Remastering Season 1

[Clivey]

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?

[Recoil]

Originally Posted by Clivey

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?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but didn't B5 get remastered for HBOMax?

[Clivey]

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

[Moonface]

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?

[Springer]

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?

[Clivey]

Originally Posted by Moonface

May I ask what you mean by "cutting the scenes?" IS it cutting as in cropping or cutting as in shortening?

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

Originally Posted by Springer

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?

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

[Recoil]

Originally Posted by Clivey

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

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


What is the source you are using for your remasters?

[Clivey]

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'

[Moonface]

Originally Posted by Clivey

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'

Oh, but thats one of those that is missing a few minutes :/

See here: https://b5remasterissues.wordpress.com/

[Clivey]

That's fine, I can grab those scenes from my DVDs and insert them