Season FIVE OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[SpHeRe31459]

Right now I'm just watching "Second Chances" and I'm at 26:56 into the episode (where the two Riker's have their argument over the engineering "pool table"), and in the shot "yellow" Riker is extremely sharp, while "red" Riker looks like he's been through a couple of analog generations, even though it should've been a simple split screen effect (of course there could also be that the camera op never adjusted his focus for "red" Riker). Even with Betacam SP, it should've only been the third generation (second Betacam generation) from film for those two shots, and Betacam SP is rated for 6-8 generations before you notice any discernible loss. D2 I believe is closer to 40 generations. Even if Paramount used a different master for the DVD (even a DigiBeta or S-VHS copy from the late-90's), I don't think we'd see that much video loss, since it would've been sourced from the final edit master, and it probably would've only been one more generation away.

I don't remember that scene off hand, but if that pans from one Riker to another that shot could have been setup using the anamorphic trick they used quite a few times in TNG. It results in a rather blurry presentation, especially while panning. It was used for two Dax's in DS9 so maybe it was used here?

http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/04/tngs-visual-effects-you-asked-for-widescreen/

 

[Maxwell Everett]

Here's the quote from "The Making Of Star Trek Deep Space Nine" by Judith & Garfield reeves-Stevens, published December 1994, pg 242:

Every physical element of Deep Space Nine is shot on film, not videotape. However, that film is just a first step. As soon as it's printed, it's sent to Unitel Video, where it is transferred to D2 videotape. Then the film is put into storage and ---- provided no disasters occur while an episode is in postproduction --- it never sees the light of day again.

The film elements that are transferred include everything shot on sets and on location by the first and second units, all the passes of models shot at Image G, and all film of physical matte paintings executed by Illusion Arts. Live-action footage is also duped onto standard VHS cassettes so the producers can review them as dailies.

Aside from D2 and VHS videotape, no other videotape is mentioned as being used. Also, you have to remember Digital Betacam wasn't on the market til 1993 (D2 was out in 1988), so before 1993 tapes used for final mastering would've been Betacam SP, D1 and D2. Also, you have to remember that the Reeves-Stevens, even though they were not producers at this point, for their book, they still had unlimited access to the sets for the book. And if you watch the opening credits for DS9, when we get the shot of the underside of the station with the core, I did notice rainbowing right along the edges of the lower part of the core.

Also, how do you know that CIS went right to D1. Even the Cinefantastique article, from what I've read of it in regards to D1, seems to be saying that Digital Magic did have D1 decks at the time, but there was no specific mention of TNG actually being edited on them.

And here's the quote from the Cinefantastique article:

Once principle photography for an episode is completed, individual effects elements, including live-action sequences shot on the STAR TREK sound stages at Paramount as well as spaceship sequences shot using a front light-back light ultraviolet matting system on one of the motion-control stages at Image "G", are brought to the facilities of Composite Image Systems (CIS), where they are transferred from film to the digital tape format known as D1.

...

The D1 tapes containing the visual effects shots are then moved from CIS to Digital Magic for the final stages of the effects work.

So what could've been going on is either the D1 tapes were duped to D2 for offline editing, with D1 saved for the online... or only the VFX elements got the true D1 treatment. Or possibly the Reeves-Steven's are mistaken. They do mention the film being printed which wouldn't have happened.

 

[Tosk]

Is it the fourth-last cap here: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=149&page=8 ?

If so, they look about the same to me.

 

[tomswift2002]

With the Reeves-Stevens you also have to remember that they were writing a book that would be read by the general public, and they would need to use terminology and descriptions that a "laymen" could understand. But, even though the film would not need to be printed, the Reeves-Stevens may have found people would've understood that better than saying it would have to be developed and then the negative scanned and reversed in a Telecine machine. The only other information I've found as to what tapes were used was on pg. 246' in a side bar, where it is mentioned that 60% of the stations that aired DS9 received their copies via satellite, while the other 40% received their copies from Paramount on 3/4" (U-Matic) tape. Surely the DVD's would not have been mastered from U-Matic if there was a higher quality source available.

