Piyo-Piyo Productions presents: Moomin (1969 version) 1-24 (Domesday Edition) https://anidb.net/anime/1007 (rolling release dates) https://www.otakubell.com/ Source: Laserdisc Everything PPP-Raw releases is from laserdisc source. At the time of ripping, no DVD or Bluray source is known to exist. Domesday Edition: This was captured using a Domesday Duplicator. You can read all about the Domeday Duplicator project at https://www.domesday86.com/?page_id=978. Project notes (vol 2): This project turned out to be way more difficult than I anticipated! Sorry for the long delay. For starters – volumes 4 and 5 were not made correctly, especially volume 5. Both discs are out-of-spec for a standard NTSC signal. As such, the Domesday software didn’t quite know what to make of them and threw all sorts of errors. I got usable output out of both discs, but it was a slow process, it required me to use unreleased versions of software, and the end result was extra jittery. I filed bug reports, and future versions of the software will handle this issue better, and maybe have better audio besides! The really bad news: I destroyed two of the discs, volume 6 and 7. I was cleaning my room while capturing them, and I managed to drop an old cryptocurrency mining rig onto them. I had just finished running volume 6 through the DDD, and was preparing to do volume 7 when this happened. As such, I have no conventional cap of volume 6, and no cap at all of volume 7. I also owe the guy who lent me these discs $600 USD, assuming replacement discs can be found at all. I may have to do a gofundme or something: I’ve been marginally employed since the end of 2017, and just got fired from my second job in as many years (over some bullshit that was neither my fault nor my problem, but that’s what they all say). Project notes (vol 1, v2): Okay, here’s what happened: I messed up 1-12. Somehow I went and saved them at the wrong framerate, and didn’t notice until I did the same thing on another project. By that time I had gotten rid of my workfiles, because they take up a ton of space that I needed. So, instead of takign weeks and weeks to decode the original RF files all over again, I re-filtered from the DVD conversion. Technically not as good as a souce, but its close enough that I don’t think the human eye will be able to tell the difference – but feel free to yell at me if I’m wrong about that too. Hopefully there will not need to be a v2 for 13-26. Project notes (vol 1): As a typical amerifat, I know almost nothing about Moomin – it wasn’t a “thing” here like it was overseas. In fact, these discs are on loan to me from a collector in the UK (thank you). So let’s start with the original: It was a series of books and comics by Tove Jannson (from Finland, but spoke Swedish, because that’s apparantly a thing). They were popular everywhere English wasn’t spoken – nobody even bothered to translate all of the books into English until 2005. The 1969 version of Moomin was the first animated version of the series. Tove Jannson hated it. She hated it loudly and publicly due to the many changes made, stating, “My Moomin is no driver, fighter or money maker,” which he certainly has been made into here. As a result, Tokyo Movie had their contract cancelled halfway through, and Mushipro was brought in to finish the series. Somehow, though, somebody managed to get the Tokyo Movie episodes commited to laserdisc. But the later Mushipro episodes? Four random episodes were released on VHS, and the rest are lost, probably forever. There are no plans for any re-releases: Jansson’s estate won’t grant permission, there are conflicting copyright claims in Japan even if they would, and all of that assumes the original masters even still exist. So, sadly, this version of Moomin is an endangered species. Is it any good? Bear in mind this is my first exposure to Moomin, but I’m going to say “yes.” It looks like fun to me. Would I like it if I knew the original source? Dunno. The original source was rather jittery, which I largely fixed. There are weird luma fluctuations, which I’m guessing were just par for the course in 1969? Volume 3 was beginning to rot, and has a significant number of dropouts throughout, which the Domesday software could only partially fix. These were decoded using a pre-release version of 5.2 of ld-decode, the Domesday decoding software. 5.x does not have the best audio support, so the audio comes out loud and unfiltered. On past Domesday releases I have also performed conventional captures and transplanted the audio. I did not do that here. It is very time consuming, and unless I have a point of reference, like a subtitle file or something, I can’t sync the audio correctly. But I have included conventionally captured unfiltered DVD conversions. If somebody wanted to subtitle this series, I’d say dump those out to AVI or MKV, subtitle from that, and then re-adjust to the Domesday visuals. If v6.x comes out before I am done, and if it gives better audio results, I may do a separate audio-only release of 1-26, but no promises. The discs’ owner has provided scans of the LD jackets and inlays as a bonus! I used to do that, in the distant past, before I destroyed my very expensive graphic arts scanner with a cup of coffee... I am releasing this in two batches: 1-12, and then 13-26. I will take a short break from Moomin after 1-12 to work on something else, then back to it.