The distorted Rough Rider & Sand Scorcher promo video...

[Hibernaculum 933]

Over the years, some of you may have noticed that the original Tamiya promo videos vary in quality on the internet, and also, that there are actually multiple different promo clips for certain early Tamiya models. Plus some copies online are cut short, or the audio is out of sync, etc etc. It's all a bit of a mess out there.

I decided recently to research and organize the videos for my own cataloguing purposes. So that each different car has it's own distinct clip. And that all the clips are sorted in chronological order - from oldest, to newest. So I can work out which is which.

Yeah, this is what I do for fun sometimes

As most of you already know... what Tamiya tended to do with their promo videos was to put together a 10-15min "showreel" roughly once a year, highlighting certain models. Each showreel tape tended to begin with an intro card, something like this:

Followed by a series of models.  Before finishing with some sort of "ending sequence" summing up the company.

The very earliest video released, I believe, is the one featuring no narration at all, in which the sequence of videos features the following:

1. Rough Rider & Sand Scorcher
2. B2B Racing Sidecar
3. Rough Rider & Sand Scorcher

All of those cars were released in late 1979, and since no other cars are featured and there is no American narration, I think it's safe to assume this was the earliest video - i.e. showreel number 1.

The next video set after that, is the one that features the Can-Am Lola and Datsun 280ZX (both from 1980). But there is also a new video of the Rough Rider & Sand Scorcher which is probably from the same video or at least the same year (1980), as it also profiles the cars in a way that suggests they are fairly new releases. The Rough Rider & Sand Scorcher are also narrated this time. And this is the video I wanted to say something new about...

All the copies of this video online seem to be sourced from the same terrible tape. And they are either cut short like this one...

Or they are full length, but feature heavily distorted audio during the final minute like this one....

So (using the same copy, but in the largest resolution I am aware of)... I have edited this clip slightly now to crop the weird edge distortion off when it starts. And also add back a bit of the key music used in the clip, to fill that final minute. It's not perfect, but it might be better than what you currently have - and less annoying than the heavily distorted one.

It's not a huge change, but better. So feel free to grab it here  

For the record, my historical list of the videos (with each distinct showreel named liked a "Season" of a TV show - S01, S02 etc, and with each different product clip named as an "episode" hence "E01", "E02" etc), ends up looking like this as far as my research goes...

etc....

(I am still working through it).

Since we now live in an age where everybody just uploads stuff to Youtube, in low res, and calls it "promo", and it's all random and nothing is organized... some people are probably confused about the original videos. Which ones there were, how many there were, etc...

So I will probably document all of the above on my website in the future.   So that at least there is one full record of the sequence of vintage videos. Coz we all love them. But it's also nice to understand the full, exact collection of them. Otherwise you may find you are missing certain ones.

Rob.

PS - I have personally stopped uploading anything to Youtube anymore. I am tired of Google (and users) deleting videos over the years, and having them disappear from my articles after I've referenced them. Plus, Google is just another privacy-averse corporation. As much as there's plenty of useful stuff on Youtube, I don't like letting them dictate and track every video that people share online. From now on, I am self-hosting any clips I share, so that they are consistently available on my terms... and not likely to disappear.

PPS - If I'm missing a video from the list so far, let me know!

[pl212 5]

Great work! Would you consider sharing these, perhaps as a torrent, so that others could regularize their collection?

Wonder if there are some copies that have better audio or video, that might benefit from combining streams from two different files...

[Mokei Kagaku 2706]

3 hours ago, pl212 said:

Wonder if there are some copies that have better audio or video, that might benefit from combining streams from two different files...

I have an original Tamiya promo VHS from ca. 1986 which has been played multiple times as it was used in our showroom, but quality should still be relatively good. That is, if VHS can be considered good at all, anymore. It covers the 959, Monster Beetle, Wild One, Fox, Hotshot, Hornet, Bruiser, Bigwig and probably a few more, but I don't remember as I haven't watched it for surely 25+ years. I have an adapter for connecting a VHS player to my PC and have converted some other VHS'es with acceptable results. I have kept my VHS player for this purpose only. Maybe about time I give the Tamiya VHS a try? 

