The Many Video Formats of Doctor Who
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- Опубликовано: 7 июн 2024
- Doctor Who, being around for so long, has gone through a format change or two. Here are some of them! (Follow up to this video: • The Video Formats of C... )
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Footage used from:
Doctor Who
Life on Mars
Music:
None, this time.
Theme Song:
"Laura" by M83
Ending Theme:
"Dear Friend, Pt. 2 (We Were Superheroes)" by Michael Freckelton
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:07 A Refresher
03:21 NuWho
06:48 The TV Movie
09:51 An Addendum
11:18 Telecine
12:49 Metadata
15:54 On Location
19:13 Ealing
21:17 Conclusion
Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. 
Развлечения
i think the main reason why series 1 looks so much worse than the rest of the DigiBeta era is that they used much stronger diffusion filters on the lens to subtract from the oversharpened DV look to try an achieve a more ‘filmic’ look, which is what gives it that hazy, smeary effect. It’s still present in series 2, but for series 3 and 4 it is toned down even more and is noticeably sharper.
I think it was a mistake to have used such strong diffusion filters in the digibeta era, as when combined with poor dynamic range, highlights turn into huge white blobs.
I have also attempted to ‘restore’ certain shots from this era using photoshops AI generative fill tool and some colour grading to recover clipped highlights with varying levels of success, but as they are only screencaps, which manually often take a couple hours, if a serious attempt to improve the look of the digibeta era, AI will need to come along way.
I do wonder why I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over ‘fixing’ the look of those episodes, as I don’t necessarily mind it and it can feel a bit more magical to a clean, sterile, super sharp look, but it’s still interesting to mess around with.
I’ve really enjoyed these videos and I’m glad there are other people who are interested in this topic :)
Diffusion! Can't believe that didn't occur to me, thanks for chucking that in!
And yeah I don't hate the series 1 look either. The reason I pulled footage from World War Three is because that diffused look goes a long way to make that two parter feel a bit more gritty and so grounded in "our" reality. It's a fascinating anomaly when compared to the relatively clean look of series 4
@@michaelinlofianother interesting thing about doctor who video formats during this era, was that torchwood was shot in HD from the start of its run back in 2006, 3 years before doctor who. Perhaps this could be part 3? :)
I absolutely love the look of series 1 and series 2
@@michaelinlofi Also, as I remember, Brian Grant, the director of The Long Game, didn't like this filter and didn't use it for that episode. Also, I don't think it was used on the shots of David Tennant at the very end of The Parting of the Ways. Those shots don't quite match those of Billie Piper in the same scene.
I LOVE the look of season 1 so I have to disagree that it needed "fixing" lol
This type of video is literally like the perfect combination of my niche interests.
Same bro
real
Torchwood was HD in its first season while Doctor who was still on video. I read on forums from 2006 that apparently The Mill, who did CG work for Who at the time, would have taken too long rendering effects in a higher resolution, and the show was known for pushing deadlines.
i’ve always thought that for doctor who, they could have shot in HD but then made an SD master copy to do the CGI on. Then later on they could go back to the original HD master tapes and re-render the CGI again. I read on some old forums about shows that were shot in HD but only ever broadcast from SD tapes.
@@emilybk_ I suspect they didn't want to put temptation in the editors' way: All those extra pixels to play with... So much opportunity for re-framing the shots to be *just perfect*... =:o} (This is why I should never be a video editor. They'd have to drag me away from the desk at the end of each session, with me screaming "But I can do it even better! Just give me another hour...!!!")
But also, there are practical things you have to be extra careful with if you're shooting in HD and there's any chance some of it might be seen in HD (or even just zoomed in during post-production, for the SD master): Stuff like extra or more careful detailing on the sets and costumes. I remember RTD at the time saying something like "Let the Torchwood crew learn all those lessons the hard way, and then we'll take what they've learned and apply it to Doctor Who later." (Torchwood was a simpler show with much more use of standing sets, rather than having to build a whole new world every couple of episodes, so issues like "this bit of the set doesn't look good in HD; We need to repaint it or something" wouldn't hold them up as often.)
S1: Pro-Mist filters. Even Billie Piper made a joke on Confidential about how Ernie Vincze was obsessed with the haze created by these camera lens filters. Hey presto...low definition images foe S1.
I remember online discussion of the use of these filters during S1 of new Who (possibly on the Restoration Team forum)
Just found their product page. The 1/8 can look kind of artistically interesting... the 1/2 and "full" filters just look like a smudgy Vaseline mess. At least it's only $60 rather than $600 but... damn.
@@kaitlyn__LI mean it depends on what equipment set up you're using and why, promist filters are a pretty standard thing to have in a cinematographers back pocket as are plenty of other filters
@@g_tterspace I love subtle diffusion filters, I’m just not sure what good their 1/2 and 1 and 2 are. (Edit: I should clarify, for general use like they did in the first season of New Who. Obviously for effect shots, half/double cranked etc type visuals it’s a totally different matter.) DS9 used subtle ones (not sure if actual Pro Mist, but around 1/8) all the time too but that just enhanced the atmospheric lighting rather than blowing-out anyone’s hair.
I actually love the aesthetic. It gives the feeling of colours washing out of objects in an almost figurative sense
Oh my god I think this video was handcrafted specifically for me, literally combines my main interests (filmmaking, old video formats and Doctor Who).
Thank you :)
Now that sounds like a club I'd like to be part of! :-)
This video feels like a combination of a video essey about the history of doctor who and an episode of technology connections. Really loves this!
The one thing I will add with the differences in the modern series post Arri, first off there’s been a few different versions of the Alexa but it appears the show hasn’t upgraded to LF or newer 35 formats (different sensors) and thus look about the same… however the lenses change the look drastically. The Moffat era used primarily Arri or Cooke spherical lenses that have a cleaner look, Chibnall went in for Cooke Anamorphic lenses which have a distinct look.
Yeah, I wouldn't have immediately placed the season 6 image as being an Alexa, but then again, I'm more used to it on film rather than tv sets. Also, the post production and colour grading has changed immensely. 2010 we were still in the blue-grey era of everything, and now we've actually got colours and shit.
