Star Trek TNG Remastered?

[jefferiestubes8]

I just watched TNG season 7 last disc with special features yesterday and the episode "Parallels" had a shot with hundreds of Ent-D ships that were all shot on motion control camera with 35mm film.
For them to remaster that shot from the film camera negative they would have to locate each piece of film of each ship and them composite them all in. The shot was only 5 seonds or so!
That shot alone shows why if a TNG-R were done that a Ent-D would be fully CGI for all visual effects shots.

[SeattleMatt]

Hober Mallow wrote:

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Yes, there have been a few threads about this, and there's one huge hurdle which makes a remastered TNG extremely difficult. Unlike TOS, TNG was filmed and then edited on videotape. All the FX work was done on videotape, and the only completed, edited episodes are on videotape. There's no way to take that and do a high definition transfer.

Presumeably, the original film still exists, but there is no completed episode on film. Giving TNG the TOS-R treatment would be almost like taking the series back into production and re-editing every scene of episode with new special FX. This could be extremely expensive and impractical.

The producers basically f***ed themselves by trying to save money and edit the episodes on videotape.

So is the final cut a common thing among all of the series between TOS and ENT? If so even a higher resolution edition would be pointless.

[Butters]

trevanian wrote:

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Today's standards for ship stuff is LOWER than the 90s, not higher. DS9's miniature stuff looks better than most stuff that followed it. Except for FIREFLY, most CG spaceship stuff on the tube is not close to photorealistic.

Its not just a case of the standard of detail or photorealism of a scene though. Much of DS9 did present a high standard, but the introduction of the new opener in season 4, with eva guys and passing starships, only served to highlight what was missing from the regular episode effects.

B5 for example, the CGI wasn't especially convincing, but it did forward the narrative in a visually interesting way that physical models couldn't hope to compete with on weekly basis. However high the standard of modelling was, CGI today is giving us reflections on glass and glimpses through windows to see the crew inside on a TV budget.

Dissapointingly, SG:U has adopted a tradional cartoony apprearance to its CGI that remains inferior to TNG in terms of photorealism. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Miniature work produced some of my all time favourite space sequences, such as the wounded Enterprise - B overpass in Generations, and the pullback from the station at the start of Event Horizon.

NuBSG (spit) has some amazing and close up exterior shots, indeed, in Razor, theres an amzing internal shot of flightdeck after a crash landing that left me rubbing my eyes such was the attention to detail and rendering.

If done right, the CGI in a new TNGr would make us feel like we're there.

[FreddyE]

Wouldn´t it be possible to just "upconvert" the existing show to HD and then rotoscope the old effects and make new? Wouldn´t be nearly as good as starting from the negatives of course...but better then nothing?

[Cheapjack]

I think that a blu ray player would upscale anyway, if you put a standard DVD in it.

Why pay more for an upscaled DVD? It's a bit of a rip off.

[Mr. Laser Beam]

SeattleMatt wrote:

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So is the final cut a common thing among all of the series between TOS and ENT? If so even a higher resolution edition would be pointless.

TOS was shot and edited all on film. There was no videotape involved. So it was airable in HD from the get-go.

TNG, DS9 and Voyager would have to have all their EFX recreated from scratch, since those were done on tape. ENT, from what I can gather, would have to have the EFX *re-rendered*, but not recreated. There is a difference.

[FreddyE]

I thought some more about it. Since the effects were done on video and they have to reassemble the episodes from raw material anyway (since probably no film master copy without effects exists) they save the time and money for rotoscoping, right? Finding the right takes of every episode and putting them together shouldn´t be that big of a deal? Surely there´s some kind of document where they noted down wich takes they used?

[Jefferies]

FreddyE wrote:

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I thought some more about it. Since the effects were done on video and they have to reassemble the episodes from raw material anyway (since probably no film master copy without effects exists) they save the time and money for rotoscoping, right? Finding the right takes of every episode and putting them together shouldn´t be that big of a deal? Surely there´s some kind of document where they noted down wich takes they used?

Indeed, from what I have read this seems to be the case. In fact, the edit information might have been noted directly on the raw film parts. Thus if they have the original film material they also know how it needs to be edited. However, I do not know how conistently this notation was done. Nonetheless, even if they didn't have the documentation, all they would need to do is employ a few dudes to go through every episode and compare them with the raw film parts to get this information. Surely that wouldn't be the money sink of this project?