With the scene in "Second Chances", it was not a panning shot with the two Riker's. It started off with "yellow" Riker entering into engineering by the warp core, followed him to the table and was locked off there before "red" Riker even entered the shot (but it did lead upto the 4th last picture in Tosk's link). Unfortunately it looks worst in motion than in that screen cap. And I've compared the "Wishes Were..." Scene, and while there is some softness in that scene, it is not as bad as in SC. (I was checking both out on a PS3 connected to a 40" LCD via HDMI.)

I also happened to tak a look at "Dax". You might want to take a look at the whole opening credits sequence for this episode. It shows quite a bit of composite crosstalk in the graphics and on the station itself. Other episodes I've also been noticing the crosstalk issue on the phaser/tractor beam towers.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

With the scene in "Second Chances", it was not a panning shot with the two Riker's. It started off with "yellow" Riker entering into engineering by the warp core, followed him to the table and was locked off there before "red" Riker even entered the shot (but it did lead upto the 4th last picture in Tosk's link). Unfortunately it looks worst in motion than in that screen cap. And I've compared the "Wishes Were..." Scene, and while there is some softness in that scene, it is not as bad as in SC.

Hmm, well, the good news at least is that the softening should have be fixed by CBS Digital when they recomposited the footage with modern digital tools for the S6 Blu-ray release.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

With the Reeves-Stevens you also have to remember that they were writing a book that would be read by the general public, and they would need to use terminology and descriptions that a "laymen" could understand. But, even though the film would not need to be printed, the Reeves-Stevens may have found people would've understood that better than saying it would have to be developed and then the negative scanned and reversed in a Telecine machine.

All they really would have had to do was substitute the word "printed' with "developed" which a general audience in 1994 would have understood, since 35mm film was still the dominant format for still photography. The fact that they say "printed" probably represents a misunderstanding on their part, rather than an attempt to dumb down the content for their readers. To me, this throws the D2 reference (which would certainly be a head-scratcher to a general audience! "What's D2?") into question. Still, they may have been partially correct as I suggested in my last post.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

Still, they may have been partially correct as I suggested in my last post.

Yep, starting to think you're on the right track with your theory. From just looking at the episodes and seeing signs of composite video artifacts it sure seems like TNG and early DS9 were at some point composite video in the chain of editing.

 

[tomswift2002]

Well on page 249 of the book, the authors also mention how for the online edits of the episodes DS9 was not able to afford the "digital" editors that were in use at Digital Magic, so the editors were still relying on the old linear editing method.

Considering that there was a cost issue involved, D2 was probably used, as it was able to be put into existing set ups at a lower cost than D1, and it was more compatible with analog systems. As for saying D2 in the book, if you notice right in the quote the authors also put "D2 video tape", so even if the average reader didn't know what D2 was, they would still get that it was videotape, just a type used by Pro's. It would just be like telling someone you had been using DVHS----they would probably ask you if it was anything like VHS.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

I always figured that they switched to something by the fourth season of DS9, because the picture quality got so much better from then on compared to the first three seasons. Stuff like rainbow artifacts were no longer common. Same with VOY looking better by the second season after the first.

 

[tomswift2002]

I always figured that they switched to something by the fourth season of DS9, because the picture quality got so much better from then on compared to the first three seasons. Stuff like rainbow artifacts were no longer common. Same with VOY looking better by the second season after the first.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point both DS9 and Voyager switched to Digital Betacam, since it offered picture quality that was equal to or better than D1, but at a price that was a whole lot cheaper than D1.

That being said, there may still be some shots in the later seasons that contained the composite artifacts due to reuse of existing shots on tape (even if they digitally copies the shots from D2 to Digital Betacam digitally, since they would be going from a composite source to a component source), or even the opening. Sure the opening had a few shots changed with the Defiant, but a number of shots remained throughout all 7 seasons (such as the comet cloud, or the shot looking up at the lower core). I should get out Trials 'N' Tribble-ations to on the TOS Season 2 Blu-Ray and see if I spot any composite artifacts on that up-ressed version (at 25:20 there is a wall decoration that, as the camera moves with Bashir, the decoration starts to pulse with black lines---the decoration's a shiny silver thing that reflects the different color lights, but the black pulses appear to be from a composite issue, plus there was rain bowing in the opening credits when we see the Defiant pulling away from the pylon --- I'd say DS9 was definitely still using D2 in season 5).

