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I've been having some conversations with Professor Arturo, Data and Spock. More specifically, I've been asking a chatbot to impersonate these characters to discuss world events with me and talk me out of some of my anxieties.

I found that the impressions of Data and Spock were extremely convincing, capturing Spock's sage thoughtfulness and analytical severity, and Data's gentleness and neutral curiosity and fascination with others.

However, the AI impersonation of Professor Arturo was poor to the point of being vapid; it overemphasized the Professor's formal speech but couldn't provide the Professor's bombastic authority or his sardonic humour or his witty words of wisdom or his reassuring warmth. The AI impression of Professor Arturo was just a generic middle aged man with an English accent.

I understand, of course, why an artificial intelligence would find it easier to portray analytical, machinelike characters and find it difficult to play John Rhys-Davies.

However, its version of Sherlock from the BBC TV show is very good. Downright sinister.

I won't be able to watch THE FLASH on Netflix until it's available tomorrow night. And yet, THE FLASH has been so uninteresting that I didn't even worry about spoilers.

I'm sorry the finale wasn't good. I'm sorry it let you down. Please try to take some comfort in knowing that at least nobody got their brain sucked out followed by getting shot and exploded (well, except that mostly happened to Harry, but a shade of him lived on to restore the original Dr. Wells). Please try to remind yourself that at least nobody got sent to a rape camp and then transformed into the jukebox machine from the movie BIG. Please try to remember that at least nobody got merged with an alternate universe double and then got 'lost' (well, except that sort of happened to Harry too, I am sensing a theme). Please try to remember that the show at least did not end on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved (I'm assuming, I have not seen the finale yet).

I do not understand how Joe Biden sleptwalked into this debt ceiling mess.

Some commentators I like have said that Joe Biden is pretty good at being president.
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/3/1/2 … ala-harris

I think he's been mostly okay with some moments of incompetence and overestimating what his administration could pull off (Afghanistan). However, he has somehow been asleep at the wheel of a debt ceiling crisis that he has had warning of since 2011. Republicans learned in 2011: they could hold the debt ceiling hostage and exact massive concessions. Which meant that when Biden held both the House and the Senate before midterms, he had to get the debt ceiling raised. This should have been a priority from the moment he stepped into the White House in 2021.

For Reasons, he did not push for it. Those Reasons are mostly politics and optics.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/politics … index.html

Also, at the time they were gearing up to even talk about it, holidays were near.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/2 … n-00097925

I like Biden more than I care to admit, having been horrified by his candidacy at first. I fully confess that I am a sucker for political PR about being nice to people. But campaigning isn't governing. And this? This presidential malpractice. Joe Biden had 12 years to think about this moment and he somehow ended up pretty much where he was last time. A "pretty good" president would have dealt with this before the end of 2022 instead of letting a minor inconvenience become a crisis.

It's in the same spirit that I am currently exploring new options for this community in the event that future PHP updates render the Bboard software unusable.

I don't know if you're a STAR TREK fan, but STAR TREK CONTINUES isn't like those unfortunate amateur STAR TREK films that litter the internet. STAR TREK CONTINUES looks, sounds and feels like an actual 60s episode of STAR TREK at its peak quality. The cinematography, performances, music and writing are so purposeful and filled with intent and meaning, unlike amateur fanfilms where the actors have no idea why they're saying what they're saying and the directors have no idea what information they're delivering and the cinematographers have no idea what the shot means to the story that they are telling. STAR TREK CONTINUES is excellent. And I consider it canon to me, but it still isn't canon. The same way I consider all SLIDERS fan fiction canon up to and including every random story idea on this message board -- while noting that it's a minority opinion.

Maybe someday, AI can achieve something as genuine to STAR TREK as STAR TREK CONTINUES for other franchises... but even then, it still wouldn't be canon. I consider the X-FILES comics to be more canon than the TV show, but again -- it's a minority opinion.

You're basically asking if fanfic is canon. The general consensus is no. Fanfilms aren't canon, fan fiction isn't canon, comic book and novel and audioplay tie-ins aren't canon. There's sometimes wiggle room in DOCTOR WHO because if its overlapping timelines. With SLIDERS because technically, all fanfic is canon but not canon to the core group of SLIDERS while being 'canon' to an alternate group of SLIDERS with similar experiences.

STAR TREK CONTINUES is a pretty great fan series, but it is not canon.

Fanfic isn't canon whether it's a fanfilm or an AI generated whatever.

I don't have an issue with AI visual or audio effects as needed. Where I take issue is AI prose and AI screenwriting that isn't just using AI to edit, but using AI to generate content in the first place.

As far as I'm concerned, AI screenwriting or prose is plagiarism. It's taking work of other writers and running them through noun-verb-name replacement and randomization to present it as supposedly original work. Any AI screenplay is effectively theft, produced by copying existing screenplays published or leaked online that were added to the corpus of an AI language model.

