ElectricTriangle

Here’s what I’ve been working on of late. The DE’s first shot of the Golden Gate Bridge has a bunch of really sloppy Photoshop work (an unfortunate theme across the director’s edition), far worse than the original digital matte by Doug Drexler, which is of course low detail, but cuts in fine at SD resolution. I would love to commission proper matte paintings for this (what they should have done for the 4K release), but I think at that point the tram probably needs to be re-rendered and it becomes quite an undertaking.

The main objection I’ve always had with this version is they’ve tried to include super tall “future skyscrapers” like the DVD version, but scaled them weirdly and they stick out: low detail gray masses that don’t match the (real) buildings that surround them at all. The twin skyscrapers and the one with the dish (?) look especially like cardboard cutouts. I’ve just removed them completely for San Fransisco’s real skyline and the result looks much better. I might try my hand at adding some fantastical ones, but I honestly like the result as-is (and now you can see the Transamerica Pyramid all that better Smile ).

I managed to fix a number of retouching errors, including where they removed the bank of the Presidio, cut off a part of Fort Point and other real weird stuff to the south side of the bridge. I also covered up the bit of the shoreline highway that they forgot about (no cars in the future!).

Here is the result (click to switch between the two). It still looks like a gummy photoshop mess, but I think it’s better.

To commemorate the film’s 45th anniversary, I have have a (very minor) update to this project.

Changes:

• Finessed (ever so slightly) the opening credits, so hopefully now the stars don’t come off as too sharp compared with the text
• Swapped out some shots of the Klingons in the opening that had smeary DNR in the 4K theatrical master with some from the Director’s Edition.
• Various little tweaks on stray shots to try and reduce obvious DNR artifacts. Most notably the theatrical shot of the tram flying alongside the Golden Gate and the shot of Spock entering the orifice should have less dark ghosting that’s presenting in the 4K master (I overlaid parts of the uglier but less smeary 2009 master).
• Corrected some glitches on this DE recomp and color graded it to the match the theatrical version’s colors for a major boost in detail (v1 uses the theatrical version of the shot). (Click to expand):
  • Theatrical:

• DE:

• Anti DNR v2:

• For this shot, I overlaid the CGI tunnel over the equivalent theatrical shot. This gives you the continuity of coming out of the tunnel as in the DE while using the original effect.
  • DE:

• Anti DNR v2:

Not a ton of updates, but enough to give it a little more polish. Happy 45th anniversary to Star Trek’s big screen debut!

I cannot 100% confirm, but all existing British masters have been at PAL speed. That only ever is an issue in the US. They, of course will have the remixed soundtracks with the swapped out music for “Trousers.”

I’ve uploaded a prores copy of the video (sans audio) used for my Phantom projects before final encoding to archive.org as the film is in the public domain. This is suitable for anyone’s own projects or for recording any new scores to. There’s both a black and white version (suitable for making you own tinting schemes) and a a tinted copy (which matches the tints I used for the “Roy Budd” project).

https://archive.org/details/phantom-23.98-bw
https://archive.org/details/phantom-23.98-tinted

This looks excellent, and I have found the existing tool invaluable over the years when matching sources or dealing with problematic ones. The prospect of something with even more flexibility is very exciting and I’m still eagerly anticipating this.

It was Shout that promoted that (and, you know, did about as well as they do every time, lol). The UHD masters will at least be new from Aardman as supplied to Shout, which means I suspect if they are advertising new audio and have stereo and 5.1 tracks it will be a least a different go at it. And I also agree it’s why they only get a cropped “A Close Shave” master out of them (though why Aardman want to crop that one and not the other two is a real mystery).

They are advertising a stereo track and specifically “remastered audio!,” so it sounds like they may actually have the original dolby track and cleared the audio for “The Wrong Trousers.” Pretty nice if so. They are still cropping “A Close Shave” (to the very real aspect ratio of “1.67:1”), which is quite disappointing.

