DRAGON BALL Z also got cropped which definitely angered fans, though I think that was only for the US, as Japan kept the OAR intact.
Season SEVEN OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Mutai Sho-Rin
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Poor Nichelle Nichols is missing the top of her head.
I'm not aware that this one has been remastered, yet, but I think this graphic example from "The Avengers" TV series shows the potential when you have extra areas on the camera negatives left and right of the "known" image to do a widescreen extraction.
Bob
Interesting clip. I actually think the 4:3 format works better because of how it's more tight on the characters, drawing you closer to them as the camera moves closer. The extra space on the sides looks like what it simply is: extra space. I don't see any benefit to it, aside from wanting an image that fits into the tv better.
It's a pretty good example of why expanding the frame isn't a good idea. You don't lose anything, but it doesn't looked framed correctly.
It likely would have looked just like "The Naked Now" 16:9 example on the S1 "ENERGIZED!" featurette. Unfortunately, there's very little they can open up on the right and only so much they can open up on the left before you start to reveal production equipment and lens vignetting. Also, the framing becomes unbalanced the more you open up to the left. They absolutely did the right thing by sticking to the original TV Trans area for all the other episodes. It's better aesthetically, and it cost them less time and less effort than if they did it any other way.
Not sure if this is the same thing. Might be. If it is, a clip from "Lonely Among Us" was used. Don't have the S1 Blu ray set handy to check.
Otherwise, might be a saved image from an article I read once.
So pretty much, the full exposed frame doesn't fill the wide frame. Each Director would've been looking at the central area as the shot. Outside of that, soundstage reality begins to creep in.
Widescreen could be achieved through cropping, to various degrees... sympathetic and not so. Very time consuming though and the result not being how each Director originally intended the shots to look obviously.
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The only (but possibly decisive) advantage of sticking to the original 4:3 TV Transmission Area (in contrast to the 4:3 TV Safe Action Area) is that overscan cropping HD displays gave viewers the same picture height as earlier on their 4:3 tube TVs (and some extra information left and right previously not visible on the old tube TVs).
How comes? On a correctly calibrated HD Display with 1:1 pixel mapping we now either got to see microphone booms, floor cables or carpet pieces and other equipment in the outer areas previously covered / cropped / trimmed by the overscan of our old 4:3 TVs.
Some of that expendable stuff remained visible like the floor carpet piece near Data or the studio equipment above the set exterior of the conference lounge, some of it was removed by zooming up the image to eliminate the microphone boom overhead, but most of the time they applied CGI to erase disturbing objects at the edges.
I dare to say that had they trimmed all the images to the original 4:3 Safe Action Area (as they did in "Sins of the Father") it would have cost less in any category. Less overlooked disturbing objects and less cost to CGI erase, and no need to alter the framing, where that was applied instead off CGI erasure.
But, like I said earlier, that would have infuriated all owners of overscan performing HD displays ("my TNG image is more cropped at the top and bottom than previously on my 4:3 TV!"), thus CBS apparently decided to go for the TV Trans Area.
It's a decision I absolutely do understand (and many got a little touch of widescreen left and right), but to suggest - as you did earlier - that this was the optimal decision from an "aesthetically" and "economic (work labor)" point of view is not correct or remains at least debatable for the above reasons I mentioned.
There's is a healthy dose of hypocrisy involved in this entire aspect ratio / framing debate:
Those that suggested to crop the overscan areas at the top and bottom and to add camera negative space left and right outside the TV Trans Area (were possible) got under a lot of fire for not respecting the original directors' framing.
IMHO, preserving those areas outside the TV Safe Action Area (which the DPs relied on to be covered, cropped and trimmed) in the current 4:3 TNG-R release isn't that much respect for the original directors' framing, either, because those disturbing objects in the outer areas convey incorrectly the impression that the directors' hadn't paid attention.
Bob
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If you choose to disable overscan on your TV, you shouldn't be surprised to see unwanted things in the unsafe overscan area. That is, after all, the purpose of said function.
Exactly. That particular shot doesn't look too bad, but some shots will necessarily look poorly staged.
As I said, aesthetically, it doesn't look as good. Case in point (just picking an episode at random near the middle of the show):
Set design to close to edges of frame.
Feet cut off.
Even faces cut off in certain shots.
Bottom line: it's too close! "Action safe" means put important objects within this area, not cut the frame to those proportions!
IIRC in the days of CRT, the screens would just be calibrated to lose the transmission signal bar below, or VCR tracking noise lines if you're connected up by scart and playing a recording back. There would be a manual adjustment either at the factory or in the home, and some variation in picture loss all round, between different brands and whoever had done it. But I doubt any of them would be that zoomed into the safe area. You'd come close to cutting off subtitles and captions underneath, such as on the nightly news, for one thing. Just doesn't seem likely, not for much of the 1990s anyway, when I'd be watching Star Trek on a Sony Trinitron. Perhaps further back to the 80s and before, on screens that had even more of a curve.
