Visual Artifacts Found in SpongeBob

[spongebranch]

I'm not sure if I've seen 'Have You Seen This Snail?' without dot crawl in those scenes, but I'll check again. Do you think the Viacom transfers have the white halo glow issue, or do you think they exist without that?

I think they do exist without the halo glow.

 

[abney317]

I know I had asked about this earlier in the thread, but has anyone created an organized list yet of the best quality version of each episode that is available?

 

[spongebranch]

I know I had asked about this earlier in the thread, but has anyone created an organized list yet of the best quality version of each episode that is available?

well I can just cheat and say go to anywhere outside the USA for that. (many countries outside of North America tend to crop the episodes to 14:9 though, so your best bet can be Latin America and Brazil, though they don't air Seasons 1-5 as often)

and I noticed one video of the episode "Band Geeks" on Nickelodeon Latin America's website has CRT rainbow artifacts yet another one doesn't, which implies the one with CRT artifacts obviously isn't their transfer. there's also ones with Jellyfish Hunter/Fry Cook Games that have dot crawl and one of Survival of the Idiots with rainbow artifacts and really bad blur artifacts just like the USA's prints but I doubt that's their transfers to be honest as Nick On Demand En Espanol had SotI without any VHS effect in Latin American Spanish.

 

[spongebranch]

also I just saw that Hall Monitor and Jellyfish Jam have really unusual dot crawl on Nickelodeon USA, infact it keeps switching from not having dot crawl to having dot crawl every quarter second, even during shots.
Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy/Pickles have CRT rainbow artifacts as well and Bubblestand/Ripped Pants and Jellyfishing/Plankton have slight palebob (the former 2 have no dot crawl but i'm not quite sure about the latter 2 as I usually watch a CRT TV screen).

 

[spongebranch]

I wonder if anyone has found a Nickelodeon Australia livestream that's available in the USA because I want to do what I mentioned a few pages earlier.

 

[Original Raw and Uncut]

also I just saw that Hall Monitor and Jellyfish Jam have really unusual dot crawl on Nickelodeon USA, infact it keeps switching from not having dot crawl to having dot crawl every quarter second, even during shots.
Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy/Pickles have CRT rainbow artifacts as well and Bubblestand/Ripped Pants and Jellyfishing/Plankton have slight palebob (the former 2 have no dot crawl but i'm not quite sure about the latter 2 as I usually watch a CRT TV screen).

Watch on an HDTV and the artifacts would be more noticable. CRT TVs get very ::dolphin noise::y picture when they get old

 

[spongebranch]

Watch on an HDTV and the artifacts would be more noticable. CRT TVs get very ::dolphin noise::y picture when they get old

right.
I also realized that the German prints of the SpongeBob episode "Dumped" actually have noticeable NTSC dot crawl in the title card sequence (oddly enough the title card looks perfectly clean and the colors are normal for the whole episode.) even though they are PAL. The Nickelodeon/Nicktoons UK prints of Dumped have PAL dot crawl which clearly looks different from the dot crawl on the complete 2nd season DVD implying that the non-USA transfers may not have it in as many scenes as the Season 2 DVD. Also I discovered on Invincibubble's YouTube Channel that Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III/Squirrel Jokes and Jellyfish Hunter/The Fry Cook Games clearly have no dot crawl/rainbow effects on Nickelodeon Germany.

 

[Original Raw and Uncut]

right.
I also realized that the German prints of the SpongeBob episode "Dumped" actually have noticeable NTSC dot crawl in the title card sequence (oddly enough the title card looks perfectly clean and the colors are normal for the whole episode.) even though they are PAL. The Nickelodeon/Nicktoons UK prints of Dumped have PAL dot crawl which clearly looks different from the dot crawl on the complete 2nd season DVD implying that the non-USA transfers may not have it in as many scenes as the Season 2 DVD. Also I discovered on Invincibubble's YouTube Channel that Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III/Squirrel Jokes and Jellyfish Hunter/The Fry Cook Games clearly have no dot crawl/rainbow effects on Nickelodeon Germany.

