The OFFICIAL STNG-R general discussion thread!

[ChristopherPike]

Mixed feelings having watched some of TNG on Blu ray last night. I've yet to watch "The Inner Light", but I am concerned a bit...

First of all, "Encounter at Farpoint" looks astounding and having seen that one more times than I care to admit, HD remastering really did reveal more detail. Fractions more at the edge of the frame too, missed off earlier video masters... even beyond TV overscan areas. It totally adds more enjoyment to episodes I had tired of, and it really shows how much of a dip down in quality editing the show on tape really was. Q appears in his medieval Captain costume and instantly you notice how shiny the breastplate on his costume is. More of an angle to where the dry ice jets that freeze the crewman come from, off camera. There used to be a flaw in the video tape during this scene on every screening I've ever seen - a dark line running through Picard's tunic, horizonally near the comm badge, during his reaction shots at Q, right the way through his three costume changes. Probably a flaw that can be traced right back to the telecine in 1987.

Clearly a lot of love went into reconstructing the FX, and the previously video generated ones remain largely faithful to how they originally looked. A few things like Q's barrier and flashing/in out of the scene, look redone, in that they move with slight differences. But it's natural they would vary a bit. Based on what I saw, Season 1's box-set will be a must own for me, at the very least. Early TNG is definately going to be better appreciated now, and seem less dated with that grainy, noisy gauze video applies to everything.

Ironically, I have some doubts right now, whether the best years of the show will be as essential though - if how "Sins of the Father" has been treated, is anything to go by. Why? Well, whereas you can see MORE of the original frame during "Encounter", here they've cropped it or zoomed in slightly. So the upshot is, you can see more of the frame in the DVD version! The edges no where near match, all the way around. My suspicions were aroused just after the titles, in a scene set in Ten Forward, when at least one of the production credits appeared way too close to the bottom of the frame. It's in the right place. It's just the whole frame has been enlargely slightly too much. Couldn't somebody have at least had a previous master on hand, to refer to? At least if isn't possible to pull back, and show more of the filmed shot - because boom mikes and lighting stands appear - that the framing would stay as intended? It's frustrating that after how well the Pilot went down, so obvious a mistake as this was made.

 

[ChristopherPike]

Sad, I know. But I missed seeing the Paramount logo at the end of each episode. I know the TV shows are now wholly CBS property, but isn't there some case that bit of branding should remain? As much as Desliu were allowed to on each TOS show? I mean they were produced by Paramount and on their lot, their stages etc...

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Yeah I still can't get over how much better those early uniforms look now.

Yeah I still can't get over how much better those early uniforms look now.

Being able to see their texture and color better, they do seem much less 'spandex-like' in HD.

Being able to see their texture and color better, they do seem much less 'spandex-like' in HD.

Yeah it used to seem like there was a really dramatic difference between the two uniforms, but it was probably just the weird and inconsistent coloring the show had early on.

In HD, the season one uniforms, designed by William Ware Theiss, look far more spectacular than the season three two-piece modification designed by Robert Blackman. Theiss' design is slick, whereas Blackman's design is frumpy and stuffy with its Mandarin collar and shoulder pads.

Yes, I know that Blackman's redesign was to give comfort to the male actors (the women still wore spandex!), but it just doesn't look good in HD. The third season variation looked good in the first 5 episodes, where there was more of an attempt to match the silhouette of Theiss' uniform. Blackman, however, kept tinkering with it, adding the spandex belt and changing the cut of the upper yoke, where it ended up making all the men look puffy.

 

[tomswift2002]

Couldn't somebody have at least had a previous master on hand, to refer to? At least if isn't possible to pull back, and show more of the filmed shot - because boom mikes and lighting stands appear - that the framing would stay as intended? It's frustrating that after how well the Pilot went down, so obvious a mistake as this was made.

I don't think that having any unwanted material (ie. lights and other production equipment) in the shot is going to matter much too a lot of people. Sure, professionally it doesn't look good, but I've even shot stuff in 4:3 where I've had the brim of an audio person's baseball cap get into the shot because it was in a section of the frame that even I couldn't see on the camera, and I didn't get to see till we were editing the piece that I was working on. But, there were some major production faux pas's in the SD versions of the episodes that are going to remain in the HD, and the inclusion of others. Just recently I was watching Half A Life, and if you watch the scene where Lwaxana is talking with Deanna (and during the whole scene Deanna is only seen in a mirror) you can see that when Lwaxana moves over towards Deanna and the camera pans, a boom pole drops right into the center of the mirror, and then when Lwaxana and the camera come back the boom pole is gone, but now you can see a light on a stand in the mirror that was being used as a side fill for Deanna.

 

[davejames]

Nah, I still think the later uniforms are best. The collar gave them a much more dignified appearance, and with the looser-fitting style they no longer had that awful and outdated pajama look.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Nah, I still think the later uniforms are best. The collar gave them a much more dignified appearance, and with the looser-fitting style they no longer had that awful and outdated pajama look.

