Vahan_Nisanain
Supporting Actor
Do you mean LBS Communications?Neil Brock said:Lexington Broadcast System
Do you mean LBS Communications?Neil Brock said:Lexington Broadcast System
Exactly right. They remove frames from the picture when the tape transfer is done. You can't just run the tape slower, you have to put the missing frames back in and that can only be done with a re-transfer from film. Image did go back to the film elements for the 5th and final season, which unfotunately is the weakest of the series.smithbrad said:If memory serves, it was a process the studio's did at one point in the creation of the syndicated prints that they distributed. They knew exactly what they were doing at the time. The DVD's were produced from those syndicated prints by Image, an independent DVD distributor that licensed the rights, not a major studio.
Things can get a bit convoluted when it comes to independents and rights, and I don't know the state of things with regards to Combat!. There are probably film elements in a vault somewhere, but that doesn't mean that they were readily available to Image, or that it would have been cost effective for them to retransfer them. It's quite possible that this is all that was available from the source the rights were procured from.
Combat! isn't the only release timesped. The fact that they clock in at around 47 minutes each instead of 50 minutes is always the first indicator of cuts or being timesped. I knew about it before I purchased based on information here on the forum.
As for fixing it, I'm not sure you can using the timesped prints. It's one thing to remove something to speed it up but another to try to add something back that is no longer there. You basically have to go back to the original film elements. Usually it is the audio that gets most people and that can be fixed using a pitch conversion (that's what I understand they do with movies converted to PAL), but that is yet another added expense.
So whether Image knew from the get go that they had timesped prints is hard to say, but in the end there really isn't a whole lot they could do about it at the time. They don't have the budget to easily go back to original film elements. They eventually did with Twilight Zone and Dick Van Dyke but only after releasing on DVD in lesser quality first. They released Combat! a few times on DVD now so maybe they are looking to upgrade to the film elements in the future for a better release. This is the way it goes with independents sometimes when a major studio doesn't do it themselves or isn't even in the picture. Independents sometimes have to build up equity through releases to fund additional remastering work. Sound familiar.
Of course we could have just hoped for someone bigger to pick it up and try and do it right from the beginning. And we might still be waiting if that was the case. But you have plenty on your shelves so it wouldn't have made a difference to you.
Yes. The first show they did it with was Gidget.IntoIt said:Do you mean LBS Communications?
neil,Neil Brock said:Time compression/speed-up and Lexiconing, as it was originally called when Lexington Broadcast System started the process, has been around for about 30 years or so. I'm not sure how anyone could claim to know anything about television and not know about this. To me, that speaks volumes and anyone who would state that they never heard of this? Well, to me that tells me all I need to know.
They've done this with Perry Mason as well. I don't get ME-TV at my house (Direct TV subscriber) but my parents do and the other night while I was visiting we came upon a PM episode and the time-compression was horrible. Sometimes the "Chipmunk" analogy as pure hyperbole, but in this case I can honestly say that Paul Drake sounded like Alvin. It was that bad.Neil Brock said:Time speeding has evolved where now it can be done by the station itself. For instance, ME-TV runs Dobie Gillis and Phil Silvers Show sped-up. They have complete episodes but they speed it up themselves by running the tapes faster. The dialogue speed makes this blatantly obvious as they are trying to pick up 3 minutes on a half hour show and that requires a lot of speeding up.
Image has the rights, so it is possible they could redo it, at some point. But, like Twilight Zone it will depend on a few things, cost to transfer and access to the film elements, potential revenue to be generated in a better release, and the budget they can set aside based on previous revenue earned.jimmyjet said:hi brad,
i would like to see someone re-do combat, though.
not that i think they will.
mainly, cuz i dont want the final copy to be altered.
too many times "altered" from the original at some point can cause problems.
at least at this point, we still have the originals. but they wont last forever in film form.
i think this stuff can serve as entertainment for centuries to come.
BUT ONLY IF IT STILL EXISTS.
Have you seen Green Acres on Antenna TV?Gary OS said:They've done this with Perry Mason as well. I don't get ME-TV at my house (Direct TV subscriber) but my parents do and the other night while I was visiting we came upon a PM episode and the time-compression was horrible. Sometimes the "Chipmunk" analogy as pure hyperbole, but in this case I can honestly say that Paul Drake sounded like Alvin. It was that bad.
Gary "if I know a particular show well then time-compression can bother me some, but most of the time it's not an issue" O.
The theme songs are definitely where it's going to be most obvious, for sure. I've noticed the general time-sped issue most often in the opening themes.The Obsolete Man said:Have you seen Green Acres on Antenna TV?
The theme song is a dead giveaway that the show is time compressed. It doesn't hit me as much during the body of the show, but the theme song is just too fast.
I will provide my basic understanding, so most films of the past were probably shot 35mm with some of the bigger budget spectacles in 70mm. TV followed suit in the beginning with 35mm, which is why many shows from the 50's and 60's can do better with Blu-ray releases than many taped shows later in the 70's and 80's since 35mm film supports an HD resolution where much that was taped was standard definition.jimmyjet said:hi brad,
i now understand that the larger the mm, the more information that it can contain, correct ?
so 70 mm has more info than 35, which has more than 16 ?
recently, you guys have been referring to 16mm originals. but quite often i also hear about 35 mm originals.
is there some sort of way of "knowing" what film the original was shot in ?
like in these years, they used such and such. or these studios did such and such.
or is just completely random ?
If it's a legit approach to going HD then they are going from the 35mm elements. That's what CBS has been doing for most of their back catalog. That what makes it so slow at times with them because they only seem to dedicate but so many resources. They are transferring the bulk of their shows to a high definition format for future syndication and potential blu-rays releases (that they are now just starting to take advantage this Spring). These HD transfers are be downgraded to SD DVD releases that look better than most (even down-converted) because the quality of the source.jimmyjet said:thanks brad,
so are most of the blu-ray releases using the original 35 mm ?
or are they starting with the 16mm stuff ?