Remastering Query

[Methuselah Flint]

Hi guys,

I know this has probably already been addressed many times before...

I have been watching the glorious Remastered Blu Ray's, and I just want clarity on the process of remastering...

It’s my understanding the guys got the original raw footage, and recreated the special effects...

Does this mean that there were alternate takes of scenes uncovered too?

Also, does this mean that the whole take, I. E. "action" and "cut", and the few seconds before and after each scene, were on the film, and then they literally had to align each frame correctly to correspond with the originals?

Lastly, does this mean the audio/music had to be re-layered onto the film?

I'm aware the post-teaser title credits were re-done, and that a few portions of footage were not found, so they had to upgrade the SD footage.

Cheers.

 

[Tosk]

Does this mean that there were alternate takes of scenes uncovered too?

Yes. Some of them even made their way into the episodes. (There is alt footage used in Q Who, for example.) Not to mention all the stuff seen in the gag reels.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

Yes. Some of them even made their way into the episodes. (There is alt footage used in Q Who, for example.) Not to mention all the stuff seen in the gag reels.

Ooh where abouts in Q Who?

 

[Tosk]

The scene where they confront the Borg in engineering. The shots are very similar to the ones originally used, but several of the shots are definitely alternate takes.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

I assume they were replaced by accident?

 

[Christopher]

I have been watching the glorious Remastered Blu Ray's, and I just want clarity on the process of remastering...

It’s my understanding the guys got the original raw footage, and recreated the special effects...

Strictly speaking, remastering means going back to the original film masters and creating a new print from them with the highest possible quality. In the case of ordinary live-action footage without visual effects, remastering just means cleaning up the picture and audio, maximizing the image clarity and color balance and sound mix and that sort of thing.

But in the case of TNG's effects, the compositing and animation were done using standard-resolution video and thus aren't in HD like the raw film is. So they had to take the film elements used to create the original FX (e.g. miniature footage and matte paintings) and recreate the shots by combining them with new HD digital effects to take the place of the original video effects. So that goes beyond normal remastering -- sort of a hybrid between remastering and reconstructing. (Similarly, with TOS-R, the original film elements for the VFX shots no longer exist, so they couldn't remaster them at all and had to replace them. Contrary to what people tend to think, the new FX shots in TOS-R were the only parts that weren't remastered footage, because they weren't taken from the original masters.) They also upgraded screen graphics and text that were matted into viewscreens, often rewriting placeholder text into something more coherent or detailed since it would be legible now.

Also, does this mean that the whole take, I. E. "action" and "cut", and the few seconds before and after each scene, were on the film, and then they literally had to align each frame correctly to correspond with the originals?

Lastly, does this mean the audio/music had to be re-layered onto the film?

I believe that's how it works, yes. A number of re-releases of TOS in the past have altered the audio mix or re-edited different title sequences in place of the original ones. Generally the goal is to recreate the original editing, timing, and so forth as accurately as possible, but sometimes tweaks are made.

I don't know for sure, but I think editors keep detailed records of exactly what portions of film from which takes were used, which frames had the cuts, what frames the music and sound effects started and ended on, that sort of thing. So it's not like they have to eyeball it by watching the original -- there are written records that can be used as instructions for recreating the edit.

 

[diankra]

On the Who DVD, there has been a similar problem; returning to the original footage sometimes meant that the VFX had to be recreated, and that was missed (the original release of Remembrance) or otherwise messed up (Dalek Invasion of Earth, where a slip-up was removed from the updated fx edition, but ended up in the as-tx version as well)

 

[Tosk]

I assume they were replaced by accident?

I can't say for sure, but I assume they were substituted due to not being able to find the original takes.

 

[BillJ]

I can't say for sure, but I assume they were substituted due to not being able to find the original takes.

Or the original takes could have been damaged in some way.

 

[BillJ]

For anyone who questions whether or not to buy the remastered TNG, the answer is a resounding 'yes'. They did fantastic work bringing the show to the HD era.

 

[DS9forever]

Alternate takes were remastered and used for the DS9 documentary. 'The Homecoming' episode, the scene where Kira frees the prisoners, is one.

 

[JesterFace]

If a new picture quality is far superior to old one, isn't there a risk something "special" or feeling getting lost?

A little bit grainy footage might be a part of the original works' charm, at least with really old footage.

 

[Qonundrum]

Hi guys,

I know this has probably already been addressed many times before...

I have been watching the glorious Remastered Blu Ray's, and I just want clarity on the process of remastering...

It’s my understanding the guys got the original raw footage, and recreated the special effects...

True.

Does this mean that there were alternate takes of scenes uncovered too?

"The Measure of a Man" had a few. Lots of others might but as some film negatives were not found for actual takes, alternate ones may be hidden or lost or gone as well.

Also, does this mean that the whole take, I. E. "action" and "cut", and the few seconds before and after each scene, were on the film, and then they literally had to align each frame correctly to correspond with the originals?

Great question! From what I could see, a LOT of framing was fairly precise. It's definitely not an easy job, the only job worse would be to edit it all together the first time around. Am surprised youtube never had comparison videos including the original scenes' audio, which would reveal any synchronization issue.

Lastly, does this mean the audio/music had to be re-layered onto the film?

