Bill R.
Auditioning
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2003
- Messages
- 10
Hello everyone ...
This my first post to this forum, so let me take a moment to give you some background on who I am. I've worked as a broadcast TV engineer for the past 30 years, and in that time I've seen just about everything "bad" that can happen to video, and can cite the cause of most things I see. Over the course of the years I've also developed friendships with many people who work in the Hollywood post-production community, have sat in on several telecine sessions for both movies, dramas and sitcoms, and have been on the stage and in the control room when 100-piece orchestras were recording scores for blockbuster films.
I mention all of this just as a way of letting you know I'm not just some guy who dropped in off the street.
That said, I'd like to chime in on the discussion here about the video quality of the Simpsons DVDs. The main problem we're dealing with here is the fact that although the original images for the show were captured with film, the finished product is VIDEOTAPE. That is, all of the original film material was transferred to videotape, and the editing of the show took place on a tape format. Thus, these DVDs are ALL derived from VIDEOTAPE masters (all three seasons), and not the original film elements.
To use the film elements they would have the RE-TRANSFER all the film (assuming that all the pieces were cataloged for easy retrieval), and then RE-EDIT each episode, recreate the titling, etc. This is a daunting and hugely expensive task, especially considering the number of episodes involved. It's unlikely that they would go to this trouble "just" for the DVD release, but it might happen in the future if they want to make the show available in HD. Paramount recently did this with CHEERS, so there is some precedent for it (the Season 1 DVD box of CHEERS is a downconvert from the new HD masters).
Now, to make matters worse, the first few seasons of the Simpsons (perhaps up to season 5 or so) were all mastered on 1-inch tape, which is a COMPOSITE video format. To use this to produce DVDs, it must be decoded into component format, which never looks as good as something that originated in component. So, that's strike-one against top-notch quality.
Strike two occurred during the editing process of those early episodes. Many of the scenes in the first four or five (or maybe even six) seasons were shortened or lengthened during the edit to adjust the pacing -- unfortunately, since this was done by slowing down (or speeding up) the videotape for that scene, the video quality goes way, WAY down. As has been mentioned here, those scenes appear very soft, with a cyclical blurring of the vertical edges, and an odd "enhanced" look. That's just the nature of the way those 1-inch machines worked when you ran them off speed.
Fortunately, they eventually stopped this practice (can't remember exactly when, but I can find out if there's a real interest), and later moved into producing the show on a component video format (Digital Betacam). Once they release THOSE episodes on DVD, you should see a marked improvement in quality.
In the meantime, I think these DVDs are a pretty good reflection of what's on the master tapes (I have seen a 2nd generation 1-inch dub, so I have a fair idea of what they look like), and are a FAR, FAR, FAR cry from what you'll see if you watch the show in syndication. Wow, those versions look really, really incredibly bad.
I hope this helps explain some of the things you're seeing. --Bill R.
This my first post to this forum, so let me take a moment to give you some background on who I am. I've worked as a broadcast TV engineer for the past 30 years, and in that time I've seen just about everything "bad" that can happen to video, and can cite the cause of most things I see. Over the course of the years I've also developed friendships with many people who work in the Hollywood post-production community, have sat in on several telecine sessions for both movies, dramas and sitcoms, and have been on the stage and in the control room when 100-piece orchestras were recording scores for blockbuster films.
I mention all of this just as a way of letting you know I'm not just some guy who dropped in off the street.
That said, I'd like to chime in on the discussion here about the video quality of the Simpsons DVDs. The main problem we're dealing with here is the fact that although the original images for the show were captured with film, the finished product is VIDEOTAPE. That is, all of the original film material was transferred to videotape, and the editing of the show took place on a tape format. Thus, these DVDs are ALL derived from VIDEOTAPE masters (all three seasons), and not the original film elements.
To use the film elements they would have the RE-TRANSFER all the film (assuming that all the pieces were cataloged for easy retrieval), and then RE-EDIT each episode, recreate the titling, etc. This is a daunting and hugely expensive task, especially considering the number of episodes involved. It's unlikely that they would go to this trouble "just" for the DVD release, but it might happen in the future if they want to make the show available in HD. Paramount recently did this with CHEERS, so there is some precedent for it (the Season 1 DVD box of CHEERS is a downconvert from the new HD masters).
Now, to make matters worse, the first few seasons of the Simpsons (perhaps up to season 5 or so) were all mastered on 1-inch tape, which is a COMPOSITE video format. To use this to produce DVDs, it must be decoded into component format, which never looks as good as something that originated in component. So, that's strike-one against top-notch quality.
Strike two occurred during the editing process of those early episodes. Many of the scenes in the first four or five (or maybe even six) seasons were shortened or lengthened during the edit to adjust the pacing -- unfortunately, since this was done by slowing down (or speeding up) the videotape for that scene, the video quality goes way, WAY down. As has been mentioned here, those scenes appear very soft, with a cyclical blurring of the vertical edges, and an odd "enhanced" look. That's just the nature of the way those 1-inch machines worked when you ran them off speed.
Fortunately, they eventually stopped this practice (can't remember exactly when, but I can find out if there's a real interest), and later moved into producing the show on a component video format (Digital Betacam). Once they release THOSE episodes on DVD, you should see a marked improvement in quality.
In the meantime, I think these DVDs are a pretty good reflection of what's on the master tapes (I have seen a 2nd generation 1-inch dub, so I have a fair idea of what they look like), and are a FAR, FAR, FAR cry from what you'll see if you watch the show in syndication. Wow, those versions look really, really incredibly bad.
I hope this helps explain some of the things you're seeing. --Bill R.
