Demastered – A Series X Project

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

There’s a particulary odd but jarring issue I have with the new episodes of Red Dwarf…

They look ‘wrong’.

The first six series steadily expanded their visual and audio palettes as the episodes progressed but they maintained a visual consistency primarily through the use of analogue cameras which captured 50 frames per second instead of 25, a 4:3 screen ratio which constricted the idea of a more cinematic Red Dwarf visual style and of course, rubbishy old VHS quality for fans wishing to buy any episodes before the DVD era.

So I’m going to essentially demaster series X.

I’m going to begin with a frame interpolater to double the framerate to 50 FPS, matching the first six series, crop the sides to remove the widescreen and more cinematic feel to the latest episodes and run the episodes through a consumer VHS player and recapture the footage, desaturate the colour and add a few blemishes here and there.

I might even redo the title sequence and end credits but that would lead to me tinkering endlessly…

So, that’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.

Topic

[danmarell]

Hey guys.

I’m a visual effects artist and thought I’d have a go at a concept for this.

The main things that are different to me are

-aspect ratio 4:3 vs 16:9
-black levels, older tv cameras were low contrast so I’ve raised the black levels and crushed the highlights.generally a lower contrast image.
-resolution, tv from the 80s and 90s was lower res and often viewed on vhs so I’ve downrezed the frame to 480×360
technically vhs is equivilant to pal but with half the horizontal resolution so 335×576.

Also I remember lots of colour smearing in the original series so I can do that with a still frame but I’ve added some chromatic abberation. Also I added in some noise/grain to make it look not so digital and clean.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Looks like shit as a single frame but in motion, it captures the first series rather well. Series IV is where I wanna be visually.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

22 months later… I’ve restarted this project and finding myself facing one visual question.

I recently listened to a Dwarfcast where the group couldn’t quite explain how the ‘filmisation’ techniques applied to Series VII looked so good. Namely, was it a simple interlace frame removal that dropped the frame rate from 50 to 25 or something a tad more obscure that came along between the analogue to digital video filming switchover in the late 90’s / early 2000’s.

Either way, Series VII looks great. The lighting around the sets, the locations and the filmisation technique still stands up 17 (!) years later and in watching Series X again to figure out where to crop for the traditional 4:3 picture ratio as seen in Series I to VI and VIII, I came to the conclusion that Series X doesn’t fit itself very well.

Series X utilises both blanket lighting for the main sets (as seen in the majority of the first six series) and areas of mood lighting as predominantly seen in Series VII and Back To Earth. Now the problem is that blanket lighting doesn’t look great on modern, progressive, high definition cameras. The 25 frames per second output of those cameras immediately aligns itself with a more film-like look and in that, we’re all very accustomed to film grain, moodier lighting, areas of contrast and different colour palettes.

It seems the team made the decision to allow the design of the sets and overall atmosphere of the new episodes to harken back to the earlier series but modern production studios naturally use modern filming techniques and equipment. So what you get is a clash between traditional lighting and colour palettes and the modern age. The remastered editions of the first three series comes up against this clash as well. You can apply all the filmisation techniques as you like to shift colours, add grain and remove the video look to an extent but you can’t do sod all about the original lighting. It immediately shows itself up as video.

The Demastered project is essentially the reverse of the remastering project. I’m flattening colours, removing contrast, upping the frame rate and adding the visual and audio quirks of the analogue era that we all remember and pretend to love and in initial tests, it’s been a rare treat to see some of the footage come out looking as if it was filmed not too long after Series II. I’m going to go that far and say some of it looks decidedly… submarine and Peter Jackson-ish.

Not all of it can though. Some of Series X just looks great from a film standpoint visually and no amount of muddying up can make it look as if it was filmed at BBC Manchester studios circa 1990. Tough, that’s the sacrifice.

Right, onwards, I’ll post up a few tests in a few days and of course, I appreciate any comments and suggestions.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Peter bloody Jackson? Paul Jackson.

Guys, you’ve gotta know your lines. You’ve GOT to know your lines.

[Jonathan Capps]

It gladens my heart to see this thread resurface. And that’s a really excellent point about the disconnect between X’s lighting and the shooting style. I really hope that’s fine tuned for IX.

[Jonathan Capps]

I mean XI, obvs.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I do plan to have a copy or two as prizes for the next Dimension Jump. I’m hoping to get it signed by the cast and have Doug Naylor chase me for copyright infringement. It will hurt when Chris Barrie looks at me blankly and wonders why I’m handing him fan-made VHS tapes but I’m willing to sacrifice my remaining integrity for said signatures.

