Any rumors about Buffy the Vampire Slayer show coming out on Blu-ray?

[EddieLarkin]

Originally Posted by Drewbee87

So now mistakes that are just as big as the ones in 16:9 that are in the OAR are A-OK?

Don't conflate the two. The issues that crop up in the 16:9 version are not mistakes. How can they be? Who made the "mistake" of allowing a boom into a part of the frame that is not supposed to be seen? How is that a mistake?

Genuine mistakes can stay, all films and shows have them. There's nothing unique about the mistakes in 4:3 Buffy. All the unrelenting annoyances that turn up in 16:9 Buffy are there because people like you are happy to force them on others to get your own way. The only one making a "mistake" is you.

[Drewbee87]

Originally Posted by EddieLarkin

Don't conflate the two. The issues that crop up in the 16:9 version are not mistakes. How can they be? Who made the "mistake" of allowing a boom into a part of the frame that is not supposed to be seen? How is that a mistake?

Genuine mistakes can stay, all films and shows have them. There's nothing unique about the mistakes in 4:3 Buffy. All the unrelenting annoyances that turn up in 16:9 Buffy are there because people like you are happy to force them on others to get your own way. The only one making a "mistake" is you.

Again, I ask where did I say there should only be one version? And that the only way I'll buy this is if it's 16:9? I'm FOR BOTH BEING RELEASED! I'm also not "force them on others to get your own way." If it's released in 4:3, I'll be a little disappointed but I'll still buy it. It just won't be a day one purchase, it would never be a day one purchase anyway because I wouldn't be able to afford it. That's my opinion, I'm not "forcing you" or anyone else to agree.

[bloomyself]

I do agree with what's been posted that it's likely they have some program on auto-pilot doing the remaster. This couldn't possibly be the work of a human being with a soul.

It really baffles me that this continues to be a problem when it is such an easy fix. Essentially all of these problems would be fixed if there was someone cross-referencing the original episodes as they do the remaster. Try to match the framing as similarly as possible (even if converting to 16:9) and try to match the color as much as possible! Don't just take the entire negative, and make assumptions on how high/low the framing should be and what the colors should be like. It's not rocket science- it's all right there for you to cross-reference! It doesn't even necessarily need the involvement of any of the crew, just any capable human being who actually gives af will do nicely, really.

What I do worry about though, is we chalked up the fuzzy picture quality of those early season 1 episodes on Pivot's broadcast capabilities rather than DNR abuse, but the picture quality of these later episodes don't have that problem, despite still being on pivot.

[Reddkryten]

Originally Posted by bloomyself

I do agree with what's been posted that it's likely they have some program on auto-pilot doing the remaster. This couldn't possibly be the work of a human being with a soul.

You mean Angelus is on the remastering team?

[DragonQ]

Originally Posted by samukas

Just two quick examples, both would involve awkward reframing to get rid of.

This Year's Girl (this one should be easier to spot, if they keep not darkening night scenes!)

The Body


I just don't understand changing something that was always in the OAR (and doing major reframing to achieve it), but not fixing something that was caused by the change of aspect ratio.

These mistakes might be digitally fixable but since Fox seems to be spending about $50 on this remastering project I can't see that happening.

Originally Posted by BillieCassin

Now you have me on a mission to go find the source...I know I read it, because that was when I gave up and imported the DVDs from R2 and hacked my player to play them, LOL.

For series 4-7, I ripped my PAL DVDs (25p), extracted all of the audio files and slowed them down in a batch operation, then remuxed all of them at 23.976p. I was planning on doing some zooming for shots where there are obvious problems but never got around to it. The most annoying one IMO is the stock footage they used of the moon some time in series 4, which 4:3 so you get black bars at the sides for 4 seconds or something. I'm sure there are plenty of 16:9 moon shots that could be used instead.

[NileQT87]

Sadly, my computer went kaplooey in October (though late enough that I got those Pivot broadcasts through Becoming). It looks like Pivot didn't have Anne + ready until just recently, so I'm lucky with that timing. What's the new schedule now? Has just Anne aired from season 3?

