Yeah, the Hathaway shot is pretty bad, although it's a mix of the model not being given some lining on the back to accentuate the details, the poor lighting, and the explosion element. Definitely not up to par with CBS Digital's work.
Season TWO OFFICIAL TNG Blu-Ray Discussion Thread
- Thread starter JJ-R
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Unfortunately, the work we have seen from the outsourced company has been below the quality of similar shots by cbs. Establishing shots using the same footage haven't measured up even. They really need to let CBS handle all of the compositing...or at the very least have someone at CBS give everything a consistency pass.
Well, that Trekmovie shot is painfully obvious about the fact the 2 footer was used. I would've rather had the CG Enterprise there.
Yeah it definitely stands out more, but I've always thought that model looked kind of cool from the front anyway, so I can live with it.
This shot (i.e. the 2-foot miniature) doesn't bother me so much... except for the visible matte line around the ship -- which is a little inexplicable considering this new shot was digitally composited using original elements, not optically composited.
Still looks leagues better than the crappy NTSC composite.
Very true, but so would an upscaled transfer, like the example we saw on the Season 1 set. At some point though, we have to say that this isn't up to the standards we now expect from TNG HD. Having said that, I can probably live with everything I've seen so far.
It's such a relief though that CBS-D is working on Season 3.
If we can expect this level of quality from this outsourced company...visible matte lines, blurry planets, etc...I think CBS D needs to handle the compositing themselves and just let this company scan the footage for them.
While some consumers here are quite happy to accept the step down, I'm not. I would like consistency from Season to season.
If you're listening CBS D, this really dampens my spirits for the project. First the sound issues with Season 1 and now this?
While some consumers here are quite happy to accept the step down, I'm not. I would like consistency from Season to season.
If you're listening CBS D, this really dampens my spirits for the project. First the sound issues with Season 1 and now this?
Not CBS-D, just CBS. CBS-D would have dearly loved to have been able to do the whole lot, as Craig Weiss (head of the CBS-D team) told me in our interview, "we would have loved to have kept [Season 2] here, but due to the schedule it was just impossible."
Like I said before, I'd rather have had seasons every six months or so with consistent quality. If season two is screwed up, I'll simply start waiting for them to show up on TV or Netflix instead of spending cash on the sets.
I think that at least part of the problem with these shots can be found with the original effects work. Take the vortex shot from Time's Squared. The vortex itself looks stunning, put apparently the SFX team that made the original shot decided to use the two footer for the flyby shot which 25 years later looks poor in close up in HD. The HD restoration is true to the original shot, maybe to a fault, but it still is a faithfull recomposition of the original work. I think the effects shots in the second season weren't as good to begin with as the first season effects.
I think overall, the VFX were better and more ambitious than in season one... but I suspect the reason Robert Legato used the inferior 2-foot miniature for this particular shot was due to the camera move -- the ship had to appear to turn around 180 degrees and then recede from camera by quite a bit. There probably wasn't enough room on the stage floor at Image G to do that move with the larger 6-foot miniature.*
And of course that was one of the primary considerations for creating the intermediate-sized 4-foot miniature. They needed something smaller than the cumbersome 6-footer, but with more detail than the 2-footer.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Galaxy_class_model#Four-foot_model
*I suppose they could've used a wider lens, but the 6-footer would have looked too distorted up close.
I don't know if this was brought up before, but I have to say...my number one hope for the new transfers is to finally "fix" all the shots where a destroyed starship would just magically disappear the moment the explosion appeared. I understand why it happened originally, but it would be a minor task to keep them in the shot for a few extra frames until the explosion fully covered the ship. [Fingers crossed]
Maybe I'm not as attentive as I thought I am, but I don't recall an episode where we actually see the ship disappear before the explosion fully covers it. Not saying you are wrong, it's just that I can't remember something like that. Any examples?
I think the season is still awfully far from being "screwed up."
In fact, if anything, I'd say the slightly imperfect, more stitched-together shots we're seeing for S2 are probably more true to what the show actually looked like back then.
The CBS-D team may have done some incredible, feature-quality work on S1 (with cleaned up matte lines, improved CG planets, etc), but it's probably pretty far from what the show was actually capable of in the late 80s.
And maybe it's just me, but I'm not really looking for the effects on these sets to be as perfect and flawless as what we see today's movie screens. I just want it to look like TNG, and I think these shots do.
For crying out loud! Absolutely no-one implied that the extras would be revolutionary. If anyone is disappointed with these extra features they're just bloody ingrates IMO. For one we get deleted scenes, pretty much a first for Trek shows, if you disregard Ent. We're getting a totally remastered EXTENDED frigging version of Measure of a Man and audio commentaries. And let's not forget that all episodes have been remastered from 35 mm. What the hell more do you want?
Not deleted scenes and commentaries for every episode though.
It might be the best version of this season so far, but you can't say there isn't a better range of extras that could have been done, given more time and money.
Its' a glimpse of perfection, of what could have been.
An extended episode is brilliant. Imagine 22 extended episodes.