They are also advertising an upscale of “A Matter of Loaf and Death,” which, given that 25i content isn’t safe for US blu-rays, it’d be ideal to have as a 50hz deinterlaced upscale on UHD, but given that I basically never, ever see native interlaced content presented correctly any more, I kind of doubt it, lol. Unless maybe they made a new master from the project files, which I suppose is a possibility as it’s Aardman supplying these (outside of “Curse of the Were Rabbit,” which is though Universal).

They could never hide them completely; they just did their best to ensure that they are not super intrusive. Having also seen a very nice looking '97 ESB print, the matte artifacts can definitely be quite noticeable, but like everything else, it’s a balancing act to keep the film on the whole looking polished and the FX shots go by quick.

The common complaint among FX folks that matte artifacts were more visible on home media transfers remains true on the whole: think of the bright, milky black levels of the first Star Wars VHSs, for example. However, I think that sentiment got overstated on these boards some years back and treated as gospel.

Thank you for all your work over the years on these. Always an invaluable reference.

Further thoughts:
TDE22.053879-Bee Recomp.png
Brightening this up reveals that they selectively colorgraded the workbee’s cargo to be grey rather than it’s original tan. (there’s a lot of selective coloring throughout, so I don’t know if you necessarily want to mention it, but it is a change that’s part of the recomp).

TDE22.074432-Shuttle Dock.png, TDE22.075171-Shuttle Leave.png
I might note the new layers they add to this recomp:
There’s a new red light layer over the nacelles. I am very confused on what this is meant to represent (light casting on them from inside the window?) but it looks intentional. The “warp sled” of Spock’s vessel is matted differently and has lost the steady running light on it (though the blinking lights are still present). There is also a new element meant to represent a reflection on the Enterprise’s window (it’s in front of the warp sled).

This is a recomp. (Hard to tell because of how dark they made it, but if you brighten it up, you can see the differences in how the the dry dock is aligned + the starfield is different).

Since I just finished my edit of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, I have a few notes and changes to add for your series of comparisons. I know this thread is for Star Wars, but since bluesky doesn’t have DMs, I didn’t want to send an unprompted thread your way over there.

TDE22.008847-Viewscreen.png
I don’t think this is a recomposite, as you don’t see any additional clarity to the live action. Rather, it’s a modification on top of the theatrical effect (you can see the borders of the view-screen altered if you brighten up the shot).

TDE22.014394-Klingon Reframe.png
“The explosion has much more detail thanks to the HDR pass”
Not really what’s happening (as this is an SDR image), it’s just that the colorgrade shows more highlight detail.

TDE22.148958-Kirk Catch.png
This shot is not recomposited (same exact frame geometry), it’s just that the smeary filter they run a lot of effects shots through in the theatrical master hits it really badly here.

TDE22.166347-Matte Lines.png
Also not recomposited, they stabilized the background to remove a jump that’s part of the theatrical effect and isolated the Enterprise to keep its motion on the original path (and removed the matte lines with a chroma-key).

TDE22.177879-Lightning.png
The color grading also brightens their faces a little when the lightening strikes.

TDE22.193901-Vger Ascend 0.png
Not recomposited, that’s all differences due to color grading.

As you’ve no doubt realized, they do a ton of changes via color grading and messing with Davinci Resolve throughout the film and cataloging every one would be an enormous and probably fruitless endeavor (my favorite, which I can’t find now, is an inexplicable one-frame replacement of Uhura’s finger). However, I feel the following differences change the reality of the frame and more substantially alter the mise-en-scene in the way the other changes do.

For these shots of Kirk, the DE selectively brightens his face (very awkwardly).

The DE removes the shadow of the lighting rig that falls on Chekhov. Comparison w/ the SLV (Tone-mapped and brightness matched with theatrical bluray).

This shot is also colorgraded to make the deflector dish amber.

