Weekend of Basketball Bliss

I finally was able to get my grubby mitts on videos of the Ball State NCAA basketball runs from my days at the University in the early '90's. I spent the weekend cutting them to mpeg for the purposes of making a more permanent DVD archive and, better still, reliving some great memories. Butts lighting up CMU during the '90 conference championship. Chandler's huge easy-lift rim-rattler in front of a doubting Billy Packer against UNLV. Paris' great dunk over Lurch from Louisville. Greg Miller and Shawn Parrish providing all the right spark at all the right times. The tenacious defense. Holding Louisville to season low scoring and shooting percentage at the half. The crush of defeat and feeling of "almost" at the end of the UNLV game. Wow... Watched part of the Purdue game from '88 as well. Loved hearing how poor the officiating was every time BSU pulled out in front (Purdue announcers...). I have the following games in my hands now:

• 1988-9: Purdue
• 1988-9: KSU (conf championship)
• 1988-9: Pitt (NCAA)
• 1988-9: Illinois (NCAA)
• 1989-90: CMU (conf championship)
• 1989-90: Oregon State (NCAA)
• 1989-90: Louisville (NCAA)
• 1989-90: UNLV (NCAA)
• 1994-5: EMU (conf championship)
• some Muncie Central championships (1954, 1963, 1978, 1979, 1988 [semis and finals on all but '54 and '63])

Pure basketball goodness for me...

Good news, bad news... The person who cut the tapes for me back in the day who shall remain nameless (I was at most of these games and relied on other people to tape them... stupid me) had this awful habit related to his taping of games/shows/etc:

1. Use the lowest quality tape. The more used the better.
2. Dub to another low quality tape to edit commercials out. Be sure to not quite hit the marks in and out of breaks causing content to be missing. Also, be sure to cut out halftime commentary, replays, etc.

As a result, the quality of these game tapes are mixed. The CMU game looks suprisingly good for a 15 year old tape (it was not commercial-edited and thus appears to be 1st generation). The UNLV and most of the Louisville games were 2nd generation, but don't look that bad (minus some bad edits). The Purdue game, though... whoo-hoo... Looks like about a 5th generation cut. Same for most of the high school ones. Well, at least I have a copy though. I haven't looked at the others yet, so I'm hoping they look more like the CMU game and less like the Purdue one.

I am cutting these at SVCD quality in my first go (assuming that VCD is VHS quality). I seem to be only getting sound from one speaker (may be the tapes or the equipment... not sure yet), but otherwise they look pretty good so far. If any Card fans have better copies, please e-mail and I'll cut a copy from yours and send you one for your archive...