Shalashaska

Cheers, guys.

towne32 said:

Is that just supposed to be overscan space?

That would make a whole lot of sense.

Just streamed it through Universal Media Server onto my LG Smart TV.

There were two picture settings, original and full. With original, it was in a small black box in the middle, almost like a non-anamorphic DVD. When I put it on full, it got bigger, but still thin black bars on the left and right of the screen, just like with VLC when I turn on “always fit to window”.

Proof (picture setting on full)

Very minor as you can see, but a little annoying.

The main menu fills my 16:9 monitor perfectly, so I have a feeling it’s to do with the DVD itself.

On VLC, it’s more noticeable.

Wazzles said:

Shalashaska said:

Jetrell Fo said:

Shalashaska said:

Question for those who have the NTSC DVD.

Are there thin black bars on the left and right side of the image for you guys?

Are you watching it on a PC or a TV?

PC, VLC Player. I’m watching through a PAL ISO.

What’s the aspect ratio of your monitor?

16:9

When I uncheck the “always fit window” option on VLC, it gets even smaller. They’re anamorphic DVDs from what I’ve read, so I’m not exactly sure why it’s doing that.

I even downloaded another VIDEO_TS off of RuTracker, and the same thing happened.

Jetrell Fo said:

Shalashaska said:

Question for those who have the NTSC DVD.

Are there thin black bars on the left and right side of the image for you guys?

Are you watching it on a PC or a TV?

PC, VLC Player. I’m watching through a PAL ISO.

Question for those who have the NTSC DVD.

Are there thin black bars on the left and right side of the image for you guys?

So I tried it on my other computer on VLC, went messing with the settings, and now I see what you mean with the colours.

It was like going from SD to HD with the dark blacks and richer colours. All of them seemed to work fine on my laptop on MPC with the exception of Star Trek V, which definitely looked very washed out and desaturated to me.

You guys think this is the best version of the film? Trying to decide between this and the TeamNegative1 transfer.

towne32 said:

Are the alien subs burned in for these Sky HD caps?

Yep.

I’m also pretty sure the PAL ISO I have is missing some picture on the left and right, has thin black bars for some odd reason, and this has happened on two different downloads.

towne32 said:

Shalashaska said:

Does anyone have an NTSC copy of the Director’s Edition? Living in the PAL region myself, I would love if someone, anyone could share a VIDEO_TS or ISO of the film. It’s impossible to find anywhere, especially with seeders.

Why do you need the NTSC version if you’re in the PAL region? The PAL is on rutracker, and it should be higher resolution, right? Amazon and iTunes have digital versions for sale that you could probably go for. Not sure what the actual resolution and framerate are on the digital ones, though.

I can’t stand the 4% speed-up on PAL DVDs, so if the NTSC version is available, I’ll go for that.

Does anyone have an NTSC copy of the Director’s Edition? Living in the PAL region myself, I would love if someone, anyone could share a VIDEO_TS or ISO of the film. It’s impossible to find anywhere, especially with seeders.

towne32 said:

This is the file that was previously on spleen? I remember seeing a pretty big difference, though I don’t remember what I clicked in VLC to change the setting you’re changing. I don’t have the file anymore since I’m happy with the new BD.

I didn’t get it from Spleen, I got it from Usenet. Not sure if it’s the same file.

I’m using MPC-HC as VLC has trouble playing them on my laptop. On MPC, I go into View -> Renderer Settings -> Output Range -> 0-255/16-235.

Now I’m confused. Took two screenshots comparing The Wrath of Khan outputting at 0-255 and 16-235. No recognizable difference.

0-255

16-235

Maybe it’s impossible to tell from a screenshot and I’m an idiot, but on my own monitor, watching it with my own eyes, there’s no difference.

towne32 said:

Shalashaska said:

I’ve even considered putting them up for a limited time on MySpleen, but I’ve never tried uploading anything on there.

Well, II was up under the condition that it be removed when the proper BD is released and verified to be decent (and it was). It might be worth a shot to ask about putting the others up under the same conditions. However, the situation is different in that II had a release date in 2 months while the others would be up indefinitely. Also, the admin of myspleen has stepped down, so I don’t know how that will affect anything. I don’t know if he was on the more liberal or conservative side of recent decisions to purge the site of “iffy” feature film uploads.

Yeah, I’d have to get in contact with the mods/admins to see how it is. The Raiders WOWOW HD TV cap has been up on Spleen for a long time, so I can’t imagine it’d be a whole lot different with the SKY HD caps, especially considering the Blu-rays for I, III-IX are all pretty shit.

If I had any clue how to colour regrade, I’d try it with that screenshot to compare with the LPP and see how much DNR was applied to the HD TV cap. Obviously much less than the Blu-ray, but still some nonetheless.

pittrek said:

Anybody willing to put those pics on myspleen?

I’m considering it, but I don’t know the rules, and I’m not totally sure if I want to.

It’s very easy to grab them off Usenet. If I can get them, you definitely can.

towne32 said:

Shalashaska said:

towne32 said:

Thanks for posting that. I’m going to grab some of them today I think.

