logo Sign In

Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released) — Page 7

Author
Time
 (Edited)

RwAoNrDdOsM said:

The newer masters for the DVDs were carefully IVTCed (and the 29.97 portions brought to 23.976 in I-don’t -know-what-way), and then sped up to 25fps.

Are you sure they did this?
From what I found it was suggested that they used a method called DEFT to convert it to 25 fps. It does produce some combing artifacts but it works 99% of the time and that’s why I haven’t touched the PAL discs since then.

The portions with originally film, 23.976fps, seem clean progressive, and just sped up. That’s why the German sound for the DVDs had to be sped up too, while in the nineties they had done another type of conversion without speeding it up. Often done at that time, but not suitable for modern Flat tvs. This was a mixture of keeping the original interlace structure plus blendings - sometimes quite well reversable with avisynths SRestore.

The portions with originally 29.97fps (cgi, and, as Joel pointed out, even more scenes) have to be converted in another way: To get them from nearly 30 to 25 it is not possible just to slow down, that would be much too highly noticable, for sound and also picture. Also decimating is not possible, because there are no double fields to remove, and the result will be very jerky. So this is done with motion flow algorithms, f. e. with hardware or software alchemist (which can also DEFT, as I just read, but I don’t know anything more about this special technique).
In this special case they had to bring it first to 23.976fps, so that the whole episode in the end could be sped up alltogether to 25fps for PAL.
This is all a bit speculation, because up to now I haven’t seen any of the NTSC DVDs to be sure, but it should have been made like this - I can’t think of any other reason, why the German sound was sped up for the DVDs. And this was used typically.

So you can simply take the PAL discs, slow it down to 23.976, and you have the best possible conversion already done to
-one unique framerate
-progressive (if the original 29.97fps sections ARE progressive, I just assume this - if not, deinterlace first)
Everything you need for upscaling.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Just started working on the second episode of DS9 “Past Prologue” - now that the workflow is set, templates are done, it’s really just dumping in the source files and let the software do the work. It’s really nice.

Perhaps I will have another episode for you guys by the weekend, since I do not have to do much manually any longer.

Author
Time

By the way: I have thought about two other SciFi shows that were unfortunately “overlooked/underestimated” in their time and through re-runs or recordings have still managed to develop a devoted fan-base.

  • Earth : Final Conflict
  • Stargate SG-1

Since I do own the PAL and NTSC Discs of Final Conflict and the PAL of SG-1, I would do those after I am through with DS9 and Voyager. Funny how I am planning away probably years of my life, but I think it could be worth it.

But since SG-1 was available from Seasons 8-10 (as were the movies) in HD, I would only do Seasons 1-7.

I hope that would be something you guys might be interested in as well.

But for now, back to Trek.

Author
Time

FrankB said:

Animaxx said:
Strangely enough, the tv broadcasts and dvd versions are higher pitched around germany than the original vhs tapes, which had lower pitch.

Interesting, I didn’t know that. That means:
By the time the series was brought to Germany it was often practised technique to convert from NTSC to PAL in a mix of blending and keeping the original interlacing, especially with such mix-content of pulldowned and native 29.97 material.
So they seem to have dubbed it in its original length. This is what is also on the VHS cassettes.
The newer masters for the DVDs were carefully IVTCed (and the 29.97 portions brought to 23.976 in I-don’t -know-what-way), and then sped up to 25fps. Then they sped up the sound without correcting the pitch to its lower original. So you are damned right when you pitch down - even better would have been to slow down to 23.976 and then simply resample the German dub down, pitch would be corrected automatically and everything fine!

As for the speed down to 23,976 FPS: That would cause motion stutter again, which I was happy to have avoided with PAL at 25 FPS.

That’s an error. Slowing down does not at all cause any stutter, if you do it right - that means the very simplest way. Try it with avisynth with, as I said:
new=assumefps(old,24000,1001)
This will just change the SPEED, no t one frame will be added or dropped.

I can confirm what FrankB has said here. In fact, I experimented with doing this.

You can slow a PAL broadcast from 25 to 23.976 fps and never notice that you’ve done it. Then you can pitch-shift the audio down by 4% or get yourself the NTSC discs. Either works. I tried stapling the NTSC audio to a PAL rip that I’d performed this on, and while I had to add a 1.2 second offset to the track, it worked perfectly for alignment once I did. No stuttering.

This is why I seriously considered using PAL instead of NTSC for my project.

Author
Time

Joel Hruska said:

FrankB said:

Animaxx said:
Strangely enough, the tv broadcasts and dvd versions are higher pitched around germany than the original vhs tapes, which had lower pitch.

