ANNOUNCE: Roger Taylor - Shepherd's Bush 94: FROM THE MASTER

Last year I acquired the sub-master VHS tape of this concert from the filmer.
He thinks he shot on Hi-8 and then transferred to VHS.
Those Hi-8 tapes no longer exist, so the VHS is now effectively the Master tape.

I played it back through 4 different VHS machines to find the best output, both in terms of video and audio.
A Time Base Corrector was used to stabilise the picture and the colours.

All 4 of those machines had recently been maintained by a friend who is still in the business of repairing video equipment, so I believe this is the best we are going to achieve from the tape.
The machine which produced the best output is a Phillips SVHS VR1000.

Sadly, the stereo audio playback on all 4 machines has a bit of crackle on one of the channels at times: a typical issue with nicam VHS machines: if the record machine is slightly out of whack when it records the signal, other machines can have difficulty syncing in. I believe this may have been the case with the machine that created the VHS tape.

I've authored the capture to DVD with full menu and the iso file can be found at the link below.
I have no idea how many times mega will allow it to be downloaded, so if someone can create a torrent of it, that would be great.
I'm afraid I can't create torrents for some reason these days.

https://mega.nz/#!tF1TzR5A!ARqxjZtLtjtUeY2bz-y7W2zzcrnqXbDZYy8TN963tmU

Cheers, Dave!

Very nice, thank you.

Thanks a lot! That's really great.

Thank you very much indeed!

This is an excellent upgrade, but still flawed - the audio is distorted, and the video isn't encoded too well, as the picture is very blocky. Each DVD shouldn't be more than 60 minutes, as quality is compromised as soon as you go beyond that.

Tragic that the master is gone and the next best copy has distorted audio. What in the world was he thinking when he set the levels !?

Still, thanks for posting this - this is great to have. Certainly better than what has circulated before.

But if you could encode the VHS to two DVDs in best quality, I could sync audio to it - I have the audio from this source in just about as good quality without the distortion. Then we'll have the definitive version - especially if we leave it to someone like Nitroboy to include the four official tracks in an alternate audio track in an MKV file.

No problem Bob.
There's a reason it's all one disc and this wasn't the version I'd planned to share on QZ, but the resurgence of the other thread prompted me to let folks know I had the master and at least upload something.

Given some time (because I have other priority's at the moment), I'll upload a better encode for people to play with.

Nice upload Dave. Thank you. This would have been a nice addition to his boxset over 3 years ago.

[QUOTE] [b]brians wig wrote:[/b]

No problem Bob.
There's a reason it's all one disc and this wasn't the version I'd planned to share on QZ, but the resurgence of the other thread prompted me to let folks know I had the master and at least upload something.

Given some time (because I have other priority's at the moment), I'll upload a better encode for people to play with.

[/QUOTE]

Like you said in your post before: this is not the master.
This is a first generation copy.

[QUOTE]

[b]The Real Wizard wrote: [/b] This is an excellent upgrade, but still flawed - the audio is distorted, and the video isn't encoded too well, as the picture is very blocky. Each DVD shouldn't be more than 60 minutes, as quality is compromised as soon as you go beyond that.

Tragic that the master is gone and the next best copy has distorted audio. What in the world was he thinking when he set the levels !?

Still, thanks for posting this - this is great to have. Certainly better than what has circulated before.

But if you could encode the VHS to two DVDs in best quality, I could sync audio to it - I have the audio from this source in just about as good quality without the distortion. Then we'll have the definitive version - especially if we leave it to someone like Nitroboy to include the four official tracks in an alternate audio track in an MKV file. [/QUOTE]

Indeed. 2 standard DVDs, or 1 8.5GB DVD. OR even better: A direct capture to a PC in DV-AVI mode (about 25Mbps for video) :P

And? Stuff from this show has been released officially? (I'm not that familiar with Roger's solo stuff, what's available etc.)

^ 4 tracks on 'Happiness' single / 2 tracks from them on 'The Lot'.

[QUOTE] [b]Nitroboy wrote:[/b]


Indeed. 2 standard DVDs, or 1 8.5GB DVD. OR even better: A direct capture to a PC in DV-AVI mode (about 25Mbps for video) :P
[/QUOTE]

Well I do capture in DV AVI mode and always keep the unedited captures.
If someone has an alternate, lossless, better audio source, they want to share with me, I can drop it on the timeline and do a better encode.
The only difference is it will be a file to playback rather than an authored DVD.

Torrent someone, please :)

[QUOTE] [b]brians wig wrote:[/b]

No problem Bob.
There's a reason it's all one disc and this wasn't the version I'd planned to share on QZ, but the resurgence of the other thread prompted me to let folks know I had the master and at least upload something.

Given some time (because I have other priority's at the moment), I'll upload a better encode for people to play with.

[/QUOTE]

Excellent :-)

Thanks ! ! !