HD Transfer of Star Trek: TNG To Arrive This Year 267
psychonaut writes "Digital Bits have confirmed through sources at CBS Paramount that CBS are working on a high-definition transfer of Star Trek: The Next Generation. A four-episode Blu-Ray sampler disc is to be released later this year; the episodes featured will be the two-part pilot 'Encounter at Farpoint,' 'Sins of the Father,' and fan favourite 'The Inner Light.' On 2 September, LeVar Burton tweeted that he had stopped by CBS Paramount Television City to check the progress and was 'mindblown' by the conversion. TrekCore has an article with further details and an analysis of some of the technical hurdles involved in remastering these episodes."
Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Riker's beard in stunning HD!
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Not to mention all the iPad clones...I bet Samsung is cursing this delay!
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So TNG will be looking just like TOS did? It's only fair. Old stuff is old.
Gadgets looking like cheap plastic toys was never a problem. Some TNG elements looked fake when it was new and that didn't prevent anyone from enjoying the show.
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If you watch carefully the control consoles buckle under the actor's fingers a little, and because the light reflects in them it is really obvious in some shots. Most of the early panels were static backlit masks, and only later did they start using CRTs and then LCDs. The CRTs look really bad now because they are curved, and we already live in an age where curved screens are a thing of the past.
Fortunately these days they can replace them with new overlays relatively easily in post production. I'm hopeful
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Yes it will be interesting to see if they do any editing to work around this stuff.
Another example would be that they stuck bits of black cardboard over some of the rear consoles (behind Yar/Worf) in the early days to prevent reflections of the camera. You can actually see them quite often even in the DVD version. (I remember reading somewhere like Memory Alpha that Wil Wheaton kept telling them they'd show up if people were paying attention or technology improved and, indeed, they'd tell him to shut up)
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Oh shut up, Wesley!
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Sheldon Cooper, is that you?
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
I will always remember 9/11/11 as the day when I heard that TNG was coming out in HD!
Never forget!!
GOD DAMMIT (Score:3)
This probably means that I'm going to rebuy the damn series again. VHS, check. DVDs, check. Blue ray? Someday. GAH. DOES IT EVER END?
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And as long as there are people willing to buy yet another copy, they'll keep on selling yet another copy.
Ya well, may be worth it in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
While sometimes rebuying feels silly, here they are doing some real work. I didn't know the series was shot on film, I would have figured video since it was a TV series. However as they said it was edited on video, meaning that all the post effects are done SD. So they not only have to transfer all the film and clean it up, as always, they have to redo the edits and effects (if they still have the edit decision lists maybe the actual cuts can be directly transferred but that's about all).
That work is worth something, if you enjoy seeing things in HD. Now if you don't, that's fine, but I don't think you can hate on them for wanting money or people for paying.
Something else that'll be interesting to see is how much post work they do on cleaning things up. SD hides a lot of defects pretty well that you can see in HD. I wonder if they'll work on that. Makeup would be one (the horrible colour of NTSC lead to often rather exaggerated makeups being used).
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Most of the CG in TNG was pretty crap, by the standards of features, anyway. The way it was used was also crap. Either you have a talking head poorly composited over a CG background, usually then framed by the main viewer on the bridge, or you have a single element poorly composited into a live background, usually with a big margin between it and any actors. Then you'll have the occasional closeup of a single actor interacting with some CG; they stagger around as per direction, and then something is composi
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The Xindi still look like crap when they are animated, though.
Only the insect Xindi, really.
Let's just forget about that entire storyach, though. The "Xindi Season" was some of the worst television I've ever seen. It's too bad, because Enterprise really picked up after they scuttled all that Xindi junk.
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They weren't using a lot of CG back then. Instead, they used a good many practical elements for their effects. Video compositing was also done using analog electronics hardware in these days. So it's not like you just push a render button and you've got that effects element updated for HD. They will either have to live with the SD effects shots or recreate them entirely from the original film material.
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If I bought the VHS, I can just download the blu ray rips. Hey, it's just format shifting!
Re:GOD DAMMIT (Score:4, Insightful)
This probably means that I'm going to rebuy the damn series again. VHS, check. DVDs, check. Blue ray? Someday. GAH. DOES IT EVER END?
