Star Trek TNG Seasons Remastered on Blu-Ray - Page 57

Really? I did not see red rock listed on fandango or the fathom events webpage.

Fair enough. Let us know how it goes.

Will do.

Anyone worried at the news of 5 episodes per disc? Could it be the explanation why the newer screencaps from season 1 seem to be a bit soft compared to the sampler?

Which new screencaps?

On the most recently released official promo caps that were on various sites a month or two ago were softer. Hopefully they are not indicative of the final product.
Although many give the TOS BR high marks, overall deservedly so, they have had either a low pass filter applied or a consequence of the encode to accommodate the amount of material per disc.

Best Regards
KvE

Keep in mind, by the time ST:TNG came out, shows were several minutes shorter. That's potentially as much as 12-15 fewer minutes on each disc for 5 episodes compared to TOS.

That's true. The average length of a TNG episode was 45 minutes compared to TOS's 50 minutes. So that's actually 25 fewer minutes. Not to mention all the extra branched scenes that were added to the TOS discs so you could watch both original or remastered VFX. It probably does add up to an extra 30-45 minutes on the TOS discs.

But the quality will certainly be slightly less than the Next Level sampler, I'm afraid. The sampler was only filled to 90% capacity anyway (41.9 GB out of a possible 46.6 GB). "Farpoint" was 20.35 GB, "Sins" was 10.15 GB, and "Inner Light" was 10.07 GB. If they filled the discs close to capacity on the season one set, each episode could be nearly 9 GB... but they're probably on track to be more like 8 GB, which of course would be about 80% of the size of the episodes on the sampler.

Warner likes to put 6 episodes on its HD seasons... which is interesting, because they typically put 4 on their DVDs. If the argument is typically 6x the resolution for HD over SD... then you're countering some of that by putting more episodes on a Blu-ray disc than you do a DVD.

Don't forget we're also comparing codecs here: MPEG4 AVC vs. MPEG2.

AVC can compress a lot more and not lose anything (or gain artifacts) over an MPEG2 encode of the same material.

I have a number of WB TV sets on Blu and their insistence on cramming 6 or more episodes per disc is greatly affecting the image quality. They apply a lot of filtering. Sometimes it barely looks HD. They were also the last hold outs to put lossless audio on their TV sets as well.

CBS Video had very, very low bitrates on their Star Trek TOS sets so they could cram a bunch on one disc. They don't care about quality... just keeping the amount of disc platters to as few as possible per package. They're penny pinchers.

Don't expect them to ease off on the TNG sets.

True... but in some cases WB was also putting extras on the same discs along with 6 episodes... and as already noted they would skimp on the audio and use lossless.

Since we know we are going to get DTS-MA 7.1 with TNG... hearing that they are also going to pack 6 episodes per disc makes you want to cringe just a little.

The only potential saving grace is... with 4:3 instead of 16x9, perhaps they save enough space when compared with the equivalent WB offerings which are usually of more recent 16x9 shows... so a 4:3 show on Blu-ray should take less space... so maybe an extra episode doesn't have to kill the quality.

Still... it would be nicer if they would just go with 4 per disc but maybe in this case it will work ok.

Well, that discussion is depressing.

The original Trek was presented as 4:3 as well. That didn't help.

According to the released specs, TNG has 5 episodes per disc for discs 2-5. Disc 1 has 4 episodes (counting the pilot as 2) plus extras and disc 6 has 2 episodes plus extras.


TOS was also VC-1. I know VC-1 has a somewhat poorer in-loop deblocking filter compared to AVC... so fine details will be better preserved with an AVC encode, all other factors being equal.

TOS Season 1, for example, was a 7-disc set... 29 episodes... They put 4 episodes per disc except for 1 disc that contained 5 episodes.

First off, while CBS is responsible for the remastering process, I'm fairly certain that Paramount handles the disc authoring.

Other than the bit rate meter not displaying as high a number as you'd like, what specific problems did you have with the TOS Blu-rays? I have a feeling that you're probably mistaking issues with the digital manipulation performed during the restoration and remastering with compression problems. A number of TOS episodes have blocky pixelation artifacts that are baked into the remaster. The TOS Season 1 HD DVDs used AVC compression, while the Blu-rays have a completely separate VC-1 encode. Yet both have the same artifacts in the same places in the same episodes. You can also see them (though less clearly due to the lower resolution) on the DVD editions, which obviously use MPEG-2.

