Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[Salinga]

Is it me, or is the live footage of "Unnatural Selection" exceptionally sharper than the previous converted episodes? I just watched this episode and everything is to the pixel crystal clear sharp, while the previous episode is a little more blurry overall.

[BriGuy]

Well, nearly two weeks after release my copy ordered from Best Buy finally arrived in the mail.

Watched the first three episodes. Enjoyed them all. Yes, there were scenes where the film grain was pretty heavy. Whatcha gonna do?

The casualness of the "alien rape" mentioned above, yes, noticed that, wondered why they were so nonchalant about it.

But more importantly, something I noticed (and I"m sure it's not new)... how were Geordi and Data able to take Moriarty's sketch of the Enterprise off the holodek??? Shouldn't that paper have disappeared as soon as they walked out??? The holographic paper made it all the way to the observation lounge!

[trekker670]

BriGuy wrote:

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But more importantly, something I noticed (and I"m sure it's not new)... how were Geordi and Data able to take Moriarty's sketch of the Enterprise off the holodek??? Shouldn't that paper have disappeared as soon as they walked out??? The holographic paper made it all the way to the observation lounge!

Yes, it an often discussed blooper. It's been explained as the holodeck using a combination of projections, forcefields and replicated matter. In this case, the paper was replicated. However, this was actually a story point that was dropped due to a deleted scene.

[Tosk]

At this point we had already seen replicated matter leave the holodeck, so it's not really a blooper at all.

[Scotty]

BriGuy wrote:

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Watched the first three episodes. Enjoyed them all. Yes, there were scenes where the film grain was pretty heavy. Whatcha gonna do?

Nothing, as that's how it should look. If there is actually one thing HTV did right is that they didn't DNR the live action stuff. Go watch any 80's movie and you'll see the grain is there. It's inherent to the filmstock they used back in the eighties (which granted wasn't as good as quality as they used in the nineties.

[Tosk]

The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever. They didn't seem to care if one shot was overwhelmed with grain and then the next is DNR's into oblivion. If they'd cleaned things up a little more consistently, things would look a lot better and be less distracting.

Judicious use of DNR is not a crime, even though those three letters have become some kind of automatic evil.

[Angel4576]

^^ Agree.

As I said, I'm no grain snob, but the inconsistency is enough to drive you nuts. The beginning of 'The Child' is utterly ridiculous, where you get different POV shots, one DNR'd to within an inch of its life, yet the other untouched with excessive amounts of grain onscreen.

I appreciate that they used different film stock in season 2, but wouldn't that affect all shots, rather than just some? Or were they mixing in the different stocks, and getting vastly different results?

[Salinga]

Tosk wrote:

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The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever. They didn't seem to care if one shot was overwhelmed with grain and then the next is DNR's into oblivion.

Here also it shows, how much more clever the guys from CBS-D handled this matter: Instead of DNR sfx scenes, like HTV did, so the special effects, which have no grain, blend in better, they just added fake grain to the SFX, so they blend in to the natural grain of the live action footage.

Not only blend the sfx scenes then better into the 100% live action shots, the sfx scenes also look more sharp and natural due to this.

And that's how it is done!

[NewHorizon]

Salinga wrote:

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...they just added fake grain to the SFX, so they blend in to the natural grain of the live action footage.

Not only blend the sfx scenes then better into the 100% live action shots, the sfx scenes also look more sharp and natural due to this.

And that's how it is done!

Yup, exactly how the restoration team did it on The directors edition of The Motion Picture. They sampled the grain and had a grain texture that was applied to any new effects to make them match the original footage.

Why HTV did it backwards is somewhat baffling.

[BillJ]

NewHorizon wrote:

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Why HTV did it backwards is somewhat baffling.

Did HTV have the same per episode budget as CBS-Digital had for season one?

[NewHorizon]

BillJ wrote:

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Did HTV have the same per episode budget as CBS-Digital had for season one?

I have no idea. I would wager adding a grain / noise layer over a CGI effect would be no more time consuming than waiting for the computer to render out a heavily DNR'd scene so they could slap an effect onto it.

From what I've seen of HTV's work in the past few weeks, this just seems to be the way they do things. DNR'ing films to death is their schtick. Despite having original members of the crew there to guide them, they lacked the overall skill sets required for a restoration of this magnitude.

As CBS knew when they hired them, they're not a VFX house. Sure, they can do it in a pinch but that sure doesn't mean they're good at it.

There are simply instances where you can throw tons of money at something and it will still come out looking poor if the skills aren't there.

CBS-D have worked hard to earn their stripes I think. I hope the next contracted FX company is as talented.

[Salinga]

BillJ wrote:

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Did HTV have the same per episode budget as CBS-Digital had for season one?

Maybe, but even if: It depends where the money goes, how much time was invested for the money, how motivated and skilled the employees are.

[Scotty]

Tosk wrote:

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The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever.

The only grain managment is DNR and that is a big no-no. Most of you have gotten used to bigbudget movies, epic nature documentaries and recent tv shows on Blu Ray and think that is how it always should look. Older movies and tv shows look like this on Blu and it is how they should look. Notice that none of the reviewers on sites like Bluray.com or High Def Digest are complaining about excessive grain. Their only gripe is that it's missing in the visual effects sequences.

[Tosk]

Scotty wrote:

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The only grain managment is DNR and that is a big no-no.

Taking a single sentence without further context changes what my point was.

[NewHorizon]

Scotty wrote:

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The only grain managment is DNR and that is a big no-no.

I think you missed his point.

Nobody appears to have managed the use of DNR on Season 2. They either used too much, like in the vfx scenes, or didn't use any. DNR isn't bad if it's used in such a way that it balances the variance of grain from shot to shot. The shots shouldn't be scrubbed clean, but rather just 'slightly' cleaned up so that switching from one POV to another isn't jarring, or switching from a scene with no VFX to one with a phaser shot isn't completely different.

DNR is a tool like any other and can be used well or poorly.

HTV promote themselves as 'leaders' in the industry but their work on TNG and other projects show otherwise. If their tools were as advanced as they claim they are, then all of the footage should look somewhat more consistent.

They can talk themselves up but the work speaks for itself.