Project - The 'Ultimate' Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert

There's an idea that keeps popping up in my mind from a time to time. Something I really want to do. I want to create what I like to call the ultimate compilation of the Freddie Mercury Tribute concert.

So, you might ask, what am I aiming for. I want to create the closest thing to a full version of the concert. So you have the possibility to watch the full concert, as close as possible to what the people in Wembley stadium where able to see (using the professionally filmed footage of the event) without switching in between to the host of the BBC, MTV or whatever other channel. Although some of the interviews they where having, may end up as bonus features. I am also planning on making some bonus features out of news items and maybe I will even be able to cobble a short documentary together. But the big work will go into the event itself.

There's only one problem. I don't have all the footage I need to get started. I have all the official releases (and pre-ordered the new one) and I have a digital transfer of the bbc broadcast. But I feel like I could make a better quality transfer. I am trying to use the official releases as little as possible to keep quality more constant. So I am looking for many off the air recordings from different channels. I would prefer to transfer the footage to a digital format myself, because I will have maximum control about the quality of the transfer and I can match settings as close as possible. So it would me fantastic if some of you are willing to lend me your precious recordings. Of course you will get them back after I transferred them.

What I am looking for are (first generation copys of):

- VHS/Betamax/Video2000 recordings of a tv broadcast (BBC, MTV or another (international?) broadcast)
- Cassette/Reel-to-reel recordings of a radio broadcast (I want to upgrade the mono audio from the tv broadcast to stereo using this)
- Any kind of amateur recordings made in and around Wembley stadium (Can be useful as reference material or might even, when quality wise good enough, be used to fill in some gaps)
- Interviews/news items about the preparation
- Other related footage that does not fit in one of the descriptions above.

Don't worry about the fact I might already have the footage you have. I expect I am going to switch a lot between different sources, to get the best looking and sounding result.

Because of the official release, my finished edit won't be up on Queenzone. But the contributors will get a copy on a set of dvd's. And as a bonus they will get the finished audio track on cd. For all the non contributors, these won't be for sale.

Is the BBC transfer you have a 2 DVD set ? If yes, that's unfortunately the same one I have and indeed, it needs a much better transfer (putting 4 hours of rapidly moving pictures to 2 single layer discs is definitely not a good idea). Many people from Queenzone taped the BBC broadcast and still have their tapes, I hope one of them will lend you his tapes.

What I can give you is :

- BBC RADIO broadcast (almost full from what I remember)
- a dutch radio broadcast (not sure about the name of the radio station) - DIFFERENT MIX (mostly notable at All The Young Dudes & The End Of The World)
- Dutch TV (Veronica ?) broadcast transfered a few years ago by me (I don't have the tapes anymore)
- Polish TV broadcast (also edited and on 2 DVDs) but I think it has slightly better quality than the BBC broadcast 2DVD set
- the MTV broadcast - HORRIBLE quality (ripped from youtube) but features rare interviews

I have done something silimar like you're planning ages ago, but I was too using the weak BBC TV broadcast as the main source, and I have added tons of interviews and reports about Freddie's death, but again, the quality of my source material was far from good.

If anything of this will help you, let me know.

This week I finally threw my copy of the broadcast away during a house move. I was a bit hasty.

@dysan: Bad to hear I'm about a week to late for your copy. Well these things happen, don't worry about it.

@pittrek My copy of the BBC broadcast is a 2 dvd set. So I think it may be the same set indeed. Al the things you list sound interesting to me. Although I don't think I will edit in horrible quality footage from the MTV broadcast, some parts maybe can be used as a reference. And for now, I'm not sure if I will get a better copy of that very broadcast. I hope so, but I just don't know.

BTW One of the sub-projects is to restore broadcasts to which I have multiple copies to their best looking complete form. These will become most likely the starting point of my recreated concert experience.

I was at this concert but set my VCR to record the live nicam stereo TV broadcast. I also got a top billing credit in the photo section of the DVD release.  

@The Kurgen. The reason I said first generation is because I don't want multi generations of so called video improvement filters in consumer VCR's ruin the footage. I will transfer it, on a professional grade VCR with TBC. And I will save the capture as lossless AVI files. And that's why I want the video signal as pure as possible. The video filtering, if required, will be done digitally, using the captured AVI's as source, so I can tweak the required filter very precise, instead of applying 'good for everything' filters like most VCR's. If your copy looks good, It might be useful for this project. So, yes I would love to see a sample.

It's really annoying as I hung onto it for years thinking it might be useful to someone - I do forget that not many people would've been old enough to do a good complete recording of the broadcast. I only watched the Bowie bit several times and the rest was unplayed. Oh snap.

Here is the MTV broadcast : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpLQzfWun00 - I downloaded it from youtube with the Firefox plugin DownloadHelper as 480p mp4. If you're not able to download it from there, let me know and I'll try to put the downloaded video somewhere. You can anyway check the editing, the interviews and of course the quality online.

CDs - if you want the CDs, I can try to rip them and either upload them somewhere or do a personal trade whatever you prefer. The same with the Polish TV broadcast

@pittrek Thanks to the link of the MTV footage. I'm downloading it right now (using YouTube Downloader HD, a tool I used before and happen to like). But I will also contact the YouTube uploader to see if I can get the source tape of this footage.

If all your footage is digital, I prefer you to upload it somewhere. It seems faster to me.

[QUOTE] [b]Wer-Al_Zwowe wrote:[/b]
I'm downloading it right now (using YouTube Downloader HD, a tool I used before and happen to like)..[/QUOTE]

The original upload is only 480p so you won't get anything like HD

@The Kurgan. I know. But the tool is called like that.

The first footage for this project is transferred to lagarith lossless avi. It is an incomplete VHS recording of the broadcast on the German channel Premiere. It starts at the beginning and ends somewhere halfway "The Show Must Go On". The Premiere broadcast has the feel I am aiming for. No studio footage, just the concert and the inserts. But there are also a few things I do not want to have in my finished version. First of all, there is always a Premiere logo in the top left corner. There are also German speaking voice overs (a male voice translating what is said, a female voice explaining what is going to happen) and there are a few captions with the name of the lady who does the voice overs.

It seems to me like the Premiere broadcast was based on a satellite (?) stream for foreign broadcasters. There must be more broadcasters who used the same stream. Maybe even some who didn't add their own logo to it. Or some with the logo in another corner, so I could try to make a merge of two recordings to remove the logo. (I've done something similar before on a shorter video. It can be done, but it can require a lot of adjustment, to match both sources seamless.)

In the past I used to have great results with the DeLogo filter

Yeah, delogo is good. Check it here:

http://neuron2.net/delogo132/delogo.html
http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/221665-Removing-Logos-using-DeLogo-vdub-filter

Thanks for the advice about the logo removal. I will try it when I get to the editing stage of my project. But first of all I am trying to collect and digitize the parts required for my compilation.

And for that part I have a nice update. Today I received three video tapes. First of all a complete copy of the BBC2 broadcast of the tribute concert.

And two tapes containing a lot of footage from MTV europe's Queen & Co weekend (25/04/1992 and 26/04/1992). Although most footage on the tapes are the standard video clips, there are some interviews about Freddie and the tribute concert on it. That can become some nice bonus footage.