Music Replacement In Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place (16 Viewers)

[Dylan32]

I really love Beverly Hills, 90210 but can't watch with replaced music. I bought the DVDs (already knowing about the music issue) but watched the first 2 episodes before I realized I couldn't take it anymore.

I have a project to solve the music replacement issue. Same idea as the Roswell restored project. I already have the original audio for all episodes except the pilot.

Does anyone have the original, Soapnet, or TVtropolis 2 hour pilot episode (Class Of Beverly Hills) recorded on VHS in Hi-Fi stereo?

If so, can you record just the audio (with commercials is ok and preferred) and upload to my cloud drive (PM me for the link). It has to be HiFi stereo. I can easily hear the hiss and dropouts of standard linear audio tracks.

Please use at least 44.1Khz sample rate and 16bits (levels set ok so there's no clipping). Most recording programs won't record more then 2GB per file, so make 2 files if needed. You can use 24bits at 48Khz if your sound device will do it. Compressing with lossless .FLAC, .ALAC, .WV (wavpack), .APE would be ideal, but .MP3 of 192Kbps, or .AAC (.M4A) at least 128Kbps is ok too. MP3 of 128Kbps or AAC 96Kbps is the minimum before compression artifacts become obvious. .WAV or .AC3 is fine too (I can handle any format).

If you have it in digital already, say a video file you got somewhere, I can handle that too. Google for the free program Mediainfo to check the audio format and bitrate. If at least 128Kbps stereo or 2 channel for the audio, that'll work.

If you no longer have a HiFi VCR, I do have a recently refurbished prosumer editing HiFi S-VHS deck, but would rather not go the postal borrow, dub, return tape to you route as I wish to remain anonymous.

Again I only need the pilot episode. I'm not looking for DVD audio, but a recording using a VCR of any of the 4 TV broadcasts that had all the cool music. And if you are truly elite, you did the Dishnetwork trick around 2005 and recorded episodes from Soapnet (I did that starting in 2006 but they never played the pilot episode).

Can anyone help?

 

[Dylan32]

So it turns out I only need about a 3 minute clip of audio from the original, Soapnet, or TVtropolis showing, rather than the whole pilot. If someone has the pilot on tape, and can provide that 3 minutes of audio, I'll be able to integrate it into the whole episode's audio.

It's the part where David drove Steve's Corvette home from the party. Jackson Browne's Boulevard was supposed to be playing.

I found a list of songs in the pilot and with Spotify's help, I think only one song changed. Here's a rundown of the whole 90210 pilot's music:

intact:
"I Want Your Love" by Transvision Vamp
Beginning of the episode - Brandon's alarm clock

intact:
"All I Want Is Everything" by Jellyfish
introducing West Beverly. Brenda and Brandon arrive

intact:
"Attacked by Monsters" by Meat Puppets
Brandon arrives at Marianne's party.

hard to hear what's playing in background (I'm not sure):
"Paradise" by by Meat Puppets
Steve talks to Kelly at the party.

replaced (big one missing here):
"Boulevard" by Jackson Browne
David drives Steve home after party.

intact:
"The Motion of Love" by Gene Loves Jezebel
Brenda meets Jason at the club.

intact (I'm a big TIM fan, and to hear this was quite special):
"Clear To You" by The Innocence Mission
Brandon and Marianne riding motorcycle along the coast.

intact:
"Wild In The Streets" by Garland Jeffreys
Brandon and Brenda in the car listening to the radio talking about Marianne.

 

[Dylan32]

I have begun the project and noticed 4 of the TVTropolis videos are mono audio:

Does anyone have these episodes recorded on VHS or on your computer in true stereo from the original broadcast, SoapNet, or TVTropolis airings?:
Beverly Hills, 90210 - 1x02 - The Green Room [PDTV-drngr].avi
Beverly Hills, 90210 - 1x03 - Every Dream Has Its Price (Tag) [PDTV-drngr].avi
Beverly Hills, 90210 - 1x04 - The First Time [PDTV-drngr].avi
Beverly Hills, 90210 - 1x05 - One On One (29.97) [PDTV-drngr].avi

They all have mp3 stereo audio streams inside the .avi files, but it's 2 tracks identical to each other. I call it dual mono, which is not real stereo.

