This looks amazing! If any show is deserving of a full remaster, it's Babylon 5. If WB aren't willing to front up the money, I don't know why they don't just crowd fund it. They might be surprised by how many people would be willing to contribute.
Even the biggest KS money Gathering is not even close that is needed to remake this thing. Only tiny fraction of needed money would be get. We would need the budget of totally new high end scifi series. Not sure anyone would be put that kind of money to remaster.
@@haukionkannel I don't think it'd be the full budget of a new show. I mean the show is already made. So you wouldn't have to pay all of the writers, cast, makeup artists, directors, insurance and locations etc etc. But I have no doubt that it wouldn't still be an expensive process to entirely re-do the CGI. B5 has a fairly huge following still. I bet there would be a decent amount of people willing to contribute to the production of a new blu ray set with all new effects. Whether it'd be enough to make it worth their effort (profits on top) I don't know...
@@bowser515 It costs 20 million dollars to remaster The Next Generation. Babylon 5 has less episodes but it also uses more special effects so the costs might end up being around the same. I don't think WB would get 20 million from a kickstarter.
Probably not much? The originals were 480p at best and upscaled 1080p looks decent but not great, still too grainy and noisy compared to a proper film scan.
“Contact the creators”... Straczynski would tell you that he has no power over it, finds out any news about the show and remasters at the same times the fans do and if you want to do anything about it, you must go to WB as the owners.
@@johnnymillar9056 surely if a group of people can get together to mess with some high rollers money scheme on the missfortune of others (*cough cough* gamestop *cough*), then surely there is the potential to make our voice heard by WB?
@@nocillis haha I very much doubt WB will ever be in the disadvantageous position that GameStop were in. That only happened because they were going broke. We could obviously raid their offices, but there's a global pandemic. My argument is just fuck them. Fan-upscale it, distribute it through download. JMS hardly gets any money from B5, WB execs have historically hated the show. They don't deserve our money
@@nocillis anyone here remember PTEN? Defunct, but the ghost of their actions[contract !/?] still exist to this literal day as I type. there are stations that still exist today that were part of that union. WB wants nothing to do with [they told JMS' agent so] B5 [specifically with TV], my opinion most likely because money will have to be split from any successful income made to existing groups. This is nothing officially said but my speculation [logically made]. Movie profits will be JMS and theirs alone since the IP movie rights belong to JMS. Movies, direct to DVD films A-Ok. TV series, nah. WB are the worst. I remember when scifi tried to acquire the IP but WB overpriced it. My suspicion reading about PTEN back in 2018 was WB simply wanted to keep a certain lump-sum of $ for themselves without loss in splitting with others, hence the overpricing. B5 TV 9.9 outta 10 is DEAD.
@@jason-vv6kv Sorry. Living in Australia we only got a smattering of episodes and so it wasn't until the internet that I could finally fill in the gaps. But yeah I can see the point you're making. However, can't I still dream? And if a group of people got together and a remaster in their own time and resource, I wouldn't doubt that they would be very meticulous in making it right
I miss Babylon 5. It was such a fantastic show. I was so sad to hear of Mira Furlan's recent passing. Yet another member of the B5 family gone beyond The Rim to join the rest.
I never knew that Captain Sheridan had a tiger on their starfury. Thank you for making this. I hope some day we get the whole series. (: If not I hope I get to wave at the heads of the execs at WB like this. [waggles fingers]
100% Correct. Tom Smith and CaptRobau have shown the way. The channel Two Minute Papers (Soooo under rated btw) also is a treasure trove of upcoming or current open source AI tools and current papers being done in various fields of AI work. A practical application would be using footage of the actors when they are older aka years after Babylon 5 to deep fake better older versions of the characters for relevant scenes. Also would suggestion looking in how beneficial one of TMP's sponsors "Lambda GPU cloud computation outsourcing" actually is. IF it is then those without current adequate hardware could still contribute to a fan project should they wish. Also thanks to CaptRobau for highlighting Tom Smith's work, as I was only aware of Spatial Katana's work and a few others.
@@lastcharmed88 AI upscaling is incredibly overrated - especially on DVD res video sources. Tom Smith actually re rendered original assets from B5's VFX production in HD and (I think) remade the particle effects - upscaling that work output to 4K was just a waste of time when the live action footage is still basically in SD resolution. The best way to go about it would be to lobby Warner Bros to pay attention if people set up a kickstarter to pay for a 4K scan of the film footage so that someone like Tom Smith could put it together with re rendered/mastered CG.
