They make a deal. Jake and Priya are hired as consultants. Over the next 18 months, using their pipeline, they remaster not just Season 1, but all seven seasons. The infamous "Season 1 softness" becomes a benchmark for AI-assisted film restoration.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s first season is a textured, character-driven opening to one of Trek’s most complex series—but its original SD/early-HD source, mixed aspect ratios, and early-’90s image limitations mean it’s a prime candidate for careful restoration. Here’s a concise blog post pitching an AI-driven 4K upscale of DS9 Season 1 using the best 2020-era workflows, aimed at fans, archivists, and streaming platforms.
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To officially remaster DS9 into HD or 4K, Paramount would need to locate every original film reel, re-edit every episode frame-by-frame, and completely rebuild thousands of VFX shots from scratch. The financial failure of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Blu-ray project ensured the studio would never fund this for DS9. Enter 2020: The AI Upscaling Revolution
Creating the best 4K upscale of Deep Space Nine in 2020 was not about pressing a single button. The source material—the original DVDs—was of poor quality, often described as noisy, very dark, and plagued by visual artifacts like jagged lines on distant starships. The best results of 2020 came from a painstaking, multi-step process that integrated various powerful software tools. The table below details the primary applications used by the top fan upscalers in 2020, along with their main functions. They make a deal
Critics of AI upscaling argue that it invents false data. Indeed, in space shots of DS9 , the AI occasionally smooths stars into unnatural streaks or confuses Bajoran earrings for jagged pixels. But this misses the point. The alternative to the 2020 AI upscale is not a perfect 4K negative (which does not exist for the CGI composites); the alternative is 480i DVD rips or low-bitrate streaming.
It’s November 2020. Jake uploads a trailer—just 90 seconds of "Emissary" Part II, where Kira walks onto the Promenade for the first time. He titles it: on a niche forum. The infamous "Season 1 softness" becomes a benchmark
The AI-upscale process involved several key steps: