An official announcement of Star Trek: TOS will soon be upon us.... (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

Any more info on Voyager in HD?
I also thought Seven of Nine could be brought back to life in HD. Wasn't there a BIG fight about if the show should remain 4:3 or be released in 16:9?

Or, has "7o9" thrown me off track...
AGAIN?!?!?!

 

[Dave Mack]

I don't think they will get to Voyager for many, many years if ever. It is currently not HD ready.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I think what people are confusing about the last few seasons of Voyager is not that it was edited in HD, but rather all of the effect shots switched from shooting models of Voyager to a completely CGI ship. It was however edited in the NTSC format. In fact this becomes an even worse problem because those CGI effects shots were most likely rendered at NTSC resolution. They would all have to be recreated in HD resolution.

Doug

 

[MatthewA]

Consider the fact that, I assume, they also made PAL versions of the episodes. Did they just take the NTSC 480i masters and convert them to PAL or did they do separate telecines for that purpose? And then there's the effects.

Is it possible that they edited the negatives together, without the FX shots, to conform to the video EDLs?

 

[Douglas Monce]

No the negatives weren't touched after the telecine process. The NTSC master tapes are converted to PAL for distribution in the UK and Europe.

Doug

 

[troy evans]

So guys Here's the question, is there anything they can do for the PQ on TNG ? Don't get Me wrong I'm in no mood to go and replace all My Star Trek( and I do Have It all) for new masters. I just mainly have a gripe with TNG's quality compared to the others. Ed, are You playing Voyager through Your upconvert player? My episodes look Pretty Sweet on My HD A20.

 

[Douglas Monce]

It's really the first 2 seasons of TNG that look like crap even for NTSC. In season 3 they switched from editing on Analog video to D1 and that season looks MUCH better. But the show as it stands now will never look better than 480i, unless a major project is undertaken to re do all the post production on the whole show.

Doug

 

[Dave Mack]

But don't some of the later TREK series including TNG on PAL suffer from PAL speedup...?
AFAIK that only happens when a 25fps telecine transfer is made. Simply converting a 60hz (30fps) NTSC video transfer to PAL doesn't speed it up. I have the S4-S7 Buffy sets and all the episodes are sped up by 4% but all the making of docs. are the same as the R1 sets, the proper speed and pitch. (Very apparent in the Buffy musical episode where all the songs are 1/2 step higher on the PAL set but the same song when shown in clips in the documentary section is correct, pitchwise)

http://www.schmidt-web.info/malte/comparison.mp3

 

[Douglas Monce]

They may have removed the 2-3-2 pull down when preparing the the DVD sets. That would put the frame rate at 23.976. I would think that would cause the PAL speed up. I very much doubt that they did post production twice, once in NTSC and once in PAL.

Doug

 

[Zack Gibbs]

IDK, but TNG was shot at 30fps on film to begin with so it doesn't seem likely.

 

[Dave Mack]

Actually TNG and all TREK series were shot on 35mm film at 24 fps.
VIDEO is shot at 30fps, not film. Film can be shot at 25fps, (Space 1999 was shot at this speed since it was primarily going to be shown in Europe and the transfer to 50hz. PAL would be easier.) But it is very rare indeed for a film to be shot at 30fps. I think there's only a few in existence.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I was doing some research on NTSC to PAL transfers and came up with this...


Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

The only ones I know of were the two early Todd/AO films Oklahoma and Around the World in Eighty Days.

Doug

 

[Zack Gibbs]

Well we're not talking about movies we're talking about TV shows, and as of 1987 is was very common for shows to be shot at 30 FPS on film. I don't know the details, but they did it as a cost saving method, and I believe it was the team at Max Headroom that essentially invented the process (they were at least the first to do it).

Now thinking about this for a while I considered that DS9 was always shot 24 fps, and I'd bet TNG switched over to that as well when they got a larger budget, probably in season 3 or 4. So if they shot those at 24, they still did their post FX work at 30 fps (in DS9 and Voyager too). This creates havoc when transferring to PAL, as you only have a couple of options and neither of them are great. I'd bet this is where the issues you're seeing are coming from, Dave.

