At least for Casablanca, they resisted the temptation to tinker with the content of the film. Let's make it widescreen! Let's edit out all the cigarettes everyone is smoking! Let's make the roulette wheel honest! Let's have Victor die heroically so that Rick and Ilsa can get married getting the happy ending!
Poll Would you purchase a legit remaster of DS9?
- Thread starter SlayerSantiago
- Start date
I honestly think the chances now diminish day by day. Physical sales are declining so it takes the economics out of it even more.
The only way I can see it happening is if another company wants to do it and de-risk it for Paramount.
Is it? I was under the impression that it "did not make what they were hoping for" which isn't necessarily the same thing as losing money.
If I've missed confirmation to the contrary I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
Last edited:
Yeah. While I'm for upscaling, meaning I'm for improving the clarity of what's already there and making it look the best it can... I'm against changing what's already there. Unless it's correcting some glaring production error. Or correcting something that was done against the director's will. Like removing those stupid narrations that were in the 1982 theatrical version of Blade Runner.
Things like getting rid of the cigarettes? No. Smoking was huge, it's the way it was. I'm a non-smoker, but this fact doesn't offend my sensibilities. Nor should it offend anyone else's who has common sense. Hell, my favorite show of all-time is Mad Men. The level of smoking there was ridiculous, but it's still my favorite show.
From what I understand, they've made all kinds of stupid changes to E.T. I'm not a fan of that. Rocky vs. Drago is kind of gray area. It's the director himself who made the changes, and the original Rocky IV is still available.
Cropping an image to widescreen? I'm against a blind-cropping where someone decides to idiotically chop off the top and bottom without a thought about how it if it would chop off people's heads or get rid of important information. I've heard about how horrible the cropping of Gone With the Wind was, when it was re-released to theaters in the '70s. Not something I'd want to see. OTOH, if someone did a tilt-and-scan, and knew how to make sure all the important visual information was kept in each and every shot, that I could support if they were very careful with it.
At the end of the day, I don't have a "one size fits all" mentality. Some changes are for the better, some are for the worse. It depends. If something looks or feels wrong to me, to be brutally honest, it's really a case of "I know it when I see it."
On the Star Trek end, I think TNG is how you do a re-mastering and TOS is how you don't do a re-mastering.
Last edited:
Is it? I was under the impression that it "did not make what they were hoping for" which isn't necessarily the same thing as losing money.
If I've missed confirmation to the contrary I would appreciate being pointed in the right direction.
I don't have chapter and verse, but they spent a lot more money on restoring TNG (and would have to for DS9 and VOY as well) than most video projects. And this was just as physical media was taking a downturn.
How much of a shortfall it was, I don't know. But if TNG had been a success then a DS9 would have been an obvious next step and they have never taken it.
Yes, I understand that. But there is a difference between losing money and not making the amount of profit that warranted moving forward. That's the only distinction I seek.
Exactly. If you can't make as much on your investment as you would sticking it in an index fund, why bother?
Conservatives can't do math, that's why healthcare sucks, and everything else is suffering enshittification.
Is healthcare unrelated? yeah, but it's one of many thousands of examples of markets getting screwed over by bean counters who can't do math, and overinflate costs.
Scanning the film negatives is the labor intensive part, and likely runs around 9 million.
Conforming them with iConform is 3.
You could be selective about VFX and upscaling software would work fine on shots that are exclusively space shots.
Motion control data likely survives.
Never trust a conservative bean counter to do math, or you're going to end up with a stack of middle men overcharging and sabotaging everything.
If they could do math, they'd be able to make run a market that wasn't on the verge of collapse every 3 minutes.
The truth is DS9 being remastered would be profitable.
I can go in circles with what I've seen so far, and imo, looks like they're saving it for 2028, the 35th anniversary.
There's potential they'll announce in 2026.
If you want it write Paramount.
Is healthcare unrelated? yeah, but it's one of many thousands of examples of markets getting screwed over by bean counters who can't do math, and overinflate costs.
Scanning the film negatives is the labor intensive part, and likely runs around 9 million.
Conforming them with iConform is 3.
You could be selective about VFX and upscaling software would work fine on shots that are exclusively space shots.
Motion control data likely survives.
Never trust a conservative bean counter to do math, or you're going to end up with a stack of middle men overcharging and sabotaging everything.
If they could do math, they'd be able to make run a market that wasn't on the verge of collapse every 3 minutes.
The truth is DS9 being remastered would be profitable.
I can go in circles with what I've seen so far, and imo, looks like they're saving it for 2028, the 35th anniversary.
There's potential they'll announce in 2026.
If you want it write Paramount.
They're never going to acknowledge that there is a difference between those concepts.
If you bring that up, they usually start beating their head with a mallet as though you've shown them an IRL paradox, like a Mobius strip.
