Restoration query

[Stu123]

I noticed someone say that only wrath of khan out of the star trek films had been restored for blu-ray.When a films restored i know the dirt and things are cleaned off it but does this mean if a film is'nt restored for blu-ray youre going to be missing an amount of detail in high def?

[RiseDarthVader]

No if it is not restored you dont miss out anything. Restorations are usually done when the master is too damaged to be used in a transfer. Or if the old master didn't look close enough to the original image. So you will still see it in high def even if they use the original scans from the DVD. They just don't compress it as much this time around.

[Bobby Henderson]

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan may have had a new HD master created, possibly by way of modern film scanning and digital intermediate methods (the way new movie releases are treated).

It's possible the other installments in the Star Trek saga merely recycled older HD masters created years ago for broadcast and DVD use. The methods used in creating those older masters are less accurate.

[dadkins]

Originally Posted by Bolty

A lot of folks think if the movie isn't 'restored' then it can't be transferred into 'real' high defination. I've already seen many people say that, "Trek 1, 3-6 aren't really in hidef"

Isn't the restoration side just cleaning, adjusting color and contrast etc?

While the transferreing refers to taking the image and putting it into 1080, which can be done to any film no matter its condition, right?

More or less.
Film has to be scanned to digital... then the "magic" can happen that produces our discs with corrected color, cleaning, etc.

[Clark Kent]

True restorations usually refer to a process of going back to the original film elements for a movie and creating a new transfer from them. What Paramount did most likely for the Trek movies other than Khan was to use existing HD masters that were out of date. The technology keeps advancing every year and a restoration from 2002 for example will not compare to a 2009 restoration.

[Bobby Henderson]

Old HD masters for HD broadcast or DVD, no matter how outdated the telecine or datacine device used for acquisition, are still essentially HD.

The old masters may not boast the level of fine detail, absence of dirt and debris as well as rock steady playback as one could expect from a well crafted digital intermediate sourced HD master. However, only standard definition is the only thing not technically HD.

I see the difference as being similar to film done wrong or with merely passable quality at a typical multiplex movie theater versus seeing a limited issue wet gate print shown in a first class movie theater. Both theaters are showing film. Both are showing something better than SD on TV at home. One theater is just doing a much better job of presenting the movie.