"Sins of the Father" is often noticeably wrong, with Kurn's shoulders touching both sides of the frame at once, or the frame barely containing both him and Riker standing in the turbolift discussing how the Enterprise isn't a Klingon ship.
That close-up a shot on just one figure, used to only happen with cinemascope films, transferred to the small screen. Applied with a pan and scan technique, if not new one shots created. Cut back and forth, the 4:3 frame having to pick and choose between actors standing right next to each other.
"Sins of the Father" is often noticeably wrong, with Kurn's shoulders touching both sides of the frame at once, or the frame barely containing both him and Riker standing in the turbolift discussing how the Enterprise isn't a Klingon ship.
That close-up a shot on just one figure, used to only happen with cinemascope films, transferred to the small screen. Applied with a pan and scan technique, if not new one shots created. Cut back and forth, the 4:3 frame having to pick and choose between actors standing right next to each other.
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It likely would have looked just like "The Naked Now" 16:9 example on the S1 "ENERGIZED!" featurette. Unfortunately, there's very little they can open up on the right and only so much they can open up on the left before you start to reveal production equipment and lens vignetting. Also, the framing becomes unbalanced the more you open up to the left. They absolutely did the right thing by sticking to the original TV Trans area for all the other episodes. It's better aesthetically, and it cost them less time and less effort than if they did it any other way.
Not sure if this is the same thing. Might be. If it is, a clip from "Lonely Among Us" was used. Don't have the S1 Blu ray set handy to check.
Otherwise, might be a saved image from an article I read once.
So pretty much, the full exposed frame doesn't fill the wide frame. Each Director would've been looking at the central area as the shot. Outside of that, soundstage reality begins to creep in.
Widescreen could be achieved through cropping, to various degrees... sympathetic and not so. Very time consuming though and the result not being how each Director originally intended the shots to look obviously.
I was referring to this example below, which was likely the 16x9 test Robert Meyer Burnett saw and mentioned on Twitter (then included on the S1 set):
Incidentally, I applied the same framing a while back to the "Best of Both Worlds" blooper reel just to see what it looked like:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRLeDKrQbM[/yt]
And here is the same thing with marks for TV Trans and Action Safe:
[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpfgtMhKDTc[/yt]
A few hours ago, Robert Meyer Burnett posted on Twitter the first official images from "All Good Things..." Unfortunately the quality is not very good, but here they are:
But it's a relic from the age of tube TV sets that's about as helpful as the "sharpness" controls that do anything, except actually improve sharpness.
Unless you use a front projector like Maxwell Everett and myself with an electronic masking function simulating the original overscan effect (but which does not affect 1:1 pixel mapping), the overscan of your HDTV will rescale / alter the original 1920 x 1080 resolution of your Blu-Ray disc to match it do the display area of your HDTV. Your HDTV may have 1920 x 1080 pixels but the Blu-Ray image you see won't any longer, because the overscan has removed areas of your 1920 x 1080 Blu-Ray image.
@ Maxwell Everett
Thanks for these graphic illustrations. I would like to ask from which episode the image with Troi's face cut off is actually from.
In general, your examples, including the YouTube videos have shown that there is less overhead space in the "safe action" areas and unless I'm mistaken, excessive, unusable headroom is usually considered compositionally bad.
The essential question remains whether the DPs did expect / want us to see the areas outside the safe action area - or not.
TNG director Robert Legato: “STAR TREK (TNG) is normally shot flat on 35mm – composed in such a way that the outer edges unseen on television contain no crucial information.”(CINEFEX # 37)
Apparently he referred to the edges outside the safe action area where the original (average consumer) tube TV overscan cropping also took care of studio equipment occasionally showing up there.
I remain confident that for the most part the images in the safe action area is what the DPs wanted us to see - and therefore remain unable to find fault with the safe action imagery featured in "Sins of the Father" which looks to me like the original composition "to be respected".
Again, "Sins of the Father" puts owners of HD displays, where the overscan cannot be switched off, at a disadvantage because their picture is cropped at the top and bottom more than the DP intended.
But then we are having a philosophical dispute whether Blu-Rays should confirm with inadequate HD displays or whether HD display buyers should go for displays that enable 1:1 pixel mapping and thus the disabling of overscan functions.
Bob
The Wounded.
Any more news on a release date?
December 15 in the UK, probably around then in the US.
As to to the 4:3 vs. cinematic vs. people never being happy – I remember working for a large Camelot store when Laser Discs were the vanguard. I remember someone returning their widescreen discs and wanting "pan and scan" versions instead because they "have a bid screen and want it all filled up!"
I tried to explain, but folks want what they want...
I tried to explain, but folks want what they want...
Now we commonly see 16x9 TVs set up incorrectly, often with black bars at the top and bottom and a squeezed image in the middle. I saw this the other day at my eye doctors. I was a little nervous, wondering if I should trust the eye doctor that couldn't see this was wrong.
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