541 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-12-27 11:42:49)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

All interesting observations.

As it happens, just a few days ago, I had a dream in which I was taking in an upscale of SLIDERS and Season 1 was looking great.

I continue to believe that the technology will continuously improve until we can get a better approximation of how Season 1 looked when it was shot on film.

I have lost all hope that SLIDERS audience is big enough to justify a re-scan of the negative and re-edit (through automatic, imagine-matching means) because even at a very low cost at $15k per episode, the market is just not there with SLIDERS fans.  Yes, there is passion around it but so many fans are not attached to the series the way we all are here.  The type of people who would shell out $50 to $100 for an s1 blu-ray are limited in number.  Five years ago we had a better chance but every year, people care less and less.  For those who would, I feel like we have a much deeper relationship with the show and characters, in a way that connects us to a feeling we get from it, that was built into us 25 years ago.

If I ever came into money (which I won't, but if I did...) I would consider partnering with a blu-ray company myself, pay for a license to re-release it on blu-ray and do a new scan through that means.  I guess we could always keep pushing Turbine, to push Universal.   I just don't think Turbine could sell enough units to cover the costs in any case.

Now if Universal valued the old show, and wanted to bring it back with the older characters, maybe they'd consider it but not now.  Peacock at this point is a giant failure of a business.   They are not going to be able to do many originals and rely on premium subscription revenue.  There's only so many streaming platforms people are willing to subscribe to and Peacock is like in 4th or 5th place.

Regarding Topaz, I continue to also wonder about if the Gaia algorithm would yield better results for some of the content.   I also, if I ever get into time (to not have to constantly deal with economic worry), will one day try to embark on a project to edit these things from different material.  With the Wide Shots using a difference algorithm / source than the close ups.   Although, I think the  water color wideshots are pretty tolerable at living room distance.     I guess I'm at a point where I feel like the closer we can bring SLIDERS back to looking "new" and crisp, the closer we are to having it back again, as if it were fully in our lives the way it was 25 years ago.   I know for me, it is definitely a series that gave me so much comfort when it aired... it was an escape, it was great characters that worked together to get out  of the situations they were in as a team, it tapped into the possibilities of how our world could look, it had the young physics student that felt a little bit like us, it had the wise, at times sardonic, professor who brought elder, leader feel but had his own imperfections. 

I don't know, but I definitely dream of us getting one day a true HD version of this great show, particularly the early material.   Already, the samples of the past topaz work has allowed me to re-live the series again, see it "new", see it not as a fuzzy, dated memory, but to re-witness it again.   It has helped me profoundly enjoy the series in a way I otherwise would not have.  When we first watched this series, on our 4:3 tube tvs, it looked great.   There was no compression, the colors were there, and those tvs were a lot more forgiving.  It's helped bring it back to that experience.  That's part of the challenge as well now.  Our newer TVs are bigger pictures, more lines of resolution, etc etc.  And we're dealing with a poorly archived S1 and to a similar but lesser degree S2.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Well, I wonder, with Season 1: what if the solution is to aim for 480p instead of aiming for 720p or 1080p or 4K?

I have recently been upscaling a 2000s TV show called 15/LOVE which is another shot on film, edited on digital videotape product. The low budget videotape is not really adequate for a 720p upscale and it looks like a slightly below average DVD. I found that when aiming for 480p only and just using Topaz to sharpen up the details and add film grain, it went to excellent DVD quality, but aiming higher than that would have caused too much warping as the AI didn't have enough film grain to enhance. Could high quality DVD level video be achievable with the Season 1 episodes?

I personally don't see the point of making Seasons 2 - 5 look HD if Season 1 is only ever going to be SD; I'd say identify the best that can be done with Season 1 and then ensure Seasons 2 - 5 match that. No one needs to see a pristine rendering of the radioactive worm in Season 3 while only getting a fuzzy rendering of Quinn and Wade's first date.

543 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-12-27 17:43:49)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Well, I wonder, with Season 1: what if the solution is to aim for 480p instead of aiming for 720p or 1080p or 4K?

I have recently been upscaling a 2000s TV show called 15/LOVE which is another shot on film, edited on digital videotape product. The low budget videotape is not really adequate for a 720p upscale and it looks like a slightly below average DVD. I found that when aiming for 480p only and just using Topaz to sharpen up the details and add film grain, it went to excellent DVD quality, but aiming higher than that would have caused too much warping as the AI didn't have enough film grain to enhance. Could high quality DVD level video be achievable with the Season 1 episodes?

I personally don't see the point of making Seasons 2 - 5 look HD if Season 1 is only ever going to be SD; I'd say identify the best that can be done with Season 1 and then ensure Seasons 2 - 5 match that. No one needs to see a pristine rendering of the radioactive worm in Season 3 while only getting a fuzzy rendering of Quinn and Wade's first date.

A high quality DVD would be lovely for season 1.  I agree it is a perverse idea to strive for an HD like S3 while also having a far inferior s1 on hand. 

Although, I believe the samples as we have for s1, with some adjustments to color/contrast and when watching from afar, are certainly an order of magnitude or two better than the universal dvd and give me great pleasure.

The close up shots as well are certainly like a good dvd.   This is where we get the biggest gains, and that is a non-trivial achievement.  Some of the smoothing is a bit much yea, but at least it is clean, sharper, more alive, more realistic.

For me, the biggest issue with the season 1 in the dvd releases has been a combination of non-vibrant (faded) colors, fuzzy, blotchyness to the edges/lines (any text on screen makes this particularly obvious), and too much of a darker look (which makes me feel like I am watching a poorly preserved film from the 70s).   

I don't recall where our conversations netted out earlier in the year, but I seem to recall talk that the Universal dvd actually was  better for s1 than turbine (perhaps maybe just in my opinion, or maybe we both agreed), and the  pilot itself as well.  Maybe I am misremembering.    I do also recall perhaps thinking S2 was better for Turbine than Universal, but still not looking quite the way we'd like it.

I also recall that the frame rate created a movement/ghost affect with the PAL format.  I am sure different tvs and dvd players that we are outputing on all play a role in the ultimate quality.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

The Universal DVD for Season 1, Episodes 2 - 9 is blurry, smeared and dull and half of the episodes have interlacing issues meaning there are jagged edges on any straight lines. Turbine's blu-ray files for these episodes are even blurrier and more desaturated, but the interlacing has been cleaned up. It looks to me like Episodes 2 - 9 were stored on low-res analog videotape and stretched to the slightly higher resolution of PAL.

