Hello all,
I originally posted this at fanedit.org, but was advised that I'd probably get more response and perhaps more assistance/advice by posting it here. I appreciate anyone taking the time to read through this lengthy post!
I'm not sure how many of you purchased the new DVD set entitled "Michael Jackson's Vision" which is a collection of (nearly) all of his short films, supposedly remastered and fully restored.
The only problem is, they are NOT remastered nor are they restored in the slightest bit. They are obviously taken from the same old faded and grainy SD video recordings that were used to put the short films on MTV, etc., the very same sources that have been used for all previous Michael Jackson DVDs, and not from the original source material.
All in all, the DVD set is a disappointment. It suffers from extremely poor picture quality, excessive graininess in most of the "videos" from before 1990, and two very obvious omissions from the compilation.
The two obvious omissions are Captain EO and Michael Jackson's Ghosts. Sure, there's a 3 or 4 minute "music video" of Ghosts, but no sign of the entire 40 minute short film.
On the other hand, the sound quality of the DVD's is actually rather good, but all of the short films are presented only in stereo, when several of his short films are known to have full Dolby surround tracks.
I am a collector of Michael Jackson materials, and therefore am in possession of the PAL Laser Disc of Ghosts, as well as every "official" DVD that has been released with any of his short films, including Number Ones, History volumes 1 and 2, Dangerous, the Thriller 25th anniversary DVD, as well as a European PAL 20-disc set entitled "Michael Jackson: Visionary" - a set that only has one short film per disc, but has a few that aren't available in any other collection (besides the new and disappointing Vision set).
I also have a home brewed DVD of Captain EO that isn't of the best quality, but is what most people would term "watchable."
I've had a fanedit in the works for a while now, and was able to complete it recently. All of the info will be at fanedit.org. Over the past week since work on my fanedit has been winding down, I've been transferring all my MJ materials to my PC. Basically, I have at least 2 versions of nearly every short film, and for some I have as many as 5 different copies. I've ripped each short film as a separate VOB and named them with their original source information so that I can keep track of where each one came from.
A few of the videos, such as the short film for "Cry," are only available in the new "Vision" box set, and so I only have one copy. I won't even go into how much of a mess they made of that one... It seems to have been hard-telecined at least twice as well as being improperly interlaced, and suffers from some strange field-order anomalies. I probably have the clearest and best-looking version of that video in existence (for the general public) since I worked for 3 days with AVIsynth and VirtualDub just to sort out the majority of the interlacing/field order/telecining problems. It's still not perfect, but it is a lot more watchable than it was.
To fix some graininess in the source material of my fanedit, I broke down and purchased the Neat Video noise reduction plugin... if you've never seen what it can do, I suggest you go to http://www.neatvideo.com and use their demo on some of the test clips they provide.
Neat Video is an amazing plugin. It can remove even severe noise without blurring the picture "behind" the noise, and without making everything seem "too" smooth. Well worth the $99 I spent on it. I use VirtualDub a lot, so I purchased that version. It's also available for Premiere, After Effects, Vegas, and a few others.
All that said, here's what I'm pondering: I'd like to take all this MJ source material, select the best copies of each short film, and do a set entitled "Michael Jackson's Clear Vision" - since it would be made up of mostly commercially available materials, I wouldn't be able to post it here in its final form for download. I'd have to put it on fanedit.org as a FanMix or FanFix. In any event, I was advised that preserv would be the best place to discuss the actual restoration of all the footage, so here I am.
This endeavor would involve a huge amount of work, as each short film will likely come from a different source, some PAL, some NTSC, and will all have to be reformatted to a single standard. Then, of course, I'll have to clean up the graininess with Neat Video, restore the color in many of them, and put it all together in a new DVD set.
The Neat Video plugin works using a noise sample from the video you're working with, or a noise sample from the camera used to shoot the footage... so each video's noise print will have to be made separately, and NV's settings adjusted individually for each case. The plugin is also somewhat slow, and removing the noise from 45 to 50 (or more) music videos is going to take a while.
This is a huge undertaking, I know, but in the absence of any official set that is truly restored, I really would like to create a clearer, more polished collection of Michael Jackson's works... a collection actually worth putting his name on.
I have legal sources for everything except Captain EO. I am unaware of any "official" release of Captain EO in either VHS or DVD format. I have the home brew DVD, which includes the full screen and widescreen editions of the film.
Anyway, I'm curious if anyone might know where I can get my hands on any other official/legal sources of MJ's short films, performances, etc. I might also throw in a selection of some of his most memorable live performances, since there are a couple on the History and Dangerous DVD's... and any other rarities I can manage to turn up.
I suppose that figuring out the exact category this project falls into isn't important at this stage, though... The title, "Michael Jackson's Clear Vision," and the purpose (cleaning up MJ's works and presenting them the way they deserve to be presented) are enough for now.
This could end up being a project I work on slowly, here and there, as I'm also yearning to do other fanedits in the interim. And this one is going to be an awful lot of work.
Any advice, suggestions, places where I might be able to buy rare DVD's (or even VHS) of MJ's music videos (he preferred to call them short films)... or anything else you can offer, would be graciously appreciated.