Also, AI LLMs currently operate by 'reading' the work of actual human writers and regurgitating it in a chatbot session. What happens if the human writers can't make a living from writing the pieces that AI draws upon to generate its results? Where will new material to feed the AI originate?

Also, raising the debt limit is not to account for new spending; it's to cover existing spending that Congress already approved. My opinion which is shared by some legal scholars (but not all) is that the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. The US Constitution declares that the US will honour and uphold repayment of its debts; the debt ceiling is a post-constitutional amendment giving Congress the power to withhold capacity for payment on the spending that Congress itself has previously passed.

The 14th amendment and the trillion dollar coin have all been raised and downplayed as unserious and invalid, but given the invalidity of the debt ceiling itself, I think that any serious president should have made use of the 14th amendment decades ago rather than wait for crisis points to arrive. Biden has declared that all the threats are just posturing, that stalls are unserious, that Republicans ultimately don't want a default, but this new brand of Trump-enabled Republicans are nothing like Reagan era conservatives who, despite their wealth-extracting focus, didn't actually want to blow up the country.

I am honestly very nervous about this whole thing because we can't count on things going sensibly, we haven't been able to since 2016.

Just got home from my sixth dose of COVID vaccine. This time, I got the BA.4 / BA.5 bivalent whereas my fifth dose was BA.1.

Bit worried about this debt ceiling thing.

I don't think I understand your meaning. When you say you "prefer to let as much resolution through", is that via the magic of QTGMC? Or do you mean using QTGMC minimally and only for combed frames?

I ran all the re-encodes with QTGMC enabled as per pneumatic's settings (except for "Luck of the Draw" where I turned it off). It seems best to do things pneumatic's way before making any changes for personal preference. I'll next run the encodes with QTGMC disabled for all of them (except for "Luck of the Draw") and compare them when time permits.

My understanding (and let's use the word "understanding" very loosely) is that QTGMC is interpolating the field frames together and smoothing out discrepancies which creates blur, but blur that that can usually be sharpened. Meanwhile, disabling QTGMC at this point leaves some aliasing and moire and noise, but might leave us with more image texture. When an episode is in okay condition like "Prince of Wails" and "Fever", QTGMC's smoothness is fine. When an episode is fuzzy like "Luck of the Draw", it has so little detail to lose that QTGMC makes it worse. I could be wrong and maybe pneumatic will correct me.

I doubt "Luck of the Draw" was incorrectly filmed with out of focus takes used in the final edit. I'm not saying SLIDERS' Vancouver team was devoid of human error, of course, but we've seen what a version of SLIDERS is like when the crew have completely given up. That's an attitude you see in Season 3 where episodes are missing sound effects or actors are shown missing their mark when jumping into the vortex or misdelivered lines are left in the episode, but I don't feel you'd get that in Season 1 or 2 (aside from some of the issues in "Time and Again World" due to the episode being shot before production was fully organized).

I think it's more likely that "Luck of the Draw" was edited on a particularly low-grade videotape that caused the film to suffer more image degradation than any previous episode. I guess we could say that the crew at the time didn't care, but the reality of 90s CRT televisions is that the diode pattern on such screens would have made all the episodes look equally sharp. I can't find fault with the creators for not anticipating that their show would be watched on HD screens at home in the decades to come. That's also why Jerry O'Connell's stunt double's face can be seen in the episode; the expectation was that the face would be obscured by the haze of a cathode ray tube.

Stunt performers are also an artifact of low resolution television that is found in STAR TREK. Watching the HD remaster, the stunt performers for William Shatner look nothing like him. Watching the SD version in the 90s, the mismatches were also glaring and hilarious. But in the 60s, TVs were so small and the colour so vague and the transmission so fuzzy that for the average viewer, it didn't matter.

Hi, everyone. At Dreamhost's advice/encouragement, I updated the PHP on Sliders.tv. If this post posts, it means all is well, but please let me know if any anomalies appear. Thanks!

I would say that the scenes that stand out to me as blurriest in "Luck of the Draw" are the wideshot during Wade's voiceover in the teaser, the horseback riding shots, the fishing sequence, Wade and the Professor arguing about walking Henry the Dog, and the two shots of the Lottery Police detective after the sliders depart with Ryan and Henry.

I have to ask: at this point, would it be better to just stick to TFM and TDecimate on all the episodes and just omit QTGMC due to how it smooths out an already blurry video image? Would it be better to accept a litte aliasing and moire here and there? In my case, I prefer noise to smoothness.

Right now, I'm re-running all the encodes with TFM 1.0.26 on your most recent script -- except I turned QTGMC off for "Luck of the Draw". I haven't added DePanStabilize to the script for "Luck of the Draw", but I might after reviewing the episode without it.

The Benevolence of Ziggy

I liked how, despite my catastrophizing about Ziggy having become Evil, the closing episodes of Season 1 reveal that Ziggy's supposed treachery was inadvertent. Ziggy is a computer documenting Ben's leaps and Ziggy's records were being reviewed by Leaper X's handlers in the future. I don't know if that connects to Ziggy's malfunctions throughout Season 1 of QL2.0. It's possible that Ziggy's stalls were to render some of their data unusable for the Leaper X team to give Ben an edge; it's possible Ziggy's difficulties were due to glitches in the rushed upload of new code that Ben installed before his hasty leap.