I'm holding out for the quantum storage holodeck release
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> DOES IT EVER END?
it ends when you stop it.
Re:GOD DAMMIT (Score:5, Funny)
Damn it...this means I will have to re-download the series again!
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Sooner than you think, friend...
and sooner than you want.
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Not me. I have almost all of it on tape, much of it from rabbit ears with static and ghosting. I've been digitizing those old analog tapes and putting them on DVD. I'll probably buy the last season of Voyager, since it wasn't broadcast here.
I've been digitizing my old LPs and cassettes, too. There is too much content I want and don't have to go re-buying what I already have. I'm a nerd, but I'm not Bill Gates.
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It ends when you want it to.
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Don't forget the fact that at some point, they'll try to do a stereoscopic 3D conversion. So, for all upcoming media formats, they'll sell you the 2D and 3D versions separately.
(...Says a guy who has worked on stereo projects, trained with folks who know how to do great stereo, visited a 3D post-conversion facility, and is actually very excited about potentially awesome stereo cinematgoraphy in the next decade, but thinks that the current move to make everything 3D regardless of whether it makes sense if a
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Soon I'll get to buy My Little Pony in HD
Fixed that for you.
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I don't know about that, didn't the original series end up showing stains and things like that which were never seen in previous editions?
That being said, I'm not sure this warrants a repurchase for most folks, just rent the blurays and if you still think it's worthwhile go for it.
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No, Enterprise was the worst and DS9 was the best :)
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Am I the only person that liked Enterprise?
4K? (Score:2)
If they are going back to the original film and they have to redo all the edits, can't that be done in 4K yet? It seems like a shame to be doing HD right at the end of the HD era.
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right at the end of the HD era
Don't get ahead of yourself, we're not even rid of DVDs yet!
The scanning will likely be done at 6k or 8k, as they appear to have enough budget to re-composit the entire show so I can't see them cheaping out. Higher resolution scanning makes the process easier as you have more to work with before losing actual image data.
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Yes and no, there's a maximum resolution that you can scan at before you start wasting pixels. I've found that scanning at about double that and then converting the image to the proper size in software tends to keep grain and noise down. But, with the equipment they used, I'd be surprised if they hadn't taken multi samples of each pixel on each frame to eliminate noise.
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I had no idea it was shot on 35mm. That's some good forward planning. Remember B5's CGI shots were kept on video on the assumption they could be re-rendered at higher resolution in future, and they misplaced the CGI models?
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I had no idea it was shot on 35mm. That's some good forward planning.
No, it's not. The fact that *will* have to redo all the special effects from scratch (because those were all done directly to video and never existed as anything other than crappy, low-resolution NTSC) suggests otherwise.
Basically, I doubt they had that in mind back in 1987. They probably shot on film because it looked "better" (or at least higher budget) than video camera sourced footage back then. They probably didn't care about the loss of quality in transferring to NTSC for editing since it wouldn't h
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Why is that a surprise? Digital video, while available, was very expensive at the time. It's not like these days where the main cost is storage and back up. Plus, at that time, I'm not really sure that it was particularly well suited to a series like Star Trek which uses a lot of special effects added after the fact.
Most good series were "filmed" (Score:2)
Cheers was filmed on 35mm. Seinfeld was filmed on 35mm. Pretty much any series with a decent budget was filmed, rather than taped. It was the only way you could get a good picture quality. Video was used for live broadcasts and lower budget multi-camera productions. If you look back and make a comparison, video truly stands out as awful.
Video camera technology has seriously evolved since then, to the point where you can get high quality HD footage out of a DSLR, but back then film was still the way to go.
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It was 1965. What else were they going to shoot it on? Videotape? Nope--their SFX involved *direct manipulation of the film*.
British TV- particularly the BBC- used to mix-and-match video and film footage, particularly prior to the mid-80s. (Most noticeably they used film for outdoor and location footage and video for studio footage; I'm sure the mixture would be slightly disconcerting for those not used to that, but if you've seen enough your brain just tends to treat it as an indicator, i.e. film -> outdoors, video -> indoors. I remember one old episode of Doctor Who where the "outdoor" shot of the jungle looked "wrong" be
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TNG wasn't made in 1965.
