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Cropped CGI on DVD?: Final Clarification

D

Droshalla

Beyond the rim
Okay, I realise this has been discussed ad nauseam, but going throught the mass of old data I am finding contradictions.

It was my understanding that all the CGI shots in all seasons were rendered in 4:3, leading to cropped and/or zoomed images for the 16:9 DVD sets.

Now I have also read that this was only in fact the case for S1, and that from S2 onwards the CGI shots were rendered in 16:9, meaning no problems.

So I humbly ask those who own the DVDs, which is the case? Is it a problem for all seasons, or just S1?
 
Okay, I realise this has been discussed ad nauseam, but going throught the mass of old data I am finding contradictions.

It was my understanding that all the CGI shots in all seasons were rendered in 4:3, leading to cropped and/or zoomed images for the 16:9 DVD sets.
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Yes.

Now I have also read that this was only in fact the case for S1, and that from S2 onwards the CGI shots were rendered in 16:9, meaning no problems.
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No. Incorrect.

So I humbly ask those who own the DVDs, which is the case? Is it a problem for all seasons, or just S1?
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All five seasons of B5. See this and the next attached JPG (as highly compressed as I could make it, so it would meet the 102400 byte limit.).
 

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From Season 4 "Secrets of the Soul"
 

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What you may be thinking of is that toward the end of B5, they tended to let the Live Action go wider than the 4:3 central protected area (See my first attachment.), so it's slightly more likely that in later seasons, a bit of the desirable live action may have been visible only in the "widescreen" presentation.
 
Thanks for replying. Question answered.

What you may be thinking of is that toward the end of B5, they tended to let the Live Action go wider than the 4:3 central protected area (See my first attachment.), so it's slightly more likely that in later seasons, a bit of the desirable live action may have been visible only in the "widescreen" presentation.
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No, this was not my thinking (although true). I had merely read an article elsewhere online which suggested that the latter seasons of B5 had CGI rendered in 16:9. You have now shown that to be false, so thank you.

However, your useful images have shown another issue, and that is that the live action shots (in this case from S5's "Secrets of the Soul") appear to have been cropped slightly also. That is of concern...
 
Was any part of my explanation unclear?
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:eek: Oh gosh no, your explanation was fine. I just get lost making myself weave through the technical stuff sometimes. I try, but my brain wants to shut down almost immediately after it sees the letters, "CGI" and any two numbers divided by a colon, indicating ratios and not time... I don't want it to do that, but too often my brain has a mind of its own! Tell you what, though...I'll keep trying. ;)
 
However, your useful images have shown another issue, and that is that the live action shots (in this case from S5's "Secrets of the Soul") appear to have been cropped slightly also. That is of concern...
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Not necessarily ... it is a while since this was explained to me, so I may be remembering wrongly, but I was led to understand that B5's live action was shot in such a way to enable cropping to both TV's then standard 4:3 ratio and also to widescreen 16:9 ratio - the same way movies are shot.

The end result is an image that requires some cropping of the original filmed image (which is larger than both 4:3 and 16:9 ratio) whichever ratio it is being shown in. Essentially you have one large image that is cropped to the appropriate shape for the visual ratio you want to obtain - generally leaving the top and bottom of the image as background only so that it doesn't matter if it gets cropped out.

JMS was aware of the oncoming boom in widescreen television, and B5 was therefore shot with widescreen in mind, but attempting to ensure that nothing of importance would be lost in cropping it for a 4:3 broadcast.

It is not true that a widescreen TV show is shot in 16:9 ratio and the whole image is then shown on a widescreen TV - whichever way it is done, some cropping is required, and there is no reason for concern on that point.

The problem with the CGI (which, to be honest, on my DVD player and 28in 4:3 television at home has never been a problem), is that it was originally rendered to 4:3, as this was the only way it could be done using the tech available, so in order to create a 16:9 image the original has to be enlarged to the appropriate size and then the top and bottom just cropped away to make the picture the right shape. If the action fills the screen at 4:3, it is inevitable therefore that some will be lost in the process.

HTH, and HIHRIR (Hope I Have Remembered It Right).