It was a good finale and a good lead into Season 2. I liked how Season 1 feels complete, and Season 2 can be a new chapter of the same great formula.

Ian as Al 2.0

I'm concerned that Ian won't be Ben's hologram very often. While I haven't seen much of QL1.0, I listened to all of the Rewatch Podcast covering it and I can see why Temporal Flux prefers Ian to Addison. As a pair, Ben and Ian replicate the original tone of the signature QL1.0 chemistry which had an unassuming and wholesome character in Sam and an irreverent, hedonistic, bizarre, peculiar, fundamentally decent and loving human being in Al.

Ben and Ian feel like a second generation of the original double act: Ben is a mild-mannered scientist who can think on his feet; Ian is a flamboyantly clad figure of unusual life experience and their sardonic wit and loud fashion sense mask a somewhat shaky sense of self-esteem. Ian is both familiar to Al's fans but also an inversion because Al was supremely confident but bolstering heartbreak over his wife having given him up for dead when Al was thought lost to war.

I don't know how much Ian will be Ben's hologram. From what I can tell, QL2.0 brought in other holograms because Caitlin Bassett was, like Addison, experiencing exhaustion. Just as SLIDERS had to let Quinn Mallory hide from a dinosaur or be in a coma from time to time, QL2.0 had to bring in Ian so that Addison's actress could get some sleep. The Ben/Ian teamup seems to be more of a production strategy than a storytelling choice. I hope that could change.

Mirror Image and Mirror's Edge

Regarding the original QUANTUM LEAP: if QuinnSlidr and Tom of Rewatch Podcast really want me to see it, I will of course order the blu-ray. However, I have a request for QuinnSlidr.

The first time I ever heard of QUANTUM LEAP was through Temporal Flux back on the old Sci-Fi Bboard. I suppose it makes sense as QL was TF's show before SLIDERS. Temporal Flux posted about how the "Mirror Image" finale of QUANTUM LEAP had seen a mixed reception among fans. However, there was some news: the QUANTUM LEAP novels published after the show's cancellation (published at a rate of 2 - 4) a year were coming to an end, but their 17th and final original installment would come in February 2000 with a novel called "Mirror's Edge":

The novel hit the shops shortly after SLIDERS had aired its series non-finale. Some Slideheads who were also Leapers thought "Mirror's Edge" might take the sting off with a post-"Mirror Image" story.

In the many, many, many years since then, I have always remembered this posting about a media tie-in novel that I never read regarding a TV show that I never watched.

The reason I've always remembered it: "Mirror's Edge" was the first time I had ever seen an unresolved live action story being addressed in another format. That fascinated me, and I later discovered STAR TREK novels that resurrected Captain Kirk, DOCTOR WHO novels that resumed the TV show storyline during the DW hiatus from 1987 to 2005, and wrote my own tie-in stories for SLIDERS. "Mirror's Edge" remains a beacon of media tie-ins in my personal, anecdotal experience.

However, I later did learn: some QL fans expressed frustration with "Mirror's Edge" for what they called false advertising. Despite being billed as a "conclusion", that turned out to just be referring to how this 17th book was to be the last. "Mirror's Edge", like every QUANTUM LEAP novel before it, takes place before the series finale of QL1.0. It is not a sequel to "Mirror Image".

However. While "Mirror's Edge" is set before "Mirror Image"; it is set at the very edge of "Mirror Image"; it is in fact a prequel seeking to offer context to the series finale that is either new or retconned.

Some fans were furious with the publisher and the authors. Primary author Carol Davis spoke with fans on fan forums and explained: due to diminished sales, the publisher had elected to end the QL book series and commissioned a final story. However, the licensing agreement with Universal had a stipulation: the publishers were not allowed to produce any novels set after the QL series finale. The studio didn't want a novel to potentially step on any territory to be left open for a potential TV movie or series revival.

Davis and the publisher were caught between the need to produce a concluding novel and the studio declaring that Davis' typewriter wasn't to produce a single page set after "Mirror Image". Davis came up with a solution. Her solution is either tactical brilliance that would make a lawyer weep with joy or a weak gesture that is grossly inadequate.

I've always wondered what a QL fan unhappy with "Mirror Image" would think of "Mirror's Edge". would think of it if they read the book. "Mirror's Edge" is out of print, but here is a PDF and an ePub from Archive.org:

PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zTRVtW … sp=sharing
EPUB: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t32dIK … sp=sharing

Will you read it and tell me what you think of it?

I would have asked Tom of Rewatch Podcast, but Tom actually likes the finale story that is "Mirror Image". "I like it, it made me feel good with the series ending where it did," he told me. "I know a lot of people don't like it, but I do. I will die on that hill!" I didn't think him the right person to read "Mirror's Edge" and tell me if it resolves his dis-satisfactions with "Mirror Image" because he wasn't dis-satisfied.