Besides hearing it, you can see stereo with parallel digital level meters. They do not exactly track each other when music is played.

Please PM me if you have any of these episodes in stereo. And I'm still trying to find that 3 minutes of audio from the pilot episode.


If you're a video geek, continue reading, otherwise stop or risk eye glazing boredom.

The BH, 90210 PAL DVDs arrived, and I compared quality with the NTSC DVDs. After some study, the original frame rate is 23.976fps. The PAL DVDs are 25fps by simply speeding up the framerate to 25fps with no resampling of the audio- the pitch sounds higher, to the point that voices almost sound funny. A 3:2 pulldown method was probably used on the NTSC DVDs to get 29.97fps (and has some judder).

The PAL version does look visibly superior as I was hoping it would- PAL's 576 lines vertical resolution vs. NTSC's 480 lines, which suggests the master is film, and we may one day see an official high-def release of this. Maybe Melrose Place too.

I came up with a process using about 20 programs to convert the 25fps PAL DVDs to the original 23.976fps and with original audio (English subtitles too). Believe it or not, it is monumentally difficult to change MPEG2 framerates without re-encoding (H264 is easy). After 2 days of research, I found an old program called tsMuxer could handle MPEG2 and change every frame header PTS timecode (which controls the framerate) without re-encoding.

After stretching the PAL DVD audio by 104.2708333% (using Audition) and resampling at 48KHz, I had PAL audio that exactly matched the DVD video now at 23.976fps. This is important for audio-video sync. To change to TVTropolis audio, I make it an .mkv with a .xml chapter file converted from PAL 25fps to 23.976fps. Open that TVTropolis .mkv into Videoredo, and I split the video by chapter length segments. Why you ask? The TVTropolis video does not exactly match the length of the DVD because edits were manually done to make the TVTropolis files.

You need chapter segmented audio, or else you would not be able to get the TvTropolis audio in sync with the DVD audio, plus the most important reason, with chapter segments, I can use a program (that was not cheap) to automatically sync the chapter segmented audio to the DVD audio in a NLE video editor, mute the DVD audio, and render (output) as just TVTropolis audio in .flac (or .wav) at the exact length of the 23.976fps DVD video and perfectly synced to the video.

Remux that with the .ts, .xml, and .srt files and walla- the best release yet of this qreat show! The folks who made Roswell Restored did it with their eyes and ears as the syncing software had yet to be developed. Super pain in the butt, time consuming, and not perfect.

The final result is a hybrid video in .mkv file- PAL resolution, but NTSC playing time and 23.976fps and with TVTropolis original audio.

Importantly, I can do this project with no lossy re-encoding (mp3 audio to flac is lossless). I'm undecided if I will re-encode the video to H264. With a temporal smoother and slight sharpening, I may actually be able to improve the video and get the size from 1.7GB to 1GB per episode.

I WILL NOT compromise on quality to get a smaller file. If native video looks better, then native it is. 12TB drives are cheap these days.

Anyway... I'm sorry if your eyes have glazed over, but I'm sure someone finds this interesting.

 

[dawnshadow]

I found it interesting, just wondering though, wouldn't using the NTSC DVD audio have a better result than slowing down the PAL DVD audio? I know it would be extra work but it sounds like you want this to be definitive.

Or are you just using TVTropolis audio for the entire episode and not just the scenes with music replacement?

 

[Ulysses85]

Does anyone have the full show in its original version, without the changed music?

 

[Ulysses85]

I really love Beverly Hills, 90210 but can't watch with replaced music. I bought the DVDs (already knowing about the music issue) but watched the first 2 episodes before I realized I couldn't take it anymore.

I have a project to solve the music replacement issue. Same idea as the Roswell restored project. I already have the original audio for all episodes except the pilot.