Something I noticed recently while watching Voyage of the Damned the other day is that the slow motion sequences towards the end (Astrid driving Max *bling* into the engines) were actually shot on over cranked film instead of a digital slow motion camera. The slow motion scenes look hilariously better than the rest of the episode, something my boyfriend kept saying after being spoilt from being introduced to DW by Nouri's series before I forced him to watch S4 lmao. I have nothing to back this up btw other than just knowing what film looks like compared to digital (All the sparks and highlights have a gorgeous halation to them)
Random Factoid - Day of the Doctor was not shot on an Arri Alexa. It was shot on a Red (I wanna say the Epic or Epic Dragon) as it was allegedly more friendly to shooting in 3D.
That frame rate difference you were describing for the TVM is also why (until last year) the BD copies of the RTD era ran at completely-different speeds than the DVDs: They were upscaled from the US conversions and simply pitch-corrected the audio for the UK market rather than starting from the UK copies.
(As you can imagine, it made using them for watchalong events completely impossible as some people would be reacting to things others wouldn’t see for over a minute at certain points!)
Well that would explain a lot! I've been perplexed for a minute why all my copies of the Tennant years routinely ran at nearly 50 minutes when I knew that it was broadcast for 45 minute blocks. Guess that's why!
@@michaelinlofi It also explains why the music in the episodes (with the speed-change) doesn’t quite match the CD releases (at the actual recorded speed).
It is (by the very nature of the concept) a bigger issue on the longer episodes (such as finales or specials) than it is on the shorter ones, which caused no end of troubles when the episode in question needed fitting into a larger schedule (and did result in more than a few accidentally-overcooked meals!)!
Luckily the recent U.K. Blu-rays fixed that so it’s no longer an issue, the speed thing drove me nuts on those old Blu-rays!
That’s why I was so adamant about ignoring the people who insisted there wasn’t enough of an improvement over the previous BD releases when there oh-so-obviously is!
@@DrWhoFanJ Exactly the same here! I’m working on a big in-depth video about that release actually. I’ve been going through all the episodes with a fine tooth comb and I firmly believe that, although there are still some errors, every single episode is better in that set. I don’t think people realised how much of a knock-on effect the frame rate thing had, it’s little things like panning shots being juddery messes and pitch correction artifacts that really drove me mad. That being fixed combined with the more faithfully recreated captions and credits automatically made it a must buy for me!
Working in Post-production and being a nerdy Whovian has inter-sectioned nicely in this video lol. Great video my dude!
Always wondered what “flying spot” kit did. Nicely explained.
Keep up the good work. Loving these tech-heavy vids and your presentation style.
I've wondered about all these details for years and I'm really grateful for this video finally giving me answers. The most profound revelation to me here, however, was that Life on Mars totally fits the definition of an isekai show and I'd just never thought of it until now lol
The Life on Mars isekai joke was revealed to me in a vision months ago so having an excuse to make it here was fantastic
@@michaelinlofi That joke was what got me to click subscribe btw.
[RETURNS FROM DuckDuckGo] ... OK, now I know what Isekai means! =:o} Thankyou.
@@therealpbristow ditto:-)
They used soft focus lens filters too, and it was recorded in SD at 50i (50 interlaced frames) then they use a snell and Wilcox deinterlace box to make it 25p (equivalent, as it was still 50i but zzz complex) (also it was digital Betamax in SD)
Of course you mentioned much of that. But I was ahead of you. lol. I think they dialed back the soft focus filters after series 1 though.
I'm so glad you mentioned teletext just because I'm really fascinated by it for some reason.
This channel showing up on my feed is a damn gift
This was so interesting! Thanks for uploading 😊
"Best Boy Paul McGann" 😄
Am I wrong
8:13 Can people PLEASE stop losing original Doctor Who recordings??? I'm a DW superfan, a filmmaker and a history nerd and the knowledge that so much of classic Who is lost keeps me up at night! And now I have to reckon with the fact that we don't have the original film from the TV movie as well? AAAH!!!
(Also this video is brilliant! I watch a lot of DW analysis but people rarely talk about behind the scenes things like this. Keep up the great work!)
I know! Drives me mad too!
(Also thanks for watching!)
Reminder that the only reason we have Monty Python's Flying Circus is because Terry Gilliam bought the BBC a fresh set of video tapes to replace them. Otherwise the BBC would have taped over them, just like they did to Spike Milligan and other groundbreaking comedians who influenced the Pythons.
This was great! Perfect balance of niche topics, interesting details, and "wow technology!" :)
Just found your channel! Love doctor who! Loved this video! You sold me on the channel! Thank! You!
Dude. This is fascinating. You can’t go too nerdy for this kind of audience (me).
Just found this, fucken great video man. The technical aspects of shooting are very fun as a DP, and the whole changeover era from mostly-analogue to mostly-digital is such a fascinating time in film and television history. It's interesting though, with new new who being shot on what I can only assume are various Alexa bodies since their introduction, that it's only in the last few seasons that I've actually really noticed it. Having shot on a lot of Arri kit, from the Classic to the Mini LF and 35, I wouldn't have immediately placed the image from season 6 as being from one of their cameras. I suppose it's probably the post production still being very differentiated from a film PP, which isn't where we are now. Watching the new episodes today, and the specials over the summer, I really got the "steaming" vibe from them.
I've been informed in the comments series 6 might not have been Arri and may have still been the CineAlta. IMDb lied to me
I’m glad the people who made the TV Movie stayed true to Doctor Who tradition by immediately destroying the original film cans after scanned them. Very true to the source material
We love a faithful adaptation
Thanks for making this
Great follow-up video. Glad to see you corrected the telecine misinformation. I'd actually love to see _more_ diabolical technobabble. I think it's fun and cool and I'd love to see you talk about the difference between Suppressed Field and Stored Field. I talk about this all the time when hanging out with my friends. Yes, I do have friends. No, they don't care about the difference between Suppressed Field and Stored Field. They just enjoy seeing how enthusiastic I am.