Well, it looks like it's our good old remasterers have been back at it again.

That discolored beach scene... Soulless monsters is too kind. At least Angelus had an artistic eye!

<--My avatar is suddenly more appropriate and timely than I thought. This might become my new pet peeve besides hacking Angel out of frame during the kitchen scene, Darla's skirt and the day-for-night shot (way to ruin my favorite season 1 episode). One of the most ridiculous recolorings we've seen that can't even be chalked up to the original negatives (as in the day-for-night shot that even IGN singled out for mockery) and people who didn't put their thinking caps (or the DVDs) on. All that is yellow must become blue and pink! Someone hates yellow so much they can't even stand a natural golden California sunset and tan skin-tones. The discoloration of these remasters is like the blue/pink fetish that brought us pink lightsabers and blaster shots in the Star Wars Special Editions.

And it can't be the original coloring on the negative, seeing as you can clearly see the waves in the water in the dark version (no California sunshine is that desaturated and light, even on the brightest summer day), but not the light where it becomes obliterated by a overcontrasted white splodge. That's a dead giveaway that this has been given a "bleach bypass"-esque reimagining. I guess somebody thought they were being artistic by sticking a special new filter on a dream sequence (and yet, they don't filter the dream sequences that are supposed to have filters on them--the blue clown scene).

And our cropping woes haven't even ended this late in the game (it's like there are two editors: one who competently realizes they have more material to work with and another who is really fond of extreme closeups, has no familiarity with what the show is supposed to look like and needs their vision tested). Really, you know it's bad when your average Youtuber can crop a fanvid to 16:9 and get more of the important information in shot than someone with the actual 16:9 negatives who doesn't even use the entire 4:3 all the time.

And count me as one of the people who would prefer all goofs that were present in the original 4:3 to remain exactly as they are (they're less offensive than the extreme cropping it takes to remove them). And I'd rather have very light 16:9 goofs (they're not that frequent) consistent with BtVS 4-7/AtS 2 (can we please hire the editor that did those versions?) than the complete hatchet job we have taking away way too much of the 4:3 image.

[Buffdale]

Originally Posted by NileQT87

Sadly, my computer went kaplooey in October (though late enough that I got those Pivot broadcasts through Becoming). It looks like Pivot didn't have Anne + ready until just recently, so I'm lucky with that timing. What's the new schedule now? Has just Anne aired from season 3?

Glad you're back!
3 new episodes every Saturday it seems. They broadcast it really slowly compared to the first two seasons. We only had "Anne" at the moment.

[samukas]

Originally Posted by Buffdale

Glad you're back!
3 new episodes every Saturday it seems. They broadcast it really slowly compared to the first two seasons. We only had "Anne" at the moment.

Which is still quite "a lot". Half a season per month, a full season every two months. If I had to guess, they'll have to take another break in no time!

[bloomyself]

Originally Posted by Reddkryten

You mean Angelus is on the remastering team?

I suppose I am! Although, as someone just stated, he at least had an artistic eye. This job is more likely not even the work of a person at all, anyway- but rather a computer program on auto-pilot. So I suppose it's more analogous to Moloch the Corrupter working on it in the background while chatting up teens in the chat rooms.

[BillieCassin]

Originally Posted by bloomyself

about though, is we chalked up the fuzzy picture quality of those early season 1 episodes on Pivot's broadcast capabilities rather than DNR abuse, but the picture quality of these later episodes don't have that problem, despite still being on pivot.

You have to remember, the first season was completely in the can before they even aired. No one had any idea what the show would become - I love the famous anecdote of Kiefer Sutherland running into SMG and when she said she was doing Buffy on TV, he said, "Don't worry, you'll get another pilot" LOL. It wasn't expected to make it past the first season - a low budget show based on a film widely considered to be a failure. The show was shot on a very, very low budget on 16mm. The first few episodes (and really the whole first season in some respects) look like that because they hadn't yet nailed the lighting style the show eventually went with (there was more of a "documentary" feel to the light, using a lot of natural lighting - which doesn't look great on film, particularly 16mm, with such a dynamic night/day back and forth).