End of the HD era? WTF are you talking about? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are only really at the beginning of it. That higher resolution technology is available has nothing to do with anything. These standards change slowly. Consider that NTSC was finalized in 1941. We had that standard with us (with some updates like the 1953 colour update) for that long. ATSC, it's successor and current HD broadcast standard, didn't even get kicked off until the 1990s. It took 50 years before a new standard was even started on, and of course there was no real adoption of it until much more recently. Even just 5 years ago getting HD content was quite hard.
It isn't going anywhere for some time. Eventually I'm sure we'll get a better standard, but it could be another 50 years. It'll probably take a more radically new technology to make it happen.
You have to remember another issue is that more than 1920x1080 isn't so useful in most homes. The human eye has real limits and when you are sitting back from a TV, 4k wouldn't be very useful.
Now they may actually be doing a 4k transfer, film scanners usually handle that no problem. Even if they do though that doesn't mean it'll have that much useful resolution. You find that film isn't as good as you might think. Depending on the kind of film used, the cameras, storage, lighting, and a lot of other shit it doesn't end up getting as good a picture as you might hope and you find you don't get additional detail from ultra high resolution scans.
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4K images look much more real than 3D. go check a 4K display out at NAB or something... yes, it can be blow up huge, but on a 32 inch panel, it seems like you are peering through a window.
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If you're very close to a 4K panel, it's useful. When you're sitting 10 feet away from a 32" or even a 40" television, it wouldn't make a difference. At that point, 48 or 60 FPS would make a far bigger improvement.
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It isn't going anywhere for some time. Eventually I'm sure we'll get a better standard, but it could be another 50 years.
I'm sure they will come up with some reason to buy a new TV before then. That is what has driven 3D, and my bet is that higher frame rates will be next. Some movies are now being shot at 60 fps and some sport is broadcast at 60fps but only 720p resolution.
Current 3D using stereoscopic images sucks, but maybe in the future there will be a new version that doesn't need glasses and looks solid that needs a new broadcasting standard too.
You have to remember another issue is that more than 1920x1080 isn't so useful in most homes. The human eye has real limits and when you are sitting back from a TV, 4k wouldn't be very useful.
I sit about 3-3.5m from my 42" screen and can tell the difference between 7
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If they are going back to the original film and they have to redo all the edits, can't that be done in 4K yet? It seems like a shame to be doing HD right at the end of the HD era.
As I said elsewhere, it was- I assume- shot with 1980s TV viewers in mind. Even if it's theoretically possible to resolve 4K of detail from the source film, the set, makeup, etc. only needed to look good on a 525-line set, and they wouldn't have wasted money on unseen detail.
In short, with 4K, you'll be able to see the joins in a set that was only ever intended to look good on a 1980s SD TV, or notice that Picard's makeup looks cakey (and apparently strange, if- as others have suggested- it was designed w
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Of course not. They'll wait until you re-buy all the episodes in Blu-ray, and *then* re-release them in 4K. Haven't you figured out the business model yet?
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nor is it needed until we start covering the walls of our homes with screens.
Or we could have a 12" monitor with a decent DPI
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Full Aperture 4K 4096 x 3112 1.32:1 12,746,752
Academy 4K 3656 x 2664 1.37:1 9,739,584
Digital cinema 4K 4096 x 1714 2.39:1 7,020,544
Digital cinema 4K 3996 x 2160 1.85:1 8,631,360
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
You'd need to go to 8K to get 4096 vertical pixels:
http://e
Which aspect ratio? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Stop me if I'm wrong, but since it was originally filmed in a wide-screen capable format (or at least, that's what I gleamed from reading the article), we might actually get a proper widescreen conversion. I guess it depends on what's been cut off from the sides of various shots, as long as there aren't too many dumbass ensigns picking their nose or scratching their balls, they might decide to use it all.
Film isn't widescreen (Score:5, Informative)
The native aspect ration of 35mm film is 1.375:1. You will sometimes hear that called academy or full frame. that is the ratio that film actually captures at. To do widescreen, one of two tricks is employed:
1) You matte the image, blocking off the parts you don't want. The can be done on the camera, on the projector, or in editing. Fight Club is such a movie this is done in. It was shot full frame, but matted down to be widescreen.