Does anyone have the original, Soapnet, or TVtropolis 2 hour pilot episode (Class Of Beverly Hills) recorded on VHS in Hi-Fi stereo?

If so, can you record just the audio (with commercials is ok and preferred) and upload to my cloud drive (PM me for the link). It has to be HiFi stereo. I can easily hear the hiss and dropouts of standard linear audio tracks.

Please use at least 44.1Khz sample rate and 16bits (levels set ok so there's no clipping). Most recording programs won't record more then 2GB per file, so make 2 files if needed. You can use 24bits at 48Khz if your sound device will do it. Compressing with lossless .FLAC, .ALAC, .WV (wavpack), .APE would be ideal, but .MP3 of 192Kbps, or .AAC (.M4A) at least 128Kbps is ok too. MP3 of 128Kbps or AAC 96Kbps is the minimum before compression artifacts become obvious. .WAV or .AC3 is fine too (I can handle any format).

If you have it in digital already, say a video file you got somewhere, I can handle that too. Google for the free program Mediainfo to check the audio format and bitrate. If at least 128Kbps stereo or 2 channel for the audio, that'll work.

If you no longer have a HiFi VCR, I do have a recently refurbished prosumer editing HiFi S-VHS deck, but would rather not go the postal borrow, dub, return tape to you route as I wish to remain anonymous.

Again I only need the pilot episode. I'm not looking for DVD audio, but a recording using a VCR of any of the 4 TV broadcasts that had all the cool music. And if you are truly elite, you did the Dishnetwork trick around 2005 and recorded episodes from Soapnet (I did that starting in 2006 but they never played the pilot episode).

Can anyone help?

If you finish this project, please, let me know! I need a link for downloading the show in its original edit.

 

[Homestar9]

What a wonderful project! I was also disappointed at the music substitutions made on the DVD release and have been hoping for a remaster at some point. I don't know what CBS All Access is trying to do with their streaming service, but providing remasters of shows like BH 90210, Star Trek DS9, etc... would be amazing and would bring a lot of people to their subscription model.

If you do finish, please do update us because I'd like to update my collection with the original audio as well!

 

[Platelets]

I found it interesting, just wondering though, wouldn't using the NTSC DVD audio have a better result than slowing down the PAL DVD audio? I know it would be extra work but it sounds like you want this to be definitive.

Or are you just using TVTropolis audio for the entire episode and not just the scenes with music replacement?

I’d love to check out this project when completed. The audio replacement on the DVDs has driven me bonkers for years.

 

[te5s3rakt]

Super keen for this project. Would love to get a copy when done.

 

[PinkSunsets]

We should start a petition. I'm sick of these awkward episodes and missing episodes - as the powers that be did not have the insight to make arrangements for the original music to be used. Something must be done.

 

[PinkSunsets]

We all need to complain to CBS. The show is on their website now, so I guess CBS acquired the rights. I complain all the time via feedback. Lots of people need to complain to CBS about the lack of original music in the episodes.

 

[deadakaalive]

I have been working on this project for the last couple of years now.
Restoring all the missing parts back in to the original DVD's. I have learnt a lot about editing in the process such as masking.
(means putting one picture over the top of another to remove any on screen text or logos).
I have managed to source a number of different tvrips to help achieve this goal. It's not finished yet but officially all episodes are fully intact, now it's a matter of subtitles, DVD creations and fixing any parts with better tv captures when they become available.

 

[Desslar]

Still haven't picked up 90210 or Melrose Place, but the prices seem more reasonable now so maybe I'll take the leap.

Fortunately I do not really care for most of the songs that were mentioned, so their absence or presence doesn't matter too much as long as any replacements are from the same time period and genre.

Although as an LA Guns fan, their deletion from Melrose Place is a little disappointing. Can imagine they charge much for licensing their songs these days. '

What I cannot stand is when a song is replaced by something that does not match the scene or and/or the time period. There's an episode in season 1 of Hunter (1984) in which a prominently played Rolling Stones song - "Sympathy for the Devil" - is replaced with a generic mid-90s grungy sounding rock song. It does not fit at all.