Babylon 5: Enhanced 4K & 1080p Edition (DVD 16:9 & HD 4:3 Fusion) (a WIP) — Page 2

@Artan42:
Well, I experimented a lot before settling on what I am doing now.

My first approach in the past: Take the DVDs and upscale as they are. Looked good on live action, but the effects looked (in my opinion) worse because they were already zoomed in.

My second approach (after the 1080p masters from HBO/Amazon became available): Upscale that to 4K. Looked nice, but was only in 4:3 aspect ratio and personally I think they went overboard with their increased saturation.

My third approach was (as you have suggested): Mixed ratios - Live action 16:9 and 4:3 effects from the 1080p masters. Looked strange to me. Then I experimented with digitally / software-based “painting in” the missing elements from the sides. Looked good on static shots, but crappy as soon as anything moved (like stars, ships and such).

So I went with what I am doing now.

I think it loooks great, I personally do not mind the stretched 16:9 ratio. Looking forward to seeing a finished episode.

@calisto:
Thanks, won’t be long now.

2022 - First Image Set: Episode 1, Season 1 "1x01 - Midnight on the Firing Line ; Ragesh 3”

ATTENTION: QUALITY UPDATE (01-2022)

Comparison Shots (with Slider; 10 image pairs per link):

https://imgsli.com/ODkzMjM
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMjU
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMjY
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMjc
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMjg
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMzE
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMzI
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMzQ
https://imgsli.com/ODkzMzU

If you want more, let me know. Happy New Year Everyone !!!

Ok guys, since there were questions about it, I thought I do a little addition to my porevious comparisons.
Before, you had the PAL-DVD in 16:9 aspect ratio on the left side and my 4K Upscale in 16:9 on the right side.

Now, you have the latest 1080p masters in 4:3 ratio on the left side and my 4K Upscale in 16:9 on the right side. You will notice quality differences since I would never be able to achieve such results working from a DVD and replacing VFX shots from the 1080p masters with a stretch to 16:9. Also, you will see a different color palette and more grain in the 1080p masters (compared to my upscale).
The biggest differences however are: The 1080p masters have the original 4:3 effects (no stretch) but also less visual information during live action scenes on the left/right sides (since the DVDs had 16:9 natively on those).

The first new comparison set only takes a look at the CGI/Effect shots:

https://imgsli.com/ODk0Nzg
https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODA

The second new comparison set takes a look at the live action shots:

https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODI
https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODM
https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODc
https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODg
https://imgsli.com/ODk0ODk

Let me know what you think!

Black Alert, your earlier observations are correct IMO. The live action wides looks great (of course), better than noisey and off-colored 4:3 live action shots (and that’s putting aside the shame of losing the information on the sides). using the 16:9 is a no-brainer IMO.

However, me personally, with the effects shots I just can’t hang with things being stretched, planets looking like pumpkins, etc. (Your up-resing looks fabulous as always though!😃)

I haven’t watched a version that jumps back and forth from 16:9 live action and 4:3 effects as you said you have, but I can easily imagine you being correct that it’s just jarring and annoying. I’m pretty sure I would get yanked out of immersion all the time with that happening. I mean, if anything the outer space stuff is supposed to really reach out to one’s peripheral vision, no?

Ugh, this is a mess (that is NOT your fault). As always, YOUR work on this up-resing is great! Sadly for B5 with current materials it seems there’s going to be some issue that you can’t overcome. Sorry the sources have made this so difficult. 😦 It would be so much easier if the base of 16:9 live action footage was much worse than the 4:3.

I guess I’ll end by saying you are doing great work on these projects. I’m envious! 😃 But with B5 here, I just don’t know. I’m tempted to just say do DS9 and Voyager first and we all pray that some people with the effects files suddenly find a way to start cranking those out in 16:9 for you to use, and hope that happens just as you finish the other two. This is only my thoughts though.

@WXM:
Thanks for the detailed reply. As I have said before: Even I sometimes struggle with the stretch (the planets especially). But I will continue - perhaps at some point a better solution will come along and I’d happily adapt to it.

Still, after having watched the 1080p masters I wondered about several points you noticed as well:

• I certainly understand that the original film stock had/has more grain and - don’t get me wrong here - I do appreciate keeping grain to avoid a waxy look, but in this case they saved too much of it
• Why did they use such a “coolder/darker” color palette? I get things looking overly bright and sometimes even greyish (looking at the Star Trek DVDs here), but here I think it does not flatter certain elements (like fine details or already darker uniform colors)
• And finally: What’s up with the saturation? Some shots look like they went a bit overboard.

In any event, I will keep going forward. It’s kinda exciting.

You have a good eye and handle on all of this, I agree with all you said. In regards to the color and similar you pointed out, it seems it’s been a trend for a while to crank up contrast and saturation (OR kill saturation with adding some horrible blanket tint). I remember Mike Verta talked about that waaay back when he was starting efforts on his Legacy Star Wars work, pointed out even back then this idea that studios just seemed to love cranking up contrast and sat, details in the shadows be damned.

