 years ago when technology wasn't the greatest. It would be fun to see if I could "clean" them up a bit .... (after tracking them down on all the backup cd's ??? ).
Keep up the good work.
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Watch out for those CDs. The reflective backing tends to peal off with age, humidity, or moisture, & also is easily scratched off. It turns out your tapes & vinyl records may actually last longer. DVDs are more durable because the reflective surface is coated on both side with clear plastic... That's something they figured out after they discovered CDs don't last. Also if it was a home recorded CD, the substance that is actually the encoded layer spoils with age, heat, or bright light like sunlight. Some brands hold up a little better than others though.
At a few points you get to just sit back & let the machines do the work once you got it set up just right doing stuff like this. But to take an hour to work on a clip less than a minute long, means it wouldn't be practical to work on an entire YCDTOTV episode or movie because it would take days to finish. Unless somebody is paying me for all the time it would take, I'm not going to enhance full episodes or movies of anything.
However, if the video was fair quality to start with, I've taken DVD or Super-VHS quality 400-480p video, & ran them through a machine for 15-40 minutes to get them looking as good as broadcast quality 720p HDTV with some software. I've cleaned up some nice footage from the 1940s & 50s of some steam locomotives that way, & they look excellent now. About 16-30 minutes to do an hour of video. But there not much to work with, with stuff like YCDTOTV episodes. So what little that can be done with them, has to be done slowly, manually.
I experimented trying to enhance the crossdressing clip of the very first episode of YCDTOTV. The results were less than spectacular. I tried for hours to do it several different ways to get it to look as good as possible, but it only is a little bit improved.
And that was one of the clearer episodes. Most of their other episodes look like shyt by comparison, so I might not ever bother to try.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnpAJvrrYSI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnpAJvrrYSI
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I tried to clean up some more YCDTOTV video. Not much luck, only a slight improvement because the originals were too crappy.
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsuUZtzB-RM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsuUZtzB-RM
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And another...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqlVKFBYjV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqlVKFBYjV4
For those who missed it, visit my YouTube Channel! (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-noN--r7_wREFSWwV0XB_w) Like, subscribe, & share links to there or here!