Alright Retro - got a research challenge for you! Does anyone know if high quality captures exist of the Japanese Sonic Adventure "character spotlight" TV adverts? Tails' in particular is the one I'm most interested in. I've been looking for these to help with reconstructing the DC Sonic Adventure intro in higher quality for PkR's Dreamcast Conversion mod - currently I've been able to reconstruct a full 640x480 version of the Sonic Team logo sequence, but the intro itself has proved a little more tricky. A 640x448 version (i.e. matching the Gamecube version's frame size) has been created which, as of today, is currently used in the mod. However, if at all possible I'd like to go further a create a true full-frame 640x480 version - for most shots this is already doable, as they could be expanded to 640x480 using the PC version's intro or cutscenes (or in one case, the AutoDemo intro) to fill in the missing gaps. However, for a few shots this method isn't possible as they differ from the available PC/GC sources, and the biggest barrier I've found is the second half of the shot of Tails flying towards the camera. From looking at existing uploads it looks like Tails' advert featured the uncropped version of this particular shot in its opening sequence, so if a good quality capture exists it'd be really useful for helping to restore the full-frame version for the second half of this sequence! If anyone knows of a source for these in decent quality - or even the original rips used for the current uploads, as then at least they wouldn't have been recompressed via upload to Dailymotion/Youtube - then if they could point me to where I can find them I'd be most grateful! I think workarounds may be possible for the other shots we're missing, but for this one in particular the only option short of finding an uncropped source in usable quality would involve a laborious manual painting/cleanup job - not that I'm ruling that out, but I'd like to make sure I've exhausted all other possible avenues before even thinking about embarking on such a task...! Thanks - any help would be greatly appreciated! = )
The only place I ever remember having them for download was SonicHQ back in the day. Before YouTube and stuff, don't know if these would be considered high quality though. http://archive.sonichq.net/newsite/media/downloads/video.php
The videos featured on SonicHQ are taken straight from Sonic Team's SA1 website. They're extremely lowres and I don't think you could use them!
I'm pretty sure those ads simply don't exist in high quality unless we somehow manage to track down someone from Japan who happened to record them to VHS in some shape or form back then, let alone a VHS that's actually watchable today. There's also no guarantee that said VHS owner is going to own any equipment required to make a good quality rip without compression or frame drops in the first place. Really, you're probably just better off making the most with what you have to work with. We're having a hard time trying to find anyone who can rip that Sonic Adventure 1998 introduction video tape in 60 fps and proper aspect ratio + high enough quality that VHS can allow as it is.
iv never seen them in all my years of archiving stuff. On a side note the Us commercial was found recently in high quality at last! http://youtu.be/DMKihbCm9Yk
There won't be any online. Unless they're hidden somewhere on some obscure Japanese website. My advice, and it's not very good advice, is to hunt down gaming VHS cassettes from 1998. By complete coincidence I ran into this VHS yesterday - it's a promotional... thing from V-Jump, but it has a bunch of TV adverts from 1992, including Sonic 2 (which is why I was interested). Spoilers: I was hoping for something more, and while footage exists on Nico Nico, it's the same one seen in Sonic Jam in "possibly-better-but-I-don't-care-enough" quality. There are similar videos out there - all undocumented, so you might get lucky.
Thanks for the replies - had a feeling it might not exist online, but had to ask just to be sure. Guess it'll be the manual painting route if/when I attempt it, then! Thanks for supplying the link to the low quality MPEG, though - it may not be usable quality, but it's at least a reference for how the bits of Tails which overlap the edge of the frame should look, which will help if I attempt manual painting/cleanup to fill the gaps. The version of the MPEG currently on Sonic Team's website appears to have a slight visual glitch during this scene - some of the images on the site are corrupt too, so I'm guessing this is another casualty of whatever caused that! Thankfully the SonicHQ mirror seems to have been grabbed before this corruption occurred, so I'll archive that for use as a reference when I have time to attempt this.
Coincidentally, I was trying to track down high-res versions of those character ads last week. I managed to find something with a little higher quality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHdZvl0FyCw Definitely better than those SonicHQ versions I would say.
A lot of these really don't look much better than the SonicHQ mpegs, with the exception of maybe the Sonic and Knuckles ads. The rest seem to just be the same mpegs but upscaled.