@@mnomadvfx I'm guessing you haven't heard the issues with your plan. How randomly perserved (often very poorly) the source preproduction material was. The fractured owership rights to B5 material are not the main obsticle, the quality of these materials, regardless of who the fans who need to persuade, is the hinderance. Your comments about AI being overrated strongly indicate you're not that familiar with Two Minute Papers or even VFX channel Corridor Crew. What a shame
@@mnomadvfx They already did 4k scan of the footage. HBO Max version did a 1080p compromise because the VFX was so bad compared to live action quality, so they upscaled VFX and downscaled live action.
@@panathatube Yeah, I remember hearing that they used amigas. We used to have a couple of the 3D scenes for Lightwave back in the 90's. Don't know how my friend got them.
@@panathatube - Only in the first season and the pilot movie. They used 8 networked Amigas fitted with Videotoasters. After that, they used pentium PC's and DEC Alpha Workstations.
Amiga and Video Toaster at its best. what an amazing quantum jump that combo made to modern computing. all that while Windows couldn't put out a word processor that could get past a blue screen.
Man, that was really awesome. I can't believe how good it looks. You did a really great job. I do hope that they upgrade it and scale to 4k to make it look better on new TVs.
Wow! This was beautiful!! J. Straczynski was originally hoping the studio would do this kind of rework of the CGI sequences when the animation tools improved.
As I'm sure you know, the live-action footage was originally shot in 35mm specifically with future HD in mind. It's not been used because the VFX shots are in 4:3 and supposedly the files needed to redo them are gone. See if someone can get the 35mm to fall of the back of a truck somewhere? It would be great to have this both in HD and 16:9!
Looks absolutely stunning. If I had to nitpick it would be the random areas of visible film noise. With noise it's probably best to have all or nothing, rather than strange little pools of it.
Props for using a scene involving Star Fury's. Widely considered one of the most realistic ship design in SCIFI, to the point NASA approached the man who designed it and asked if they could use the design. He agreed, so long as they call it a Star Fury.
Looks really good. Iam quite sure that a remake of such quality could be a great success for a streaming service. Should be less expensive to make than a series like star trek picard but probably gain at least the same traction.
WB listen the money just like any company. Tng Blu-ray was very bad move economically. So there allready Are examples of remake that did not go well...
B5 was so well written. Especially the Shadow war parts. I mean it all hangs together, but that Shadow war was, for me the highlight. Just as the Dominion War was the highlight for DS9 and the Xindi War was the highlight of Enterprise. Hey, I guess I just like a well written war story.
I LOVED this show back in the 90s! I spent so much on VHS tapes and merch, I'm sure that those autographed/foil/hologram trading cards must be worth something by now... The show always appealed to me because I had an Amiga and there was always the hope that my little A500 could make VFX like the show, hah fat chance! Just seeing this small clip brought back such good memories Good job, guys. JMS can't write dialogue to save his life, it's always corny and sometimes borders on cringe BUT he sure can plot good story arcs.
How good TV? It looks very good on Macbook Pro (2018 and 2020) but back in the days when LCDs were poor and my CRTs was worn, i could not see any details, had to up brightness and gamma till everything looked really washed out but at least it brought out some detail from the darker areas. Not to say your TV is bad but no PVA panels can compete with a top notch IPS, i must honestly say im surprised how big the difference is, it can never be great but is very watchable.
Fantastic job! I would love for something like this to happen, if only to find a new audience for *Babylon 5.* Sadly, the effects are holding it back for many. As an old-school sci-fi fan, I'm used to having to look past such things. But modern audiences don't seem to cut such shows any slack in that department.
I love these new fx. Personally I think B5 has some of the most beautiful and innovative Fx is all of sci fi TV. The designs, the color pallets...I love it all. If they ever update them I hope they retain all the originality brought to us by these creative masters!
DS9 and Babylon 5 are my most wanted remasters. This was awesome, its a shame the studios see no benefit in preserving these works in their highest quality.
