GamesMaster HD: 4K Restoration

[Roareye]

GM:HD has been something I've bandied back and forth on this forum a few times but there have always been reasons for setbacks. For the last two years (Since showing updates on the VCD Gore Special) I've had computer troubles. Having fully built my new PC last year, and with even greater tools of the trade at my disposal, I felt it was high time I revisited GamesMaster HD.

---------- SO WHAT'S IMPROVED? ----------
This should be the final restoration technique as I'm not sure there's anything else to pull out of the old Standard Definition picture, however I'm on Mark 7 of the technique. Years of development has gone into this, but I honestly think it's such a huge improvement over any standard upscale that it is worth it.

Improvements include more clarity in the picture, details pop out of the screen more than they did in the murky SD upscale. There's also a more stable frame rate, however some of the footage couldn't be recovered (Actual Game Footage still suffers, I am looking into a technique to salvage these, but there's no guarantees). The most obvious and impressive change is the increase in the colour palette, being restored in 4K allows for the restoration process to access more of the colour range and pull a stronger image out of the yellow/red mist that the original footage was often plagued with.
These vary from Season to Season dependant on how well each one was shot, however I have again used the Final Episode to give me a good mix and idea of how to adapt the technique to each Season.

Finally, I had issues with black crush in the Mark 5 previews. Every time I editted the video it looked fine, but on rendering the black levels would "crush" and remove darker detail from the image (at times quite badly). This has now been resolved.

---------- HOW LONG WILL THIS TAKE? ----------
It averages at about 5 hours for every 8 minutes of footage. As you can imagine, that is quite a lot of work time. I'm hoping to have the Final Episode completed within the next two weeks (I work full time on the side) at 4K resolution and will upload the completed episode to Youtube.

---------- WHERE CAN I FIND OUT MORE? ----------
I've been working on a video gaming channel called Reset.TV, so all my GamesMaster HD updates will be available through that channel. We have a website at http://www.resettv.net
Please do Subscribe and click the bell in order to keep apprised of updates. The more likes and subscribes the better (I need another 33 subscribers to get a custom channel URL) and you can go to patreon.com/resettv if you want to help complete the series.

Hope you guys enjoy the preview, please give me any feedback you may have on anything you think doesn't look quite right, as well as positive vibes

I've been working on a video gaming channel called Reset.TV, so all my GamesMaster HD updates will be available through that channel so do Subscribe and click the bell in order to keep apprised of updates.

I've been working on a video gaming channel called Reset.TV, so all my GamesMaster HD updates will be available through that channel so do Subscribe and click the bell in order to keep apprised of updates.

https://youtu.be/vZ-Ja9vcbN8

[K1ngarth3r]

Great to see you still interested in this.

Will follow

[Roareye]

So it's been a long time. Won't go into too many details, but had a couple of hellish years mixed with pushing towards going into the film industry as a career change.
My company, Cyberpunk Studios, is about to launch our first Blu-Ray (Human Cargo) and I'm also working on the remastering and recovery of lost footage to the Super Mario Bros movie from 1993. In all of that I forgot about GamesMaster HD as other things became priorities.

So after a nudge yesterday, I remembered the old gal. I re-copied the DVDs from here to my Hard Drive and began work on remastering the first ever episode of the series in 4K.
Now I'm going to be very clear, this isn't the finished article. I'm posting it here as both a comparison between a basic upscale and the remaster, but also to get feedback on things you guys feel need tweaking on the remaster before it can be considered complete. There are a few things I'm already looking into (including the remaster of the in-game footage as I don't think it works at all there) however both versions are from the exact same video file. That episode was broadcast on Standard Definition cable TV (as such there's a permanent Challenge logo in the corner), recorded onto a VHS tape in someone's home which has introduced some flicker and screen-tearing, then placed on DVD at a 356 x 572 aspect ratio, which means further information is compressed vertically than is necessary. This may have been done to reduce filesize, but either way it's another issue for the remaster to handle.