Do they all have the color space issue the version of II that was posted to Spleen has?

edit: Oh, I see you’ve posted a sample image. For III at least, it looks like the answer is no. Black levels look black, etc.

I kept switching between 0-255 and 16-235, and I didn’t notice any difference at all. I was using MPC-HC, so either my eyes are misleading, I’m doing something wrong, or there really is no difference.

Great. Did you happen to grab the Khan Director’s Cut? The difference should be clear as day with that one.

Yep, found Insurrection due to it being uploaded by the same user as some of the others. It is indeed the oldest upload, so people should maybe grab it first. Not sure if that’s how it works or if they’ll all be deleted in one huge batch for that chunk of time.

I’ll have to look at it again. I kind of skimmed through that so I didn’t get to give it a proper look. I don’t remember it looking washed-out or grey though.

Yeah, oldest upload is gone first. With UNS, it has a 2919 day retention. Most of these have been up for something like 2600+ days, so once it goes past 2919 days, they’re gone, unless you can find a provider with an even longer retention which I very much doubt.

STIV is definitely the youngest of the bunch, I think it’s been up for ~1900 days, so consider going for that one last. I just grabbed them all at once and backed them up on an external. I’ve even considered putting them up for a limited time on MySpleen, but I’ve never tried uploading anything on there.

A couple of the films (just II and III, I believe) have two different downloads, one with the rar files, another with all the par files. You have to add the par files to the main folder once their downloaded before post-processing (repairing, verifying, unpacking). If you’re using a newsreader like SABNZBD, it does the post-processing for you, so you’ll have to let it “fail”, then bring all the par files into one folder, and then retry. It’ll work then.

towne32 said:

Are you sure you got “stin.dts” with that file name? I don’t see it, perhaps it is gone already? The TNG era ones do seem to have been posted first.

I couldn’t find it either, until I added an “s”. It’s actually “stins.dts”.

towne32 said:

Thanks for posting that. I’m going to grab some of them today I think.

Do they all have the color space issue the version of II that was posted to Spleen has?

edit: Oh, I see you’ve posted a sample image. For III at least, it looks like the answer is no. Black levels look black, etc.

I kept switching between 0-255 and 16-235, and I didn’t notice any difference at all. I was using MPC-HC, so either my eyes are misleading, I’m doing something wrong, or there really is no difference.

Took a screenshot of the 35mm LPP scan and the Sky HD cap to see the difference. Here’s the comparison.

35mm LPP

Sky HD

You can see there’s quite a difference in colour. The Sky HD cap also seems to be missing some picture on the left and right side, not sure why that is.

I much prefer the more theatrical dark look of the first image. It’s similar to the Wrath of Khan Blu-ray in that way, which I think is a fantastic film-like restoration.

Now if only we could get someone to do a Raiders of the Lost Ark-esque restoration by regrading the Sky HD cap to look like the 35mm scan without losing the clarity and detail of the HD TV version 😉

That would be the ultimate restoration project.

I managed to grab all nine films off of NZBKing.com yesterday, using UsenetServer.

They’re definitely worth it. First off, from what I can tell, all six original films have a 5.1 track taken from the PAL DVDs, or from the NTSC DVDs and sped up, while the three TNG films have DTS tracks from their DVDs.

While there’s much much less noise reduction and terrible digital enhancements added to the picture, I still feel it’s lacking grain. Not sure if that’s more of an issue with the source or the format these masters were used for, but the image can look a little soft, most notable with the TNG films.

Other than that, fantastic. They’re the Blu-rays with a bit less detail, less vibrant colours, but a much more natural unaltered film look. I wouldn’t say they’re stunning, but for most of the films, they’re the best option out there.

The Motion Picture: Sky HD.

The Wrath of Khan: Director’s Cut Blu-ray. Proper colour grading, proper theatrical presentation with the dark look and improved contrast. Much more detail coming from a 4K scan. Everything looks too bright after seeing this, a very faithful restoration.

The Search for Spock: 35mm LPP scan. You can get this off MySpleen. Depends if you prefer detail over colour grading, but I find it very hard to go back to any of the Blu-ray/DVD/HD TV caps after seeing how the film’s supposed to look. Everything else looks way too bright and extremely vibrant after seeing the 35mm scan. It also comes with its original LD 2.0 PCM track, so it provides a much nicer aural experience.

The Voyage Home - Insurrection: Sky HD.

Nemesis: Blu-ray. It’s the only option you have, but thankfully, it’s far and away the best looking of the bunch (excluding STII) as it was the first film to get a digital intermediate during its production.

There you go. So if you’re planning to get these but don’t have enough HDD space for all of them, skip II and pick up the Blu-ray and get the 35mm scan of III. I’d get them quick, I can’t imagine most of them surviving to next summer.

P. S. Star Trek VI is a strange one. First off, it’s presented in its director’s cut’s 2:1 aspect ratio. The only problem is it’s not the director’s cut, it’s the theatrical version. It’s a weird amalgamation of the two rather than one or the other.