I found that Topaz AI made the grained up, max-sharpened video files look like a clumsy AI-generated animated movie. I tried turning on the video stabilization module and what I saw was so disturbing, so fundamentally antithetical to life and existence and sliding as we know it, so mentally cataclysmic that I gave serious thought to giving up SLIDERS and getting into STARGATE instead.

I don't know what the hell is going on up there and I don't ever want to see it again.

Very interesting, pneumatic! I actually don't 'like' the smoothness of the Turbine files, it's just that it's consistent and I can accept that it's the visual level of the episode and sit back to enjoy the story. In contrast, Universal can be so variable that I'm jarred when a good closeup becomes a blurry wide. You've alleviated that considerably, but I'm not sure I would want more smoothness.

That said, your new script has QTGMC on "high strength" (smoothing?) and that with the contrast adaptive sharpening looks really good to me. I can see, however, how a TV's sharpness settings (as opposed to a monitor's neutral settings) could make it too much. The sample and the Avisynth+ scripts on the episodes makes them look a bit like DOCTOR WHO episodes that are upscaled videotape files (which these episode of SLIDERS are).

I'm also intrigued by how the contrast adaptive sharpener seems to pull my noise/grain out of the image. I wonder if Topaz AI could do more with the image if the sharpener is set to maximum and the file output is 540p.

Interestingly, the sharpener is so processor-demanding that I can't play the file by running the AVS script in Media Player Classic. I'll load the episodes into AVIDemux tonight and let the episodes re-encode while I sleep.

I feel so crushed, heartbroken, grief-stricken and betrayed by recent events. I honestly do not know how to process that Ziggy has turned against us and is no longer a friend.

Yes, I have been super-behind on QUANTUM LEAP, but I finally caught up with the public defender episode and the mental asylum episode. Whoa. I don't even know the original QL that well and I was deeply shaken to learn that Ziggy is the traitor on Project Quantum Leap.

Has this always been the case? Has Ziggy always been against Sam and now Ben? Will this throw our entire understanding of Ziggy and The Project into a state of upheaval? Has Ziggy's treachery been hiding in plain sight all along every time my mother's Google Nest Hub froze up, every time her smartlights didn't come on, every time Google Assistant sent me down a dead end in Google Maps? Every time Bing AI gave me incomprehensible explanations of inverse telecine or anything else pneumatic talks about?

Is Ziggy behind all these DeepFake phone calls that have been scamming people out of thousands of dollars by impersonating loved ones in need of emergency funds? Did Ziggy come up with the moral abomination that is DeepFake porn?

Was Ziggy behind the creation of the death robots of "State of the ART"? Was Ziggy steering the automatic little toy cars with laser cannons in "Please Press One"? Is Ziggy preventing me from mounting a solid AI upscale of Season 1 of SLIDERS? Did Ziggy get SLIDERS cancelled?

It's time Ziggy answered for all of the above.

Two questions for pneumatic:

Why don't the Turbine files have the aliasing? The jagged edges? The comb lines?

Also, regarding your current work on SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09: do you think your future scripts can make the video sharper and clearer? Or have we reached the upper limit of what is possible with these analog videotape files?

There's certainly a cooler, bluer look to the LOIS AND CLARK HD rescan with a higher brightness level. And all the effects are just the videotape sequences that have been stretched, so any time there's any kind of video effect, it goes from HD to terrible looking SD. I only saw the first season, but it looks like they didn't even try to upscale the SD footage.

**

I thought the pneumatic Avisynth+ script had dealt with the jagged edges in this Pilot shot when reviewing a 540p version, but looking at it in 1080p output, the jagged edges are still there:

How would pneumatic address it?

I forgave most of the issues too.

I liked how Oliver assured Barry he wasn't wasting his life with some very simple questions.

I would have been happy with Diggle having a longer arc in all the shows instead of what was really an extended cameo.

Thank GOD. pneumatic, I seriously thought I was going insane (well, more insane) and that I was dragging RussianCabbie down with me.

I'm currently recopying my Universal discs of Season 2 and 3 to my hard drive with MakeMKV. Might as well get the best versions on my media drive.

I liked 9.09 more than the rest of the season so far, but there were some odd glitches that reflect either a lack of diligence or a lack of skill on showrunner Eric Wallace. At Barry's party, Wally West is present, Cecile is present... but Joe West isn't. Does Joe not like Barry any more? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't even hear a throwaway line to explain it.

At Barry's party, Diggle decides that a celebratory event is the best time to give Barry the bow of Oliver Queen, a moment that would be more appropriate at a funeral or a memorial reunion than at a birthday party in a room filled with people. What the hell was that?

Oliver tells Barry that Barry wants to die and stay dead and Barry accepts this observation, a very odd claim. I think what the episode means to say is that Barry doesn't think he deserves to return to life when Frost and Caitlin weren't resurrected, but that's not quite what Oliver's words seem to say, so there's a strange lack of precision in the dialogue. Once again, we have a character hesitating to engage in a straightforward course of action to stretch out the story.

