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Remastering Season 1

C

Clivey

Member
So I've been remastering B5 because i don't think they will ever do it.

I've just finished season 1 and need someone else's view before I finish all the seasons. This isn't just an upscale, its been a lot of cutting scenes and tweaking each scene with AI to 1080p. (this has taken a month for 1 season). Finally got rid of the grain that's in the scenes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NpcCY7JIaY

What do you think?
 
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Clivey said:
So I've been remastering B5 because i don't think they will ever do it.

I've just finished season 1 and need someone else's view before I finish all the seasons. This isn't just an upscale, its been a lot of cutting scenes and tweaking each scene with AI to 1080p. (this has taken a month for 1 season). Finally got rid of the grain that's in the scenes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NpcCY7JIaY

What do you think?
Click to expand...


I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but didn't B5 get remastered for HBOMax?
 
yep and all they did was denoise it a little and convert to 1080, so the grainy look is still there.

Here's a screenshot of the HBO remaster on the left compared to mine on the right. If you look at the cupboards, you can see the grain that is across all the footage and its clear they didn't remaster it, they just upscaled the resolution and denoised it a little. Compare that to mine, its clear, sharp, got better detail and much better looking

https://ibb.co/xYkvV5S
 
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I like it! First of all: the remaster is great and all, but the graininess always bothered me and on top of that: I haven't seen it in full length. All the sources I've found so far have the problem of the missing minutes in some episodes.

The only thing I can see that's not quite 100% is that the upscale seems to need some time after a cut or lots of movement to adjust to the new picture. So it starts a little bit grainy or blurry (one can see it especially well with the skin) and get's better after a few frames. But I think that's acceptable for greatly reducing the grain overall.

May I ask what you mean by "cutting the scenes?" IS it cutting as in cropping or cutting as in shortening?
 
I say leave some grain in! I find that grain can help add texture to the picture, and avoids things like people's faces becoming too smooth and waxy looking, which I can see a little bit here (the Predator blu-ray was notorious for this).

But I really do like how the colours really pop in this remaster, and the backgrounds are much sharper. Overall it looks great, I wish I had the skills to do something like this!

Here's a possibly interesting debate to have: B5 was obviously made on a budget and although a lot of care and ingenuity went into the sets, at the end of the day they're still plywood and paint. The previous low quality releases of the show hid some of this, but now in HD we can see how that data crystal port is made of wood, or how rickety certain sets are. While I think the HD remasters, including Clivey's, really help show how colourful the show was, and all the gorgeous details in costumes etc, do you think it makes the sets look better or worse?
 
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Moonface said:
May I ask what you mean by "cutting the scenes?" IS it cutting as in cropping or cutting as in shortening?
Click to expand...

What I mean is I cut the scenes changes, i.e. from the bridge of the station to the bar area. I did this because if you just set one enhancement setting for the whole episode, some scenes don't clean up as well, so those I cut, redid under a different setting and them put in back in. Don't worry about the cuts, they are clean in the final version and that sample in the video was just slapped together using random clips form episode 1


Springer said:
I say leave some grain in! I find that grain can help add texture to the picture, and avoids things like people's faces becoming too smooth and waxy looking, which I can see a little bit here (the Predator blu-ray was notorious for this).

Do you think it makes the sets look better or worse?
Click to expand...

yep, I try to leave a little grain in as much as I can and agree that you have to be careful with the plastic look. The problem I have is I am doing this on a PC and a PC monitor processes the film different to a TV,(TVs apply filters whether you want them or not) so am trying to get it look good on both. The big problem though is if you ever see on set photos, the actors are plastered with makeup they look plastic to start with, especially the women :)

As for the sets, they look so much better when remastered properly but they do expose how cheap some things were made. The only thing I wish I could change is the CGI, as no amount of editing is ever going to make it look great and modern.

btw, I will share somehow when I'm done :)
 
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Clivey said:
yep and all they did was denoise it a little and convert to 1080, so the grainy look is still there.

Here's a screenshot of the HBO remaster on the left compared to mine on the right. If you look at the cupboards, you can see the grain that is across all the footage and its clear they didn't remaster it, they just upscaled the resolution and denoised it a little. Compare that to mine, its clear, sharp, got better detail and much better looking

https://ibb.co/xYkvV5S
Click to expand...


Ahhhh I see what you are doing and can see the difference. Looks great!


What is the source you are using for your remasters?
 
I tried some torrents and they were pretty poor because they have been compressed so much. I even tried ripping straight from my DVDs but again, the original footage was so bad it wasnt worth it. So I ended up remastering Amazons HBO 'remastered'
 
That looks amazing! I would definitely watch the whole series again with all your remastering. I myself wouldn't even begin to know how to do that.
 
Recoil said:
Sinclair said:
That looks amazing! I would definitely watch the whole series again with all your remastering. I myself wouldn't even begin to know how to do that.
Click to expand...


I would too. I was thinking of making another B5 run sometime in 2022.
Click to expand...

I will definitely be doing that.

And I noticed I am posting in order. And by order I mean geographically speaking. I am just about equal distance away from both you and Sinclair. We form a Triluminary. :LOL:
 
So what are the rules about posting torrent links here?

How can I share my remastered B5 Series and B5 films? Am I allowed to post a torrent link to my files?
 
So I've enhanced and cleaned up the films to 720p, but haven't spent a great deal of time on them. I just put it at one setting per film and let it go.

How do I get them to you?

I didn't go higher with the resolution because the upscale to 1080p should really be done with the device you watch it on. Too many people make the mistake thinking that upscale to 1080 is better than a clearer crisp 720p that is then upscaled by the device.This way there are less AI produced artefacts

I will caveat that some of the films are recorded in a terrible state and some scenes just will not clean up. This is especially true in "the gathering" and "a call to arms". The issue with A Call to Arms is that I suspect one of the cameras they used was a lower spec than the others camera on the same set, because you can see when it cuts from one angle to the other, even though the lighting is the same and the scene is the same, one of the camera is clearly out of focus/capturing at a lower quality.

Films completed:

calltoarms.png

sher.png

cap.png
 
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I don't think that's ever come up, but I've never seen or heard anything on here that says you can't. Of course, I am not the final authority. The worst that can happen is we'll make you take it down.
 
Sinclair said:
I don't think that's ever come up, but I've never seen or heard anything on here that says you can't. Of course, I am not the final authority. The worst that can happen is we'll make you take it down.
Click to expand...


Is there anyone on this board who DOESN'T own B5 on DVD? (or VHS for that matter).



It's not like we haven't paid for these episodes already.
 
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