This looks really amazing. I watched some previews of the HBO version. Yes the rescanned materials looks nice, but indeed, the VFX is simply state of the 90´s. So rerendering every VFX scene is defacto a must have for this awesome series I loved, am still loving and ever will love. Let´s me think about something... There is someone having scene fiies and models in parts or complete. I know, rendering takes a lot of time, especially 4k, with all kinds of optimizations (antialias, motion blur, raytracing, and what ever...), btw. rendering is not the only thing. Time is power from the wall and therefore money. Why don´t rising a kind of crowdfunding project where everyone can contribute and distribute his own computing power??? (Like BOINC SETI ...) Let´s do the rendering by everyone, and why not the cutting into the material, too? And than providing this to HBO, WB or whoever. Shall they earn money with this, but WE know WE made it real!!!
Beautiful work. Man you just need a sound guy. I know the show was done in surround sound. To remaster the sound would add to your amazing work. Just a thought
VERY NICE! I am a big time B5 fan and this looks wonderful! Maybe the owners will invest a little bit and get a big return. I actually have the complete B5 set in the movies. I would be happy to buy 4K version.
Remember when IP laws were such that if a franchise was out of production for a period of something like 7 years then it was automatically added to the public domain? I think that if that was the case, and if the source files and high-res scans were also released to the public, then we could have projects like this more often. Market forces making big companies decide there's enough interest in a product to make something seems to not work all that well. I think I'd rather have a system where individuals and small groups had the opportunities to do remaster-style projects themselves based on what they thought was most important. Who do you think should hold the majority of the cultural / creative power?
@parallax3d You might be interested in reading up on the book "Free Culture". It goes in to the various laws that govern intellectual property. Disney isn't the only big player in this. As long as disney and the other players exist, copyright will never expire for anything ever again.
Amazing work. I'm curious, with the live action footage do you get better results starting out with the already upscaled HBO version or from the DVD source?
Warner Brothers if you are floating a balloon on this green light the 4k version , then release it on blue-ray and streaming, space the releases of each episode a week apart so information has time to flow into the spaces the internet cast little or no light . This show is like a glove that fits perfectly that part of every generation
I know you don't want to do this, but you should contact them with this POC. A lot of the people making these decisions are visual types, a demonstration speaks to them a thousandfold more than lines on a piece of paper/screen or even excel sheets (although they do love their money). I would pay a a hundred bucks, heck maybe even more for the entire series in 4K in a nice collectors' box.
Do you do requests? Would you consider doing the entire grappling hook scene in 1x02 "Soul Hunter" ? His matching his ship's spin with the spin of the Soul Hunter's ship was a classic scene, IMHO.
Gooood! But always a bit annoying to see background stars so brightly even when there are illuminated objects in the frame, not realistic. A thing to consider, the Andromeda galaxy is seen from Earth as a single Messier object in the dark night sky, but in reality it is 2.5 times bigger than the full moon and yet we see spiral galaxies in the sky in most scifi series, impossible, they are here in our real earth nightsky too but only the core is visible. That is a good guide of measurement, on a completely dark nigth, when any space vessel is in the frame only a few very bright stars will be visible. Many times before dawn i can only count Venus and Jupiter and a few other stars, 20 to 40 total, behind a lit Starfury there should be only 5 to 15 stars visible.
Agreed, I prefer this to the the HBO max versions though. Those versions have brightened up the colour schemes too much, they look even more artificial to me. It's like they were trying to make everything look like shiny metal.........when it's not supposed to look like that. In my opinion anyway.
@@MrBottlecapBill It's one of the tricks of hiding imperfections or lower resolution textures. the brightening deliberately washes out some pixelizing so it technically looks higher quality then it is.
The biggest thing is the aspect ratio. I feel modern viewers are more bothered by 4:3 instead of 16:9 than the overall resolution. I imagine they have the original live action footage to fix that but the CGI files being lost means that any adjustment to the aspect ratio requires every CGI sequence to be rendered from scratch.
What is involved to remaster an old production to 4k? It can't be simple sharpening or using special filters? Really curious to know the process. This is excellent.
Haha you can see the white tape they used on his helmet. That's the problem with HD remasters of TV shows... it lets you see the sets, props, and effects a little TOO clearly.
If you could do the other scene from the same episode, you know the one I mean, the one with a certain Vorlon and captain in it, I would be very happy!.
