Voyager Remaster through AI machine learning
- Thread starter Cap.T
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If you click on the source I linked to you can download a 9 minute uncompressed sequence from the episode. There is a short shoot of the Voyager in front of a planet about two minutes in, that looked quite nice, when I watched in on my 65 inch 4K TV.
He also posted effects sequnces from DS9's "Sacrifice of Angles", but it's only on youtube with it's heavy compression:
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Nope.
Same problems apply here as they do for DS9. Real HD wouldn't get blurry beyond its source definition. The source definition is not 4K. So anything less should not be blurry or jaggy... but still is.... until you lower the window size to something closer to 720x480 (the native/original size, which is still two interlaced fields (effectively 720x240) composited into one 720x480frame... )
Watching full screen on a 2.5k monitor, the SD (which is far lower than 2.5k, never mind 4k) source shines right through the technical trickery. The edge enhancement is still unable to add actual detail within elements. At least for Odo, I'd expect it since he's simulating a shape and not quite as perfectly as other Changelings who do it as a favor for the humans... But also forgetting the text font, which is anything but crisp but definitely has the SD limitations shrieking out... or quilting on the uniforms of Dax and O'Brien that should be consistently visible (and in natively crisper detail) but clearly aren't despite being close enough to the camera, even crows' feet and face wrinkles on Odo's face don't begin to have the definition that a proper remastering -- there's the flicker and jaggies obscuring the actual detail, which would be consistent between frames.
Remember, one can always downscale from larger density materials but once removed, adding detail back isn't going to happen, for motion video though I'd seen a couple static photos that showed some promise, despite being obvious paint-by-numbers affairs. But I digress. Even Photoshop with its tools that can remove background objects still requires a lot of manual work - for even just one frame - to make the finished result look adequate. Never mind 24 frames per second... 60 seconds per minute... 43 minutes per episode...
The ships too have that bizarre fuzziness that just scream "HI THERE, I'M SD! COOIE!" that start to look more detailed once the video playback window is reduced in size. If you enlarge it and it starts to look fuzzy and/or jaggied, it's not true HD because you're still displaying it above its original resolution.
It's still nothing more than edge enhancement trickery largely via contrast and unsharp masking and slightly augmented/shifted color gamut (NTSC is mocked with its other acronym, "never the same color"...).
Same problems apply here as they do for DS9. Real HD wouldn't get blurry beyond its source definition. The source definition is not 4K. So anything less should not be blurry or jaggy... but still is.... until you lower the window size to something closer to 720x480 (the native/original size, which is still two interlaced fields (effectively 720x240) composited into one 720x480frame... )
Watching full screen on a 2.5k monitor, the SD (which is far lower than 2.5k, never mind 4k) source shines right through the technical trickery. The edge enhancement is still unable to add actual detail within elements. At least for Odo, I'd expect it since he's simulating a shape and not quite as perfectly as other Changelings who do it as a favor for the humans... But also forgetting the text font, which is anything but crisp but definitely has the SD limitations shrieking out... or quilting on the uniforms of Dax and O'Brien that should be consistently visible (and in natively crisper detail) but clearly aren't despite being close enough to the camera, even crows' feet and face wrinkles on Odo's face don't begin to have the definition that a proper remastering -- there's the flicker and jaggies obscuring the actual detail, which would be consistent between frames.
Remember, one can always downscale from larger density materials but once removed, adding detail back isn't going to happen, for motion video though I'd seen a couple static photos that showed some promise, despite being obvious paint-by-numbers affairs. But I digress. Even Photoshop with its tools that can remove background objects still requires a lot of manual work - for even just one frame - to make the finished result look adequate. Never mind 24 frames per second... 60 seconds per minute... 43 minutes per episode...
The ships too have that bizarre fuzziness that just scream "HI THERE, I'M SD! COOIE!" that start to look more detailed once the video playback window is reduced in size. If you enlarge it and it starts to look fuzzy and/or jaggied, it's not true HD because you're still displaying it above its original resolution.
