Newsgroup: it.hobby.home-cinema
Titolo: Star Trek on DVD (lungo)

Un articolo interessante...
06.06.00 Star Trek on DVD: Preserving the Future
Special to STAR 
TREK.COM
 by Kevin Dilmore
Somewhere within the Paramount Pictures lot, a team of experts has spent
more than a year meticulously reviewing every episode of Star Trek -- second
by second, frame by frame, in order to save the future from the past.
For decades, viewers of the original Star Trek episodes have had to contend
with the dust, fingerprints, grime and scratches that collected on existing
prints and only got worse with every screening. Now, digital video
technicians are stripping away that grime and revitalizing the adventures of
Captain Kirk and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise for viewers of the newest
home entertainment format: Digital Versatile Disc.
Fans will be able to appreciate the latest fruits of the technicians' labor
when Paramount releases the next two volumes of Star Trek with the episodes
"Tomorrow is Yesterday" and "The Return of the Archons" on Vol. 11, and "A
Taste of Armageddon" and "Space Seed" on Vol. 12.
This brings to 23, including the two-part episode "The Menagerie," the
number of original series titles available on DVD with restored visual and
aural clarity.
The DVD volumes boast features that have drawn many home video fans to the
new format: instantaneous jumping to favorite scenes of an episode, English
subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and interactive menus that allow
one to navigate throughout the disc's features. The discs even contain
preview trailers for "coming" episodes as originally broadcast when the
series first was aired in the 1960s.
But for Ron Smith, senior project manager for Paramount's Digital Mastering
Department who supervises Star Trek's transfer to DVD, the gizmo factor
shouldn't be the only draw for viewers - particularly once they experience
the finished product. "We have done work to clean, restore and color-correct
each episode to give it that Star Trek look. Then we are working on the
sound track, restoring it rather than remixing it," he says. "When you get
into a show that is as historic as Star Trek, it's silly to think that you
can improve on the original."
But once an episode appears on DVD it is, in essence, improved by virtue of
utilizing the modern technology now available -- technology that previous
engineers and producers would have used were it at their disposal.
In creating the digital transfers, Smith and his team had access to
Paramount's two existing positive prints on 35mm film for each of Star
Trek's 79 first-run episodes. They remastered each episode, selecting the
best available footage from the combined prints, then cleaned and restored
the footage while color-correcting the transfer to its original production
tones.
"There are wear and tear on all the elements; there always are episodes that
are in better or worse shape," says Smith of culling through the show's
interpositive prints. "It seems to me that the more popular an episode, the
worse shape the elements are; but naturally those have been handled more.
But I have some very good people on this project, who aren't affected by
that."
The team addresses each episode's soundtrack not as a simple remixing for
DVD, Smith says, but as a restoration that creates Dolby Digital 5.1
Surround sound for home theater systems. Their goal, he says, is to spread
out the sound while making it more discrete, give direction to sound effects
and place special attention to the ambient track - the background hum of
alien planets or starship locations - that makes Star Trek feel like Star
Trek.
"In general, the studio work is getting better and better as we go," Smith
says. "We're amassing a very large library of sound effects and ambient
sounds that we're using for the effects tracks. We have made 5.1 Dolby
tracks of each sound, and we've been able to lay in some high quality
sounds. We're also learning how they blended some sounds with others to make
certain sounds."
Once pieced together on the digital transfer, Smith says, the whole
experience of viewing Star Trek seems refreshed, more subliminally on some
levels than others. "Fans are noticing," he says. "People really are paying
attention out there, which is really gratifying to us."
Martin Blythe, vice president of publicity for Paramount Home Entertainment,
agrees with Smith's assessment of fans of DVD and Star Trek alike. "We're
getting wonderful reviews in magazines and on the Web," he says. "People are
pleased with the releases and we are pleased with the sales."
Next up for Star Trek on DVD is the long-awaited release of "Star Trek II:
The Wrath of Khan" on July 11. Smith says he is as excited about the
studio's DVD treatments of the theatrical releases as he is of the original
shows. A treat for him personally as well as professionally, Smith says, was
a DVD screening of this spring's release of "Star Trek III: The Search for
Spock" with director Leonard Nimoy.
"He came out at the end of the session and said it had really renewed his
interest in the film," Smith said of the release. The DVD not only
incorporates a 35mm six-track soundtrack made for the 70mm release of the
movie in 1984, but follows Nimoy's directions on a 1994 film-to-tape
transfer to upgrade ST III's video master to High Definition TV, using a new
interpositive struck from the film's original negative.
"That took a lot of time, money and hard work to do," notes Smith. "It never
ceases to amaze me how these DVD transfers just breathe new life into film."
Ciao.
    Rino
--
Il sito del Guestbook di It.Hobby.Home-Cinema:
http://www.geocities.com/it_homecinema/

 ceases to amaze me how these DVD transfers just breathe new life into
film."
Una sola frase: in Italia dovremo aspettare la sesta serie prima che
arrivino anche da noi? E con il doppiaggio ed i nomi (il famoso mistero
"spock" "spack") che cambiano? Ridoppieranno tutto? ne dubito di grosso...
Prima di far uscire ST in italia ne passeranno di dvd tra le nostre mani
(rieditazione di "acqua sotto i ponti" :D)... sigh!
--
ciauz
Maurizio Berti
MLK : 
maur...@jidesk.net
http://www.jidesk.net
( 
jid...@goldrake.com
 , 
jid...@tiscalinet.it
 )
ICQ: 21686278
-------------------------------
Clear your mind, if there is anything there...

 (rieditazione di "acqua sotto i ponti" :D)... sigh!
Purtroppo e' proprio per questo che sto prendendo tutti quelli che escono in
R1.
Avere in Italia tutti i film e' piu' semplice (speriamo), ma per gli episodi
sara' lunga.
Inoltre per l'audio in italiano degli episodi sara' molto difficile riuscire
ad avere lo stesso livello qualitativo della versione USA. Più semplice per
VOY e DS9.
Comunque speriamo che Paramount la sua politica di voler "preservare il
futuro" la applichi anche al di fuori degli USA.