You didn't notice it even on DVD because the difference wasn't so great due to everything still being SD resolution - the difference between those episodes and later ones isn't as great a divide. In HD, it's going to be really obvious. Those episodes likely look as good as they are going to look.

Originally Posted by DragonQ

For series 4-7, I ripped my PAL DVDs (25p), extracted all of the audio files and slowed them down in a batch operation, then remuxed all of them at 23.976p. I was planning on doing some zooming for shots where there are obvious problems but never got around to it. The most annoying one IMO is the stock footage they used of the moon some time in series 4, which 4:3 so you get black bars at the sides for 4 seconds or something. I'm sure there are plenty of 16:9 moon shots that could be used instead.

Ohhhhh...I so wanna do that LOL. Nice job!

[Panemlights]

Originally Posted by NileQT87

That discolored beach scene... Soulless monsters is too kind. At least Angelus had an artistic eye!

<--My avatar is suddenly more appropriate and timely than I thought. This might become my new pet peeve besides hacking Angel out of frame during the kitchen scene, Darla's skirt and the day-for-night shot (way to ruin my favorite season 1 episode). One of the most ridiculous recolorings we've seen that can't even be chalked up to the original negatives (as in the day-for-night shot that even IGN singled out for mockery) and people who didn't put their thinking caps (or the DVDs) on. All that is yellow must become blue and pink! Someone hates yellow so much they can't even stand a natural golden California sunset and tan skin-tones. The discoloration of these remasters is like the blue/pink fetish that brought us pink lightsabers and blaster shots in the Star Wars Special Editions.

Granted I can't convince the members that make up this thread about the colors, but I firmly believe that the reasonable explanation for the colors is that it's the way it is on film.
Colors caught on film aren't always going to be great, which is why there is the need for color correction. That day-for-night shot you mention is a perfect example. They've adjusted lighting on set to make it seem like night, but they obviously can't make it too dark to the point that they can't see anything. They made it dark enough and then fixed it in post.

The yellows have always been prominent on the DVDs, and we've pretty much gotten used to it. But we can't know for sure that's what it was like on set or the film. Either they made it like that on post, or it was part of the dated process of transferring to DVD which made it yellow.

A few X-Files comparisons seems to show it, but then again it varies for each shot.




From what I looked up about the blues and pinks, they say this is often part of the film degradation process.

Originally Posted by NileQT87

And it can't be the original coloring on the negative, seeing as you can clearly see the waves in the water in the dark version (no California sunshine is that desaturated and light, even on the brightest summer day), but not the light where it becomes obliterated by a overcontrasted white splodge. That's a dead giveaway that this has been given a "bleach bypass"-esque reimagining. I guess somebody thought they were being artistic by sticking a special new filter on a dream sequence (and yet, they don't filter the dream sequences that are supposed to have filters on them--the blue clown scene).

I think that still from your avatar sorta proves that it wasn't as yellow as you think it was. Joss definitely added a warm filter to make it seem like sunset instead of the cold color that was present at the time of filming. When you say overcontrasted white splodge, that's basically based off the low quality SD version of the episode we have.

It's illogical for them to recolor each episode horribly. Again, from what we know from their lazy job, they wouldn't bother wasting their time coloring. What we see is just a simple automatic HD transfer from the film with crops they think is necessary to get the job done.

[Buffdale]

If the show is released in Blu-Ray one day, Fox surely wants interviews with the team (Joss...). I can not imagine that they accept to do it if the problems are not corrected. So... Fingers crossed!

[seannyd]

Originally Posted by Buffdale

If the show is released in Blu-Ray one day, Fox surely wants interviews with the team (Joss...). I can not imagine that they accept to do it if the problems are not corrected. So... Fingers crossed!

I would hope that's the case, but packaged media is not what it once was.

If this was 1999/2000, I guarantee they'd be pulling out all the stops to make sure this was right because DVDs turned people into collectors who otherwise wouldn't have been. As of now, I'm sure they're running surveys and focus groups and whatnot trying to figure out the best way to release this stuff.