2) More commonly, you shoot using an anamorphic lens. This is a non-spherical lens that squashes the picture on the film. When you play it back using the same lens, you get a widescreen picture.
So for TV, they'd shoot full frame, because it is close to TV's 1:1.33 aspect ratio.
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Additionally a film or TV show is filmed with that aspect ratio in mind. Which is why films that were shot in 16:9 look like crap when displayed in 4:3 without letter boxing and vice versa. Ultimately, I'd guess that even if they did have the ability to show more to the frame that there'd be times when there was something distracting going on off camera or where it screws up the composition.
Which would be interesting, but would greatly diminish the movie.
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Let's hope so. I bought the first episode of Kung Fu on DVD, knowing it was originally shot in 35mm. It hadn't been shot in widescreen, so they cropped it to make it widescreen.
I took it back to the store for a refund; I already had it on tape, and rather than being better, the DVD was worse.
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I can't imagine the original models would be terribly useful today, except as a point of reference? By today's standards, they must be pretty low quality and would probably have to be redone anyway. At the very least, it'd be no different to the redone special effects Star Trek (TOS) got, in that the original material was more or less dumped and duplicated in a modern way.
Not to mention that B5's special effects weren't all that brilliant anyway, they were probably the most obvious signs of budget constrain
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B5 had some awesome dynamic space scene CGI going on for the 90s. No reboot for B5.
Trolling:
BSG new and old sucked.
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Not to mention that B5's special effects weren't all that brilliant anyway
Seriously? B5 had space battles with hundreds of ships at a time when Star Trek rarely had more than one ship on screen at a time. Even the typical shots of the station had lots of commercial traffic floating around. I remember thinking it looked impressive when it was on TV.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by effects though. The internal ones were all pretty poor. Redoing the view from the captain's office (I always thought it was meant to be a painting, but apparently it was meant to be a win
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You know, we used to give Babylon 5 a hard time for the quality of the effects shots. But I'm watching Voyager right now (well, not at this moment, but we just got to season 4, and I never watched that far in broadcast) and the CG is fucking awful. And we just watched through TNG, and its CG is also just terrible. There were a couple pretty bad shots in B5 and the vorlon ship animations always looked pretty super cheesy, but other than that, it holds up well compared to the competition. The macrovirus on vo
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They do this in Trek all the time, though. The most common use is a background behind a talking head on the main viewer. They did this least in TNG but it became very common by Voyager.
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I've watched B5 through a couple of times now, with friends who hadn't seen it before. Funny thing happens - at the beginning people complain that the CGI looks so bad (it was awesome for mid 90s TV, but I get that in this context it's fair to evaluate against present day). But that fades quite quickly and by the time you're half way through, at Severed Dreams, people are pretty blown away. It's a good time to remind them of their complaints. ;-)
I assume that there is a combination of two things going on -
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I heard a rumour that the original/early B5 CGI was done on Amiga systems. Is this true?
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Yes. The first season was done on a small network of Amigas using Lightwave 3D. Later they moved to Alphas. Apparently the deadlines were very tight. There was an article about it in the Amiga Shopper section of Computer Shopper back in the day where they described setting up the renderer to run overnight and having to drop some scenes from the final edit because the renders didn't always come out as hoped and they didn't have time to re-render.
I'm not sure when the switch from Amigas happened, but t
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Realistically, to really do B5 some justice, I'd like to see someone make a genuine attempt at a reboot.
Did we already get that with Deep Space Nine?
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I was wondering the same thing. Based on what others are saying, it probably was close to 4:3 :(
However... There might be some "overscan" that we never saw. It was (is?) common to zoom in on the picture a bit so that it was guaranteed to fill the whole screen.
What I would love to see is if they could zoom in a bit, like they originally did, then crop the top/bottom as before, but try to capture and use the overscan.. possibly even stretch it just a TINY bit. They could never get 16:9, but they might be
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Filming in 35mm doesn't necessarily mean it was widescreen. The "native" format for 35mm is 4:3.
