Paramount working on DS9 HD?
- Thread starter Captain Dax
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You've provided some great details and I really enjoyed reading them. One thing that I see discussed online a lot is the early digital remasters of the 80's. Supposedly, those were often made by just transferring the original tape to a digital format, without any effects to make it sound "better" on CD. The interesting thing then, is that a master tape would be made knowing that tape would be used to make a vinyl record, so the engineer who created that sound on the tape knew that it might sound different on vinyl. Later, engineers making CD masters seemed to take this into account and actually change the sound from what was on the master tape to make it sound more like the vinyl would have under "ideal" conditions, and thus actually changed the sound from what was on the master tape in some cases.
Maybe that is how some people feel, and it brings up the problem of knowing how a given shot in DS9 was "supposed to look." If the artists that made the props, costumes etc, could have been aware of what would happen to color and sharpness when completing the process of creating videotape masters, can we know that the makes of the show considered the film considered it to be the final word on how anything shot on film for the show should look?
For example, to borrow and modify a question from the TOS threads:
How blue vs. green should the science uniforms look? It seems that they look one way on film with "better" color saturation, and a different way on tape. Some TOS fans say that Kirk's shirt is yellow, even though that the costume was green, because William Ware Theiss took into that green shirt would look yellow on film. Others say Kirk shirt is green because the costume was green. Did Robert Blackman take the idea of what the costumes would look like when the film was transferred to tape into account? Did he do so subconsciously, so that even asking him might not provide the answer?
We know that he made the Operations uniform more yellow even in person, as opposed to the green or orange version used in early TNG that looked like a very similar yellow on tape but does look like not quite the same yellow on film.
So, unlike with TNG where the process of "filming on actual film" but having it "mastered on tape quickly" was fairly new, with DS9 and Voyager it is possible that those making the show acted in a similar manner to those later engineers of CD's, and may not have put on film exactly what they intended the audience to see.
Obviously film is a chemical process so it's difficult to know what the "true" colour should be. I believe for TNG they used the original SD master tapes as the basis for the final colour grade, which seems like the right way to go. I just want the original episodes, but in HD!
Garak Ruled!!!
Re-re-rewatching DS9, and I could not find a better place to put this;
I utterly forgot how exceptional Majel Barret was in her various performances in the ST iterations…plus, René Auberjonois!!!
On occasion I see some DS9 clips on YouTube that has been upscaleed to HD and it looks pretty good. However it's usually clips from after season 2 which geneally look better by default. I just compared a clip ftom "The Way of the Warrior' AI upscaled on YouTube that I casted to my TV and the current version of that episode ( same scene) that's streaming right now on Paramount plus. Didn't see a big difference. They both look like passable HD or "good" DVD quality. As already mentioned in this thread, it looks like Paramount may have already quietly done an upscale for Paramount plus.
The true test for me is the few minutes of "Emissary ". Is there any upscale clips of those scenes that actually look decent? Because to date, it's ranged between God awful quality to mediocre DVD quality. I have yet to see a HD ish improvement of those first few minutes that looks like anything close to passable HD or even "good" DVD quality. Especially the colors being so muted with fuzzy/pixelated blacks . If Paramount plus did recently upload a new print, Emissary still looks noticeably subpar unfortunately.
The true test for me is the few minutes of "Emissary ". Is there any upscale clips of those scenes that actually look decent? Because to date, it's ranged between God awful quality to mediocre DVD quality. I have yet to see a HD ish improvement of those first few minutes that looks like anything close to passable HD or even "good" DVD quality. Especially the colors being so muted with fuzzy/pixelated blacks . If Paramount plus did recently upload a new print, Emissary still looks noticeably subpar unfortunately.
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Sounds about right.
There's another clip, this from "The Die Is Cast" - upscaling has a superficial sharpness, but plenty of scenes show massaged-down artifacts, uneven sharpness for consoles (with blotchy bloopy text that instantly reveals it's just another upscale), inconsistent looking waxy mannequin people with haystack hair... uniforms with quilting that is matted out (but would be consistently visible if scanned from the original negs, of course)... the usual NTSC hue disparity between some scenes (the red alert lights are not quite that shade of orange)... saturation issues are a given unless they use another filtering too, not to mention bloom and crush artifacts on top of compression smoothing... What's really odd is how first-gen videotape upscaled looks so much better than film-telecined-to-videotape-being-upscaled. I'd bet Topaz Video AI was used. Which does a good job and is one of the best upscalers out there, but I wouldn't pass the YT clips as being genuinely remastered. The same TDiC clip has a battle scene and it looks impressive for what it is. If it wasn't for inlaid CGI into live action, they could otherwise do with DS9 what was done with TNG - scan the live action footage but port over upscaled/recolored CGI.