Since Turbine uses the PAL masters, those Season 1 episodes have poorer video quality. However, it looks like Turbine's version is interlaced correctly and doesn't have the jagged lines. It looks to me like Universal's home video department misidentified the even and odd fields when authoring their DVDs while Turbine got it right.

I'm going to run an upscale on "As Time Goes By", "Season's Greedings" and "New Gods for Old" just to see if Turbine files gain anything from upscaling files that range from good to really good, and then I'll see if "Summer of Love" turns out well if aiming for the lower hanging target of a good 480p upscale.

I think the ghosting you describe is because your player is American and can't handle the European PAL format correctly. I've copied the blu-ray files to MKV and that distortion is not in the raw files. There isn't ghosting on mine, but I think I just lucked out that this discounted blu-ray player I bought from a refurbished-tech store could adjust for different framerates.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I've put the Turbine files for "As Time Goes By", "Season's Greedings" and "New Gods for Old" in the Topaz queue, set to output at 720p so that we can find out by tomorrow night if Topaz can make these files any better or if the results will be about the same as a TV upscaling SD content with image filters to deblock and sharpen and add contrast.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

"As Time Goes By" finished. I can report that the AI-upscaled Turbine file looks astonishingly good and well beyond on-the-fly filters for SD upscaling. Topaz has resolved the mild fuzziness and transformed all of the blockiness in the Turbine file into crisp, crystalline detail. Also, the new grain effect prevents the waxy look of earlier upscales.

Turbine has added film grain texture to offset the waxy effect of my previous upscales. I was really impressed by how the Pilot episode, being shot and edited on film, could be AI-restored to 1080p and its original film look thanks to Topaz's new film grain feature. This 720p version of "As Time Goes By" looks as crisp as the film-look of the restored Pilot, although I did have to up the grain layer by 25 percent. I don't think a 1080p upscale would quite as sharp, however, as "As Time Goes By" was shot on film but transferred to 1996-era 540 line videotape.

The AI upscale definitely looks better than the Turbine version on an upscaling TV. The small, blocky texture on the the Turbine image looked nice at living room distance; it looked like film grain. However, the AI has converted that into sharper detail and texture: the grainy approximation of texture has become actual texture for dirt on the ground, for the actors' skin. It captures the sharpness of HD quality at edges, although it still doesn't have the fine detail of a true HD image. The wide shots still have a bit of telltale AI-imprecision although the grain effect has offset it so it doesn't distract. 1080p would probably make the lack detail and the wide shot issues more prominent.

Currently upscaling "Season's Greedings". I don't know if Turbine can this one better than the TV's on-the-fly upscaler, however. Season 3 seems to be using a 1997 digital videotape format for editing and effects that seems to capture even more of the original film's detail in a downscaled state.

It's truly ironic: each subsequent season of SLIDERS seemed to get crisper, sharper and more detailed even as the writing production became clumsier, shoddier and shabbier. The better SLIDERS' image quality became, the less it had to show.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

"As Time Goes By" finished. I can report that the AI-upscaled Turbine file looks astonishingly good and well beyond on-the-fly filters for SD upscaling. Topaz has resolved the mild fuzziness and transformed all of the blockiness in the Turbine file into crisp, crystalline detail. Also, the new grain effect prevents the waxy look of earlier upscales.

Turbine has added film grain texture to offset the waxy effect of my previous upscales. I was really impressed by how the Pilot episode, being shot and edited on film, could be AI-restored to 1080p and its original film look thanks to Topaz's new film grain feature. This 720p version of "As Time Goes By" looks as crisp as the film-look of the restored Pilot, although I did have to up the grain layer by 25 percent. I don't think a 1080p upscale would quite as sharp, however, as "As Time Goes By" was shot on film but transferred to 1996-era 540 line videotape.

The AI upscale definitely looks better than the Turbine version on an upscaling TV. The small, blocky texture on the the Turbine image looked nice at living room distance; it looked like film grain. However, the AI has converted that into sharper detail and texture: the grainy approximation of texture has become actual texture for dirt on the ground, for the actors' skin. It captures the sharpness of HD quality at edges, although it still doesn't have the fine detail of a true HD image. The wide shots still have a bit of telltale AI-imprecision although the grain effect has offset it so it doesn't distract. 1080p would probably make the lack detail and the wide shot issues more prominent.

Currently upscaling "Season's Greedings". I don't know if Turbine can this one better than the TV's on-the-fly upscaler, however. Season 3 seems to be using a 1997 digital videotape format for editing and effects that seems to capture even more of the original film's detail in a downscaled state.

It's truly ironic: each subsequent season of SLIDERS seemed to get crisper, sharper and more detailed even as the writing production became clumsier, shoddier and shabbier. The better SLIDERS' image quality became, the less it had to show.

This is great news but forgive me for misremembering....  turbine season 2 were already a part of older upscaling experiments.

I Understand the algorithms have been upgraded to add grain since those attpts but what is new about this upres vs the one earlier this year that has rendered much better results?

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I don't recall doing more with Turbine's Season 2 beyond the second Daelin segment of "As Time Goes By", and I lost my enthusiasm for upscaling SLIDERS because if Season 1 doesn't look good, what's the point of upscaling any other episode? I also didn't work on it enough to figure out if AI upscaling was any better than on-the-fly smoothing and sharpening. However, it looks like Season 2 does upscale really well and benefits from AI upscaling and not just some non-adaptive filters.

I did attempt to upscale every Season 1 episode with Turbine at which point I realized Turbine's Season 1 video quality was actually worse than Universal's Season 1.

I'm just doing some experiments out of curiosity. I have the feeling that Topaz won't be able to do much with the Turbine versions of Seasons 3, 4 and 5 since those benefitted from advancements in digital videotape while Season 2 was using digital videotape in its earliest form.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

I don't recall doing more with Turbine's Season 2 beyond the second Daelin segment of "As Time Goes By", and I lost my enthusiasm for upscaling SLIDERS because if Season 1 doesn't look good, what's the point of upscaling any other episode? I also didn't work on it enough to figure out if AI upscaling was any better than on-the-fly smoothing and sharpening. However, it looks like Season 2 does upscale really well and benefits from AI upscaling and not just some non-adaptive filters.

I did attempt to upscale every Season 1 episode with Turbine at which point I realized Turbine's Season 1 video quality was actually worse than Universal's Season 1.

I'm just doing some experiments out of curiosity. I have the feeling that Topaz won't be able to do much with the Turbine versions of Seasons 3, 4 and 5 since those benefitted from advancements in digital videotape while Season 2 was using digital videotape in its earliest form.