As for matching index funds?
Financial brainrot never ceases to leave me in awe.
The only solution economically, watch water evaporate and consume pink goo, and eat maggot soup.
Risk Aversion proves if you live in a cardboard box, wear a jumpsuit, and do these things, we can solve all of the world's problems.
Austerity Augury is the only way to live.
Last edited:
No. It isn't. Did you follow how the HD of TNG was made? This was not a simple process because of how the Berman SD shows were made. And if they had sold as many blu-rays as they had DVDs then the cost/benefit would have worked out. But they didn't.
Hollywood is FAMOUS for being run by conservatives.
WHAT??!?! Where? How? Why? They can't keep track of all of their models! And you think they're keeping 1990's MOTION CONTROL DATA?
And what would you do with it if you had it? Reshoot the models?
Or are you talking CG files? In which case, again, what do you do with it? Re-render at higher res (on what systems and with what software?) with assets that wouldn't be appropriate for a current video game? What format are these all in? That can be read by anybody now?
Fine. It didn't make enough money. No they didn't go into the red. But as they do not make Star Trek out of the goodness of their hearts (not even the Great Bird - ESPECIALLY not the Great Bird) then what is the difference to you? They did not feel it worth the investment in time, effort, and cost.
They DID make enough money on TNG DVDs. So they made DS9 and VOY DVDs. They did NOT make the money they felt justified the project on the TNG Blu Rays. And they put a LOT of time and effort into the TNG blu rays.
The VFX supervisors kept track of the files, they've teased that for decades now.
Year of Hell's VFX files survive, so do nearly all of DS9's.
Deep Space Nine in High Definition: One Step Closer?
Two years ago, fans thought it would be impossible that a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation could ever be remastered in high definition. Like spinoffs Deep Space Nine and Voyager…
blog.trekcore.com
sci-ficandy: voyager strikes back
Happy Friday, nerds and nerdettes! I twisted my wrist pretty badly yesterday, so I decided on a weekend post that would involve as little typing as possible; that could mean only one thing –…
darthmojo.wordpress.com
(If you want, go digging around, they've been teasing that the assets survive since 2008. If you're still parroting that BS that they didn't survive, you're two thousand and late.)
(The Vast majority of Babylon 5's do too. I have to keep repeating it. But it's been confirmed for decades at this point.)
Conservatives run the business side of things at corporate, anyone with a brain can tell you that.
Creatives skew Liberal, that's always been the way it is.
Film Negatives are stored in a mine, and then have to be pulled, shipped, catalogued and scanned, that's physically labor intensive.
Where am I wrong there? Also, did I say it was simple? You intentionally are misconstruing my statement.
The physical models don't need to be reshot, they're on film.
They just need to either be recomposited or upscaled, (The Babylon 5 special is always an option.)
TNG's filming process is documented pretty well, and they did the same thing remastering that,
Scan it and recomp, or upscale.
In the grand scheme of things, it's no harder than TNG.
Or...the other 42 times that it's been accomplished.
Even "Mad Men" had a 4k remaster, and had tons of CGI.
They don't have to reshoot the models.
Pink Goo for the win.
As for the profitability of TNG, it made it's money back and then some.
But the under-performance lie is one that keeps on self perpetuating, as well as the fact, that 12 years ago, the Market wasn't making the record profits (it's supposedly not making, but totally making now, with multiple mature revenue streams, and a strong cult following, that likely would surpass TNG by orders of magnitude. From a critical and financial perspective, Voyager and DS9 are now the relevent vintage Trek, as TOS and TNG were 15 years ago.)
Last edited:
Here you are correct. And that's the problem. Because TNG was hard.
No. It was watch it, find it, scan it, whoops wrong one, damn it why didn't they keep these clips together, oh, we don't have that scene at all, do we? and so on for seven seasons.
Now if they just want to do an upscan like they're doing for Doctor Who, that would be far more affordable. But that's not what they did for TNG. Or What We Left Behind.
But in these cases they are not actually in the shape of an episode. Because that's not how they were edited. They were edited on tape and they just happened to have saved all of the film. That's what made TNG different from, say TOS.
Then "motion control data" will do you no good.
As for the CG elements, I believe that the teams that made the Star Trek: The Motion Picture DE (which was more recent than DS9 and used some of the same staff) thought they would be able to do the same thing. They had kept all of the data with the explicit intent of re-rendering at higher def some day. When they went to make the 2022 DE they found out that they were wrong.
But maybe what Bonchune said 12 years ago still absolutely holds. So the FX aren't an issue and now it's ONLY as hard as TNG.
But that was hard.
If you do the bulk scan, iConform finds all of that for you.
It's why it only took the X files 18 months to be completed.
