Season FOUR OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread

[davejames]

What the heck is their problem with Silicon Avatar?? I just recently rewatched it, and I think it's still as solid as ever.

Even if you have a beef with the way the scientist lady was treated at the end, there was still a lot of other good character stuff in that ep. As well as some great effects and planet sequences.

 

[tomalak301]

I was just browsing through those rankings and they rated Family a 4? They called it boring? Who wrote those reviews. While I don't agree with all of his reviews, At least Jammer seemed a bit more fair.

 

[TheSeeker]

I don't pay attention to reviewers for the most part. I know what I like and that's all that matters.

 

[LogicDeLuxe]

I'm no expert, but I would bet that the WAHP shot was done that way so that the film speed would match up with the frame rate of television monitor playing on-set.

Sounds logical. On the other hand, we have a lot of real monitor shots done in 24 fps. I've read somewhere, that it was common practice to rather match the refresh on those CRT's to film rather than vice versa.
And this doesn't explain at all the reason behind the unusual frame rate in "Identity Crisis".

 

[SpHeRe31459]

It's been said that it depends on the VFX team doing the episode Curry or Legato. Dan Curry liked 30 fps so every other episode has it's VFX done that way. It was kind of odd, but one had a distinct preference for doing at video speed rather than film speed. Which could help explain "Identity Crisis".

http://trekcore.com/blog/2012/09/exclusive-trekcore-interviews-cbs-digital-part-ii/

Yes, the two main VFX supervizors on the show were Dan Curry and Rob Legato. Rob Legato liked to shoot at 24 frames per second and Dan Curry liked to shoot at 30 frames per second. So basically, every other episode, one is 24 one is 30 – for the visual effects. So, yes, we had to – on all the episodes that were shot at 30 by Dan Curry – we had to put a 125% speed up on each of those elements so that they matched the original. We’re using Autodesk Smokeand Flame to do those speedups. For the most part, they are indistinguishable from the original. If and when there are artefacts from the speed-up process, we take them out and clean them up if they are noticeable.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

The other possibility for that panning shot in WAHP is that it was done anamoprhically and scanned across, that would result in some odd issues which have been seen in other such shots
http://trekcore.com/blog/2013/04/tngs-visual-effects-you-asked-for-widescreen/

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I'm no expert, but I would bet that the WAHP shot was done that way so that the film speed would match up with the frame rate of television monitor playing on-set.

Sounds logical. On the other hand, we have a lot of real monitor shots done in 24 fps. I've read somewhere, that it was common practice to rather match the refresh on those CRT's to film rather than vice versa.

Yep there were special CRTs monitors that you could get that were sync'ed at 48Hz so it was in step with the 24 fps film system and wouldn't show the rolling refresh bar you can see when not syn'ed. These kind of monitors were on the bridge sets of all the Trek movies and TV shows throughout the '80s and '90s AFAIK.

 

[jimbotron]

You may have noticed the jerkines in "We'll Always Have Paris" in this long panning shot when Picard first enters the Holodeck. This scene was shot in 30 fps for some reason, which was no problem in NTSC. The Blu-Ray however is 24p and this particular scene has applied a very ugly frame rate conversion making it that jerky.

Are you sure? That pan included live action elements, which would have been shot on film, which is only 24 frames per second. The only time the frame rate varied in production from 24 to 30 frames per second would be model shots.

If you're watching a Blu-ray on an older HDTV that only refreshes at 60Hz, then you will experience judder as you would from a DVD.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

I actually happened to put in WAHP yesterday afternoon to watch for fun, and I didn't see anything particularly bad about that scene, but since this discussion hadn't come up yet, I also wasn't looking for it either.

 

[tomalak301]

Trailer is Out!!!! (Thanks to Trekcore of course )

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zfR5T2mlCts[/yt]

Some thoughts:

-The remastering looks pretty good. I'm not sure if it's as spectacularly clear as CBS-D would have it but I would say it's a big improvement over HTV

-Was season 4 a comedy season? The reason I ask is because while the Season 3 trailer focused on action and adventure, Season 4's seems a little more light hearted (Family?, Sibling Rivalry, "This is what you do for fun"). I've never really thought of Season 4 as a comedy year before but it's really interesting the contrast between the Season 3 and Season 4 trailers. I really do hope we get the Season 4 Trailer (And season 5 trailer) on the sets themselves because these are actually really fun to watch.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

Hard to tell from the pretty highly compressed video, but yeah I'd say like 90%-95% of what CBS-D can do. So for a 3rd party that seems quite acceptable.

 

[FrontierTrek]

Watch it in 1080p... it's better.

We'll have better quality downloads available in the near future

 

[davejames]

Yeah, it's probably not the best-constructed trailer we've seen, but the footage itself still looks great I think.

There was one slightly iffy effects shot where the Enterprise had a brighter, golden look for some reason. But everything else looked fantastic.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

Watch it in 1080p... it's better.

We'll have better quality downloads available in the near future

I did, I was referring to the compression artifacts that crept in there towards the end, the video in general looks a little poorer than previous season trailers. So I assume when you get back from the big LA event we'll have better versions available

 

[SpHeRe31459]

Yeah, it's probably not the best-constructed trailer we've seen, but the footage itself still looks great I think.

There was one slightly iffy effects shot where the Enterprise had a brighter, golden look for some reason. But everything else looked fantastic.

Talking about at 0:30? That's the only place in the video I could find that might be what you're referring to.

 

[tomalak301]

Yeah, it's probably not the best-constructed trailer we've seen, but the footage itself still looks great I think.

There was one slightly iffy effects shot where the Enterprise had a brighter, golden look for some reason. But everything else looked fantastic.

I just noticed that on a second view. It looked like the ship was Brown. Hopefully on the finished version this is something they fix. Not entirely a big deal, but hopefully they caught it.

 

[FrontierTrek]

Yeah, it's probably not the best-constructed trailer we've seen, but the footage itself still looks great I think.

There was one slightly iffy effects shot where the Enterprise had a brighter, golden look for some reason. But everything else looked fantastic.

I just noticed that on a second view. It looked like the ship was Brown. Hopefully on the finished version this is something they fix. Not entirely a big deal, but hopefully they caught it.

No no no! That's PART of the episode guys. The Enterprise is bathed in the light of the star from "Half a Life". Here are the original caps: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=95&page=3

 

[tomalak301]

Yeah, it's probably not the best-constructed trailer we've seen, but the footage itself still looks great I think.

There was one slightly iffy effects shot where the Enterprise had a brighter, golden look for some reason. But everything else looked fantastic.

I just noticed that on a second view. It looked like the ship was Brown. Hopefully on the finished version this is something they fix. Not entirely a big deal, but hopefully they caught it.

No no no! That's PART of the episode guys. The Enterprise is bathed in the light of the star from "Half a Life". Here are the original caps: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=95&page=3

Ok, I haven't seen the episode in a while so I probably forgot. Still, it looked like they dimmed the lighting on the HD version, which is nice.

 

[SpHeRe31459]

No no no! That's PART of the episode guys. The Enterprise is bathed in the light of the star from "Half a Life". Here are the original caps: http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=95&page=3

As TrekCore/FronterTrek has reported, CBS-D did the conform on Season 4, so they would have done the final composite and color correction, etc. They've always done things with good taste and pretty true to the original compositions. So if that's how it looks, then blame the original TNG team

 

[davejames]

Oh ok, cool. I just didn't remember them doing the "cast light" effect very often on TNG. But apparently in this instance they did.