Ok maybe I just assumed s2 was a part of that process.  I do distinctly remember turbine ironically being worse than universal for s1 and the realization s1 wasn't that compressed on the universal disc.


Another thing I recall is our conversation around episodes being shot differently and a few of them being on the darker / dimly lit side.

550 (edited by ireactions 2022-12-29 19:01:22)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Well, here's a comparison for "As Time Goes By: 540i Turbine on the left (stretched) and Topaz upscaling it to 720p on the right. As you can see, Topaz has given "As Time Goes By" quite the boost in visual quality, getting it closer to the original film.

https://i.ibb.co/hD8hLBK/upscale-0004-Layer-1.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/qmMJ0Lp/upscale-0003-Layer-2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/T8SFVZ3/upscale-0002-Layer-3.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/GFYXyWy/upscale-0001-Sliders-213-As-Time-Goes-By-scale-1-34x-1-mp4-snapshot-16-14-400.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/tPSDLFH/upscale-0000-Layer-5.jpg

And the 720p version of "Season's Greedings" next to the 720x540 blu-ray version -- well, it's better, but a TV upscaler that did sharpening and smoothing wouldn't look very different. The only real difference is that Topaz AI has refined the detail rather than just upping pixel contrast.

A TV upscaler adds more jagged edges to the grass; Topaz AI actually rebuilds the grass. But from a living room standpoint, Season 3 already looked crisp and clear, and all Topaz AI does it make it look a little crisper and clearer.

540i on the left (stretched to fill the screen) and 720p on the right:

https://i.ibb.co/CH7SkdP/upscale-0003-Layer-2.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/gdSbrNC/upscale-0002-Layer-3.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/sPQrZzK/upscale-0001-Layer-4.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/Hp1FM4X/upscale-0000-Layer-5.jpg

551 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2022-12-28 20:51:44)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Out if curiosity do bluray or tv upscalers ever convert a 720 source to 1080 eg if you have a specific setting on?

I do recall in your old experiments you tried upscaling in multiple stages.  An uoconvert to 720 followed by 1080.  I wonder if you did it in turbine though? Maybe something to check if you haven't is converting the 720 there (say 30 seconds of it) to 1080 via artemis to see if you can turn that 5 to 10 percent gain you achieved into something more.

Or maybe as I recall doing it in stages had no better results than one stage and 1080 was more than it could handle.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Look at the magnificent stature of JRD on the pics of ATGB.

553 (edited by ireactions 2022-12-29 00:07:47)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I think everything on my TV is being stretched to 4K at 55 inches, and the TV has some grain reduction and sharpening for lower-resolution video. It's best to turn all that off for anything at 720p or higher.

I didn't find multiple passes in Topaz to be effective. And if you look at the above screenshots, I don't think there's anything more to develop. Season 2 looked good enough on Universal's DVD, had a bit more detail and film grain texture on Turbine, and after Topaz AI, Season 2 is approaching the quality of the film-based Pilot episode and Season 3 is only a few steps past it.

The original quartet was wonderfully cast and assembled. It will always baffle me that David Peckinpah looked at them and declared John had to go and Sabrina could go next. Heroin makes you stupid.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I see you updated your post to include As Time Goes By

Definitely gains there.  It looks like a 10 percent lift maybe 15.  I would say Seasons Greedings looked 5 to 10 from the screen shots.


It really is too bad we don't have a better source for season 1.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

So there's a lot of information here. I'm looking into getting a boxed set of Sliders. Which has the best picture/closest to restored? I really want to see the series again looking it's best.

THANKS for the guidance in advance!
-Oracle

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

The Pilot Episode: The Universal DVDs are best, the Turbine blu-ray from Germany is bad, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.

Remaining Season 1 Episodes: The Universal DVDs are bad, the Turbine blu-ray from Germany is very bad, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.

Season 2: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is very good, the Universal DVD version is good, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.

Season 3: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is great, the Universal DVD version is very good, the Mill Creek DVD is terrible.

Seasons 4 and 5: The Turbine blu-ray from Germany is amazing, the Universal DVD is very good, the Mill Creek DVD is bad.

Full details on Page 1 of this thread here:
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=2078#p2078

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I'm watching pilot part 2 on Roku Channel which got sliders content as part of their agreement for peacock app to be distributed in the Roku app store.

The quality looks so incredibly bad.   Universal continues to sabotage the shelf life of the series by distributing lesser quality than possibly versions of the series.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Funny observation about DOCTOR WHO:

I remember watching Series 5 and Series 6 of DOCTOR WHO (2005) where Matt Smith, to my eyes, seemed to age so much between the two seasons. The smooth visage of Matt Smith's Doctor in Series 5 seemed to have become more weathered and lined in Series 6. It was very appropriate because Matt Smith's Doctor in Series 6 is actually several hundred years older than he was in Series 5.

However, I recently watched Matt Smith's debut episode in HD instead of DVD and... Smith's face actually looks pretty much like it will in Series 6. It's just that I watched Series 5 in standard definition which blurred/smoothed facial textures on my old 32 inch TV and I watched Series 6 in HD on a 40 inch television, and in HD, the sharpness shows all the pores and marks and lines in Smith's face.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Ha

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

So the Universal DVD release is out of print.  I've tried buying it from 2 sellers who just cancel the order a few days later because it's not actually in the warehouse anymore.  I've emailed the publisher (Via Vision) who say they won't be printing any more in future.   I don't want to "download" it for various reasons, one of which is image quality.

Can anyone help?  I only want the original discs.  I do not want someone else's transcode.  I want the original MPEG2 stream that is on the disc, untouched, unaltered, 720x480i29.97.   Then I can do my own realtime IVTC with my own optimal IVTC settings in an Avisynth script.   At some point I may do a script for each episode to optimally preserve the 60i elements such as some of the animations found in the intro and some other random scenes which use different frame rates so they all go nicely into a 60p container without transcoding.

Have bought the Mill Creek release & found the image quality subpar - desaturated colours, zoomed in slightly, and this weird double-line drop shadow type effect on fine details:

https://i3.lensdump.com/i/TtotpC.png

Have previewed a transcode of the Universal release and it doesn't have these artefacts on the same episode.  These are not deinterlacing artefacts by the way, nor are they frame blending artefacts - image was captured from a static progressive frame.  If I had to guess I'd say it's probably some primitive deflicker filter to reduce interlace flicker on CRTs that got baked into the source at some point in the chain, and then further janked up by a weird scaling algorithm used by ancient analogue equipment.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I still see the Universal sets for Seasons 1 - 4 on eBay. Season 5 has been hard to find.

