Season ONE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' started by Mutai Sho-Rin, Jul 24, 2012.

  1. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    I think that's the real Quinn's personality. Remember in "Conspiracy" the tip off for Riker and Picard that something wasn't quite right with Admiral Quinn was that he was being so cheerful.
     
  2. FrontierTrek

    FrontierTrek Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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  3. Salinga

    Salinga Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    I have to confess: I am a little bit dissappointed. I didnt expect so much strong grain in the image, since it was shot in a well lit studio athmosphere. 1080p resolution seems even be a bit too high for the source material, it would pretty much look the same in 720p. Looking close it even looks more like an to 1080p upscaled 720p picture to me.

    But I guess thats due to the old analog source material? New movies have a much sharper image on BluRay for me.
     
  4. gaghyogi49

    gaghyogi49 Commander Red Shirt

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  5. Michael

    Michael Good Bad Influence Moderator

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    ^ I gotta say, I really appreciate these wonderful articles! Always a very interesting read. Endless thanks for doing these. Mit anderen Worten: Weiter so! :bolian:
     
  6. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    You know, it never occurred to me that the neck of the Ferengi ship was actually supposed to be elongating in that one scene. Or that it was supposed to be some kind of "surrender stance."

    I always thought the camera was just zooming in to make the ship look more dramatic and imposing.
     
  7. The Transformed Man

    The Transformed Man Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Huh? Most film stock used in TV production in the late 80s is going to have a layer of grain... sorry but grain is not an imperfection it's part of the structure of the image. And what does analog have to do with anything? The images on the disc are struck directly from the camera negative so you are going to get the best image possible. Certainly doesn't look "upscaled" at all.

    You need to watch some older movies. I would dare say "Casablanca" and "Sound of Music" on blu-ray are two of the best representations of film on disc and demonstrates just how much detail a properly restored and scanned film shot on celluloid has.

    What you are describing as "detail" I suspect has more to do with the modern fascination of "crushing" blacks which means heightening the contrast until blacks become almost pure black. It artificially makes the image look sharper, but the reality is a lot of image detail is lost as subtle shadows and highlights are lost in blackness.

    Here are a couple of examples:

    http://media.photobucket.com/image/crushed blacks example/GamerGuyX_GGX/blackcrush.jpg

    http://savestarwars.com/images/sefail/blacklevelscomparison1.jpg

    As you can see in both examples the images with the "crushed" blacks look sharper, but a lot of the fine detail of the image is lost.


    Yancy
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2012
  8. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    There might be SOME shots that are overly-grainy, but the vast majority appear about as clean and sharp as anything made for TV today. At least from what I'm seeing.
     
  9. Captrek

    Captrek Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Since it wasn't legible in the original broadcast, why did somebody take the time to write it? Why not just use lorem ipsum, or any preexisting public domain text?
     
  10. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    The various moving parts of the Ferengi ship are not really apparent as shot. It was an interesting idea, that one culture's "surrender" gesture might be read as something different by another, but it just doesn't come across.
     
  11. gaghyogi49

    gaghyogi49 Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    That particular filler text has been around for decades. There are companies that produce those newspapers especially for film studios, they simply use the same text over and over again. I'm currewntly watching The Twilight Zone on blu-ray, and the same filler text can be read whenever a newspaper is seen on that show. Here's an article about newspapers in Star Trek I wrote some time ago:

    Newspapers in Star Trek at EAS
     
  12. Sho

    Sho Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Thanks!
     
  13. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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  14. Maxwell Everett

    Maxwell Everett Commodore Commodore

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Well said! As you touched upon, grain on the original camera negative isn't simply something in the way of the image... it is the image. Each individual silver-halide crystal grain in the blue, green and red sensitive layers of the film emulsion are exposed to light in their respective wavelengths. The silver grains are then bleached away during processing, leaving behind a color dye "cloud" -- like a tiny drop of water on a paper towel.

    If you're interested Salinga, you can read more about the process here.

