Remaster
A remaster is a change in the sound or image quality of previously created forms of media, whether audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic.
This might be as simple as copying a tape for further duplication purposes or might include the actual equalization and processing steps used to fine-tune material for release.
The early DVD era was not much different, with copies of films frequently being produced from worn prints, with low bitrates and muffled audio.
[citation needed] When the first CD remasters turned out to be bestsellers, companies soon realized that new editions of back-catalog items could compete with new releases as a source of revenue.
[2][3] Many remastered CDs from the late 1990s onwards have been affected by the "loudness war", where the average volume of the recording is increased and dynamic range is compressed at the expense of clarity, making the remastered version sound louder at regular listening volume and more distorted than an uncompressed version.
[1] Audio effects are also added or enhanced, as well as surround sound, which allows the soundtrack elements to be spread among multiple speakers for a more immersive experience.
[7] These three negatives were scanned individually into a computer system, where the digital images were tinted and combined using proprietary software.
[7] Restoring the movie made it possible to see precise visual details not visible on earlier home releases: for example, when the Scarecrow says "I have a brain", burlap is noticeable on his cheeks.
Shows that were made between the early 1980s and the early 2000s were generally shot on film, then transferred to and edited on standard-definition videotape, making high-definition transfers impossible without re-editing the product from scratch, such as with the HD release of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which cost Paramount over $12 million to produce.
There have been times where these revisions have been controversial: boxed DVD sets of animated properties like Looney Tunes from the early 2000s saw extensive criticism from fans and historians due to the aggressive use of digital video noise reduction (DVNR).
While complex and revolutionary, this process was criticized by some for essentially removing the films from their era and medium, making them indistinguishable in age.
In the case of natively digital images, including computer-animated films, remastering can be a simple matter of going back to the original files and re-rendering them at a desired resolution.
Some modern software, like Toon Boom Harmony, utilize lossless vector shapes,[17] allowing an artist to re-render work at different resolutions with ease.
This allowed its creative team to completely re-render episodes in a higher resolution than its original broadcast; in some instances shots were re-framed to fit a 16:9 aspect ratio.
[19] Another issue in terms of remastering is upscaling projects completed in the early days of digital ink and paint.
Animation industries across the globe gradually switched from cels to digital coloring around the turn of the millennium, and projects that pre-date the advent of higher-resolution formats have proved challenging to remaster.
[20] Remasters of films that used early digipaint processes are typically struck from filmout 35mm prints, as the computer files were never properly archived.
Projects that were composited on lower resolution formats like videotape have made going back to the original elements impractical due to their inferior size.
Some studios have utilized artificial intelligence to professionally upscale the material; boutique label Discotek has released seasons of the anime Digimon using a specialized tool called AstroRes.
[23] Modern computer monitors and high-definition televisions tend to have higher display resolutions and different aspect ratios than the monitors/televisions available when the video game was released.
Older computers and video game consoles had limited 3D rendering speed, which required simple 3D object geometry such as human hands being modeled as mittens rather than with individual fingers, while maps having a distinctly chunky appearance with no smoothly curving surfaces.
Older computers also had less texture memory for 3D environments, requiring low-resolution bitmap images that look visibly pixelated or blurry when viewed at high resolution.
(Some early 3D games such as the 1993 version of DOOM also just used an animated two-dimensional image that is rotated to always face the player character, rather than attempt to render highly complex scenery objects or enemies in full 3D.)