[Cheapjack]

Jefferies wrote:

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Indeed, from what I have read this seems to be the case. In fact, the edit information might have been noted directly on the raw film parts. Thus if they have the original film material they also know how it needs to be edited. However, I do not know how conistently this notation was done. Nonetheless, even if they didn't have the documentation, all they would need to do is employ a few dudes to go through every episode and compare them with the raw film parts to get this information. Surely that wouldn't be the money sink of this project?

How much would that cost? And would they make a profit? Has anyone here put the standard DVD in a blu ray player and seen the results on a HD screen?

[GhostFaceSaint]

You know most of this technology is still changing and improving, eventually they may be able to transfer the old 35mm negatives onto 1080p HD efficiently and therefore cheaply but the problem would come that the "Hero" version of the USS Enterprise would cost a lot of money to do it digitally on the same level of detail as the USS Enterprise in the film Star Trek (XI), that cg model cost a lot of money to render. What about other ships like Romulan Bird's of Prey or the Borg Cube? Don't get me wrong I want them to redo all those shots for my big screen TV but the money could still easily be in the millions for just one season just because of the CG but the CG rendering technology is also improving becoming cheaper to to do but I don't want them to do any new CG if it is not up to the scale of XI Enterprise, so it may take a few more years to see any remastered TNG.

[GhostFaceSaint]

Cheapjack wrote:

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How much would that cost? And would they make a profit? Has anyone here put the standard DVD in a blu ray player and seen the results on a HD screen?

Depending on your blu-ray player you could get a very decent image but certain images like CG shots and some other special effects don't always transfer so well even on the best blu-ray player, if you want a really good image for HD you have to render them in HD.

[FreddyE]

I watch blue-ray using my pc...the player software has a very elaborate SD - > HD upconvert...never watched a TNG DVD with this before though...I´ll give it a try and post a screenshot.

As for the cost for TNG RE...I don´t know a lot about studio polictics and stuff...but couldn´t they finance it via a jointventure of some kind? For example 50 % CBS and 50 % Paramount? It seems they are doing something similar on a smalscale already for the TOS BlueRay...it has the CBS Bumper on the start of each disc but on the packaging there is the "Paramount Home Entertainment" logo.

If only I was more talented...I would love to do some rotoscoping on clips from my TNG DVDs and throw together a small "demo reel".

[Dukhat]

I have a question that I wonder if anyone in the know (i.e., Mr. Okuda or Sternbach) could answer.

OK...let's say for argument's sake that a remastering of TNG actually happens. And let's say that all model shots will now be replaced with CGI. And let's take a specific episode as an example: "The Naked Now." In that episode, the U.S.S. Tsiolkovsky was shown to be a re-use of the old Grissom model from Star Trek III, albeit 70+ years after that movie, and would have been a terribly outdated design for the late 24th century. Now back in the day, the recycling of old movie models was prevalent, not because TPTB necessarily wanted to use them, but because they were forced to because it was a cost-cutting measure so new models didn't have to be built. However, if there had been a budget to build a new model for the Tsiolkovsky, then it would most likely have been built.

Here's my question: Since the FX would be redone In CGI, then for all intents and purposes, a new design could be created for the Tsiolkovsky. But would that happen, or would there just be a CGI model made of the Grissom-type ship, just to honor the original footage? And all those endless reuses of stock footage of the Excelsior rendesvousing with the Enterprise...would they all just be the same too, or would there be new shots of new ship designs instead?

[FreddyE]

Well for TOS RE they actually created a totally new design in a similar instance. Can´t remember what is was or wich episode though.

Something else: Do you think the "rubber band effect" wich was state of the art at its time should be recreated like it was or enhanced? I would love an enhanced version...maybe some kind of mixture of what they did in Star Trek 09...with that loud "BANG" at the end.

[Bertie]

TOS-R didn't really change ships excessively.

When there was no ship (which happened sometimes due to the budget) or a pathetically cheap ship (like a blob of light) they replaced those with something different-looking.

But when the ship was reasonably identifiable, as was the case for example with all appearances of the Constitution class or the Romulan warbird or the Klingon cruiser, the new artwork tended to keep the same basic shape as the old. At some point, supposedly, they thought about replacing some of the Constitutions in "The Ultimate Computer" with something else, but eventually decided, no, they were Constitutions in the original, and that they will stay.

So I don't see them doing anything like replacing Grissoms and Reliants or Excelsiors; its established, for better or worse, that these hulls lasted a really long time, and they'll probably stay that way.