Yeah, I found clean copies of several season 2 episodes on his channel (Spongebob is even a normal shade of yellow, no pale bob)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxWI53A9JA4

Look at how clean Christmas Who is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVDV05R5t7Q

Here's Wormy, which looks so clean, if paused at certain frames, it looks like a season 4 episode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj7-0Aizejo

Here's Life of Crime without the VHS effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoY2Kzhl0aQ

 

[spongebranch]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6jkYYr20WQ
The Secret Box and Band Geeks have had $#%@ed up color calibration on Nickelodeon USA ever since they first aired.

also I discovered that Have You Seen This Snail on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons USA and The Season 4 DVD has the most blatant CRT effects I have ever seen. Not the worst, but as in it switches to CRT artifacts right in the middle of a shot, right when Mr. Krabs goes up to SpongeBob when he's sad. Someone needs to record this episode from Nickelodeon Australia and see if they don't have CRT artifacts.

 

[Original Raw and Uncut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6jkYYr20WQ
The Secret Box and Band Geeks have had $#%@ed up color calibration on Nickelodeon USA ever since they first aired.

also I discovered that Have You Seen This Snail on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons USA and The Season 4 DVD has the most blatant CRT effects I have ever seen. Not the worst, but as in it switches to CRT artifacts right in the middle of a shot, right when Mr. Krabs goes up to SpongeBob when he's sad. Someone needs to record this episode from Nickelodeon Australia and see if they don't have CRT artifacts.

Alright, are the animators from season 2 colorblind?

 

[LARRY22]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6jkYYr20WQ
The Secret Box and Band Geeks have had $#%@ed up color calibration on Nickelodeon USA ever since they first aired.

also I discovered that Have You Seen This Snail on Nickelodeon and Nicktoons USA and The Season 4 DVD has the most blatant CRT effects I have ever seen. Not the worst, but as in it switches to CRT artifacts right in the middle of a shot, right when Mr. Krabs goes up to SpongeBob when he's sad. Someone needs to record this episode from Nickelodeon Australia and see if they don't have CRT artifacts.

Yeah, it's really weird that those two episodes have strange colors compared to other episodes.

In 'The Secret Box' on Netflix, SpongeBob looks like this:

Yet in 'Procrastination' on Netflix (Where the colors are normal), he looks like this:

As for HYSTS, I did notice that you can gradually see the dot crawl produce in some sences. You can actually see it go from clean to having CRT artifacts before your eyes.

 

[spongebranch]

Alright, are the animators from season 2 colorblind?

yes, but it's obviously the Nickelodeon USA transferrers that were braindead when they used a TV with a** color calibration. The animators were colorblind too as the international transfers have SpongeBob with a darker shade of yellow than normal (even the PAL transfers).

Yeah, it's really weird that those two episodes have strange colors compared to other episodes.

In 'The Secret Box' on Netflix, SpongeBob looks like this:

Yet in 'Procrastination' on Netflix (Where the colors are normal), he looks like this:

As for HYSTS, I did notice that you can gradually see the dot crawl produce in some sences. You can actually see it go from clean to having CRT artifacts before your eyes.

on the topic of Netflix what does Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III look like on there? I heard it has rainbow effects there although many international countries have it without rainbow effects like Israel though as I previously mentioned.

 

[LARRY22]

yes, but it's obviously the Nickelodeon USA transferrers that were braindead when they used a TV with a** color calibration. The animators were colorblind too as the international transfers have SpongeBob with a darker shade of yellow than normal (even the PAL transfers).

on the topic of Netflix what does Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III look like on there? I heard it has rainbow effects there although many international countries have it without rainbow effects like Israel though as I previously mentioned.

The colors on MM&BBIII on Netflix look normal, but the rainbow artifacts and dot crawl are not pleasant to look at. Look at Patrick's outline and you'll see some bad dot crawl.

 

[spongebranch]

The colors on MM&BBIII on Netflix look normal, but the rainbow artifacts and dot crawl are not pleasant to look at. Look at Patrick's outline and you'll see some bad dot crawl.

if their prints have the Nickelodeon flag logo at the end, then they must've had YTV's transfers for this episode. as many of their older episodes have dot crawl.

