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Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever. They didn't seem to care if one shot was overwhelmed with grain and then the next is DNR's into oblivion. If they'd cleaned things up a little more consistently, things would look a lot better and be less distracting.

Judicious use of DNR is not a crime, even though those three letters have become some kind of automatic evil.
 
^^ Agree.

As I said, I'm no grain snob, but the inconsistency is enough to drive you nuts. The beginning of 'The Child' is utterly ridiculous, where you get different POV shots, one DNR'd to within an inch of its life, yet the other untouched with excessive amounts of grain onscreen.

I appreciate that they used different film stock in season 2, but wouldn't that affect all shots, rather than just some? Or were they mixing in the different stocks, and getting vastly different results?
 
Tosk said:
The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever. They didn't seem to care if one shot was overwhelmed with grain and then the next is DNR's into oblivion.
Click to expand...

Here also it shows, how much more clever the guys from CBS-D handled this matter: Instead of DNR sfx scenes, like HTV did, so the special effects, which have no grain, blend in better, they just added fake grain to the SFX, so they blend in to the natural grain of the live action footage.

Not only blend the sfx scenes then better into the 100% live action shots, the sfx scenes also look more sharp and natural due to this.

And that's how it is done!
 
Salinga said:
...they just added fake grain to the SFX, so they blend in to the natural grain of the live action footage.

Not only blend the sfx scenes then better into the 100% live action shots, the sfx scenes also look more sharp and natural due to this.

And that's how it is done!
Click to expand...

Yup, exactly how the restoration team did it on The directors edition of The Motion Picture. They sampled the grain and had a grain texture that was applied to any new effects to make them match the original footage.

Why HTV did it backwards is somewhat baffling.
 
BillJ said:
Did HTV have the same per episode budget as CBS-Digital had for season one?
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I have no idea. I would wager adding a grain / noise layer over a CGI effect would be no more time consuming than waiting for the computer to render out a heavily DNR'd scene so they could slap an effect onto it.

From what I've seen of HTV's work in the past few weeks, this just seems to be the way they do things. DNR'ing films to death is their schtick. Despite having original members of the crew there to guide them, they lacked the overall skill sets required for a restoration of this magnitude.

As CBS knew when they hired them, they're not a VFX house. Sure, they can do it in a pinch but that sure doesn't mean they're good at it.

There are simply instances where you can throw tons of money at something and it will still come out looking poor if the skills aren't there.

CBS-D have worked hard to earn their stripes I think. I hope the next contracted FX company is as talented.
 
Tosk said:
The main problem with season 2 is that there is no grain management whatsoever.
Click to expand...

The only grain managment is DNR and that is a big no-no. Most of you have gotten used to bigbudget movies, epic nature documentaries and recent tv shows on Blu Ray and think that is how it always should look. Older movies and tv shows look like this on Blu and it is how they should look. Notice that none of the reviewers on sites like Bluray.com or High Def Digest are complaining about excessive grain. Their only gripe is that it's missing in the visual effects sequences.
 
Scotty said:
The only grain managment is DNR and that is a big no-no.
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I think you missed his point.

Nobody appears to have managed the use of DNR on Season 2. They either used too much, like in the vfx scenes, or didn't use any. DNR isn't bad if it's used in such a way that it balances the variance of grain from shot to shot. The shots shouldn't be scrubbed clean, but rather just 'slightly' cleaned up so that switching from one POV to another isn't jarring, or switching from a scene with no VFX to one with a phaser shot isn't completely different.

DNR is a tool like any other and can be used well or poorly.

HTV promote themselves as 'leaders' in the industry but their work on TNG and other projects show otherwise. If their tools were as advanced as they claim they are, then all of the footage should look somewhat more consistent.

They can talk themselves up but the work speaks for itself.
 
I don't have a problem with grain, but that shot of Maddox on the bridge in Measure of a Man is so incredibly noisy and excessive with grain it stands out like a sore thumb.

All we're asking is that they tone some of that down a little, so those shots look more consistent with the surrounding ones.
 
Anyway, I watched "The Dauphin" for the first time in forever, and it was just about as dull as I remembered. Although I will say Wheaton does a pretty decent job with what he's given (Wesley is still a clueless geek, but at least he's a more likeable and less obnoxious one than in the first season).

And the planet and Holodeck effects sequence looked pretty good too.

Of course the real highlight of the episode was when THIS girl came on the screen. Hummina hummina. :drool:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x10/thedauphin061.jpg
 
Just watched the Icarus Factor and have a new highlight for Season Two.

THOLIAN REFERENCE!
 
*Finished watching "Q Who"*

Huh. They put First Contact/Voyager style Borg alcoves in the pan out shot of the Borg Ship interior. Weird choice.
 
Saw the caps on TrekCore so I watched 'Where Silence Has Lease' this afternoon, hard to get this one wrong because the Enterprise is darkly lit for the majority of the episode. The probe launch and CGI replacement model I can forgive, even the very noticeable matte lines, but the model element used for the Yamato was completely wrong.

Original
Remastered

The new one just looked ridiculous from an angle because its a head on shot of the ship.

Original
Remastered

Its an element that has already been found and re-composited in Season 1 here, its just been flipped for the Yamato. Really stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

Take a look at the Viewscreen shots as well, the colour bleed from the blue screen is dire.
 
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Doug Otte said:
I had a $25 Amazon gift card, so I paid $39.99 for the set. I sold the DVD set for around $20, so I paid $19.99 to upgrade. I'm glad I did.

So far, I've seen the 1st two episodes. Yes, I notice the mediocre effects shots, and the disparity in smoothed-vs.-natural live shots, and am disappointed in them.

Yet, overall the increase in resolution, color accuracy, and lossless audio make it a worthwhile investment.
Click to expand...

I have to revise my opinion. As I get further into the set, the flaws are more noticeable. Last night I watched Measure, surely one of everyone's favorite episodes in all of Trek history. I was constantly distracted by the shifting PQ, from sharp and grainy to smooth and glassy, by the poor compositing, and by the overly bright ship shots that lack depth.

I know everyone has already mentioned these issues numerous times, but even though I paid a small price to upgrade, I'm getting more and more disappointed w/ this set.
 
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