What’s odd, though, is that the episodes that have been sped-up and slowed-down are all about 26:15 in length-some 3-4 minutes *longer* than was normal for a network cartoon at that time. (“If I Were A Witch Man” is an exception at 23:32, but it also seems a bit sluggish to my ears.) Since they come from the same season, the slow episodes should be longer, the fast episodes shorter, and the bootlegs from the ABC broadcasts should be right in the middle. So, it’s thoroughly possible ABC fiddled with the episode lengths, especially if Season 4 was when the show got shrunk back down to a half an hour (I was committing self-torture by watching NBC’s Saturday line-up at the time, except when Garfield & Friends was on, sorry.)

I think that it just effects this disc, which still seems odd to me.

Oh well, it’s still kind of watchable. It just feels like your brain has been fried while watching it.

I’m not sure. I’ve seen a few things converted from PAL, but none of them have been this noticeable. Also, I skimmed through most of volumes 4 and 5. This was the only disc I found to be slowed down.

“Hopefully this week I’ll get a chance to actually check out every disc when I gather the runtimes for everything, and that’ll at least give me some indication of which episodes are screwy. I pray the problems are confined to just that disc, though I know that the 15-minute ep “Venk-Man!” sounded really sped-up. It could be like that on ABC, so I’d have to check before I throw up an alarm ”

I know that the 15 minute Fox Family episodes always appeared to be sped up. But, that could have been Fox Family’s editing.

Well that certainly would explain it, though it makes me wonder if they could have done something to correct that. I’m guessing speeding them up a bit would throw them off the NTSC framerate.

God I hate that whole NTSC and PAL format nonsense. Couldn’t they have just stuck with one and used it worldwide?

# AJ Quick on November 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Paul.. What do you mean by this:

I haven’t been through all of those episodes yet.. so I don’t know what you are talking about.

I thought you knew about the four alternate music episodes, which have been known about for, like, 10 years or more. In short, there are four episodes that have a small portion of alternate music:

* Knock Knock
* Venkman’s Ghost Repellers
* A Fright At The Opera
* The Bird Of Kildarby

In one version the standard series music is used during a specific scene, in the other a Tahiti song is used in that same scene. The DVD contains two of each type, but not both types for all four episodes.

Go to the RGB ep guide on my site and look up those four episodes to see comparison videos of the two versions.

# Zuul on November 25th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Is it just my copy or are all the episodes on Volume 4 – Disc 2 kind of slow? All of the voices are really noticeably sluggish. Even the music and effects track is messed up.

See, that’s exactly what I was talking about. That’s the disc with “Partners In Slime”, and the other episode I briefly checked on that disc (“Live From Al Capone’s Tomb”) sounded slow as well.

When “Parters…” showed up on Sony’s GB2 DVD in 2005, I thought they screwed up in the transfer. But now I’m starting to think the issue is with the master, as I highly doubt that TimeLife simply used the DVD transfer that Sony did three years ago.

Hopefully this week I’ll get a chance to actually check out every disc when I gather the runtimes for everything, and that’ll at least give me some indication of which episodes are screwy. I pray the problems are confined to just that disc, though I know that the 15-minute ep “Venk-Man!” sounded really sped-up. It could be like that on ABC, so I’d have to check before I throw up an alarm

There’s been no confirmation of this, though the effect is consistent. And there’s no explanation as to why this is.

I can guarantee you that they are not, and I don’t know why Paul thinks they are different.

I spent 10 days at Technicolor going through over 600 1″ Master NTSC tapes, finding the most complete and best set of ORIGINAL masters I could.

These are 100% from NTSC masters, and AS ORIGINALLY AIRED, unless the labels were lying. Some of the ABC shows even had the original commercials in place.

Best,
Andy Mangels
http://www.AndyMangels.com

Paul.. What do you mean by this:

“However, of the four alternate music episodes, two are series music and two are Tahiti music.”

I haven’t been through all of those episodes yet.. so I don’t know what you are talking about.

The ones that hold 5 DVDs have 2 on the front, 2 on a swinging door, and 1 on the back. Obviously one isn’t a problem.. the two that overlap can be accessed without removing the disc if you are careful.