The looser-fitting style seemed more like a PJs to me.

 

[AdmiralScreed]

I haven't watched the sampler, but from all of the screen shots and trailers I've seen I really like the way the early uniforms look. I'm not sure if I prefer one uniform design over the other, but in HD I think they both look great!
I can't wait to watch the first season later this year!

 

[RAMA]

Yeah I still can't get over how much better those early uniforms look now.

Being able to see their texture and color better, they do seem much less 'spandex-like' in HD.

Being able to see their texture and color better, they do seem much less 'spandex-like' in HD.

Yeah it used to seem like there was a really dramatic difference between the two uniforms, but it was probably just the weird and inconsistent coloring the show had early on.

In HD, the season one uniforms, designed by William Ware Theiss, look far more spectacular than the season three two-piece modification designed by Robert Blackman. Theiss' design is slick, whereas Blackman's design is frumpy and stuffy with its Mandarin collar and shoulder pads.

Yes, I know that Blackman's redesign was to give comfort to the male actors (the women still wore spandex!), but it just doesn't look good in HD. The third season variation looked good in the first 5 episodes, where there was more of an attempt to match the silhouette of Theiss' uniform. Blackman, however, kept tinkering with it, adding the spandex belt and changing the cut of the upper yoke, where it ended up making all the men look puffy.

On the whole there really isn't a big onscreen difference, while I slightly prefer the newer uniforms.

RAMA

 

[mswood]

Right, because they are two totally different conceptual designscapes and of course you will never ever understand that in million years.

RAMA

They are stylistically different, but that doesn't mean one isn't also qualitatively better produced than the other.

Although if they get the artist(s?) who did the digital matte paintings back for TNG-R, I will be very happy indeed. They were superb.

If we're to say what FX are best absolute terms, then Enterprise is the clear leader, as it produced modern FX at the limit of the tech of the time. The TOS-R FX are tremendously successful and widely praised by the pro FX community because their goal was to NOT produce FX to the limits allowable by technology but to create them so they did not look out of place: rounded, soft edges, less detail, limited motion...though in most cases, slightly tweaked so they were beyond the capabilities of the budget of the 60s era (the ion pod scene, the expanded motion in Doomsday Machine, Klingon D7s maneuvering in space, instead of stationary, etc). Two different goals, both successful.

Really Praise from professional fx personal over the end results of this project?

Now I freely admit I love the digital matte work they did, I loved the planets that were created, and I loved (with a few exceptions, that I have mentioned previously ) the stately manner of the layout of shots. But I will again reiterate that this is the first production of fx for broadcast trek where the fx creators and designers had to degrade their work.

I stated that I would have liked final product that matched the CGI work of Trek not current of that time or the best of tv at the time it was created, but of shows that were 5 - 11 years old.

For space bound shots, most failed.

If their intent was extremely flat, little detail or soft focus.

Why create such a detailed rich mesh for the old girl?

Why degrade their work?

They did that because they couldn't get the quality they wanted with the time and budget limitations they had. And hey everyone here understands that shows have both time and financial limits. But it was clear that the worked on both a tight time frame and a fairly low fx budget.

And clearly this desire to show such more renders wasn't due to matching original creations, because again why did they create such a detailed mesh for Enterprise. Why create a much more detailed and weathered render of the SS BB (its clearly not from the original), and does feature far greater details then almost all the ship shots.

And if they wanted such flat work, then why such rich digital mattes? Why such nicely done planets?

I give absolute props for what I fell deserves it, but I wont give them a free pass when their own work clearly shows that they wanted richer material to be shown.

I mean 90% of all space shots feature the Enterprise, Clearly I think they wanted to be able to show the detail they put into her. They had to scale that back.

 

[tomswift2002]

The original model of the Enterprise would been considered "flat, with very little detail" back in the 60's because they were shooting for TV and the producers knew that TV stations would use a "video chain" to air the series and fine detail would not survive. (Check out the special features on DS9's Season 5 about the tribbles episode; Paramount actually recreated a few seconds of video to show what TOS looked like in color in the 60's because of the chain.)

And that's one of the nice things that TOS-R got right, sometimes too much detail can detract and lower the quality (just like it did on Enterprise).

 

[ChristopherPike]

Finished watching the TNG HD sampler, with "The Inner Light" and the remastering is back up to a fantastic standard again. I ran the DVD edition synchronised alongside while the Blu ray player was running, and if you're able to do so - I recommend it. Really shows how much of a picture improvement there is. Toggle between the two and there's undeniably extra detail, with more of the safe area onscreen. Always to the left & right, and occasionally above & below what's visable on DVD. What I presume to be the original colour palette filmed, where an odd yellowish-green filter seemed to have been applied throughout "The Inner Light" before. Possibly that's due to NTSC. Possibly a choice when editing on video. In any case, no complaints here. The bridge scenes are rich and vibrant with colour and are a whole lot more consistant than ever seen before.

