Exit Stage Left Youtube Upload (possible 50th anniversary announcement?)

[grep]

5 hours ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

If there's an ESL Blu-ray coming I'll be pretty stoked.

Same here. I kind of thought that Live in YYZ was the best we'd get for an ESL 40. 

But here we are today, eh?

[treeduck]

On 10/8/2024 at 7:24 PM, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

Ten posts in and no one has posted links? You made me visit a webz and type a words and click a mice! It was awful!

 

 

 

 

 

Several years ago, in the course of a Blindfold Test with the great jazz drummer Tony Williams, I decided to cross him up and play something different than the Elvin Jones, Miles Davis, and Chick Corea tracks I had been feeding him. I let him listen to Rush's "Limelight" [from Moving Pictures].

 

"This is the first one that I've really liked," said Tony. "Even though it's a 7/4 here and goes into 3 over there, it feels really relaxed. I get an emotional feeling from it. I like the bass playing and the bass sound. The groove is good, and that's the bass and the drums."

[grep]

O' Little Town of Megadon

How still we see thee lie
Above thy hallowed halls
The red star shines so high
Yet in thy dark streets below
The people follow the plan
All in all for the best
The priests rule the brotherhood of man

[TheAnarchist2112]

17 hours ago, TheGhostRider said:

This is a nice surprise, but I'm still skeptical it will lead to any new or updated releases. If they released a remastered trailer with some unreleased ESL footage (if it still exists) I would be psyched. But just these uploads with the Terry Brown mix is not much to get me excited. And plus we already had this with remastered footage from Stickhits. I would love to see an announcement for something like that but it doesnt seem very likely. 

If we're gonna get any new footage of any songs, like say, YYZ, it would be today. YYZ and the By-Tor medley are next in the tracklisting and probably will be released today or tomorrow. 
Or they'll release everything and then make an announcement, and then release new footage.

The possibilities are seemingly endless...

[TheAnarchist2112]

17 hours ago, TheGhostRider said:

This is a nice surprise, but I'm still skeptical it will lead to any new or updated releases. If they released a remastered trailer with some unreleased ESL footage (if it still exists) I would be psyched. But just these uploads with the Terry Brown mix is not much to get me excited. And plus we already had this with remastered footage from Stickhits. I would love to see an announcement for something like that but it doesnt seem very likely. 

If we're gonna get any new footage of any songs, like say, YYZ, it would be today. YYZ and the By-Tor medley are next in the tracklisting and probably will be released today or tomorrow. 
Or they'll release everything and then make an announcement, and then release new footage.

The possibilities are seemingly endless...

[TheAnarchist2112]

17 hours ago, TheGhostRider said:

This is a nice surprise, but I'm still skeptical it will lead to any new or updated releases. If they released a remastered trailer with some unreleased ESL footage (if it still exists) I would be psyched. But just these uploads with the Terry Brown mix is not much to get me excited. And plus we already had this with remastered footage from Stickhits. I would love to see an announcement for something like that but it doesnt seem very likely. 

If we're gonna get any new footage of any songs, like say, YYZ, it would be today. YYZ and the By-Tor medley are next in the tracklisting and probably will be released today or tomorrow. 
Or they'll release everything and then make an announcement, and then release new footage.

The possibilities are seemingly endless...

[Rush Didact]

The thing that doesn't make sense is why would they be uploading the old video if they're planning a remaster?  Unless they're planning on just re-releasing the same crappy 80s video transfer yet again, which wouldn't surprise me...

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

2 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

The thing that doesn't make sense is why would they be uploading the old video if they're planning a remaster?  Unless they're planning on just re-releasing the same crappy 80s video transfer yet again, which wouldn't surprise me...

 

Those new videos are upscaled to 1080p, but when you play them at full screen you can see how soft the image is -- a lot of noise reduction was applied. Noise reduction lowers the graininess but also softens the image.

 

Let's compare the new Xanadu with the StickHits upscale from a year ago. The Rush version is first.

 

(For a fair comparison, make sure both videos are set to 1080p)

 

 

 

[Rush Didact]

2 hours ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

Those new videos are upscaled to 1080p, but when you play them at full screen you can see how soft the image is -- a lot of noise reduction was applied. Noise reduction lowers the graininess but also softens the image.

 

Let's compare the new Xanadu with the StickHits upscale from a year ago. The Rush version is first.

 

(For a fair comparison, make sure both videos are set to 1080p)

 

 

 

 

Yeah, it's quite clear that they're all sourced from the same old video transfer.  As much as I appreciate what Stickhits does, no amount of AI upscaling will ever beat a proper remaster from the original camera negatives.

 

God I hope I get to see it done right someday, it could look incredible...

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

3 hours ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

Those new videos are upscaled to 1080p, but when you play them at full screen you can see how soft the image is -- a lot of noise reduction was applied. Noise reduction lowers the graininess but also softens the image.

