Rumor: TNG-HD is a-coming

[RAMA]

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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I'm sure for consistency of TNG-Remastered for 7 seasons they would do all exterior ship visual effects with CGI Ent-D.
Also it would be less of a hassle to find visual effects work that didn't include actors.

I was going to suggest this too, if they are going to do SOME FX, whether or not the 35mm negatives exists, they will want to make it coherent...the same way they changed the music and titles for all episodes of the TOS-R remastering.

The June 2010 link has some useful technical info on how STNG can be remastered.

[Rarewolf]

Doug Otte wrote:

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People keep repeating this erroneous info. Others have tried to correct it, and now I'll try. It's probably futile...

The effects were shot on 35mm film, too.

It's the compositing, editing, and the beams, lights, etc. that were done at SD resolution on video.

So, all the shots of ships, etc. were done on film.

Doug

Yes... so that compositing needs recreating does it not? New beams will need adding. They aren't going to do that to match the orignals and create CGI new alternatives. There's even the odd CG effect like the SIlicon Entity

Recomposting is still recreating.. .even if it uses the same elements.

[GNDN]

Also it would be less of a hassle to find visual effects work that didn't include actors.
I was going to suggest this too, if they are going to do SOME FX, whether or not the 35mm negatives exists, they will want to make it coherent...the same way they changed the music and titles for all episodes of the TOS-R remasttering.

Wasn't suggesting it was feasible or realistic, only that seeing shots of the 6 footer in HD skillfully composited could be gorgeous.

Which leaves the question of what to do with the original FX. TOS-HD is perfectly watchable with old or new FX.

The "Trials and Tribble-ations" upscaled HD version shows the abysmal state of what original TNG FX could look like if merely ported to HD as is. Here is a case much stronger than that of TOS-R for the necessity of updating the FX, since they are actually locked in at such a low resolution.

There are presently 2 ways to cope with this. CGI recreation, which may or may not be cheaper, but adds more value to rereleasing the show with "new, improved FX!" or re-compositing the filmed elements of the original FX in a format suitable for HD presentation. Given that the likelihood of CGI is 99.999999999999%, including the original FX in HD will either betray a marked drop in quality, or be virtually unwatchable unless techniques significantly improve from the T&TA release.

[RAMA]

Rarewolf wrote:

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Yes... so that compositing needs recreating does it not? New beams will need adding. They aren't going to do that to match the orignals and create CGI new alternatives. There's even the odd CG effect like the SIlicon Entity

Recomposting is still recreating.. .even if it uses the same elements.

I wanted to see more CGI early on in STNG, but upon reflection near the end of the series in 1994, I thought they did the right thing. Babylon 5 attempted to all-CGI, and the results didn't work well, though the attempt itself was revolutionary (someone had to do it first). STNG used CGI where they thought it seemed fit, a lot of the CGI of the time was not up to the task week in, week out of looking realistic.

[NJOberheim]

I can't tell you guys how stoked I am about this. I'll be picking it up for sure. Like many have said, I just hope that if they're going to do it, they do it right and don't cut corners. Unfortunatly the time contraints that the team usually has to work with hinders the end result sometimes.

[LitmusDragon]

I would love for this to be true but the projected timeline in the article- airing in the fall- seem a bit suspicious. Wasn't TOS-R in secret development for several years before the first episodes aired?

[Lateralus]

LitmusDragon wrote:

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I would love for this to be true but the projected timeline in the article- airing in the fall- seem a bit suspicious. Wasn't TOS-R in secret development for several years before the first episodes aired?

TOS required an enormous amount of work. Not saying TNG couldn't benefit from the same attention to detail, but I am saying that TNG doesn't need it as much, wont get it anyways and will look better than what we've got currently regardless.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Of course TNG needs it as much. Indeed, more so - TOS could conceivably have been released on Blu-Ray, and aired in HD, as it was, since it was all on film from the get-go. But since TNG's effects and editing were on video, it MUST be remastered. It cannot be aired in native HD without it.

[Lateralus]

Sure TOS *could* have been Blu'd as was, but that doesn't mean anybody would have bought it. And nobody would have. So from a marketability standpoint, TOS needed its bath way more than TNG does.

TNG needs new FX and that's really about it. The level of color adjustments/enhancements and scene by scene detailing that went into TOS will never go into TNG.

At this point along CGI's evolution, FX isn't that expensive anymore. It's all the other stuff, the pain staking scene-by-scene stuff, which is expensive and that's what TOS needed a lot more of.

[RAMA]

LitmusDragon wrote:

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I would love for this to be true but the projected timeline in the article- airing in the fall- seem a bit suspicious. Wasn't TOS-R in secret development for several years before the first episodes aired?

Bingo

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Lateralus wrote:

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Sure TOS *could* have been Blu'd as was, but that doesn't mean anybody would have bought it. And nobody would have. So from a marketability standpoint, TOS needed its bath way more than TNG does.

TNG needs new FX and that's really about it. The level of color adjustments/enhancements and scene by scene detailing that went into TOS will never go into TNG.

At this point along CGI's evolution, FX isn't that expensive anymore. It's all the other stuff, the pain staking scene-by-scene stuff, which is expensive and that's what TOS needed a lot more of.

It's not just the effects, it's the editing. With TNG, that also was done on video. So that's another thing they'd need to redo.

[mswood]

Yeah while I would love for the filmed images to be cleaned up (really, thanks it looks like crap). But I felt the effects work done for TOS were by and large poor. It looked like each shot wasn't fully rendered (now I did love the redone CGI version of matte images those did rock!). And the idea of seeing that happen to TNG (when some of the later effects are actually very well done) pisses me off.

[Zaku]

Lateralus wrote:

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TOS required an enormous amount of work. Not saying TNG couldn't benefit from the same attention to detail, but I am saying that TNG doesn't need it as much, wont get it anyways and will look better than what we've got currently regardless.

TNG requires more work than TOS. The editing of the films should be remade. Hoping to find ALL the original films.

With TOS they needed only the original negative of the single episode, not all the takes.

[jefferiestubes8]

I think that season 2's first episode "The Child" would benefit a lot from HD as there is a lot more shadow detail in HD.
See the lighting info about the episode from memory alpha:

[Director Rob]Bowman and director of photography Edward R. Brown experimented with a different, even lower-key than usual style of lighting in this episode. Notably, this is the only episode from the first two seasons where there are no sheets of cardboard on the LCARS displays, which were usually necessitated by the lighting system used. However, Gene Roddenberry and the other producers did not approve of this lighting style, and by the next episode Bowman and Brown reverted to the series' usual style of lighting.

Yes it looked different than the rest of TNG's 7 seasons but it also should show up better in HD than NTSC.
Also people have much better HDTVs than tube televisions from the mid-to-late 1980s capable of displaying higher dynamic ranges.

[AviTrek]

jefferiestubes8 wrote:

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I think that season 2's first episode "The Child" would benefit a lot from HD as there is a lot more shadow detail in HD.
See the lighting info about the episode from memory alpha:

Yes it looked different than the rest of TNG's 7 seasons but it also should show up better in HD than NTSC.
Also people have much better HDTVs than tube televisions from the mid-to-late 1980s capable of displaying higher dynamic ranges.

Actually, a good CRT is going to have better blacks and shadow detail than what's out there today. An HD signal might contain more detail, but in terms of blacks LCDs/Plasmas just can't compare to a good CRT.