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Comment by tutfbhuf | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but not by much, question. Is it possible, with the recent AI advancements, to create 16:9 4K versions of TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY?

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I don't know about 4k, but I think a lot of the newer stuff is on bluray.

Only TOS and TNG. They lost buckets of money allegedly doing it for TNG because nobody bought it. That put plans to do the same for DS9 and VOY on ice

ENT I think was shot at 1080P at the very least and Lower Decks/Disco/Picard/etc are all probably 4K at least

My understanding is that TOS and TNG were shot on film and the 1080p versions aren't upscaled but are actually rescanned from the film. TNG supposedly had to basically be re-edited from the original footage after rescanning, but not sure about TOS.

That method wouldn't be possible for DS9 or Voyager as both of those shows were shot digitally at 480p. I remember hearing that there's been some community work that upscales DS9 to 1080p using neural networks, but haven't really been able to find anything concrete about that.

ExtremeTech has a few articles about upscaling DS9 and I think the work has been ongoing for a few years now. Some of the examples are really good but the techniques and technology is changing as the author is working and maybe I'm misremembering but I think the GPU time was measured in months to over a year for the whole series to be upscaled.

Having seen the AI up scaled versions of DS9, I would be surprised if that ends up being something I want to watch. I definitely don't see the point of changing the aspect ratio.

The point would be to get more screen estate and hence a more immersive experience. It's why The Shield was later released in widescreen despite originally being cropped for 4:3. Similarly there's a non-matted full-frame video from Jurassic Park and it's a whole different experience because you see so much more. AI would allow generative fill to create the environment and truly experience the vast space or see the environment even in close-ups. The counter argument would be that frame and composition matter.

Something of note though is that things are shot for the aspect ratio they're shooting for. I'm guessing The Shield was intentionally shot with both Widescreen and 4:3 in mind if that happened, because it's pretty common to look through your viewfinder as a cinematographer, see that there's a boom in the shot, but it's outside of the matte and proceed with filming.

If we were to trust AI to do this, we'd need to build models specifically for this, with a way to give context to the rest of the set for the scene in question. From a technical perspective, I find the concept interesting, but from a practical sense, the amount of energy and time required to do this is almost a non-starter, and in doing this, we'd be going beyond the director's intent for the work at hand, which makes a transformative interpretation a degree or two removed from the intent of the director and production team.

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