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Old Film to DVD Transfers Examined
Richard W.M. Jones writes "Slate is
running an interesting article on the process involved in
Warner Brothers remastering films, the quality of the films being compared to the Criterion Collection discs.
Going back to the original
technicolor
negatives, preserved in temperature-controlled
rooms, the transfer begins with a 4,000
line scan, followed by digital alignment of
each color." From the article: "In some ways, these DVDs have finer color and detail than even the original film prints. In the old days, it was difficult to align those three strips perfectly. The task became still harder years later, when the films were reissued, because the negatives had stretched or shrunk over time. If you need all three strips to get the right color, and you can't line the strips up precisely, then the colors and the sharpness are going to be a bit off."
And here I've been thinking all those movies were 3-d! Apparently it was just a red/blue misalignment.
Your family shot your home movies in three strip Technicolor?
...
Are you Cecil B. DeMille III or something?
Nope sorry just us Barrymores here
-- (Score:i , Imaginary)
That I dont have to see Bernidete Peters or Woody Allen, begging for money to preserve old films anymore?
That's way too much work. Just pay some neighborhood kids to re-enact those old films of your children going up and record it digitally this time.
In fact, I hear that's what George Lucas did with his old home movies. You can even add in some hilarious CGI sidekicks!
There are flatbed scanners that have a bulb in the lid so that you can scan photo slides. So if you were extremely patient, you could carefully scan your 8mm film one frame at a time, crop and align them all exactly the same, and then string them together. That would likely give the best possible quality for home use, but the problem here would be finishing the project before the film finishes degrading. :)
What about the Black and white Charlie Chaplin and Laurel& Hardy movies... if they digitize those, all the animated characters will get a run for their money.. hey u cud digitally create more black and white Chaplin films!!!
What about the color Charlie Chaplin films? Oh wait, most are kept in a vault never to be seen again.
that industry's way ahead of hollywood on this one.
Turns out John Wane and other early movie stars looked better in the fuzzy colors. Something to do with their alien ability to bend light. Okay so that last statement was a bit much.
Want a more mature forum than Slashdot? Try Technocrat.net [technocrat.net] I tried that place once, but I just couldn't stand all the "Netcraft Confirms: Southern California's Pinot Noir Wines are Dying" trolls.
> My daughter, when she was 10, could look at a movie on television and tell me whether or not it was shot in Technicolor.
Yeah... It says so at the beginning of the movie...