Fraggle Rock: Season 1 DVD Coming Fall 2005

[No1MuppetFan]

Does anyone know if the season box set will be released anywhere overseas?

 

[SarahFraggle]

I am going to scream!!! fraggle rock season sets, i can finally see all the episodes I never saw!!

 

[Wembley]

I had my older sister call HIT Entertainment today about the Fraggle Rock box sets and the woman told her some good news...... they have had so many calls and letters about Fraggle Rock, that there is definitely going to be a box set!! The bad news is that it won't be until next fall because, of course, it's going to take them awhile. I don't even care how long it's going to be, I'm just ecstatic that this is going to happen!!!

Producing DVDs can take a long, long time. I taped (using a prosumer Mini-DV camera) my amateur radio club's September meeting, 80 minutes' worth of video, it took almost 30 *hours* to process on my (admittedly fairly low-end by today's standards but top of the line when it was built) computer to convert from the digital format my camera uses to the format that is used on DVDs. That's also just taking the tape and dumping it onto a DVD, without any special processing, adding titles, chapters etc.

While I'm sure that HIT (or their DVD production house they use) probably has much better, dedicated equipment, and (more importantly) people who know what they're doing (unlike me who is still a relative beginner), it still is a *lot* of work. The master tapes have to be converted from whatever format they were originally recorded in (proably 1" reel tape, if I remember correctly) to a digital format, processed to make them look good (even stored properly, videotape only has a shelf life of about 20 or so years) edited if needed (I hope not!), put in airing order (the episodes may not have been shot in the order they were aired), titled, menus built, extra content added (we hope!), dumped to digital tape, masters made, tested, debugged, cleared by Henson and HIT, duplicated, and shipped to the stores.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, it assumes that everything is going without a hitch, that is to say, no major bugs are found in the software for the DVD (since, after all, the menus that you see on your DVD player are in fact, a computer program, and one wrong instruction can lock up your DVD player, kinda the DVD equivalent of Windows "Blue screen of Death" - and yes, my first DVD production efforts did this!) all the transfers are done right, all the audio syncs up with the video (try watching an episode of FR where the audio is delayed a half-second behind the video - it's spooky) etc. Any showstopper bugs mean "back to the drawing board" for that particular phase of the project.

At the same time, box art is being designed and manufactured, and announcements have to be sent to the video outlets, as well as distrubution contracts set up with the store chains (note to HIT - how 'bout having someone else in addition to Wal-Mart sell Fraggle Rock?!?! ) and all the legalities have to be squared away.

So, let's all thank the good folks at HIT by purchasing their product! If season 1 sells well, hopefully we'll see more seasons made!

Now is the time, too, to let HIT know what you want in the DVD! Its much easier to implement a certain feature on the DVD now, than it is to add it later on in the production cycle. Personally, I'd like to see some of the "foreign" stuff such as the international Travelling Matt and Doc segments, etc.

One last thing - just as a technical note, a single-layer DVD can handle 4.7 GB of data, or about 120 minutes of video. Most blank DVDs that you buy today are single layer discs. Most DVDs you buy in the store with movies on them, are dual layer discs (about 9 gigs of data or 240ish minutes of video).

Now that I've probably bored you all to tears with my technical know-how I'm going to put up some video I shot (and converted using the wrong MPEG settings so it looks very blotchy) at the New England Museum of Telephony in Ellesworh so you check it out. It will be on my *personal* web server (so be kind!) at http://rickmiller.dyndns.org - I'm thinking of producing a telephone DVD (yes, I *am* a geek!) next summer... let me know what you think!

-Rick "Wembley" Miller
..."You can NOT leave the magic!"

 

[GelflingWaldo]

This is great news, and I am glad we are finially getting Box Sets

It may seem a long way away (a year), but it does take a while to produce quality DVD sets. From desinging menus and packages, to creating bonus features, and cleaning up video/audio. Let alone marketing and legal stuff. But I am glad they are comming!

(note to HIT - how 'bout having someone else in addition to Wal-Mart sell Fraggle Rock?!?! )

HIT! is going to put fraggle DVDs in places other than Wal-Mart, the first DVD (Where it all Began) was released only at Wal-Mart to test the market for Fraggle DVDs. The special editon of the same DVD, due out next month, will be avalible everywhere DVDs are sold. I would asume all Fraggle DVDs from now on will be released everwhere aswell.

 

[anathema]

With respect Rick, it's not quite as complicated as all that ;-) Certainly there's a good deal of work involved, but there is no reason why it needs to take a year to do. I could -and have - produced a set of that scale in under six months, and that's a) in my spare time, and b) using consumer equipment.

The original master tapes are 2" quad, btw, at least for the first season. The picture quality (and faults) are unmistakeable

What I would like to see is HIT taking the time to perform restoration on the episodes - there's a huge amount of scratching, dropout and other nasties which are easily repairable if they wanted to invest the time and money in it. Heck, if they're reading this, I offer my services! I've been doing that kind of thing for a few years now... It makes all the difference, and it's becoming more and more common - witness the M*A*S*H releases, the just-released Star Wars set, the BBC's Doctor Who and Dad's Army[i/] discs, etc.