Iconform was in it's infancy on TNG. (Hence why they had sections of upscaled footage on the demo disk, I watched the little documenary and have cited that.)
It uses image recognition from the original master tape, makes an EDL, then produces a raw HD master, that is true to the old cut.
You still need VFX work, but options exist for that, and IMO, they have a solution.
Cleanup is up to MTI software. (From 2008)
It's not a manual process, it's an HD scan, paired with a type of AI. At this point, it's a mature process with two labs, that's close to Paramount anyway.
It was in it's infancy in the 2000s and early 10s, The Sopranos, Firefly, Twin Peaks, and TNG were the test subjects.
Twin Peaks had missing film reels, that were located in David Lynch's attic.
It was a mature process by 2013, when TNG had finished, and they started and completed "X files", most of the remastering work they did was after 2015.
They even did "The Shield", again, this part was mostly automated.
DS9 would be in the same shape TNG was, but from what I gather, they'd find everything the closer they got to the series finale (As was the case with TNG. When they got to season 7 they found the missing clips.)
TNG was on a 3 year deadline, and was releasing these as they went, a bulk remaster before release would easily solve the problem of film that got moved into random seasons.
You don't need the shooting scripts for that either, it's a matter of procedure for Illuminate, the people who own "Iconform".
If you're trying to dig out 20 minutes of selected scenes across a 176 episode series, then shooting scripts and a research department are necessary.
The only condition is every reel has to be scanned, and re-catalogued. The AI puts the EDL together.
Ideally, before you release a single season, you'd have all of the film scanned, and iConform would be assembling this as you scanned.
Then you re-catalogue, and send the film negatives back to the mine.
The software you're looking at?
Lightwave, Blender? idk maybe 3D studio MAX or Maya,
Adobe After FX.
Maybe Da Vinci Resolve
MTI's cleanup software
Illuminate's Iconform
(There's gonna be missing things, but I don't think it's going to be a whole lot. There wasn't a lot missing from TNG.)
Since all of the mergers, there's probably a consolidated library, and no need for redundant scanning departments with outdated 2k spirit datacines.
Black Magic's cintel can complete 4k, 6k or 8k scans, and is a lot more affordable.
Fotokem
Paramount
OTOY
and
Illuminate
As well as a VFX house like FX3X might be involved.
I would imagine new 3D assets would come from STO, freelance modelers in network, The Rodenberry Archive who has most of the people who would oversee the remaster as members.
All of the pieces are in place.
They've done it 42 times, any remaster is hard, but the tech was built to do this at scale.
People love citing VFX, without realizing even a show like Mad Men required tons of CG that no one noticed until HBO messed it up to get attention.
Hollywood does mastering work regularly, and remastering work on a regular basis.
It's not so hard, that it's impossible.
TNG was mastered twice, TOS was mastered and remastered multiple times.
DS9 and Voyager were mastered once, and it wasn't a herculean effort to do it then, and they were making it back then.
Now, it's just redoing 1/3rd of the job, with advanced automation tools.
The VFX aren't on the scale of Avatar. The budget isn't on the scale of Avatar.
VFX are updated 90s FX, that someone can do in their living room, and most of those were done on computers in 1992, and are commonplace in videogames today.
The Budget required wouldn't be remotely close to the hundreds of millions of dollars people act like it would take.
It's a microbudget project, with a guaranteed return, that would cost no more than a standard streaming film, or an A24 indie film.
IMO, you lost just as much, if not more money on dumb streaming films, so the argument that DS9 and Voyager would break even (which they would at least do in the short term.)
is a null point, most streaming fare doesn't even come close to breaking even, most things Paramount does, don't even come close to breaking even.
It's not AVATAR 3, not even close.
It's not remotely as hard now as it was 15 years ago, or 35 years ago.
15 years ago, they weren't using modern GPUs to do FX for TV shows like they are now.
Physical labor wise, it will be just as hard as TNG.
Edit wise, and VFX wise?
65-75 percent as hard as TNG, it's gonna be a lot faster. Going off of the 2015 average, iConform can put a raw episode together in 2.1 days
Remember, it'll swtich off from recomping filmed models to CG for all of the work at one point.
TNG's VFX remastered packages remain mostly unchanged through DS9 and Voyager, and probably could be tweaked and reused for new remasters, (Software changes.)
It's very likley the Roddenberry Archive and Otoy are in possession of those, as well as CBS VFX.
I bet Craig Weiss is pretty meticulous.
Last edited:
And expensive. No one seems willing to shoulder the cost.
DaVinci Resolve paired with the Neat Video Plugin on Adobe Premiere Pro is the best combination that I've found, when I've tested out upscaling episodes. I've also used DaVinci to reduce the green, improve the lighting, and boost the colors.
