Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/21/deep-space-9-remastered-with-d.html
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The SBS video dosing demonstrate the “look” very well, but damn!!! If that 4K clip isn’t titts. I’ve rewatched all of ST several times and would welcome this upgrade very much.
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Now I’m wondering what kind of resolution a first-generation holodeck would have.
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I am pretty sure ds9 and voy were still shot on film. What is different is the age of CGI that came in to fashion during their runs. The FX work was only ever rendered to lower res broadcast standards of the time. That is why its not as easy to remaster DS9 and VOY to HD.
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During the latter seasons of the TNG restoration, Mojo, one of the original, Emmy-Winning VFX artists on Voyager , who, at the time, was still in possession of many of the original DS9 and Voyager VFX assets, did a re-rendering VFX test on footage from “The Sacrifice of Angels.” The test really looked spectacular, and proved it could be done. But again, it would still take very talented VFX artists working long hours to accomplish the number of shots required for the episodes at great cost.
However, since then, I’ve heard many of these assets have been lost, either through drive failure, or simply the dumping of all the original data.
The only alternative would be to re-create all of the CG VFX shots from scratch, much the same way CBS Digital re-created TOS’ visual effects. But with the number of elements needed during DS9’s Dominion War arc, with sometimes hundreds of starships in combat, this could cost in the millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, depending on who was doing the VFX.
http://www.treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/
so, it sounds like the 35mm elements still exist-- in some unedited, uncut, form. Those could be used to accompany the deep learning upscaling of visual effects shots.
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It did well on some things and not on others. Where there are defined lines (closeups of the Defiant and the station) it looked fantastic. When the station was further away it kind of gave it a weird organic look as if it was trying to refine something that it didn’t know how it should look. And the stars, while sharper, tended to take “steps” as the camera panned and the star shifted between standard definition raster lines. The comet was really fuzzy until for a moment it wasn’t. It seems like it couldn’t determine which particle was which between frames.
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Based on CBS’s history of treating fan contributions to their properties, I’d expect a C&D in about five minutes.
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Can’t they just lean forward and mutter, “enhance”?
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I’d rate this uneven. In some of the shots the colors look more saturated, but I see blurring in places which I assume is from the remastering process. Not impressed. (But I usually find ultra HD stuff to be too sharp and generally cold and ugly, so I’m obviously not the intended audience).
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I… think maybe I could tell the difference a few times in the side-by-side?
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The single biggest overall change I can think of, is the simple lack of bleeding retinal cancer from seeing a standard definition (640x480) TV image on my 1080p monitor =x. E-freaking-gad, it looks lousy at native rez! Even after up-, then downscaling, this looked… Alright, let’s say. The lack of aliasing on the model details was especially nice.
Gotta agree, tho, on the oddly “organic” look of the more distant shots of DS9.
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Yeah, it does sound like they did 35mm shooting for all the Trek series, but it exists only in uncut form. Which means the FX, beyond any physical model shots, were all done at the SD resolution. (And The Next Generation would have had the most practical FX shots.)
Apparently they went back to the original film footage and recut the episodes for TNG Bluray, but I’m guessing they don’t see the other shows as popular enough to warrant it. It would have been pretty expensive to do it for TNG. (And the later shows, with their digital FX, have less footage to work with and more that would have to be recreated from scratch, making them more expensive and even less likely to be done.)
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I’d like to see this done with Babylon 5. See if it can fix the VFX stuff that’s all screwy on the DVD release. B5 is the better space station after all… 
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I found those quite jarring, watching TOS a little while ago. It’s a hard line to toe: the design of TOS, the hokey practicals the CGI scenes are matched against, etc.
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That sounds more like the typical shortcomings of the compression YouTube uses.
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Just so long as they stick to enhancing the video effects, and not changing things.
Sisko shot first!
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I seriously loved this serious. Sisko was the bombdiggity.
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You can see the difference at the edge of the face and on the fabric of the shoulder - your unsharp mask also enhances the compression artifacts of the DVD video creating halo effects and visible MPEG blocks at color boundaries. This may not be a big deal if he is allowed to work with the uncompressed video, but it shows one of the benefits of his method.
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