The audio is only partially original though, which means that the music is the original, whereas the comments are by one of Norway's most popular sports reporters, who was hired by the distributor for this work. As a professional, his language and voice sound good, but you can clearly hear that he doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about even though I'm sure he had a script.  

[Hibernaculum 933]

5 hours ago, pl212 said:

Great work! Would you consider sharing these, perhaps as a torrent, so that others could regularize their collection? Wonder if there are some copies that have better audio or video, that might benefit from combining streams from two different files...

I am checking the videos as I go, based on the decent copies I had vs all the other copies on Youtube (or that I had download from other sites years ago. On a couple of occasions, I have swapped better audio in from a different copy.

In some cases though, as far as video quality is concerned, it's a judgement call between a copy which is smooth - but blurry. Versus another which is cleaner - but may have a glitch or two. I tend to prefer the cleaner, larger res copies - even if there's the odd VHS tape glitch in the footage.

FYI - I am using Adobe Premiere Pro 9 for all of this, and I have some video editing experience - so the resulting copies have zero additional degradation, relative to the source files I am using. Which is the best anyone can hope for. I have experimented with many sharpening, denoise, and other tools - but the results are mixed, so I have not applied any of that filtering to the files at this stage. Just fixed obvious major problems - like audio that was out of sync. And did a custom edit on the aforementioned "distorted" Sand Scorcher & Rough Rider video - because the final minute was utterly terrible in every copy I have seen!

And yes, re: sharing - we could do a torrent, or else I see no reason why I can't just offer them from my website at this point in time. They have been all over Youtube for years, just in mixed quality.

One more note - I would like the final set of videos to feature no "watermarks". Some of the copies around the web have "lunchrocs", "www.tamiyabase.com", and "divx" among other watermarks. My hope is to put together the full set, in the best quality we can find, from copies of the videos that do not have watermarks. Whether this will be possible, remains to be seen as I work my way through the whole sequence....

1 hour ago, Mokei Kagaku said:

I have an original Tamiya promo VHS from ca. 1986 which has been played multiple times as it was used in our showroom, but quality should still be relatively good. That is, if VHS can be considered good at all, anymore. It covers the 959, Monster Beetle, Wild One, Fox, Hotshot, Hornet, Bruiser, Bigwig and probably a few more, but I don't remember as I haven't watched it for surely 25+ years. I have an adapter for connecting a VHS player to my PC and have converted some other VHS'es with acceptable results. I have kept my VHS player for this purpose only. Maybe about time I give the Tamiya VHS a try? 

The audio is only partially original though, which means that the music is the original, whereas the comments are by one of Norway's most popular sports reporters, who was hired by the distributor for this work. As a professional, his language and voice sound good, but you can clearly hear that he doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about even though I'm sure he had a script.  

Cool   Not sure if these copies are really known, as I have never heard a narrator on the early (or mid 80s) videos other than the US narrator (whose name escapes me, but I believe we had ID'd it on these forums at one stage).

Based on my list above, I am just now studying the videos from the mid-1980s to see what all the copies are like. And so far, it seems as though in my 20 years of looking for these videos online and sourcing other copies.... nobody seems to have a clean, decent resolution, watermark free copy of the Supershot video? Mokei Kagaku, I would be very interested to hear a full list of what your VHS contains.

I have everything ready to go here also, in terms of safe importing of VHS video, and digital encoding. And would be happy to help (and return the tape) if that's an option for you. I usually import from VHS direct to uncompressed MPEG2. Then convert to MP4 using h264 - but with maximum rendering quality and minimal compression - to keep the original quality.

Anyway, first things first - if you or anyone knows of a bigger, clearer, watermark free copy of the Supershot video in particular - please let me know!

Right now on Youtube, there are 3 poor quality, low res copies, some with watermarking - one, two and three. And that's it. My higher res source copies do not appear to include the Supershot. The same thing may apply to the Hotshot II. It's possible there is one entire "showreel" from 1986/1987 that I am missing (in reasonable quality)... so I wonder if anyone has it.