Those are some impressive new graphics, David cgc! It would be amazing to see the series like that. Though I imagine shots mixing live and CG elements would be the hardest to update. And unfortunately those are the ones that look the worst on DVD.
Nearly impossible, honestly. There are probably a handful that could be helped from what I have to work with on the DVD (like, there was a clean shot, then a cut away, then a cut back to the first shot, but with an effect over it. Then I could use the effect-free version to help restore the full framing of the effect). Ideally, if someone were doing a proper restoration along these lines, they'd be able to telecine
all the footage into HD, including stuff used in live action/visual effects composites, and would redo those effects from scratch.
There is one thing I can fix with just the DVD as a baseline, though. The current transfers treat flashbacks to earlier episodes and stock footage as if they were visual effects, cropping the SD framing instead of using the widescreen versions. That means stuff like "Previously on Babylon 5" segments, or footage of Sinclair in "In the Beginning" can be replaced with the versions from the episodes they were first shot for an instant boost in quality.
And oh my those first widescreen broadcasts were dire. From errors in the opening titles, to this screw-up that makes it seem like a Narn C&C transport looks a lot like a teapot!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V90fc-iTIY4
(Would be funny if it wasn't so depressing!)
I'd seen that before, but completely forgot about it, so when I read it, I assumed it was a
CG Teapot that had somehow gotten mixed in with the footage from the episode.
But, yeah, I've been noticing a lot of little things I'd like to correct now that I've started skimming DVDs with an eye towards rejiggering the episodes. Stuff like the above-mentioned stock-footage problem (would it have been so hard to just splice in the HD footage they'd
already digitized? I realize it wouldn't be in the same box as the film for the episode they were working on at the moment, but they probably did them in order, so they'd already have a clean widescreen version of the stock shot in their system), various issues with the title cards (including episodes using the wrong font, the way they blew the way JMS's credit flashes on-screen in the season 3 credits, and the wildly inconsistent way episode titles are displayed. All caps, not all caps, in quotation marks, not in quotation marks... anything goes!), and shots that were cropped from SD for no apparent reason at all.
And that doesn't even touch the stuff that I'd like to do just for fun even if the widescreen transfer had been done perfectly. For instance, I really want to add spinning stars outside whenever you can see through the C'n'C window.