Then again there's this video that has it with no VHS effect. (Camrip though)
https://youtu.be/YKJyi7dqo44

 

[Original Raw and Uncut]

The colors on MM&BBIII on Netflix look normal, but the rainbow artifacts and dot crawl are not pleasant to look at. Look at Patrick's outline and you'll see some bad dot crawl.

It looks like a season 3 episode

 

[spongebranch]

I know this isn't much of a VHS effect but I heard that at least one Season 5 episode on Amazon Instant Video has the end credits omitted. Which one was that again?

 

[spongebranch]

oh and I imagine Nicktoons would switch to using international prints of SpongeBob (as in the NTSC ones that the Latin American Spanish dub use with the correct audio pitch on older episodes. Nick On Demand En Espanol uses them if i'm correct and they sync well with the Latin American Spanish audio.) as they look a lot fresher than their old broadcast tapes they share with Nickelodeon (with newer episodes they use older versions without updates like the HD intro on Season 9a episodes) thus resulting in:
every episode from Help Wanted/Reef Blower/Tea at the Treedome to The Abrasive Side/Earworm having a Nickelodeon comet tail logo added in the intro.
Bubblestand/Ripped Pants and Jellyfishing/Plankton with SpongeBob in a more vibrant, less pale shade of yellow
Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy/Pickles without CRT rainbow artifacts and blur artifacts
Hall Monitor/Jellyfish Jam without on and off dot crawl every quarter second (at the expense of having a textless title card at the end of the intro which plagues the international transfers and is a mystery as to how it happened)
Sandy's Rocket/Squeaky Boots with brighter transferring
Nature Pants/Opposite Day and Culture Shock/F.U.N. without oversaturation and the former without dot crawl/CRT effects
MuscleBob BuffPants/Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost with brighter transferring
The Chaperone/Employee of the Month with grain that's not so noticeable to the point it's like magnetic tape, brighter transferring, and without 2 separate black frames at the beginning of the former
Scaredy Pants/I Was a Teenage Gary and SB-129/Karate Choppers without oversaturation and dot crawl/CRT effects (especially in the former)
Valentine's Day/The Paper and Arrgh!/Rock Bottom without dot crawl/CRT effects
Texas/Walking Small with a textless logo at the end of the intro, an out of sync flute solo animation, and an awkward fade to black as it goes to "Created by Stephen Hillenburg" (complete with the audio fading out) before fading back in a second later with the correctly synced audio (as if those that were assembling the international prints of the episode went "ABANDON SHIP" and put in a black fade as a "Please Stand By" to prevent the audio from being off-sync for the entire episode as they chose the wrong logo template)
Your Shoe's Untied/Squid's Day Off without dot crawl/CRT artifacts
Something Smells/Bossy Boots without dot crawl/CRT rainbow artifacts and with the "Edgar Larazzabla" and SpongeBob's duplicated "I just don't get it!" line and without the glitch during the title card in the former. (at the expense of "Hi building!")
Big Pink Loser/Bubble Buddy without dot crawl/CRT artifacts (and maybe that package in mouth sound effect error at the beginning that can be heard on Nicktoons UK)
Dying for Pie/Imitation Krabs without dot crawl/CRT artifacts and the constant comb filter-like glitches whenever SpongeBob checks off his list in the former
Wormy/Patty Hype without the greenish tint
Grandma's Kisses/Squidville without any trace of CRT artifacts. (not sure if there are any because it looks really clean from what I can see)
Prehibernation Week/Life of Crime without dot crawl/CRT artifacts and slight palebob in the latter
Christmas Who without dot crawl/CRT artifacts (unlike the Season 2 DVD they are for the entire episode on Nickelodeon USA)
Survival of the Idiots/Dumped without dot crawl/CRT artifacts, blur artifacts, and palebob (and maybe less dot crawl in the latter knowing what I've seen on Nickelodeon Germany and Poland)
No Free Rides/I'm Your Biggest Fanatic without dot crawl/CRT effects
Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy III/Squirrel Jokes without dot crawl/CRT effects and with the animation of the title card fading in in the former being restored (it's cut out even on Nicktoons airings which is sad because at first I thought it was Nickelodeon making room for commercials when I saw it cut on Nick)
Pressure/The Smoking Peanut without dot crawl/CRT effects
Shanghaied/Gary Takes a Bath without dot crawl/CRT effects and palebob in the latter and maybe with all 3 endings and having 1 of them randomly shown every time the episode is aired just like Nickelodeon Latin America/Brazil
Welcome to the Chum Bucket/Frankendoodle without dot crawl/CRT effects (and without the alternating levels of dot crawl, especially how bad it gets when the pencil hits the ground in the latter.)
The Secret Box/Band Geeks without bad color calibration and dot crawl/CRT artifacts (albeit with the sacrifice of SpongeBob's perfectly normal shade of yellow, replacing it with the ugly @$$ lemon chiffon color in non-USA transfers)
Graveyard Shift/Krusty Love without dot crawl/CRT artifacts
Procrastination/I'm With Stupid without dot crawl/CRT artifacts, palebob, and the brown tint, and the restoration of the scenes that have been cut in USA airings since May 17th, 2005 (plus Ennio Torresan uncredited in the latter just like in the Season 2 DVD)
Sailor Mouth/Artist Unknown without the greenish tint in the former and dot crawl/CRT artifacts in both
Jellyfish Hunter/The Fry Cook Games without dot crawl/CRT artifacts
Squid on Strike/Sandy, SpongeBob and the Worm without dot crawl/CRT artifacts and palebob
The Algae's Always Greener/SpongeGuard on Duty, Club SpongeBob/My Pretty Seahorse, Nasty Patty/Idiot Box without dot crawl/CRT artifacts
Have You Seen This Snail? without dot crawl/CRT artifacts in certain scenes.
The Original Fry Cook/Night Light without dot crawl/CRT artifacts
SpongeBob SquarePants vs. The Big One with the "SpongeBob SquarePants and the Big Wave" title card
Truth or Square with the "Stuck in the Freezer" title card
The Clash of Triton with the "Neptune's Party" title card (the "The Clash of Triton" title card can fade in at the start of part 2 and appear for a second then wipe to the start of part 2 of the episode.
The Monster Who Came to Bikini Bottom/Welcome to the Bikini Bottom Triangle, The Curse of the Hex/The Main Drain, Trenchbillies/Sponge-Cano! without palebob and blur artifacts
Super Evil Aquatic Villain Team Up is Go!/Chum Fricassee and Move It or Lose It with less noticeable dimming.