Also, as others pointed out, it seems to be slowed down back to its original 23.976/24 FPS speed, except, the guy who slowed it down didn’t even think to adjust the pitch. Now you’re stuck with audio that sounds like its on helium, but is in its proper speed, giving a very strange overall presentation.

I’d almost argue going for the iTunes Director’s Cut version of this film rather than the Sky HD cap for those two reasons. But if you’re okay with the aspect ratio problem, and the pitch is easy to fix, I’m sure you’d find this version preferable.

litemakr said:

Shalashaska said:

litemakr said:

Shalashaska said:

I imagine this will be the best-looking version of the film compared to the 35mm LPP scan?

I’m not very sure of it myself though. From seeing the comparisons of the HD TV/Blu-ray with the 35mm scan, the 35mm version almost looks excessively dark. I gave it a pass until I noticed the same when comparing the 35mm scan of Star Trek III (released by the same group as this project’s 35mm master) with the HD TV cap, the colours look a hell of a lot more muted, desaturated, and dark.

Perhaps I’ve been ruined by all the extremely bright and vibrant Blu-ray releases of classic films and don’t know how they’re truly supposed to look, but are we absolutely sure that the film’s not just faded or weathered after all this time? Is this fairly accurate to the original presentation?

EDIT: Apologies for all the questions, but does anyone know what master this TV broadcast was sourced from?

I can’t speak for ST III, but the brightness of the 35mm Raiders is accurate, it isn’t faded at all. The home video versions are created from low contrast prints or negatives and are overly brightened, have less contrast and more shadow detail. The contrast on theatrical prints is higher so there is a larger extreme between brightest and darkest areas. This is difficult to represent in the more limited dynamic range of HD video without crushing the blacks or blowing out the brighter areas. If you watch the bar scene in motion it looks natural, like a low lit, dingy dive bar. Exactly what the filmmakers intended.

Cool, makes sense.

With that said, you make it sound like scanning from the negative is a BAD thing. Would you think so?

I’m not exactly sure how theatrical prints would have better contrast than the negative itself.

It’s not a bad thing in theory because you get more resolution and more shadow detail. But it can be bad because a completely new digital color grade must be done and often they don’t respect the original theatrical timing. If done correctly, a good digital grade can look like the theatrical and have the benefits of more shadow detail. Too often though, the contrast is reduced too much so the image can be made brighter (like the Raiders blu-ray) and the saturation is over-cranked. And they can’t resist the temptation to change the color and scrub away the grain (reducing the detail they got from the negative in the first place).

Theatrical prints have higher contrast because they are 4 generations from the negative and printed on higher contrast film stock. The details in the brights and darks are reduced with each generation. However you don’t really notice when watching it projected because of the high dynamic range. The range from light to dark looks more natural and less extreme. It is more noticeable on HD video.

Have you seen the new blu-ray remaster of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Some scenes are darker and have more contrast than any previous home video versions, which I assume more accurately reflects the theatrical version. I think it plays much better and looks more like a projected film, even though they did scrub too much grain. I hope we see this in more film remasters.

With the new Star Trek II Blu-ray, I think the image can look a little soft at times, not because of digital processing, but coming from the source.

Star Trek II had a very small budget, so they had to shoot on cheaper film stock. As well, a lot of shots you can see are blatantly out of focus, probably another result of just running out of money for reshoots or more retakes. It’s not so much they scrubbed too much grain, but more it’s just unavoidable. A lot of shots, most shots, still do have a healthy helping of grain, it’s just some shots that can look a little soft.

I’m very interested to see how it looks on UHD BR though, I believe they will be releasing it sometime next year.

litemakr said:

Shalashaska said:

I imagine this will be the best-looking version of the film compared to the 35mm LPP scan?

I’m not very sure of it myself though. From seeing the comparisons of the HD TV/Blu-ray with the 35mm scan, the 35mm version almost looks excessively dark. I gave it a pass until I noticed the same when comparing the 35mm scan of Star Trek III (released by the same group as this project’s 35mm master) with the HD TV cap, the colours look a hell of a lot more muted, desaturated, and dark.

Perhaps I’ve been ruined by all the extremely bright and vibrant Blu-ray releases of classic films and don’t know how they’re truly supposed to look, but are we absolutely sure that the film’s not just faded or weathered after all this time? Is this fairly accurate to the original presentation?

EDIT: Apologies for all the questions, but does anyone know what master this TV broadcast was sourced from?

I can’t speak for ST III, but the brightness of the 35mm Raiders is accurate, it isn’t faded at all. The home video versions are created from low contrast prints or negatives and are overly brightened, have less contrast and more shadow detail. The contrast on theatrical prints is higher so there is a larger extreme between brightest and darkest areas. This is difficult to represent in the more limited dynamic range of HD video without crushing the blacks or blowing out the brighter areas. If you watch the bar scene in motion it looks natural, like a low lit, dingy dive bar. Exactly what the filmmakers intended.

Cool, makes sense.

With that said, you make it sound like scanning from the negative is a BAD thing. Would you think so?

I’m not exactly sure how theatrical prints would have better contrast than the negative itself.