As for TNG, in "All Good Things", after the collapse of the anomaly, we go to Q's courtroom, and star with a high shot over Picard. It you take a look at the grate underneath Picard, on all the broadcasts and DVD's of the episode I've seen (even upressed to 1080p) that grate always rainbows. I realize even with SD component the light might be causing issues, but I think it might be a definite clue that TNG was still being edited in the composite realm at the time.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

Another possibility is that everything was D1 right up until they needed to put titles on the episode, and to do that perhaps they made D2 dupes and that's where all the composite artifacts originate.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Being produced on D1 and then finalized on D2 might be the case, because I remember on DS9 the rainbow artifacts that would appear on exterior shots in the first three seasons were no longer present from the start of S4.

Just to get off topic, I do miss watching DS9 as if it were looking brand new on the DVDs from season four and on, when it looked as good as it could ever look on a CRT TV before I upgraded to HD.

 

[tomswift2002]

Or the VFX team could've gone D2 to D1 for the effects and done the effects in D1 or the D1 could've been false PR on Paramount's part. When I was checking the Blu-Ray of Tribble-ations, I had set my PS3's display output to 480p, and surprise, surprise, that episode actually played at 480p while the TOS and TAS episodes both played at 1080p (with other Blu-rays I've noticed that with the PS3, if the display's set to 1080p then everything will be upressed to 1080p, if it's set lower, such as 720p, it'll only play 1080p encoded stuff at 1080p or 1080i at 1080i, everything else will be at 720p). Of course Tribble-ations is in a 16:9 matte, but encoded at a high bit rate 15-20Mbps on average.

 

[Borjis]

Another possibility is that everything was D1 right up until they needed to put titles on the episode, and to do that perhaps they made D2 dupes and that's where all the composite artifacts originate.

I was thinking that as well. It always shows itself whenever you see the deflector dish of the D.

 

[tomswift2002]

Then there's also the fact that D1 was not readily accepted at the time for being a film to video tape transfer method.

This is a quote from "Video Editing: A Post Production Primer Fourth Edition" by Steven E. Browne published in 2002 (you can check out the quote here: http://www.tlu.ee/~rajaleid/BFF6193_Heli_ja_videotehnika/Lugemismaterjalid/Kohustuslik%20kirjandus/Video-Editing_A-Post-Production-Primer-4ed.pdf on page 6 of the PDF --- page 10 of the scanned book)

D1, an expensive, extremely high-end product, was used for effects and graphics. D2, a less-expensive digital medium, made inroads into the higher-budgeted production and postproduction environment and as a film-to-tape mastering format...while D2 was used for some graphic and animation product creation.

So even though D1 may sound like the better format for the editors to use, it has a number of strikes against it, with the biggest one being that for film-to-video mastering, it was not the format that was being used. And the high cost of D1, as someone mentioned in the Season 2 forum, would've been a major detractor to the producers of TNG and DS9.

 

[Maxwell Everett]

No, the use of D1 was not "false PR on Paramount's part." As it says in the official ST:TNG magazine piece, the whole reason they moved their post-production to that digital bay at The Post Group was so they could work entirely in D1 and abandon the analog 1" tape. Note that the article also says, "...some of the equipment in the bay is still considered R & D (Research and Development) and came with no manuals."

Given the option between D1 and D2, D1 is obviously what they would use given the heavy amount of live-action bluescreen photography shot on the Paramount stages and the front light/back light ultraviolet matting they were doing on the motion control stages at Image "G".

As I said, D2 might have been used further down the chain when titles were put on the episodes. That would explain everything you're pointing out without contradicting the existing sources of information we have.

 

[trekker670]

Deleted -- Wrong thread :-)

 

[gaghyogi49]

"Brothers" is a season 4 episode, though. ;-)

 

[trekker670]

True enough :-) I've moved my post.

 

[depp91]

Look what I found googling, this seems like a preview shot of the remastered S6 episode Birthright - where does this come from???
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison.php?id=61265