Strangely enough, all the upscaled exterior fx/battle scenes generally look.lots better (though, obviously, re-rendering at native 2k would be tons better (no deinterlacing of two 480i fields and the rest of it), if the assets existed, could be upgraded to the latest software as the models were created in early versions of said software, etc, etc.)
Is that what you mean? It still looks like 480p and, yep, I have the video resolution set to 1440p (note that people on Topaz forums recommend that 480i material not be upscaled to more than 1080p because 480i just doesn't have enough raw resolution to work with...). Every telltale sign of a low-end upscale process is there - especially for background elements, those not in focus, wax mannequin blobbiness, inconsistent smoothed mpeg artifacting, etc. Best of all is at 0:46 in. reveals more shiny moiré fun than at any given glitter spewing party.
Looked awesome in 1993, though. Of course, with 0.5~0.75mm dot pitch on a 25" 4:3 aspect ratio crt tv, a lot of these issues wouldn't have been seen. With today's 0.10~0.30mm dot pitch on a 32" 16:9 tv or monitor (never mind 40, 50, 65, 90"), this stuff does start to stand out.
All that wax mannequins... reminds me of something... flashback to yet another example of the 1990s and this one is fun:
The funny part is, it too is clearly upscaled, but the waxy look and ramped-up saturation actually suit the video because... plastic. It's all about the fuzzy waxy plasticine play-dough appearance, and you know that flower hat would have tons more detail (edge definition, contrast (shading) level, and you name it. (The original videotape wouldn't do color/saturation very well either, as VT always looked less saturated... like many 90s sitcoms that used VT and not film for the source material recording before being edited...)
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Same, going to unwatch for a while.
It's happened so often that I no longer get excited. Besides, the chance of them doing an upscale that looks bad is definitely not zero. If they do sell an upscaled version, my first act might be to buy a second copy of the DVD in case it ever becomes unreadable.
I know how you feel.
Babylon 5 didn't have upgraded effects when it got a HD remaster.
Babylon 5’s remaster is an extremely weird case, and the VFX shots were not just lower quality than the live-action, they’re a bit worse than the already-bad DVD release, and considerably worse than the original SD 4x3 videotape masters.
The live-action footage is pretty good, aside from being in 4x3 and not 16x9. The VFX footage has a weird stuttering effect in motion, probably from being rendered at 24 FPS, edited at 30 FPS, then converted back to 24 FPS to be printed to film, then scanned back from the film. The VFX shots are also more contrasty and a little less saturated than they were on the DVD, with detail either being over-bright or dropped to black. It looks doubly-odd, since the live-action footage is a touch more saturated and with less crushed highlights and shadows than before.
I wouldn't call it a definitive version, but I'm not sure there's ever going to be a definitive B5 release. Also, the Blu Rays didn't include any of the special features from the DVDs, including the movies (it does include the special edition of the pilot, but inexplicably cropped in to 16x9; "The Gathering" is the only episode of B5 that wasn't filmed with widescreen in mind, ironically). I did a quick live-action comparison on my blog, and I've just put together a comparison of a VFX shot of the Blu-Ray, DVD, and Tom Smith's re-renders of the original file so you can see what a TNG-style remaster might give you (or a taste of it, that YouTube compression doesn't mess around). There's another one I can do, comparing the live-action quality of the DVD to a VFX composite shot on the blu-ray (there was a post-production camera shake they missed when doing the widescreen master in "Voices of Authority"), but I'll save that for some other time.
Also, a petty thing I just remembered when I was typing up those labels—while they fixed a couple of the seasons on the DVDs switching to the wrong font for credits, subtitles, and captions, the color is way off, the blue is much too light.
I've been watching the B5 S1 Blu-rays on a 50" 1080p TV and I've found them pretty watchable, though I also may not have the most discerning eye. I'm used to seeing the episodes in widescreen, so for me it's a bit jarring to see them in 4x3. I think when I first got them I also watched "Severed Dreams", but that's now long enough ago that I can't really comment on it.
That TPTB didn't even port over the commentary tracks is baffling to me, especially given how many of the people on them are no longer with us. It really seems as though WB settled for the minimum viable product, but at least it doesn't look or sound terrible.
That TPTB didn't even port over the commentary tracks is baffling to me, especially given how many of the people on them are no longer with us. It really seems as though WB settled for the minimum viable product, but at least it doesn't look or sound terrible.
Warners should've spend the millions to upgrade the FX; that they didn't show how negligent they really are towards this franchise that they own, and also why fans tried to get JMS to buy the rights to Babylon 5 so that he could get it made at a company that cares (and also why they were willing to crowdsource fund said buyout.)
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