As I think I’ve brought up here in the past, I myself am a LightWave (<- software used for the effects of the first seasons of B5) artist and man is it frustrating to know that the scene files and meshes and maps are sitting out there in the world but not able to be implemented for the likes of this! I know a bit of work would need to be done to those files (namely, oh, turn them into 16:9 shots!) but if a mass of people can pool together and spend a zillion hours finding the seed of a thumbnail image in Minecraft, ya’d think with the effects shots files of B5 there’d also be a push for the end result needed with the likes of this project. Oh well, enough of my whining about this.

@WMX:
Trust me, that’s not whining, you’re just giving facts. It’s the same thing with all the conversations about the upscales on both Star Trek shows that haven’t been properly remastered. There are certainly enough people out there with either the time, resources and/or abilities to actually create something that could be really great. And there are certainly those around who might have “saved” stuff (like model photography, renderíngs, CGI concept art and such), after all more and more stuff turns up every year.
If we could all just band together I bet we could do some magic of our own 😉

Hey guys, sorry I haven’t been as fast as I thought, had technical issues. But the next eps are almost done (currently including Voyager s01e03, DS9 s01e03 and B5 movie The Gathering).

Also, two more projects will be added to the three I already have up (I know, I am insane), but perhaps some of them would be of interest to you guys, so I thought I would announce them ahead of time so you can tell me if you want to be invited.

Upcoming new project: Earth - Final Conflict (Upscaled to 4K from DVD)

• This is one of those “forgotten” SciFi treasures of the 90’s by Roddenberrys widow, effects were certainly ahead of their time

Upcoming new project: Stargate SG-1 (Upscaled from the 1080p BluRay to 4K)

• I managed to get my hands of the BluRays which also suffered from problems (too much digital noise reduction and screwed up channel upmix in the audio from 2.0 to 5.1), so I tried a bit and will splice in the audio from the DVDs - here a little teaser image comparison: https://imgsli.com/OTI2MzY

So anyone who is interested let me know!

Wow, weird. I was just thinking about Earth - Final Conflict a couple of days ago out of the blue, hadn’t thought about it in years, and suddenly this mention of it…!

(Upscaled to 4K from DVD)

I can’t help but ask about that huge leap (to 4k). You surely have good reasons as all your results thus far have been great and well thought-out…but to 4k from a DVD, wow! Does the DVD source have some extra clarity (not present in your others) that benefits using up that extra time processing power?

@WXM:
Well, those DVDs have actually aged well, comparable to Babylon 5 DVDs. The Star Trek DVDs had more problems as far as picture quality was concerned (especially during the early seasons).
I am currently doing a test render on EFC, will have teaser images soon.

Earth:Final Conflict had only one good season & that was the first IMHO.

@calisto:
Well, I thought season 1 was very good, seasons 2-3 good, season 4 was ok with some good episodes, season 5 … um, let’s just say I watched it to see how it all ends 😉

Hello guys, sorry but I am still busy, many things to do at the moment. Still wanted to show you a little something I did in a quiet moment. Sorry if it’s a bit off topic, but perhaps some of you know (Star Trek) Enterprise.
The BluRays are not the best quality (similar to SG-1, but with waaayy more grain and artefacts).

Since someone saw me doing my SG-1 samples they asked if I could have a look at the Enterprise BluRays.
Perhaps this will be yet another addition for me.

Here’s what I can bring to that table, anyone who is interested let me know:

https://imgsli.com/OTQyMTc
https://imgsli.com/OTQzNzY

Back to work.

Your Enterprise images… To my senses, the first one has a wee bit too much artifacting, ala introduced halo’ing: note the light band at/around the front of the saucer. Also, the still-glowing torpedo port looks akin to being slightly too-compressed or similar. Nothing terrible at all, but does look like something’s being a little degraded from reaching a little too far with settings in a way I don’t see with most of your other work

(such as the second image, which looks groovy…although you’re no doubt going to tell me the same settings on the second on are used on the first one as well 😃).

@WXM:
Same settings in all images. But yeah, I see where you’re getting at. Those settings aren’t quite there yet, still just an experiment I did.
The BluRay is bad in that sense that it has far too much grain and actually heavy artefacting in some of the effect shots, because the CGI/VFX stuff had been done in 480p (SD-quality) and was never rendered in HD. So for the BluRay-release they upscaled those. Also, the live-action scenes were filmed with HD-ready equipment, but not native HD.
This was the case for both seasons 1 and 2.
Season 3 was sort of a transition (HD-ready being used for the effects as well) and the live action had better quality.
Only season 4 was shot in native HD.

It’s a shame that Trek-sources always have quality-issues.

As always, thanks for the explanations behind your efforts…and for your great efforts (and output) to begin with. 😃

I want to respond to something else you said, but I’ll do it in your Trek thread where it’s more relevant

Hello there community.

Just thought I would share a little snippet from my upscaling experiments on the B5-Movie “The Lost Tales / Voices in the Dark”. Thankfully a friend of mine provided me with a 720p version, so I could work from that.

Here are the comparison images:
https://imgsli.com/OTQ1NTk

Here is a video sample (but downsized to 1080p):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kbssfloqobaggex/B5 The Lost Tales Upscale Sample 1080pHD.mkv?dl=0

Let me know what you think!