[GIGGLE] So it's not just me, then. =:o}
Perfect timing because I was thinking about this question today
This was extremely interesting. Thank you😊
Fascinating video! I wrote an article ('Light Years') on the history of Who's cinematography for a DWM special a couple of years back and it is really interesting how much has changed creatively and technically over the show's long life. One thing I would add is that the differences in look since landing on the Alexa camera aren't all due to post-production - lens choice is a big part of it, most notably the use of anamorphic lenses in the Chibnall era.
I did debate going into lenses actually bc I did see that, but I had the irrational fear of being figuratively shoved into a locker for going full nerd so I didn't
"Filmed on film, but finished on videotape."
All of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager fans shudder as they hear these words. They know what this means. Alas, TV movie... alas.
The deep depression I feel when I remember we may never get an HD copy of Deep Space Nine. I binged that show hard in quarantine and it actually hurt when I got to the end of it
9:14 If you weren't aware, speeding up NTSC 24fps movies was the method for PAL region encoding home media releases for basically every VHS and DVD release of movies in the 1990's and 2000's. PAL releases of NTSC movies were always sped up by 4%, and so their audio was pitch shifted by about 0.67 semitones. I have a DVD of Titanic, which runs for about 3 hours 6 minuets, whereas the Blu Ray runs at the correct speed for 3 hours 14 minuets. This is the case for literally every DVD I have of a Hollywood movie - runs slightly shorter and sounds slightly high pitch.
Some newer films and programmes have the audio corrected, thanks to improvements in pitch shifting. Loads still don't as they will be using older masters for repeats or the channel can't be bothered.
@@RatzaChewy Interesting, thanks for the insight
[NODS] It was the standard for TV broadcast of movies too. Maybe still is, for all I know... I haven't bothered watching a movie on TV in years. =:o}
All of Dallas ran fast in the UK for this reason.
It came as a shock when actors where interviewed in 625 land and didn't sound like Pinky and Perky.
Aww, I wanted to find out why Series 1 looked so different. I already knew about DigiBeta in general 😅 Good video though! You're getting better at presenting. Also, thank you for sharing my grief at PAL Speedup.
According to the comments, for series 1 it's as simple as diffusion filters on the lens scattering the light
@@michaelinlofi thank you! I did notice those comments a wee while after I left this one.
Subtle diffusion filters can look really nice, you see them a lot on product photos demonstrating the “lume” on watches at night for instance, but the ones in Series 1 were very _very_ strong indeed!
@@michaelinlofi funny you just liked that reply, as I only just noticed DS9 S1&2 (before they got a new director of photography) also uses subtle diffusion filters all the time.
I’d noticed them in dark and smoky scenes over a decade ago, but since this video made me pay more attention to that I’m noticing their effects even in brightly-lit scenes.
Of course, since DS9 was shot on film, the glow is always more subtle than (and “behind”) the highlights or fine detail in people’s hair - even if they’d gone with a more intense filter, which they hadn’t. By contrast, in the first series of New Who, the digital sensor’s dynamic range makes it hard to tell where a highlight ends and the diffusion begins - even if they’d gone more subtle, like they did in S2.
Huh now that you mention it you're right. Kinda wish they'd stuck with it actually, it gave the space station a really nice ambience
@@michaelinlofi yeah. I liked it too. It was subtle enough that in well-lit places you basically couldn’t tell, except for a couple of very bright lights like the red alert in ops or Quark’s bar sign. That DP liked using dry ice for a few scenes as well so it wasn’t always immediately obvious. But in the dark scenes it really adds to the ambience.
I do think the way the DP for seasons 3-7 did things was more colourful and did more interesting things with light and shadow and contrast. But I’m not a fan of how he put grilles in front of lots of the lights, which seems to be his ambience effect of choice in lieu of the diffusion.
You were not all the way wrong in defining a telecine as a camera pointed at a film screen. The simplest telecines were just that--a box with a projector at one end, a camera at the other and a little translucent square in between. It accounts for why our collective memory of certain ancient films on TV often conjures grainy, contrasty, juddering images.
relatedly, the moon landing recordings look as bad as they do because the process to convert from slow-scan TV to NTSC was... pointing a camera at a ten-inch video monitor. And then they lost the original slow-scan recordings.
You are describing a Film Recording system.
Conversions from 525 to 625 always resulted in a loss of definition, but graininess is a function of film duplication for fast turnaround news programmes. Sadly, only the news copies were left.
There is a story about a Tele Cine operator who saw there was a hair in the gate, opened the window to blow it away - but forgot he was eating a sandwich.
@@RoyWiggins Recently a tape was found of a Canadian broadcast - first gen - now on YT somewhere !
Excellent job, yet again. =:o}
I have been wondering about these exact things for a long time. Particularly how they even achieved the effect of the 2005 series 1.
Seems for Series 1, it's filters on the lens that diffuse the light going in.
Thanks for watching!
Just to be clear, that PAL speed-up problem isn't only limited to the Doctor Who TV movie. From my experience (I'm not exactly an expert), it seems that basically all PAL movie releases on DVD or videotape have this problem. The first time I actually noticed it was when A View to a Kill was shown on TV. I was very familiar with the theme song and had previously only watched the film on Blu-ray (where this issue - as far as I know anyway - has been corrected), so the increased speed and pitch really threw me off. The running times listed on the back cover are also always a few minutes shorter that the ones listed online. This is especially obvious in dual format DVD/Blu-ray combo releases where the running times are listed separately. NTSC never had this speed-up problem, but their 3:2 pulldown solution wasn't exactly perfect either.
The increased pitch is totally optional for the last 20 years, TV stations can fix that but are fools for not choosing to.
3:2 pulldown is awful for NTSC broadcast but even DVD can store native 24 (23.94) fps. Every HD and streaming platform should figure this out and use it, not 60 or (ugh) 30, which would totally screw up 24.
@@whophd when I last looked into the specs, I'm pretty sure DVD is 50i/60i natively, and the "24p" mode is indeed just 3:2 pulldown from 60i. Though at least the DVD can tell the player about it and the player's deinterlacing can sometimes un-pull-down the footage.
I was looking into whether PAL speedup is an inevitability and getting very annoyed that I might have to rip and re-export my DVDs just to fix the speed. (Frustratingly a lot of speed adjustment tools now automatically compensate for pitch, but that left it too high from the DVD speedup!)
