The OFFICIAL STNG Next Level Bluray watch and review thread

[davejames]

DostoyevskyClone wrote:

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Transporter effects: I thought they looked great. Different people have different priorities, but reflections on the floor (or lack thereof) weren’t a big deal for me.

Agreed. I'm just happy that they've finally brightened the beam up, and removed that dull, overly-pixalated look it had.

Same goes for Q's energy orb and the phaser beams. It was just amazing to me how much cleaner and sharper every effect was.

Even Q's "flash" effect looked brighter and more realistic.

[Maxwell Everett]

Dac wrote:

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So guys, I got a Blu Ray Drive today....how the f**k do I take screenshots? Hollywood says that's illegal, but thats bullshit. Surely someone found a way around this rediculous "feature"?

ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 can take screenshots. If you can't find it, then you need AnyDVDHD (you can get a free trial) to patch the disc's copy protection while it's in the drive. Once that's done, you need a player such as PowerDVD. Open the BDMV folder on the disc, browse to the "STREAM" folder and find the 3 largest files. The biggest one should be "Encounter at Farpoint". Drag that .m2ts file onto PowerDVD and it should start the episode. Now you should be able to take screenshots. In the PowerDVD settings, you can choose where to save them and what compression to use.

[Borjis]

It will be quite interesting to see what they do with the space creatures in "Galaxy's Child."

That definitely gives off the look of the CGI of the time. The texturing and lighting was terrible on that. Something tells me that was never put on film.

[BillJ]

I'm interested in seeing episodes like 11001001, The Neutral Zone, Contagion, Where Silence Has Lease, Time Squared and Q, Who?.

[Dac]

Maxwell Everett wrote:

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ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 can take screenshots. If you can't find it, then you need AnyDVDHD (you can get a free trial) to patch the disc's copy protection while it's in the drive. Once that's done, you need a player such as PowerDVD. Open the BDMV folder on the disc, browse to the "STREAM" folder and find the 3 largest files. The biggest one should be "Encounter at Farpoint". Drag that .m2ts file onto PowerDVD and it should start the episode. Now you should be able to take screenshots. In the PowerDVD settings, you can choose where to save them and what compression to use.

0_o

But In VLC I just push a button...

[tomswift2002]

I just watched the Blu-Ray last night, and I must say that, while the colors and sound are better than the versions we've seen for the past 25 years, the framing for each shot needs to be worked on a lot more, especially if they plan to present the series in HD just as it aired. I noticed in quite a few shots that we actually see more picture than what has been on TV (such as when Zorn's office window gets blown out, and I don't mean with the whole the SD video master was in 1.33:1 and the HD master is in 1.37:1, I'm talking about more info all around), but then I was finding that a number of shots were cropped to almost make them look like I was watching the show on an old 80's TV were the casing was covering way too much of the screen (almost as if the producers had zoomed those shots in to a 4:3 Safe Titling Zone fit, instead of the 4:3 Safe Action Zone). If you compare the scene with Troi in Zorn's office, in Encounter At Farpoint, where she says that her mother is Betazoid but her "father was a Starfleet Officer", on the DVD you'll notice that there is tons of room between the top of the image and Troi's hairband and you can see it going around her head, but on the Blu-Ray her hairband goes right into the top part of the TV. That would be something that, if I was watching the episode back in the 80's, I might expect to see on a TV that had too much casing covering the screen, but on a modern HD TV (I was watching the Blu-Ray and DVD on a Philips 40" LCD connected by HDMI to both a Playstation 3 (Next Level Disc) and a DVD Recorder (TNG DVD Season 1 Disc 1)). I was also finding that in Sins of The Father a number of the close-ups were zoomed into and I was getting an almost "Babylon 5 DVD-Live Action/CGI combined" type of shot where the eyes of people were getting very close to the top of the TV and were almost cut off, and their foreheads were appearing in a distorted way. If the producers were going to do that much modifying, then why did they not just go with a HD widescreen version of TNG and just left the 4:3 original version at SD?