Thanks!
I originally posted this at fanedit.org, but was advised that I'd probably get more response and perhaps more assistance/advice by posting it here. I appreciate anyone taking the time to read through this lengthy post!
I'm not sure how many of you purchased the new DVD set entitled "Michael Jackson's Vision" which is a collection of (nearly) all of his short films, supposedly remastered and fully restored.
The only problem is, they are NOT remastered nor are they restored in the slightest bit. They are obviously taken from the same old faded and grainy SD video recordings that were used to put the short films on MTV, etc., the very same sources that have been used for all previous Michael Jackson DVDs, and not from the original source material.
All in all, the DVD set is a disappointment. It suffers from extremely poor picture quality, excessive graininess in most of the "videos" from before 1990, and two very obvious omissions from the compilation.
The two obvious omissions are Captain EO and Michael Jackson's Ghosts. Sure, there's a 3 or 4 minute "music video" of Ghosts, but no sign of the entire 40 minute short film.
On the other hand, the sound quality of the DVD's is actually rather good, but all of the short films are presented only in stereo, when several of his short films are known to have full Dolby surround tracks.
I am a collector of Michael Jackson materials, and therefore am in possession of the PAL Laser Disc of Ghosts, as well as every "official" DVD that has been released with any of his short films, including Number Ones, History volumes 1 and 2, Dangerous, the Thriller 25th anniversary DVD, as well as a European PAL 20-disc set entitled "Michael Jackson: Visionary" - a set that only has one short film per disc, but has a few that aren't available in any other collection (besides the new and disappointing Vision set).
I also have a home brewed DVD of Captain EO that isn't of the best quality, but is what most people would term "watchable."
I've had a fanedit in the works for a while now, and was able to complete it recently. All of the info will be at fanedit.org. Over the past week since work on my fanedit has been winding down, I've been transferring all my MJ materials to my PC. Basically, I have at least 2 versions of nearly every short film, and for some I have as many as 5 different copies. I've ripped each short film as a separate VOB and named them with their original source information so that I can keep track of where each one came from.
A few of the videos, such as the short film for "Cry," are only available in the new "Vision" box set, and so I only have one copy. I won't even go into how much of a mess they made of that one... It seems to have been hard-telecined at least twice as well as being improperly interlaced, and suffers from some strange field-order anomalies. I probably have the clearest and best-looking version of that video in existence (for the general public) since I worked for 3 days with AVIsynth and VirtualDub just to sort out the majority of the interlacing/field order/telecining problems. It's still not perfect, but it is a lot more watchable than it was.
To fix some graininess in the source material of my fanedit, I broke down and purchased the Neat Video noise reduction plugin... if you've never seen what it can do, I suggest you go to http://www.neatvideo.com and use their demo on some of the test clips they provide.
Neat Video is an amazing plugin. It can remove even severe noise without blurring the picture "behind" the noise, and without making everything seem "too" smooth. Well worth the $99 I spent on it. I use VirtualDub a lot, so I purchased that version. It's also available for Premiere, After Effects, Vegas, and a few others.
All that said, here's what I'm pondering: I'd like to take all this MJ source material, select the best copies of each short film, and do a set entitled "Michael Jackson's Clear Vision" - since it would be made up of mostly commercially available materials, I wouldn't be able to post it here in its final form for download. I'd have to put it on fanedit.org as a FanMix or FanFix. In any event, I was advised that preserv would be the best place to discuss the actual restoration of all the footage, so here I am.
This endeavor would involve a huge amount of work, as each short film will likely come from a different source, some PAL, some NTSC, and will all have to be reformatted to a single standard. Then, of course, I'll have to clean up the graininess with Neat Video, restore the color in many of them, and put it all together in a new DVD set.
The Neat Video plugin works using a noise sample from the video you're working with, or a noise sample from the camera used to shoot the footage... so each video's noise print will have to be made separately, and NV's settings adjusted individually for each case. The plugin is also somewhat slow, and removing the noise from 45 to 50 (or more) music videos is going to take a while.
This is a huge undertaking, I know, but in the absence of any official set that is truly restored, I really would like to create a clearer, more polished collection of Michael Jackson's works... a collection actually worth putting his name on.
I have legal sources for everything except Captain EO. I am unaware of any "official" release of Captain EO in either VHS or DVD format. I have the home brew DVD, which includes the full screen and widescreen editions of the film.
Anyway, I'm curious if anyone might know where I can get my hands on any other official/legal sources of MJ's short films, performances, etc. I might also throw in a selection of some of his most memorable live performances, since there are a couple on the History and Dangerous DVD's... and any other rarities I can manage to turn up.
I suppose that figuring out the exact category this project falls into isn't important at this stage, though... The title, "Michael Jackson's Clear Vision," and the purpose (cleaning up MJ's works and presenting them the way they deserve to be presented) are enough for now.
This could end up being a project I work on slowly, here and there, as I'm also yearning to do other fanedits in the interim. And this one is going to be an awful lot of work.
Any advice, suggestions, places where I might be able to buy rare DVD's (or even VHS) of MJ's music videos (he preferred to call them short films)... or anything else you can offer, would be graciously appreciated.
Thanks!
