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quote:

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Originally posted by Strider
WELL, Im glad the sales are supposably good, but Im cautious. I dont wanna get my hopes up like I did with LotR, which I despised.

Still sweet!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Strider
(Hated season1 and 2......

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You hated season 2? You're a mad one aren't you.

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bsc Ian Andrews

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quote:

---

Originally posted by Strider
(Hated season1 and 2......

---

You hated season 2? You're a mad one aren't you.

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bsc Ian Andrews

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Ahh.. B5 on DVD is there anything sweeter...

The only thing I'm not happy with is the quality of some of the extras (JMS's commentary was good though). I'd nearly forgotten how good S1 was!

Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2...

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Ahh.. B5 on DVD is there anything sweeter...

The only thing I'm not happy with is the quality of some of the extras (JMS's commentary was good though). I'd nearly forgotten how good S1 was!

Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2... Must buy S2...

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More info on ships,people and places would have been nice, perhaps they might do more for seas 2.

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I read that the FX sequences are not true widescreen and have been blown up to fill out the screen, thus reducing their quality. Is there any truth in this?

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quote:

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Originally posted by IPAndrews
I read that the FX sequences are not true widescreen and have been blown up to fill out the screen, thus reducing their quality. Is there any truth in this?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by IPAndrews
I read that the FX sequences are not true widescreen and have been blown up to fill out the screen, thus reducing their quality. Is there any truth in this?

---

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Since I wasn't party to that conversation, no we didn't.

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Since I wasn't party to that conversation, no we didn't.

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Ah...

In that case, can we pretend that you were? In which case my previous post would make some kind of sense.

Alternatively we don't have to, in which case I'll simply say that a previous converstaion took place, in which it was deemed that the effects were only completed for the 4x3 ration broadcast.

I'm not sure that that makes anything clearer or not.

Clarity - it's not my thing.

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Ah...

In that case, can we pretend that you were? In which case my previous post would make some kind of sense.

Alternatively we don't have to, in which case I'll simply say that a previous converstaion took place, in which it was deemed that the effects were only completed for the 4x3 ration broadcast.

I'm not sure that that makes anything clearer or not.

Clarity - it's not my thing.

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The ugly truth

Ok people, here are the facts about the dvd transfer of Babylon 5.

All live action material was filmed widescreen (24 fps), as it was planned to make it HDTV compatible when it's time would come. However, all CGI (pure and the composite scenes) were rendered only in 4:3 NTSC (30 fps), for economical reasons, since there wasn't as much computing power back then. They reasoned they could render them again in widescreen later, when more power was available and it would be cheaper... unfortunately, it isn't that easy, and to make matters worse, Warner Brothers managed to destroy all the original, beautiful cgi models a while back! Some original models were salvaged from Sierra, who had been given some models for making the B5:ItF game (They were then used in the Rangers pilot).

So, now they only have the widescreen live action film stock (that also seems to have taken damage from WB's storage, grrr!) and the 4:3 NTSC computer graphics and composite scenes. Those must be put together and the CGI converted to widescreen, thus losing more of it's quality... The horrific details, and a demonstration of doing the job better than it has been done now, can be found here:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.html

At the moment, the job has been done quite poorly, but with luck, the apparent success of the S1 box might convince them to do the job on later seasons a little better - digital clean-up on to the film material, and better conversion of the cgi... Let's hope for the best.

Last edited by Jokoto on 12-06-2002 at 04:21 PM

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The ugly truth

Ok people, here are the facts about the dvd transfer of Babylon 5.

All live action material was filmed widescreen (24 fps), as it was planned to make it HDTV compatible when it's time would come. However, all CGI (pure and the composite scenes) were rendered only in 4:3 NTSC (30 fps), for economical reasons, since there wasn't as much computing power back then. They reasoned they could render them again in widescreen later, when more power was available and it would be cheaper... unfortunately, it isn't that easy, and to make matters worse, Warner Brothers managed to destroy all the original, beautiful cgi models a while back! Some original models were salvaged from Sierra, who had been given some models for making the B5:ItF game (They were then used in the Rangers pilot).

So, now they only have the widescreen live action film stock (that also seems to have taken damage from WB's storage, grrr!) and the 4:3 NTSC computer graphics and composite scenes. Those must be put together and the CGI converted to widescreen, thus losing more of it's quality... The horrific details, and a demonstration of doing the job better than it has been done now, can be found here:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.html

At the moment, the job has been done quite poorly, but with luck, the apparent success of the S1 box might convince them to do the job on later seasons a little better - digital clean-up on to the film material, and better conversion of the cgi... Let's hope for the best.

Last edited by Jokoto on 12-06-2002 at 04:21 PM

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NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IT CANNOT BE!!!!
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IT CANNOT BE!!!!
NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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(natives of Z'ha'dum may ignore this)

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This was discussed in the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated when Crusade was going... This is almost year-old news, I'm surprised everyone didn't know about the lightwave model subject already. If you want to read JMS's own words about it, go check [URL=http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en]google groups[/URL] and search for this Message-ID: 007301c1a4ec$5c9dff20$65d5c997@MACBRECK

(put it in the box next to the "Find the message with message ID" text) I tried to put a direct link to the post, but something's adding extra characters to the url and it isn't working anymore...

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This was discussed in the newsgroup rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated when Crusade was going... This is almost year-old news, I'm surprised everyone didn't know about the lightwave model subject already. If you want to read JMS's own words about it, go check [URL=http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl=en]google groups[/URL] and search for this Message-ID: 007301c1a4ec$5c9dff20$65d5c997@MACBRECK

(put it in the box next to the "Find the message with message ID" text) I tried to put a direct link to the post, but something's adding extra characters to the url and it isn't working anymore...

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Yep, some of the live action sequences suffer from pretty obvious to severe filmstock damage (scratches, contrast fading, c.). I think though, when the CGI sequences improve in Seasons 3 and 4, that the DVD format will really shine. Plus, keep in mind that the video can always be enhanced if they prove popular enough to warrant the cost of the improvement... Look what they did with Gone With The Wind or The Wizard of Oz after all- those originals were majorly hosed and when didigaily enhanced were almost TOO vibrant.

Maybe (dream of dreams) one day a "Babylon 5 v2.0" will come out, with totally re-done FX, like Lucas did with Star Wars... Personally, after not watching Season 1 for about 3 years, I'd forgotten just how cheesy some of those FX were compared to later seasons.

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