Interesting, I didn’t know that. That means:
By the time the series was brought to Germany it was often practised technique to convert from NTSC to PAL in a mix of blending and keeping the original interlacing, especially with such mix-content of pulldowned and native 29.97 material.
So they seem to have dubbed it in its original length. This is what is also on the VHS cassettes.
The newer masters for the DVDs were carefully IVTCed (and the 29.97 portions brought to 23.976 in I-don’t -know-what-way), and then sped up to 25fps. Then they sped up the sound without correcting the pitch to its lower original. So you are damned right when you pitch down - even better would have been to slow down to 23.976 and then simply resample the German dub down, pitch would be corrected automatically and everything fine!

As for the speed down to 23,976 FPS: That would cause motion stutter again, which I was happy to have avoided with PAL at 25 FPS.

That’s an error. Slowing down does not at all cause any stutter, if you do it right - that means the very simplest way. Try it with avisynth with, as I said:
new=assumefps(old,24000,1001)
This will just change the SPEED, no t one frame will be added or dropped.

I can confirm what FrankB has said here. In fact, I experimented with doing this.

You can slow a PAL broadcast from 25 to 23.976 fps and never notice that you’ve done it. Then you can pitch-shift the audio down by 4% or get yourself the NTSC discs. Either works. I tried stapling the NTSC audio to a PAL rip that I’d performed this on, and while I had to add a 1.2 second offset to the track, it worked perfectly for alignment once I did. No stuttering.

This is why I seriously considered using PAL instead of NTSC for my project.

It’s certainly an interesting idea. Any way to accomplish that with StaxRip? I have zero experience with avisynth.

Author
Time

Joel Hruska said:
Then you can pitch-shift the audio down by 4% or get yourself the NTSC discs.

4% isn’t enough. This would fit if you slowed down to exactly 24fps. You have to resample with 104.271%
We use these numbers (the opposite for speedup is 95.904%) that often, that I know it by heart.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

FrankB said:

I don’t know anything about Staxrip, but this might work:
Staxrip-Framerate AssumeFps

Like Frankb said. Just run:

AssumeFPS(24000,1001,true)

That will slow your video down. You need to make a call to sync_audio to also shift the audio. I didn’t do this because I decided to just use NTSC audio. The “True” command tells the filter to synchronize and slow the audio by 4%.

If you make a clip available to me, I’ll verify your audio is properly slowed. Emissary or Sacrifice of Angels preferred, because I have those ripped already and I know you have Emissary finished.

Also, Frank: You are absolutely correct re: the precise amount of slowdown, but AssumeFPS handles the calculation after the decimal correctly, as far as I know. Animaxx shouldn’t need to set anything beyond “24000,1001,true”

Author
Time

I see. “true” means audio resampling. I never used this, we handle audio mostly with Audition. I hope the quality will be the same with your “true”-method.

Author
Time

FrankB said:

I see. “true” means audio resampling. I never used this, we handle audio mostly with Audition. I hope the quality will be the same with your “true”-method.

Frank,

If it isn’t, there are other ways to slow the audio. Bolting the NTSC tracks on works perfectly, for example, and this function allows you to set the interval properly.

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/DelayAudio

Author
Time

Thanks for all your input. But I must ask: Does the 25 FPS bother you on my version? If so, I would consider doing the slowdown to 23,976 FPS, but I did watch my pilot-version and did not notice any decline in audio quality despite me doing modifications.

Also, I have bad news (at least for me) but good news (for you guys).

Let’s start with the bad for me: I really caught a nasty bug and I am lying around sick as a dog, which is just what you need when you have work piling up regarding your “real life job”. So for now I have taken 2 sick days, cause I really can’t do much physically speaking.

The good news for you: Since I can’t do much lying in bed but keyboard and mouse are in reach, I decided to spend more time on this project to get my mind of being down, so look over at the release topic, the next episode will hit within a few hours, putting up preview images now, uploading the 4K-version to google, which will take about two more hours. Size: About 5GB. Episode: 1x03 “Past Prologue”.

Have fun.

Author
Time

Animaxx said:

Thanks for all your input. But I must ask: Does the 25 FPS bother you on my version? If so, I would consider doing the slowdown to 23,976 FPS, but I did watch my pilot-version and did not notice any decline in audio quality despite me doing modifications.

No bothering at all. But
-23.976 (24, but THIS difference isn’t noticeable…) is the original speed.
-Resampling audio is never lossless, but quite lossless, if you change speed AND naturally pitch together with it. Manipulations of pitch are always lossy. Meanwhile there are really good algorithms, but it’s never the same.

Bothering? No. But you want the best possible quality, don’t you?

Author
Time
 (Edited)

@ Frank: Certainly I would want best quality. I will try on a short sample clip and see.

@Joel: Loved your latest article over on extremetech on fans getting impatient and doing there own upscaling. Did we inspire you’re latest journalistic endeavor a bit? 😃

Author
Time

The 4K-link for the latest episode “Past Prologue” is now online over at the release topic!