Yup. Especially with multi-channel (Was it 5.1 or 7.1?!), there's a lot more that can be done to make the audio feel snappier. Done right, a scene of being in a Borg cube and having Borg speech waver between all the surround channels would be freaky as all heck. I don't recall how BOBW had remixed it, only that it sounded cool. (Borg speech could still be in primary channels and other sounds in the background, depends on what the team was thinking of that they implemented.)

I'm aware the post-teaser title credits were re-done, and that a few portions of footage were not found, so they had to upgrade the SD footage.

Cheers.

Aye. Thankfully most scenes were filmed with softer lenses or were distance shots (only a couple with close-ups of Riker's face betray the upscaled SD origins, which still look okay and it helped that such reaction shots were brief). Season 5 had the worst omissions, from "Power Play" (1 minute 40 seconds or so, in Ten-Forward, but those were mostly distance shots. The differences are seen but not terribly detracting.)

 

[Christopher]

If a new picture quality is far superior to old one, isn't there a risk something "special" or feeling getting lost?

A little bit grainy footage might be a part of the original works' charm, at least with really old footage.

Well, back before things were digital, any copy of a copy would have degraded quality. So something like, say, a home video release of a feature film would have lower image quality than the film had in theaters (especially because the process used to transfer film to video back in the '70s and '80s washed out the colors, which is part of what created ST:TMP's reputation for being drab in appearance). Often, later syndication or video releases would be copies of copies of copies and would look a lot worse than the originals. So going back and taking a new print from the original master negatives was the only way to restore the quality to the same level as the original release.

That's not as much of an issue in the digital age, since in theory a digital copy has no loss of quality. Though I guess that depends on the resolution of the copy, whether it uses data compression, things like that. So maybe there can be some degradation. The goal of remastering is to match the quality of the original as closely as possible. So restorers/remasterers wouldn't try to remove any grain that was there in the original film master to begin with. I mean, that grain isn't the result of later processing or degradation, it's physically built into the film itself, so it's going to be reproduced by any direct print taken from that master. Although depending on how you approach things like digital color correction, recompositing FX shots, and the like, the remastered version can look cleaner or more vivid than the original in some ways.

Of course, sometimes people get used to the degraded version of a thing and think that the restored quality is "wrong" -- like when they restored the original colors of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and many art critics thought they were too garish because they'd grown up with the colors that resulted from centuries of fading and wear and assumed that was the "right" way for it to look.

 

[Sakonna]

If a new picture quality is far superior to old one, isn't there a risk something "special" or feeling getting lost?

A little bit grainy footage might be a part of the original works' charm, at least with really old footage.

For the most part, I think the TNG remaster is incredible, and it increases my enjoyment on rewatch. But I think a small handful of eps are actually harmed by it. Only two come to mind right now... remastered "Schisms" loses it's power for me, you simply see too much in the alien realm, it no longer feels mysterious and frightening, as it did in lesser definition. And the aged Picard makeup in "Inner Light" does not hold up and really takes me out of that story (though I was always cooler on "Inner Light" than the general consensus).

 

[TV's Frank]

The way it's been described by Mike Okuda and others is that the TNG remastered Blu-rays essentially meant revisiting almost the entire post-production part of the process. It was re-editing picture, sound and music using the original elements once they were remastered, assembling each episode again from scratch. This is why it was a big deal when the team couldn't locate 10 seconds of footage for a certain episode, they needed every take from was cut and printed for every single episode, in order to assemble a completely remastered image.

 

[tomswift2002]

You have to remember, with TNG, Seasons 1 to 3 were originally edited on analog NTSC 1-inch Type-C composite video tape for both SFX and final master (so the effects shots could’ve been up-to 20 analog composite generations away from the film, depending on how complex the shot was), and then switched to NTSC D2 Composite Digital Tape for Seasons 4 to 7. (S4-7 SFX were composited on D1 Digital Component Videotape and then transferred to D2 Composite Digital Video for editing into the final D2 master; for PAL regions these NTSC tapes were converted to PAL.) Also with the originals, some shots, like the “Torres freezing” shot from Farpoint were zoomed into further than the could zoom into them with the 2K scan for HD without loosing quality or becoming grainy and extremely soft. (It could’ve been possible with a 4K or 8K scan, but the film wasn’t scanned at that resolution.). So there are shots that look different, but are the same.

Also another difference is that the Blu-Ray’s are in 24 frames-per-second, which is the original film’s frame rate, vs the NTSC standard of 29.97 frames-per-second (which for PAL was then converted back to 25 frames-per-second) that the originals are in (of course some of the SFX model shots were shot at 30 frames-per-second and look overly-digital and plasticky in the remasters, but are physical).

Another difference is the color timing. With the originals, some episodes like “Haven” had changing colours with every cut. Or, in the case of “We’ll Always Have Paris”, Janice Menheim’a costume originally appeared grey, but was really blue and is blue in HD. Plus there was an overall pinkish hue to a number of original cuts (which may’ve come from the NTSC transfer process). But the pink hue is gone. Also one major issue that is gone is the rainbowing of the Enterprise’s deflector dish. That was caused by the NTSC composite video, but HD uses component video and has a lot more detail, so even in SD you no longer have the rainbowing (unless you are watching via composite or RF, but even then it’s not as bad as the original).