If you do decide to take the plunge, much of trek has been remastered, TNG (the series that came after Shatner’s Kirk in the Original Series) for example was redone and got a Blu-ray release.
Unfortunately this hasn’t been done for others like Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which came after TNG’s run. So the community stepped in to fill this need.
I’ve gone thru many AI remasters and they have gotten better and better. Utr/Joybell used to be the best for DS9 until somewhat recently, but they have all been a little rough around the edges.
Enter DS9, Redefined; this project in my opinion is many steps above in terms of quality. The person running that project has finished a remaster for all of DS9 and is currently working on Voyager (almost done with s1 I think). If you click that link, you can check out some of the footage and screenshots they provide (shown with a slider so you can easily compare source with remake)
Join their discord, and go to the #instructions channel, there is an ftp server for all completed episodes; you don’t need to run the workflows yourself on the source eps yourself
Enjoy old trek in a more clear and vibrant experience, the first time :)
Unfortunately this hasn’t been done for others like Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which came after TNG’s run.
The reason for that, by the way, is that while TNG was shot on film (from which more detail could be extracted using new technology), DS9 and Voyager were at least partially mastered directly on videotape (especially the CGI effects) and thus there was no higher-quality source to pull from to begin with.
Yeah, there’s a real doughnut-hole in the '90s-2000s between when stuff was old enough to be remastered and stuff was new enough to be digital/HD to begin with. Also, I double-checked, and according to this article what I wrote before wasn’t entirely accurate: apparently the raw footage is on film, but the cut and edited product only exists on video. In theory, they could go back to the raw film and re-do the entire editing process, but it would be cost-prohibitive compared to how much consumer interest in an HD remaster they expect there to be.
Have you compared it to other upscales? there is a 720p from icecracked that looks excellent and to my knowledge even beats redefined by a noticeable margin.
That looks pretty good at first. I am a huge DS9 fan. But upon closer examination with those sliders, it looks like it’s just brighter. That’s it. Am I wrong?
It does look minimal and honestly the source files weren’t that bad. It’s just an attempt to upscale the image so it looks better on bigger screens. If you look at previous AI up scales and such there are lots of artifacts and things like that and this project is the cleanest I’d seen, but also things like stars and other small details are more clear or newly visible also
I like to watch trek on my big tv and the original source files are frustrating in that regard, so for you it may not be the same value and doesn’t make sense to replace an existing collection but for newer watchers may as well start at an improved version
If you do decide to take the plunge, much of trek has been remastered, TNG (the series that came after Shatner’s Kirk in the Original Series) for example was redone and got a Blu-ray release.
Unfortunately this hasn’t been done for others like Deep Space Nine and Voyager, which came after TNG’s run. So the community stepped in to fill this need.
I’ve gone thru many AI remasters and they have gotten better and better. Utr/Joybell used to be the best for DS9 until somewhat recently, but they have all been a little rough around the edges.
Enter DS9, Redefined; this project in my opinion is many steps above in terms of quality. The person running that project has finished a remaster for all of DS9 and is currently working on Voyager (almost done with s1 I think). If you click that link, you can check out some of the footage and screenshots they provide (shown with a slider so you can easily compare source with remake)
Join their discord, and go to the #instructions channel, there is an ftp server for all completed episodes; you don’t need to run the workflows yourself on the source eps yourself
Enjoy old trek in a more clear and vibrant experience, the first time :)
The reason for that, by the way, is that while TNG was shot on film (from which more detail could be extracted using new technology), DS9 and Voyager were at least partially mastered directly on videotape (especially the CGI effects) and thus there was no higher-quality source to pull from to begin with.
Oh wow! Nice to learn the actual reason why. Directly in vhs my god lol
Yeah, there’s a real doughnut-hole in the '90s-2000s between when stuff was old enough to be remastered and stuff was new enough to be digital/HD to begin with. Also, I double-checked, and according to this article what I wrote before wasn’t entirely accurate: apparently the raw footage is on film, but the cut and edited product only exists on video. In theory, they could go back to the raw film and re-do the entire editing process, but it would be cost-prohibitive compared to how much consumer interest in an HD remaster they expect there to be.
There’s a really good Technology Connections video on the topic, by the way.
Finally, I’m not sure if “VHS” is strictly accurate. There are other varieties of videotape that might have been used.
Yeah no way they would eat that kind of cost for not much value overall. The fans would love it but no way they make their money back.
Thanks for the neat info tho!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
a really good Technology Connections video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Have you compared it to other upscales? there is a 720p from icecracked that looks excellent and to my knowledge even beats redefined by a noticeable margin.
That looks pretty good at first. I am a huge DS9 fan. But upon closer examination with those sliders, it looks like it’s just brighter. That’s it. Am I wrong?
It does look minimal and honestly the source files weren’t that bad. It’s just an attempt to upscale the image so it looks better on bigger screens. If you look at previous AI up scales and such there are lots of artifacts and things like that and this project is the cleanest I’d seen, but also things like stars and other small details are more clear or newly visible also
I like to watch trek on my big tv and the original source files are frustrating in that regard, so for you it may not be the same value and doesn’t make sense to replace an existing collection but for newer watchers may as well start at an improved version
But bottom line, it is more than that. Here is the workflow to see exactly what is being done: https://discord.com/channels/774116592409378816/774119166931894272/1066138918128468060
Comment saved!
Aye much appreciated, will look at it later when I got some free time.
Thank you for this!!!