Have you guys tried rendering this files through a modern engine instead of trying to make them look like they did in the 90s? Models, after all, are models. It's the way you light them and render them that makes the difference.
The show was shot in widescreen it's a shame that HBO/WB didn't go all in and remaster the show in widescreen with updated CGI like what is shown here. Maybe if they get enough interest from the HBO remaster they can do that.
What They need is a lot of money, money and money... and most likely any money They would put in the remaster, would give better income from being used on new tv series. Or at least that is what They most likely would be Afraid of. Tng remaster was very bad busines vice and tng still is much more popular than B5 ever was.
I bought the entire series through itunes & I wanted to upscale it using an AI 4K upscaling app, but itunes has every single episode DRM locked so I can't do anything with them. I have never done video stuff before, but all attempts to remove the DRM have failed. I legally own the digital version of every episode of all 5 seasons & 3 of the TV movies. I want to 4K60 these so badly, because I love B5! I watched it when it originally aired & I bought the entire series on VHS (I'm 46 now but lots does this make me sound ancient!)
WB has left B5 to languish but many other sci fi franchises were left to rot like Space 1999, Space Above and Beyond and even sci fi ish series like The Man From Atlantis.
![Вавилон-5. Обзор сериала (Это фантастика) [RocketMan]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/WsAy64LwsN4/mqdefault.jpg)
1 minute down, 6,599 minutes to go.
And £65,000,000 to do it!
This looks amazing! If any show is deserving of a full remaster, it's Babylon 5. If WB aren't willing to front up the money, I don't know why they don't just crowd fund it. They might be surprised by how many people would be willing to contribute.
Even the biggest KS money Gathering is not even close that is needed to remake this thing. Only tiny fraction of needed money would be get.
We would need the budget of totally new high end scifi series. Not sure anyone would be put that kind of money to remaster.
@@haukionkannel I don't think it'd be the full budget of a new show. I mean the show is already made. So you wouldn't have to pay all of the writers, cast, makeup artists, directors, insurance and locations etc etc. But I have no doubt that it wouldn't still be an expensive process to entirely re-do the CGI. B5 has a fairly huge following still. I bet there would be a decent amount of people willing to contribute to the production of a new blu ray set with all new effects. Whether it'd be enough to make it worth their effort (profits on top) I don't know...
@@bowser515 It costs 20 million dollars to remaster The Next Generation. Babylon 5 has less episodes but it also uses more special effects so the costs might end up being around the same. I don't think WB would get 20 million from a kickstarter.
@@jprewitt7 Maybe not. But we can dream.
@@jprewitt7 That's just 100,000 people putting up $200 each. Te original DVDs for TNG cost $150 per season. The VHS-quality DVDs.
I'd love to see what you could do with Space: Above and Beyond, the Never No More and Angriest Angel episodes. Great work!
Probably not much? The originals were 480p at best and upscaled 1080p looks decent but not great, still too grainy and noisy compared to a proper film scan.
@@fallinginthed33p You would need to redo the CGI from scratch.
@@edding8400 Those Lightwave models and textures are probably long gone. DS9 has the same problem, B5 too, all the 90s scifi shows.
Hoorah!
hell yea!
“Contact the creators”... Straczynski would tell you that he has no power over it, finds out any news about the show and remasters at the same times the fans do and if you want to do anything about it, you must go to WB as the owners.
Came here to comment the same thing. JMS has no power and WB doesn't care enough. Fans should have the power
@@johnnymillar9056 surely if a group of people can get together to mess with some high rollers money scheme on the missfortune of others (*cough cough* gamestop *cough*), then surely there is the potential to make our voice heard by WB?
@@nocillis haha I very much doubt WB will ever be in the disadvantageous position that GameStop were in. That only happened because they were going broke. We could obviously raid their offices, but there's a global pandemic. My argument is just fuck them. Fan-upscale it, distribute it through download. JMS hardly gets any money from B5, WB execs have historically hated the show. They don't deserve our money
@@nocillis anyone here remember PTEN? Defunct, but the ghost of their actions[contract !/?] still exist to this literal day as I type. there are stations that still exist today that were part of that union. WB wants nothing to do with [they told JMS' agent so] B5 [specifically with TV], my opinion most likely because money will have to be split from any successful income made to existing groups. This is nothing officially said but my speculation [logically made]. Movie profits will be JMS and theirs alone since the IP movie rights belong to JMS. Movies, direct to DVD films A-Ok. TV series, nah.