Author
Time
 (Edited)

@ Everyone: I really recommend reading Joels articles over on extremetech - they are really well done!

@ Joel:

I immensely enjoyed what you have said in your latest outing about fans.
While it is true that copyright is a serious matter, fans are not doing this in order to hurt the studios or companies, quite the opposite actually - as you have stated, many want to show ways to inspire companies to do their work differently to make the process perhaps more affordable.

Also, sometimes fans (like me) are also doing it out of a certain “necessity”. And while the following example is not meant to be some sort of apology or defense to use grey areas (in a copyright sense), it may add another dimension to the topic of fan remastering/upscaling:

TVs, screens, projectors, laser tv … everything continues to evolve, generally in the directions “larger, more detailed, ai-enhancing”.
And while those developments are great for modern content (or generally for content with a certain quality level), they can turn out to be horrific for older sources.
In my case: I love some of the old 80’s and 90’s classics, many of them have only been released on DVD (like DS9 and Voyager). So when I got a really high end TV for my birthday last year I was so happy, because the quality was (and still is) amazing, but naturally they only present those devices against “newer stuff”, which of course looks brilliant.
But when you play something that has some dust on it, the magic is all but gone. Now I don’t want to say that the original DVDs can’t be watched, but especially early seasons (like DS9s first) look bad on a 55` UHD (even with tweaked settings there is only so much the device can do).

So if you are a fan, happen to have great tech on hand (like a good tv) you obviously would want to enjoy even your old shows in at least “decent” quality. This was one of the reasons I got started thinking about upscaling, since many modern devices are designed to go forward, not back.
So I do understand the urge to improve things yourself if you can.

Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).

So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.

Author
Time

Animaxx said:

Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).

So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.

This certainly has to do with bad deinterlacing… You are right: Especially NTSC-DVDs can be watched best, when you set HDMI to 576i. That may be the mode your player used.

I just looked into the upscaled pilot. Well, I don’t want to be negative, but it’s not for me. And I still think, there is not REALLY much done about new details. Everything Topaz did, seem to me to be also possible with slight sharpenings (if you know how) and simple resizing.

But: This can be the future, and everything new needs pioneers who just do it, become better and better, inspire even better techniques, a. s. o.

Maybe it’s also about youth and age. I watched my first Star Trek episodes in Germany in 1972, so I think I can also wait a few years longer to see something really revolutionary.
But keep on to move forward, where no man has gone before!

Author
Time
 (Edited)

FrankB said:

Animaxx said:

Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).

So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.

This certainly has to do with bad deinterlacing… You are right: Especially NTSC-DVDs can be watched best, when you set HDMI to 576i. That may be the mode your player used.

I just looked into the upscaled pilot. Well, I don’t want to be negative, but it’s not for me. And I still think, there is not REALLY much done about new details. Everything Topaz did, seem to me to be also possible with slight sharpenings (if you know how) and simple resizing.

But: This can be the future, and everything new needs pioneers who just do it, become better and better, inspire even better techniques, a. s. o.

Maybe it’s also about youth and age. I watched my first Star Trek episodes in Germany in 1972, so I think I can also wait a few years longer to see something really revolutionary.
But keep on to move forward, where no man has gone before!

I can sympathize with you on many points. My mother was the one who first introduced me to Star Trek (she watched the original series when it aired back around the same time, I grew up with VHS tapes and original effects and still watch those today). And I continued the tradition with doing tv recordings when TNG, DS9 and VOY aired (from kid to teenager in my case) and later went on to collect the first DVDs.
And so it went on and on.

I admit, this is a project I mainly do for myself, since I think even a little improvement is good. And when others like to have these files, I am happy to share, since not everyone can do this work him-/herself.
Also, I am just a beginner and couldn’t hope to compete with you or Joel, but I am content to learn from you guys.

And as you have said: I will continue going forward with this until something better comes along.
(And while we are on the subject of paying homage to the original work, I still own the DVDs and have them as digital backups, my version will just supplement them in case I want to watch or “show off” 😃 )

Author
Time

Animaxx said:

@ Frank: Certainly I would want best quality. I will try on a short sample clip and see.

@Joel: Loved your latest article over on extremetech on fans getting impatient and doing there own upscaling. Did we inspire you’re latest journalistic endeavor a bit? 😃

You are one of the people I was referring to, certainly. There are at least a half-dozen or so DS9 upscaling projects. There’s a big Babylon 5 project. I’ve met people on the Topaz forums working on all sorts of varied stuff.

I do not condone piracy and will not be distributing my own work illegally, even though that means my version of the show will be the one virtually no one ever sees. But that was the price of getting permission to work on the story in the first place. Hopefully people who decide to undertake these efforts will pay for the DVD sets of the discs they want to work on. If you feel a show is worth remastering, it’s worth investing in to do it right.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

FrankB said:

Animaxx said:

Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).