 

[LARRY22]

I know this isn't about the VHS effect, but what do you guys think is up with the title cards for the 83 trio (83a, 83b, and 83c)? I noticed that they look quite fuzzy, especially when looking at the text. It's noticable for the title card for Fungus Among Us especially. Look at the text and the backgrounds, they look pretty pixelated. They also look pretty interlaced (Especially Rise and Shine). The text is meant to resemble the 'Ick' like in the episode, but it looks too pixelated for that. The title cards for Rise and Shine and Waiting have the same problem, but not like FAU. I feel like this has something to do with them being aired at different times, but produced under the same production number (83)? Maybe there was an exporting issue when it was sent to Nickelodeon?

 

[spongebranch]

I know this isn't about the VHS effect, but what do you guys think is up with the title cards for the 83 trio (83a, 83b, and 83c)? I noticed that they look quite fuzzy, especially when looking at the text. It's noticable for the title card for Fungus Among Us especially. Look at the text and the backgrounds, they look pretty pixelated. They also look pretty interlaced (Especially Rise and Shine). The text is meant to resemble the 'Ick' like in the episode, but it looks too pixelated for that. The title cards for Rise and Shine and Waiting have the same problem, but not like FAU. I feel like this has something to do with them being aired at different times, but produced under the same production number (83)? Maybe there was an exporting issue when it was sent to Nickelodeon?

Really has to be an exporting error. Then again I've seen a non-USA transfer with less noticeable interlacing.
I've always wondered how they assembled the intro in those international prints.

 

[Original Raw and Uncut]

Anyone notice how the colors in Whirlybrains/Mermaidpants are a bit dull: