Remastered Space: 1999 S1 (1 Viewer)

[Rob Foss]

the bonus SFX image of the Moon passing Saturn appears to be from Saturn 3.

Nope, it really is unused footage from 'Breakaway'!

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Yes, that is UFO.

 

[Brian Himes]

So basically, the A&E set just didn't do as good a job of restoring the show as compared to the new set? Not a surprise there. This show started showing up on DVD when DVD was still fairly new.

I did watch a number of episodes from the A&E set after reading about the new set. I can see where there is room for imporvement, but I still think the show looks great. It is way better than I remember it looking when I watched this originally.

If the new set is released here in the US, I will probably pick it up. I just hope that they restore season 2 in the same way.

 

[Rob Foss]

So basically, the A&E set just didn't do as good a job of restoring the show as compared to the new set? Not a surprise there.

A&E don't normally restore anything. I know they make all these claims on the packaging but that's just for publicity. All A&E did/do is licence S:1999 and the other ITC titles for release in North America from Carlton International (now Granada Ventures) in the UK. It's the latter organistion who supplies A&E with the master tapes which A&E then use for encoding and authoring.

I did watch a number of episodes from the A&E set after reading about the new set. I can see where there is room for imporvement, but I still think the show looks great. It is way better than I remember it looking when I watched this originally.

Well it's all relative isn't it. If you watched battered 16mm prints on your local station as a kid then watching A&E's 35mm prints - despite their many shorcomings - is obviously going to seem like an improvement. Equally if you go from A&E's set to the new Network restoration you'll experience another huge leap in quality.

On which subject I've noticed that one of the big advantages of these new transfers is how much better the optical FX look. Usually there's always a severe drop in quality (manifesting itself as colour shifts and massively increased grain) whenever somebody fires a laser because the optical process that was used back then took the shot down by several generations or more in quality. However I just watched 'Earthbound' and the scene of Commissioner Simmonds blasting Alphans with a stun gun displayed no noticeable colour shift or increased grain at all. Amazing!

 

[Mark_Wilson]

Was S:1999 shot at 24 or 25fps?

 

[Jay Pennington]

24, because the show was delivered on film to U.S. stations, whose film chains ran at 24fps.

 

[Rob Foss]

Was S:1999 shot at 24 or 25fps?

To quote from Jonathan Wood's article on the HD restoration of S: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!'

 

[Jerry R Colvin]

And yet, it wasn't available on DVD until after 1999... which annoyed me greatly at the time...

 

[Mark_Wilson]

Thanks Rob, that's exactly what I was looking for.

 

[Kevin L McCorry]

If they do, I very much doubt it will be with a release as reverent or as comprehensive as this one.

On the off chance they do, I hope they'll retain the fix on "A Matter of Balance" (the A & E transfer) to remove an intrusive clapperboard and the zoomed-in fixes on a few other shots that are overly revealing (i.e. overshooting the set) around the frame. And that they don't put "The Rules of Luton" before "The Mark of Archanon" and "Space Warp" before "A Matter of Balance". I realize these were simultaneous filmings, but why not adhere to given logdates in such instances? Chronologically, "...Archanon" precedes "...Luton" and "...Balance" comes before
"...Warp".

 

[Jay Pennington]

Wow, very interesting info about the frame rate.



Well, then, that would make the final product a 24fps show, regardless of how it was captured.

 

[Mark_Wilson]

No, I think he was describing Why they had to write "CAM SPEED - 25 FPS" on the reels. So the dubbing studio wouldn't mistakenly do the audio at 24fps.

Maybe someone can get him to clarify.

 

[Nelson Au]

Perhaps I missed it, but is there any official word this set will be available in the U.S.? I LIked what Kevin had said earlier about the set. The Testiment of Arkadia for me was the best episode of the series. It had a feel that made it stand apart from the rest of the epsidoes.

 

[Dave Mack]

Interesting... So it was shot at 25fps and live audio recorded, (dia.) as well but looped dialogue and music at 24? Odd...
So then visually, 25, (PAL) will be accurate but the music and looped dialogue and sound FX would be correct at 24, (NTSC)

Ah well, I have a native PAL outputting oppo player so full PAL res. 576 will look Fab.

Mine soon...!

 

[Kevin L McCorry]

Watched "The Full Circle" and "End of Eternity" this evening. Quantum leap in picture quality in all areas: depth and range of colors, brightness, clarity, detail, etc.. Never have I ever believed that the first season could look this good.

 

[Kevin L McCorry]

Perplexing discovery about this set is that when I play the episodes on my television in NTSC thru my region-free DVD player, they look horrible. Blurry, soft, pasty red hue to the colors. Easily the worst PAL-to-NTSC converted DVD picture quality I've ever seen. I wonder how there could be so much of a difference...

 

[Roger_R]

I asked Steve Roberts about it a while ago on the RT forum and he said that some of the ADR was done at 24fps, but not all, so there would be the occasional pitch change.

 

[Bryan^H]

I have the A&E set, but really want this release. However, I'm not going to buy it until the second season is released. Anyone have an idea as to when that may be?

 

[AndyMcKinney]

Are the A&E discs now officially out-of-print? If so, A&E might decide to reissue the remastered ones themselves, rather than having to wait until their rights expire.

That Bosco fellow can be quite persuasive. He, after all, he helped convince A&E to not only make Message from Moonbase Alpha available, something many of us thought would never turn up on official DVDs, but also got them to put improved-quality versions of three of the year one episodes that looked bad on the originals. Most studios won't even bother to go back and fix dodgy single-episode transfers. I think he's American and I'm sure he want this released on a proper NTSC format disc.

I'm sure, though, that no one would release this in the US until it's confirmed that Year 2 is going to get the same remastering treatment.

 

[Bill>Moore]

I won't hold my breath for a US release. I'm not quite sure if I'd want to double-dip on these again in any case.