I've seen the double-line drop shadow type effect on my Universal discs in the Season 1 episodes, and I had to remove them by using Handbrake's detelecine function. This effect isn't on the German SD blu-ray release, however, although the video quality for S1 is even worse than Universal's.

562 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-11 19:26:54)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

I've seen the double-line drop shadow type effect on my Universal discs in the Season 1 episodes, and I had to remove them by using Handbrake's detelecine function.

Detelecine (or IVTC as I called it) won't get rid of the drop shadow effect in that image I posted, because that image is from a progressive frame, and IVTC will identify and preserve these progressive frames through its field matching process.

I think you may be describing combing, which looks like this if the video is displayed raw without any IVTC or deinterlacing at all:

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/TtDhfD.png

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Hmm. I can see what you've screencapped when I hit pause on the detelecined file, but I don't seem to see it when the video file is actually playing on my Android TV box.

564 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-11 20:27:39)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Hmm. I can see what you've screencapped when I hit pause on the detelecined file, but I don't seem to see it when the video file is actually playing on my Android TV box.

Hmm, not sure what's going on. 

Here is the same frame Universal vs Mill Creek:

https://i.lensdump.com/i/Ttfpwr.png

https://i2.lensdump.com/i/TtfKz7.png

I am quite confident this is not a deinterlacing or detelecining artefact, as both have been field matched to weave to a progressive frame.

edit: this is from the end credits of S01E03 Summer Of Love

565 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-11 20:37:47)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Here's on an actual scene

Universal
https://i3.lensdump.com/i/Ttfowe.png

Mill Creek
https://i.lensdump.com/i/TtfYza.png

566 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-11 20:20:27)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Actually I just realised I've seen these type of double line artefacts before. It can happen when interlaced video is scaled without deinterlacing.   i.e just taking each field of 720x240 and resizing them individually, then weaving them back together into a progressive frame.   It creates this "mice teeth" effect because the fields were resized independently of eachother and don't fit back together quite properly.  I observed this on a recent Bluray release of the show Fawlty towers - https://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p= … stcount=71

So my hypothesis is that Mill Creeks version went through this field scaling process at some stage which offset the field structure slightly.   In the screenshots you can see it is zoomed in slightly compared to Universal, maybe that was when it happened.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

It's good to have an expert looking at this. Where did you acquire your knowledge of video processing?

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

It's good to have an expert looking at this. Where did you acquire your knowledge of video processing?

I'm just an amateur but I learned a lot recently about Avisynth & deinterlacing from some helpful users on Doom9 forum ("THE in-place to be for everyone interested in DVD conversion").

569 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-14 03:35:45)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

I still see the Universal sets for Seasons 1 - 4 on eBay. Season 5 has been hard to find.

Cheers, I just ordered this which appears to be Universal's PAL release.  There were no NTSC versions listed in my region of ebay which I would have preferred.

I suspect the PAL version might actually be NTSC video on the disc though, as I've recently bought DVDs of other US shows that say PAL region 4 on the box but the MPEG2 video on the disc is still 720x480i, eg. The Ray Bradbury Theater & Caroline in the City.

edit: hmm, it seems there are actually 2 different PAL DVD releases in my region: one published by Universal in around 2008, and another published by Via Vision in around 2013.   I am not sure if they both contain the same MPEG2 video streams, so I bought both just to make sure.   I suspect the Via Vision one may be the same video contained in their box set, although the box set has a release date of 2019 which is much later than 2013 so maybe not.   My PAL/R4 versions of Ray Bradbury Theater and Caroline in the City are both Via Vision releases and contain NTSC MPEG2 video streams, for whatever that's worth.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Why don't the lines show in my detelecined S1 files during playback on my Android TV box? My guess is that it's some combination of the player app or the SoC in the Android TV box.

You're clearly in a position of superior knowledge despite self-identifying as an amateur, so let me ask you: looking at even the transcodes of the S1 discs --

What went wrong with Universal's home video department when they handled SLIDERS? Why are there so many combing artifacts and double line artifacts? Why is the video quality ghastly for the S1 episodes but excellent for the Pilot, pretty good for Season 2 and really good for S3 - S5? I have my theories, but what are yours?

Why is the file quality even worse in the Mill Creek version? What would you suggest for correcting the errors in the Universal discs?

Also, as someone who knows more than I do: would you have any suggestions for cleaning up these files and engaging in AI upscaling for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09?

I'm glad you found your discs. It would be interesting to know if the PAL versions of the Universal DVD releases are any better or worse than the NTSC DVD or the German PAL-masters on the SD blu-ray.

The SD blu-ray release had very poor video quality Season 1 (including the pilot), worse than NTSC Universal, but the SD blu-ray looked absolutely terrific for Seasons 2 - 5. Season 2 is a little fuzzy and heavily grainy, but it looks rather nice at living room distance and the film grain texture allowed for terrific looking AI upscales. Seasons 3 - 5 look great in that you have razor sharpness for all the god-awful Season 3 monsters and pathetic Season 4 Kromagg makeup and tedious conversations of Season 5.

Of course, that's my perspective from my amateur eyes and you are clearly a well-informed video maven as opposed to some guy messing around in Handbrake and Topaz for a half-hour before queuing up the jobs and going to bed.

571 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-12 15:49:49)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Why don't the lines show in my detelecined S1 files during playback on my Android TV box? My guess is that it's some combination of the player app or the SoC in the Android TV box.

It's hard to say without seeing a screenshot.  If you detelecined it in Handbrake then all the frames would be progressive and it should look pretty much the same whether its paused or playing, so I'm not sure what's going on there.   Are you able to upload a short clip?

ireactions wrote:

What went wrong with Universal's home video department when they handled SLIDERS? Why are there so many combing artifacts and double line artifacts?

I think Universal's release should look relatively clean if it's optimally detelecined?  I don't have the discs yet, only this transcode which was already detelecined and transcoded to x264 by someone else.  But it looks like pretty clean 480p to me, at least for this one episode (Summer of Love).   edit: after looking at more episodes I found a couple from Universal season 1 and 2 that do in fact have the drop shadow problem on the credits just like the Mill Creek release.

ireactions wrote:

would you have any suggestions for cleaning up these files and engaging in AI upscaling for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09?

The only AI upscaling I've played around with is nnedi3 in Avisynth. I have mixed feelings about it... it's great at antialiasing high contrast edges, but certain shapes sometimes come out looking a bit unusual, like a pattern of small circles might look more like diamonds.

