No, it’s not actually this bad, but the fan remasters I have seen definitely suffer from the usual AI “upscaling” issues like smooth skin, weird text, etc. What is the best quality these shows can actually be found in?
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AI disclaimer: If it’s not obvious, the punchline at the bottom is an AI-generated image. I found it by browsing already-generated Trek-themed AI images. I believe this post fits the AI rule on this community, but I understand if not. My first idea for the punchline was to run a photo of the DS9 cast through a 2015-ish Deep Dream model or whatever (the kind that makes nonsense like this), but apparently that’s no longer a thing.
I wonder if Paramount actually still has the 35mm negatives.
They have the film, they no longer have the CG or modeling data because it was lost or deleted after digitally mastering the DVDs at that resolution.
All of the computer generated effects would have to be recreated from scratch. And while that would be a good thing (some of the CG was pretty bad at any resolution), it’s an undertaking that Paramount doesn’t want to spend the time or money on.
Of course DS9 had to lose the special effects data, they saw B5 do it first.
DS9 (and probably voyager, but definitely DS9 per some documentaries) was filmed on 35mm and then transfered to D-2 tape at 480i. Shots that required CGI were transfered to D-1 tape (both store an uncompressed digital recording, but D-1 stores component video instead of composite with D-2.) CGI shots got transferred to separate D-1 tapes and sent to Paramount to be finalized and merged onto the lower-quality D-2 tapes. Nevermind that they had several very low resolution assets that would be used depending on visual fidelity needed (computers were slow and didn’t have a lot of memory or storage.) Here’s a cool interview with the Senior CG Supervisor for Voyager talking about the work they did making the assets. https://blog.trekcore.com/2013/07/voyagers-visual-effects-creating-the-cg-voyager-with-rob-bonchune/
Also also - the DS9 doc “What We Left Behind” has some non-CGI shots from DS9 properly restored and remastered. I remember the scene where they’re all walking to the holodeck in the casino heist episode was featured, I’m sure there were some others.
Actually, a lot of the CG seems to have survived and is in the hands of VFX artists; they actually remastered a few select scenes and showed them in the documentary “What We Left Behind” and re-rendered the ship battle from the original assets.
The HD battle scenes were all done from scratch. Painstakingly recreating the cinematography of the original footage. Apart from the overly-saturated colors, there are minor differences.
Also, they recreated the Odyssey explosion fully in CG and that was originally digitally-composited model shots.
Never underestimate a fan’s attention to detail. Since the 1990s, there have been digital recreations of Star Trek ships that are almost indistinguishable from the official models and CG.
The problem I’ve heard is that DS9 and VOY were shot directly to tape, and not film. This means that there is not a high resolution source to rescan. Another problem is that apparently the studio did not maintain an as shot copy before sfx. So even if it was possible to start with a studio quality master tape for the best source possible, you don’t have a clean version to reapply effects to.
ENT was shot in HD with an updated workflow as Broadcast TV standards had evolved.
Deep Space Nine and Voyager were definitely filmed using 30mm film. Most of Star Trek in the TNG era was (even a lot of Enterprise):
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Panavision
This included a lot of model shots. Deep Space Nine used only model shots until switching over to CG ships and CG-enhanced model shots during the Dominion War arc. Voyager was the first series to use CG models extensively throughout, but many stock shots of Voyager itself were done on film:
I think what you heard about tapes might be due to Paramount releasing these shows directly into syndication during a time when TV stations were switching over to digital equipment. They probably sent tapes to the various stations instead of actual reels of film.
I posted this in another comment but I think you’d enjoy it if you haven’t already read it. https://blog.trekcore.com/2013/07/voyagers-visual-effects-creating-the-cg-voyager-with-rob-bonchune/
That’s great to hear, and brings back hope that there is a chance. Like Dr Who, lost collections do exist if anything is missing. And fans will go to all sorts of lengths to recover source media if given the opportunity, just look at the animated show Reboot and what the teams are doing to rebuild the video equipment that was used in their processes.
O’Brien’s buffer clones
I dunno what all the fuss is about. GAN upscaling pretty good at this even before “AI” became a household term (and so cursed).
We had upscaling so good a decade ago, for old shows, that no one even notices it’s AI once the “fan cleanup” is published. I worked on one such project.
SOTA these days, as far as I know, is SeedVR2 + oldschool Vapoursynth pre/post processing, but plenty of projects are locally runnable: https://github.com/ByteDance-Seed/SeedVR
Obviously if you put “upscale this” into Sora or whatever, you are going to get lovecraftian horror back… which, to fair, I’d half expect Paramount to do just to get OpenAI into their earnings call.
Just wait until your eyes are too old to notice the difference and watch the original resolution.