Let’s be fair, why would Doug Naylor want the new episodes to go out looking decidedly ‘BBC Manchester’ when he has pined for a movie with all the fancy visuals and thematic additions that would come with it. Modern production has allowed him to capture the big screen mood but alas, the clash with blanket lit sets to help both the feel of the show and to allow a quicker setup and recording rate because of the return of the audience is tangible and evident onscreen.

Which is no bad thing, after all, Series X on blu-ray is absolutely stunning. The Beginning for me is like watching the long-awaited film if it was made a decade ago, regardless of the fact elements are based off the pre-production movie script.

Series XI will be a contrast from X visually but we won’t see as such a difference from say… Series II to III or even V to VI. I suspect the audience will return but we’ll see something akin to a high definition Series VII.

Hmm, now there’s a thought… who’d like a demastered VII?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Right, this is a VERY early light and motion test of the first fifteen seconds of Trojan. No colour grading bar contrast and saturation tweaking, no re-framing of the shot, no camera imperfections, nothing. The following is to simply assess how well the frame interpolation holds up alongside picture resizing and deinterlacing.

If all that sounds a tad technical, basically I’m doing all I can to make a beautifully shot show look rather shite and VHS’d. To properly gauge the difference in motion, play the beginning scene of Trojan as originally broadcast then play mine.

The following file is 50 frames per second, so if your rubbishy computer can’t handle it, tough…

https://www.sendspace.com/file/o3sm3z

[Ben Paddon]

Looks good to me!

[Bexley Heath]

I’m nowhere near film-savvy enough to understand half this thread, but it’s fascinating nonetheless. I have learned things! :) Looking forward to checking out the test file when I get a chance to download it.

[pfm]

I really want to see this happen! If there is one thing I would change about X (visually, at least) it would be a return to the ‘video’ look. It could have been shot that way with the Epic cameras, no problem.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s progressing along as we speak, inbetween creating the definitive Queen videography and bumping Series VII back into the video look.

The widescreen (16:9) presentation of Series X has brought the principal characters closer to the camera than they would be in the first six series (4:3), so I’ve decided to crop the picture to 14:9 which is exactly halfway between those two screen ratios. The traditional 4:3 presentation looked too claustrophobic and jammed together. Also, the 14:9 ratio was used in the Remastered episodes but we don’t talk about them, ever.

So, I go shot by shot, reframing and using Series III and IV as a reference to judge whether characters should be dead on centre in the frame or slightly skewed based on camera setup. Turns out that when you really analyse the shots in those particular series, they must’ve had the work experience lads behind the lens.

And now, we move onto liars.

Father Peter Thornton.

Father Desmond Kearnes, remember him?

[pfm]

Father Lennon Weary

Father Chilly Becker

Father Guy Heidi

Father Terence Wurst

Father Samuel Redundance

Father Alpen Spider

Father Willy Weller

Father Macaulay Woo

Father St John Smatter

Father Lopper Topper

Father Kayden Krum

Father Torbeck Winters

Father June Sarpong

Father Jimmy Jimjam

Father Wesley Crusher

Father Taiwan Tony

Father Wilson TheBallFromThatFilm

Father Tripping Cenotaph

Father Jefferson Airplane

Father Dick Chew

[clem]

Eff you. Eff your effin’ wife.

[besbvesdy]

please re-upload this or bung it on youtube, the whole thing sounds both pointless and fascinating

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s on hiatus until I finish off pre and post-episode idents and VHS promos. I’m currently working on ‘BBC Manchestering’ Series VII and a few other bits and bobs.

Series VII’s film look was partly achieved by halving the frame rate. Having had a good goose at the episodes frame by frame, I’ve noticed that they were shot on standard studio cameras then the odd fields were knocked out and the even fields duplicated down. Essentially a quick and dirty way to convert 50 fps interlaced video to 25 fps progressive. Because it was 1996 or so when this happened, the conversion process completely ignored any information that could be retained from the odd fields and as a result, fine details ended up blocky and obscured as the vertical resolution of the image was essentially halved.

So, skip to 2015 and I’ve been able to interpolate new odd fields that use information gleamed from the even fields and furthermore, interpolate up to 50 fps to bring the series back into video land.

Finally, I’m looking into the possibility of upconverting Series I to VI into HD, formatting new titles and end credits that closely adhere to the originals, colour grading, stereo conversion and other fixes that I can’t recall at the moment.

So that’s Series X De-mastered, Series VII BBC Manchestered and Series I – VI High Definitioninginised.