WB are the worst. I remember when scifi tried to acquire the IP but WB overpriced it. My suspicion reading about PTEN back in 2018 was WB simply wanted to keep a certain lump-sum of $ for themselves without loss in splitting with others, hence the overpricing. B5 TV 9.9 outta 10 is DEAD.
@@jason-vv6kv Sorry. Living in Australia we only got a smattering of episodes and so it wasn't until the internet that I could finally fill in the gaps.
But yeah I can see the point you're making. However, can't I still dream? And if a group of people got together and a remaster in their own time and resource, I wouldn't doubt that they would be very meticulous in making it right
I miss Babylon 5. It was such a fantastic show. I was so sad to hear of Mira Furlan's recent passing. Yet another member of the B5 family gone beyond The Rim to join the rest.
WHAT!!!? B5 literally got me through 5 years of night shift. It's one of my all time favourite shows. RIP Mira. I had no idea... 😔
@@planetdisco4821 I only just found out too. It's quite shocking how much of the cast we have lost.
Best part. Beginning: rising climax: climax: decline after climax: end. That is how all shows and movies should work. Love BB5
Crossed over beyond the rim.
That looked fantastic! B5 definitely deserves this treatment. I really hope this gets more notice.
The owners of babylon 5 should hire you guys. Outstanding work!
They can not afford it...
I never knew that Captain Sheridan had a tiger on their starfury. Thank you for making this. I hope some day we get the whole series. (:
If not I hope I get to wave at the heads of the execs at WB like this. [waggles fingers]
A fan project is the ONLY way this will get done, just like 4K77. I contributed money to them, I would be happy to do so for this.
100% Correct. Tom Smith and CaptRobau have shown the way. The channel Two Minute Papers (Soooo under rated btw) also is a treasure trove of upcoming or current open source AI tools and current papers being done in various fields of AI work. A practical application would be using footage of the actors when they are older aka years after Babylon 5 to deep fake better older versions of the characters for relevant scenes.
Also would suggestion looking in how beneficial one of TMP's sponsors "Lambda GPU cloud computation outsourcing" actually is. IF it is then those without current adequate hardware could still contribute to a fan project should they wish.
Also thanks to CaptRobau for highlighting Tom Smith's work, as I was only aware of Spatial Katana's work and a few others.
Maybe target Elon Musk, he's a big sci-fi fan, I'm not sure of his opinion on B5....but attention from someone like him would go a long way.
@@lastcharmed88 AI upscaling is incredibly overrated - especially on DVD res video sources.
Tom Smith actually re rendered original assets from B5's VFX production in HD and (I think) remade the particle effects - upscaling that work output to 4K was just a waste of time when the live action footage is still basically in SD resolution.
The best way to go about it would be to lobby Warner Bros to pay attention if people set up a kickstarter to pay for a 4K scan of the film footage so that someone like Tom Smith could put it together with re rendered/mastered CG.
@@mnomadvfx I'm guessing you haven't heard the issues with your plan. How randomly perserved (often very poorly) the source preproduction material was.
The fractured owership rights to B5 material are not the main obsticle, the quality of these materials, regardless of who the fans who need to persuade, is the hinderance.
Your comments about AI being overrated strongly indicate you're not that familiar with Two Minute Papers or even VFX channel Corridor Crew. What a shame
@@mnomadvfx They already did 4k scan of the footage. HBO Max version did a 1080p compromise because the VFX was so bad compared to live action quality, so they upscaled VFX and downscaled live action.
Wow, this looks incredible.
Don't contact JMS! It's out if his hands. It's Warner Bros who needs to be pestered.
If i'm not mistaken, the CG was made by 16bit Commodore Amigas frame by frame!!
@@panathatube Yeah, I remember hearing that they used amigas. We used to have a couple of the 3D scenes for Lightwave back in the 90's. Don't know how my friend got them.
@@panathatube - Only in the first season and the pilot movie. They used 8 networked Amigas fitted with Videotoasters. After that, they used pentium PC's and DEC Alpha Workstations.
@@Orlor Still using Amigas it's impressive!