So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.

This certainly has to do with bad deinterlacing… You are right: Especially NTSC-DVDs can be watched best, when you set HDMI to 576i. That may be the mode your player used.

I just looked into the upscaled pilot. Well, I don’t want to be negative, but it’s not for me. And I still think, there is not REALLY much done about new details. Everything Topaz did, seem to me to be also possible with slight sharpenings (if you know how) and simple resizing.

But: This can be the future, and everything new needs pioneers who just do it, become better and better, inspire even better techniques, a. s. o.

Maybe it’s also about youth and age. I watched my first Star Trek episodes in Germany in 1972, so I think I can also wait a few years longer to see something really revolutionary.
But keep on to move forward, where no man has gone before!

FrankB,

The problem is DS9 itself. There’s a reason I didn’t use Emissary (1x01) to show off my work. Early Deep Space 9 does not respond to upscaling nearly as well as later DS9 does. It’s not as clear. It’s not as sharp. It makes early greenscreen effects look really fake, and the footage can almost look as though it’s being spliced in from VHS. There’s moire on everything, the models are dull, and it scarcely looks like an upgrade. Some of that is baked right into the source and looks bad there (like the early holodeck scene), but gets magnified by the upscaler. But the show looks bad – really bad – on DVD.

It’s Deep Space Nine’s fault. And the reason I know that is because later episodes of the show, filmed with different techniques, upscale beautifully using the exact same settings.

I do not yet know how to meaningfully clean up Emissary, and Animaxx will tell you that my QTGMC script that I shared with him is excellent for denoising and fixing artifacts. It’s not good enough. Sharpening isn’t enough. The rainbow filters I’ve run against the content haven’t worked, and it’s very hard to draw detail out of scenes.

The level of improvement I get in Emissary is less than half the improvement I get in episodes from Season 4 forward.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

Joel is spot on here. I did a test clip from the season 5 finale some time ago, it was a huge difference to early episodes.
Even when just watching the DVDs: Somehow from season 4 onwards the blur is noticeably less present, so are luma and chroma issues.

And I understand your opinion on piracy. That’s why I decided not to talk about my work openly and only share it around here in a “limited” capacity, not on public torrenting sites.

Author
Time
 (Edited)

@Animaxx
Wonderful story! A trekkie-family-tradition! And: what an obligation!
I know this kind of feeling very well: The strong wish to take part, help, somehow in something you really love.

Joel Hruska said:
The problem is DS9 itself. There’s a reason I didn’t use Emissary (1x01) to show off my work. Early Deep Space 9 does not respond to upscaling nearly as well as later DS9 does. It’s not as clear. It’s not as sharp. It makes early greenscreen effects look really fake, and the footage can almost look as though it’s being spliced in from VHS. There’s moire on everything, the models are dull, and it scarcely looks like an upgrade. Some of that is baked right into the source and looks bad there (like the early holodeck scene), but gets magnified by the upscaler. But the show looks bad – really bad – on DVD.

Yes, I know that. I recently watched it (about two months ago the first episode). They seem to have improved scanning equipment through the years… Problems are Rainbowing (see Borg-cube), Ringing (I guess not because of not-so-well DVD-encoding, but somehow compressed storage in the past, quite common - see captions after upscaling), rests of aliasing (same reason, some of the past storage compression algorithms did not 100% take respect of interlacing), artefacts of not-so-well encoded film-grain, a. s. o.
Maybe I can find some time next week for this, I see some possibilities.

Author
Time

I just took the time to try something. I always thought the worst picture quality of the pilot is in the scene with Cisco and son. There is no magic that can turn this in something really good, but it is possible to remove most of the rainbowing, aliasing and (bad) grain, in order to get something to experiment with:

Before

After

One could sharpen this a bit, but that wouldn’t do much good. Too many vertical-ringing-kind artefacts, that would be sharpend, too. It’s even possible to remove these (didn’t try yet, just think so), but would surely cost a lot of sharpness, and I doubt if in the end this would be profitable for AI input

Author
Time

Yeah, the holodeck scene is a tricky one. Not much to work with from the start.

Also, I noticed an imperfection in my audio track conversion: DS9s intro music suffers from fluctuations, possibly due to the time/pitch adjustments. Since it only effects the intro, I would leave it at that, I can’t really hear anything during the episodes.

By the way, I got a technical questions for which I haven’t found a solution so far: Is it possible to invite someone to a private topic when that has already been created? Like add them later on?

Author
Time

I just asked a couple of DS9-fans over on reddit if they would also be interested in the episodes.
Perhaps that way, I can make more fans happy. Let’s see how that goes.
But I think that will be the extent of it. I got several questions on possibly doing this as a torrent release, but you know how I think about that.