I didn't find anything about a true 24p mode in DVD, just that bodge, and a whole lot of excitement about BD finally having true proper 24p.
@@kaitlyn__L I've mentioned Dallas already.
I miss the look and feel of Series 1-4.
Hi again, many thanks for part two, and even more for the mention. I was not a TK man so can't be specific about those details, VT, I knew :-)
Sorry, further correction needed...
'Click track'? No... Time code, yes. They are different.
There was an audio Control Track on Quad 2 inch machines that tried to get the replay scanning set of four heads, set at an almost 90 degree angle to the tape to match the tracks made during the recording. There was a 'tracking' control that altered the phase of the audio frame rate buzz to get within the range of analogue systems to get the picture to display with no 'tracking errors' - ie noise. There were two stages of analogue timing correction to get the monochrome image set to the same frequency as the rest of the BBC's pulse chain, the Amtec ( on n Ampex machine ) and the Colortech provided the rest of the timing fixes to get colour to decode. Note, the control track had nothing to do with either sound or the unused video lines.
TimeCode was often used for synchronising an external audio tape, for 'radio simulcasts' in stereo sometimes, but mostly it was used to ensure tape machine knew where they were in terms of recorded time on the tape. This code was later used for 'Sypher' SYPHER is “SYnchronised Post-dub Helical-scan and Eight-track Recorders”. Also, the producer would have Umatic cassettes ( or Shibaden1/2 inch open reel) tapes with the timecode burnt onscreen for use with choosing shots. They would take a list of numbers to an edit session. and the poor playin man, me, had to find the right shot on the right tape. This code WAS recorded on video lines, but never transmitted back then - it looked like Teletext, because it was a very similar system. You can see it these days as a long of dashes at the top of some archive recordings.
Oh, there is one more thing to add about the lost lines.
When 1inch broadcast 'Helical Scan' machines, 'Omega Wrap', simply put, there was a gap in the tape path where the heads switched over - that gap was adjusted to fall in the lost lines area. There was no gap on a Quad machine, but a helical machine would record an entire picture on one 'wrap', so it could do still frames.
Loads of info is at tech-ops.co.uk/ and at www.vtoldboys.com/
Hi! Nice to see you again, always happy for the clarification.
The phrase "click track" was derived from my understanding of the comment you left on the previous video:
"The only 'Data' recorded was control track, basically an audio track of clicks at 50Htz to lock the system mechanically to the electronic aspects of the video."
I did debate describing it as a short burst waveform at 50 Hz, but I wasn't sure if that would be walking further away from the reality of it so I went with the extreme base of what you said: "track of clicks = click track". Possibly a bit too literal but it's good to have the clarification one way or another.
@@michaelinlofi you see, that term is already used in the system. I couldn't let your esteemed followers enter a swamp of confusion :-)
Oh I do know the actual meaning of click track, I play to them myself when I work on the music I occasionally upload to this channel. So I can understand why you'd want to clarify that :)
About telecine, you probably stumbled upon definition of type of camrip, where camrip is hidden camera, ans TC is camera placed more freely to shoot the projected movie.
I’m a Doctor Who fan but probably a bigger fan of stuff like video engineering and film restoration so this is really cool
I'm both :-)
This was a really good video! I discovered the main reason behind Series 1s definitive look. They shot on Mini DV tape and cameras! If you look at the old Whospy photographs, they have one of a box of Mini DV tapes.
I’m glad to see more videos like this! Boy do I wish all of Classic Who could have been shot on film, it would have looked incredible today.
Oh no oh no. The video look is TOTALLY underrated by the internet, due to garbage uploads. I’m just restoring the Caves of Androzani regeneration right now and will upload it to my channel to prove that point. What they worked with in 1969-1989 was excellent technology, designed to capture and recreate reality. (Then a ton of computer geeks who knew nothing about broadcast engineering mangled it in 4 or 5 ways).
I definitely wish a lot more of Doctor Who was on film, but some of its most striking shots do happen to be a result of video work. The CSO'd shot of the end of alternate Earth in Inferno, Episode 6 leaps to mind. It's low-tech, but that shot scares the hell out of me.
@@whophd I was the/a VT engineer recording Caves. I can assure you it was alright leaving me. What I have seen on iplayer is wonderful though, almost as if I was looking at a Barko monitor displaying the studio feed.
"The Sontarran Experiment" was the first DOCTOR WHO episode this Yankee saw (Sunday mornings on Long Island's PBS station), so I was very impressed that the BBC shot the entire thing on videotape on location! Everything else the BBC had put out that American television showed was the "video for studio, film for location" style That seems so alien to American television viewers, and which Monty Python mocked by having Graham Chapman warn everybody else that the room they were in was surrounded by film...!
Of course, it was made easier by the arc only having one location-Ye Old Rock Quarry that serves as so many alien worlds on that show.
Is that sketch on RUclips
Even as a kid (in America) i noticed the difference between Cheers (film) and almost every other sitcom (video tape). So the Doctor Who style wasn't alien to me, especiallysincei watched a lot of BBC stuff back then. In fact, part of the reason i stopped watching Doctor Who when McCoy took over was the switch to all video- the outdoor scenes no longer had that atmosphere.
@@kdkseven - what do you think of NuWHO? Does the HD video make things look "film-like" enough that it plays for you?
@timeliebe Not really. It looks fine, although everything looks too glow-y. But honestly, i only liked Eccleston and Tennant, and stopped watching early into Matt Smith. And even the Tennant years i find problematic with his whole relationship with Rose. She was great, but that relationship set the stage for all the dumb relationship stuff that came later, so i retroactively kind of hate it though i liked it at the time. I've never re-watched any of the new Who, and doubt i ever will. I watch the old stuff all the time. All that is to say, i don't really like the look of any of it after Colin Baker.
@@kdkseven Ah, Colin Baker... That coat could have used a diffusion lens or two! =;o]
The situation with the 1996 film reminds me of Babylon 5, shot on film, but all the composite and CG work was done for TV. Hence why that classic show's "Remaster" is in a 4:3 aspect ratio with the wholly live action scenes using rescans of the original film, cropped to the aspect ratio, and the CG shots are upscaled rather than horrendously cropped and blown up like they were for the 16:9 DVD release. Unfortunately this also means the composite shots see a noticeable dip in image quality as they had to upscale those, not so bad when someone is firing a gun, butnot so nice on long shots, for example, Sheridan looks weird when he's falling out of the exploding tram.