But, then (and I hope CBS corrects this by the time Season 5 is released on Blu-Ray) I was really disappointed at whoever did the CGI Enterprise-D in The Inner Light. Right as soon as the teaser opens there's the shot of the D flying by with Picard's log entry, but that ship looked like Absolute CGI Garbage. I was reminded of the opening to the Voyager episode Blink of An Eye where you could tell that the Voyager was not the studio model, but a CGI ship. It was like a white shadow of the D flying by, and didn't have any of the depth that the physical model that appeared in the opening credits had, or when the D appeared briefly at the first return to the Enterprise. On the saucer, you know the lip on the underside where there are those two rows of rectangular boxes (I'm not too sure what they are for? Escape Pods?) running around the whole saucer, well on the CGI model I could just barely make them out, and yet on the SD DVD I could make those out just fine! Plus, just the way the ship came towards the screen looked like a very unfinished CGI design, or the way a Galaxy class ship might've looked at a distance on Bridge Commander or Armada from the late 1990's/early 2000's.

CBS Digital did such a fantastic, and way better job on the CGI for TOS-R than Eden FX did for Enterprise, that I was shocked at just how low quality this CGI D looked.

[Trekker4747]

Borjis wrote:

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It will be quite interesting to see what they do with the space creatures in "Galaxy's Child."

That definitely gives off the look of the CGI of the time. The texturing and lighting was terrible on that. Something tells me that was never put on film.

I suspect the CGI creatures in "Galaxy's Child" and any other time primitive CGI was used would've been done on videotape during the editing process. Even if it was done on film there's no way the CGI in those episodes would hold-up to HD. I suspect we'll see new CGI creature effects for "Junior."

I just watched "The Inner Light" and some of you must be watching this BD on an old console TV hooked up to your BD-Player through those old screw-in type connectors. I so no problems with the film-grain in this episode it looked perfect. Hell it almost looked too clear and perfect as the old-age makeup and appliances on Patrick Stewart didn't hold up very well to the high resolution.

But, then (and I hope CBS corrects this by the time Season 5 is released on Blu-Ray) I was really disappointed at whoever did the CGI Enterprise-D in The Inner Light. Right as soon as the teaser opens there's the shot of the D flying by with Picard's log entry, but that ship looked like Absolute CGI Garbage. I was reminded of the opening to the Voyager episode Blink of An Eye where you could tell that the Voyager was not the studio model, but a CGI ship. It was like a white shadow of the D flying by, and didn't have any of the depth that the physical model that appeared in the opening credits had, or when the D appeared briefly at the first return to the Enterprise. On the saucer, you know the lip on the underside where there are those two rows of rectangular boxes (I'm not too sure what they are for? Escape Pods?) running around the whole saucer, well on the CGI model I could just barely make them out, and yet on the SD DVD I could make those out just fine! Plus, just the way the ship came towards the screen looked like a very unfinished CGI design, or the way a Galaxy class ship might've looked at a distance on Bridge Commander or Armada from the late 1990's/early 2000's.

CBS Digital did such a fantastic, and way better job on the CGI for TOS-R than Eden FX did for Enterprise, that I was shocked at just how low quality this CGI D looked.

Yes those "rows of boxes" are escape pods. I didn't really notice any problems with the "CGI Enterprise" (assuming it was one) in any shots. But I suspect that as the project goes on the final versions will be more perfected. To put it bluntly, this sampler disc is probably very much a "rushed job" to give the idea of what they are doing.

I do think the "rainbow stars" just look odd and "too fake" during the warp shots. the colorization on them looks like someone just copy-and-pasted a couple pixel-wide segment of the color-selection menu in MS Paint. I certainly hope the warp-effects are changed in the final version of the episodes, something closer to what we saw on Voyager and Enterprise as the shows delved more into CGI.

[davejames]

BillJ wrote:

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I'm interested in seeing episodes like 11001001, The Neutral Zone, Contagion, Where Silence Has Lease, Time Squared and Q, Who?.

I think they'll almost have to replace the Borg ships, or at the very least the closeup shots. Unlike the movie version, the TV ships were much more plain, with a lot of obvious model kit detail that was scaled up a LOT bigger than it should have been.

[BillJ]

davejames wrote:

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I think they'll almost have to replace the Borg ships, or at the very least the closeup shots. Unlike the movie version, the TV ships were much more plain, with a lot of obvious model kit detail that was scaled up a LOT bigger than it should have been.

There's no need to replace it. TNG was a product of the 80's let us see the ingenuity of the 80's in action.

[22 Stars]

OK guys, EaF and SotF are done and I'm saving Inner Light to watch with my wife later.

