"Superman: The Movie" WCI Home Video condensed end credits

[RedTailedTuna]

WHAT A KNOB YOU ARE 

[Watcher3223]

@RedTailedTuna

A knob? What are you talking about? If that's an insult, I'm insulted you think that would be a good insult.

Hope you enjoy reading responses to your lame attempt at harassment with no way to reply to them. You've been blocked.

[Riddler95]

Superman was one of the best SuperHero movies ever made.

I own the Four-Disc DVD Version of the film. I has both the Original Theatrical Version and the 2001 Director's Cut.

[WAYNE1980AA]

i had the original wci vhs tape.

[JesseL85719]

YOU ROCK!

[eyeh8nbc]

And I counted about 3 minutes of blank tape after the end, so they could've at least run the full end credits sped up rather than cut like this. Parts of the movie I checked seemed sped up too- in fact I read about this issue in "Video" magazine a long time ago, this tape was an example of how not to transfer a movie (and they didn't even bring up the panning and scanning!)

[gpwerner]

@eyeh8nbc Yes, in my entire VHS home video viewing experience, spanning 1982-1998, watching this particular tape of "Superman" was beyond a doubt the most disappointing.

I rented it in the old box thinking it would have an earlier cut of the film on there (no Internet at the time to set me straight on the runtimes). Total waste of a Sunday afternoon, and I had no one to blame but myself. Grrr.

[eyeh8nbc]

Just checked the end of my 1979 tape and it's like this. It didn't have the card inside, but it does have a neat catalog of titles inside that says "You've opened your home to the most exciting entertainment experience of the 80's."

How did you get this to digitize without a rolling picture? This tape uses the old "Stop-Copy" system and the tapes I have with this will not run through my DVD recorder without splitting down the center and my HDTV does too if the VCR is run through the receiver.

[Watcher3223]

@eyeh8nbc

I just used a computer video capture device and that was it.

What I had was itself a copy of an original WCI Home Video product, so it's possible whomever made that copy in the past may have done something to defeat the copy protection (assuming there was one present in the original used to make the copy I had).

[JesseL85719]

@Watcher3223 Better yet, I also have a copy that I dubbed to DVD. It also has stop-copy.

[JeterSwisherFan88]

Thanks for uploading. I think that the DVD must have retained the full end credits considering the limitation of the 1/2" video tape back then, three years before my birth.

[timetravelhyman88]

good video because the complete end credits did not used until 1983.

[Watcher3223]

@timetravelhyman88

For video cassette, anyways.

The 1981 LaserDisc and 1982 CED releases spanned two discs and retained the full theatrical runtime.

[avickers1992]

Thanks for uploading!



[Watcher3223]

@avickers1992

Thank you.

[JesseL85719]

This was actually released in 1979.

[Superpower20011]

OMG,This Is The First Time I Ever Seen This

[tinkerthecat]

im not sure if wci home video existed in the uk as i have a vhs of blazing saddles from 1980ish and it is warner home video on the box and no logo exists on the tape,

anyway i have just bought a copy of superman the very same day of this upload ,does anyone know if the 127 mins version was released in the uk

[Watcher3223]

@tinkerthecat

I don't believe so.

VHS in the U.K. had far longer running times for the same length of tape. For example: a typical length of VHS tape used for T-120 would result in 120 minutes in SP for NTSC.

That same length results in 169 minutes for SP in PAL.

Also, E-180 tape has slightly longer length to permit 180 minutes in SP.

Both are more than enough to contain the entire Superman movie without cutting anything on PAL VHS.

[tinkerthecat]

@Watcher3223  i understand. the only way that it could be the same is that if it was made from the same master as the us tape ill see how long it is and then i will know if it is the same version.

[Watcher3223]

@tinkerthecat

A big reason is the video standard and what it requires of VHS.

The head drum rotation for VHS in NTSC is 1800 RPM. The drum must rotate roughly 30 times a second. Each half-rotation accounts for one field. 2 fields = 1 frame, so 60 fields = 30 frames.

This correlates to the scan rate of the video standard being used. NTSC refresh is 60 Hz and interlaced scanning requires two fields to comprise one frame.

[Watcher3223]

@tinkerthecat

PAL operates at 50 Hz refresh with interlaced scanning. Two fields = one frame, so it's 25 FPS.

VHS PAL requires a head drum rotation of 1250 RPM (or 25 revs a second), substantially less than the 1800 RPM (30 revs a sec.) used with VHS NTSC.

This means the linear tape speed for PAL VHS doesn't have to be as fast as that of NTSC to accommodate the head drum writing/reading speed while keeping track crosstalk to as much of a minimum as possible with all tape speeds.

[tinkerthecat]

@Watcher3223 i have just checked and the running time on the uk vhs original issue is 129 mins so judging by the times 14 or so minutes have been cut so it must have been issued from the wci master

anyway thanks for uploading this video

[Watcher3223]

@tinkerthecat

Interesting. The UK release would not have required the condensing yet it appears they released it anyways.

They couldn't have used the master tape for the NTSC release, but they could have used the same film element to prepare a PAL master tape.

[nx01alpha]

Interestingly, the closing credit compression only accounts for 8 of the 17 mins. The other 9 minutes were accomplished by speeding up scenes without dialogue. WCI was very notorious for compressing films down to meet videotape limitations & to keep costs down. Blazing Saddles was shrunk by 3 minutes (despite being a 93 min. film). That and the transfer quality was not as good. Superman was released by Warner on video at its proper length in 1982 or 83.

[MrServoRetro]

@Watcher3223 You're doing great, pal. Keep up the good work! : )

That copy of "Superman" looks pretty interesting. It looks like someone spliced the trailer segments or whatever they are and converted them on to this release.

By the way, is your WCI copy of "Superman" a rental copy.

[Watcher3223]

@MrServoRetro

It was a 2nd generation Betamax dupe of the original. Don't know if the original was a rental or a retail copy, but I believe it may be a retail copy as Warner only had around 3, maybe 4, titles available as rental only and I don't think "Superman" was one of them. "Superman 2" was available as rental only, though.

[MrServoRetro]

@Watcher3223 "Prince of the City" was also a rental only release. I saw a Betamax copy of it.

[Watcher3223]

@MrServoRetro

The other thing I will say of the copy that I got: BASF made LOUSY video tape back in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

[cessnaace]

@Watcher3223 Which makes since as BASF made Radio Shack branded VHS and Betamax tapes. Their quality was always poor.

STAY AWESOME! :)

[Watcher3223]

@cessnaace

I never owned RadioShack video cassettes until the late 1990s-early 2000s. Thanks for the info about older vintages!

The late 1990s-early 2000s RadioShack Beta cassettes that I do have were made in Japan by Sony probably because Sony was the only company still making Beta cassettes at that time and the fact that BASF spun off their magnetic media division, which renamed itself EMTEC and was later sold off.