The Old School Otaku Lounge

davemerrill wrote: ↑Fri May 04, 2018 1:52 pm I picked up a Super Beta cheap at the Value Village, mostly for the heck of it. It needs work, and it's been on the far end of my "to do" list for a while, but I always hoped I'd get it operational. From what you're telling me _D_, the prospects of getting it repaired here in Canada don't look great. Oh well. I have upgraded most - heck, *all* of what I had on Beta anyways.

Lots of info on YouTube on fixing those decks. But you might have to cannibalize other decks to get parts. Some parts are still available though you might need an oscilloscope to really set them up. I've seen DVD recorders galore at VV and the Sally Ann but no Beta decks. VHS are there every week but usually the old crappy ones. I have yet to find a good SVHS deck at one of those places. Might find them at yard sales but they seem to have been the victims of recycle drives of the past...

runesaint wrote: ↑Sun Apr 08, 2018 5:35 pm I think perhaps I should reply to the original question. Lets see...

Thanks for sharing. Interesting read. I know you're not the only one in the same boat...

_D_ wrote: ↑Thu May 03, 2018 7:34 am Well, since my last visit I've had more time to cap a lot of Toei shows with good audio from the original broadcasts

That is good news.

_D_ wrote: ↑Thu May 03, 2018 7:34 am Can anyone tell me definitively if the Sailor Moon TV series has good audio from the Cinetape masters?

My memory tells me that the Sailor Moon laserdiscs had good quality audio.
Interestingly, it also tells me that the TV broadcast did not.

Found this on TVTropes:

"Certain previews of the series use the Original Broadcast Audio, which is audio for Sailor Moon taken from VCR recordings of each episode's initial broadcast in the Kanto region of Japan. This audio is highly sought-out as it offers the closest quality to the show's cine tapes. When production of the episodes were completed, Toei would send the cine tapes over to TV Asahi and retain their 16mm master copy's optical soundtrack as their internal audio source; the cine tapes were usually disposed of by TV Asahi following the initial broadcast since they were large and TV Asahi's storage space was at a premium (this issue also plagued Toei's other pre-2000's shows, most notably Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Cutey Honey and Saint Seiya). It's averted for the episodes, despite the Japanese tracks still being in mono, since Toei released the entire series on Laserdisc first."

So, it looks like the good audio was kept as the LDs had it. Since none of the other shows at the time had LD releases or they predated the format, there is no broadcast audio available unless fans recorded it and released it...

Well, figured out how to make the recorders record in LPCM which SHOULD be better for people trying to clean up the audio as most programs DO NOT allow you to use Dolby Digital which my recorders (Pioneer, Sony and Panasonic) default to. So, all my recordings here on out will have that audio format. Dunno how much interest there is in lesser shows like Kamen no Ninja Akakage or Sakigake Otoko Juku but I will be recording those that way as well. Everyone seems to want the holy grail shows like Dragon Ball and to a lesser extent Hokuto no Ken and Saint Seiya. Maybe a few others like Transformers (of which I have scant few episodes). What I would like to find out is what other series besides Toei ones had crap audio or did they always keep their audio masters (unlike Toei). Can't seem to find that info anywhere. At least what I do have will keep me busy for a long time and perhaps I can archive even more if I can fix my recorders to do so. It's all pretty iffy at this point...

I think with the recent popularity of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, more people might be ready to appreciate Sakigake Otoko Juku. (^_^)

Oddly enough, there are subbed episodes up on YouTube. Too bad the live action movie isn't subbed though...

mbanu wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 10:41 am I think with the recent popularity of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, more people might be ready to appreciate Sakigake Otoko Juku. (^_^)

I feel like Otokojuku is something everyone appreciates, when they are exposed to it, but only in minimal (and usually lacking full context) doses. I'll admit, I'm only a fan of the earliest parts of the series where it's a fighting comic gag affair, as opposed to later on when it becomes a run of the mill shonen action/fighting comic.

The fansubs that _D_ mentioned on YouTube were done 8 years ago and they never found an audience despite having the whole series and movie subtitled.

Found a bunch more stuff in my travels like the original broadcast episodes of Esteban Child of the Sun which aired in 1983. As I understand it, NHK threw out the audio masters for that show, so it was redubbed in the 1990s for re-release. There were only three of the original episodes up on Youtube, though the poster had said he had them all albeit many were in rough shape. He vanished years ago but never took his account down. The Right Stuff has the English language episodes up on YouTube but they are pay to view.

I also found out that the Canadian dubbing of the 1980 Astroboy series had it's audio wiped. I did have many of those episodes at one time but erased the tapes and used them for something else. A big pity that...

But I'm trying to track down what else might have gone missing that I might be able to salvage. Some people purport to know so I'll just have to wait and see...

The original airing broadcast audio Dragonball episodes I have seem to be the big thing but some people are never satisfied. Give them something no one else has and they STILL complain. Biggest is that the shows aren't recorded in LPCM audio instead of the Dolby Digital the DVD recorders default to. It's all just mono audio and will need to be cleaned up anyway, so who cares? Well, apparently a small subset do, so I made some recordings in LPCM. Waiting to see what they say about those. Still have lots of old shows to cap but the motivation is waning just about now. And losing my oldest high school friend to cancer yesterday didn't help my morale. Ah, life...

_D_ wrote: ↑Fri Jun 29, 2018 4:59 am The original airing broadcast audio Dragonball episodes I have seem to be the big thing but some people are never satisfied. Give them something no one else has and they STILL complain. Biggest is that the shows aren't recorded in LPCM audio instead of the Dolby Digital the DVD recorders default to. It's all just mono audio and will need to be cleaned up anyway, so who cares? Well, apparently a small subset do, so I made some recordings in LPCM. Waiting to see what they say about those. Still have lots of old shows to cap but the motivation is waning just about now. And losing my oldest high school friend to cancer yesterday didn't help my morale. Ah, life...

Sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, _D_. That is really rough to lose close friends like that.

Your posts about restoring audio to tapes, especially the old Dragonball ones, always fascinates me, even though I have little to no clue about audio or video engineering or even digitizing analog tape. I've always been in the camp that knowing about Dragonball and Dragonball Z's mono broadcast meant we weren't going to see good tapes released, particularly from fansubbers, but was just "oh well, can't be helped." I am guessing the small subset you're talking about are the ones that do know (or, at least, reasonably believe) that it can be helped.

Folks complaining like that aren't worth your time - do what you think is important and what you appreciate.