It has taken me about six years, but by tomorrow morning, I'll have every single film released in the 1980s on my Plex server. It took a small army of friends and contacts and a few angels in particular. Some of this stuff barely exists.
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You can start simple, like with an old Mac or Windows PC with a USB drive attached. Get the feel of it and read the support pages. Then you can get bigger: a NAS (like a Synology) with Big Disk Energy and a good CPU, or a dumber NAS with processing done on a Mac mini.
I started with a WD My Cloud NAS as an all-in-one Plex server but once I started ripping Blu-Rays the CPU wasn't powerful enough. So now I use the NAS just for storage, and an M1 Mac mini for the server. Works GREAT. and I share libraries with friends.
If you eventually want to go the whole cord-cutting hog, get a Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Flex 4K box and an external antenna for live OTA TV and DVR capabilities.
This is where I learned to do it. I have one library on my server that is just for the videos that are forced pre-rolls when anyone watches any film from any of my libraries.
I imagine many of these titles are IP orphans with uncertain copyright status. It may be that many of the original rights holders are defunct and titles may be acquired for almost nothing.
You are a true hero my good sir. I need to direct my mom and dad your way because there are tons of movies they watched as young adults that they’ve been trying to find.
Man, coulda used this for the Cannon Fodder project some friends and I have been doing this year. We found all but a handful of things (and had to do some deep digging to accomplish that). We are down to the final 20-30 films of it.
My god, that's incredible! Just the meta data work alone. My pal Nathaniel Thompson, a cult movie historian in LA, has done similar work with the entire Disney live action movies and countless other "lost" films. Being connected to his server is a real treat. You guys are doing the lord's work!
I have a bunch of TV stuff from the era, but for now, the project was to gather and review all of the theatrical releases that at least played NY and LA.
Wait, every movie from the 1980s? Like every feature length? Studio made? American movie? It's just such an enormous statement my brain is boggling. Please give me details.
You would think right? It’s absolutely amazing the amount of work he has put into this. I don’t think most people have a clue how many hours he is dedicated to this one project. And he still has several projects going at the same time so he’s insane! 🤪
Ooooh. I disagree. I started with a WD MyCloud and it is safe to say I despise their company and their product with the intensity of a dwarf star. LOATHE.
As best as I can tell, the only version out there is sourced from an old Key Video transfer. This one was hella obscure, and part of the reason is that date. I don't show it playing LA until 1986, and I don't have any record of it in any American market pre-1985. 1983 appeared to be only overseas.
I watched a poor quality version of it on a now-defunct Youtube channel about 5 or 6 years ago. That was the only way I could find it without buying a high-priced VHS tape via Australian ebay sellers, which I didn't totally trust.
There is one film from the 1980s that I can not find a copy of anywhere: The Luckiest Man in the World (1989), dir. by Frank D. Gilroy. It was released in a very limited run in New York in February of 1989 and in Los Angeles in May of 1989. It has since vanished. No VHS release. No television run.
There's nothing that indicates that ever played theatrically in either NY or LA. It appears to be direct to video, and that's a whole different thing. I am not tracking down every DTV title from the decade. That would be a whole new project.
Every film released theatrically in the US during that decade. There are a ton of international titles included in that, but I am only counting films that played on screens in at least NY and LA.
Annie's Coming Out. IDK why I keep trying to find it, but I do. If you can share your source, please do. I'm going to assume the 80s Korean films I can't find did not release in the US. (Saw Annie in NY.)
When you look at the way the number of releases each year grew over the course of the decade thanks to the rise of the multiplex, you also realize how few films actually came out in a year at one point. We are drowning in choice today. It was not always like that.
Are you doing any sort of file compression or are all titles at full size source quality? Just curious how you manage such a large library. Storage has been my biggest concern preventing me from getting started on a server, l think I’d need at least 12TB just to cover my existing disc collection
I'm at about 20TB so far, and I've got a lot more to eventually transfer over, so it's definitely a big process. I've got a lot of files that are 1080p, but it depends on the source material. Some of the really hard to source stuff never made it past VHS and the digital rips are SD at best.
Gotcha, yeah I think I’m pretty evenly split with dvd and blu currently but as I move to more 4k discs I’m wondering if I’d have to just keep those rips at 1080 for storage reasons. Appreciate the info!
