The original Babylon 5 and EAS Cortez CG models re-rendered to modern HD standards (with a new background). Whilst the Warner Brothers film masters wouldn't look this good, they'd be big improvement over the DVD versions of the show.
The only way to get a HD Babylon 5 would be to go back to the original film stock and extract a new HD image of all the live-action footage - which is time-consuming and tedious, but straightforward - and then re-render all of the thousands of CG effects and composite shots* in the show from scratch - which would be mind-bogglingly time-consuming and expensive. Star Trek: The Next Generation took this approach, but the show didn't have much CGI to re-render, as most of the effects were handled in-camera on film, so it was straightforward to remaster. It still took four years and cost $20 million, and took years to break even across multiple media releases and years of streaming on Netflix and CBS All Access. Babylon 5 would cost around twice that as it had far more CG than ST:TNG and in fact far more effects shots in total, despite being almost seventy episodes shorter in length. Given the relative obscurity of Babylon 5 compared to ST:TNG, this would appear to be commercially unviable.
(* a composite shot is one that combines live-action footage with effects, so any shot which has weapons being fired, the characters standing in front of a green or blue screen, interacting with CG characters etc)
However, Straczynski has completely upended this understanding of the situation with new information.
It turns out that at the end of every season of Babylon 5, Warner Brothers requested that every episode be completely re-mastered on 35mm film. This was for an archival copy to sit in the WB archives and to match the show as broadcast. This process involved taking the digital elements - including the original CG shots in their original resolution (noticeably higher than what we saw on TV from the video master) - and putting them on film.
So in order to get a full HD version of Babylon 5, all one has to do is extract a broadcast copy from each film reel, and since everything is on there already - including CG - that's all you need to do. It's extremely cheap.
This may sound too good to be true, and there is a hitch. Because this was an archival copy of the episode as already aired, it only involved the 4:3 TV format, not the widescreen master which only exists on video. Or to put it another way, Babylon 5's HD edition would only be available in 4:3, not widescreen, despite Babylon 5 being the first TV show ever filmed directly in widescreen. Which is both ironic and immensely frustrating. As long-term B5 fans know, the CGI for Babylon 5 only exists in 4:3, with the widescreen CG shots seen on the DVD release coming about from cropping the image (which is incredibly annoying, and loses information from the top and bottom of the image), so this would both restore the original CG image and in a much higher resolution, but at the cost of losing the live-action widescreen shots.
There is the possibility of going back to the original film stock for the live-action-only shots and combining those with this new master to get at least some of the show in widescreen HD at a still-reasonable price, but the series would need to switch to 4:3 for every CGI and composite scene, which would be rather distracting.
Whilst it's not a perfect solution, it does open up the possibility of seeing Babylon 5 in high definition, at level of visual quality never seen before. Whether Warner Brothers are prepared to invest such a remaster remains to be seen, but at least now, in the long, twilight struggle of rewatching your favourite twenty-year-old SF show, there is the possibility of hope.
22 comments:
"the series would need to switch to 4:3 for every CGI and composite scene, which would be rather distracting"
No more distracting than the current widescreen versions, where in order to fill the screen during CGI and composite shots it chops a huge chunk off the top and bottom of the SD 4:3 image and stretches what remains into a badly framed mess of ugly grain. Maybe there's some fancy way a bluray release could provide optional pillarbox overlays to give us the choice (I'd snap it up immediately if so), but a high quality 4:3 version is perfectly acceptable. It wasn't really shot for 16:9 after all, so much as (ineffectively, as it turned out) future-proofed for the possibility of 16:9 becoming the standard.
This seems to be exactly how they were able to create a HD version of seaQuest, recently released on Blu-ray in Germany and Australia. The effects shots (like B5, created using the Video Toaster system) were printed on 35mm film for international sales.
I wonder if the Warner Archive Collection might be interested in doing B5 this way. They release classic films and shows that are seen as not having mainstream appeal, including recent shows like The 100, iZombie, Riverdale and Lucifer. They have presences on Twitter and Facebook, maybe it might be a good idea pointing them toward JMS' posts. It would be weird at least if WB just let the film rot in their archives without doing at least a basic digital scan.
Regarding the widescreen issue: I see having B5 only in 4:3 as not a problem at all, I wish they had done the DVDs that way. Apart from the cropping of the effects shots, I doubt that the directors shooting the show in 1994 were framing their shots for anything other than 4:3, as that was how the show was being mastered and broadcast. If anything, they probably only protected the 16:9 frame so that boom mics and such were not visible, but composed the shots for 4:3. I don't think anyone complains about Star Trek TOS and TNG only being in 4:3.
