First and foremost, let's give full credit to the creators of this artistic material: Mr. Bill Feigenbaum and CBS Sports.
WHY I BOTHER WITH THIS EXTENSIVE DESCRIPTION ... Well, if you were as fond of this particular theme as I am, you'd have a lot to say about the details of your project, too. In addition, since I'm offering this as among the highest-quality, complete copies readily available, I feel I owe the viewer/listener an explanation describing my efforts, techniques, and other information relevant to producing my version of this material.
As the opening slides in this video indicate, a favorite musical theme of mine is this renowned theme developed for CBS Sports by Mr. Bill Feigenbaum. I haven't made a formal study of music in general, so detailing the exact reasons why this musical theme impresses me so much would be difficult and incomplete at best.
SEARCHING FOR THIS MATERIAL ... I have searched relentlessly over the past couple of years — on-and-off, of course — for the best available versions of this opening sequence used for CBS' NBA games, but with very mixed results. As I mention in the video itself, the best copies I could find seemingly are recordings of over-the-air broadcasts containing relatively noisy analogue audio. How someone obtains a copy of the original material from CBS without the voice-overs is a mystery to me, but as you fans of this theme well-know, there are many copies of this opening sequence available.
During one of my searches from a year ago, I came across a copy of this open with an original file name of "CBS_NBA_85_Montage.mpg". This particular copy was ABSOLUTELY EXTRAORDINARY for having the most clear video component I had ever seen. In addition, compared to all the other versions I had obtained, the audio fidelity was amazingly crisp, clear, and full, i.e., all the sounds and instruments seemed to be accurately and fully represented in the audio portion of this particular version. This file named "CBS_NBA_85_Montage.mpg" was devoid of the noise typically present in the other versions I had seen and heard.
Now, as for the quality of my work, let me admit: I know I'm not fooling anybody. A keen ear will easily sense certain transitions where the audio fidelity changes from being reasonably good to something of lesser quality. In addition, toward the end as I tried to blend/cross-fade between a medium-quality passage to the high-fidelity portion, a phasing problem might easily be detected. However, at that point in my project, I had worked on editing the audio for so long and I had so many versions, I was growing tired and sacrificing maximum precision seemed acceptable at that point.
DEALING WITH THE VARIED FIDELITY ... I basically have two different-quality sources, neither of which is complete. As mentioned above, one version has extraordinary fidelity; the second version, which is also incomplete, has an over-the-air analogue quality to it, meaning the audio fidelity is lacking and some high-pitched, low-amplitude hiss is apparent.
I tried in vain to improve the fidelity of the analogue version, but couldn't get close to the quality of the high-fidelity copy. Tired of struggling with it, instead of trying to improve the lower-quality copy, I decided to soften the fidelity of the better version. I did this by reducing the strength a bit of the bass and treble frequencies — and by making cross-fades lasting several seconds which enabled a smoother-sounding, less-conspicuous transition. Yet, make no mistake: a keen, experienced ear would have no trouble detecting where these transitions occur.
SOFTWARE USED ... My favorite audio editor is called Audacity, and it's free. Although I purchased and installed a copy of Sony Sound Forge Audio Studio version 9.0, I just don't know how to use it well enough, therefore all the audio adjustments and editing was done with Audacity. As for the video, I'm somewhat familiar with Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum.
THE VIDEO ... I knew I was going to produce an extended version of this popular theme. I do that sometimes with favorite musical works that I wish were longer, so producing an extended version was among my objectives. It would be boring to just put up the CBS animation and a couple of CBS Sports logo slides, so I went about collecting a few photos and video segments, added them to the audio, carefully adjusted the transitions, and, well, now you see the results.
Enjoy, everyone!
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2010 NBA Finals Game 7 With NBA on CBS Openby gwhipjr392 views
That was one awesome video!
acesaces12 3 months ago
@acesaces12 -- Thank you kindly. It was a labor of love. Hopefully a better, higher-quality copy will turn up one day. If I get my hands on it, I'll surely share it. Thanks again.
tonyny77 3 months ago
Question, do you have the ques from CBS end of transtion & come back in from some commericals, they was good too.
DyeSportingnetwork 3 months ago
@DyeSportingnetwork ... I guess you're referring to their transitions to and from commercial breaks? Actually, that was not the focus of my attention at all. I'm not saying the transition you asked about are not worthy of being collected, but I was exclusively concerned about the CBS open for their NBA games in the '80s. As I mentioned, I had to work with the best copies I could find and the original copy of the first half of the open is even better than this video reflects, but I had to ...
tonyny77 3 months ago
@DyeSportingnetwork ... But I had to try hard to match the tonal characteristics. Since I couldn't improve the lower quality segments, I had to "soften" the sound of the higher quality segment in order to achieve a reasonable match. As I have some time, I might try to sample some of the transitions you mentioned; I might learn a thing or two. Thanks for viewing the video and I appreciate your question.
tonyny77 3 months ago