A well timed trip to Swindon  to mark the end for at least two years of traffic through Fleming way which really means buses. Got there for the end of the morning rush hour services and banged on until I'd got an hour with sunshine and cloud. Then on to Bath where I met someone who recognised my voice! Anyway shots from yesterday at Chesterfield. Hoping to be filming lorries tomorrow, need to check weather for location!

It is now very hard to find if a bus company workers are on strike, today the rail union chap was handing stuff to the Stagecoach bus drivers. Very few buses on the bottom road by the bus station plus some sort of police operation which had also blocked the road. I sort of assumed it would go back to normal when the police tape was lifted but still barely anything so I guess perhaps it was some buses running in from a different region / garage which were on strike. The tourist info had noticed that something was up but had no idea what. Anyway Mansfield was straight forward.

I use our shop as a sort of cloud storage although uploading takes a lot longer. The new Liverpool film which was to showcase our work with AI is also on a DVD but really it shows nothing other than the colour work as DVD cannot ever show HD. The downloads are just £8 and all new releases are available to download at HD quality.

We shall be at Showbus despite the stall cost, its the 50th Showbus and the last so in the spirit of fraternity lets all come together to celebrate some glorious shows especially at Detling although we have been at many of their  locations since the 1980s.  Anyway if you want to pick up anything special let us know beforehand.

I may be doing the Mansfield Chesterfield duo tomorrow, trucks mid week and Bath plus Swindon, all depends on weather!

Good to see a few orders rolling in today. Tomorrow I hope to get recent clips uploaded to the shop for storage and generally tidy up the digitised filed and get the latest archives on to the master list. A few more locations are now on our to do list this is at the end of the dvd/download list.

A lot of experimenting with the video enhance software, I've actually made a film out of it covering the social history with lots of street scenes from the 1920's to 70's. I've had to chop down the download a bit as it was a bit too long at this increased file size. At first pass the files was nearly 700GB that's some file so I used the no loss compression and that brought it right down to under 200GB but still very big. To get the files to fit as ordinary downloads I've do it to fit and at 60fps so its not bad but on the full quality files it would fill the largest home monitors and look brilliant, I was quite chuffed and even Mandy was very impressed ( well perhaps not very). I need to get it on to DVD which isn't hard but I've taken a break to edit West Wales and the two Yorkshire locations from this week.

It is quite mind blowing what can be achieved but you have to think of how distribution would go if we were using huge files sizes, if people did want Ultra HD Copies at 60fps they would have to go out on memory sticks in the post way over our file capacity online. The price would be around £25 to include the cost of the memory stick and the work to download it. Still perhaps it will interest some people, let me know if it appeals. I'm going to have a go at our earliest Merseyside films and get them to HD and 60fps de interlaced and cleaned up. I wonder if I can locate past West Wales material for you, I'll have a look.

It has been good  have a 'play' with the new software collection and I think i'm well pleased with this one as a starter, I'll put it on the shop as a download then you get it at 60fps in HD, a DVD will always lower the quality to fit the format. I can announce that the next mini project will be getting all my Liverpool bus material converted to digital 60fps HD, with clips on Youtube and as a download on the PMP shop. I've still got a lot more experimenting to do though so hold on to your hats as we stream off into the world of artificial intelligence. Mandy was quite impressed with the colourisation of the old B&W film, of course the better quality it was in BW the better it will come out in colour. so lets have a few dips into my Merseyside files for tonights slide show. I hope you have a great bank holiday weekend. We had a send off for a friend from church today, always good to see the building full shame it is usually funerals although weddings can also do the job.

I can hardly tolerate Ebay and dearly wish nobody would use it rather coming to us direct. Then  Paypal ( once related to EBay) is turning into an arrogant money laundering service which should be avoided like the plague. They are placing themselves out of reach from all regulatory authorities so for instance in the UK they accept no remit from financial service authority, they declare themselves beyond the law. Please do not use them and if possible I'll get them deleted as a means of payment there are so many alternatives. Although doubtful about Square they have been fine they are like a US version of Paypal who are now it seems from Luxembourg.

I had a meeting with my friend Peter Waller in Shrewsbury today , a funeral tomorrow, three DVD to edit , the usual merry go round. Here are some photos from the Bradford trip.

Well a good start with email and in person messages from two mothers whose children are great fans of their old mate Dave and can do all the thumbs up and we'll see... stuff. It is humbling and very satisfying to know we help out so much keeping children occupied specially during the lock downs and all year round. It is extra special for those with various leaning disorders and we have managed to meet up with several who wanted to see the old fellow in the flesh.

I think anywhere where Arriva plays a large part in the public transport will go to the back of the to do list as the strikes seem to have spread nationwide. While we are on strikes, the post will be disrupted a certain extent in the coming months with walk outs all over the country.

The weather was much better in Yorkshire than the BBC weather forecast suggested, in the end it was warm, mostly sunny and dry - just a bit of a stiff breeze now and then.

I've nearly finished the colourisation of our new production on Liverpool On Film 1920-80's all in colour. I'm not sure how the AI managed to get the Liverpool trams green but it seems to have worked on the frames I've viewed. Still a lot more to get the project completed but it will be in Ultra HD and 60 fps. The download will replicate this fine as will the Youtube clips for projects like this where we can share them. This is still very much a development stage in the operation.

Tonight some shots from Halifax, tomorrow I'm down in Shrewsbury with Peter Waller at the OTA archive. Halifax bus station new build is well underway, the temp facility is small and has few services using it, the rest are scattered everywhere!

A very long journey to West Wales, would have been better in school term time. Looks like I might have to delay my Kent coverage as I'm told Arriva are going on strike there but will still try for Essex and East Anglia plus Scotland.

My first try with a long film colorised and upgraded to 60fps and to HD size has got to 70% finished after about 30 hours but it is 50 minutes long, previously it would not have been even feasible doing it. AVC have proved a rotten outfit to deal with so far. Not been able to use it, they just gave techno talk in reply perhaps go back to Topaz although they have their limitations and lie about what they are doing and not doing.
Anyway some shots from today , enjoy.

I may go back to banning comments on our Youtube channel, it seems to just appeal to those who want something for nothing. I put on good lengthy advertising trailers for our DVDs  then they moan that I haven't put all the gems on the trailer - why would I ?  Anyway a busy day as ever and may be off to West Wales tomorrow depending on the weather. Here are some more photos from Ternhill last week. I have made some good progress with AI etc on old films I can get them to 60fps in less than a minute and at HD definition. Colourisation takes a long time with Pixbim, I'm using NEAT for de- noising and would use AVC if it worked, I have used it once yet, it won't let me update and won't let me use old version, response from AVC awaited perhaps I should have stuck with Topaz.