    Also, if you pay close attention to the Energized featurette, a gentleman, I believe it was Wade Felker, the film transfer technician on the project, holds up an original film canister from the episode "Justice" (if I remember correctly)... and on the camera report sticker it says the film stock used was Kodak 5294 (400T). This was a high-speed stock that was a bit contrastier and grainier than the stocks we have today.

    Another film that used Kodak 5294 400T was 1986's The Name of the Rose starring Sean Connery. You can see some screencaptures here, (NOTE: there is one NSFW cap in the mix!). You'll see that its contrast and "graininess" is quite similar to TNG in its first season. Though, I'll just point out that this blu-ray did not have an original camera negative as its source.

    Interesting side note... all films shot before 1981 used 100 ISO* speed film. The first high-speed stock was introduced by Fuji (Fuji A 250T 8518) which, as you can see by the number, was 250 ISO. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was one of the first motion pictures to use this stock.

    *ISO (International Standardization Organization) Yes, they also measure film speed!
     
  15. Maxwell Everett

    Maxwell Everett Commodore Commodore

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Great as always! Just wanted to point out that in the section that shows Riker on the cliff you write, "Some shots on the planet surface are rather blurry, perhaps owing to the video post-production." You could note here that this is one of many anamorphically lensed shots in the early seasons where -- in lieu of using a motion control camera -- the shot was filmed in 2.35:1 Panavision and later "Pan & Scanned" to achieve a camera move in post.
     
  16. gaghyogi49

    gaghyogi49 Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Cool, thanks for that info! We'll include it and give credit to you in the article!
     
  17. Maxwell Everett

    Maxwell Everett Commodore Commodore

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  18. gaghyogi49

    gaghyogi49 Commander Red Shirt

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Ahh, that explains the extreme blurriness of that shot in the original episode. I thought it was just the various materialisation effects of the holodeck but the pan and scan adds to the blurriness and explains why the shot is still a little blurred, even on blu-ray.
     
  19. Maxwell Everett

    Maxwell Everett Commodore Commodore

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    Yep. And here's the other one from "The Last Outpost". I had to do more image editing to this one because it isn't used in one shot like the other two... but pieced out in several shots on the bridge, sometimes tighter, sometimes wider:

    [​IMG]

    Full res: http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/8508/thelastoutpost2235.jpg
     
  20. mswood

    mswood Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Re: The OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Season 1 Discussion Thread

    I have to seriously disagree. Even the effects producers will talk about how poor their work was in the first season. This wasn't because they didn't have talent (far from it, I mean look at Legato's career as just one example).

    It was primarily due to two major factors, man power and not having the infrastructure in place to really do weekly effects.

    Not that they couldn't produced some nice model work, but that the production was not designed to do weekly special effects. The plan was for ILM's stock shots to cover the vast majority of material.

    They weren't staffed for it, nor did they have the facilities to do really strong work. Now of course they tell stories of working themselves do death the first season just to get anything on the screen. But you will see that Season two had vastly more polish and creativity in both design and actual lensing of fx.

    And as each year happened the show increased the productions ability to work on a tv schedule. Compare (not the ILM footage as they did have the have a great set up designed for fx, obviously), the work done in the first season versus the 2nd and 3rd (pre 4 footer), and obviously it wasn't that they gained greater skill, but they gained more time (as the staff was enlarged), and they planned out more what was needed, and how best to work with the facilities they had.

    Really can't wait for us to be able to see the various teams work and how it differs. For example, I love Legato's work, and find Curry's (motion control side) serviceable but not beautiful (Curry's non model work I actually like better). TO me something like comparing a Rob Bowman versus a Cliff Bole.

    As for the quality of episodes, I know we disagree though the episodes mentioned are the ones I do like ( I rate them all as Very good in fact really the only episodes of the first season I would actually recommend), but I even my favorite of that bunch (usually 11001001), but I wouldn't call any of them great (but in fairness I don't through out high marks often, generally I think people are way to lenient on the writing and acting of popular entertainment.