The DE re-frames this shot to show all of the man on the left, taking advantage of the fact that section of the frame would be on the original negative (and which would have been matted out by the soundtrack portion of release prints). Comparison w/ the SLV.

Background on the film

The original release date of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” was on a tight schedule and what debuted in theaters in 1979 had many rough edges, most noticeably some essentially unfinished FX and a rough sound mix. Several important scenes were cut for time to accommodate often languid cutting for those scenes where effects were completed at the last minute.

The Director’s Edition of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” premiered in 2001. It was conceived of by its producers, Daren R. Dochterman, Michael Matessino and David C. Fein, who were longtime Star Trek fans and collaborators with the film’s director, Robert Wise.

Robert Wise described the new cut in the liner notes of the original DVD: “Thanks once again to Paramount’s support, we have been able to complete the film as “The Director’s Edition.” In addition to finding a new, and I feel, proper editorial balance for the film, we have also completed those effects shots and scenes which we had to abort in 1979, and have given the film a proper final sound mix. It has been an opportunity which I never believed would happen, and one for which I am grateful beyond words.”

The 2001 version was completed in SD, with new effect work by Foundation Imaging. Robert Wise closely supervised the film’s cutting, while letting the producers more freely tweak the film’s effects. While the 2001 effects cut in fairly successfully with the SD transfer of the film, the fact that it had not been budgeted for an HD master in 2001 limited it to a DVD release. After years of lobbying Paramount, the DE’s producers successfully got a greenlight to recreate the edit in HD/4K, working from the most recent 4K remaster of the film that Paramount completed in 2021. Robert Wise passed away in 2005, so this version of the DE was supervised by the producers who kept very close to the 2001 edit, but continued to freely tweak the film’s FX. Given their respect for Wise, it’s clear they feel these additional changes are within their remit: working from what Wise originally oversaw in 2001.

My Fanedit

I strongly feel that the Director’s Edition of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” is the best version, giving it a necessary final editing pass and finished sound mix. However, the PQ on the 2022 DE is unfortunately quite inconsistent: most noticeably much of the film has been subjected to ugly, aggressive digital noise reduction. The new effects work is also very inconsistent, more understandably so considering their (lack of) resources, but some of it shouldn’t have been released as is if they couldn’t improve on what they had.

My fanedit syncs all the live action footage from the theatrical 4K master to the DE, eliminating as much obtrusive DNR as possible as well as the often revisionist and wonky color grading used for the DE. It also uses the new effects when needed, but prefers the original theatrical unaltered effects when I felt they were already fully realized. (This is a guideline that is not always strictly followed, both out of necessity as well as personal preference: for example I prefer, and have used, the new matte work on Vulcan). Further work (color-grading, further edits, added grain) has been done to hopefully meld this all together as best it can be. If you are familiar with my old effort to bring the 2001 edit to HD, this follows a similar philosophy.

Video Sources

This edit was completed in 1080p SDR as I do not have the ability to grade or monitor in HDR or 4K.

I worked from these sources:
2021 Theatrical Blu-ray (4K remaster).
2022 “Special Longer Version” UHD (the same 4K master, which I tone-mapped to SDR and matched its brightness with the 2021 Blu-ray).
2022 Director’s Edition Blu-ray

The theatrical/SLV master has generally nice quality live action footage, while the DE’s live action footage is often aggressively de-noised and features a very revisionist and awkward color grade (frequent use/abuse of power windows and such). The effects footage for both masters is very problematic. The theatrical master often uses a filter that smears all the frames of a shot together, which ruins detail for fast motion, while the DE uses a more traditional, though no less aggressive, temporal noise reduction method combined with sharpening. This often has less fine detail overall but retains detail much better on motion. I tend to prefer the theatrical master for slow-moving model shots as it often looks more natural, while using the DE for fast-moving shots and composite shots with live-action (which are often extremely smeary on the theatrical master). However, this is far from consistent, and many shots do not offer a good option and leave you picking the least bad option or compositing the shots together in various ways to try and minimize the flaws of each source.

