Recording comments

Here I offer another grail to put on the shelf next to the others. This monumental effort brings you the mirrors tour as never seen before. Based on a tip from André Garnath, I searched, contacted, and met the filmer Pete Shapter near my home town in Ohio, at a hotel between our cities of Cleveland and Columbus, to find the largest collection of reels I have ever seen or even heard of for one performance. Pete filmed the show at Ohio State University in St. John Arena, where security was not very strict. About halfway through the show when he was filming behind the stage they threatened to take his reels, but in the end let him keep them and continue. I don't believe these views could be filmed with the heavy security at most venues. But to be safe Pete gave finished reels to his brother in case security tried to confiscate them, and continued to film the rest of the show further away from the front. He filmed 17 reels of super 8mm film with the rare audio on the reels (only about 5% of super 8mm film sold had audio). The audio quality is nice for 8mm but suffered from inconsistent speed and skips common with 8mm reels, also the bandwidth is similar to AM radio (only about 10kHz). There is another audio source for this date, but the quality is actually worse than the reels and is incomplete. A match is not good if it cannot be heard. So I decided to overlay audio from Chicago three days later (TMAV version) in 2-channel uncompressed PCM 48K format. Coupling this audio with the film gives a real feel of what it was like to see a show in 1978. Of course the two performances are a little different and I did my best to sync the two and the match is very close...but there is another reason I used this audio source. For those that remember the TMAV version, this "stereo" recording was originally encoded for the radio in 4-channel SQ quad (a 1970s multichannel format that predates Dolby Surround, ProLogic, etc). So I also encoded this 4-channel audio in high bitrate (640k) Dolby Digital and full lossless DTS-MA using TM's original work files. I struggled for a long time to determine the most compatible and best quality audio format to use. Dolby Digital is of course the most compatible multi-channel audio, though it isn't lossless 640k is considered to be nearly so. DTS-MA is less compatible (and not in the AVCHD spec) but it is lossless if used with HDMI or discrete audio connections, otherwise the "core" will be used, also considered to be nearly lossless. At this point you may be wondering how I managed to put PCM 1536k, DD 640k, and DTS-MA 1509k on the same disc as a 55 minute film. First, I sized this collection to fit on a DVD9, though it can also be put on a Blu-Ray blank too. I know this may leave some people who cannot or may not want to burn DVD9s, but there was no other way. Also this is 4-channel audio, not 7.1 or anything like that. But I also encoded the video in H.264 MPEG-4 format, which offers the same or better quality as MPEG-2 at half the bitrate. So by decreasing the bitrate a little and increasing the compression efficiency a lot, the result should be the same or better, even with 3 audio tracks. Don't ask me how long it took me to find a way to do this. Let me just say that Blu-Ray authoring software (at the consumer lever) is not very good. If someone doesn't care about menus, audio formats, aspect ratio, or bitrates then there are many choices out there. But finding software that compresses video using H.264, supports DTS-MA, gives the user control over menus, bitrates, and formats, and costs less than a car...to give you a hint, it doesn't exist. Thankfully there are rebuilding tools out there (however painful to use) that allow me to prepare the individual files in different programs, remux everything together in yet another program...and not destroy everything in the process. Where was ? Oh yeah...Pete walked around the stage to get front, left side, right side, and (quite interestingly) rear stage views...to see Chester, a monster on the drums! The image held up nicely to these changes in view, with the only major difficulty being the 1978 light show. Sometimes the band was *drenched* in color, followed by a few seconds of dark green, a harsh spotlight, and near darkness with a laser. This causes a problem for the transfer because dark scenes can get too bright while the computer searches for an image, and bright scenes can lose all definition despite turning down the exposure all the way. I accounted for these changes with separate keyframes (settings) as the lighting changed. I also used two separate transfers with different light settings to get the most out of each scene. The results are worth it (to my eyes) as we can see many details in the dark and still not overexpose the brighter moments. From what I can tell by looking at the filmstock, Pete used fresh Ektachrome 160, which is great for indoors. Unfortunately for most of the vocals, Phil is overexposed by the spotlight, but this is the reality for 8mm. Apparently, Ektachrome reversal doesn't have the best "light latitude"...it can't make out details in a bright light on a dark stage so strong spotlights often show up as pure white, and Ektachrome is generally high contrast and high color saturation. I reduced the exposure as much as possible to see things in spotlights, but cannot go beyond the capability of the film/camera setting. The film itself was in really nice shape, and we are treated to a 1.55 widescreen (17% wider than standard). There was some damage to the emulsion, lines and spots here and there, but compared to most 34 year old film, Pete took really great care of it. There were 2 spots where damage affected the film motion, but I tried my best to hide this, shifting the image down as the film shuttered up (for example) or otherwise substituting good frames for bad. I have transferred and edited well over 100 reels of 8mm, but I typically only see 2-5 reels from a show, where I can examine the frames in great detail. These 17 reels were a major undertaking for me and took months of work. But I am glad I was able to give this important film the effort it deserved, and not just "any old transfer". Thanks to André Garnath for the tip on the film, to Pete Shapter for trusting his films to a stranger he met at a hotel, to TM and AV for their audio, Willem for reviewing some early versions, and to Genesis for putting on an amazing show that holds real spirit some 34 years later. Sorry, this description got really long...

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Simon_Funnell (A-), Matt McMad, Chiffi_Argentina, SimonH (A-), hecko, cirrus (A-), Jack_Floyd (A), lurker11

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