Doctor Who

[Aractus]

I was thinking of watching the original series, all twenty-six seasons. Has anyone else seen the original?

Well there are rumours that 92 of the 108 missing episodes have been found in Nigeria , Although personally I take that with a grain of salt. There are a number of episodes which were never shown outside of the UK, thus they were never copied onto film ("Marco Polo", for instance), and thus they almost certainly don't exist anymore. Here's one such statement saying that no missing episodes were found in Nigeria

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A lot of the Classic episodes are missing. As far as I'm aware, I've seen all of the episodes that aren't lost at least once.

Well, there are "missing" episodes, but there aren't really any "lost" episodes. All the original video tapes from the Hartnell-Troughton years were blanked. Intentionally blanking the videotape doesn't make the episode "lost". Since the videotapes were destroyed, the only copies of those episodes are telerecordings - transfers onto 16mm black-and-white film which trows away 50% of the vertical resolution reducing the 405-line videotape to below 200 lines of actual resolution present on the telerecordings. With that said, at least the quality of the t/r's is pretty good considering the limited technology of the time.

[Cyberman]

That's where the Restoration Team comes in, cleaning up the prints and processing the audio tracks. Though they have their detractors who believe the Team often stray from their Mission Statement to restore the original footage and resist temptation to improve it, in my view they do good work.

[Aractus]

You can't restore the original 50i PAL video tape from a Telerecording, you only have half the resolution on the film!

BTW anyone getting this:



NZ:
AUS:

[Cyberman]

The Restoration Team log in detail the whole process they go through, including the techniques and specialist equipment/software they use, on their site. They can pull a 625 line broadcast quality PAL image from practically any resolution film recording by de-interlacing and other arcane witchery. In fact, if you've watched any DVD release of the past decade or so, you've already seen their work.

[Aractus]

Oh OK, why don't I put up some images then?





That's a remastered episode. Sorry to break it to you, but there's no magical way to get back the fields of video that you've thrown away - at best you could use interpolation, but that's if you reduced the film back to its native video resolution (practically impossible for reason's we'll not go into right now) and then used an upscale algorithm (ie interpolation). As you can clearly see from the screen caps, the jaggies are there for all the behold and are even more pronounced in motion. Based on those screenshots, I count ~140-160 lines of resolution. You're welcome to disagree all you want. The T/R's are less than half and probably less than 40% of the original videotape resolution.

[Cyberman]

Fine. This is nothing for either of us to get bent out of shape about. I presented the RT's own accounts of the techniques they use; you clearly disagree. Tomato, tomato (which doesn't work quite as well in print as I would've liked, annoyingly). I've tried caring less, honestly I have, but sadly find I cannot.

[Aractus]

Right, so when I point out that you were clearly WRONG with your statement on the "restoration process" of a 16mm T/R, you try claiming that it's based on what somebody else somewhere "involved in the process" said? LOL.

This is what you said:

• The Restoration Team log in detail the whole process they go through, including the techniques and specialist equipment/software they use, on their site. They can pull a 625 line broadcast quality PAL image from practically any resolution film recording by de-interlacing and other arcane witchery. In fact, if you've watched any DVD release of the past decade or so, you've already seen their work.

It doesn't work that way. The de-interlacing has already been done when the T/R is made. The T/R has already thrown away 50% of the temporal resolution. Not only that, but it doesn't have 100% of the video field in frame either, so it's also been cropped.

If you had have been talking about the process of transferring videotape - ie from say the Tom Baker years or something - you may have had a point to make, but even then de-interlacing destroys either temporal or spatial resolution.

Here's a screenshot from the last episode that aired:



Notice anything? I sure did when I watched that episode. Somebody FORGOT to de-interlace the Tom Baker footage before incorporating it into the episode! And dear or dear, it's as obvious as sin and sticks out like dog's balls.

Carry on.

[Cyberman]

Ok fair enough I was wrong. At best I probably exaggerated the RT's abilities. How far can I expect you to carry my punishment? I only have one pair of balls for you to chow down on. I already conceded that the Team is not without their faults (or if I didn't, I should have), if nothing else I acknowledged their detractors. I'm wearing my hair shirt. Lol all you like.