According to IMDB [imdb.com], it was shot with spherical lenses in 35mm, which suggests that it was NOT filmed in any sort of widescreen process. (It could have been, but they would then be throwing away a significant part of the image at the time just to make it look better in some hypothetical future version.)
Extra Features (Score:4, Funny)
Sheldon Cooper commentary track.
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Sheldon Cooper and Whil Weaton sitting in a room? I would buy the set for the commentary alone.
Of course LeVar Burton will praise it (Score:2)
LeVar Burton knows what happens if you cross the almighty Paramount execs and express your own opinion. Wil Wheaton is an object example.
Mart
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You become an exceedingly popular person who people actually want to listen to?
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Have you seen what's happened to his career [wikimedia.org] after TNG finished? Basically, nothing except Reading Rainbow. Unlike Wil Wheaton, who has published a lot, been in a load of TV shows and films (and even voiced some of the Romulans in the new Star Trek movie, so seems not to be too out of favour with Paramount).
More likely, he realises that he gets a percentage of every BluRay sale. I'd imagine that Star Trek DVD sales have been slacking recently, but there are enough geeks who will buy the new release, ju
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I'd imagine that Star Trek DVD sales have been slacking recently,
Netflix is now streaming some Trek. I wonder if they get anything when someone watches it online; the contract might be old enough not to cover it.
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Unlike Wil Wheaton, who has published a lot, been in a load of TV shows and films (and even voiced some of the Romulans in the new Star Trek movie, so seems not to be too out of favour with Paramount).
Wil Wheaton is a cult figure among the geek community, but he's not *that* famous in mainstream terms. As for Paramount, that's explained by the fact that the suits who were in charge almost 20 years ago have probably long moved on (mostly retired now, I suspect) and been replaced by a new generation who weren't personally involved and don't have the same level of animosity towards Wheaton.
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Have you seen what's happened to his career [wikimedia.org] after TNG finished? Basically, nothing except Reading Rainbow.
Heaven forbid he dedicates his life to helping gets kids excited about reading instead of starring in a sitcom on NBC Thursdays?
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There are always bridges to be burned.
-Restil
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Wil Wheaton has done well enough for himself, but I really think he screwed the pooch when it came to Star Trek. Sure, he faced the risk of being typecast, and the character he played tended to draw derision from the audience, but he WAS a kid... and lets face it, he had about the most awesome job a teenage geek could ever hope to have. I figure he missed an opportunity with the character. Since the character he played was an awkward teenager, he could have embraced that role and had that character grow
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Wil has complained publicly that he was forced to play the character as a whiny bitch. I don't think he used those words, but you should probably try to recognize that shows and movies have directors who tell you what to do and how to do it. And since his character was on his way to transcendence it wouldn't make much sense for him to be on Voyager.
So are the masters in HD or 35mm? (Score:4, Interesting)
Was Star Trek The Next Generation shot on film, or on video tape? If the latter, what exactly can be done with the content? Did the studio record to higher than broadcast resolution? I suppose they could sharpen it and upscale content, and redo titles and some of the effects. The higher res and audio / video codecs might yield a superior presentation. But is it really HD? Seems a bit deceptive to claim it is if it isn't.
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HD resolution film doesn't mean it was shot as HD (Score:5, Insightful)
Was Star Trek The Next Generation shot on film, or on video tape?
As others replied, shot on film, edited on video.... except the special effects, many of which were mastered direct to video AFAIK.
Did the studio record to higher than broadcast resolution?
The bits that were shot on film probably contain more detail than could be shown on 525-line NTSC video.
I suppose they could sharpen it and upscale content, and redo titles and some of the effects.
The stuff that was shot on film probably doesn't need "upscaling", just rescanning at higher resolution.
The stuff that only ever existed on video... there's no way in hell they'll ever be able to upscale that in a worthwhile manner. The quality of NTSC video just isn't good enough to do that, and it would stick out like sore thumb if they tried to integrate those bits with the rescanned film. They'll have to redo them.
But is it really HD? Seems a bit deceptive to claim it is if it isn't.
I suspect you meant is it HD, or just upscaled SD?
But if we interpret your question another way, it raises an interesting point. The original film footage probably contains *much* more detail than the SD video transfer was capable of retaining.... so yes, it's "HD" in that sense.
