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Top of the Pops

1990 on BBC Four (January 2018)

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NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
I've long suspected the music channels received a print years ago (which they're probably still using and have since butchered for widescreen) or they've been cobbled from other sources (Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' never had an official music video so the recording that gets wheeled out every year appears to have been taken from something else which had a crawler on it, which is subtly (or not as the case may be) cropped out.)

The Spice Girl videos were posted in 2009 to YouTube (the Who Do You Think You Are was posted in 2019) - I think what's happened is they were uploaded in "decent" quality in the first place but back in 2009 when those were posted YouTube couldn't "play" HD (November 2009 was when it was added) and so it was probably downsampled at the time on the fly. I've seen other videos that date from the previous decade that have suddenly decided they're HD and 4k quality when I know they weren't originally so presumably YouTube's systems can look at the original uploaded file and decide its good enough to play in 4k.
WH
Whataday Founding member
Have they gone back to the raw film footage or just the master tape?
You can tell it's the raw footage just from looking at it, it's clearly native HD, you wouldn't get that detail from a 35 year old SD master tape!


The old and new versions are identical frame by frame in terms of movement, cuts etc so it looks like it is from some sort of master. Perhaps it was edited on film?
WH
Whataday Founding member
The Spice Girl videos were posted in 2009 to YouTube (the Who Do You Think You Are was posted in 2019) - I think what's happened is they were uploaded in "decent" quality in the first place but back in 2009 when those were posted YouTube couldn't "play" HD (November 2009 was when it was added) and so it was probably downsampled at the time on the fly. I've seen other videos that date from the previous decade that have suddenly decided they're HD and 4k quality when I know they weren't originally so presumably YouTube's systems can look at the original uploaded file and decide its good enough to play in 4k.


No, the videos were definitely newly uploaded this Summer. The record label got them to replace the original uploads without affecting the view counts, and therefore the original upload dates still show.
VM
VMPhil
Yes that happened with a lot of music videos, from Universal Music primarily. I think most of them are just upscaled taken from the master tape of the final edit, rather than them all being rescanned film.
VM
VMPhil
Some of the outdoor shots still look ropey, but the indoor stuff looks great.

I suspect this is because those film elements are lost or just don't exist anymore. I have noticed that when it transitions from those clips that look like they're from the original videotape to ones that have been remastered, that you can just see the old version underneath the newly transferred version in the crossfade. So it seems those clips now only exist as part of the final edit of the original video made in 1984.
JA
james-2001
It's the same on some of the TV shows that have been remastered in HD, some of the shots are still upscaled SD, presumably because they couldn't find the original film or it was too damaged to use. Telecine and other film cleanup technology has come a long way over the years, so modern scans can look hugely better then the originals, even in SD. I've been rewatching Cheers and it's obvious when they've had to do it there, even watching on DVD in SD, because the original episodes always looked so poor, even by late 80s/early 90s standards, so it stands out horribly around the surrounding more modern scanned material. It must show up even worse when watching the episodes in HD (as ITV4 and Channel 4 have shown them).
Last edited by james-2001 on 17 December 2019 7:49pm
RI
Richard
Yes, it lasted up until the last regular edition of the year, the new titles were introduced on the Christmas day episode.

It’ll be a while before we see it on BBC 4 anyway.

Was the switch to widescreen made when they moved back to TVC?
JA
james-2001
Yes it was. October 2001, so we're nearly 13 years away from that. If BBC4 even survives long enough to get that far.
VM
VMPhil
When TOTP first went widescreen, their existing 4:3 title sequence of the time was adapted without cropping the top & bottom but instead by filling the extra width with flipped "reflections" of the left-most & right-most parts of what was already there (as if mirrors had been placed at the edges of the original 4:3 version).


I remember this, but have never found it online anywhere. Think it only lasted a few months.

There's a clip of them right at the end of this video. It's unfortunately been uploaded in the wrong aspect ratio, but you can use https://stretch.site to fix it. Sound quality isn't great but it's the video that matters.

RI
Richard
When TOTP first went widescreen, their existing 4:3 title sequence of the time was adapted without cropping the top & bottom but instead by filling the extra width with flipped "reflections" of the left-most & right-most parts of what was already there (as if mirrors had been placed at the edges of the original 4:3 version).


I remember this, but have never found it online anywhere. Think it only lasted a few months.

There's a clip of them right at the end of this video. It's unfortunately been uploaded in the wrong aspect ratio, but you can use https://stretch.site to fix it. Sound quality isn't great but it's the video that matters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tXoUcOVsfc


Thanks very much. It doesn’t look as good as I remember!
SW
Steve Williams
Thanks very much. It doesn’t look as good as I remember!


It still baffles me that Pops went into widescreen three years after pretty much everything else on primetime BBC1, and even then they still hadn't got round to making new titles in widescreen and just rehashed the old ones.
JA
james-2001
I seem to remember reading somewhere it might have been down to the fact there were so many international versions, with footage shared between them. It may well also have been that the cameras weren't that old and they didn't want to spend the money to replace them when they were well before the end of their lives. Remember as well that Corrie and Emmerdale were in 4:3 until the start of 2002 and they were ITV's flagship shows! Emmerdale had certainly only moved into new studios towards the back end of 1997, so I imagine the age of the cameras were likely the reason in that case.

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