At the moment I'm just using the Lanczos algorithm to upscale which is nothing special, it's kind of like bicubic but slightly sharper.   I'm also adding some modest amount of sharpening through MadVR video renderer, but only for the early seasons - the later seasons I think would look oversharpened if any more was added.  This is all personal preference of course, some people like more sharpening, more noise reduction etc.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Well, when my external blu-ray cable arrives (the old one broke), I'm going to recopy 1.02 - 1.09 from the Universal discs, run them through detelecine to produce h.264 files at 480p, and see if the latest version of Topaz video can clean them up at 480p and at least get a decent SD image. The Universal episodes aren't clear enough to bring them to even 720p, but I would like to get them looking at least as good as the Universal versions of Season 2. It's a cultural injustice that "The Breeder" looks so crisp and sharp while "Eggheads" is a blurry mess.

573 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-15 01:06:20)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Well the 2013 Via Vision PAL DVD is highly disappointing.  In terms of clarity and colour it's about half way between Mill Creek NTSC and Universal NTSC.   Here are some screenshots which are zoomed in 200% nearest neighbour (duplicating each pixel into a square of 4 pixels)...

Scene 1: Mill Creek NTSC , Via Vision PAL , Universal NTSC
Scene 2: Mill Creek NTSC , Via Vision PAL , Universal NTSC

Clarity and colour seems closer to the Universal NTSC release than Mill Creek, but there is another huge issue with the PAL version - the frame rate is inconsistent.  Most of the scenes are sped up to 25p - this would have been fine as it's easy to slow back down to 23.976 in realtime with Avisynth using AssumeFPS(24000, 1001, true) - however many scenes for some inexplicable reason were done at 24p frameblended to 50i, so there is no possibility of detelecining these scenes, and there are a fair few of them.   It sounds like they didn't pitch correct the 25p sections either so the actor's voices get noticeably deeper on those scenes.   

Still have the 2008 Universal PAL release coming in the mail tomorrow, but not getting my hopes up.  I'd anticipate it's exactly the same MPEG2 stream on the 2013 Via Vision PAL release, just with older packaging.   I'll probably chuck the whole lot back on ebay and burn the Mill Creek discs.

edit: managed to scoop a used copy of Universal NTSC off eBay with international shipping - expected delivery date end of March.  Also spotted this rare item, but not sure which release it is exactly.  Probably Universal NTSC?

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Here's a comparison on an episode where the Universal version also suffers from field alignment problem (S01E07 The Weaker Sex)

Scene 1: Mill Creek NTSC , Via Vision PAL , Universal NTSC
Scene 2: Mill Creek NTSC , Via Vision PAL , Universal NTSC

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I wonder if some of this relates to comments I've made here in the past about some of the season 1 episodes looking a lot worse than others?

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I wonder if some of this relates to comments I've made here in the past about some of the season 1 episodes looking a lot worse than others?

Judging from what pneumatic has said, Universal's home video department converted the Season 1 analog video tapes into DVD with a primitive anti-flicker method for interlaced video, designed to make the image more attractive on CRT televisions. The diode pattern of a CRT TV would likely hide these flaws, but when these DVDs and digital files are played on modern LCD televisions, there are problems.

You see jagged edge throughout Season 1 episodes for straight lines (signs, furniture, buildings, cars) and the horizontal lines across the opening titles and the credits. This distortion in the even-odd fields of interlaced DVD video are now part of the digital NTSC masters that Universal delivers to home video distributors and streaming services.

pneumatic wrote:

Well the 2013 Via Vision PAL DVD is highly disappointing.  In terms of clarity and colour it's about half way between Mill Creek NTSC and Universal NTSC. 

Clarity and colour seems closer to the Universal NTSC release than Mill Creek, but there is another huge issue with the PAL version - the frame rate is inconsistent.  Most of the scenes are sped up to 25p - this would have been fine as it's easy to slow back down to 23.976 in realtime with Avisynth using AssumeFPS(24000, 1001, true) - however many scenes for some inexplicable reason were done at 24p frameblended to 50i, so there is no possibility of detelecining these scenes, and there are a fair few of them.   It sounds like they didn't pitch correct the 25p sections either so the actor's voices get noticeably deeper on those scenes.

I'm sorry to hear your PAL DVDs aren't good. I have the German Turbine blu-ray set which uses the standard definition PAL files. Season 1 looks very blurry, worse than Universal, but without the combing artifacts. Even the Turbine Pilot, which looks amazing on the Universal DVD, is blurry. Probably, Season 1 was stored on non-digital, analog videotape and stretched to the PAL resolution.

Season 2 looks good with heavy film grain texture. Season 3 looks very good with a very crisp visual quality. Seasons 4 - 5 look excellent.

I also have the Universal Dual Dimension Set (Seasons 1 - 2) and the Universal Season 3 set. I find that the Universal version of the pilot is beautiful, but the next eight episodes are blurry and filled with combing issues. Seasons 2 - 3 look good but a slight step down from the Turbine versions.

Oddly, I find that the Mill Creek versions of Seasons 4 and 5 look good despite the compression (although the Turbine versions look great). This is probably because Seasons 4 - 5 were shot on cheaper 16mm film which has larger image forming grains that could survive videotape transfer and DVD compression more capably than 35mm film.

Also oddly: the SD blu-ray versions of Season 1 look very good on my TV and blu-ray player. My TV was increasing the pixel contrast, deepening the colour. This and the lack of jagged edges made the blu-ray look a lot better than the DVDs. Only when looking at the raw files on my computer did I see the blurriness of the Season 1 blu-ray image quality.

The Universal versions of Season 1, despite the field errors, have a lot more texture and detail (although it's still quite low).

I found that the blu-ray versions of Seasons 2 - 5 are excellent for Topaz AI to upscale to 720p and 1080p results thanks to the high levels of film grain needed for an AI to rebuild a video image at a higher resolution.

I have never seen the VIA Vision files, so I can't speak to how that distributor may have messed up the PAL masters or if those same flaws are in the Turbine SD blu-ray.

I'm currently running a new round of upscales for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09.

In the past, I think the main issue for 1.02 - 1.09 has been combing errors. In my first AI upscaling attempt, the jagged edges on any straight lines (signs, furniture) would get stretched out and distorted and appear and disappear. It was visually distracting. And the video quality under these distortions was extremely muddy, almost like a watercolour painting.

In my second attempt, I found that while the detelecine setting smoothed out these lines, the smoothing was also creating a blurriness across those detelecined surfaces. The AI upscaler couldn't sharpen the image effectively, and stretching the video to 1080p gave everything a painfully waxy look that no amount of AI grain could offset.