The show just looks great, plain and simple. Lots of little things that everyone has pointed out that don't work, like that first SotF shot (honestly not sure why the went that route with the static matte shot) but otherwise just BRILLIANT! Even that wonky shot under the E with the energy beam looks better in motion, the beam is MUCH improved, not just its position.

I am making a date to watch the show with my TNG producer friend, and she wants to brush up on her TNG memories before going in front of the camera (not sure when yet) and I am going to jog her memory on some stuff.

Do me a favor, email me at rmeyers@nyc.rr.com if you have any specific questions about the production of TNG back then, specifically post-production stuff, sound design and anything in general and I will ask her! Specific episodes would be great too, as I don't think I'll be watching all 179 with her

[22 Stars]

I also wanted to mention how incredibly lucky we are that CBS is doing this project, not many tv shows get this treatment. I am going to try to locate the perfect person at CBS to direct THANK YOU emails to, and I think we should make our appreciation known.

[BillJ]

The fact they replaced the opening shot of Sins of the Father probably doesn't bode well for A Matter of Honor which uses the same shot.

[tomswift2002]

[QUOTE=Trekker4747;5731447]

Borjis wrote:

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Yes those "rows of boxes" are escape pods. I didn't really notice any problems with the "CGI Enterprise" (assuming it was one) in any shots. But I suspect that as the project goes on the final versions will be more perfected. To put it bluntly, this sampler disc is probably very much a "rushed job" to give the idea of what they are doing.

Another thing that I noticed with the ship in that shot was that it was very white. When they showed the ship in the opening credits and later on, you could see the blues and greens that had been used to make the ship appear the gray that it was, plus the lighting made the ship look lit up, but grey at the same time, and made it look real, not a plastic toy.

But with the escape pods, when you look at the shots of the D in the oc's and later in the episode, you'll notice that the escape pods actually stand out away from the ship, whereas on the CGI version they are flat into the hull and look like someone just took like a paper clip and scratched the "boxes" into a piece of plastic.

But with the CGI models, you also have to remember that when TOS-R was put into production, the models for Balance Of Terror & Miri and those early TOS-R episodes looked a hundred times better than the CGI D in Inner Light, and they were rushed jobs too. But those models I still remember when I saw my first episode of TOS-R, I thought were long-lost frames of film that had been shot in the 60's with the physical models, and they didn't look anywhere near the low level of CGI that Eden FX used for Enterprise. So, hopefully CBS Digital will get the CGI up to a higher level.

[Maxwell Everett]

GalaxyX wrote:

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The episode ["Sins of the Father"] suffers from the same grainy sections, and in some places looks washed out.

I'm watching it again right now, and I actually think "Sins of the Father" looks the best out of all three episodes (minus the upconverted bit). It has good deep blacks, bold color, and the most consistent and finest grain structure throughout. And it has a lot of great, dramatic lighting. And I LOVED how good "Encounter at Farpoint" looked!

I also appreciate they are using AVC compression on these instead of VC1 like TOS. TOS looked to be too DNR'd with a fair amount of dithering applied over that. This has what looks like original film grain, true to the source.

GalaxyX wrote:

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I only skimmed thru The Inner Light and noticed the following things:

1. The grainyness in the entire episode is turned up twice as bad as the other episodes, sometimes 3 times as bad, to the point of being distracting. In the other episodes, it was only certain portion that suffered it. This episode seems to have grain in its entire length.

The bridge scenes still look a bit finer grained than the Kataan scenes. It's possible it was a stylistic choice by DP Marvin Rush. Perhaps he used a coarser grained film stock. It's at least clear he was using diffusion on the lens in those scenes. This is from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion:

The warm cinematography, designed to subtly imply the oncoming supernova of the Kataan sun, almost rivals that of "Family." What's amazing here, though, is that the exterior scenes of the Ressick community were all filmed on Stage 16 indoors; Marvin Rush's lighting can be credited for the beautiful illusion.

[Trekker4747]

It'll all remain to be seen. I, personally, didn't find much problem with any of the shots that appear to be replaced. The only quibble I might have is that opening establishment shot in Sins it just looked off.

Otherwise, I think the show and the ship looks great.

The 90-degree grand fly-by of the ship near the end of "Inner Light" looked fabulous. (And was a remastered model shot.)