BABYLON 5 was originally going to be funded by a coalition of international broadcasters working with Warner Brothers, including a Japanese company who were insistent on the show being shot in widescreen for a laserdisc release late on. When that collapsed and PTEN was set up instead, they decided to keep shooting the show with widescreen in mind (and indeed, B5 got a laserdisc release in Japan later on).
Shots were composed primarily for 4:3 though, because that's how everyone would see the show on its original release. So yeah, you don't lose anything from the sides of the frame.
If the 4:3 HD version would turn out to be Open Matte the problem would be instantly solved. So I guess it isn't. (Open Matte = this is when the idea is widescreen, and an extra 4:3 version is created by NOT cutting the top&bottom edge off. So the 4:3 version in fact has some extra image top and bottom, although there won't be any essential stuff happening there. This is what they should have done in the first place.)
There is a thing to note this is TV series, there is a lot of hours material and in CGI there is recycling of 3D-models.
I believe that there is shortcut way to do this, by doing careful modelling of those spaceships and other elements that are used on most of scenes and implement process having software that automates CGI scene creation.
Scene creation automation I mean that it is possible to use software to calculate motion paths, camera position, lightsource positions and even give measurements to missing models to remodel them quickly.
Not possible on every scene but it is really worth to investigate.
4:3 would be the perfect solution anyway - that's the OAR, period. Fuck widescreen. Have you seen the DVDs? The live action only parts are exactly what you'd end with. Lots and lots of empty, dead space on the sides, poor composition in many cases where the DP clearly intended the 4:3 ratio to be used and seen by the viewers. A scan of those broadcast copies in HD would be PERFECT.
If there's a petition, please point me the right direction! 4:3 HD would be very acceptable as would 4:3 4K which I would have thought quite possible if has truly been put on 35mm film stock. I'm in my 70s so haven't got 25 or more years to hang around so, WB, please just get on with it!
I have to be the one person on this thread to argue in favor of keeping the widescreen aspect ratio. I have all the DVDs and the live-action footage has never looked this good. The argument that B5's shots were framed primarily for 4x3 doesnt hold; they were protected for both aspect ratios. Firefly is, likewise, a widescreen series that was protected for broadcast in 4x3.
The special effects and composite shots, yes, would have to be (selectively!) cropped and upscaled, and you'd lose some resolution. But you'd be starting with higher resolution than was available in the broadcast masters. And upscaling is key: they can't simply ZOOM into the images and blow them up like what apparently was done for the existing widescreen masters. The HD remaster of Farscape is beautiful, and it's all upscaled from 576i PAL master tapes.
What they should really do is remaster for BOTH widescreen and standard formats, as was done for the BSG (original series) Blu-Rays. That way the standard version gets the full resolution/compositions of the special effect shots, while the widescreen version gets the full composition of the live-action shots. And then just package them together, and allow people the OPTION to purchase the standard 4x3 version separately for less.
Agree 100%. I sense a strong "should" around 4x3: it should not bother us; it should be accepted; it should be regarded as just fine, but you know what? 4x3 kinda sucks actually and if a widescreen image exists, like you, I want it.
Haha.. I've got idea to implement fancy scene capture algorithm how to process low resolution 90's synthetic look rendered video to re-render those in HD resolution and high fps with and more realistic lighting by using old low quality digital video. And it could can be made semi-automatic but it will need heavy processing.
It may be even possible to enlarge 4:3 -> 16:9 rendering missing areas using captured scene data from other frames but there is limitations when that is possible.
I was under the impression that all of the live-action only scenes on the DVDs were already re-scanned from the original 35mm. Is that not correct? Did they not keep those scans? Or were the scans done at less than 1080 lines?
The biggest issues with the DVDs are certainly the effects and composited shots, which were royally butchered when mastered to DVD.
"I was under the impression that all of the live-action only scenes on the DVDs were already re-scanned from the original 35mm. Is that not correct? Did they not keep those scans? Or were the scans done at less than 1080 lines?"
Nope. The DVDs are taken from the broadcast video masters. They may have beens slightly up-rezzed (from 480p to 576p) but no more than that.
I've been experimenting how restoration could be done on rendered scenes.. Because there there is film copy, there is data but rendered data is different thing.
1. Upscaling using superresolution.
All lowres rendered scenes could be processed to 1440x1080 HD version using non-upscaled 4:3. To make this possible, it just requires learning data by rendering that oldschool rendering software bunch of frames, 200-500 on HD and SD. also capturing detail on moving objects and zoom-in/zoom-out and using that detail to re-render details, can be done.
This can be done automatically, almost no labour after training neural network.