It's still nothing more than edge enhancement trickery largely via contrast and unsharp masking and slightly augmented/shifted color gamut (NTSC is mocked with its other acronym, "never the same color"...).
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Suppose we watched something better until VGR is remastered properly, and if that doesn’t happen in the next thirty years, would there be massive disappointment?
Well, aren't we a Danny Downer! I just watched the daydreaming Doctor clip projected on a very large wall, and, while not the perfection that is remastered TNG, I'd say it's pretty damn close - 80% or more. Which, for a hobbyist working alone and then being compressed back down through YouTube, is nothing to sneeze at. (I also watched VOY's "Death Wish" on the same projector via Netflix the other night, and the quality of this clip is light-years beyond that.) True, I didn't watch the DS9 visual effect scenes, but, let's face it, the most impressive visual effects on Voyager were the actors anyhow.
As someone on another forum I frequent pointed out, AI has also gotten to the point where it could easily be fed raw scans of the original DS9/VOY film negatives, and then re-edit them to match the existing files, thereby vastly reducing the human labor costs that made TNG's remastering so expensive. So really, between scanning the old raw film with AI re-edits, and AI upscaling of visual effects elements, DS9/VOY remasters, even if not quite so expertly and hand-crafted made as TNG's, just might be financially plausible in the not-too-distant future.
It's pretty good, though there are occasional Uncanny Valley moments.
Of course, VOY and DS9 could be remastered properly if CBS had the will, the time and the money. The real potential in this technology is for productions that never had HD in the first place, such as pre-2009 Doctor Who.
Of course, VOY and DS9 could be remastered properly if CBS had the will, the time and the money. The real potential in this technology is for productions that never had HD in the first place, such as pre-2009 Doctor Who.
Well, aren't we a Danny Downer! I just watched the daydreaming Doctor clip projected on a very large wall, and, while not the perfection that is remastered TNG, I'd say it's pretty damn close - 80% or more. Which, for a hobbyist working alone and then being compressed back down through YouTube, is nothing to sneeze at. (I also watched VOY's "Death Wish" on the same projector via Netflix the other night, and the quality of this clip is light-years beyond that.) True, I didn't watch the DS9 visual effect scenes, but, let's face it, the most impressive visual effects on Voyager were the actors anyhow.
As someone on another forum I frequent pointed out, AI has also gotten to the point where it could easily be fed raw scans of the original DS9/VOY film negatives, and then re-edit them to match the existing files, thereby vastly reducing the human labor costs that made TNG's remastering so expensive. So really, between scanning the old raw film with AI re-edits, and AI upscaling of visual effects elements, DS9/VOY remasters, even if not quite so expertly and hand-crafted made as TNG's, just might be financially plausible in the not-too-distant future.
Just a realist.
But I wouldn't say 80%.
If the episodes don't get remastered, at least material exists in some archived form. But the negatives are still there and stored and with any luck won't deteriorate too much until it's viable to repatriate all the episodes in a genuine HD form. There was a news article from a few months or year or so ago that had new theories on how "the vinegar effect" and other issues that destroy film can start a lot sooner, even under appropriate storage conditions. As long as the original negs exist, definitely keep them safe and well but having a backup is hardly a bad thing. So it's not anyone being a "Danny Downer", not in the slightest.
Great point on the potential of "AI" knowing how to repatriate films based on source material. Would the scanned material have metadata attached or would the AI analyze the existing videotape source?
AI "upscaling" still doesn't hold a candle to extracting actual "data" available in real life resolution. One can mask the effects, which the upscaling processes also do, but it's nowhere near the same thing.
I will agree, or maybe many of us would, that keeping the original f/x and upscaling those but re-scanning the negs from scratch might not be implausible. But DS9 had such rich and lush and other adjective-laden sets and costumes that it seems silly not to do a proper, real remastering. The stories themselves were the best focus of the productions, just buoyed by an opulent production style that's more than... the beige and silver the late-80s were known for.
But that's DS9, VOY did look a bit grayscale at times...
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That looks horrible, even on an iPhone screen!
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