Muppet Family Christmas cut scenes video clips

[GonzoLeaper]

Hey,
I was hoping someone could post some high quality video clips of the cut scenes from Muppet Family Christmas online for me. I would probably prefer mov or mpeg or avi files, but whatever will work. I just mainly need the Fozzie and Snowman "Sleigh Ride" song clip, and some good quality video clips of the Fozzie lighting the Christmas tree scene, and Fozzie and his mother discussing whether or not to keep his stocking up.
If anyone has the original airing and could make video clips of those scenes and post them online, I would be really grateful. I have access to the equipment needed to take those clips and merge them back into the version released on home video (you know, the one with all the cuts )
Then I could put it all back into one new movie on a video and even put it onto a DVD format. If anyone could help me out with those clips, I'd really appreciate it.

 

[anathema]

Drop me a line ;-)

 

[jediX]

Hey Anathema, I've heard you're quite the video person so let me know if you have some advice for me here. I've been tryin to transfer some of my videos to my computer to do as dvd but they transfer very jumpy (JHH, for example). However, some things transfer just fine (Muppets @ DisneyWorld). Do you have any advice for how I should set up a transfer system? Thanks.

 

[anathema]

The single most important thing you need is a time-base corrector. VHS recordings - which I assume is what you're working from - are extrememly poor quality, and very unstable.

A video signal consists of several components, the most important of which is the synchronisation. This is what tells the receiver - your TV, another VCR, or your computer's capture card - about the timing of the signal and enables it to keep all the lines in the right places. The sync coming off a VHS recording is extremely sloppy, and while a TV can deal with this, your computer can't. (Older TVs can't deal with it either, for the same reason.) A time-base corrector (TBC) basically digitises the sloppy signal and pumps it back out again with electronically-generated sync, which the computer can then handle.

Beyond that, you will need a decent analogue capture card. I don't have any experience with consumer-level cards; I've only ever bought pro ;-)

Once you've got the recording in your computer, it's up to you what you want to do with it.

The above is just the basics. There's a lot more detail I can go into if you're interested - and have the money to spend!

 

[jediX]

Well here's a quick synopsis of what I have set up now since I have to get to class in about 10 minutes.

Im running a 9000 (I think) Ati Radeon All-In-Wonder, which handles my video rather well. It has an input block (composite & svideo) and an analog connector on the card itself. When I transfer from my camcorder I use the composite, which works out rather well without needing a firewire board or anything of the sort. When I run from a vhs, i just connect the out on my vcr w/ an analog to the analog on my video card, which works great for things that are recent tapes or live on tv. However, since most of my collection was filmed in the 80's (heck, my MT episodes don't transfer either) they just don't want to go.

Where can I get a TBC (or similar device) and how much would it set me back?

 

[anathema]

Ok

First up: if you can, you're always best using the S-Video input, even when copying from normal VHS.

TBCs: you're in the US, I'm in the UK. The only suppliers I know are UK ones The unit I use is the DataVideo TBC-1000, which is pretty good. However, if you're going to get this, it's *essential* that you use the S-Video connectors all the way through. If you pass composite into it, you will find that you get dark horizontal lines all the way down the picture :-( I believe it's making a mess of splitting the composite signal up internally. Other than that, I've had excellent results with the unit. It cost me around £300, I think.

Whatever you do get, don't be tempted to buy one of the TBCs that come on a PCI card - the inside of a computer is about the last place you want to send analogue video, so always do as much signal processing as you can outside the PC.


My setup currently consists of: Matrox RT2500 NLE card, plus a serious amount of processing power - digital video is heavy stuff Externally, I have two PAL S-VHS decks, one NTSC VHS deck and an NTSC laserdisc player. These are all wired up via an A/V switch, a standards-convertor and the TBC to the computer and a 20" widescreen TV for monitoring. The system is configured so that I can play both PAL and NTSC VHS, and NTSC laserdisc into the computer, and also convert between PAL and NTSC and record the output of the computer back to tape should I need to. But mainly it's a one-way thing: video goes in, DVDs come out ;-) Eventually the laserdisc player will be replaced with a PAL/NTSC model, but that's low priority right now...

 

[jediX]

Right now I have a regular ntsc vcr and a vcr/dvd player. I connect these two when doing video copies, but right now i have the plain vhs hooked up to the pc through the analog. Unfortunately, it doesnt have svideo and the guy down at the Radio Shack had never heard of svideo altogether. Frankly my sound hookup is much better

I'm going to be studying DMS (digital media) and that incorporates a lot of video (along with audio and etc stuff) so I guess I can always use my school's video lab. Their pc's lack the power of mine (mine is 3ghz) but if I can get the video in I don't really care.

Do you think I should pick up an svideo vhs and see if that improves quality (the cheaper option) or the tbc? Who knows, maybe later on down the line I can borrow a tbc or similar device from the school.

Then again, theres the cheater option of getting one of those dvd recorder thingies.

 

[anathema]

A decent SVHS deck will give you a better picture than a standard VHS one, but it won't fix the stability problems you're having - you'll still need a TBC for that.

A DVD recorder will have one built in, so if all you're after is just copying tape to disc, that's definitely the best bet. You only need to put the video through the computer if you want more control over encoding, or if you want to edit the material, or if you want to get into serious DVD production ;-)