Sample Frames and Release Details

Linked below is a general overview of the picture quality as well as some of my changes compared with the DE. This does not cover many of the changes made: nearly every shot is different from the DE, since most of the live action footage has been swapped out for the theatrical master with the special effects reviewed on a per-shot basis. I have also made further adjustments to many, many shots.
Sample frames: https://imgur.com/a/Cq8hwwu

Video: 1080p MKV - 30 GB
Both the video and audio are BD-compliant if you want to remux this for a Blu-ray. This edit runs in sync with the 2022 Director’s Edition and you can mux in any audio or subtitles that sync to it. Please support the official release and purchase the official blu-ray or UHD.

Audio:

1. TrueHD 8ch / Atmos Track [eng]
2. Dolby AC3 6ch / Compatibility Track [eng]
3. Dolby AC3 stereo / Commentary with David C. Fein, Michael Matessino and Daren R. Dochterman [eng]
4. Dolby AC3 stereo / Commentary with Robert Wise, Stephen Collins, Jerry Goldsmith, Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra [eng]
5. Dolby AC3 stereo / Isolated Score

Subtitles:

1. Forced Alien Subtitles - Theatrical “Translation” / These follow the original 1979 subtitles for alien languages with the original typeface. The DE had edited this in an attempt to further obscure that the actors were originally speaking English on set, but I’ve always found it to be too awkward.
2. Forced Alien Subtitles - DE “Translation” / Direct from the DE Blu-ray
3. English Subtitles
4. SDH English Subtitles
5. Commentary with David C. Fein, Michael Matessino and Daren R. Dochterman
6. Commentary with Robert Wise, Stephen Collins, Jerry Goldsmith, Douglas Trumbull and John Dykstra
7. Text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda
   Also included are an array of subtitles in multiple languages from the official release of the DE.

Changelog:
1.0: Initial Release
1.1: Added more subtitle languages and English SHD subtitles. Both the SHD and non-SDH English subtitles now follow my typesetting for the alien subtitles.
2.0:

• Finessed (ever so slightly) the opening credits, so hopefully the stars don’t come off as too sharp compared with the text
• Swapped out some shots of the Klingons in the opening that had smeary DNR in the 4K theatrical master with some from the Director’s Edition.
• Various little tweaks on stray shots to try and reduce obvious DNR artifacts. Most notably the theatrical shot of the tram flying alongside the Golden Gate and the shot of Spock entering the orifice should have less dark ghosting that’s presenting in the 4K master (I overlaid parts of the uglier but less smeary 2009 master).
• 35:45 Corrected some glitches on this DE recomp and color graded it to the match the theatrical version’s colors for a major boost in detail (v1 uses the theatrical version of the shot).
• 1:54:00 For this shot, I overlaid the CGI tunnel over the equivalent theatrical shot. This gives you the continuity of coming out of the tunnel as in the DE while using the original effect.

Now available! PM me (click my user name and then select “start a private topic”). Also on myspleen and blutopia.

I’ve finally completed my version of the new Director’s Edition, syncing the theatrical master for better picture quality. Check it out here: https://originaltrilogy.com/topic/Star-Trek-The-Motion-Picture-Directors-Edition-The-Anti-DNR-Fanedit/id/114112

I thought I could retire (or make a new version) this project given that the new UHD advertises the TV cut in 4:3 HD as an extra. What they have put on that disc, however, is an old SD TV master with horrific machine learning upscaling (now often termed AI upscaling). Like it’s baaaaaad. Some of the worst video quality I’ve ever seen. All the NSTC artifacts like rainbowing, haloing and aliasing are being warped into atrocious “fake detail” by whatever tool they rammed it though. I also think they might have deinterlaced it poorly to start, but it’s been damaged so much by this process it’s hard to tell. It’s probably the worst looking blu-ray I’ve ever seen. The audio will probably be nicer than the existing rips I have, but this is so terribly disappointing considering I’d have been happy for them to just put the TV cut in SD on disc.