Seeds of doom was the first episode of Dr Who I watched sometime in the late 70s when I came across it on PBS. (At a guess I think around 79) OMG, I just did some googling and actually figured out the date when I first saw Dr Who, March of 1979. So I have been watching the show for about 45 years.
I like the ashestic of the old doctor and the transition. It signalled a new era and a new decade.
The RTD 2 era is shot in 4k, the first era to do so.
Wow, I could have sworn that a telecine machine works the way you described initially. I think it must be quite a common misconception
It's a common shorthand way of describing the process, and it literally *was* the way telecine was originally done, before they figured out better ways.
@@therealpbristow for a few months... possibly.
I’ve been looking for easier to understand info on this for ages
I love how crusty s1-4 look, just actually reminds me of how it would look on old CRT telly's back then 😂
AH!!! no it didn't look crusty ! We spent hours ensuring tv was as close to studio output as possible, but, people in their own homes never set their controls correctly.
I didn't have a problem with your previous telecine explanation. The simplest ones _were_ projection screens and TV cameras in a special box together to keep the framing right.
Though the flying spot one you described isn't _that_ far removed either - it just gets rid of the projection stage, and basically runs the film through the middle of the TV camera. All TV cameras as the time used scanning CRT image sensors, before the advent of CCDs.
In a regular camera light passed through the lens, through the photomultipliers, and then was scanned by the beam. In the telecine, it was kind of turned inside out, there was no lens.. but as far as the electron beam "knew" it might as well have been scanning an image from a lens.
The optical distortions eliminated by removing the projection stage is of course significant, and explains how many telecines looked relatively high quality, but nevertheless the components and electronic function are still basically that of a video broadcast camera.
One thing about me is if I get something wrong I'm possessed by the need to clarify myself. Between that and Simon Anthony finding the last video (tortysoft in that comments section) I felt it would be bad form not to correct it
@@michaelinlofi providing the extra detail is definitely good for the viewers, especially those who didn’t know about CRT image sensors or telecines!
After all, it is a specialised device and it’s not like you insert a full camera body in most of them. Just like telescope “cameras” are usually just a sensor, not a full camera body.
I just don’t want you to think you were 100% wrong - after all, the CRT image sensor is the same sensor. It’s just used in a different, more specialised way in a telecine box over a broadcast camera :)
And I especially didn’t want you to leave with the impression that video cameras used any drastically different technique. They use a “flying spot” scanning beam just the same, in all cases perfectly in sync with the emissive beams in the TVs watching them in fact!
Thanks :-) @michaelinlofi . When I matched the FR - camera at a projector - films with the 525 to 625 conversions for recolourisation experiment - not only was the framing wrong, but also the actual shape !
In simple terms though, that will do. I'm delighted that more of the technology is known about now.
I was a VT, not a TK engineer. I hardly ever used a TK machine, and only once on air...
It sounds to me like you were mistaking a telecine for those home film-to-videotape transfer devices that your dad bought to transfer the family's old 8mm/Super-8 movies to video.
They work pretty much exactly the way you described in your original piece - you project the movie onto a mirror or a screen which your video camera is pointed at.
In the early days that was exactly how telecine was done, but obviously the process got refined over time.
If anyone wants to look at a great fan remaster, I highly recommend Owen Davies' 4K upscales of the RTD era on RUclips. I'm really not fond of AI upscaling on film sources (ala the nightmares that are the new James Cameron UHDs), but I give upscaling video a pass and Owen in particular has done a better job at making the first four series stand up today (especially S1) than the BBC's two attempts at upscaling those seasons themselves. They look genuinely impressive while also remaining faithful to the original image (as in facial features and environments aren't scrubbed away, the colour grade is intact etc). He does great work.
See, I'm not a fan of AI upscaling in general a) because I have an aversion to the technology in general and b) I saw how AI upscaling massacred Inland Empire. But with that being said the upscaling work done by some for Doctor Who does fascinate me. I'd never be interested in it being an official release (I believe it's much more authentic to release it as it was made, the remasters for the classic Blu Rays are perfect in my mind) but it's a fun alternate look all the same
@@michaelinlofi That is totally fair. We've seen the ugly side of it with how Cameron has used it on Aliens and True Lies. I've seen good examples of it where it looks great and not weird/fake and 9/10 it's because the source is video rather than film. where I'm half and half about it. Avoid using it on film (especially if you already have the camera negatives you can easily scan with your eyewatering amount of money, Jimmy Cameron), but have a person who knows how to use it well on a video source.
Also how awful is the picture on Peter Jackson's Get Back?? It's a travesty and genuinely painful to look at. All that 16mm grain gone.
@@nighttimevideoaliens looks fine
@@michaelinlofiI’ve done a ton of work with it in the past year and can confirm that it’s easy to screw it up, especially with default settings. In fact I’d almost always be on my 3rd or 4th change of settings, minimum, before sharing the results with anyone.
Most people don’t use the non-AI toolkit of video tools anyway, so why expect them to know how to use the AI toolkit? Quite apart from the fine-tuning settings, you have to make a decision between several different models before even starting. And then there’s the massively-underrated art of choosing an upscaling ratio - AI has added a lot more time and effort, basically. Surprised?
The tech isn't quite there for an official release just yet.
There are too many artefacts with low quality footage.
You could use multiple different settings & models then combining different elements into complete frames on a shot by shot basis but that's far more work than the BBC would wanna do.
That being said, all things Ai are improving rapidly so I expect it won't be too long before the tech is ready for Prime-time.
And I fully expect the BBC are itching to improve these episodes as soon it's it becomes practical.
Am I the only one who thinks that 2005-2006 Who looks the absolute best (though I am otherwise partial to Classic and Capaldi)? Like, it just feels so much more welcoming and homey and cozy than everything past 2010.
