Star Trek Pilots Episode 1: The Next Generation

Fanedit Synopsis: The STAR TREK PILOTS project is a 3-DVD collection of the first episodes of THE NEXT GENERATION, DEEP SPACE NINE and VOYAGER - all in trimmed WIDESCREEN versions. This one is for fans, who always wanted to watch these shows without the worst annoyances on the big modern screens.
Episode One: The Next Generation - Encounter At Farpoint

tagline: To Boldly Start
original film name: STAR TREK - THE NEXT GENERATION - EPISODE 1/2: ENCOUNTER AT FARPOINT
new film name : Star Trek Pilots - Episode 1 - The Next Generation
film studio name : Paramount
edit crew name :CBB
Date Original Film Was Released : 1987
Date Edit Was Released : October 2009
Original Runtime : 91 minutes
New Runtime : 83 minutes
Amount of time Cut/Added : 8 minutes cut

Cuts removed/added/extended :
- removed Beverley and Wesley with Will on Farpoint Station
- removed Wesley on the holodeck
- removed Will and Deanna meeting
- removed Wesley and Beverley inspecting the bridge
- removed Jean Luc and Beverley talking about Wesley

Trailer:
[youtube:21qu0t4c]
Fanedit details:
This is a widescreen version of ENCOUNTER AT FARPOINT, the pilot double episode of Star Trek - The Next Generation. The most striking annoyances (especially Wesley Crusher) have been removed.

DVD details:
1.78:1 aspect ratio
English audio in true 5.1 ac-3
English subtitles
Switching menus (you'll see what they are)
Teaser/Trailer
Deleted Scenes
Making Of
Info on all 35 CBB fanedits

Intention for this fanedit:
I did this little fanedit most of all just for myself, because I am a Star Trek fan (especially TNG) and it annoyed me to have those huge black sidebars from the original 1.33 format, which made this show look so out of date and old fashioned. And while I was on that, I thought to go a big step further and remove that annoying Wesley Crusher and the stupid past relationship scene of Troi/Riker that always makes me groan in pain, when I have to see it.
This is not a huge or drastic fanedit, but a labor love and I thought a few of you might be interested in watching. The result is not (probably cannot be) perfect (see additional comments below, where I mention the issues), but I think it's an entertaining fun watch from the good old late 80s, when one of the best shows ever started.
Personally I consider the pilot episode of TNG as a rather weak and strange one. The introduction of the super being Q, the ridiculous look of Farpoint station and the jellyfish aliens, the terrible mask of Worf... etc. Still it does have a nostalgic value to me and was fun to spend time with again.

How the intention was achieved:
1. deinterlacing (to get rid of the stripes) and recoloring (to get rid of the pinkish overall color)
2. reframing EVERY scene of the movie to make it fit to the widescreen format. Only very few times the center could be used. Some parts had to be zoomed and additionally cut to not chop off heads.
3. editing

Hardware and software information:
video: Avisynth (for deinterlacing), Virtualdub (for cropping, deinterlacing of a few scenes, framerate changing (from PAL to NTSC), recoloring, creating lagarith video, black level correction, Jasc Paint Shop Pro for image creation and alteration, Sony Vegas for editing and reframing, CCE for m2v creation
audio: headac3he to create stereo audio, which I used as workfile, cinematize pro for 5.1 ac-3 to wave conversion, adobe audition for PAL to NTSC audio conversion, Sony Vegas for 5.1 creation
ripping and DVD extraction: dvd fab decrypter, pgcdemux
subtitles: subrip, subtitle workshop
DVD authoring: DVD lab pro, Jasc Paint Shop pro for images, Adobe Audition and Sony Vegas for audio

Additional Comment:
This release is not (and maybe cannot be) perfect. Here are the known issues:
To turn 1.33:1 to 1.78:1 meant to sacrifice more than 20% of the visible image from top and bottom. This results in:
big faces, some blurry images, additonal needed cuts, if reframing would chop off heads.
Because of the overall rather bad image quality of the DVD source there is also in some scenes:
blurriness, a bit of stuttering, slightly visible noise pixelation, slight flickering
The original comes with a lot of video imperfections and I was not able to correct them all. The deinterlacing filters did cause some stutter and flicker in a few scenes.

Time needed for the edition: 2 weeks
other persons involved: AvP (cover art), Uncanny Antman (surround enlightment)

IMAGES:
kickass cover art by AvP (download here):


downloadable from fanedit.info through Rapidshare. If there is enough interest I can launch a torrent.

boon23 said:

other persons involved: Uncanny Antman (surround enlightment)

Click to expand...

Credit for doing so little! :lol:

This woke me up this morning! Proper versions of the pilots beginning with TNG... I thought these were some time off!

I'll download this straight away. I''m a big TNG fan. Thanks, boon.


EDIT: Actually, come to think of it, I have this pilot from the TNG movies' collection on DVD. If forgot that it included the pilot along with the other two-parter episodes. That fills the screen on exact scan with no sidebars.

I don't get it. Why not just use that as your source?

Cool!

I see that you don't care for the snoozefest Broken Bow either?

Enterprise could never please me. And for this project it was not fitting anyway because it was a 45 minutes episode and already 16:9.