In my third attempt, I tried having the AI upscaling leave the files at 480p, and then used Lanczos to stretch the upscaled 480p image to 1080p. The results were a little less waxy than before, but not by much.

However, I think I may have been muddying the DVD files. I was converting the files from DVD VOB files to MKV with MakeMKV followed by using Handbrake to detelecine the files and get them to h.264 MP4 and then using AVIDemux to increase the colour saturation. During all these conversions, I set the bit rate to Super HQ which was a bit below the Production Max preset.

At the time, I thought it wouldn't make any difference to create 1GB SuperHQ files instead of 2.5GB Production Max files. Certainly, it made no visible difference for Season 2 - 5 video files.

But since then, I've been comparing SuperHQ and Production Max transcodes of the Universal files... and the Production Max transcodes have just a little more texture and detail (although it's still not much). I think my conversion methods (Handbrake encoding at the Super-HQ preset) reduced image quality in video files that didn't have much margin for loss.

For my new attempt, I'm having Handbrake detelecine and output at the Production Max preset. The Production Max files are 2.5GB per episode. I'm then having AVIDemux add colour and save at the Lossless HQ preset. It's giving me files that are 7 - 9GB per episode.

These files still look rather hazy and undetailed; I don't think they can be upscaled to a higher resolution.

I'm currently running the files through Topaz AI, but I'm setting Topaz to only output 480p files. It's possible that Topaz AI can refine the 480p image to deblur the fuzziness, sharpen up the textures, apply AI grain to offset the lack of the detail, and get the episodes to passable DVD quality and look almost as good as Season 2 on the Universal discs.

Right now, the 'best' video quality for Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 is on the Universal discs and that quality is poor. I would like to get it looking okay, even if it would only rest on my hard drive.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

pneumatic wrote:

edit: managed to scoop a used copy of Universal NTSC off eBay with international shipping - expected delivery date end of March.  Also spotted this rare item, but not sure which release it is exactly.  Probably Universal NTSC?

If I remember correctly, that’s the same original Universal release.  The difference is that the season three set is single sided (unlike the original double sided release).

578 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-15 21:00:05)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Judging from what pneumatic has said, Universal's home video department converted the Season 1 analog video tapes into DVD with a primitive anti-flicker method for interlaced video, designed to make the image more attractive on CRT televisions.

Just to clarify: at first that's what I thought was happening, but now I think it's a field alignment issue caused by the fields being scaled independently of eachother before being weaved back together.  This effect is "baked into" the source and I'm not sure there's any way to reverse it.


ireactions wrote:

However, I think I may have been muddying the DVD files. I was converting the files from DVD VOB files to MKV with MakeMKV followed by using Handbrake to detelecine the files and get them to h.264 MP4 and then using AVIDemux to increase the colour saturation.

I believe the technical term is "generation loss" - every time it gets re-recorded a bit of quality is lost.  Of course, you could compensate by setting the bitrate very high.   

In my setup I'm using MakeMKV to "remux" the MPEG2 stream on the disc into a mkv file, which doesn't cause any generation loss (it's just copy pasting the MPEG2 stream from disc to mkv file).   Then to play it I write my Avisynth detelecine processing options in a text file and save it with a .avs extension, and open the .avs file with MPC-HC media player and the Avisynth processing gets done in realtime.   This is the highest quality method as it avoids transcoding to another format like x264 which results in some generation loss  (unless you set the bitrate very high... for me it's mostly a convenience thing as encoding video takes a lot of time with my CPU pegged at 100%, and if I want to change something in my Avisynth script, I'd have to re-encode the whole lot).

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

This back and forth between pnuematic and ireactions is just like the Professor and Quinn talking about string theory.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Lego_Sliders wrote:

This back and forth between pnuematic and ireactions is just like the Professor and Quinn talking about string theory.

Lol

I am loving it too!

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

With regards to the Universal home video department's crimes against humanity: one wonders why they had to increase the size of the image when producing DVDs.

My theory: Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 do not look like 480i files to me. The container may have that resolution, but the video content itself looks more like 360i, maybe even 240i. My guess would be that the finished episodes for 1.02 - 1.09 were on low resolution analog videotape that was below the resolution of DVD VOB containers and these analog scans were stretched to 480 size and likely stretched with a clumsy method that expanded the even and odd fields separately.

**

I've been running some more tests with "Summer of Love". I find that when working with the maximum bitrate files and outputting to 480p only, the results are decent for close and medium shots -- but the wide shots are like watercolour paintings when watching them on a 55 inch TV. I'm running another upscale right now to add on a very high amount of AI film grain. This adds a lot of 'static' to the shots, but it adds some weight to the wide shots while being consistent across the entire file.

One thing about Topaz AI's latest update: the setting to make the AI film grain small seems to have been deleted. AI film grain is now medium, large and extra large. I may have to roll back to the previous Topaz version so as to make the grain finer and less like static.

One other flaw in my previous methodology: I would often look at the upscale results on my monitor and think they looked good only to find later when watching them on my living room TV that they didn't look good after all, so I'm not calling anything 'done' until I've watched a significant portion of the episode in my living room.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I hope that costs eventually come down enough for universal to go through their library and just re-scan the damn footage (and automatically insert upscaled versions of cgi shots).  But I guess they never will.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Here's a question: does Universal actually have the original negatives at this point?

The blu-ray release of THE X-FILES has numerous sequences with standard definition footage that's been upscaled. Many effects and background plates were sourced from the SD videotapes and rotoscoped onto HD rescans. And THE X-FILES was one of FOX's biggest shows, the crown jewel of their network for nearly a decade.

If FOX had trouble hanging onto the negatives for one of its biggest franchises, how likely is Universal to have held or stored to the original film for SLIDERS? Universal can't even release BACK TO THE FUTURE on DVD or blu-ray without massively screwing it up.

For years, Temporal Flux's enemies (I'm not among them) have speculated on all the treasures that TF may be storing in his basement: gag reels, scripts, beat sheets, pitch documents, casting calls, trading cards, original art, storyboards, audition sides, cheque copies, party invitations, locks of Sabrina Lloyd's hair, Jerry O'Connell's baby teeth, John Rhys-Davies' saliva samples, Cleavant Derrick's unfinished sandwiches, Kari Wuhrer's self-respect, Scott Smith Miller's dream journal, David Peckinpah's sobriety, Bill Dial's heart, Keith Damron's spine, Tracy Torme's pizza boxes, Robert K. Weiss' robots.

I am absolutely sure Temporal Flux has all of these things, but unless he's storing SLIDERS' film cannisters under his bed, I suspect they may be hard to locate at this point.