:D
 
The problem with the CGI (which, to be honest, on my DVD player and 28in 4:3 television at home has never been a problem), is that it was originally rendered to 4:3, as this was the only way it could be done using the tech available,
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I think this had more to do with available budget than available technology. They only had the budget to render the scenes the way that they would be broadcast.

so in order to create a 16:9 image the original has to be enlarged to the appropriate size and then the top and bottom just cropped away to make the picture the right shape. If the action fills the screen at 4:3, it is inevitable therefore that some will be lost in the process.
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However, the pieces of image that were "lost" in this process are often not a problem in terms of artistic composition (though the resultant enlargement leaves you with a grainier looking image, at least on high end eequipment). This is because:

A) The peopel designing the F/X shots were also aware that things were moving in the direction of widescreen, and so *generally* composed the shots with that in mind (though some exceptions can be found).

B) For a whole lot of the shots, widescreen is just naturally the better looking aspect ration for the scenes. The station itself is a long and narrow thing. Shots showing the whole station (or even a significant portion of it) just naturally want to be shown in a wider and shorted aspect ratio.


When you mention live action shots being cropped as well, there is something to remember. All the post-production F/X shots were only rendered in 4:3. This includes not only the full CGI shots. It includes anything where there is CGI or roto work anywhere in the scene. Examples of this would be scenes that are predominently live action but with a window out into space visible behind the actors, or the scene at the end of Soul Hunter when Delenn is opening the globes and the white whisps of the souls are flyng away (in my mind, quite possibly the worst example in the series of the cropping actually getting in the way of understanding what it happening in a scene). I believe this "F/X get cropped" rule also applies to shots that are really composites of 2 or more live action shots, even if none of the pieces were CGI. Examples of this would be any of the shots of the Zocalo where you could see both upper and lower levels of shops etc. Those sets weren't 2 stories high. They shot the two pieces (one for each level) and then stitched them together in post-production.
 
it is a while since this was explained to me, so I may be remembering wrongly, but I was led to understand that B5's live action was shot in such a way to enable cropping to both TV's then standard 4:3 ratio and also to widescreen 16:9 ratio - the same way movies are shot.

The end result is an image that requires some cropping of the original filmed image (which is larger than both 4:3 and 16:9 ratio) whichever ratio it is being shown in. Essentially you have one large image that is cropped to the appropriate shape for the visual ratio you want to obtain - generally leaving the top and bottom of the image as background only so that it doesn't matter if it gets cropped out.
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Right, this would mean that it was shot in Super35 rather than Anamorphic Scope. That's a shame.

What is vital now, given this informaiton, is how each shot was composed and intended to be viewed. I suspect that, given the rotation of different directors, this was probably a mixed bag, with some thinking in 16:9 and others thinking in 4:3.

What I am left with is the realisation that whichever aspect ratio of B5 you go for, you will be missing something available to you elsewhere. If you opt for 4:3, you will be missing some of the horizontal picture, and if you opt for 16:9 you will be missing some of the vertical picture.

That's why I don't like Super35.
 
You're correct - the show was shot in Super35. Purely live action shots were composed for both 4:3 and 16:9 - mostly cheating towards 16:9 according to JMS.

The pure 'CGI shots were composed to allow matting to 16:9 but rendered at 4:3. On my new HD LCD television with the Faroudja line-multiplier these shots look gorgeous. I just recently watched In the Beginning and the CGI was stunning.

The composite shots never existed on film and were rendererd only as 4:3 NTSC broadcast quality images. JMS's hope was that they'd eventually be able to go back and re-rendered the CGI at 16:9 and re-composite these shots combining the original film and new FX elements. That turned out not to be the case. In addition nobody was thinking in terms of the video being electronically processed in "anamorphic" for widescreen TVs. That added another layer of complexity to how the composite scenes were handled for theh widescreen version. (Which was originally produced for the U.S. Sci-Fi Channel's widescreen broadcast by Warner Technical Operations, not by Warner Home Video for DVD release.) As it happens they used a crop-and-zoom approach to the composite shots that didn't retain as much of the image quality as other methods probably would have - but it is unlikely that anyone involved in the widescreen TV prep would have been aware of this.