 

Let's compare the new Xanadu with the StickHits upscale from a year ago. The Rush version is first.

 

(For a fair comparison, make sure both videos are set to 1080p)

 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Rush Didact said:

 

Yeah, it's quite clear that they're all sourced from the same old video transfer.  As much as I appreciate what Stickhits does, no amount of AI upscaling will ever beat a proper remaster from the original camera negatives.

 

God I hope I get to see it done right someday, it could look incredible...

 

It's been 42 years since ESL came out. With the band nine years retired and their fans looking for something new to get excited about, now would be the time to dig out those original film negatives and do a full-blown restoration with remixed audio. If they're not doing that now, I'd have to think they're never going to -- with the band and a lot of their fanbase reaching advanced age status, what would be the point of waiting another ten years?

 

Plus, we don't know if the negatives still exist -- if they do they're probably in some underground vault that only Indiana Jones and Lara Croft can get to.

 

Pink Floyd did it right with their1988 Delicate Sound of Thunder video. Fans were clamoring for an upgrade for decades, so what did the band finally do? They completely re-edited it from the original footage and remixed and remastered the audio. The finished product is as good as you could hope for.

[Timbale]

1 hour ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

It's been 42 years since ESL came out. With the band nine years retired and their fans looking for something new to get excited about, now would be the time to dig out those original film negatives and do a full-blown restoration with remixed audio. If they're not doing that now, I'd have to think they're never going to -- with the band and a lot of their fanbase reaching advanced age status, what would be the point of waiting another ten years?

 

Plus, we don't know if the negatives still exist -- if they do they're probably in some underground vault that only Indiana Jones and Lara Croft can get to.

 

Pink Floyd did it right with their1988 Delicate Sound of Thunder video. Fans were clamoring for an upgrade for decades, so what did the band finally do? They completely re-edited it from the original footage and remixed and remastered the audio. The finished product is as good as you could hope for.

I think Floyd used a proprietary mullet removal AI on that to greatly lessen the visual impact of Scott Page... 

[Rush Didact]

1 hour ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

It's been 42 years since ESL came out. With the band nine years retired and their fans looking for something new to get excited about, now would be the time to dig out those original film negatives and do a full-blown restoration with remixed audio. If they're not doing that now, I'd have to think they're never going to -- with the band and a lot of their fanbase reaching advanced age status, what would be the point of waiting another ten years?

 

Plus, we don't know if the negatives still exist -- if they do they're probably in some underground vault that only Indiana Jones and Lara Croft can get to.

 

Pink Floyd did it right with their1988 Delicate Sound of Thunder video. Fans were clamoring for an upgrade for decades, so what did the band finally do? They completely re-edited it from the original footage and remixed and remastered the audio. The finished product is as good as you could hope for.

 

Yup, absolutely. I don't know why they haven't done it yet. The time is now: the remaster of Stop Making Sense a couple years ago was such a big event it even got a theatrical release, and the Beatles Get Back  that Peter Jackson did was a sensation.

 

A properly done remaster of ESL could reach those heights. (Okay, maybe not Beatles heights, but that isn't a fair comparison.) I don't understand why they won't do it. This band's stony ambivalence towards their archives is inexplicable and irritating.

[snowdog2112]

1 hour ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

It's been 42 years since ESL came out. With the band nine years retired and their fans looking for something new to get excited about, now would be the time to dig out those original film negatives and do a full-blown restoration with remixed audio. If they're not doing that now, I'd have to think they're never going to -- with the band and a lot of their fanbase reaching advanced age status, what would be the point of waiting another ten years?

 

Plus, we don't know if the negatives still exist -- if they do they're probably in some underground vault that only Indiana Jones and Lara Croft can get to.

 

Pink Floyd did it right with their1988 Delicate Sound of Thunder video. Fans were clamoring for an upgrade for decades, so what did the band finally do? They completely re-edited it from the original footage and remixed and remastered the audio. The finished product is as good as you could hope for.

All that is true and I agree with you, and as a collector I want everything I can get. Heck, I would kill for stuff that even most fans around here probably wouldn't care about (Like the 1992 Irvine Meadows show that we now know was filmed by Atlantic, they were on fire at the end of that tour and there's almost no proshot video of the tour).

 

But at the same time I try to be realistic about what to expect and what exists. I seem to be the only person on the forum that was fully expecting there to be no live stuff for the Signals box set at all, I would have been shocked if there was. There's never even been a hint that anything was saved at a professional level from that tour. Do they have simple reference recordings and such? Possibly, and even then it might not still exist in usable condition, but nothing that was ever intended for release. Every single box before that one had live stuff of varying value and length, there's no reason to believe there wouldn't have been some if they had it. And I'm confident any future boxes will, too.