@@panathatube - Yes. The Amiga at the time was the most cost effective means they had.
Amiga and Video Toaster at its best. what an amazing quantum jump that combo made to modern computing. all that while Windows couldn't put out a word processor that could get past a blue screen.
I always heard the original Lightwave scene files were lost when they talked about rebuilding assets for Babylon 5: The Lost Tails. This is awesome!
Cool to see! Thanks for posting this. To me, best it's ever looked and sounded.
This is AWESOME! I'd pay serious money to be able to watch the whole thing again but at this level of quality.
4k bluray release would be awesome!
Nice to see you and Tom work together on this, was bothered there was going to be some weird rivalry going on.
Man, that was really awesome. I can't believe how good it looks. You did a really great job. I do hope that they upgrade it and scale to 4k to make it look better on new TVs.
That looked amazing! I really wish they would do an actual remaster.
Wow! This was beautiful!! J. Straczynski was originally hoping the studio would do this kind of rework of the CGI sequences when the animation tools improved.
This is not a rework. This is an HD export of the original CGI files.
As I'm sure you know, the live-action footage was originally shot in 35mm specifically with future HD in mind. It's not been used because the VFX shots are in 4:3 and supposedly the files needed to redo them are gone.
See if someone can get the 35mm to fall of the back of a truck somewhere? It would be great to have this both in HD and 16:9!
I've called for this for a while now👍🔥👍
Holy... wow. Just... wow.
Seriously, astonishing work
Looks absolutely stunning. If I had to nitpick it would be the random areas of visible film noise. With noise it's probably best to have all or nothing, rather than strange little pools of it.
Props for using a scene involving Star Fury's. Widely considered one of the most realistic ship design in SCIFI, to the point NASA approached the man who designed it and asked if they could use the design. He agreed, so long as they call it a Star Fury.
Sadly that's, just a myth that's grown over the years.
Looks really good.
Iam quite sure that a remake of such quality could be a great success for a streaming service.
Should be less expensive to make than a series like star trek picard but probably gain at least the same traction.
Oh man, that looked lovely! This is all B5 needs. justa touch over with modern CGI, not a full remake
This is an amazing job! If only WB would listen to fans for once...
WB listen the money just like any company. Tng Blu-ray was very bad move economically. So there allready Are examples of remake that did not go well...
Love the ambition here. So many shows would be great to watch with a CGI upgrade.
B5 was so well written. Especially the Shadow war parts. I mean it all hangs together, but that Shadow war was, for me the highlight. Just as the Dominion War was the highlight for DS9 and the Xindi War was the highlight of Enterprise. Hey, I guess I just like a well written war story.
well DS9 completely ripped off and plagiarized B5
This looks good.! I have the DVD set, the special effects from that era was as good as they were charming :)
I NEED this in my life, I want to introduce friends and whatnot to B5 but the original graphics are a barrier to entry.
Which is a shame because there is a really rewarding story waiting for them. Good luck with that regardless.
I LOVED this show back in the 90s! I spent so much on VHS tapes and merch, I'm sure that those autographed/foil/hologram trading cards must be worth something by now...
The show always appealed to me because I had an Amiga and there was always the hope that my little A500 could make VFX like the show, hah fat chance!
Just seeing this small clip brought back such good memories Good job, guys. JMS can't write dialogue to save his life, it's always corny and sometimes borders on cringe BUT he sure can plot good story arcs.
I hope the creators of Babylon 5 take note and hire this dude to do a full 4k remaster of the entire series!
This has to be done. Its the greatest show ever and its almost unwatchable on a good tv.
No stinking remake a redo of fx
Now I want to know the four shows that you like better, please.
How good TV? It looks very good on Macbook Pro (2018 and 2020) but back in the days when LCDs were poor and my CRTs was worn, i could not see any details, had to up brightness and gamma till everything looked really washed out but at least it brought out some detail from the darker areas.
Not to say your TV is bad but no PVA panels can compete with a top notch IPS, i must honestly say im surprised how big the difference is, it can never be great but is very watchable.
So good I felt like I as watching the episode again.
Looks so crisp, nicely done 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Outstanding work!
Holy crap! I had no idea that Captain Sheridan looks like a hi-res Corporal Gossard ("Roughneck Chronicles - Starship Troopers")!
