Star Trek TNG Seasons Remastered on Blu-Ray - Page 14

From what I can tell from the Panavision specs, it would be about a 9% total crop, or 4.5% each on the top and bottom of the frame to get to 1.78:1. In other words, equivalent to overscanning, comfortably outside of the TV Action Safe area. No important information lost.

Or they could just give us a 1.66:1 presentation with small pillar bars on the sides ala DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE and GOLDFINGER, and we wouldn't lose anything.

Ah - yeh I think it will be 1.78:1 that we get not 1.66 - since Paramount seem to do 1.78:1 for the remasters even on 1.85:1 films like The Ten Commandments.

Getting really excited about this - I hope we see some footage when this is announced properly - Sep 28 someone said?

Didn't he play a blind character in this series?

Hmmmmm - I think that dude was a little bit taller

http://www.mobypicture.com/user/leva...n/view/7881534

The transfer might look good. I won't vote on that unless and until I see it. But if it isn't in the OAR, I will have little interest in buying it on release day. I may want it eventually, but I'll be able to wait for the inevitable years-later price drop because it will not be tempting to me after the alteration from the original airings.


Some shows on TV were shot with 16x9 in mind, though they were cropped to 4:3 for TV airing... Those shows I am fine if they open up to 16x9 on the DVD/Blu-ray releases because the intent was there from the start to make the program available in 16x9 when it became possible to do so.

But TV shows (or movies) that were shot with 4:3 intended airings... I don't like them mucking about and changing the aspect just because people think they want it. I want the show as it was framed and intended.


I don't... It's a dangerous precedent. There are so many people that don't like black bars on anything (be it 4:3 or 2.35:1) that they would likely vote in numbers to give us everything in 16x9 regardless of how it was framed/shot.

I wager that if you put it to a vote to release Twilight Zone in color or black & white... they could probably run a poll that got enough votes for people wanting that show colorized!

People have been known to think they want things that are not good for them.

Asking people to vote on whether they want OAR or 16x9 for TNG... would be like letting your 5-year-old vote on whether he wants vegetables OR candy for dinner. You can guess how the vote would turn out, and you know giving him what he wants will only make him sick later!


Well... even with re-framing... they will be cropping. There's no way around that. Technically speaking, the 4:3 is a crop of the original film too... it's just that the 4:3 crop was planned for and intended when the film was shot.

Here's an example I mocked up in Photoshop using a frame from "Encounter at Farpoint":



1.33:1 - Just a straightforward presentation of the intended 4:3 framing.




1.66:1 - Combining the added picture info from the camera negative but maintaining the intended vertical framing.





1.78:1 - Cropping the vertical height to almost the TV Action Safe area to bring the composition to 16:9.

Here are the images I used if you were wondering:
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...point1_070.jpg
http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albu...point1_071.jpg

Would the actual film not be closer to 5:4

So kinda like Super 35... but sideways?

Only for anamorphic photography, as far as I'm aware.

http://www.motionpicturecameras.net/...lm_formats.pdf

The 1.66:1 and 1.78:1 look much better than the 4:3. If they have some negatives to go back to and can open matte the picture up and add some picture on the sides, then that's great, and they absolutely should do that. A 1.78:1 would be preferable over the 1.33:1 but if the widest they can get by open matting is 1.66:1 then they should go with that so nothing needs to get cropped. If people don't want the minor black bars on the sides from that aspect ratio then they need to learn how to turn on overscan/zooming on their players and TVs.


Then quit being selfish/lazy. You can always take a 16:9 open matted picture and add black bars to the sides yourself to get it back to your precious 4:3 aspect ratio. You can't magically add the picture to fill it in to 16:9 if they release it in 4:3 in the first place.

The anti-open matte people are just as bad as the pro-DNR people imo. If you want everyone to look like wax you can enable the DNR option on your TV, but when it's baked into the transfer on the disc you can't remove it. The same goes for when the black bars are plastered over area where additional picture information could be contained.

That's an incredibly ill-informed stance to take. The answer to widescreen framing is not just to arbitrarily open matte the frame. If you do that you open up a whole can of worms with picture detail coming into shot that was never intended to be seen - boom mikes, crew, incomplete sets. When shooting for a specific aspect ratio you dismiss anything that is outside of the intended frame because it isn't going to be there in the final show.