I don't think it's the switch over where films are lost. It's the neglect and lack of funding that's the issue in getting everything digitized. This still doesn't save the film because digital isn't as archival as film. It is a never ending battle
Nope. Since there is no single list of the films of the '80s, I have been piecing together my master list since the start of the project, and I am still adding titles to the list as new research shows up.
Amazing achievement. Is there any guides you would recommend for starting a plex server? I’ve been meaning to forever but it’s kind of intimidating getting started
You are going to want to build a NAS server (which is very simple - I recommend Terramaster with Iron Wolf drives) and run it off a dedicated device you can always leave on. I use an iMac. I find the r/Plex community is very welcoming and helpful.
Just to add a bit of caution, once you choose your NAS, read the list of acceptable drives and stick to it. Do not assume that the size that isn't on the list, but a step larger and smaller in same make is listed means it is going to be okay. @#$%&
It's not just a research tool for my newsletter, it's also an archive that I'm going to duplicate offline for storage and preservation. It is wild how films can disappear from neglect or legal quicksand or commercial indifference.
So it includes IT TAKES TWO, the movie where George Newbern buys a car, gets food poisoning, bangs the sales lady, and then races home for his wedding?
I'll spotlight a few of the more difficult things I tracked down, movies that just barely exist at this point. For example, how many of you have ever heard of or seen this?
Saw it entire back when. (Take a date!) It is an incandescent agony meant to be *suffered* through for all eternity right alongside the figures who stand damned within it—a fancy eight hour self-celebrating snuff film with bureaucracy & puppets. And popcorn. No name. No.
Out of curiosity, what do you do with a movie like this that was released under multiple different titles? It originally opened in South Florida and in Boston in May 1986 as I Was a Teenage Boy, then in New York and Los Angeles and other cities starting in November 1986 as Something Special.
All of that would be addressed in the article on that film. There are a bunch of movies that played Title Round-Robin as they were released and re-released.
I want to see this one. My friend watched it last year, and he said it wasn't bad. I remember seeing this ad for it when I was a kid, under a different title:
One of the things that is unique to my server -- I have corrected the metadata by hand on every single title to make sure they're set for the actual US release date. You would not believe how chaotic it was just to make the list, much less find everything. Release date info is crazy online.
I feel your pain. I keep a pretty tight offline Kodi Library of Italian Horror and the like (several terabytes), and the TITLES as well as the release dates be all over the shop. In addition, properly synced subtitles can often be challenging to find, especially for the more obscure entries.
Anyone who wants to support this ongoing lunacy can sign up for The Last '80s Newsletter (You'll Ever Need) on Substack. Just a few bucks a month and even less if you buy a whole year's worth at once.
The German film MEN... made a solid arthouse splash in the US, leading to the director's first English-language film. I'm sure we all remember this movie, where Mark Linn-Baker played Griffin Dunne's talking penis. Seriously.
It's also irritating on a molecular level to see IMDb and other online sources use a film's trade screening or festival screening as a "release date," because it's really, really not the same fucking thing.
That's an incredible achievement! I'm not positive, but I think it may have been from the Rewind This documentary, but the depressing pattern is film libraries are decimated after every format change, and things become impossible to find. Thank you for preserving what you can!
This seems like an impossible task and I'm amazed you've done this. Great work. Do you have specs on what you're using for your plex? What kind of storage space this is using? Plus, I have second hand anxiety hoping you have some sort of DR. Lol. How many movies? Or is this all on your newsletter?
Thats cool , but you should post photos of your whole collection for verification. JustInCase Cuz there's mofos on here that'd report you to the US government. On the outside it looks like a massive case of piracy, we talkin thousands of films or more? That's decades in prison.Just cover your butt.
I have over 12000 discs in my house. I have a massive physical media collection I've been writing about online for decades now. I have written about the process of moving my physical library into a digital medium. It's fine.
I spent the first few months of the Pandemic converting my DVD's and Blurays to digital building out my own home Plex server. The amount of work you've done deserves the applause. Wow.
You know what I haven't heard about since opening weekend? Remember "The Unknown Comic" from The Gong Show? He made a movie, that I saw in a NJ theater when it first came out. And then it was gone.