 

Likewise, I'm a little less certain, but still pretty confident, that we'll never see any more footage of any of the 1980s concert videos. And I sure hope I'm wrong about that. And I guess we'll find out soon enough when the GUP box comes, but there wasn't even a hint when the MP box was released that more footage of ESL might exist. I just think it's a longshot. But of course you're right, at least ESL and ASOH were both shot on film and I'd love remastered versions of those even if they only have the same content (although they could add Lock and Key back in). Again, I wouldn't bet my life or my house that they don't have them, but I've always been extremely pessimistic. I think those projects were outsourced back then, with short-term thinking, and the rest was trashed or has rotted away or gotten lost since.

 

Also, as much as I want more stuff, when I see many other major bands it's pretty astonishing how much we've gotten as Rush fans over the years. Poor Van Halen fans for example never got a single live Blu-ray or official documentary, not a single live release from the original band lineup of any kind (which is a crime), there are only two official live albums in their entire career, and literally the only archive release in their entire history was the Carnal Knowledge box set released this summer with an abbreviated show from Dallas. That's it. As a collector of tons of bands Rush is way near the top in terms of releases of all kinds. So we should at least complain with some context. If you had told me in the late 90s when the band was dead that every single future tour would be filmed and released on Blu-ray and we'd have many documentaries and the 1974 concert video and the 1976 footage and some alternate songs from ATWAS and a full AFTK concert mixed by Terry Brown and a full MP show and more Permanent Waves live songs and the 1990 footage and the 1997 footage and so on I would have not believed it. 

 

Having said all that, we should have every reason to believe they still have the remaining half of the 1990 Auburn Hills show, the remaining half of the 1997 Toronto show, the 1992 Irvine Meadows show, etc. And we know for a fact many shows were professionally recorded on the Power Windows and Hold Your Fire and Counterparts and Test For Echo tours, and the London 1992 RTB tour, and the Edmonton Moving Pictures show (along with a bunch more Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures shows). Plus we know that the 1979 Hammersmith shows were recorded and filmed. That's the one that blows my mind that no one ever talks or asks about because they spoke openly about it at the time, it's not just some wild speculation. 

 

So there's a still a lot archived that we know of, and maybe a few things that we don't, but regardless it's up to the hands-on people at this point. It's not realistic to expect Geddy and Alex in their 70s to say "Hey, let's get together and spend a bunch of time digging through old boxes at a warehouse to see if we can find hidden gems of ourselves!" It's out of their hands and I don't blame them for saying "I don't know, ask someone else" at this point. Maybe we'll still get something this fall for the 50th. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

2 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

Yup, absolutely. I don't know why they haven't done it yet. The time is now: the remaster of Stop Making Sense a couple years ago was such a big event it even got a theatrical release, and the Beatles Get Back  that Peter Jackson did was a sensation.

 

A properly done remaster of ESL could reach those heights. (Okay, maybe not Beatles heights, but that isn't a fair comparison.) I don't understand why they won't do it. This band's stony ambivalence towards their archives is inexplicable and irritating.

 

The one advantage that StickHits had was that he had the Laserdisc to work with, which, if it was an official studio release, is a digital copy of the original edited master. While it's still in standard definition, it has a decently clean image to work with for AI upscaling. The upscaled clips that the band is posting right now look like it was taken from a tape, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.

[Rush Didact]

1 hour ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

The one advantage that StickHits had was that he had the Laserdisc to work with, which, if it was an official studio release, is a digital copy of the original edited master. While it's still in standard definition, it has a decently clean image to work with for AI upscaling. The upscaled clips that the band is posting right now look like it was taken from a tape, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.

 

The laserdisc and the DVD would have both been produced from the same video source, there isn't a whole lot between them in terms of picture quality.  The DVD has a slight edge, being a digital format, while the laserdisc is analog.  (The video track, anyways.  Audio was encoded on the laserdisc as 16 bit 44.1 kHz PCM, the same as a CD.)

 

My understanding is that Stickhits is using the DVDs as the video source and the laserdiscs as the audio source for his videos.  The DVDs had a terrible remix done for the Replay set, while the laserdiscs have the original mixes.

 

I did this myself with A Show of Hands, I took the audio from the laserdisc and married it to the video from the DVD (splicing in Lock and Key from the laserdisc) to produce a better product than either one alone.

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

2 hours ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

The one advantage that StickHits had was that he had the Laserdisc to work with, which, if it was an official studio release, is a digital copy of the original edited master. While it's still in standard definition, it has a decently clean image to work with for AI upscaling. The upscaled clips that the band is posting right now look like it was taken from a tape, and the results are pretty much what you'd expect.

 

5 minutes ago, Rush Didact said:

 

The laserdisc and the DVD would have both been produced from the same video source, there isn't a whole lot between them in terms of picture quality.  The DVD has a slight edge, being a digital format, while the laserdisc is analog.  (The video track, anyways.  Audio was encoded on the laserdisc as 16 bit 44.1 kHz PCM, the same as a CD.)