Reading the stuff from Bill Hunt at the digital bits, he mentions quite often these days how home media departments have had their employment numbers slashed. The people who really cared about fantastic content have been let go. Now it's numbers people. And these numbers people will estimate that X amount of people will purchase this set at X dollars making a restoration worth it. But if they think fewer people will buy it, they might not do anything at all.

Clearly they feel that a Buffy upgrade is worth it. And I'm actually surprised they're recomposing shots (even if they're doing it poorly), as Whedon's other show (Firefly) simply had the effects upconverted instead of remastered for Blu-Ray, resulting in slightly muddier looks to Serenity than you would have had if they went back to the original elements a la Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The simple truth is that packaged media is dying and elaborate, expensive sets like Buffy would need to be is less of a priority. And therefore getting it right is an even lower priority. So if it's too expensive to fix the problems they are creating for themselves, they'll stick with what they have, Whedon's participation be damned.

I'm unhappy about this. I don't understand why these studios can't understand that doing it right is better for their long term prospects than doing it haphazardly and calling it a day. The only was we can prove that this sort of thing is what we value is through our dollars. And that means purchasing sets like TNG because it shows that consumers not only care about quality, but are willing to spend money on it.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

For me, this whole OAR debate when it comes to TV content is a catch-22, and more so for the preservation of my equipment rather than a personal preference in how to watch it.


Back in January 2007, my wife and I got our first HDTV. It was a 37" 720p LCD HDTV. There was a period during which we were watching A LOT of 4:3 content on it with black bars on the sides (back then a lot of TV shows that we watched were still in that format). It ended up having an adverse effect on the TV. When I went to watch a movie at one point that filled the screen, I could see the areas where the black bars were darkened. It cleared up somewhat over time (the right side went away completely), but there is a portion on the left that never fully recovered, despite it being an LCD TV, which supposedly is not "prone" to burn in.

For years I wanted to get a new TV (eventually wanting a larger, 1080p set), but kept putting it off due to other expenses coming up and not wanting to comprimise on getting a nice quality set. In fact, a couple of years ago the set started having problems turning on, which ended up being capacitors on the power board going bad. Rather than buy a new TV, I went with a much cheaper option of buying a replacement power board because at the time I had just gotten a new car and was about to replace the furnace and air conditioning condensor (cha-ching!).



Finally this past summer I upgraded. I kept reading how great the quality of plasma is, but that's it's being discontinued due to it being expensive tech and the profit margin not being that great. I knew Plasma was supposed to be more prone to burn in than LCD, but that the tech had come along way over time. Long story short, before they were gone, I ended up getting the Samsung PN64F8500 set (a really nice and rather price set). The picture quality is phenominal.

But that being said, given my past experience with the LCD screen, and my paranoia over Plasma being more prone to burn in (even if newer sets are better than older in that regard), I try to avoid having black bars on the screen for too long of a period of time.

Most content that my wife and I watch on TV is 16:9 anyway, so that's not a big issue. And most stations that we watch have transparent logos that help prevent burn in. When it comes to watching Blu-Rays, I don't worry too much if we watch a single movie with a wider aspect ratio since it will just be the one movie, and we'll go back to watching 16:9 content shortly there after. Plus if I have to pause the movie to go to the washroom, I typically run the screen wipe anyway.



But my concern with 4:3 TV content is this. If I'm just watching a single episode or two of a show, and there are black bars going up and down the sides, it's not too big of a deal (no worse than watching a single movie with bars). But if I'm in the mood to "binge watch" a show, this becomes a bit more problematic.

So what I end up doing in these situations, though I would prefer not to, is using the zoom options and what not (which are more limited on this new TV, I basically have an option that stretches it out and slightly crops the top and bottom... other zoom options are grayed out for some reason) to adjust the picture to fill the screen, which of course does not look quite right. I get used to it after a bit (with everything temporarily looking odd to me when I switch back to a proper ratio).

