funnybook
03-25-2007, 10:18 AM
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I've completed a thorough remaster of the complete run of The Johnny Cash Show.
http://tinyurl.com/3xqhou
The Johnny Cash Show has been running around the trade circles complete for a long time. In that original set there are 28 disks with 2 episodes each, and 2 disks with just one episode each, for a total of 30 disks. The menus play "Folsom Prison Blues" EXTREMELY loud, and they have small meaningless thumbnails that don't tell anything at all about the episodes such as a guest list or song list or anything besides the episode number. The audio volume fluctuates wildly between episodes, too... One will be at normal volume, then the next will be so quiet you have to crank the volume in order to hear it, then if you forget about it until it ends and jumps back to the menu you get a SPEAKER BLOWING EAR SPLITTING BLAST of "Folsom Prison Blues"... it was for this reason more than any other that I decided to remaster this set. The variation in volume levels is truly insane.
The first thing I did was spend about two weeks watching the entire run, taking notes for the remaster process in one text file and keeping a separate text file of a complete list of every guest and song performed. During this time I paused the play frequently to go online and search lyrics databases for various song titles since they were seldom given. There were very few I couldn't pin down.
If you'd like to see the list of guests and songs performed, or if you already have the old set and would just like to have my new text file as a reference, you're welcome to it:
http://www.writetome.com/funnybook/johnnycash/cash_text.txt
Once the text files were done, to begin work in ernest I collected the entire 100 gig collection on my hard drive and demultiplexed every episode (separated the video and audio streams). The first thing I noticed was that, besides the insane volume inconsistency, none of the audio was in DVD standard AC3 format. The first order of business was to find one episode with normal, standard volume, and then adjust all of the other episodes to match, and finally, to encode all of them to the AC3 standard. During this process I repaired many minor audio glitches, and where the audio was abruptly cut at commercial breaks or at the end of an episode, I did mild, pleasant fades.
Combining the two single disks from the old collection I settled on 29 disks of 2 episodes each for my new collection and made a simple and silent menu for each one. Each menu has one selection cell for each episode, listing the names of the guests for that episode.
The next consideration was the video streams. The quality of the entire set is surprisingly nice with just a few minor tape bugs here and there, and one episode is missing the closing credits. There are no commercials. I believe that these were ripped long ago before the availability of the powerful and flexible tools we take for granted today, and I say this to show my appreciation for the original ripper, not to criticize. The mpeg streams varied between three different resolutions:
352x480
704x480
720x480
Of course all of them are stretched to a 4x3 (1.33:1) ratio during playback, so the above variations are not noticeable when watching the episodes. The reason I mention it is that the only thing I would have liked to do with this set, that I didn't do, was to make the two episodes on each disk play back to back. Some older DVD players choke on a change of resolution. Of course I could have re-encoded one stream or the other, but even disregarding the time and effort required, there was the fact that re-encoding always degrades the quality and I wasn't going to do that. So rather than have the disks be incompatible for some people, I made it so each episode jumps back to the menu when it's through. This involves an extra click of the DVD remote control to watch the second episode, but there it is.
The upside is that the quality of the video was absolutely unchanged throughout the entire project. All of the work I did was with lossless processes. The single exception was one episode that was corrupt at the base level, and I even acquired it from two different sources and found it to be the same, so I had to copy it deck to deck.
Next I assembled each disk's contents and prepared to remultiplex the audio and video streams. I inserted handy chapter stops that fall in sensible spots between acts, compiled and burned the complete collection, and test played all of the disks.
Having put a great deal more work into this project than any other I've done yet, I felt like creating something special for packaging. I opened up Photoshop and Google Advanced Image Search and went nuts. I made 29 different disk labels, and then, using these labels as artwork for the cover, I made the text file of the list of guests and their songs into a handsome booklet to accompany the collection. Finally I adapted the disk label graphics for use as envelope inserts and ordered some jet black envelopes to wrap up the project. Here's what it looks like:
http://www.writetome.com/funnybook/johnnycash
If you'd like a set, please e-mail me privately.
Trades only. No sales.
funnybook_swaps at writetome dot com
.