Anyway. I'm going to watch a super-grainy version of "Summer of Love" on my TV in a bit while a fine-grain upscale runs on it again on my computer.

584 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-16 21:15:37)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Got the 2008 Universal PAL release today and sadly it appears identical to the 2013 Via Vision PAL release - the MPEG2 streams have identical file sizes, and MediaInfo reports the same properties for both.    Visually I can see no difference with an A-B comparison in photoshop toggling the second layer on and off.   

The Via Vision PAL box set from 2019 is I believe identical to their 2013 release since the product codes printed on the case spine are the same for both, eg. "VVE454" for season 1 & 2.

Universal NTSC version is still a month away from eBay international shipping, so no Sliders for a few weeks hmm

Universal NTSC packaging is bulky and the cardboard looks a bit tatty in seller's photos, so I'll probably store the discs in the Universal PAL cases.   That way it's still Universal - consistent with the printing on the discs, just a "better" version of Universal smile

I might still keep the PAL discs as a reference in case I come across some odd episode that might be cleaner.

Oh and if you hadn't noticed in the screenshots I posted earlier, the PAL version can also be much dimmer in terms of brightness, so that's another reason to dislike it.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Here's a question: does Universal actually have the original negatives at this point?

Well, I remember reading a while back that the MacGyver negatives were lost and that's why there would never be a HD remaster.  Then in 2018 CBS announced they had the film negatives and were remastering it.  So you never know, there could be negatives of Sliders in storage somewhere.   And if there wasn't, there may be copies floating around elsewhere kind of like what happened with Project 4k77.   

The big issue is the time and money taken to scan them in and re-edit all the episodes to splice in the new film frames alongside the frames with CGI which were probably rendered directly to video at 480p.   Kind of like what you mentioned with X-Files, although I remember reading the X-Files HD was done on the cheap with some clever software to automate the colour grading process and it ended up costing less or something.

Another possibility is that there could be "broadcast quality" SD masters sitting in the archives of TV networks.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

Sorry to hear PAL has let you down again. Is it just the Season 1 episodes that are poor, or is it all five seasons? Seasons 2 - 5 look great on the German-released Turbine blu-ray which uses the PAL masters.

587 (edited by RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan 2023-02-16 22:10:43)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

pneumatic wrote:

Got the 2008 Universal PAL release today and sadly it appears identical to the 2013 Via Vision PAL release - the MPEG2 streams have identical file sizes, and MediaInfo reports the same properties for both.    Visually I can see no difference with an A-B comparison in photoshop toggling the second layer on and off.   

The Via Vision PAL box set from 2019 is I believe identical to their 2013 release since the product codes printed on the case spine are the same for both, eg. "VVE454" for season 1 & 2.

Universal NTSC version is still a month away from eBay international shipping, so no Sliders for a few weeks hmm

Universal NTSC packaging is bulky and the cardboard looks a bit tatty in seller's photos, so I'll probably store the discs in the Universal PAL cases.   That way it's still Universal - consistent with the printing on the discs, just a "better" version of Universal smile

I might still keep the PAL discs as a reference in case I come across some odd episode that might be cleaner.

Oh and if you hadn't noticed in the screenshots I posted earlier, the PAL version can also be much dimmer in terms of brightness, so that's another reason to dislike it.


did you search universal dual dimension on ebay?  Because i see stuff that arrives quickly and is cheap..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324550543086

https://www.ebay.com/itm/192053266781

https://www.ebay.com/itm/363744351212

https://www.ebay.com/itm/404151367692

a fair amount..

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

We may not want to assume that pneumatic lives in the United States. In fact, given their linguistic patterns and specific vocabulary choices, I would surmise that pneumatic lives in Australia.

(I'm just messing with you, that's the geolocated IP address indicated by the Bboard.)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Sorry to hear PAL has let you down again. Is it just the Season 1 episodes that are poor, or is it all five seasons? Seasons 2 - 5 look great on the German-released Turbine blu-ray which uses the PAL masters.

I've only checked season 1 & 2 so far - takes about 30mins to dump each disc in MakeMKV.   Now that I've got NTSC Universal discs on the way from an ebay USA seller, I just don't feel motivated to spend the hours dumping all the PAL discs with MakeMKV.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

Here's a question: does Universal actually have the original negatives at this point?

From what I’m told, Universal keeps everything.  They have a massive film vault on their Hollywood backlot (located just a few blocks from where the Chandler Hotel facade stood).  It was feared the film vault was damaged in the fire that destroyed the Chandler, but the film was untouched.  The music vault was unfortunately a different story.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

This is deeply comforting, thank you!

Universal has been screwing up DVD releases since at least 2002 (the mis-framed BACK TO THE FUTURE release) and right through to 2022 (messed up colours on the new BTTF blu-ray). But if the negatives are still in storage, then perhaps we're just a few regime changes and scanning adjustments away from Universal making better use of its back catalog.

I just watched a hypergrainy AI upscale of "Summer of Love" and it looks like we have a choice between Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 looking really grainy (like a the very grainy Season 2 Turbine PAL release) or like a really waxy watercolour. I guess grain is preferable.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:

This is deeply comforting, thank you!

Universal has been screwing up DVD releases since at least 2002 (the mis-framed BACK TO THE FUTURE release) and right through to 2022 (messed up colours on the new BTTF blu-ray). But if the negatives are still in storage, then perhaps we're just a few regime changes and scanning adjustments away from Universal making better use of its back catalog.

I just watched a hypergrainy AI upscale of "Summer of Love" and it looks like we have a choice between Episodes 1.02 - 1.09 looking really grainy (like a the very grainy Season 2 Turbine PAL release) or like a really waxy watercolour. I guess grain is preferable.

I was not a fan of the new BTTF Blu-Ray as well, but I think I heard that it was more reflective of how it may have first appeared in theaters?

The only way way Sliders gets re-scanned is if Universal does a mass catalog project, as you eluded to, or they decide to scan the titles in distribution -- SLIDERS is lucky enough to still have enough audience demand to be considered a "classic" to be on Peacock.   However, I fear it will go the way of Netflix and Hulu, where they were once comfortable having Sliders on their service  (through 2016, and 2017 respectively, I believe) but eventually as they build high quality, original content, they want nothing to do with it.   The problem is, SLIDERS, looks like shit so it's shelf life will never be as long because of how it looks.   Unless they fix that, eventually, I think Peacock will consider it too low quality to have on there. 

At the same time, Universal could simply do better upconversion and handling of assets and I think it would make for a dramatically more viable product for streaming services over time.   