Personally I think this works very well on the live action segments (again, I'm looking at redoing the game footage). Sadly there's a lot of blocking occurring during movement which is inherent to the DVD source, likely inherent to the Challenge TV broadcast before that, which can't be completely eliminated. However by getting this episode as close to perfect as is possible, I can take it as an example to Future Publishing and request access to the source material (or as close as they have) to clean up the cleanest source possible.

Let me know what you think, and please be constructive with any feedback. These things take time, and any decisions made on my part that you may not like can be worked on. I'm open to ideas for the good of the project, but I'm only human.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jeb8vWjeAU

[SeeNoEvil]

Have you checked out the download area here;

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=270

The first series are an upgrade on the source material you have here, they don't have the challenge logo either.

[Roareye]

Ohhh! Nice!

Is it the NRG files you're referencing? If so I'll download those and use them to make a much better quality remaster. I've been spending some time improving the remaster process too, so now it looks better than this video. By taking the improved remaster and applying it to your new transfers the show should start looking pretty darn awesome again

[SeeNoEvil]

Yes, the NRG files are Nero Burning Rom's own DVD disc image format. You can extract the original files out of each NRG file with a program like 7-zip.

[Roareye]

Episode1-EarlyWork.png (3.05 MiB) Viewed 6925 times

First Version - using the old DVD transfer from several years ago. You can see it's an improvement on the source, however SeeNoEvil has pointed me to the newer transfers downloadable on here.

S1 EP1 Dom Intro - New Transfer.jpg (1.37 MiB) Viewed 6925 times

Here's the remaster on the new transfer. The new transfer was in such a better condition, that the remaster has little to actually fix. Stabilising the image and getting past that VHS 'haze' that muddies every tape was almost all that it needed. You'll also see that the grain detailing is much less egregious and gives the image a much nicer and less in-your-face quality. Mix that with the much improved colour space of the source material and I think it looks bloody lovely indeed.

[Roareye]

So I've been going through the downloaded new file of the first episode and it's mostly much better. However it seems that it was recorded digitally at a time where signal strength wasn't consistent. The key showcase of this is when Dominik Diamond introduces the show, you get a lovely natural look the picture. However it cuts away to the distant crowd shot and on returning the colours are heavily over-saturated, macro-blocking has appeared and pixelation has increased. This is inconsistent throughout the duration of the recording, lending the new recording as something of a hodge-podge of best image quality and blocky - dare I say some shots (not many, to be fair) look better as an image on the old DVD version I used.

To rectify these scenes I decided to work on digital masking and compositing techniques to get an image that serves as a "best of both worlds" while seamlessly removing the Challenge TV logo in any shots that fared better on the older transfer.

Here's an example of one such shot. The old DVD version is murky, has the Challenge TV logo but has a more consistent, clear and smooth image. The new download version of this shot is surprisingly red heavy (when it shouldn't look any different to the prior, clean and clear shot from the same camera angle), over-saturated and detail is damaged by a jagged, blocky edging.
As such I built the third image, the composite of the two, which has the cleaner lines and less pixelation of the old DVD transfer, mixed with the higher colour palette, better contrast and missing Challenge TV logo of the new download version.

Sometimes when I go quiet, it's because I'm working hard at something worthwhile XD

S1 Ep1 Composite Sources.jpg (2.77 MiB) Viewed 6917 times

[SeeNoEvil]

Hi Roareye, I spent months putting the original DVD S1-7 sets together a few years ago. I appreciated this forum has been pretty much dead for a while now, but it's nice to see someone putting in some great work like I did back when the set was first assembled! Well done, looks great!

[houseofpants]

Hey seenoevil, great to see the forum is still around. Your work years ago on the DVD sets were fantastic - must be approaching ten years ago now?

Roareye - agree that it's great to see some continued effort on this. I'll drop you a PM - there may be someone I can point you in the direction of.