Star Trek Deep Space Nine - NTSC DVD Restoration & 1080p HD Enhancement (Emissary Released) — Page 8

Animaxx said:

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.

I haven’t been responding in the thread because I have been busy, but I have been reading it. I have all seven PAL DVD seasons of SG-1 already converted to NTSC framerate if you need them. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel if you think my work was good enough, I can upload them for you. That being said, I’d love to see Earth: Final Conflict get an upscale like that as well. I’d also like to see Dark Angel get the same, so I can share my PAL conversions for that if anyone wants to do that one.

A lot of the discussion in the thread (which was insanely awesome to read, and great seeing another big name in DS9 HD conversions pop in) went right over my head. I did a simple slowdown of each element and didn’t have any issues with extra/dropped frames or quality loss. I don’t know if that was something intrinsic to SG-1’s CGI sequences or not.

Thank you for joining in. No problem, everyone also has a life to get back to at some point 😃

Since I will be working on DS9 and Voyager first, I would contact you once I get around to SG-1.
Also, I am planning to work on Babylon 5 (later on).

Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.

And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.

As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.

Animaxx said:

Thank you for joining in. No problem, everyone also has a life to get back to at some point 😃

Since I will be working on DS9 and Voyager first, I would contact you once I get around to SG-1.
Also, I am planning to work on Babylon 5 (later on).

Sounds good, just let me know. I wasn’t planning on deleting the raw assembled episodes anytime soon, so no rush.

JadedSkywalker said:

Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.

And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.

As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.

I have the original pilot episode version. I actually need to track down a PAL copy of the director’s cut movie to encode alongside it just for completionist reasons. If I recall correctly, Babylon 5 was available in 4:3 on Vudu.

I know, unfortunately I only own the PAL DVDs of Babylon 5, which have the dreadful 16:9.

EDIT:
Thankfully, I have a lot of SciFi Fans around me (or at least they know others). A friend of mine just said he could provide me with 480p captures of the original 4:3 vudu. I will pm you on this further.

JadedSkywalker said:

Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.

And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.

As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.

What did you meant by ‘fake widescreen’?

B5 was filmed in anamorphic widescreen to allow future proofing on 16/9 tv. There is, as far as i know, no original 4:3. Watch B5 on TV only and not your computer monitor as the technology is different. The monitor will show B5 in ‘squishing effect.’

cm said:

JadedSkywalker said:

Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.

And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.

As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.

What did you meant by ‘fake widescreen’?

B5 was filmed in anamorphic widescreen to allow future proofing on 16/9 tv. There is, as far as i know, no original 4:3. Watch B5 on TV only and not your computer monitor as the technology is different. The monitor will show B5 in ‘squishing effect.’

Skywalker probably meant that the live-action scenes were filmed in 16:9, but the cgi/vfx were done in 4:3 to save production costs, so when you watch the DVDs the computer generated scenes (space scene, composite shots) were cropped and zoomed in, which caused blurriness and artefacts.

As for my own approach (once I get around to it): I changed my opinion on the VUDU-version. I compared them and in my opinion to much information is lost left/right since the live action has been cropped in the 4:3 version (there is a scene in the episode “Midnight on the Firing Line”, where the B5-guards next to G’Kar almost completely disappear, which does not happen with the DVD-version). Since the cgi/vfx only makes up for about 15-20% of the actual episodes, I’d rather see more from the live action shots; also, my filtering setup would take care of artefacts. As for having a little less space to look at top/bottom of the screem and sometimes ships being zoomed in, I think I could live with that (but that’s a matter of personal taste, I guess).

Animaxx said:

cm said:

JadedSkywalker said:

Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.

And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.

As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.

What did you meant by ‘fake widescreen’?

B5 was filmed in anamorphic widescreen to allow future proofing on 16/9 tv. There is, as far as i know, no original 4:3. Watch B5 on TV only and not your computer monitor as the technology is different. The monitor will show B5 in ‘squishing effect.’

Skywalker probably meant that the live-action scenes were filmed in 16:9, but the cgi/vfx were done in 4:3 to save production costs, so when you watch the DVDs the computer generated scenes (space scene, composite shots) were cropped and zoomed in, which caused blurriness and artefacts.

As for my own approach (once I get around to it): I changed my opinion on the VUDU-version. I compared them and in my opinion to much information is lost left/right since the live action has been cropped in the 4:3 version (there is a scene in the episode “Midnight on the Firing Line”, where the B5-guards next to G’Kar almost completely disappear, which does not happen with the DVD-version). Since the cgi/vfx only makes up for about 15-20% of the actual episodes, I’d rather see more from the live action shots; also, my filtering setup would take care of artefacts. As for having a little less space to look at top/bottom of the screen and sometimes ships being zoomed in, I think I could live with that (but that’s a matter of personal taste, I guess).

Yes, CGI were done in 4:3. There is a slight difference between PAL and NTSC. PAL has more ‘information’ at the top of the screen and NTSC at the bottom. When comparing some CGI scenes you can see it. PAL turned out better than NTSC. I made some improvements to the CGI for the first season. Slightly faster, Sharpened/textured graphics using Reshade. Looks good for now. Just hoping someone knows how to improve the explosions etc. Using MadVr helps a lot.

Anyone know of a good derainbowing method that can be used with StaxRip? I thought I found one, but it didn’t work out.

Wasn’t the CGI only also added to the tape after the transfer from 16:9 to 4:3 was made? That’s one of the reasons the show would be so difficult and expensive to remaster in HD, and probably also why it looks so bad. I finally had a chance to watch some of the upscales. Animaxx, they’re looking great! Past Prologue looks fantastic. Thank you for your hard work!