Fantastic job! I would love for something like this to happen, if only to find a new audience for *Babylon 5.* Sadly, the effects are holding it back for many. As an old-school sci-fi fan, I'm used to having to look past such things. But modern audiences don't seem to cut such shows any slack in that department.
Looks amazing!
Still my favorite series
I'm happy just knowing the material that exists can be upscaled. CGI is less important.
Looks beautiful. Very crisp.
Love your work!
I love these new fx. Personally I think B5 has some of the most beautiful and innovative Fx is all of sci fi TV. The designs, the color pallets...I love it all. If they ever update them I hope they retain all the originality brought to us by these creative masters!
REALLY GOOD JOB!! I LOVED B5!!
This, but in widescreen.* That's the dream.
* (and maybe with some higher-detail models and textures for the CGI stuff, but I'd call that optional)
DS9 and Babylon 5 are my most wanted remasters. This was awesome, its a shame the studios see no benefit in preserving these works in their highest quality.
Don’t forget voyager
This looks really amazing. I watched some previews of the HBO version. Yes the rescanned materials looks nice, but indeed, the VFX is simply state of the 90´s.
So rerendering every VFX scene is defacto a must have for this awesome series I loved, am still loving and ever will love.
Let´s me think about something... There is someone having scene fiies and models in parts or complete. I know, rendering takes a lot of time, especially 4k, with all kinds of optimizations (antialias, motion blur, raytracing, and what ever...), btw. rendering is not the only thing. Time is power from the wall and therefore money. Why don´t rising a kind of crowdfunding project where everyone can contribute and distribute his own computing power??? (Like BOINC SETI ...)
Let´s do the rendering by everyone, and why not the cutting into the material, too?
And than providing this to HBO, WB or whoever. Shall they earn money with this, but WE know WE made it real!!!
Fantastic work.
Holy crap this looks AMAZING!!!
That looks incredible!
That is Fantastic! I am binging Babylon 5 currently.
Thanks. Enjoy your binge!
Are you binging the HBO remasters?
@@CaseAgainstFaith1 alas no I don't have HBO but it sounds great. This was a great piece of art.
Beautiful work. Man you just need a sound guy. I know the show was done in surround sound. To remaster the sound would add to your amazing work. Just a thought
This was amazing!
Very nicely done.
VERY NICE! I am a big time B5 fan and this looks wonderful! Maybe the owners will invest a little bit and get a big return. I actually have the complete B5 set in the movies. I would be happy to buy 4K version.
Remember when IP laws were such that if a franchise was out of production for a period of something like 7 years then it was automatically added to the public domain? I think that if that was the case, and if the source files and high-res scans were also released to the public, then we could have projects like this more often.
Market forces making big companies decide there's enough interest in a product to make something seems to not work all that well. I think I'd rather have a system where individuals and small groups had the opportunities to do remaster-style projects themselves based on what they thought was most important. Who do you think should hold the majority of the cultural / creative power?
@parallax3d You might be interested in reading up on the book "Free Culture". It goes in to the various laws that govern intellectual property.
Disney isn't the only big player in this. As long as disney and the other players exist, copyright will never expire for anything ever again.
Looks pretty good
Amazing work. I'm curious, with the live action footage do you get better results starting out with the already upscaled HBO version or from the DVD source?
Warner Brothers if you are floating a balloon on this green light the 4k version , then release it on blue-ray and streaming, space the releases of each episode a week apart so information has time to flow into the spaces the internet cast little or no light . This show is like a glove that fits perfectly that part of every generation
Great show!
Молодцы!! Ждём обновлённые пять сезонов прекрасного Вавилона-5!!!
In my memories it always looked like this.
Just what I was thinking watching this. I guess my brain upscaled it.
RIP Jerry Doyle
and RIP Mira Furlan
He kind of reminded me of a K-mart Bruce Willis.
Outstanding!!
I would purchase the series if it got remastered!
Beautiful just beautiful
I'm loving this!
I know you don't want to do this, but you should contact them with this POC. A lot of the people making these decisions are visual types, a demonstration speaks to them a thousandfold more than lines on a piece of paper/screen or even excel sheets (although they do love their money). I would pay a a hundred bucks, heck maybe even more for the entire series in 4K in a nice collectors' box.
I would fight Conor McGregor to see this done for the whole series.