 

[Dave Mack]

I'm pretty sure that the TREK shows were shot at 24fps though.
Douglas, interesting.
I do have my Buffy PAL sets (completely different transfers) and they look much better than the R1 NTSC ones.


Either way, a 720 by 576 master is still a long way aways from HD.

 

[Douglas Monce]

TV shows in the U.S. that are shot on film are NEVER shot at 30fps. 24fps is the standard now and it was the standard when I Love Lucy was being shot in the 50s. The effects shots for all Star Trek shows were done at 24fps. You would be able to tell if a show was shot at 30fps because the motion looks very much like video. (watch the Todd/AO version of Oklahoma on dvd and you'll see what I mean) Also 30fps would not be a cost saving measure as you would use almost twice as much film.

Max Headroom was a UK show and most likely shot at 25 frames per second.

Doug

 

[Dave Mack]

Interesting observation. Space 1999 was shot on film at 25fps (UK based show) but when they "looped" additional dialog, they used a 24fps playback (accidentally...?) system so whenever you hear looped dialog, it is pitched up a 1/2 step from their normal speaking voices. If you have a good ear, it's easily detetectable.
The restored and remastered S1 of Space1999 from the UK looks absolutely stunning btw...

 

[Douglas Monce]

Yeah I have the first season of Space 1999. I remember reading that Space 1999 was shooting at 25fps so that it would be easy to sync the film cameras with all the TV monitors they used on the show. I don't know if that was hype or not.

Interesting about the looping, but I'm not sure about that. Looping is normally done to magnetic tape, which doesn't have a frame rate. It just uses a sync signal to interlock the recorder with the projector for looping. The tape recorder can actually run at any speed as long as the speed is constant. Also if the looped likes were at a different speed from the film they were looping too the dialog wouldn't stay in sync very long.

Doug

Edit: I just got what you are saying. The Projector running the film in the looping stage was running at 24fps rather than 25fps. I would think that they would be able to hear that though as they listen to track recorded on the set.

 

[Dave Mack]

No, what I mean is that when the actors were in the looping studio recording their replacement dialog, the film they were watching to record the new dialog was shown at 24fps and when sped back up to 25, the pitched up voices were a result. Been confirmed with people who did the restoration that that was the case. It's very apparent when you watch it that there is a pitch change when there is a looped line.

Found this in the big old Space 1999 thread...

http://hometheaterforum.com/htf/show...ght=space+1999

To quote from Jonathan Wood's article on the HD restoration of Space:1999;

'The question of frame rates often arises with this series - was it shot at 24fps or 25fps? The answer is not as straightforward as you would imagine. Having now worked through the remastering of year one with my colleagues at a meticulous level I now firmly believe that nearly all live-action scenes were filmed at 25fps. Why would this speed have been chosen when the international standard for video production is 24? It's due to the abundance of the video monitors in a great majority of shots, placed in wall panels, corridor pillars, Eagle control desks and so on...In order to have film camera and video output locked to avoid unsightly frame bars (caused by a differing refresh rate on the monitors) it was a far easier solution to run the cameras at 25 frames per second as well...

...This seems to have been borne out by the existence of original audio rushes tapes with their labels still intact indicating "CAM SPEED - 25 FPS". However, it appears that the dubbing theatre (where audio post-production work occurs) was usurprisingly still running at the standard film speed of 24fps with the consequence that any music, effects and dubbed lines were applied at this frame rate ... With this in mind, the remastering work was carried out at 25fps, which in my view is the preferable speed for the series as it matches the vast majority of the action. It is a simple matter though in these days of digital data to change this speed to other rates if required, so no doubt any material that appears on NTSC format will be running at 24fps with deeper voices as a result. As with many filmed series, personal preference can sometimes simply be a case of what you're used to, as I often find that viewing some American imports now at their correct speed (via Region 1 DVD) can sound oddly slow after all the years of viewing them on British television!'

 

[Douglas Monce]

Yeah I got it after I read what you said again. It might be that that was the only looping stage they had available to them and the projectors weren't able to run at 25fps.

Anyway it seems likely that the PAL speed up on TNG is a result of using the Deft transfer equipment. Deft was used for high quality conversation of the image from NTSC to PAL. With the extra features its likely they didn't bother to use the Deft system as it would have been more expensive to use. Hence no PAL speed up on the extras.

Doug