 

[anathema]

One last thing - just as a technical note, a single-layer DVD can handle 4.7 GB of data, or about 120 minutes of video. Most blank DVDs that you buy today are single layer discs. Most DVDs you buy in the store with movies on them, are dual layer discs (about 9 gigs of data or 240ish minutes of video).

Not quite true A single layer holds 4.7 billion bytes. But in computer terms a gigabyte is 2^30, not 10^9, so a single layer actually holds approximately 4.37GB and a dual-layer disc holds 8.75GB. This is extremely important to remember if you're making a disc - there is nothing more irritating than discovering that you're a couple of meg over the disc capacity!

Also, the recordable dual-layer DVDs that are starting to appear do not have quite the same capacity as pressed discs - they're typically around 8.5GB.

 

[Wembley]

Not quite true A single layer holds 4.7 billion bytes. But in computer terms a gigabyte is 2^30, not 10^9, so a single layer actually holds approximately 4.37GB and a dual-layer disc holds 8.75GB. This is extremely important to remember if you're making a disc - there is nothing more irritating than discovering that you're a couple of meg over the disc capacity!

Also, the recordable dual-layer DVDs that are starting to appear do not have quite the same capacity as pressed discs - they're typically around 8.5GB.

True. I'm just giving the "approximate" numbers that appear on the box of DVD-RWs that I had sitting on the desk at the time. This is like the "marketing" megabyte versus the "technical" megabyte issue that hard drive advertising used to have.

I haven't actually started playing with the dual-layer recordables yet - I'm still working on getting a good handle on making a good DVD using the stuff I have now!

If I might ask, what type of equipment are you using? I've got a miniDV video camera (A sharp something or other, got it for a song) connected to my computer with a firewire connection on my sound card. As far as software goes, I'm running Kino and the MPEG tools under Fedora Linux 2, and trying to get Cinelerra to work.

The only drawback right now is that the video has to be extracted from the tape in real-time, that is to say, if I have 60 minutes of video on the tape, it will take 60 minutes to download into the computer....

Anyway, I'm glad there's someone who knows more than me about video - I'm just a beginner when it comes to pro video stuff. I'll have to learn more!

-Rick "Wembley" Miller
..."You can NOT leave the magic!"

 

[MuppetDude]

Are you sure she didn't say it may be coming to DVD next fall? I think she may have read her "Fraggle DVD" script wrong. Perhaps someone else can confirm with them too to make sure they get the same info and it wasn't just an error?

I never heard her say "may".

And it's better a year than never.

 

[anathema]

True. I'm just giving the "approximate" numbers that appear on the box of DVD-RWs that I had sitting on the desk at the time. This is like the "marketing" megabyte versus the "technical" megabyte issue that hard drive advertising used to have.

Still does, unfortunately. And a "megabyte" is usually defined as 1,000,000 bytes rather than the (correct) 1,048,576 bytes.

I haven't actually started playing with the dual-layer recordables yet - I'm still working on getting a good handle on making a good DVD using the stuff I have now!

I'm holding off for a little longer before committing myself. At present, only DVD+R technology is available, and I'd like to see DVD-R as well. And I'd expect compatibility problems for a while yet. However, for backup purposes it would be very useful - I normally use the huffyuv codec for projects in order to eliminate lossy compression stages, and the resulting files are sodding huge!

If I might ask, what type of equipment are you using? I've got a miniDV video camera (A sharp something or other, got it for a song) connected to my computer with a firewire connection on my sound card. As far as software goes, I'm running Kino and the MPEG tools under Fedora Linux 2, and trying to get Cinelerra to work.

I have an old Panasonic miniDV camcorder, but its main use is as a miniDV player rather than a camera. For analogue import I use a Canopus ADVC55, which converts composite or s-video plus stereo audio into a DV stream; this feeds into one of the firewire ports in my system. My video setup (currently) comprises a professional PAL SVHS deck, used mainly for playback; a semi-pro NTSC SVHS deck; a semi-pro PAL SVHS deck (for recording), and a PAL/NTSC laserdisc player. All of this feeds into an A/V switchbox, the output of which goes into a TBC/standards-converter. This then goes to a distribution amp, which outputs the signal to the recording decks, the monitor and the ADVC55. I have the capability to play and record both PAL and NTSC VHS and SVHS tapes; PAL and NTSC laserdiscs; and PAL miniDV tapes. I can also convert between PAL and NTSC in either direction.

In the computer, I have a Terratec DMX 6-fire 24/96 sound card, although this isn't used during A/V capture as the audio is part of the DV stream. I use Premiere6.5 for import and editing, along with a variety of other tools including VirtualDub and AVISynth for processing footage, and TMPGEnc for MPEG-2 encoding.

The only drawback right now is that the video has to be extracted from the tape in real-time, that is to say, if I have 60 minutes of video on the tape, it will take 60 minutes to download into the computer....

There's no way around that, I'm afraid!

Anyway, I'm glad there's someone who knows more than me about video - I'm just a beginner when it comes to pro video stuff. I'll have to learn more!

Feel free to ask

 

[Frisky Fraggle]

I forget. Which episodes were in the first season?

Its been a long time since I have had anything to do with Fraggles and my Fraggle knowledge has worn off.