A.I. keeps getting better and better... I am not sure if it will ever be able to deal with the field alignment issues being spoken on here but if there algorithms take that into account (assuming it is a common enough problem with older content for them to factor in), then make AI can give us a fairly decent replacement for a scan in the future.

Just the existing topaz experiments have taken the content a long way in my opinion.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

The only way Sliders get rescanned is if a reboot kindles interest in the old show

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

pilight wrote:

The only way Sliders get rescanned is if a reboot kindles interest in the old show

if they do a reboot, on the other hand, they may want to pretend the first one never existed lol.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I was not a fan of the new BTTF Blu-Ray as well, but I think I heard that it was more reflective of how it may have first appeared in theaters?

The frustrating thing about BACK TO THE FUTURE that you've noted: the previous blu-ray release in 2015 was overseen by producer Bob Gale who amped up the colours significantly to make the film look vibrant and new on HDTV screens. It was done with care and thought, making the film fit for modern day viewing on modern equipment without cheapening the original intentions. The 2020 release may be in 4K and have HDR, but it's completely undone all of Gale's adjustments for HDTV presentation when Gale had found a happy medium between Lucas-style overrevisionism and historical preservation.

I'm currently upscaling SLIDERS episodes 1.03 - 1.09. Just letting it run at home over the weekend while I go on a roadtrip.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

ireactions wrote:
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

I was not a fan of the new BTTF Blu-Ray as well, but I think I heard that it was more reflective of how it may have first appeared in theaters?

The frustrating thing about BACK TO THE FUTURE that you've noted: the previous blu-ray release in 2015 was overseen by producer Bob Gale who amped up the colours significantly to make the film look vibrant and new on HDTV screens. It was done with care and thought, making the film fit for modern day viewing on modern equipment without cheapening the original intentions. The 2020 release may be in 4K and have HDR, but it's completely undone all of Gale's adjustments for HDTV presentation when Gale had found a happy medium between Lucas-style overrevisionism and historical preservation.

I'm currently upscaling SLIDERS episodes 1.03 - 1.09. Just letting it run at home over the weekend while I go on a roadtrip.


The "poppy" colors of the 2015 release are perfect for BTTF, and it's hyper-real, comic-book like sensability.

597 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-18 02:50:06)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I'll add my comment: I do not like it when movies are intentionally color graded in a different way for a new release.  To me it's like taking someone's music and putting a U-shape EQ and compressor on it, and thinking you made it better and that everything is fine.   Then to add insult to injury, they tell you the U-shape is actually "more accurate" because it compensates for people's hearing, or lower listening volume levels, or some irrelevant nonsense that has nothing to do with the original artistic intent.   Changing the source material is wrong for the same reason it's wrong to crop 1.85 movies to 16:9, or zoom in on 4:3 a little bit to reduce the pillarbox bars.    In some cases you can even preserve the artistic intent, but then it turned out that wasn't what got shown on screens anyway cause the equipment they used was adding its own nonlinearities which produced a different look and feel to what the director intended, which then got reified with the movie.   Warner Bros seems to be a particularly bad offender in this regard with many of their backcatalogue being redone in orangeteal with crimson reds, eg. Lethal Weapon.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

In the case of BACK TO THE FUTURE, the colours were always meant to look rich and hypersaturated. But what looked colourful and vivid on theatre projection screens in 1985 was looking faded and washed out on LCD televisions in 2015. Movie theatre screens were dimmer than the screens in our living rooms today.

In addition, the 2015 remaster of BACK TO THE FUTURE wasn't recoloured by a random someone, it was done by Bob Gale, the original writer, producer and storytelling force behind the series. Robert Zemeckis, the director, has always struck me as more the technical genius behind the movie, but less the creator and more the special effects facilitator.

Now, not every change made by the original creator of a property will be effective. George Lucas' hideous STAR WARS recolourings and replacement effects are a disaster.

However, I feel Bob Gale had the right approach: he adjusted the colouring of each scene individually, not just amping up the colour vibrance across the board. He wasn't trying to change BACK TO THE FUTURE as much as he wanted it to look as good on 2015 TVs as it did in 1985 movie theatres.

599 (edited by pneumatic 2023-02-18 06:19:24)

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

So if George Lucas had recoloured Star Wars in a way that you found subjectively appealing, there is no problem with that?

The problem I have is that when they recolour it, they're not just giving you new colours, they're deleting the old colours.  I wouldn't want to delete the new colours either, I'd like to preserve that too for historical purposes. 

The best solution imo is to put the colour grading as metadata in the video stream and let the user choose which version they want: original or new.

Re: Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)

I'd agree about having two different colour gradings in the video stream.

Setting aside personal taste: objectively, Lucas' colour regrading of the original STAR WARS trilogy created a lot of visual problems that were incredibly distracting even on late-90s VHS. Lucas' colour grading was ultimately to replace the low-contrast high-brightness look of his trilogy with a hypersaturated, high contrast look that would ultimately mimic Lucas' prequel movies.

These changes unfortunately led to crushed blacks and damaged hues: Darth Vader's costume went from being a disturbing robotic approximation of humanity to a vague shadow of blackness. Lightsaber colours were warped: Luke's blue blade became mismatched from shot to shot, going from green to blue to green. Darth Vader's lightsaber, a terrifyingly imposing red of harshness and horror, became a faded pink. The crisp and deadly white cores of the lightsabers became a muddied set of the outline colours.

The changes also damage the coherence of the movie. In the original trilogy, the movie often seemed a little too bright in the desert because the intense sunlight was more than what the camera and film technology of the era could capture. But when the blowouts are managed, then the desert garb costumes look less like Tatooine clothing and more like the hacked up blankets gathered by a scrambling costume master. Obi-Wan's costume looks less like the garments of a hermit warrior and more like a bathrobe over a T-shirt when the film is too clear and overbrightened. The visuals weren't meant for this level of lighting. And that's before we get into how the computer generated X-Wings are severely mismatched to the practical models.

Getting back to the subjective: BACK TO THE FUTURE actually benefits from the 1985 scenes looking a little drab compared to the pop art hypersaturation of the 1960s. This specific movie series benefits from looking as bright and rich as Bob Gale wants it to look because the main special effect of the series is the vivid settings of the 1960s, the '2015' future, the alternate 1985, and the wild west of the third movie.

I personally wouldn't dare to say that all colour regrading is good or bad; I would say that for the specific project of BACK TO THE FUTURE's three movies, Bob Gale's intentions and results were, in my opinion, very good and that the original material could withstand and even shine with the Gale-regrading. But I am totally on board with viewers being able to select what they want to see.