The composite shots are thus compromised, sometimes badly cropped, sometimes fuzzy and slightly out of focus. But this is a compromise I'll accept. Because JMS has spoken so often about the show beinig designed for widescreen, there was a real demand for a widscreen version among fans. Warner Home Video concluded that a 4:3-only release would not sell. But they were unwilling to pay for all-new widescreen transfers of the show. The Sci-Fi Channel's decision to air the show in widescreen (intended to differentiate their reruns from what TNT had been offering for years) effectively gave WHV free widescreen masters and thus removed a major stumbling block to a DVD release. The transfers may be imperfect, but chances are we would not have gotten the show at alll without them. And the composite shots amount to such a small percentage of the seriies entire running time, that this has never been a huge issue for me.

Regards,

Joe
 
...The pure 'CGI shots were composed to allow matting to 16:9 but rendered at 4:3. On my new HD LCD television with the Faroudja line-multiplier these shots look gorgeous. I just recently watched In the Beginning and the CGI was stunning...
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Hey Joe, question for you. You indicate in that post that the pure CG shots seem to look better to you than the composite CG/live action shots, and I wanted to ask you why you think that's the case.

I don't have my DVD's on hand to test on my own relatively new LCD HDTV, but I remember thinking both CG and comp shot looked about at the same level of crappiness. Surely both are simply overly processed 4:3 NTSC images.

Maybe the pure CG looks better to you because you have nothing to compare it against. When it comes to the comp shots, your eyes are constantly forced to switch between live action footage that on one hand is 16:9 anamorphically enhanced from an HD transfer, and on the other is a nasty looking 4:3 image, blown-up, zoomed-in on, or stretched.
 
"Surely both are simply overprocessed NTSC images"

Not exactly. The composite shots took the Super35 film elenents, digitized the live action, cropped it to 4:3 and added the CGI elements, then output the finished file to an NTSC broadcast master. This was then cropped again to 16:9 for the Sci-Fi Channel widescreen broadcast master. In order to produce the anamorphic widescreen master for the DVDs, the composite shots had to be blown up to full frame height and then squeezed to fit a 4:3 frame.

The pure CGI needed less processing. They started one generation closer to teh original source, since they had gone directly from computer to broadcast master video tape. They never existed as filmed images. What looks worst in the composite shots is not the CGI itself, but the live action, which was not sourced from film the way the rest of the live action was.

So sure, the pure CGI looks good in part because the damaged live action is not embedded in it (as it is on the comp shots. It is not a matter of switching back and forth between the two, the comp shots are those that contain both, and those are the ones where the live action pieces look the worst - although the crop/zoom does also soften the CGI somewhat. The realtively more straightforward crop/zoom of the pure CGI, combined with the fact that computer graphics tend to be especially ameable to digital display systems, makes them look quite good ovall-all. Really, the detail on the ships and the station (and, to my eye, the generally better shot composition) makes the combination of anamorphic live action and pure CGI - which between them probably account for 95% of what we see on the show - a net improvement over a pure 4:3 presentation, and therefore more than off-set the unfortunate problems with the composite shots. In my opinion, of course.

I still don't have all my gear hooked up, but this reminds me that I need to watch some B5 on my new 56" JVC D-ILA (their flavor of liquid crystal on silicon [LCoS] technology) RPTV.

Regards,

Joe
 
RPTV - Rear Projection Television. As opposd to front projection, or any kind of direct view TV. IIt is an important distincition because many technologies are used in several different type of TV. Cathode ray tubes (CRTs) are used in standard direct-view sets, big screen RPTVs and front projector. LCD fllat panels are direct view sets, but LCDs can also be used in RPTVs. LCoS is used in both front and rear projection. Plasma is the olnly display technology that has only one consumer applicaton - direct view flat-panel.

Regards,

Joe
 
Yeah, I know what rear projection is, I'd just never seen it refered to as "RPTV."
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That's become the standard abbreviation among home theater hobbyists. And while I figured you knew what rear-proijection was, not everyone reading this thread would, and people do get confused about things like LCD and LCD-RP so it seemed worthwhile to spell it out.

Joe
 
You might want to check out another site I visit, avsforum.com. I'm still fisheggs there. Lots of info on home theater available.
 
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