Here are those PDFs reuploaded: https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rcndsev4e4c6v/Aliens+Cuts

There’s no need to do it that way, when the theatrical blu-ray generally has much less DNR (for live action), so you edit that to match the DE edition. This is what I will be doing.

While I certainly appreciate everyone’s enthusiasm for the film, it’s probably time to make a separate thread for any different project you are working on.

For my part, I will be doing my own fanedit of the new master as detailed here:
https://fanrestore.com/thread-1745-post-83136.html#pid83136
I bought the UHD and was extremely disappointed to discover it had a bunch of DNR all over it. No timeline on this (probably not any time soon), but it will happen at some point.

I actually just recently watched the Arrow release of this for the first time and was reminded of this project. I’m really happy to see you are working on on it again!
Knowing the DC has a pasted together audio track I opted for the US theatrical cut and while the Tangerine Dream score is perfectly fine, that hall of columns clip you posted is fantastic.

The Probert concept was for a grand officer lounge:

(as seen in the final film here when Spock’s shuttle approaches):

They had to scrap this as they were behind on budget and time.

Both DC changes (first adding the nacelles and then adding this backdrop) are at attempt to bring this to the film.
Both attempts unfortunately look very poor and they should have just avoided doing so (the added nacelles screw with the visual weight of the frame, and the attempt to blow out the wall looks amateurish). This video is a decent illustration of what they are conceptually going for, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU1-crmRpCc

Fullmetaled said:

I meant in regards to the effects that had no work done on them a look bad getting fixed. I can’t talk about the quality of the movie because I never seen any of og Star Trek same goes for most of Star Trek the next generation.

Not that I disagree with the notion that some of the effects work on this doesn’t look great, but why exactly are you invested in this without having seen the film, lol?

I would strongly recommend watching “the Motion Picture” when it releases on disc. The vintage effects work is stunning, and while others will point to Khan as more emblematic of the relationships at the core of Trek (and I probably agree), I find that TMP’s serious take on high concept sci-fi makes for easily the best Star Trek film. This is particularly with the final (and very necessary) pass on the editing and sound design the director’s edition offers. And outside of the context of Trek, what I think often gets dismissed as middlebrow space fare genuinely deserves a place among Wise’s best efforts.

The fact we have this in UHD, even with its (expected) shortcomings is fantastic and I recommend you give it a shot (the rotowork is bad, but it goes by in a minute 😉 ).

Based on every indication from the producers of the DE, from like 2007 to present, the deleted scenes will almost certainly be included (including the rediscovered ADR!) and there’s a decent shot they include the full SLV as an extra.

there’s a decent shot they include it in the UHD disc release they are planning (they have always talked about this) and if not, they will be including the deleted scenes, making it pretty simple to put together.

We finally have a release date for the new 4K/HD master of Star Trek: The Motion Picture - The Director’s Edition, releasing April 5th on Paramount+ with a disc release later in the year! Produced by the orignal team, this release is very exciting, and I can hardly wait. Obviously the new master will have different creative decisions with regards to how best update the old CGI, (from the trailer, some of it very nice and some is quite iffy) but irregardless, the general quality of the new edition should thoroughly exceed my old fanedit and will be the one to watch. This project will still remain up for posterity, but for first-time viewing, I will direct you to what hopefully will be the definitive edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

This guide is from 2016 and was only for the bluray. If you have the UHD, the file names will not match and you’ll unfortunately have to determine how things fit together on your own.

Here are the original PDFs from the first post in the thread:
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/rcndsev4e4c6v/Aliens+Cuts

This is still available as of 2025.
PM me (click my username and select “create a private topic”) if you would like a copy.