I would prefer not to do this. Visually speaking, I don't mind the look of black bars on the sides, but any potential adverse effect it can have concerns me. As it is, even though watching a one-off show isn't too big of a deal, if my wife and/or I watch an old TV show that's actually on a TV station (and especially if the station is showing lots of programming of this type back to back), I adjust use the zoom option just incase we get side tracked at some point, leaving the TV on but doing other things around the house. I just don't want to risk it. Heck, if it's an old TV show that doesn't look that great in quality anyway, I'll just stretch it out even if I know I'll be watching something in 16:9 afterwards because I figure why risk it at all for something that's not going to look that great anyway (but that I otherwise want to watch)? Perhaps I'm being far more over protective and even paranoid about this than is necessary, but given my past experience, I have a great deal of concern about this sort of thing.


So for this reason, this debate is a conundrum for me. While I don't necessarily want to go against the original artists wishes, in many ways, if done well, having an old 4:3 show adjusted to 16:9 is far more preferable to me than oddly stretching out actual 4:3 content. I obviously don't like important things being cropped, or a frame opened to reveal things like the crew, etc. And of course I would like the coloring and so forth to be correct.

But to me it is the lesser of two evils. I'm sure Joss would prefer me to watch it in 4:3 with black bars on the sides (which is what I'd prefer to do as well), but at the end of the day preserving my equipment and not causing permanent damage to it is going to win out over an artists wishes... no disrespect intended to said artist. And a properly done 16:9 conversion seems better to me than stertching a 4:3 picture. It's the lesser of two evils IMO.

[Doctor Jack]

^

Artists visions should not be compromised to suit your setup. Should not be compromised or any reason unless stated by the original artist.

[The Fallen Deity]

Originally Posted by Doctor Jack

^

Artists visions should not be compromised to suit your setup. Should not be compromised or any reason unless stated by the original artist.

Amen to that!

[chip75]

Originally Posted by seannyd

Clearly they feel that a Buffy upgrade is worth it. And I'm actually surprised they're recomposing shots (even if they're doing it poorly), as Whedon's other show (Firefly) simply had the effects upconverted instead of remastered for Blu-Ray, resulting in slightly muddier looks to Serenity than you would have had if they went back to the original elements a la Star Trek: The Next Generation.

They did go back to the original elements with Firefly, they were just rendered in standard-definition. Nearly all the TNG stuff was shot on film and could be re-composited with HD scans.

[Dynamo of Eternia]

Originally Posted by Doctor Jack

^

Artists visions should not be compromised to suit your setup. Should not be compromised or any reason unless stated by the original artist.

Originally Posted by The Fallen Deity

Amen to that!

That's ridiculous. Did you actually read my post?

So you are saying that even though staying true to the artist's vision may cause damage to my equipment if I watch that content a lot and in that ratio, I should stay true to it anyway just to not dishonor the artist, even though they will never know the difference?

Look, I'm in favor of OAR up to a point, but excuse me if I make an exception and take advise elsewhere. Even if I'm stuck taking a 4:3 image and stretching it, that's what I'm going to do if it means not damaging the expensive TV that I bought.

Artists rights are well and good up to a point, but they are not infallible or something that should be looked upon as a religion that you never question under any circumstance. Anyone who takes it that far needs to reevalutate their priorities... not just in how they watch movies and TV shows, but in their overall life in general.

[seannyd]

Originally Posted by chip75

They did go back to the original elements with Firefly, they were just rendered in standard-definition. Nearly all the TNG stuff was shot on film and could be re-composited with HD scans.

Well, Firefly correct me if I'm wrong but Firefly was also shot on film so if they wanted to spend the money they could have given it the old TNG treatment.

My point was more along the lines of the more money people will pay, the more attention they might give to a restoration. Of course, this also presupposes that there are people within the home video department who actually care about such methods instead of just saying HD=$$$$. And I worry those people aren't around much these days.

[Panemlights]

Originally Posted by Doctor Jack

^

Artists visions should not be compromised to suit your setup. Should not be compromised or any reason unless stated by the original artist.

That's sorta ridiculous to say tbh. People have to right to view things the way they want to on their own TV.