There's no guarantee that the 16:9 presentation of TNG isn't simply going to be cropped at this point. Until we see previews of the remasters it's probably not worth getting bogged down in conjecture, but I certainly don't think asking for these shows to be presented in their intended aspect ratio is selfish and certainly not in any way lazy.

If they were going to do that, then they would have done the same with TOS.

No - I don't think we need to worry about that

How 'bout you quit being selfish? The show is in 4:3 and is meant to be presented that way. If you want something different for yourself, you can go the extra steps to accomplish something the show was never intended to be.

I don't think we are getting an effects choice this time, so it may be a choice of ratios.
But then we get into disc space issues!
It's an interesting problem look at a show like buffy, later seasons were 16:9 in the uk against the wishes of the creators.
Early seasons of buffy have so much DNR to hide the 16mm grain it's untrue, but that was the original broadcast.
So it's not always best to be slavishly true.
In saying that I am OAR all the way.

I didn't like widescreen movies being cropped to fit a 4x3 screen. I also don't like 4x3 material being cropped to fit 16x9 screens.

As long as it's about opening up the frame and not a crop of 4:3 material, I can at least accept the changes. I guess I'm losing my purist credentials here, but I'm a bit looser on television.

I demand OAR for movies, but I'm going to be a hypocrite and admit that I'd be perfectly okay with a 1.66 or 1.78 TNG presentation that primarily represents an opened frame.

On the other hand, 16:9 crops of a 4:3 frame (ala the first season of Kung Fu) are a complete abomination. And if they do that with TNG, I'll end up not making the purchase. I really hope they don't do anything like that, because I'm seriously looking forward to this.

+1

You said this more eloquently than I was able to.

There is often more to it than just a simple crop. A lot depends on the original. With TV shows, the original can be at almost any aspect and often even if it's 4:3 it was under-scanned considerably.

Case in point is the BD release of Lonesome Dove. The original was 1.66. By opening the frame and combining careful combinations of zoom, cropping and panning they were able to create a VERY nice 16:9 adaptation with excellent composition. Each scene was individually handled.

Point being that not all 16:9 adaptations are just crude cropping even if the original was not 16:9.

Seinfeld in HD looks very good and natural. So much so that when I watch an original 4x3 ep there just seems to be WAY too much headroom

I thought the new HD versions of friends look great.
The thing with OAR and tv is that it was not the director's choice of AR.

What's that supposed to mean? The director knows the aspect-ratio being composed for, just like a film director does.

Yes. Let me just break into Paramount's studios and retrieve the film negatives so I can open matte the picture. I can certainly reasonably "go the extra steps to accomplish something" as an OAR fan can just slap black bars over the picture.

This show was never meant to be presented on Blu-ray either. It was designed for 4:3 transmission on home television in standard definition. Why are you even posting in this thread if you oppose the show being made into something "it was never intended to be" ? It sure as hell wasn't intended to be in high definition either.


That's a cool story, bro. Good thing we're not talking about doing cropping here.


Eww. No it doesn't. Now that is an example of a show that has been cropped.

Go watch Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond in HD if you want to see how much open matting to 16:9 can improve the picture.

A director can dictate the ratio for a motion picture for the most part.

Maybe while you're there, you can also grab some behind-the-scenes footage of Patrick Stewart eating lunch.

'That's not part of the show', you say?

Well, neither is the out-of-frame area you speak as if you're entitled to.


Want a 16:9 show? Watch a 16:9 show. Star Trek - The Next Generation is not a 16:9 show.

Ok, so the theatre has two shapes while the (sd) tv only has one. So what? You still compose for the shape of the screen you're going to be displaying on.

Yes, but you never know if they shot safe or not.
Like I said earlier, a lot of dead space in the majority of episodes.

You could always ask.

I may just try that, to twitter!

I'd be completely happy with this, and examples like that just make me more optimistic about what they'll do with TNG. If this sampler ends up being good, I'm going to have to start saving up money for seasons, because I'll pay out the nose at Paramount's ridiculous prices just to own that show in HD if it's done right.

TOS was a different beast. Plus, they'll do whats best for syndication marketing. The private market is icing on the cake.

My only worry is they do it, but where it makes little sense. The actors where always grouped very close because of the OAR, and a larger framing might just add a lot of deadspace.

The again, the HD scans for "These Are the Voyages" worked pretty well at the new aspect ratio, although better care needs to be taken this time around.