"Sins of the Father", whose frame cropping I assume has already been spotted and won't be how it and other Season 3 episodes end up treated, when or if CBS get that far. Otherwise it'll be a bit strange for the best year of TNG, not to be up to the high standard of everything else.

Part of me wonders if they had been experimenting with 16:9 for that episode. Partly because the missing edges of the frame, plus whatever a new film transfer has revealed, might well have brought it pretty close. Possibly 14:9 or more. At the expense of extra information at the top and bottom too however. I would only really recommend that, as an optional viewing experience to the original 1.37:1 frame.

I wish I could upload comparison shots, but being a bit of a luddite, my PC doesn't have a Blu ray drive. Perhaps an excellent resource site like Trekcore have already uploaded images from the sampler disc? In which case, it'll be a simple matter to illustrate my issues with the Klingon episode.

 

[Start Wreck]

There was some speculation on here that Sins of the Father was used as the 16:9 "test" episode, hence the cropping of non-effects shots. I would assume it'll be fixed for the full release. It doesn't seem intentional, just an oversight.

 

[ChristopherPike]

There was some speculation on here that Sins of the Father was used as the 16:9 "test" episode, hence the cropping of non-effects shots. I would assume it'll be fixed for the full release. It doesn't seem intentional, just an oversight.

Thanks. I clearly haven't gone through the whole thread. I'm happy to find out others spotted this right a way. Fingers crossed for that then. I find it a bit strange they'd include it all really, since it might be misconstrued as the final decision about how others from that Season will look... remastering all those different film elements undoubtedly being such a costly business. It should've been made a bit clearer then, that that was just an extra showing off an earlier experimental attempt. No worries though. The framing of "Encounter" and "The Inner Light" hopefully establishes the standard by which the whole series is being redone.

I have just looked over at Trekcore and there are some good screenshots that are close enough in sequence, indicating more visable frame on the DVD version for "Sins of the Father".

 

[Doug Otte]

Nah, I still think the later uniforms are best. The collar gave them a much more dignified appearance, and with the looser-fitting style they no longer had that awful and outdated pajama look.

The looser-fitting style seemed more like a PJs to me.

The early uniforms seemed less pompous, to me. However, as noted, they were uncomfortable for the actors, and they were unflattering on certain body types.

The newer uniforms looked a little more ostentatious and militaristic, but they were more comfortable and forgiving for various body types.

Has anyone noticed that the new uniforms in the first few episodes of Season 3 were overly-padded and boxy? Also, the seams were more obvious. After that, they were trimmed down a bit and looked more natural.

Doug

 

[mswood]

The original model of the Enterprise would been considered "flat, with very little detail" back in the 60's because they were shooting for TV and the producers knew that TV stations would use a "video chain" to air the series and fine detail would not survive. (Check out the special features on DS9's Season 5 about the tribbles episode; Paramount actually recreated a few seconds of video to show what TOS looked like in color in the 60's because of the chain.)

And that's one of the nice things that TOS-R got right, sometimes too much detail can detract and lower the quality (just like it did on Enterprise).

Yeah, I don't think the people behind the remastered were trying in any way shape or form to get the product to match what could be broadcast into homes at that time.

If that was the case they never would have done any of the reissues of the show beyond the very first VHS release.

As for the FX, I have to strongly, strongly disagree with you. While I did dislike some fx done on ENT (as I have disliked some fx done in every single show I have ever watched). Higher quality has never been the factor that made me dislike an image. Design, yes, poor renders, yes. But high quality, never.

Well I don't think it was ever the intent to match the work being done by the artist of the day (during tis production phase). and I have never held it to that standard. But I would had liked to see the original mesh fully rendered (like some early released images), and to see work done that might have matched the early CGI of 1st season Voyager, but in ship shots, I think they in general failed. And when you show that level of render and then look at teh digital matte work (I really, really liked those a lot). They don't match. One has much sharper detail (well thats what it looks like on my 55 HD).

But clearly the artists didn't get the quality they wanted on the Enterprise, and clearly they had no problem with much more detailed digital mattes and planetary bodies, and most of the praise I have read for the remastered work, wasn't the ship shots.

 

[Start Wreck]

Regardless of whether the quality of TOS-R's ship shots was an intentional style or not, the relevant factor here is whether their CGI work for TNG-R is up to scratch, and on the basis of the sampler disc, it unfortunately is not, and that's not something you can excuse as their "style".

 

[ChristopherPike]

I was really impressed with the FX on the HD example TNG episodes. Especially since they were the original filmed model shots, enhanced with an unavoidable do-over for all standard def video effects.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

You can perhaps guess posters' ages from how much they obsess about CGI and not about the quality of the stories or the acting. I speak as an old fart who witnessed many theatrical performances - staged proscenium, thrust, and in the round - before I ever set eyes on a video game.

 

[Tosk]

Quiet down there Grandpa.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Quiet down there Grandpa.

Get off my lawn.

I'm not complaining - well maybe I am - but I guess it is a generational thing, which is kind of appropriate.