Roseanne on LAFF looks weird...

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by PaulKTF, Oct 30, 2016.

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  1. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I'm watching Roseanne on LAFF and it has this weird look to it as if it's been put through a filter to make it look like it was shot on film instead of video tape.

    I've never seen the show look like this on any other station it's been re-run on. It's a little distracting. I don't think it has anything to do with it being in HD, but who knows?
     
  2. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Just tuned to LAFF. Yeah, it's nothing short of awful. Who thought this was a good idea?

    Do the Mill Creek DVDs have the smooth and fluid look of videotape?
     
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  3. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    The Mill Creek DVDs look like video tape (or like the show is supposed to look). :)
     
  4. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    Did they stretch the image to fit the screen?
     
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  5. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    A little, yeah.
     
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  6. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    That always makes shows look weird to me.
     
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  7. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    It does look kind of weird. I don't know why they didn't window box it.
     
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  8. Lord Summerisle

    Lord Summerisle Forum Resident

    Thread is useless without pics. :oops:
     
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  9. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    You'd have to see it on TV to really see how bad it looks. I don't know if screenshot should really show how weird it looks.
     
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  10. Vahan

    Vahan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Glendale, CA, USA
    Well, "Inherit the Wind", the last episode in this marathon is playing, and it looks proper. It doesn't look jerky.
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    It's always sad when non-technical people make bad decisions to screw up video images, especially for re-release. The Roseanne show was a straight NTSC 525-line 30-frame show, and I think the first few seasons were even all-analog. I think they went to Digital Betacam around 1994 or so, but still shot with analog cameras at ABC Sunset & Gower. The original master tapes should look no worse than they did 25 years ago, and they don't need any additional processing -- just some minor noise reduction and maybe a little bit of color-correction to clean up any camera matching problems.
     
  12. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    These LAFF re-runs are the first time I've ever seen it look really awful like this. I don't know if it's Carsey-Werner's (the distributor) fault or what, but whoever screwed around with it really messed up.

    Like I said, the show looked fine on every other cable or local broadcast station that's aired it in the past 20 years (including the early season episodes).
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2016
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  13. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    Do other shows look weird on LAFF? How do the commercials look?
     
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  14. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Commercials look okay. I don't really watch any other shows on that channel so I can't comment on them.
     
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  15. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    I was just wondering if LAFF is just a crappy channel. Seems to be inconsistent at the very least.
     
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  16. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I think it has to do with the masters they got from Carsey-Werner.
     
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  17. Joseph.McClure

    Joseph.McClure Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    Night Court looks terrible on LAFF.
     
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  18. The Hud

    The Hud Breath of the Kingdom, Tears of the Wild

    I am glad I don't have this channel.
     
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  19. O Don Piano

    O Don Piano Senior Member

    LAFF's other programming looks better than "Roseanne". The shows look like 3rd generation 6-hour VHS recordings but at least they retain that videotaped sitcom look. "Roseanne" indeed looks like someone futzed with it. Looks like it's trying to be film, and looks bad. It's that way on some of Antenna's Johnny Carson episodes.
    Why? It looks ridiculous and cheap!
     
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  20. Hymie the Robot

    Hymie the Robot Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Could be your local? Pretty sure LAFF locally here in Tampa doesn't stretch. ME tv does stretch, a little, but the picture looks so much better on old shows. I am no video expert for sure but just curious if it could be a bitrate thing, or maybe I am comparing old shows shot on film vs the ones shot digital? ME just consistently looks better than LAFF by a large margin here in Tampa OTA.
     
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  21. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Hmmm Could be, I'll ask them. :)
     
  22. Joseph.McClure

    Joseph.McClure Forum Resident

    Location:
    Memphis, TN
    MEtv is miles ahead of LAFF in picture quality here in Lexington, KY. LAFF is virtually unwatchable.
     
