Season THREE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

That recently happened to me on the season 4 set after watching Night Terrors. Had to load the disc again. The strange thing is, I've already watched this disc once before without any problems.

 

Yes you can seemingly break the menus, I've seen something like what you guys describe on all the season sets so far (since the menus are basically the same across all seasons). When you put in a disc and the menus start to load, you get an animation of the Enterprise warping by and then the title floats by on a starfield, then finally you get to the actual menus. You can skip that animation, but I've seen it then hiccup and load blank menus. With no choice but to press stop and play again. I have a Panasonic player as well.

I've also made it totally choke in a similar manner from a PC Blu-ray player software.

 

Yes, I recall having that issue the first time I viewed "The Offspring" as well. Interestingly though, I can't seem to reproduce the error right now! On either my PS3 or Panasonic BD75. Go figure. It may simply be as SpHeRe31459 says above.

 

I have a Samsung and haven't been able to reproduce the error. Also, I can't skip the enterprise flyby before the menus start. Not a big deal, I enjoy the animation.

 

No idea but I imagine they will sooner or later. They took their time releasing the first two season on itunes, then put both up at the same time. Hopefully 3 and 4 will follow soon.

 

That happened to me with the Enterprise season 1 set as well.

 

I've noticed if you hang around for a minute or two, the menu will eventually correct itself. I'm watching primarily on a Magnavox player that I bought in late-2009.

 

Oh hell yes...
http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/thumbnails.php?album=71

 

I broke down and bought season 3 yesterday on an impulse, not sure whether I'd care or not vs. watching the episodes on Netflix. Wow the image quality is so much higher it's unbelievable. That's worth it alone, haven't gotten to any of the special features yet other than one of the quick crew vignettes on the second disc. I'm impressed with the restoration.

 

I notice season 3 has been added to the US iTunes store. Hopefully not be too long before they add it to the UK one.

 

Sorry if this has been noted before, I couldn't read through the entire 76 page thread...

I've just watched A Matter Of Perspective as part of the rewatch that some of us are doing. Were they unable to find some of the original footage? The bit where Riker gets up and circles the facsimilie of himself on the holodeck looks suspiciously SD.

 

This was most likely an anamorphic shot that had to be zoomed, thus losing some of its clarity.

More info on the process here:
http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/04/tngs-visual-effects-you-asked-for-widescreen/

 

That's correct - it's definitely an anomorphic zoom.

 

I'm very familiar with widescreen filming processes, and although I knew long ago the anamorphic pan-and-scan technique was used this way on TNG, it's very cool seeing TrekCore's visual demo with the original 35mm frame recreated by stitching together the frame grabs. Among other things it makes it even more obvious that the Stargazer bridge is basically the TOS movie bridge when you see it with similar CinemaScope framing. Are there any cases of this process being used for TV VFX work prior to TNG? Either way, quite an ingenious solution to the problem at hand.

A question about the quality of the pan-and-scan shots: I've not been able to glean from everything I've read since TNG-R began whether the VFX in these specific shots were recomposited like the others. When I first saw the still of Riker on the cliff from "The Last Outpost" I thought it had to be upscaled SD; there was virtually no detail in Riker's face and I was frankly amazed this shot was released as a sample (everything else was stunning). Panning-and-scanning anamorphic 35mm should result in a slight loss in quality, but there's still ample resolution there to get a detailed HD image right? Is it possible (even likely) the 35mm anamorphic elements used for the VFX work were not stored with the spherical elements and were unavailable to the TNG-R team so they upscaled (and perhaps enhanced as necessary) these shots? The workprint for "The Child" shows that entire 'scope frame was included in letterboxed form for screening purposes prior to the VFX work, but has it been confirmed that the elements were actually available after being used by the VFX house?

 

That's a very interesting hypothesis, I too would be interested in hearing if this is what happened.

 

No way. If they had to upscale shots, they would have informed us. Plus, none of these anamorphic pan-and-scan shots look as bad as the SD masters.

 

No, I'm pretty sure they were stored along with all the other spherical elements, no reason not to. The only thing that changed was what kind of lens was being used to photograph the scene. It's the same camera, the same film and so they probably scanned the same 2k Full Camera Aperture area as everything else, i.e. 2048 x 1556.

The Anamorphic Aperture area would be a slightly narrower portion of that, 1828 x 1556. But that was probably resampled to 1920 x 817 instead of expanding it out 2X to 3656 x 1556. This, in addition to the motion blur imposed by the panning and the fact that they often used an even more zoomed-in area to make the pan last longer or move diagonally, is probably what's behind the lack of sharpness in these shots. CBS-Digital probably just doesn't have the hardware and software pipeline to deal with what would essentially be 4k size video files. Everything they have is set up for 2k work.

 

... which is quite poor according to todays restoration standards by the way.
And even more so regarding to what they are doing there at the moment.

 

Would a 4K scan really make that much difference? Depending on the film stock, you'd probably just get enlarged grain, no?

2K/1080p should be absolutely fine for a 1980s TV show! I honestly wouldn't expect a 4K re-remastering any time soon, if ever. It's overkill.

EDIT: Although, in the context of those pan-and-scan shots, yeah, it would probably be a noticable improvement over how they've done it there.

 

I may be incorrect, but I've heard varying reports that film holds a resolution of almost 8K. On bluray scanning above 2K probably wouldn't make much of a difference, but in a few years when 4+K is the norm, we'll be stuck with our 2K scans since I'm sure CBS won't want to re-remaster TNG in a few short years.