However, just because film can resolve that much detail, doesn't mean the show was made with that in mind. In particular, it's likely they shot it for SD transmission and TV sets. Even a well-budgeted TV show like TNG would have had to allocate its budget wisely, and I doubt they would have wasted valuable money on (e.g.) set detailing that their audience would never see. It only had to look good in SD.
Now, if you watch the footage in high definition, chances are we may see that the set looks a little shoddy, with visible joins if you look closely. Picard's set makeup might look a bit "cakey" and obvious. And (as others mentioned) any illegible in-jokes on the button text could suddenly become readable.
Of course, this isn't a criticism of the original show, as it was probably never intended that people would be able to see that level of detail on screen.
Apparently, the BBC are having to invest in a new set for their popular soap opera EastEnders' move to HD, because the limitations of the existing one- which looked fine in SD- started showing up. Which shows that shooting in HD isn't simply a question of being able to resolve more detail- you have to plan for it too.
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However, just because film can resolve that much detail, doesn't mean the show was made with that in mind. In particular, it's likely they shot it for SD transmission and TV sets. Even a well-budgeted TV show like TNG would have had to allocate its budget wisely, and I doubt they would have wasted valuable money on (e.g.) set detailing that their audience would never see. It only had to look good in SD.
Now, if you watch the footage in high definition, chances are we may see that the set looks a little shoddy, with visible joins if you look closely. Picard's set makeup might look a bit "cakey" and obvious. And (as others mentioned) any illegible in-jokes on the button text could suddenly become readable.
I recently visited the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle, and was amazed by how clunky and cheap most of the Star Trek and Star Wars props looked. In SD, I had never noticed. In HD, I think the tricorders are liable to look ridiculous.
That said, I wouldn't want them to change it. Once you start messing around with that stuff, you're tempted to go down George Lucas's path to the dark side, and I would really hate to see that happen to Star Trek, too. (Riker shot first, anyone?) Part of the beauty of these ol
Re:HD resolution film doesn't mean it was shot as (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, I wouldn't want them to change it. Once you start messing around with that stuff, you're tempted to go down George Lucas's path to the dark side [..] Hiding that--let alone gussying it up--would be a sin.
As far as the 100%-film ST:TOS goes, the problem is that by rescanning and viewing at a greater level of detail than was ever originally expected, one *is* being sort of inauthentic- in the opposite direction- by exposing "flaws" that it's unfair to call flaws, because they wouldn't have been visible under the original planned viewing conditions.
Some may argue that I'm imposing a restriction on it that never existed (since the film-based masters were never tied to the resolution of TV). Still, IMHO, this is applying higher standards to the original material than could ever be considered fair.
As for The Next Generation (even ignoring the above), *any* HD version is going to fail the George Lucas authenticity test regardless.
The SD-video-based special effects would have to be remade to ensure consistency with the effects-free high-definition film scans even if one didn't want to attempt to "improve" them beyond this. The alternative- trying to remain as authentic as possible by including the original effects- wouldn't work either since (as I mentioned) it's going to be impossible to upscale them to anything even approaching true HD. The result would be a piebald mixture of high-resolution film shots and obviously much lower resolution effects shots- the jarring nature of which would in itself be inauthentic (as well as being crap!)
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Good points, all around. So, where does the compromise lie? How do we make this look good without adding muppets or changing the storyline?
Make it so (Score:3)
A daunting project... (Score:3)
I hear about 80% of the work in this HD transfer involves editing every shot with a display panel, sign, label or plaque to remove the easter eggs and in-jokes. So far, Mike Okuda has been burned in effigy three times.
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heh, you know that's actually a good point.
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Why would they do that? Those easter eggs are the main reason why Trekkies would even buy the HD versions...
Good. 'cause it looks like crap now (Score:2)
I've been watching TNG on Netflix and it looks absolutely awful. Certainly no better than a VHS tape. I've also been watching the original Mission: Impossible, and it looks about 3x better, even though it aired in the 60's and certainly isn't popular enough of a show to get any special treatment whatsoever.
Re:Good. 'cause it looks like crap now (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been watching TNG on Netflix and it looks absolutely awful. Certainly no better than a VHS tape.