It was good to finally get some onscreen reaction from Wally to the death of Jesse Quick, but it was odd that Wally was searching the multiverse for some vague "enlightenment" instead of trying to see Jesse again. I also have to note that Wally being 'jealous' of Barry and accusing Barry of stealing Joe and Iris was pretty silly when Barry never knew that Wally existed, and while it's meant to be unreasonable, Eric Wallace has a tendency to create conflicts like this that are absurd in their irrationality even when no one is being mind controlled.

Aside from that, it was fine. Thankfully, Eric Wallace didn't spend all of Amell's screentime on an alternate universe doppelganger and only bring the real Oliver in for a few rushed scenes at the end. Thankfully, Eric Wallace didn't have Bloodwork claim to have taken over the city / planet / universe / multiverse with no way to sell it convincingly onscreen. Sendhil Ramamurthy did a better job of underplaying Bloodwork; I wish this subtle, capable actor weren't being directed to such a one note performance on THE FLASH. The fight scene with Bloodwork felt sizable. I liked how Bloodwork was cured rather than killed.

Oliver had some nice moments of assurance and kindness to Barry along with his usual exasperation with Barry's mild neediness for hugs and self-esteem boosting. The reunion between Oliver and Diggle was good.

I should say: I haven't hated anything in THE FLASH this season. It's not like Season 3 of SLIDERS. It's not offensive. It's just dull. This week was livelier than most episodes of this season.

This is the script I used.

clip = "D:\!MakeMKV\S1 - Universal\Sliders - 101.mkv"   # produced from the disc using MakeMKV (lossless remux)
CPUcores = 8  

video = LWLibavVideoSource(clip, stream_index=-1, repeat=true, cache=true)
audio = LWLibavAudioSource(clip, stream_index=1, cache=true)
AudioDub(video, audio)

TFM(mode=0, slow=2, scthresh=100, PP=3, metric=1, cthresh=9, MI=200,
\    clip2=PropDelete("_FieldBased").bwdif(field=-1, thr=5, edeint=nnedi3(field=-1)))

TDecimate(mode=0, cycleR=1, cycle=5, hybrid=1, viddetect=2, vidthresh=4.5,
\    denoise=true, chroma=false, hint=false)

QTGMC(InputType=1, preset="slow", Sharpness=1.0, FPSDivisor=1, Rep0=13, EZKeepGrain=1.0, EdiThreads=CPUcores/4) 

z_ConvertFormat(                      
\ colorspace_op="601:601:170m:full=>709:709:709:full",
\ resample_filter="spline36",
\ interlaced=true,
\ dither_type="ordered")

Tweak(sat=1.45) #Sorry, pneumatic, I know you don't approve of this.

nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=4, cshift="GaussResize")
GaussResize(1440, 1080, p=30.0)

Prefetch(CPUcores)

I have some questions for pneumatic because I still don't fully understand his learnings and some of the underlying technologies.

What exactly is the difference between deinterlacing interpolation and deinterlacing weaving?
You've specified that QTGMC doesn't weave but instead interpolates.

My (shaky) understanding is that interpolation is when the deinterlacer takes an even or odd field that's only 50 percent of the image (stretched to fill 100 percent of the frame) -- and takes a guess at what's in the missing 50 percent of the of the frame based on analyzing previous and subsequent frames as well as the existing information in the current frame.

My (shaky) understanding is that weaving is when the deinterlacer combines the even and odd fields and then doubles that frame in order to meet the video's existing framerate (or the framerate would otherwise be cut in half).

My (shaky) understanding is that interpolation can create image degradation if the missing data is filled in with bad estimations, and bad estimations happen when the current and surrounding frames don't have helpful information for the algorithm.

My (shaky) understanding is that weaving creates motion artifacts when the weaved frames of two fields don't line up precisely due to movement in the scene.

My (shaky) understanding is that most modern blu-ray players will use progressive scan on a DVD, which combines two fields into one frame and then duplicates that frame by three or two for an alternating 3-2 pattern that reduces the motion artifacts and provides a full image without the guesswork of interpolation.

My (shaky) understanding is that when dealing with video like SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09 where the fields were scaled separately and misaligned, progressive scan produces all ugly visual anomalies on the Universal discs (as does weaving). Meanwhile, interpolation to remove those artifacts depends on analyzing current and surrounding frame-fields to fill in the gaps; since the fields are misaligned, that analysis yields poor data and image degradation.

My (shaky) understanding is that QTGMC's motion analysis yields better data to fill in those gaps which is why the pneumatic scripts have yielded better results than handbrake or progressive scan players.

It's a shaky understanding that I'm hoping pneumatic can correct when time permits.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. I'm really interested in this new script you're working on! I'm not sure the Universal files for 1.02 - 1.09 have much or even any grain. If it did, we'd be watching Topaz AI upscales now.