I'm glad to see that Wesley (set phasers to kill) has been removed

boon23 said:

This release is not (and maybe cannot be) perfect. Here are the known issues:
To turn 1.33:1 to 1.78:1 meant to sacrifice more than 20% of the visible image from top and bottom. This results in:
big faces, some blurry images, additonal needed cuts, if reframing would chop off heads.
Because of the overall rather bad image quality of the DVD source there is also in some scenes:
blurriness, a bit of stuttering, slightly visible noise pixelation, slight flickering
The original comes with a lot of video imperfections and I was not able to correct them all. The deinterlacing filters did cause some stutter and flicker in a few scenes.

Click to expand...

Boon, I really have to labour this point a bit. There is a 16:9 version available. It's from the TNG movie collection.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Trek-Gener ... 489&sr=8-3

Am I missing something? I really don't see why you had to recrop a 1.33 :1 source, because as you yourself say the picture looks pretty bad.

I'm not trying to **** on your edit. As you know, that's really not my style. I'm just bringing this up because if you really do love these pilots and want to make your edit perfect you'd want to know about a possible improved source. I'm probably failing to understand something here, as usual.

the link you gave contains no 16:9 versions. 16:9 versions do not exist to my knowledge.
All episodes exist only in 4:3.
The DVDs you mentioned here contains all double episodes of TNG in the same bad interlaced 4:3 quality that I have. So my goal is what it was, to create a trimmed widescreen version of the pilot episode of TNG.
I am still sure I used the best source available for my project.

Well, they play as 16:9 on my TV. I've put it on exact scan, and I even checked on another television. Encounter at Farpoint looks perfect.

Seeing as you own the original, do you want me to see if I can rip it and upload it for you, just so you can check it?

I hope you don't think I'm trying to cause trouble. I just think you'd want your edit to look as good as possible because I know you're a perfectionist. I'm just trying to help in my own limited way. :-(

EDIT: Well, I'll try in another player. I may be wrong, but it looks perfect in my Pioneer blu ray player.

If I'm wrong, I'll issue a retraction immediately.

well, it is absolutely possible that I missed this release - I never ever heard of it at all (and it would make this fanedit obsolete). Could you maybe with womble create a sample and let me see it for myself?

My blu ray player has a mode that blows up 4:3 automatically. It does so pretty much perfectly, and no matter what I did to my TV I couldn't make it look like 4:3. I had to google it, and there's a setting in one of the menus that turns it off. I didn't even know it was there.

I'm really sorry for this, boon. I feel like a microbe. :-(

accprding to this: http://moviemaniaoutlet.com/products/St ... tion-.html
it's a 4:3 release.

*edit*
all good. Although i was jsut starting to get seriously frustrated about having wasted so many hours, on the other hand excited about true widescreen pro versions, which unfortunately don't exist.

Yeah, it is unfortunate indeed. I was convinced that I had a proper widescreen one. :-( Many people haven't heard of these releases, as you say, which is a shame, as they're brilliant for Star Trek fans because they edit two-parters into a continuous movie, which is how I like to watch them.

Oh well, moving on. Does anyone else think Q looks like the Firefox logo when he's dashing around in space?

Captain Khajiit said:

Does anyone else think Q looks like the Firefox logo when he's dashing around in space?

Click to expand...

absolutely

I'm curious if any scenes from the series' last episode "All Good Things..." could have fit into the pilot (such as Lt. Yar showing Capt. Picard the Enterprise for the first time, Picard taking over command, or O'Brien and Data meeting in Engineering) but then I also thought that might stick out as there was a real-time seven year gap between shootings.

Voyager had a similar episode in "Relatively", where Seven of Nine is the one who jumps back in time to a pre-pilot Voyager with Capt. Janeway first coming aboard ship. The footage in that didn't seem obviously all that different although part of that might have been that with the exception of Janeway and Lt. Carrey there were none of the immediate main cast involved- just like the crew in the pilot episode at first.

Watching this on my computer DVD player, it looks like the 16:9 is elongating the details within the picture ever so slightly. I mean really slightly. But it's there, I promise.

I tried to be as close to the original AR as possible. Could you post a comparison, where you think the image was stretched?

I didn’t care for the reformatting, I have no problem with 4:3 when it’s the original aspect ratio. But regarding the actual edit factor, this was much, much better than the original. The removal of Wesley and Riker/Troi was very welcome. However, I think the final scene between Picard and Dr. Crusher should have been excised, as the conversation refers to events that are no longer in the story, so it feels weird and puzzling and is the one moment that makes apparent something is missing.
Overall, another fine outing by Boon! 8/10.

bleujayone said:

I'm curious if any scenes from the series' last episode "All Good Things..." could have fit into the pilot (such as Lt. Yar showing Capt. Picard the Enterprise for the first time, Picard taking over command, or O'Brien and Data meeting in Engineering) but then I also thought that might stick out as there was a real-time seven year gap between shootings.

Click to expand...

I tried to do a Farpoint re-edit myself once before it became too time consuming. I looked at including the past material from All Good Things, but ran into problems. While I could start the episode nicely by fading into the Picard/Yar shuttle ride, including Picard's speech at the podium became a bit of a nightmare as cutting out the jeerings of Q's courtroom crowd made the scene too jarring, and it didn't make any sense to leave them in. Saying that I'm pretty much a beginner at this and a more experienced editor may have been able to do it.

My aim as it were was similar to Boon's. Either removing Wesley entirely, or if that wasn't possible making him as much of a background extra as possible. Also I tried to remove evidence and references to Troi's empathic powers and her role as Counsellor, with the result that she came off looking like she was standing in for Riker as First Officer before he arrived.