I watched TNG on TV in the early 90s on the same 22" CRT I watched most programmes on, i.e. by the standards of the time on a moderate-sized set that wasn't going to show up any minor flaws.
And even *then* it was obvious to me that TNG's picture quality was f****** awful. It was almost distractingly soft and poor quality.
I live in the UK, and I noticed that the picture quality of a lot of US TV shows was visibly *worse* in the 90s than it had been in the 80s. I later found out that the reason was that until the late-80s most US shows were shot and *mastered* on film. In some cases at least (e.g. the original Star Trek series) the BBC got a film copy that they transferred live directly to the PAL transmission, with no NTSC intermediate.
From the late-80s, a lot of US shows switched to shot on film, but edited on video tape, probably to save money. This was probably okay for Americans watching on NTSC, because what got transmitted would have been degraded to crappy NTSC standard anyway. But showing that NTSC-edited programme on a UK TV system, you could see it looked rubbish.
Granted, the problem would probably have been exacerbated by NTSC->PAL conversion, but I've seen enough to confirm that the NTSC master probably wasn't that much better, and that the problems were down to NTSC. What you say just confirms it. ST:TNG's picture quality was garbage in the first place because it was downgraded to the lowest-common denominator NTSC quality at the editing stage.
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You know, it has seemed to me that a lot of the material from the 70's to the 90's suffered from this problem, regardless of what the mastering process was, and I suspect it had to do with a "that's good enough" attitude from the producers. Prior to this, the folks working on the projects were allowed to be true artisans, and afterwards, they started to realize that this wasn't good enough anymore.
There were exceptions, of course. There will always be really good and really bad.
I noticed that TV stations,
I can't wait... (Score:2)
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Mix of res? (Score:3)
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Or they could do the really crappy job they did for Babylon 5.
Although live action actually was shot in HD (forward thinking for a 1993 show), the large number of CGI and live/CGI composites were done in SD only. Computing resources were strained as it was, they weren't going to waste it rendering in HD until consumer technology caught up.
Unfortunately, the Warner Bros. warehouse that stored all these computer files burned down, and they had no backups elsewhere. So on the DVDs, any CGI or live/CGI scene wa
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Most of the filming was done on film and then transferred to video for editing. Most of the effects were done on video so will have to be recreated digitally. It will be interesting to see how it turns out - TNG always had a very soft look to it due to the limited resolution and colour definition of video.
Additionally shows shot and edited on film like Frasier or Seinfeld don't need to be re-edited because the editing notes contain frame numbers, but TNG's edits will have to be recreated by matching up the
My hope (Score:2)
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CleverNickName (Score:2)
I wonder what this guy [slashdot.org] have to say about this...
Why Farpoint? (Score:3)
What about the sound? (Score:2)
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I rented some TNG DVDs and was disappointed that I could hear that they were walking on plywood floors. I don't think duranium floors would make a hollow thud when you walk on them. Are they going to fix the sound so it will sound good on a surround-sound system?
So, you want to hear plywood squishing in 5:2? Not sure what sort of an improvement that would be, but hey, whatever floats your boat.
I can't wait! Really! I can't! (Score:2)
Great. Heavy-handed messages about tolerance and stiff acting [theonion.com] in HD. I can't wait for international diplomacy to be debated in endless detail with every loose thread visible on overused costumes. Count me in! The only thing that would make my life complete would be if Star Trek: Insurrection was finally released on Blu-ray. Followed by a 4K release in a couple years so I could have something to look forward to.
Just kidding. I have the re-release of TOS, which has some nostalgia value and several hot ch
Only if done properly (Score:4, Insightful)
Meaning
1- If it was filmed at a resolution higher than NTSC so they just don't upscale it
2- If they keep the ratio it was filmed in (4:3)
WB totally messed up B5, and it looks like crap on DVD compared to VHS. I know that part of the problem was the CGI was not done in 16:9 and some moron at WB probably insisted it would sell better in Widescreen, they cropped and stretched the composited shots and it's a big blurry mess...)
http://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.html [modeemi.fi]
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You realize TNG was shot on 35mm film, right?
You're thinking of HDD (Score:2)