Still working on The Pneumatic Bilinear Edition. I've decided to switch to Nvidia GPU encoding (Nvenc 264). I'd previously 'felt' that Nvenc video didn't seem as good as CPU-only encodes, but I could never point to it or figure out why from screenshots whether still or in motion. I have to conclude that it was simply a bias without evidence aside from Nvenc having no tuning settings for grain. I set the bitrate to 10 MBps and the file sizes are only 3 - 6 percent larger than CPU h.264.

Since I'm no longer seeking to add grain and the original files don't have any, I may as well take advantage of GPU encoding taking one hour per episode instead of three. This will also allow me to run different batches of jobs with different scalers. I finished all the bilinear encodes.

I found that bilinear turned out really good results on "Luck of the Draw" where the simple pixel contrast/pixelation on surfaces actually mimicked a subtle grain. For some episodes like "Eggheads", however, I found myself wondering if bicubic smoothness would  be preferable. I'm running the bicubic set now and I'll compare them side by side and decide which one to keep. I guess it'll be The Pneumatic Nvidia Edition if there's a mix and match.

Of course, I'd end up redoing it all over again with pneumatic's new script (which is why speedier GPU encoding seems necessary).

The job that is currently running is pneumatic's script on the Pilot but with nnedi3 scaling it to 1080p. It'll be interesting to compare a pneumatic-1080p pilot with the Topaz 1080p pilot. I suspect that, because the Pilot's video quality is so strong already even at DVD quality, pneumatic's version might be an improvement since it won't have the peculiar AI muddiness on wide shots that's offset by AI grain.

Topaz AI, I think, is really best for video files like the Mill Creek Season 4 - 5 files: extremely grainy, compressed SD files sourced from digital videotape that, due to the grain, can be AI-rebuilt to a close approximation of the original film.

My (very shaky) understanding from pneumatic's script and posts: it's TIVTC/TFM for detelecining, and then QTGMC is deinterlacing and interpolating any combed frames that remain (and there seem to be a lot in 1.02 - 1.09).

My (very shaky) understanding: the issue with Handbrake's using detelecine function is that while it reduced glaring interlacing issues (jagged edges, lines), the added pixels to fill in the gaps just muddied what little detail was there. Also, you were still left with a small amount of flicker. This is because the detelecine process generated the missing field data for those problem frames via a simplistic process of copying and averaging the surrounding image information. In addition, the Handbrake process output files at 640x480 when the image data, pneumatic explained, is actually for a 720x540 video, so Handbrake was costing us about 11 percent resolution.

pneumatic's solutions seem to retain as much of the Universal file's data as possible because QTGMC uses motion analysis to better match and fill in the missing image data. QTGMC also alters the existing fields to blend into the new material. This doesn't make things sharper because it isn't sharp to begin with; it just avoids making things fuzzier, resolves the field alignment issues and creates that smoothness in the pneumatic results.

I think. I still don't totally understand it (yet).

Anyway. I ran pneumatic's script on the Pilot episode, playing the script and video live via Media Player Classic. It fixed the jagged lines on Quinn's car when he drives up to the park. And it did a better job than Handbrake. Handbrake reduced the jagged edges significantly and they were about 80 percent gone and far less annoying, but pneumatic's script removed about 95 percent of the flicker. However, the Pilot had so few instances of these aliased edges, so pneumatic's version is a modest improvement (but still an improvement). Also, pneumatic's method produces a 720x540 file, so we'd have 11 percent more image data to feed into Topaz AI for an upscale, another minor improvement.

The Pilot episode is the only AI upscale I kept and I think upscaling pneumatic's version from 540 to 1080 would resolve a few minor visual issues, add a very fine level of detail... but I suspect for the most part, you would barely notice. I think it's worth doing in full for the Pilot episode.

I'm currently going back to The Pneumatic Edition and running another encode on 1.02 - 1.09. I've elected to use the bilinear scaler because it worked so well on those smooth Turbine files. And I find that pneumatic-style QTGMC detelecined files have a certain smoothness that's actually very reminiscent of the Turbine files and might benefit from that simple pixel contrast increase. I also won't be adding grain to these files.

I was working with the Turbine files in Hybrid and the bilinear scaling was turning out some good results, but Hybrid seems like a poorly coded program that couldn't produce the colour settings that it was promising in its previews. I realized I'd need to use Avisynth+ to do it properly... and I felt I should use pneumatic's script on the Universal files first.

After I finish The Pneumatic Bilinear Edition, I'll use Avisynth+ to use bilinear scaling on the Turbine files. It'll make for a neat comparison.

That's a pretty cool attitude, actually, that David Yost and Walter Jones are sufficient to sustain 10 episodes for you. They're very good actors and I'd defer to you on that since you're more a POWER RANGERS fan than I am.

Amy Jo Johnson actually declined to specify why she didn't return for ONCE AND ALWAYS, but she said it wasn't about money. She's been moving into directing TV and indie films lately. She's also writing a Pink Ranger comic, and considering that comics pay about $220 per page and offer no real royalties, I'd take her word for it that money isn't an issue.