  23. drmark7

    drmark7 Forum Resident

    MAMA'S FAMILY on Me-tv was the first show I'm aware of that has the video to film process applied to it. (I think this is mentioned in another thread here somewhere.) It doesn't look TERRIBLE. But... "Why?..." I think the response (excuse) was that the studio that provided it did so (paraphrasing) "to present the best available quality." (!!!!?????!!!!)

    Then there is the recent transformation of Me-Tv to ALL WIDESCREEN. I don't know exactly what they have done (process?) But as hard as I look with my own critical eye... It's not that bad! I have no A-B comparisons. Surely there is a bit trimmed top and bottom. Then they must thin down the remaining image a HAIR. There is still a sliver of black bar left and right. But it's not nearly as bad as previous attempts to just LETTERBOX by matting off the top and bottom of the "square" image. I'm surprised that more has not been written on this as it has affected such GIANTS as "Star Trek" and "The Andy Griffith Show."

    Then there are some other shows seen of late in the AM on Me-TV like PETTICOAT JUNCTION and THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES that now have extremely bright and sharp transfers. And while not anything like the look of TIME COMPRESSING from previous generations- flow much more smoothly. Though still show signs during RAPID MOVEMENT of looking "fast." Though nothing like earlier time compressed shows like THE WALTONS that look like old time silent films in their jerky movement during fast scenes. It's almost the opposite of the video to film look- in that it sometimes almost looks like the film image has become like a VIDEO image! Which is what happens when you project film faster than 24 frames a second. Has anyone else noticed this???
     
  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Mama's Family is owned and controlled by Lorimar/WB/Telepictures, but Roseanne is owned by ABC/Disney. The only thing they have in common is the "Laff Channel," so my guess is somebody at that channel is screwing with the master recordings. I personally don't have a problem with the way standard-def shows looked in the 1980s and 1990s, and they are what they are. Anybody trying to apply a "film look" to them is out of their minds.

    There are many variations of 4x3 -> 16x9 conversion. Some just do a straight blow-up, but the problem there is you lose 10% of the top and 10% of the bottom. You're better off zooming in and tilting up to preserve headroom, which is what I call the "cut 'em off at the knees" method. There is always the "partial sidebox" approach, where they blow up the image slightly to create a 14x9 image (which the BBC used for a few years), providing a slight side matte and less of a blow up. And then there's the "funhouse mirror" approach, where they continuously stretch out the pictures on the side, so the image fills the screen but doesn't lose anything top and bottom. The problem is that when somebody moves left to right in the frame, they'll squeeze or stretch, depending on where they are horizontally. All of these are compromises.

    I think a lot of younger viewers are annoyed by 4x3 programming, because it immediately looks "old" on an HD set. This is no different from the problem in the 1970s and 1980s where audiences generally turned away from B&W programming on a color set. It just dates the show and makes it look ancient. I have seen episodes of Cheers and Friends and Seinfeld in 16x9, and they actually hold up pretty well. Funny is still funny, and they weren't made so long ago that the jokes and settings don't still work. Videotape shows will not hold up nearly as well. But 1960s shows are always going to look old just because of the stories, the hairstyles, the clothing, the acting style, the editing pace, and so on. The number of shows from that era that will hold up to a modern audience is very small.

    Motion compensation has actually been around for decades. If a show exists only in standard-def -- I have yet to hear of Petticoat Junction or Beverly Hillbillies ever being remastered for HD -- then they could theoretically process the standard-def master tapes done in the 1980s from film, and just remove the 3/2 pulldown to provide progressive scans, which will uprez better for HD. If you're seeing motion artifacts from time-compression, that's because they're taking a 1960s TV episode that's about 25 minutes long and speeding it up to provide an additional 2-3 minutes of commercial breaks. Time-compression looks awful, particularly when it's done badly. Even when it visually looks OK, everybody is movingmuchtoofast, like that. If it were up to me, I'd say just air the shows in a 35-minute timeslot, run it at 24fps, and don't cut any of the show. But... it ain't up to me.
     
  25. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    LAFF needs to hire Vidiot, stat!
     
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