I dunno about "best", but it does give the season a unique cosiness that I certainly don't mind. =:o}
It wouldn't fit with far-from-cosy the tone of the Moffat era, though (which I love!).
@@therealpbristow yeah I can see that
what’s the tune in your intro? been bugging me a LOT lol
Laura by M83!
First time viewer.
I can remember reading a book in the 80’s that claimed that telecine was using standard tv cameras as you said in your explanation. I wonder if it was once done this way or if the book was just trying to keep things simple so it didn’t go into a detailed explanations?
A bit of both, probably. =:o}
No way!! I swear I’d heard that telecine explanation many, many times, over many years, before I watched that vid of yours! I even remember myself kind of nodding in agreement while you were saying it and thinking, “wow, for a young-looking person, this kid knows his sh1t!”. So I almost fell off my chair just then when I heard you say what you said! This is seriously up there with mind blowing moments like the first time I were told, in Year 9, that the bible was just a metaphor and none of that stuff actually happened for real. 🤯
Year 9? Most kids age 10 were poking holes in it at my school, just part of being rebellious (and the natural next stage after doubting Santa Claus).
@@whophdi didn’t say it was the first time I’d ever thought it. It was the first time I heard it from a teacher in Religion class at a catholic school! 🤣
@@whophd I am Santa by the way.
Lovely stuff. 'Everything at Lime Grove and Television Centre was recorded on videotape' - there were oddly a few that weren't because the camera output was immediately telerecorded rather than being recorded to video: about 9 episodes if memory serves, mostly from the Troughton era (and a couple of Hartnells). Wheel in Space 5 and 6 were done this way, I think.
It's also mad to think that the BBC were making productions on video for nearly twenty years (1936-1956, war excepted) before they could record them on videotape!
Oh yeah I covered the ones immediately telerecorded to film in the original video very quickly. I believe an episode of The Mind Robber was done the same way too
I agree, I am very cool and very sexy, and The Seeds of Doom is one of my favorite episode ever made
You ever see a video title and just think yes! Yes! Finally somebody is talking about it!
Great video! This stuff fascinates me. I read RTD didn’t want to film Doctor Who in HD because of issues they faced on Torchwood with people not being experienced, do you know why people need experience to film in HD? It’s a shame because I read a comment from years ago that someone said DW would never be upscaled in future anyway so why does it matter but fast forward all these years later and DW has been upscaled not once, but twice and yet still doesn’t look great. RTD said the Tardis would look bad in HD with its little flaws but someone made a great suggestion that they could have filmed in HD and still released the episodes in SD because video being compressed from HD down to SD would still look way better than filming from straight SD. RTD also said it was filmed in SD because of the amount of CGI being used would take longer to process but Torchwood has a lot more CGI aliens than The Sarah Jane Adventures for example so that still confuses me.
I think it's important to take into account the disparity in computer power between today and back then. What we can render in a couple of seconds in Blender Eevee on a decently cheap laptop that anyone could have these days would have taken a lot longer with a much less effcient render pipeline and need to be done on a large and expensive render farm 20 years ago, which at a TV studio would have had to have been divided between several competing shows all needing render time. Add in the risk of effects shots needing to be redone and that would mean taking up that same amount of render time all over again. Put that together and basically you want to be minimising the computational time your effects will need in order to get things in under deadline.
Furthermore with digitally stored and edited video, you need a lot of RAM to hold video in memory while editing, and the more RAM you're using (and the more stuff you have to shove into the page file), the slower things run. And there's pretty much an upper limit on how much you can hold in your suite at the same time based on RAM + page file size before you crash the computer. So when it comes to editing shows on computer working with a lot of footage, working in a situation where you have to do a lot of takes or reshoots is going to build up to not a pleasant experience editing. The more pixels you have, the bigger the file sizes, the more of a slog editing is.
And as years go on, computers get cheaper and more powerful so dealing with HD in both regards is less of a problem, so for us these are fairly trivial things.
The HD pipeline just looks different. People get experienced at doing things in a good looking way in SD, then they look a bit cheap and nasty in HD. The 2009 specials were shot in the same way as they used to but with a new camera (basically what you're suggesting), and despite the images being more crisp the effects look noticeably cheaper than in the SD RTD era.
That's why they redid the entire visual pipeline for the Moffat series.The transition from analogue to digital SD needed a similar 3-5 year period of adjustment as well.
@@kaitlyn__LI did note that when I last watched Planet of the Dead. It occurred to me that the first seasons being rendered in SD hid some of the jankiness in the effects work of the time bc once I saw them in HD my first reaction to the stingrays was "oof that looks worse than the Adipose"
Could you share the sources for those whom desire to learn more?
OK so first, great comment, kind of a big L on me not actually writing those down in the first place. Because i neglected to do so I'm gonna have to run this from memory so here goes.
The information on the cameras that the modern run of Doctor Who was shot on largely comes from IMDb, as does the fact that the 1996 film was shot on 35mm film. There are likely better sources for those out there however, likely in behind the scenes documentaries or something of the likes.
Most of the information relating to the shooting of location, studio and model work of the Classic run in the back half of the video comes from TARDIS Wiki.
The description of the telecine process and the empty videotape lines were adapted from a comment left by Simon Anthony on the previous video in this series. He worked for the BBC so I trust his insight.
In short, a lot of IMDb, wikis and occasional comments from people who happen to see my videos. This is not nearly as exhaustively researched a video as my Talons of Weng Chiang one for example, which does have all its references listed
"famed isekai Life on Mars" took me OUT
I'll be honest that's my favourite joke I've written for this channel in a long time
S2 is weird cus some episodes are more like S3/4 but some are like S1 and have that weird fuzz on it.
POV youve found the coolest guy at the party
Electron BEAM!
Me, a lil tired, a lil distracted, watching the entire prequel vid and this:
I don't know what it means yet but I like it
Excited to rewatch later lol!
I wouldn't be suprised if the reason they sped up the TV movie was so that the ambulance chase scene looked faster and more intense!
I don't know much about it all but I heard David Lynch at the time used a video camera like what they used for Series 1, because it looked rough and cheap. It was funny seeing RTD saying they had state of the art tech.