I'm also assuming you have the first Cocoon movie? Please?
This is incredible work. You are a real historian and are so important to the world. I bet this must have been painstaking work. You have a lot to be proud for. History in all of its many facets, has a wealth of important lessons to teach us. Preserving the records of the past ensures a future.
This is one of the things I love most about you. Your need to curate and have so much of this together is beautiful, and I love that you’re finally accomplishing this. What a milestone. Congrats, man. 👌🏼
I don't watch too much of new commercial fare but forever keep looking for older/rarer/arthouse stuff to watch. Seen 7K+ films (not counting shorts) but <1K of L15 yrs. Last decade there's been a constant drop off in P2P servers hosting stuff from 20th century so my movie watching's tailing off.
Don't know how you managed this coz Disney more than any other studio buys other studio's IPs of previous century & retires them, doesn't even give them for non-commercial/educational screenings, just so ppl are forced to watch thr new releases. Movie culture/education's dying.
Wow, that’s an incredible accomplishment! Six years of dedication really paid off.The 1980s had so many iconic films, and preserving some of those rarer gems is such a cool project.Kudos to you and your“small army”for making it happen sounds like a labor of love
Congrats Drew! That’s a lot of work. I hope your NAS drives are of high quality and redundant, so if you lose one you will be ok. But that’s a real cool achievement.
You lucky thing. We ran into problems with the different coded copyright protections. We bought several different programs & not one handles them all. We were trying to load up expanded hard drives for our boat. Not happening here.
I swore you were a while back noting concern with updates to PLEX.... if am I am not misremembering.... would you still suggest a PLEX server? Or... something else? Thanks!
I really need to revisit my Plex backups too. I filled two 10TB hard drives maybe five years ago (stored offsite obviously), but I know I've added at least another 10TB since then. There's no universe where I would have the time to rip my collection again.
This is also exactly the push I needed today to update my HDD backup of all of our band's data 🙏 (multitrack demos, premiere pro projects, etc). Everything is already synced to cloud storage, but multiple backups are essential (and my Nextcloud decided not to work anymore).
Thats really an amazing feat. Congratulations. I can’t even imagine the herculean effort of tracking down so many titles. Preserve that collection for all time!
I had all my DVDs (and a producer’s I worked for) backed up on a Drobo at one point but haven’t set it up after a couple moves. What software are you using to rip your 4k stuff? I have an old Mac mini in the same tech pile. I could run plex on that, I think. I’ll never hit your 3000 but I’ve got…IDK
The 4K is where I'm not making the digital jump. At least not yet. (A) Storage space becomes a real issue. (B) Even with the fastest internet, I still see a difference between streaming 4K and physical. My 4K collection will remain physical only for now.
Our daughter spent her Fulbright time in Cambodia cataloging films that were considered lost during the Khmer Rouge period.
I think this kind of work is fascinating
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Plex' support pages have an article on the "best" NAS devices to use:
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201373803-nas-compatibility-list/
Take it slow. Make sure you've got something that works before you start packing files onto it.
3 to a tape. SLP speed.
https://youtu.be/ctGjTc-Ndqc?si=Ues1Eu74sLQ5rAaR
This is where I learned to do it. I have one library on my server that is just for the videos that are forced pre-rolls when anyone watches any film from any of my libraries.
I’ve been looking for it for YEARS!
Did you also get tv movies? Or only theatrical films?
It's all about finding the setup that works for you.
Plex server that it can be a pain in the ass, and I was hacked several times.
Is this for personal use?
I have my movie collection in Plex, almost 20 TB now. Many 4k movies which take a lot of space though.
https://lostmediawiki.com/Dead_End_(lost_zombie_comedy_film;_1985)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Circus_(film)
I wonder sometimes how many films have been or will be lost in the switchover to digital.
*chuckles bitterly to self*
Oh, you sweet summer child...
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/
If that ended up in the torrents.
Is it just by whatever title is on the copy you have?
https://thelast80snewsletter.substack.com
What
I would like to film a documentary of someone doing just that.
Call it what you'd like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbyAkc4__tc
I'm also assuming you have the first Cocoon movie? Please?
I think this kind of work is fascinating
Seems rather niche.
I also enjoy getting access to other servers to see what I can discover
But in all seriousness, hats off to you, man.