Broadcast quality music videos

[IanJRedman]

The best remasters seem to be those done for various BBC programmes, i.e. Doctor Who, Hitchhikers Guide, Monty Python etc. kept in the original aspect ratio, surviving film elements rescanned in HD, video elements cleaned up and properly kept interlaced etc.

The Blu-ray release of the BBC Hitchhiker's Guide wasn't up to par with the other titles you mentioned - it's a fairly straightforward upscale of the VT masters, with quite a severe amount of cropping at the sides, presumably to hide any artefacts at the edges of the picture. The surviving film inserts were re-scanned in HD, but bafflingly, they weren't integrated back into the episodes; the special features include a compilation of HD film footage, but you can't watch it as part of the main show. On balance, it's probably still a better experience than the DVD, just by virtue of being a Blu-ray encode (and I think the Blu-ray has newly restored/remixed sound?) but it isn't spectacular.

By comparison, Doctor Who - The Collection, and Monty Python, are fantastic ground-up restorations, as you say, although the latter is from Network rather than the BBC themselves

[technologist]

One key issue which helped greatly with quality for BBC recordings was the use of a (Weston) clean PAL decoder
- thus PAL footprint was (almost) removed..
and also after a v brief foray into MPEG long GOP the files are straight Rec601 at 270 Mbit/sec.

I think many of the "aspect ratio" errors are due to the fact that the editorial people can " do it" on their lap top -
and then Don't look to see how grotty it looks on a real TV!!!

The Technical issues are also down to some Of a more IT persautaion not realising that a transcode adds artifacts,
and multiple transcode or decode/recode multiplies them

I also think that there is not the same curiuosity (" how does it work" - "lets lift the lid of the box")
in more recent broadcast engineers... and there fewer of them
- because unlike PAL, which required constant "fettling" .... SDI etc does tend to "Just work"
Although unlike PAL what comes out of the camera is not the same as what goes into the TV....
and how many (other than Sat comms engineers) really know the broadcast chain
and the characteristics of its various and plenteous codecs.... concatinated.....
And also what fractional means ........ I think Soho know more about this than Hollywood or NY

With IP whether ST2110 / NMOS or NDI - there is a lot more "Fettling"
and understanding of the transport as " every Packet counts"
and there is an awful lot of other packets getting in the way!