Yeah that’s the sad part - Sony offered HD cameras to RTD for Series 1, and he could have just filmed with it and post-produced in SD. That would have been the SAME effort for better results, and spectacular re-releases 15 years later.
SD has been used properly for “films”, but it’s so incredibly rare. 28 Days Later was the famous example - they used a DV camera. But I think it was able to shoot in progressive mode.
As always - if you know what you’re doing, the quality of the camera hardware matters a lot less.
For Inland Empire?
With the classic era u can tell the difference between studio scenes and location scenes in a lot of serials but it never really took me out of the plot cause I just love watching the show in general withere it’s classic era or modern era my first full rewatch of the classic era is Jon Pertwee cause from him forward have all been recovered and available to watch for free on Tubi unlike William and Patrick who still have incomplete serials but are still available on Tubi also just the 1996 movie isn’t available on Tubi even though I have 2 copies of the movie due to it being the only thing Paul mcgann did for the show so it got used as the apart of the doctors revisited specials done as part of the 50th anniversary celebration so now I have that copy and the stand alone release I already had
I hate that the first season is so glowy
They made film copies of Classic for international broadcasters by pointing a film camera at a screen I believe, so that might be where you got that idea about telecine.
P.S. Please pronounce 'era' the non-American way and not like 'error'. That would be an error!
Yes, that's the FR system, 'Film Recording'. TK is the other way round :-)
When i saw the thumbnail, personally my brain thought "oh another video of a nostalgia blind person going on about how every single bit of the rtd era was amazing and uncriticisable" but i watched the video and it's actually very well done technical information. good job.
i feel it's important to mention something you left out which is that the SD look of the rtd era was according to a lot of sources largely to cut costs on cgi rendereding and make the lower quality cg fit in better, but besides that it's a very good video.
also personally i think the capaldi era is the peak of the show's look. series 5 and 6 have that beautiful cinematic quality to them sure, and the newer series have that wide and modern look too them with some distinct and intresting lighting. but the capaldi era is that perfect level of clean simplicity for me. it's beautiful without trying too hard to look so. it's not screaming "look at how pretty we are" in my face, it just is pretty. although the amazing colour grading in the 60th does run for the prizee.
I can see the vision with the Capaldi era, especially series 10. They also had some fantastic directors for that era, I really want to do a video on why Rachel Talalay is a killer director
Seeing as I am a degenerate video nerd and doctor who fan, I clicked on this video so quicklyyyyy
The Seeds of Doom... It may not be my Favorite? But it was my first Introduction to Doctor Who. (PBS Re-run in the Early 80's. Edited into "Movie" format. Episodes edited together)
For me it's my second favourite, running very close behind City of Death
oh hell yeah, i’ve always wondered about this and lacked the vocabulary to even express my curiosity
i believe based on what i've read the series 1 look comes primarily from a mix of Len types, the fact it was at the time trendy to vaseline certain len's but, im guessing one of the directions, didn't know how to properly apply the technique so it's WAYY ooverused in some shots perticularly in the Rose/Aliens of london/ww3 shooting block. plus differant direction and stylistic techniques than later series's of the show, which might exaserbate the older look
7:40 why we will never get an HD scan of Deep Space Nine and Voyager. They did all the cgi on video to save $.
Ok, you beat me to it
Also, the DS9 film was not archived nearly as well, when compared to TNG, so it’s significantly more difficult to fin/identify the camera footage and match it to the edits.
You may want to mention the only other time film was used in NuWho - the trailer for Season 1 looks excellent, and teased us a picture quality we would not get. Does that season look different on Blu-ray? It’s been reprocessed from camera originals now.
It also has a new audio mix, different to the broadcast (and every repeat we’ve seen) - but that’s a whole kettle of fish that you don’t want to open I bet.
Arri Alexa was used in Series 7 not Series 6 - except for the shots of the house that Amy and Rory moved into. This house was used several times in the 7th series. You can see the definite difference in contrast ratio.
Speaking of contrast ratio, Gen Z’er, are you going to talk about HDR and 4K? RTD2 absolutely shoots on both 4K and HDR, but a couple of Jodie episodes do too - it’s just hard to prove when none of the modern streaming services “own” the content.
Then there’s all the aspect ratio changes as of Jodie’s seasons, and all the 3D and 4K experiments in the Moffat era. The 50th anniversary was shot and stored in stereoscopic HD, and Capaldi’s first season finale was released in 3D (but probably not shot that way). His final episode was released on Blu-ray in 4K HDR.
This makes it a bit like Pertwee’s first episode, an outlier in a higher definition (on home media, only). You should probably talk about all the JNT episodes that contain snippets of HD too, which are glorious to see, and an excellent reason to buy my favourite science-y episodes (the Chris H Bidmead ones) in Blu-ray for the third time, if you’ve bought the DVDs and VHS before.
Don’t be so surprised 24fps film is shown at 25fps in Britain (and Europe, Australia, etc) - this is TOTALLY normal and is just as common as the stupid 2:3 pulldown in NTSC or the 29.97 drop frame speed.
More interesting about the TV Movie is that the visual effects were NOT produced at 24fps (or 23.94 fps) but at 30fps. This is why the puddle outside the TARDIS moves so weirdly.
Re: the Arri Alexa. Bugger! That's what I get for trusting IMDb. Seems to have been right on every other account though...
Re: 4K. I know zilch about 4K HDR formats, even less than my baseline knowledge on analogue formats. For this reason I did not feel comfortable wading into that particular pool.
Re: HD footage from JNT episodes. I did very briefly cover occasions where the original 16mm film was available for rescan in the first video this follows up. Didn't give an exhaustive list, but when I got my season 19 and 20 blu rays I can't stress enough how overjoyed I was at the quality of the location work on The Visitation, Earthshock and The Five Doctors. Allegedly we might be in for a treat whenever season 16 comes to Blu Ray, I've heard tell that the 16mm footage from Pirate Planet still exists...
@@michaelinlofiTPP definitely has the original film. That’s the whole reason "Spannergate" exists after all! (Rescanning the film in HD necessitates recreating any video effects and reoverlaying them over the original film).