If you fought Conor McGregor, you might not live to. ;p
God I love the show. I hope it gets conintued at some point, not redone mind you.
Fantastic Job.
That was amazing
Hard not to feel like if the live action footage has grain, that grain should be reproduced for the CGI moments.
They really should do this for the whole show
Do you do requests? Would you consider doing the entire grappling hook scene in 1x02 "Soul Hunter" ? His matching his ship's spin with the spin of the Soul Hunter's ship was a classic scene, IMHO.
Amazing!
Where did you guys got the actual 3D files of the serie?
Gooood! But always a bit annoying to see background stars so brightly even when there are illuminated objects in the frame, not realistic. A thing to consider, the Andromeda galaxy is seen from Earth as a single Messier object in the dark night sky, but in reality it is 2.5 times bigger than the full moon and yet we see spiral galaxies in the sky in most scifi series, impossible, they are here in our real earth nightsky too but only the core is visible. That is a good guide of measurement, on a completely dark nigth, when any space vessel is in the frame only a few very bright stars will be visible. Many times before dawn i can only count Venus and Jupiter and a few other stars, 20 to 40 total, behind a lit Starfury there should be only 5 to 15 stars visible.
Incredible!
That looks decent, good work. My only slight criticism is that (for me) the CGI looks a little too 'clean'.
Agreed, I prefer this to the the HBO max versions though. Those versions have brightened up the colour schemes too much, they look even more artificial to me. It's like they were trying to make everything look like shiny metal.........when it's not supposed to look like that. In my opinion anyway.
@@MrBottlecapBill It's one of the tricks of hiding imperfections or lower resolution textures. the brightening deliberately washes out some pixelizing so it technically looks higher quality then it is.
The biggest thing is the aspect ratio. I feel modern viewers are more bothered by 4:3 instead of 16:9 than the overall resolution.
I imagine they have the original live action footage to fix that but the CGI files being lost means that any adjustment to the aspect ratio requires every CGI sequence to be rendered from scratch.
I am sure laser beams travel with the speed of a tennis ball.
What is involved to remaster an old production to 4k? It can't be simple sharpening or using special filters? Really curious to know the process. This is excellent.
Haha you can see the white tape they used on his helmet. That's the problem with HD remasters of TV shows... it lets you see the sets, props, and effects a little TOO clearly.
Re-record the soundtrack with an orchestra in a full-sized sound studio, and this would be amazing.
That would be well spent. A well written show should have videos to match.
If you could do the other scene from the same episode, you know the one I mean, the one with a certain Vorlon and captain in it, I would be very happy!.
Have you guys tried rendering this files through a modern engine instead of trying to make them look like they did in the 90s? Models, after all, are models. It's the way you light them and render them that makes the difference.
The show was shot in widescreen it's a shame that HBO/WB didn't go all in and remaster the show in widescreen with updated CGI like what is shown here. Maybe if they get enough interest from the HBO remaster they can do that.
What They need is a lot of money, money and money... and most likely any money They would put in the remaster, would give better income from being used on new tv series. Or at least that is what They most likely would be Afraid of. Tng remaster was very bad busines vice and tng still is much more popular than B5 ever was.
The ST:TNG remaster BlueRays lost money. And TNG is far more popular than B5. Nobody will spring for the money to do a full redo of effects for B5
Looks siiiick!!!
I bought the entire series through itunes & I wanted to upscale it using an AI 4K upscaling app, but itunes has every single episode DRM locked so I can't do anything with them. I have never done video stuff before, but all attempts to remove the DRM have failed. I legally own the digital version of every episode of all 5 seasons & 3 of the TV movies. I want to 4K60 these so badly, because I love B5! I watched it when it originally aired & I bought the entire series on VHS (I'm 46 now but lots does this make me sound ancient!)
WB has left B5 to languish but many other sci fi franchises were left to rot like Space 1999, Space Above and Beyond and even sci fi ish series like The Man From Atlantis.
Really nice
I bet the way Zeta Leader got shot down here is the reason why he had to act out against Luke Skywalker couple years later
AMAZING!!!!!
This looks on par with the last episode of the expense lol
How do you get G forces in space?
For the next attempts - you can't have the plane and the station to be in focus at the same time. Focal length and stuff.
Is the bluray release just as good?