1987-07-08 - Brussels (2020 video & audio remaster)

Audio lineage: Proline Arrow AST-20 cardiod mics > Sony WM-R15 >
> Maxell XLII tapes > "You Can't Be All From Dublin" CD-R > EAC >
> WAV-Files > FLAC FRONTEND > FLAC (Level 6) > MP3 (Lame, 192kbps)

Video lineage: unknown gen VHS > DVD > Handbrake > MP4 > Vegas Pro 17.0

This is one of the best concerts U2 have ever played. Ever.
We at U2start adore it for all the right reasons. It's got an incredible performance by the band, it's got a great crowd that sing along to all the songs in a passionate way, and it also has a great audio recording that has allowed thousands of fans to enjoy it through the years, making it a very popular bootleg among fansites. There is also an audience-shot, almost-complete video - something quite rare for 1987. The video has a much worse sound quality than the audio bootleg so for a long time I've been wanting to remaster them both and put them together. The 2020 covid quarantine was perfect for that.

That's much easier said than done, though! Stitching audio and video together is easy as pie... When both run at the same speed and with no missing parts or glitches here and there. Which wasn't the case for both Brussels sources. The audio ran too fast (mostly around 6% faster than it should, which also changed the music pitch) and the video ran... Well, at many different speeds throughout the tape, haha. There are songs that needed a 99,4% adjustment, others needed a 100,7%, some needed a more fine adjustment like 99,783% and some other songs even ran at different speeds in different moments of the song so they needed a dynamic adjustment for each part. And to make it all worse, the video misses some random parts (from the top of my head, a bit of October, the first two minutes of Running To Stand Still, and some random secondshere and there). The audio is also missing some parts (most notably the whole of the encore), so syncing the audio and the video was an absolute nightmare.

What I did was to split the whole, main video recording in songs, then split each song in 3 or 4 asymmetric parts, and then adjust the speed in all of them separately to fit the audio recording. You might find the odd spot where the video is slightly out of sync with the audio for a couple of frames, but all in all I think it's as good as it gets. I had to adjust over 70 split video sections with the audio so bear with me! I remastered the audio in Audacity, did the video speed adjustment in Vegas Pro 17.0 and remixed it all in Adobe Premiere Pro 2020.

The video source misses the whole of Streets and the first half of I Will Follow. I used the Brussels proshot for Streets (thanks Bibien!), which again was missing the last minute - so I used the proshot from Florida 1987-12-05 to fill the gap.I used the Boston R&H outtake (1987-09-18) for I Will Follow. There are better '87 Streets & IWF videos out there but these were the video sources that fit the most with Brussels. I tried to make it all fit as good as possible. It's not proper Brussels footage but it's better than having a black screen for 7 minutes!Last but not least, the second half of '40' was also missing, and for that I used the Tempe 12-20 R&H outtake and did a bit
of cinema magic to fit the final part. It now looks as if Brussels starts and ends with a proshot, which is kinda nice.

Overall I think this is the best possible document from an incredible show. It took me several days to complete the project but it's worth it. Now we can watch the epic Brussels show, for the first time 99% complete, and for the first time paired with this excellent audience recording.

Enjoy!

Sergio - LikeASong - U2start.com

Originally posted by germcevoy:My word that sounds like a labour of love for a classic classic show. I will very much be making time for this at the weekend with a few beers. Top top job sir.

Originally posted by hkle77:Wow. I was there. Thank you,thank you,thank you.

Originally posted by KieranU2:Hats off to you lad, I'll be giving this a listen this weekend. Whisky in hand, joining Gerard in the getting pissed with some U2 bootlegs.

Originally posted by germcevoy:[..]
This must be possible via zoom or something.

Originally posted by KieranU2:[..]
Definitely up for this - I'll get the Balvenie out.