It's not on your list, but I recommend against Topaz Video AI. It takes too long, does weird things to the images, and is prone to pixelation with files too large. It's more trouble than it's worth.
I keep going back to: If there can be a Babylon 5 Remaster, there can be Deep Space Nine and Voyager Remasters. No, it wouldn't be like TNG-R, but technology has come a long way and it can be made to look almost as good if someone knows what they're doing.
I could only imagine, it would only cost 50 trillion dollars to do (Double the national debt?), with Avatar grade VFX.
The Federal Government and the Army Corps of engineers would bulldoze half of LA.
Netflix, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, and Comcast would have to rebuild the sets.
And Donald Trump playing Captain Kathryn Janeway?
Naturally, you'd cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Chakotay.
...and Sam Jackson as Tuvok.
Elon Musk can play "The Doctor", Tom Paris, and B'elanna Torres. (Tweeting out nonsense is part of his acting process. That's why all 3 of his characters are tweeting nonstop.)
Elon will also be playing 7 of 9.
Taylor Sheridan as showrunner?
That's why it would cost so much.
How could I ever have misunderstood the Vulcan Logic presented to me?
Last edited:
I'm not talking about generative AI dogshit.
The subject is a legit remaster from the studio, (Who very likely uses Topaz on occasion in some form. I love Lucy and the Iris Model caused a stir of controversy a year ago. It was partially upscaled to match 16mm footage, and they cranked that up too high. The software doesn't understand Bokeh and shallow depths of field, so it was trying to fill in blanks, again, inferior to a human visual cortex in every concievable way.)
If the studio is sitting on pristine film negatives, AI upscaling an ancient tape master with virutally no video fidelity is an abomination, there is no excuse for a studio.
For a fan who is cynical, it's a godsend until then, they do a labor love.
For the studio to do it, is an unholy abomination, that god had no hand in, and sofware engineers did.
Not unlike Las Vegas' Dome presentation of "The Wizard of Oz".
(I believe Illuminate's red headed stepchild application, SmartRez IT, that was used on a bunch of old sitcoms (That were shot on tape) and posted on Netflix is an outdated version of Topaz being passed off as their own product. That's a hunch of mine.)
Last edited:
I don't think they'd put the same effort into a DS9 or VOY re-master that they did into a TNG re-master (if they ever do it, have to put that in there for the people against it). So, I think there would be at least some AI. Most likely where the CGI is concerned. I think the same effort should be put in as with TNG, but I have serious doubts it would actually happen. I think they'd go the simplest way possible. JMO.
Unless they find a team who's just that passionate about re-creating DS9/VOY the same way as TNG and look at it as a labor of love instead of "it's the assembly line!"
If you're not going to the film negatives, it's assembly line dogshit. (If you're just talking ships in space, It's fine.)
However, the old VFX artists want to go back, and do those FX again.
I think keeping the 4:3 aspect ratio, and doing a slightly better hybrid approach, not unlike Babylon 5 is okay.
If a human is in the shot, screens, transporters, phasers, changelings etc. Recomp or redo the FX.
The Founders Homeworld should get new FX.
If it's space, upscale.
Intro theme songs for DS9 and Voyager, Emissary, Far Beyond the Stars and the final 10 episodes should get new FX though. (iconic episodes is what I'd suggest.)
As should Caretaker, Year of Hell, Equinox, Scorpion 1 and 2,and Endgame. (Iconic episodes)
The final shot of Kira and Jake looking out of the window of the promenade, as a somber Trumpet plays the theme of DS9, redo that shot, it can be done better now.
If it's Tuvok looking out of the window on Voyager, If it's the Doctor or a Holodeck shot, do a new FX shot. Babylon 5 was dogshit for that, comp shots should be redone.
If it's just a ship, or multiple ships in space... and there isn't a human face in sight, or the footage isn't missing, or a matte painting that has characters thousands of feet out of view, upscaling could speed it up faster.
I wouldn't be against that.
The most affordable path is a hybrid approach closer to Babylon 5's (I still think it should surpass Babylon 5's to a very reasonable visual extent) , or X files', than a TNG one.
It would break even, that's a guarantee, it wouldn't flop or lose money, TNG at least broke even.
Paramount didn't lose shit on TNG, saying they did lose money there is a verified lie.
IMO, breaking even means you're not gaining anything, but you're not losing anything.
Short term? You may not gain, but you're not going to lose.
Long term? You're going to gain.
It's an investment.
Most things Paramount produces flop.
If it breaks even, then there is no reason not to do it.
Anything with an actor in it should be rescanned in HD though.
That's all I care about, tbh.
Rescanned 35mm film has a glow to it, that tape masters can't capture. (Aside from fine detail and texture.)
Last edited:
Similar threads
- Poll