 

My understanding is that Stickhits is using the DVDs as the video source and the laserdiscs as the audio source for his videos.  The DVDs had a terrible remix done for the Replay set, while the laserdiscs have the original mixes.

 

I did this myself with A Show of Hands, I took the audio from the laserdisc and married it to the video from the DVD (splicing in Lock and Key from the laserdisc) to produce a better product than either one alone.

 

Thanks for the clarifications. I don't know much about laserdisks. So the question is, why don't Rush's upscales look as good as StickHits'?

[Rush Didact]

49 minutes ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

Thanks for the clarifications. I don't know much about laserdisks. So the question is, why don't Rush's upscales look as good as StickHits'?

 

Likely because they weren't processed with any sharpening algorithms like Stickhits uses. They're just straight linear upscales with maybe some noise reduction or deblocking, which would soften them even further.

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

1 hour ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

Thanks for the clarifications. I don't know much about laserdisks. So the question is, why don't Rush's upscales look as good as StickHits'?

 

17 minutes ago, Rush Didact said:

 

Likely because they weren't processed with any sharpening algorithms like Stickhits uses. They're just straight linear upscales with maybe some noise reduction or deblocking, which would soften them even further.

 

Right, but it isn't just sharpness. Stick's videos are cleaner looking. You look at the dark areas and the blacks are black. Yeah, it looks upscaled as opposed to how a proper HD transfer from the original film would look, but it's more watchable than any other versions we've seen to date.

 

The dark areas of Rush versions are smothered with a ghosty fog -- it's the look that you get when you overdo the noise reduction. In fact, it looks like the noise reduction I used 25 years ago when I was doing tape-to-tape S-VHS editing. Surely Rush has the resources to do better than that.

[Rush Didact]

18 minutes ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

Right, but it isn't just sharpness. Stick's videos are cleaner looking. You look at the dark areas and the blacks are black. Yeah, it looks upscaled as opposed to how a proper HD transfer from the original film would look, but it's more watchable than any other versions we've seen to date.

 

The dark areas of Rush versions are smothered with a ghosty fog -- it's the look that you get when you overdo the noise reduction. In fact, it looks like the noise reduction I used 25 years ago when I was doing tape-to-tape S-VHS editing. Surely Rush has the resources to do better than that.

 

Yeah, there's a lot going on in Stickhits videos. Noise reduction, sharpening, colour grading and local contrast enhancement, etc. He does good work, but it's still just the same source material.

 

That's why the official Rush releases are so frustrating: they do the bare minimum and move on.

[snowdog2112]

The last ones are posted now. 

[TheGhostRider]

13 hours ago, Rush Didact said:

 

Yeah, there's a lot going on in Stickhits videos. Noise reduction, sharpening, colour grading and local contrast enhancement, etc. He does good work, but it's still just the same source material.

 

That's why the official Rush releases are so frustrating: they do the bare minimum and move on.

I'd argue they do even less than the bare minimum. Bare minimum would be bonus footage of some kind: (interviews, unused songs and footage) even if it was standard definition. Even Queen, which has shitty overdubbing on a lot of their Blu-rays and DVD's include bonus footage and features. Rush has never done anything of that kind for ESL, GUP Live, or  ASOH. 

[TheGhostRider]

13 hours ago, 1-0-0-1-0-0-1 said:

 

 

Right, but it isn't just sharpness. Stick's videos are cleaner looking. You look at the dark areas and the blacks are black. Yeah, it looks upscaled as opposed to how a proper HD transfer from the original film would look, but it's more watchable than any other versions we've seen to date.

 

The dark areas of Rush versions are smothered with a ghosty fog -- it's the look that you get when you overdo the noise reduction. In fact, it looks like the noise reduction I used 25 years ago when I was doing tape-to-tape S-VHS editing. Surely Rush has the resources to do better than that.

I don't remember all the specifics but he explained his remaster process to me and it's very detailed and in depth. Jesse spent a LOT of time enhancing the footage, including adding film grain and cleaning up the image and making it clearer. 

[malm_51]

On 10/9/2024 at 4:13 PM, grep said:

Same here. I kind of thought that Live in YYZ was the best we'd get for an ESL 40. 

Hey maybe it's just me but the snare drum for more than half of Live in YYZ sounds artificial, almost worse than the remaster of Exit...Stage Left from Replay x 3! I think Live in YYZ was probably produced over three nights although advertised as the 25th! So for me, a proper remaster of ESL video would be excellent!

 

[78jazz]

It also sounds like it has the pre-2006 audio on the clips.

[ytserush]

17 hours ago, 78jazz said:

It also sounds like it has the pre-2006 audio on the clips.

Alex should never have never messed with that.