The Petra Zone

Great review. I guess the set list does look familiar.

What a small world (no pun intended), I came back Saturday from Disney World and was almost storm stayed in New Jersey too. Since I was headed for Manchester, NH, I took another flight to Boston and took flightline to Manchester (opps! $100 gone at the end).

But we made it home.

Bob, I sympathize with you. Expensice city, lousy service and cranky service people.

BTW, could you tell if many made the trek to Kingston from Ottawa?

I asked Bob and John about CITAS at Peachtree City and they both said that the master is lost. I do not understand why it would be needed. Seems like you could make a DVD from a tape. But any way they both seemed like they would like to to put it out on DVD.



How can a master be missing anyway. It has to be somewere.

What everyone is saying that is lost is the master used to maufacture. The reason that another cannot be made, is the bulk footage is gone. That stuff went away with a studio that is out of business. I was told this by two people that were directly involved in the production.

The production masters would be the next valuable asset to locate.
The reason that you would need these masters, is to get the audio and video to lock together with what is called sync, or timecode. Both the audio and the video master recorded this code when the production was done. When the machines "chase" the time code coming from the tapes, then they lock together. Over time, tapes deteriorate. If not stored in a climate controlled tape vault, then they will literally gum up, or flake apart. They would need to be baked in a tape oven for a one time transfer into digital.

You want the virgin masters preserved, because of the quality. Any copy of that is one generation away, and many lines of resolution away from the original picture quality. The audio masters still exist. When I talked to JDB, he knew exactly where they were.

Louie has a virgin copy of the finished product. So does Greg according to Louie. Louie said that he also has copies of every show that they filmed/taped. They did some shooting before the concerts that make up CITAS/CITS/CIT&S.

All other masters were destroyed according to three people that were directly involved with the project. They speculated as to who did it and that it had to do with GXVs departure. This may be the thing that they could kick themselves for now, since everyone is playing nice now.

As long as Louie and Greg had kept their copies in excellent shape, then could possibly be digitized, and then sync'd to remixed audio. It would be time consuming, as the video will be off from the video for many technical reasons. But it could be done.

I lined up JDB to remix in Nuendo, and put it in some psuedo surround format. He was ready to go. I asked Bob via e-mail for permission to license and distribute CITAS. He responded, "How do you know that EMI doesn't have plans for it? Aren't you getting ahead of yourself?" So, I called Richard Green at EMI who told me that it would be a $25,000 deal they figured. But they would never, ever, ever, for any reason, license EMI assets. they would sit in the vault forever. They did not care. They said that it was up to the publisher. I told them that I asked Bob. I told Richard my response and Richard just laughed. I then got a speech about publisher greed and modern consumer marketing through EMI glasses.

It will never be on a DVD. They will have to pay Greg and Bob too much money, and the product will never look as good as it could have. It will be a digitized copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of the video. The audio could be stellar. There has to be more material to justify the production also. See my previous rants.

Matthew RJ wrote:Mello medley with cello:

Oooo, MELLO CELLO! I like that! I hope they call it that on the CD! hehe

OK....I have a question...does ANYBODY have a VHS copy of CITAS?
I will pay for shipping, whatever!! I have not seen it in it's entirety for a loooooooong time.

I cannot get your email at your site to work, contact me [email protected]

You want the virgin masters preserved, because of the quality. Any copy of that is one generation away, and many lines of resolution away from the original picture quality.

Unfortunately, this is too true. To prove it, all you have to do is be a blues fan. Paramount used to use the crappiest quality EVERYTHING in their recordings, many of which do not have masters, and even with the painstaking and loving remastering that went on for the beautious revenant Patton set, some of the recordings still sound poorer than we would be used to.
I'm not sure one could convince the record industry that all the time and work on Petra would be worth it either.
Too bad you couldn't do it Brent!