Thank you. I will probably stay with my “latest” derainbowing method, it may not catch everything, but it reduces it at least.

Also: Several members have pointed out little flaws in my versions so far, so I will be reworking the episodes I have already done (check the release topic for updates). Right now those changes include: Reducing the framerate of the episodes from 25 FPS to 23,976 FPS - there are two reasons for that:

1. It more closely resembles the original
2. It does not require for the english audio track from the NTSC-source to be adjusted (pitch etc.), for that has caused sound glitches/issues (especially noticeable during the intro music)

Since it causes no motion stutter, that improves the workflow.

Furthermore, I added several derainbowing and deringing/dehaloing options to reduce these issues further; I was also careful to adjust with contrasharpening, so no detail gets lost.

As for my work so far: The pilot will be done over the weekend, then the other episodes so far will be updated. Afterwards work on the release will continue as planned.

I would like to mention that I really owe thanks to several members (most notably FrankB & Baobab Archiver), they have picked up those “little problems” and therefore helped make the release better, before it would have went on and by pointing that out saved me long work hours on re-releasing episodes - thank you guys.

Mind posting you’re workflow incase I or others can see any parts that could be improved upon before redoing E01?

I will as soon as I get around to it, ok? Right now it’s all on paper, notes and scribblings I have taken on the run. I will have to scramble up all the stuff and get it in order.

Animaxx said:

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.

Stargate SG-1 is already completely in HD, just not released for whatever reason on blu ray. Wouldn’t be worth it to work on that show.

lilmanjs said:

Animaxx said:

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.

Stargate SG-1 is already completely in HD, just not released for whatever reason on blu ray. Wouldn’t be worth it to work on that show.

Perhaps, but I had the “pleasure” to watch some of that HD-Versions, while seasons 8-10 are in what I would call “decent HD”, seasons 1-7 have been done by SyFy, and they are really soft and show signs of aliasing, therefore I think perhaps going from the DVDs would be better.

Anyway, I am not going to work on it today or tomorrow, perhaps something will change until I get around to it.

Animaxx said:

lilmanjs said:

Stargate SG-1 is already completely in HD, just not released for whatever reason on blu ray. Wouldn’t be worth it to work on that show.

Perhaps, but I had the “pleasure” to watch some of that HD-Versions, while seasons 8-10 are in what I would call “decent HD”, seasons 1-7 have been done by SyFy, and they are really soft and show signs of aliasing, therefore I think perhaps going from the DVDs would be better.

Anyway, I am not going to work on it today or tomorrow, perhaps something will change until I get around to it.

As you said, seasons 1-7 are just upscaled from SD sources for Syfy, and not well at that. Seasons 1-3 were filmed in 16mm and 4-7 in 35mm, the difference between the two sticks out even more with that release. The entire run needs a TNG-R-style remaster to be properly in HD.

Talos said:

Animaxx said:

lilmanjs said:

Stargate SG-1 is already completely in HD, just not released for whatever reason on blu ray. Wouldn’t be worth it to work on that show.

Perhaps, but I had the “pleasure” to watch some of that HD-Versions, while seasons 8-10 are in what I would call “decent HD”, seasons 1-7 have been done by SyFy, and they are really soft and show signs of aliasing, therefore I think perhaps going from the DVDs would be better.

Anyway, I am not going to work on it today or tomorrow, perhaps something will change until I get around to it.

As you said, seasons 1-7 are just upscaled from SD sources for Syfy, and not well at that. Seasons 1-3 were filmed in 16mm and 4-7 in 35mm, the difference between the two sticks out even more with that release. The entire run needs a TNG-R-style remaster to be properly in HD.

Agreed, but I don’t think we’ll get that one either. That’s why I have planned my projects according to those series which I believe to be worthy of a remaster, but unfortunately won’t get them. Of course my projects are also limited to those source materials I already own, not to mention the series I personally like.

Hey guys, I have just updated my workflow at the beginning of this topic, but just to be sure, here is the link for it again:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12E8hLHJYm58CkKPnCvhXBIUbvpZ8vbHs/view?usp=sharing

And in case any of you aren’t in my release topic yet, I have an updated version of the pilot, please PM me in case I have forgotten to invite you or if you have joined later on; you will then get regular updates as soon as I have finished more episodes.

triadne said:

Hi, I really love what you’re doing. I’d love a hd version of both these star trek series.
I’d like to contribute but I don’t have a decent enough computer. I only have a i5 gtx960 and a tiny SSD for gaming.
I have contributed financially to some other projects though and would be happy to add something into the pot if needed. I’d also be happy to help out in some other ways if I am able 😃

Nice of you to offer, but I started this as a personal project for free, which it will always be. So no money offers are necessary. However I am always open to tips and ideas on how to improve things.

As for the actual episodes, I will PM you with the links soon.

triadne said:
…using the hd versions of TNG alongside the SD versions of that, to help teach the AI how to upscale star trek images better?

Up to now this won’t work, because the A.I. only uses structure-similarity to guess what new details it might create. What you suggest will be the future, but not the near future, I fear. Machine learning will be really convincing, when it will begin to think like humans think: To categorize and associate things in “tree views”, in order to take details from things that really correspondate with the missing details in the version to be upscaled.
Maybe in 20 years your suggestion would not be wrong. 😃

As usual, Frank is a true fountain of knowledge (I do mean that honestly, not sarcastically).

Current AI software won’t be able to do that, but there certainly will come a point when it will.