Austin St. John... I'm not sure what to say about him except that everyone's innocent until proven guilty and I hope the prosecutor will determine that St. John's management misused his finances and business.

Jason having his Red Ranger powers in FOREVER RED with no explanation whatsoever was both a rational creative choice and a baffling continuity choice. Tommy, however, got his hands on a master morpher that allows him to morph into any Power Ranger form he'd ever used in the past. And ONCE AND ALWAYS has Billy and Zack reconnect Rocky and Kat to the power grid, so presumably between TURBO and FOREVER RED, something happened that reconnected Jason, Kimberly, Zack and Trini to the grid.

In GRID CONNECTION, the Beast Morphers team calls on past Rangers for help and Jason arrives, later bringing in Billy, Kimberly, Trini and Zack (morphed), so it looks like the original Mighty Morphin team had already reassembled by 2020.

I imagine that Billy had some happy times with Cestria on planet Aquitar but felt the need to return to Earth and make a difference to human society with what he'd learned. ONCE AND ALWAYS has Adam and Aiysha heading for Aquitar and telling Billy that he should visit Cestria again soon.

I imagine Jason after TURBO becoming a paramedic, trying to make a difference without his powers, only to be caught in a collapsing building, crushed under rubble, believing his death is near... and then he miraculously morphs into the Red Ranger and is able to save himself. Elsewhere, Zack is scuba diving, Kimberly is in a grocery store and Trini is getting a haircut, and Billy is trying to exchange a laptop when they too morph into their original Ranger forms. They return to the command center and discover that when Zordon died, a part of his power was sent to the five Power Rangers he'd missed most. Billy builds new morphers. Tommy returns and tells them all that they are adults now and should not feel obligated to resume running around in spandex, but that they should be available whenever the new generation of Power Rangers needs them.

Cut to 2022 and the original Power Rangers have never had more than a week between emergency calls and have elected to just reassemble the team and accept the situation.

I too am feeling great enthusiasm for the POWER RANGER comics. They're set in a different continuity from the show while still mirroring some of its history, and they have a more pseudo-realistic, militaristic tone, but they're very interesting. A bit like Christopher Nolan doing a POWER RANGERS movie.

The Pneumatic Edition is definitely the best of the lot, especially in avoiding the obnoxious flicker. Even the Turbine version of those episodes have a small amount in some of the worst scenes on Universal.

Why do the Turbine blu-ray discs of Season 1 look so good on my budget blu-ray player (bought for $35 USD refurbished)?

My current theory: the player must be using a very simple scaler. There's no way this $35 player has any sort of neural net or AI scaling or so much as a noise filter. It's likely bilinear scaling, a low-power method of analyzing the surrounding four pixels of each pixel to add more for upscaling.

Bilinear is out of vogue these days since bicubic creates smoother gradients by analyzing the surrounding 16 pixels while Lanczos and nnedi3 have even more intricate methods to smooth-sharpen video. But I'm starting to think Lanczos, nnedi3 and Topaz AI may be completely overshooting on SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09.

Those scalers are all about rebuilding detail and maintaining smoothness at higher resolutions to offset upscaling degradation. 1.03 - 1.09 don't have much detail to rebuild, so what we keep getting is an oversmoothed blur on video that was already lacking detail.

Bilinear is probably adding very simple pixel contrast that is well-suited to the fuzzy Turbine files. That and the HDMI Deep Color setting are probably making the files look like a good (enough) DVD.

I'll run a few bilinear scaling jobs and report back later.

As for the Universal files: pneumatic's QTGMC deinterlacing and detelecining have created a fairly clean set of files. I think my grain additions were a mistake.

I suspect that pursuing the illusion of sharpness with grain and increasingly complex scaling algorithms is trying to build on a foundation of sharpness that isn't there.

It may be better to just use pneumatic's QTGMC script but edit it to use bicubic scaling to prioritize smoothness over sharpness in these low-grain, low-detail videotape files. But I'm going to start with the Turbine files first since I've already seen how that can turn out pretty well from my $35 blu-ray player.

I personally would be very keen on a season of MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS, but I think the short length of the reunion special was a blessing in disguise due to all the practical issues.

If you can't get Austin St. John to play Jason because he's barred from leaving the US, can't get Amy Jo Johnson to play Kimberly because she feels she's well-past wearing skintight suits, can't get Thuy Trang to play Trini because she's slightly deceased, can't get Jason David Frank to play Tommy because he's somewhat dead... then options are limited.

ONCE AND ALWAYS has to kill off Trini without having the actress' face visible for a death scene. Then it has to find ways to keep Jason, Kimberly and Tommy offscreen  The limitations would become even more glaring in a 10 episode season if you only have two of the six main Power Rangers (and yes, I know Tommy wasn't among the original five, but history associates him with the originals).

I suspect you'd have to recast, and then... is it really a reunion?