[Phil]

lol at Father Taiwan Tony

[Moonlight]

If you ever do Back to Earth, make sure to remove the completely unnecessary CGI skutter pasted over that bunkroom scene.

[besbvesdy]

this all sounds great and i’d be greatly interested in the results but for now i’d settle for the clip you posted a while ago…?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s gone, started over, I’ll put another up soon though along with a Series VII test and a mock-up of the HD titles for Series IV.

BECAUSE I’M GOOD TO YOU ALL.

[besbvesdy]

ok, is deal

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s not a fucking drug deal in front of Cappsy’s flat, it’s just some extra frames on the telly, bro.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Ok, here is a Series VII test. I’ve reconstructed the frame using a modern de-interlacer, interpolated up to 50 fps and lessened colour saturation to bring it into line with the first two series. It’s not even close to the finished product but it’s a start.

http://www.filedropper.com/rd7test50fps

[Ben Paddon]

Ruddy Hell, that looks good.

[besbvesdy]

looks great to me, but then again I just gave up on my series 2 dvd in favour of the vhs. how about a comparison wipe? gworn.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

The End is nigh…

Series I, upscaled, re-titled, de-interlaced, pro-choice, non-unionised, hosed down and given a hat.

August 1st on blu-ray.

[Ben Paddon]

Ooh.

[Ridley]

said Paddon.

“Ooh,” said the woman with the invisible appendectomy scar.

[pfm]

Want…..

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

It’s one of the many Red Dwarf projects currently on the boil but this one is advancing along at a fair rate.

Essentially, it involves cropping each and every shot, not just scene, not just episode, but every shot to remove black bars at the left and right of the frame. Now, this would be simple and completed in a matter of minutes if the bars were consistent across the entire episode. But, naturally, Red Dwarf was shot on analogue video and each camera, each tape they used for capture had varying degrees in which these unused areas of the frame were evident. So, I cut from one shot with Rimmer talking away to the next with Cat or Holly and find the bars have shifted in or outwards by four pixels, sometimes the bars merge where shots have been layered for special effects and transitions, sometimes the bars have terrible patterning that eats into the shot itself. It’s a fucking pain in the arse but ultimately, what it allows is for a completely consistent, edge to edge new master of the episode to then be saved.

As a result, when the series is upscaled to 720p, what is going in is fully de-interlaced, edge to edge, 50 frames per second progressive video that shows off the absolute full amount of image and detail which can be pulled from the DVD. There’s no changes to colour, no edge enhancement, no personal choices in regards to brightness levels or anything of the sort. This is a precise upscale that takes advantage of the benefits that blu-ray and modern digital formats can bring.

Of course, having said all that, I decided that all those carefully and innovatively created title sequences, overlays and credit rolls were shite and needed completely erased from history. I am recreating them and the sole reason is that although standard definition footage can look really, really nice in high definition when converted properly and with care, superimposed text and credits can look hellish because they originate from the earliest days of computer generated graphics and simply couldn’t compare to the resolution and quality that hand-crafted or really big budget title sequences at the time could bring. Now, this is undoubtedly gonna be a point of conflict but it allows for EVERY single element of these episodes to shine and not be encased at either side by titles and graphics which simply do not hold up in high definition. These are recreations and not revisions so the choice of font, spacing, speed at which credits run, everything will be as it was but they’ll hold up really nice in this brave new world of 938 inch tellies.

So, yes, that’s my plan, go back to your constituencies and prepare for Red Dwarf – HD (kinda).

[Kris Carter]

Looking forward to seeing all your various Red Dwarf video projects in all honesty – but please can you upload the previews, tests etc in a format that I can view on a Mac? I’ve tried downloading the previous tests and cannot get them working in any software I’ve got, even VLC which damn near plays everything…

Cheers m’dears!

[Pete Part Three]

Handbake, Kris?

[Pete Part Three]

Or HandbRake, Kris?

[Kris Carter]

I’ve not heard of that one – I’ll try it when the next previews go up (the old links have expired)

[George Kaplan]

<block quote cite=”The End is nigh…
Series I, upscaled, re-titled, de-interlaced, pro-choice, non-unionised, hosed down and given a hat.
August 1st on blu-ray.”> </block quote cite>

Looking forward to this. Is it still being made available tomorrow?

[George Kaplan]

Ok. So we’ve established I don’t know how to do a blockquote.

[Somebody]

Like this

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

August 1st, 2016.

[Phobos And Deimos]

August 1st, 2017 – I swear to Christ.

[RickLee84]

Would love to see the examples posted so far but the links are dead.

[Author]

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