An Open Letter to the Okudas

[Maxwell Everett]

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Okuda,

If you're still keeping an eye on this place (and we hope you are!)... first of all I want to say on behalf of everyone here that the two of you and everyone else at CBS Television, CBS Home Entertainment, CBS Digital and now Illuminate Hollywood are doing a fantastic, amazing job and we all love you for it.

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season One looks wonderful on Blu-ray and all of us are blown away by the quality on display. We are enjoying this series now in a way we never before imagined was possible. It's like a dream.

A few mistakes have crept-in, but that was to be expected... I know CBS has every intention of making this release as perfect as it possibly can be and we are very fortunate to have people like you working on this gargantuan project.

What I'm just going to throw out here is a suggestion -- not a demand. We don't want to tell you how to do your jobs. It may very well be that you've already got a handle on the issues that have cropped up since release day, and we understand if that's the case (we hear CBS in the process of correcting the audio problems and an official statement is imminent as of July 27th, 2012)

But I'm sorry to say that we're now starting to see some VFX that are either missing or original elements that have been found and restored in certain episodes but remain digital mattes in others. If CBS truly wants that extra layer of perfection, perhaps they should consider setting up a web page where fans like those of us here can submit error reports. As soon as they are completed (i.e. months before release on Blu-ray), CBS could allow people to see a streamed version of an episode for a brief period of time (say in lowly 480p and heavily watermarked with timecode and CBS/Paramount logos) that fans could then comb for errors and send feedback on.

Why not use the available Star Trek community as a resource? We're capable, willing and best of all, free! And we want this release to be the best it can possibly be just as you do. Stuff can inadvertently slip through the cracks and it's not necessarily any particular person's "fault."

These are uncharted waters here and it's going to be a long haul to 2015... and maybe it's appropriate to do something a little bit unconventional.

Give it some thought, anyway... and once again, thanks for your unwavering dedication to Star Trek these last 25 years!

 

[GNDN]

No question that the show looks and sounds amazing in blu ray. We've unfortunately seen some errors creep in (arguably unavoidable on a project of this scale and the available schedule). Any and all errors will be discovered. The choice seems to come down to whether this will occur before or after the official release.

I'm already committed to purchasing the entire series (again) and DS9 if/when it becomes available. I'd love the presentation to be as perfect as possible, so if there is any practical and positive way that we, the fans, could help, then I'm all for it. My interest is not in any way an effort to second guess the phenomenal efforts being made by CBS, but I'd be more than happy to participate in any way if called upon.

Thanks to the entire team at CBS. Know that we're definitely on your side!

 

[Sho]

Crowdsourcing the quality control process indeed sounds like a good idea. I know that some people are going to scoff at the notion of putting "beta testing into user hands", but really, it's 2012 and we live in a world that has been changed by the open source and free culture movements: Going participative is the new way to go to get things done.

And in this case, a sizable portion of the audience and the maker of the product certainly share a common goal, which is to preserve The Next Generation at the best possible quality for future viewers. Achieving that goal is compensation in itself.

 

[Jefferies]

Max, this is a very sensible idea and I fully support your initiative. I believe people here are spot on when they say that quality control could be done more efficiently, expediently and, most of all, more cost-effectively by the fan base. Time and again fans here have demonstrated a depth of knowledge on all aspects of the show. Put together this level of expertise must exceed what could be expected from a conventional quality control team by many orders of magnitude.

 

[Sho]

Well, of course it's not that the fine folks at CBS Digital aren't capable of doing this task, but rather, it's more effective and useful for them to spend their work hours on the actual remastering and have us comb through the results before picture lock. I mean, even if I didn't believe we could achieve higher QC this way, it'd still be a good idea not to have any more CBS Digital pair of hands spend their time on this relatively speaking menial work than absolutely necessary. My hope would be that this way costs could be brought down a bit, which would make remastering efforts of later shows more feasible as well.

It really comes down to: We're willing, we're capable. We're free labor, and we don't mind that. Use us.

 

[BillJ]

While I'm all for this, does anyone know if there are labor contracts in place that would prevent it?

 

[Sho]

Oh, you mean like guild stuff? Hmm, good question ... I'm so not clueful there, wrong country and all.

 

[NewHorizon]

While I'm all for this, does anyone know if there are labor contracts in place that would prevent it?

