Remaster

Remaster (also digital remastering and digitally remastered) refers to enhancing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic.

Mastering

To understand the concept of remastering, it is beneficial to understand that often a pyramid of copies would be made from a single original "master" recording, which might itself be based on previous recordings. For example, sound effects (a door opening, punching sounds, falling down the stairs, a bell ringing, etc.) might have been added from copies of sound effect tapes similar to modern sampling to make a radio play for broadcast.

A master is the recording which experts state will be the definitive copy that is duplicated for the end user usually into other formats i.e. LP records, CDs, DVDs etc.

Problematically, several different levels of masters often exist for any one audio release. As an example, examine the way a typical music album from the 1960s was created. Musicians and vocalists were recorded on multi-track tape. This tape was mixed to create a stereo or mono master. A further master tape would likely be created from this original master recording consisting of equalization and other adjustments and improvements to the audio to make it sound better on record players for example.

Software remastering

Software remastering is software development that recreates system software and applications while incorporating customizations, with the intent that it is copied and run elsewhere for "off-label" usage. If the remastered codebase does not continue to parallel an ongoing, upstream software development, then it is a fork, not a remastered version. The term comes from remastering in media production, where it is similarly distinguished from mere copying. Remastering was popularized by Klaus Knopper, creator of Knoppix. The Free Software Foundation promotes the universal freedom to recreate and distribute computer software, for example by funding projects like the GNU Project.

Remastered Linux, BSD and OpenSolaris operating system distributions are common because they are not copy protected, but also because of the allowance of such operating systems to grow an application for taking a snapshot of itself, and of installing that onto bootable media such as a thumb drive or a virtual machine in a hypervisor. Since 2001 over 1000 computer operating systems have arisen for download from the Internet. A global community of GNU/Linux providers pushes the practice of remastering by developer switching, project overtaking or merging, and by sharing over the Internet. Most distributions start as a remastered version of another distribution as evidenced by the announcements made at DistroWatch. Notably, remastering SLS Linux forked Slackware, remastering Red Hat Linux helped fork Yellow Dog Linux and Mandriva and TurboLinux, and by remastering a Debian distribution, Ubuntu was started, which is itself remastered by the Linux Mint team. These might involve critical system software, but the extent of the customizations made in remastering can be as trivial as a change in a default setting of the distribution and subsequent provision to an acquaintance on installation media. When a remastered version becomes public it becomes a distribution.