But I wish they could do MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS. You know how fascinated I am with what it's like for people to have drifted from a life defining experience (like sliding or being a Power Ranger or investigating X-Files) only to return to that experience decades later.

FOREVER RED, GRID CONNECTION and ONCE AND ALWAYS raise (but don't necessarily answer) the question: what does it mean to be an adult doing the same job you were doing as a teenager?

MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS could be a metaphor for never losing your youthful passion and optimism, but also a metaphor for arrested adolescence.

FOREVER RED indicates that Jason got his powers back after his ZEO-depowering. There was always a slight disconnect between Jason and the Red Ranger; the unmorphed Jason was a low-key, quiet guy while the Red Ranger was hyperactively melodramatic. FOREVER RED and GRID CONNECTION show that Jason's Red Ranger personality has become his morphed and unmorphed personality, and no matter what random crap happened to him in ZEO or TURBO, the status quo would inevitably reassert. Jason would always return to being the Red Ranger; ONCE AND ALWAYS indicates that Jason would inevitably be back with the original Rangers.

ONCE AND ALWAYS shows that Zack could never get away from being a Power Ranger. He was a Power Ranger from 1993 - 1994. It was an after-class high school job that he left to get into politics. He gave up his powers; he campaigned for world peace; he worked in Congress -- but despite all this, by 2022, Zack was once again back in the suit fighting Rita Repulsa alongside the other five Rangers and despite his best efforts, he raised the next Yellow Ranger.

ONCE AND ALWAYS shows that Billy had the same curse or blessing. Billy was the longest-lasting original Power Ranger and this after school job nearly killed him when some sci-fi thingamabobbin prematurely aged him from a college kid into a geriatric. Billy had to go to another planet to get cured and once he was there, he fell in love with an alien mermaid and decided he needed a break from Power Rangering. But despite this, by 2022, Billy was back on Earth, back in blue spandex next to the others and we learned that even in his civilian life, he was devoted to the Power Rangers: working in the old command center, building a company on top of the Ranger HQ, mining his engineering learnings from Rangering to build new technologies for Earth.

Maybe MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS has Jason discovering that he has completely lost the ability to live a civilian life; he's now spending 90 percent of his life morphed into the Red Ranger. When trying to help organize Trini's funeral, he discovers he has no idea how to use self-checkout machines at grocery stores, he has no recent credit history to rent a space or book a restaurant; he forgotten how to follow street signs, having teleported everywhere for the last decade.

Maybe Kimberly confesses that after she washed out of the Olympics, she retreated into being a Power Ranger because she couldn't make her other passion work and is now forever reliving her pre-athletic life as a gym teacher at same high school she attended, mentally regressing.

Tommy actually returned to POWER RANGERS pretty frequently (which was why Jason David Frank's refusal to do ONCE AND AGAIN was so strange and indicated some serious issues). Tommy's various returns established that he was a high school teacher who had married Kat (Pink Ranger II) and they had a son, JJ. Perhaps Tommy is now a teacher at Kimberly's school and unlike Kimberly, Tommy is eager to leave Power Rangering to the new generation. Tommy is astonished that with all the new Power Rangers, his old teammates still expect him to suit up as the Green Ranger every few weeks.

A fun subplot may reveal that the morphed Green Ranger in MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS is actually Adam Park (Black Ranger II, Green Ranger Zeo) because Tommy got sick of people coming to him and asked Adam to just pretend to be him in the suit because Tommy needed to take his son fishing and have a spa seekend with his wife.

Maybe Trini started a private security company for residential properties and was leading a quiet, mundane life, raising her daughter alone after the illness and death of her husband, bemused with Tommy at how the others had no life outside the Rangers -- and then Trini dies in battle, forcing Jason, Billy, Zack, Kimberly and Tommy to have to deal with a casualty on their team for the very first time (and with all of them having made it to their 40s and having only ever lost Zordon).

If only they could get the actors. Still. MIGHTY MIDDLE-AGED POWER RANGERS could be a very interesting animated show or comic book.

I'm not entirely sure the Federation has any distinctions between federal, state and municipal law enforcement.

Much in the same way Starfleet is the NASA and the NSF and the EPA and the Navy and the Air Force, Starfleet in TNG and DS9 also seemed to be the CIA and the DOD and the NSA and the FBI and the state police and the local PD and the parks and recreation department. I honestly would not be surprised if Starfleet officers were responsible for replacing lightbulbs in streetlamps and doing restaurant inspections.

I guess, if I had to come up with an explanation, it'd be that while the entire fleet will be gathering on Frontier Day, they will not be gathering at the exact same time on Frontier Day. There will be a lot of headliners in standing positions. There will also be a lot of ships that will be passing through, making an appearance, and then warping back to their posts, operating on an alternating schedule with other ships so that no patrol is abandoned.

It's possible that the Borg-compromised Starfleet went so far as to set up 'commandeered-from-the-Borg' transwarp conduits so that every ship could at least do a flyby. As handwavy an explanation as they come.