I've completed a thorough remaster of the complete run of The Johnny Cash Show.
http://tinyurl.com/3xqhou
The Johnny Cash Show has been running around the trade circles complete for a long time. In that original set there are 28 disks with 2 episodes each, and 2 disks with just one episode each, for a total of 30 disks. The menus play "Folsom Prison Blues" EXTREMELY loud, and they have small meaningless thumbnails that don't tell anything at all about the episodes such as a guest list or song list or anything besides the episode number. The audio volume fluctuates wildly between episodes, too... One will be at normal volume, then the next will be so quiet you have to crank the volume in order to hear it, then if you forget about it until it ends and jumps back to the menu you get a SPEAKER BLOWING EAR SPLITTING BLAST of "Folsom Prison Blues"... it was for this reason more than any other that I decided to remaster this set. The variation in volume levels is truly insane.
The first thing I did was spend about two weeks watching the entire run, taking notes for the remaster process in one text file and keeping a separate text file of a complete list of every guest and song performed. During this time I paused the play frequently to go online and search lyrics databases for various song titles since they were seldom given. There were very few I couldn't pin down.
If you'd like to see the list of guests and songs performed, or if you already have the old set and would just like to have my new text file as a reference, you're welcome to it:
http://www.writetome.com/funnybook/johnnycash/cash_text.txt
Once the text files were done, to begin work in ernest I collected the entire 100 gig collection on my hard drive and demultiplexed every episode (separated the video and audio streams). The first thing I noticed was that, besides the insane volume inconsistency, none of the audio was in DVD standard AC3 format. The first order of business was to find one episode with normal, standard volume, and then adjust all of the other episodes to match, and finally, to encode all of them to the AC3 standard. During this process I repaired many minor audio glitches, and where the audio was abruptly cut at commercial breaks or at the end of an episode, I did mild, pleasant fades.
Combining the two single disks from the old collection I settled on 29 disks of 2 episodes each for my new collection and made a simple and silent menu for each one. Each menu has one selection cell for each episode, listing the names of the guests for that episode.
The next consideration was the video streams. The quality of the entire set is surprisingly nice with just a few minor tape bugs here and there, and one episode is missing the closing credits. There are no commercials. I believe that these were ripped long ago before the availability of the powerful and flexible tools we take for granted today, and I say this to show my appreciation for the original ripper, not to criticize. The mpeg streams varied between three different resolutions:
352x480
704x480
720x480
Of course all of them are stretched to a 4x3 (1.33:1) ratio during playback, so the above variations are not noticeable when watching the episodes. The reason I mention it is that the only thing I would have liked to do with this set, that I didn't do, was to make the two episodes on each disk play back to back. Some older DVD players choke on a change of resolution. Of course I could have re-encoded one stream or the other, but even disregarding the time and effort required, there was the fact that re-encoding always degrades the quality and I wasn't going to do that. So rather than have the disks be incompatible for some people, I made it so each episode jumps back to the menu when it's through. This involves an extra click of the DVD remote control to watch the second episode, but there it is.
The upside is that the quality of the video was absolutely unchanged throughout the entire project. All of the work I did was with lossless processes. The single exception was one episode that was corrupt at the base level, and I even acquired it from two different sources and found it to be the same, so I had to copy it deck to deck.
Next I assembled each disk's contents and prepared to remultiplex the audio and video streams. I inserted handy chapter stops that fall in sensible spots between acts, compiled and burned the complete collection, and test played all of the disks.
Having put a great deal more work into this project than any other I've done yet, I felt like creating something special for packaging. I opened up Photoshop and Google Advanced Image Search and went nuts. I made 29 different disk labels, and then, using these labels as artwork for the cover, I made the text file of the list of guests and their songs into a handsome booklet to accompany the collection. Finally I adapted the disk label graphics for use as envelope inserts and ordered some jet black envelopes to wrap up the project. Here's what it looks like:
http://www.writetome.com/funnybook/johnnycash
If you'd like a set, please e-mail me privately.
Trades only. No sales.
funnybook_swaps at writetome dot com
.