2. Creating widescreen
Can be done reusing image data when camera is panning, mirroring view, filling background to keyframe using liquid rescale. There is difficult scenes too but this can be done because there is a lot of static CGI backgrounds or space.
This can be done by manually using suitable method to every scene, and some tool couple of mouse clicks.
3. Adding framerate
Can be done using motion vectors. Almost no manual labour.
4. Global illumination rendering
Can be done by postprossessing scenes to capture depth map.
This is a bit harder and may require manual work to create enough good depth map. When there is depth map, it is possible to calculate screen space ambient occulsion if there is scenes that have low detailed shadows.
They could use before and after scenes to create a complete widescreen from 4:3 HD; just a thought.
Widescreen managed only with incomplete SD with mutilated CG & composite shots vs. 4:3 HD with no need to crop anything. This should not be a dilemma.
@Adam Whitehead - Actually, how come an SD widescreen copy exists, but that it doesn't include CG (or maybe composite) shots? (I thought I heared that it's from a PAL area, but then it would still be useless without those.)
If the camera negative also exists, then it seems like they are now faced with the same choice as before, only in HD: They could use original film for the live action and mutilated ex-4:3 for the rest.
@Samuel Benezet - When you say it looks good, I take it that you are just talking about the picture quality. Now I could be wrong, but I was led to believe that the "protected area" is the area OUTSIDE the intended AR; so that it is the extra area. Unfortunately it sounds like in this case, the extra area is left and right instead of top and bottom.
I've seen the same dilemma in the other direction with a 1950s movie. It was non-anamorphic widescreen but 4:3 protected. Both copies are available, so what do you choose? Keep the largest area, or crop off top and bottom because widescreen is widescreen? (To make matters worse, the film in this example has shots that seem made for 4:3, and shots that really look best in widescreen.)
(@tim goldich - Hmm. People give incredibly technically well-informed opinions here, and you come in with "oh yeah 4x3 kinda sucks"... Doesn't impress. Anyway FYI the problem is that it does not exist the way people want it.)
An HD master in 4:3 would be perfectly fine! I'm confused as to why he would mention that these 35 mm digitals exist only just now (well, 2018).
I'd love for Buffy and Angel to be re-released in remastered in HD in their original format.
Can we just skip ahead and just start work on capturing B5 in virtual reality? How much fun would it be to watch scenes from a ‘real’ 3rd person viewpoint? B5 holo novels and interactive games here we come! ;) (well we can dream can’t we?)
Sounds like a perfect opportunity for a mass open-source collaboration... get all the Babylon 5 fans together who are good at Blender and hey-presto... Warner would have to go along with it of course...
There have been a few snippets on Youtube where "Tom Smith" re-ran the original models on current machines (as far as I understood), and they look absolutely gorgeous.
The Battle of Gorash 7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24AJP0693mc
I’ve just noticed that here in the UK iTunes is showing all 5 seasons as having been re-mastered. Quite what this means I don’t know but It does look as if Season 1 is in 16:9 format and the other 4 seasons are in 4:3 ratio. Everything is still showing as SD and not any form of HD so I’m puzzled. Can anyone throw any light on this?
See the latest news on this:
https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2020/11/warner-brothers-releases-somewhat.html
The "remaster" being released on iTunes and Amazon is simply a reversion to the original 4:3 version of the show, which fixes the problems with the zoomed-in CGI and composites, at the expense of losing the widescreen version of the live-action-only footage.
Thanks for your comments and the link Alan. I have all the old series and stand-alone DVDs for everything B% and Crusade etc. I did buy Season 1 & 2 on iTunes for ease of watching but was not terribly impressed with the quality. However, the new "re-mastered" episodes on iTunes do look better on my 75" 4K tv (and I do appreciate this is expecting a lot to put it mildly).
However, I was wondering what you meant by being released "piecemeal" as I have noticed that of the 2 seasons that I own on iTunes there are 3 episodes which are still in 16:9 format. These are all on Season 1 and these are The Gathering (often sold separately but included on S1 on iTunes), Mind War and Babylon Squared. Also these 3 episodes still appear lesser quality and are actually smaller file sizes (some 120 mb smaller on the latter 2 and similar on The Gathering) than the newer 4:3 versions.
Are the episodes being released, as you say, piecemeal or are some unable to be "re-mastered"?
Looking ahead it appears all episodes of Seasons 3,4 and 5 are re-done in 4:3 so I may well invest in these so I can watch on my iPhone, iPad or AppleTV rather the having to import my own rips of the DVDs.
Finally has anyone any idea if any of the movies or Crusade are being re-done?
Thanks again, John
Post a Comment