[720p/50p] BBC1 | closedown and transmitter shutdown | 16th August 1997 | Part 2 of 2 | NICAM stereo

© BBC TELEVISION 1997
Yes, I still notice the juxtaposition between having Men In Black and the national anthem within a few minutes of each other...
Anyway...
Subscribers, you join me at the official inauguration of Sticky Tape 'n' Rust's 720p 50p service, so videos will have the look of "fluid" movement as they were captured, as well as higher picture definition! I've noticed a few other continuity uploaders moving to this and so I thought "I want some of that, even though the resulting large file sizes mean I will eat through hard drives!"
It has taken a significant investment in computer hardware and processing power to get me to this, (well, my old PC dated from 2003 - yes, 2003 - had only been upgraded with bits replaced over the years, so I just took the opportunity to start a clean slate and buy a brand new PC and it is SO fast!). All this was set up and installed while I had a few days spare over Christmas - at 32, I still hate this "being an adult" thing! I've also had to spend some time learning how to use VirtualDub 1.10.4, which is not easy to use but allows me to capture videos so they look like this. I'm still learning some of it, so there will undoubtedly be mistakes and improvements along the way.
Now, there are two things you MUST understand!
1) This does not in any way mean that every video from this point onwards will be at this quality. Like the rollout of TV itself, then 625 lines, then colour, then NICAM stereo, then widescreen, then digital, then HD, then UHD and 4K have all taken time, this will too. There are still another 2-and-a-half years worth (yes, you read that right!) of videos that were captured using the old PC hardware and capturing software, so this will be a gradual change. The person who has helped me greatly (thanks ever so much, by the way, Jonathan!) at teaching me how to use VirtualDub has examined the video files captured by my old software - Honestech VHS to DVD 7.0 - and it turns out that that software couldn't capture in AVI format. So that means the interlacing data in the video signal to enable "fluid" movement was filtered out by that software at the point of capture. I'm really not made of money (I'm back to a student budget and diet for the next few months while I pay off my new PC), so as you probably all know, I just do not have the money to pay for the space to store what must have been hundreds of thousands of tapes to recapture all the content for this channel, both published and unpublished, so I won't be able to recapture those clips, the tapes containing themhave either been binned or donated to Kaleidoscope. The only reason why I've recaptured these two clips are simply because this cassette was still left in the VCR when I needed something to capture.as a test clip.
Therefore those older files that are as-yet unpublished will NEVER be seen with fluid movement and we just have to accept that and feel lucky that the clips I find have survived *at all*! If I could summon up the time, money and effort to re-process those, I could get them up to 720p (so higher quality than 480 as they were originally captured in 576p), but that still wouldn't mean fluid movement in the videos. But as of now I don't have any such excuse to spend so much time, money and effort in doing that. Even converting them from MPEG2 or MPEG4 (they're a mix of file formats) to AVI wouldn't restore this - the interlacing data was lost by the original capture software as it processed it.
2) The above information about the as-yet unpublished files also - obviously - applies to the older video clips that have already been published.
snips the proverbial red ribbon with the proverbial scissors
small applause
-------------------------------
End of TOTP
BBC2 trailer: Third Rock From The Sun
BBC1 virtual globe: weather forecast
BBC1 clock (01:53am): closing announcement
BBC1 virtual globe with national anthem
Black and silence
Black with GLITS tone
Black and silence
Loss of sync - 11:05
Transmitter shutdown - 13:05

[@khangphamchannel016]

How perfect that they decide to use the song Men In Black to end this airing of TOTP :)) who knew that this song can became such a hit in the UK…

[@stickytapenrust6869]

They didn’t “decide” it, the music-buying public decided it by buying the most copies of that single. In the 90s, TOTP always ended with the top-selling single that week.

[@khangphamchannel016]

@@stickytapenrust6869 that’s cool to hear, I haven’t seem to watched a lot of TOTP fully…(aside from some actually good live performances on the show)

[@KaleunMaender77]

About as close to watching it live as we'll ever get anymore. Now the ident means so much more to me (not that it didn't mean much before, but at 50fps, it's got that extra bit of sentimentality attached to it). I would love to see the BBC2 idents in 50fps. I'd especially love to see Neon and Water in 50fps. Those are my favourite idents of all the 90s ones.

[@revolume]

Any information if you'll be uploading old Top Gear episodes soon on 50fps?

[@stickytapenrust6869]

If I find any in the future, I will.

[@dt08-old]

You can try using HandBrake to stop yourself from eating your hard drives.

[@stickytapenrust6869]

I really don’t like HandBrake, I use XVid to compress it when exporting the video.

[@revolume]

Handbrake sucks mainly because it makes quality much worse as it can't handle interlaced video