Don't be so quick to blame everything on bit rate. 99% of visual artifacts you see in any Blu-ray are the fault of the video master itself, not the compression encode.

VC-1 is notorious for reducing resolution with low bitrate encodes. During the mastering process they probably added a bunch of filtering to ease the compression process. This is what I saw, besides pixelization and banding in some solid colors.

Even if the HD-DVD's had AVC encoding, Paramount would have been using the earliest encoding software for H.264. They've improved since then... though, you still need high bitrates and low filtering anyway for the video quality to hold up on a large projection screen home theater system.

I also don't buy that with the new H.265 codec the Blu-ray steering group will only only need a 50 GB disc and the current bitrate for quality 4k video either. They probably don't want to have to pay a bit more to produce 100 and 200 GB Blu-ray discs, which will handle the extra load quite well and allow for enough bitrate breathing room.

99% of all unreferenced statistics are made up on the spot. Of those that do have references, most of those sources are as dubious as the referrer. ;}

Simple fact, higher average bitrate with a lossy codec resolves a more transparent facsimile to the source.
I do not believe every single second of a film needs to be maxed out to 40mbs on a BR disc; what matters is the final result does not exhibit any compression artifacts.
Just because the originate material have some flaws does not excuse additional artifacts that maybe introduced due flawed compression decisions.

A great example of VC-1 vs AVC within similar amount of content on BR is the visual disparity seen in season 4 of BSG. All the VC-1 material is softer and does not resolve fine detail as well as the AVC half. It almost appears as though the show was filtered but it has to do with codec.

Hopefully the concerns are wrong and the show looks spectacular. Wish the latter seasons would come out sooner though. Crossing fingers for an imminent DS9 remastering as well.

Best Regards
KvE

Uh huh. And you're certain that what you're complaining about is actually the result of digital filtering, and not just soft focus in the original low-budget 1960s TV photography?

Soft focus is not going to reduce or soften grain, the combination of exposure and film stocks will dictate it.

Best Regards
KvE

Do you have specific examples of this in the Star Trek TOS Blu-rays, or are you just throwing out generalities?

when will the 1st COMPLETE season come out, or are they going to trickle out each disc, say with 4 ep. on each???

Season One is scheduled for release on July 24th. I don't know if they have announce dates for future seasons or not, but they will be complete Season sets. The first Bluray with the 4 episodes was a one time only teaser disc, just to give an example of the restoration process.

StarTrek.com says Season Two is coming "later this year", but no firm date yet. Robert Meyer Burnett just tweeted this about 2 hours ago:

That would mean they have finished up to episode 36, "The Dauphin", which suggests they're probably busy working on assembling "Contagion" through "Time Squared" about now.

Looks like we may be getting an extended cut of a fan favorite episode:

Snodgrass wrote the episode, so I imagine they sent it to her for approval. Here's hoping for more extended cuts!

I did not think that there were extended cuts of any episodes this will be interesting.

After reading the teleplay and watching the episode, it looks like the biggest deletions were:

• Picard, Admiral Nakamura & Maddox beaming aboard
• Following corridor/turbolift conversation with Picard, Riker, Nakamura & Maddox
• Picard talking to Nakamura on viewer in Ready Room
• Maddox acts like an even bigger dick at Data's party
• Gymnasium scene between Picard (who's fencing) and Riker
• Picard prepares Data for trial in Data's quarters
• Alternate Guinan/Picard scene in Ten Forward (probably re-written and filmed the way we've already seen)

Here's an RTF file with the deleted moments bolded and italicized:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/a22yu4

***

EDIT: As someone just pointed out on another forum, Snodgrass might be saying that she has an old, first cut of the episode on VHS from 1988 and that CBS requested it. What they will ultimately do with it is unknown. They could make a longer cut in full HD (with new VFX and a new sound mix for those scenes), or just simply include the low-quality scenes from videotape on the Season Two set as an extra.
Edited by Maxwell Everett - 6/24/12 at 3:25pm

Here's the TV spot that aired during the Big Bang Theory tonight:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=406918596012367

I had no idea that observation lounge element from the main title sequence was very rudimentary animation! I always figured it was a filmed element with real people in costume. Don't understand what I'm talking about? Watch the video!

Gotta say, even though season one is probably the worst of the bunch, I'm still super excited this is coming in a few weeks.