Pretty sure there are open betas on video games from time to time. Just get these folks to agree to some terms...shouldn't be an issue. Nice to see you guys run with my suggestion like this.

 

[Sho]

But then the video game industry frequently laments that they don't yet have guilds in place the way Hollywood does ...

That said, since we'd not actually be performing any hands-on work on the product, I figure we'd just qualify as test audiences giving feedback.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

While I'm all for this, does anyone know if there are labor contracts in place that would prevent it?

But then the video game industry frequently laments that they don't yet have guilds in place the way Hollywood does ...

That said, since we'd not actually be performing any hands-on work on the product, I figure we'd just qualify as test audiences giving feedback.

Exactly. Look at it this way: Were there labor contracts or guild rules in place that prevented us from finding errors and reporting them after the set was released?

This would be the same thing, just before release -- potentially saving them millions in re-authoring and replication costs over the course of the show.

Nothing would really change except that. They would complete the episodes as thoroughly and completely as they already have been doing (which is still pretty great)... they'd just give us a final look see to check for any oversights.

They could then choose to implement those changes or not. They'd still have the final say.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

Also, I forgot to mention, VFX artists (at least in the US) don't actually have a formal union -- they're still struggling to form one. IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) has in recent years been working with VFX artists, supervisors, coordinators and shop owners to help them accomplish this. You can read more here:

http://www.iatse-intl.org/news/visual-effects-meeting-west-coast

 

[Trekker4747]

It really seems a "beta test" needs to be done with these DVD sets with maybe a select-few getting a prerelease copy of the set to watch through and find errors problems. Here, within one day of the set being on the streets, numerous problems have been found. And not talking about niggling little things like the scale/size of the Stargazer compared to the Enterprise or even the missing phaser beam but real, actual, major things like the serious sound problems with the set.

Other "quality" things could probably be cleared out too as I find that menus a bit bland when 75% of the screen is empty.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ I thought at least one person round these parts had a pre-release copy.

I'm probably mistaken.

 

[Brikar99]

The majority of the complaints I've seen are regarding the audio. How are they supposed to do a public beta of a 7.1 surround track?

 

[Maxwell Everett]

The majority of the complaints I've seen are regarding the audio. How are they supposed to do a public beta of a 7.1 surround track?

My letter is really more about catching occasional VFX oversights... but to your point, the 7.1 audio problems can also be heard mixed down to stereo or even mono. They manifest as a tinny echo in certain scenes, sometimes entire episodes.

Let me give you an example. As a sort of extreme test, I hooked up my blu-ray player to a 30 year-old, 5" B&W portable TV I had stashed away in a closet... and I watched particular scenes from "Haven" and "11001001" on it... and even on that, all the characters sounded like Darth Vader through its single speaker just like they do on my 32" HDTV's speakers (other episodes with good mixes sounded normal even on the old B&W TV).

 

[Joker]

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Okuda,

Just out of interest... do you actually expect any of this to happen or be taken seriously?

 

[Maxwell Everett]

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Okuda,

Just out of interest... do you actually expect any of this to happen or be taken seriously?

Probably not.

But, I figured, what the hell... why not go ahead and suggest it. Most of the focus has been on the audio errors (which they seem to be taking seriously) and I thought this might be a constructive way to address some of the missing/uncorrected VFX.

They obviously need more eyes (and ears) on the final product before it goes out to replication. How they ultimately go about it is up to them.

 

[roliver]

They obviously need more eyes (and ears) on the final product before it goes out to replication.

How about someone overseeing you at your job to make sure you don't make mistakes? I suspect very few of us would really "appreciate" such a suggestion.

Humans make mistakes. Adding more humans into the mix is not the clear solution some might think it is.

 

[Jefferies]

They obviously need more eyes (and ears) on the final product before it goes out to replication.

How about someone overseeing you at your job to make sure you don't make mistakes? I suspect very few of us would really "appreciate" such a suggestion.

Humans make mistakes. Adding more humans into the mix is not the clear solution some might think it is.

Quality control is part of any standard development cycle. It has nothing to do with scrutinizing someones work for mistakes. It's there to make sure a product that is released to the mass market has the least amount of faults possible to reduce the burden of replacements and costumer support.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ With emphasis on "mass market". We're talking what, hundreds of thousands of sets? Or tens of thousands?

Either way, a lot of discs to have to be remade & replaced, or whole sets in the case of restocking what's still on store shelves, if they go that route.