Really? I collect SteelBooks – I want to know which 3+ disc SteelBook you’ve seen that doesn’t have packaging where you have to remove one disc to get to the other. Because in the nearly 75 or so I have had or own now, I’ve never seen it any other way.

This is the way it has to be packaged since SteelBooks are not much bigger than your standard amaray case. How else are they going to put 4 or 5 discs in there? These are 200000x better than the packaging used for their Get Smart set, which was essentially just flimsy cardboard.

Anyway, it’s fucking packaging. I’m more concerned about the goods inside the case. As for those “slow” episodes Paul was talking about, I can almost guarantee they were PAL masters slowed down to match the NTSC framerate, which although the framrate is now matching our standard, it just doesn’t look right.

I have a few DVDs that are like that where PAL masters were used and it looks like shit. It’s possible the original masters broadcast on ABC are no longer in existence or whatever.

Are there any Kenner toy commercials?

See, I *KNEW* that we’d all make that the first disc that gets watched! And I’d bet you went straight to the promo, too.

…has the original four minute promo video (from what looks like a better-than-average VHS master)

I can confirm that it indeed came from VHS. It is kinda obvious, but thankfully, it’s an excellent quality copy.

The bibles are marked as First and Third, which begs the question, “where’s Two?”

Two and three are combined. It’s Season two, revised for season three”. It’s the same one I’ve had on my site since August, though that was one of the few scripts from my collection that I didn’t contribute.

# Brian Reilly November 20, 2008 9:03 pm
How is the audio/video quality? I’m assuming it varies from episode to episode.

Video is pretty consistent. I’ve seen nothing where I thought one was worse than the others, though one of the Slimer! eps had some scratches at the very beginning, which although minor, hardly qualifies it as being “restored” or “remastered”.

Audio is a mixed bag, generally because it’s like that way in the series. In some episodes Lorenzo and Maurice sound odd and in others they sound fine. That’s not a fault of the DVD, though.

What I do have an issue with is that something is really screwy with Season 4. Again, the “Partners In Slime” episode is played too slowly, and thus sounds bad and has defects in the audio. It was like this on the GB2 2005 DVD, but NOT in the original ABC broadcast. A few other Season 4 episodes I checked sound slow as well.

When I finally get the chance to watch all of the episodes, I’ll make notes about what doesn;t sound or look right and compare to the original ABC episodes. I have a feeling I may have to keep a few more of my old tapes than I originally planned to.

Are the original Lorenzo Music voice tracks there for the re-recorded episodes, or are they the Dave Coulier dubs? Or are both available?

No redubbed or alternate episodes are on the DVD except for the one-hour version of Deja Boo (and technically the retitled Slimer! “A Mouse In The House” that none of us knew about – or probably cared about).

However, of the four alternate music episodes, two are series music and two are Tahiti music.

The full set breakdown and lots of details (including the list of alternate eps not in the set) can be found on my site.

I’m definitely NOT a fan of the needing to remove one disc to get to another aspect of the packaging. They went all out and then skimped there? Very disappointing.

I totally agree! I hate the disc-over-disc layout. Even more annoying is the disc holding mechanism which has absolutely no give and upon repeated use will cause the inner hub of the disc to crack. I’ve had this happen with my GB1 1999 DVD, and that case’s disc holding mechanism is a bit better than this ones – but not by much.

The steelbooks on the outside are nice, though.

One of my very early missions as a member of the community was to discover and archive all of the episodes of The Real Ghostbusters for all those looking to re-connect with their past, and to spread it forward to a new generation.

Time-Life did a fantastic job with this collection. I look forward to sharing my thoughts as soon as I digest it all.

GBFans has a few extra copies of the Collection from Time Life that we will be giving away!

Obviously I’ll wait until it’s in my hands to make a final judgement on the packaging (which is stellar, for the most part), but placing discs on top of one another always seems to result in scratched discs.

On the plus side, these discs will probably be used only once in my case, as I’ll most likely rip all the episodes directly to my home theatre setup.

This has all been sort of surreal. I just haven’t been able to accept that these dvds really existed, despite the fact that I had pre-ordered from timelife awhile ago. Knowing that you have a copy in your possession has sort of brought some reality back to my senses. I feel like a kid staring at his christmas presents under the tree on christmas eve, writhing in agony over not being able to open them yet.