DS9 should get Remastered

[Nerys Ghemor]

TeutonicNights wrote:

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Replacing stock shots with new ones could do wonders.
Especially in the early seasons we got a lot of those, and a lack of starships made the station often look a bit isolated.
I could see them doing great stuff with really basic things like runabout take-offs, the wormhole or docking animations.
In some cases, they could really do cool new stuff. Like showing a "naboo" shot of a bajoran street instead of the standard Bajor matte shot.

DS9 remastered would have HUGE potential. An approach like TOSR would not do it justice.
Imagine the Earth shots with the tram train in "Homefront" replaced by a future Paris flyover!

Daaaang! That would be SO cool!

But you know what I'd almost kill for? Some really, really good Cardassia shots, instead of just that matte painting.

I think that also, in "What You Left Behind," we need an overflight of Cardassia Prime, post-bombardment. That would make Martok's actions look all the more grotesque, when he starts gloating and drinking amidst the carnage.

[Thor Damar]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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Daaaang! That would be SO cool!

But you know what I'd almost kill for? Some really, really good Cardassia shots, instead of just that matte painting.

I think that also, in "What You Left Behind," we need an overflight of Cardassia Prime, post-bombardment. That would make Martok's actions look all the more grotesque, when he starts gloating and drinking amidst the carnage.

Hell yes

I would have loved to see lakarian City as well. (as well as Cardassia City in all it's pre DW glory.)

[TeutonicNights]

Nerys Ghemor wrote:

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we need an overflight of Cardassia Prime, post-bombardment.

YES!!! i understand how they didn't go all out on the new FX in TOSR, but DS9R would have to be different. It should be about taking the old FX and making something even cooler out of them whenever possible.
I would be irritated if they redid everything about the Wolf 359 opening battle, Saratoga explosion and everything, but I wouldn't mind them adding more background ships getting torn apart or firing.

If it takes another 10 years to make it work on a limited budget, so be it.

[PorthosShadow]

You know, when this thread began I wasn't convinced that a DS9 remastering was nessessary but I'm slowly being turned out. I have to agree, creating new FX such as new matte shots and battle sequences would be great. I think as large a canvas DS9 had, it didn't have a lot sweeping landscapes to go with it. I'm really intrigued with new shots of Bajor and Cardassia under attack and after the attack. Personally I would love to see more ships hanging around DS9 to show that it really was a busy port. I really hope Paramount gets going with this, even though I have the entire 7 seasons I would definately buy them again if they did the same level of work that was done on TOS.

[Cap.T]

I knew it was to good to be a true. Accorings to a post on the blu-ray.com forums the episode is just upconverted.

[SoM]

TeutonicNights wrote:

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Especially in the early seasons we got a lot of those, and a lack of starships made the station often look a bit isolated.

The station was MEANT to "look a bit isolated" early on - pre-Wormhole, the Bajoran system was the back of beyond. It wasn't until S3 or so that it became actually busy (which is why they redid the opening titles for S4 to work in more ships & other activity, along with upping the tempo of the theme music).

[NKemp3]

cwalrus2 wrote:

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I for one don't understand why they altered TOS.

Heck, I'll go a step further. I don't know why they REMADE TOS for the big screen this summer. I liked the original handling of characters, relationships and origins much better.

[DevilEyes]

NKemp3 wrote:

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Heck, I'll go a step further. I don't know why they REMADE TOS for the big screen this summer. I liked the original handling of characters, relationships and origins much better.

They didn't "REMAKE TOS" this summer.

I don't recall any episode having this plot.

Now, if you had said they REMADE "The Changeling" in 1979 for the big screen, you might have had a point...

[Nerdius Maximus]

Why do you need to see it in HD? It looks just fine on an HDTV the way it is. Does it matter that it's not in HD? It's a moot point, anyway, since there's no way in hell they'd spend the money to do it.

[Butters]

Nerdius Maximus wrote:

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Why do you need to see it in HD? It looks just fine on an HDTV the way it is. Does it matter that it's not in HD? It's a moot point, anyway, since there's no way in hell they'd spend the money to do it.

Erm, cos HD looks better maybe?

Would it hurt to see it in full HD? With new effects? Would that be damaging somehow?

True, it likely won't happen, but if it did, I'd watch it, and chances are I'd appreciate the improved visuals. Whats with the knee jerk negativity?

[Navaros]

DS9 DVDs actually look quite crappy on HDTV with a DVD player, especially if the screen is 50"+. The image is extremely blurry and odd-looking.

I've never seen it upscaled though. Does it get upscaled automatically if the DS9 DVDs are put into a BluRay player?

[TheGodBen]

If it is being played on a HDTV then it is already being upscaled by the TV, your TV probably just has a crappy upscaler. I have a DVD player which upscales DVDs and, while I haven't watched DS9 on it yet, Voyager looks okay, although I have noticed that once they made the transition to CG in season 3 the starship models are noticeably undetailed. I imagine the same will be true for DS9.

[Hober Mallow]

Navaros wrote:

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I've never seen it upscaled though. Does it get upscaled automatically if the DS9 DVDs are put into a BluRay player?

Yes, and it looks quite the crap.

I've noticed that movies and TV shows mastered from film upscale very well on my blu-ray player, whereas shows transfered to videotape, like Trek, Alien Nation, Due South, and the 1980s Twilight Zone look positively godawful. I'm no video tech guy, but my own theory is that the VHS noise that may not be that visible in standard definition screws up the upscaling process and makes it look ten times worse. Even the home movies I transfered to DVD look really bad on my blu-ray.

[Harvey]

Well, Alien Nation looks god awful on any television set. Terrible DVD transfer. But you might be right--I'm no expert on upscaling.

[jefferiestubes8]

CGI models:

Michael Stetson who had to rebuild the Jem'Hadar fighter in LightWave from the [/FONT][FONT=Arial]VisionArt[/FONT] [FONT=Arial] files for DS9: "Sacrifice of Angels" gave another example, "I don't remember where exactly the original model came from, but I believe we got it as a .obj file that was a mess when it was imported into Lightwave (version 5.5ish back in '97) I had a couple of days to make it usable in Lightwave3D which involved seriously cleaning up the geometry (I think the original might have been NURBS) and redoing the texture map since LW didn't have UV mapping back then." (Drex Files)

However, as supervisor Bruce Branit of Digital Muse explained, referring to DS9: "Sacrifice of Angels", sometimes the effort of transferring CG-files to another software format was worthwhile:

"It was the first time that anyone had actually assembled the entire Starfleet fleet in CG. Normally there were always a few ships they used for CG, and they pulled models out, and did motion control. Due to the nature of the show, there was no way they could do it with motion control. There was not enough time and not enough money. They were talking about having fifty to a hundred Starfleet vessels on screen at one time, and there was no way to pull that off in traditional ways. So we were a collecting point for anything that had been done in CG before. We brought the digital models in and converted them to LightWave, which is our rendering package of choice. The Enterprise-D had been done before, but in something else, so we were able to bring the geometry in, and bring some of the maps in, but we had to rebuild it. We had all the ingredients, so we could put it together much more quickly than building it from scratch. So now we have folders with the entire fleet all lined up in the same form, so we can just load a Reliant, we can load a Defiant, we can load an Excelsior, whenever we need it. That was the first real challenge, to get all that stuff in order, and to fill the garage with useable ships." (Cinefantastique, Vol.30, No.9/10, page 64)

Tackling the ILM models, done for "Star Trek Generations" and "Star Trek: First Contact", in an early stage, Digital Muse was able to showcase the upgraded versions already in DS9: "Call to Arms".

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