@@michaelinlofi At least the Disney app makes it dead easy to see what format you’re watching. HDR 4K from now on.
sorry i will watch video now🖒
I used to be confused over the difference between PAL and NTSC runtimes on movies and TV until I realised PAL is sped up by 4-5%.
This is beside the point but you're so real for the Stalker pfp
@@michaelinlofi Thank you. One of my all time favourite movies. I recently bought the rest of Tarkovsky's movies and need to dive into them.
I’ve always wondered my British shows and commercials look different from shows in America. Watching something like Call The Midwife, for instance, when people move there seems to be a slight distortion and lack of really clear contrast. I wondered if it might have to do with frame rate, since that’s, famously, why the Hobbit movies looked so unusual.
the BBC archives are a Mess
It’s so weird seeing the raw footage and it looks like it was just shot on iPhone Pro Max or something.
DOCTOR WHO 🛸🫶💙💙 ✨🚀🌈 I am always here for
yo that bzzt sound at the start is actually painful way too loud pls compress
Thanks for the comment! I will actually keep that in mind for future videos and make that static a little less aggressive :)
@@michaelinlofi ❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ bless you and thank you :)
Season one of doctor who was still fairly low budget as the BBC didn't wanna spend a ton of money on something that could turn out to be a complete disaster meaning they used cheaper cameras and equipment and stuff
I think why Doctor Who Series 1 (2005) is lower in quality is the BBC didn't have faith it be a success so they didn't use the most expensive cameras.
Honestly i wish they could go back to this aesthetic, the modern era of the show season 10 onwards just looks incredibly strange visually and way more flat compared to the sorta dreamy look the earlier seasons.
Series* 10
I’m very nostalgic for the shitty 2005-2009 quality 😂
I am currently losing my mind as I hadn't realised that technically-speaking, yes, Life on Mars and Ashes for Ashes for that matter are isekai.
I've been waiting for an excuse to make that joke for a while, was delighted when the opportunity fell into my lap here
poggers!
Looks great! I'd love to see you do a review of The Daleks in Colour next. From what I've just found, it seems to be available on Dailymotion, so that shouldn't be a problem
It shouldn’t be. That’s illegal.
I've been thinking about The Daleks in Colour actually, partially because I'd like to use it as a springboard into an exercise I do for myself: if I were forced to edit serials down like that, how would I do it?
@@michaelinlofi That would make for a pretty interesting video - I once tried to make an edit like that for The Ambassadors of Death. I didn't get very far before giving up but I did manage to compress its first part from 24 to 15 minutes. Fun, if anything.
@@DrWhoFanJNot sure how else I was supposed to watch it before Christmas. Why can’t they sign the bit of paper and push the button that puts it on worldwide streaming? This is why I like the Disney+ deal … no more unnecessary delays (for most stuff).
Is it illegal to watch Ncuti do his stint on the Hartnell TARDIS? Because that’s never been released outside the UK either, and can’t be bought or paid for by anyone. Copyright sucks.
@@whophd AAiSaT2023 has never been released inside the UK either thanks to the same reason that version was so much shorter than the original.
And tough. Get the BD release if you want to watch _The Daleks in Colour._ There is no other legal method.
even using taylor's version for the blank space job. 10/10
Has anybody ever done an explanation as to why the BBC used "video for studio, film for location" for so long? Was it a Union thing, where the television broadcasters Union insisted if it was being shot in a studio it had to be done by the television people, but if you were shooting on location the film unions said it had to be done on film? Was it a question of cost that carting film cameras out to a location was just simpler and cheaper than video gear, even after telecine'ing it?
It was, as I understand it, an efficiency thing. Electronic video cameras were not very transportable until the 1980s, so if you wanted to get them out onto the field you needed the broadcast vans. The BBC didn't have an unlimited number of those (hence the necessity of booking their use in advance), so film was by in large way easier to shoot location work with even with the telecine step involved. It was mostly just a question of practicality
@@michaelinlofi - Ironic given that, come the Eighties and Port-a-Paks/Camcorders, video became so much more portable so quickly that shooting Direct-to-Video was exponentially cheaper and easier once you got over the hurdle of buying your gear!
I remember shooting a feature for somebody using 3/4" video in 1983 or '84, how while it weighed a lot it was a breeze compared to the open-reel tape Port-a-Paks and cameras where we had to align the red and blue filters by looking through the viewfinder and using a screwdriver(!), which we used in college in the 1970s. Setting colors via White Balance by pointing the camera at a white piece of paper and pressing a button was comparatively a breeze-and I still think it works better than the later Automatic White Balance that's built-in to set itself.
Of course, it was only a few years after that that S-Video, with significantly higher horizontal resolution than 3/4", and chrominance/luminance separation for more accurate colors, started being sold to "prosumers" (consumers looking to move up into low-end production, like for special-occasion videos, documentaries, or ultra-low budget narrative projects). My then-wife and I invested in a S-VHS camcorder for me because I felt it made more sense than Hi8-in retrospect, I should've gone with Hi8! I did a lot of low-end videos, shooting art galleries, speeches, cheap industrials, and even a stab at a feature or two, using that gear.
@@timeliebe OB vans needed a full studio in a box as well as two video recorders - and they were big and needed lots of power. They could only be easily used where there was a solid power supply, generators would have made a heck of a problem for the sound folks.
Umatics, the 3/4 inch format, came in Low and Highband, but the output was never considered ' Transmission Quality'. I used to reject them on the pre TX tech review.
@@tortysoft - I think it depended on what was being shot and for whom. For the home video market 3/4 or later S-Video was considered acceptable, as it was for industrials and local TV stations. (I remember seeing news crews carry 3/4" during the Eighties, and New York One, the pioneering local all-news network in NYC, shot extensively with Sony Hi8 camcorders for their field stories-I included their use of them in an article I once wrote on "Pro" use of prosumer gear.)
It wouldn't have flown on a network show except in a "This is the best footage we could get" situation-but as we used to joke at VIDEO, VHS is "broadcast quality" if you're showing on AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS!
@@timeliebe My specific BBC knowledge stops around 1990. ENG, electronic News Gathering and indeed "This is the best footage we could get" situation stuff started the rot . The BBC Christmas tapes helped it on a lot by stimulating domestic 'blooper' shows.