Slashdot Mirror
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."
"When a film is turned into a DVD, the first step is to scan each frame digitally and to store the data on a hard drive. The more times a frame is scanned, the more coherent is the resulting picture. Many DVD studios now scan films at "high-definition"--or 1,080 lines. Warners is one of just a few that scan at 2,000 lines (or, in the parlance, "2K scanning"). Soon, beginning with a Wizard of Oz reissue later this year, it will start releasing Technicolor DVDs scanned at 4,000 lines ("4K scanning"). This is a significant number. Engineers estimate that if you digitally reproduced all the information on a frame of 35mm film, you'd need about 4,000 lines of data. In other words, at least theoretically (and for more on this caveat, click here), 4K scanning captures everything that's on a film.
That's good news, I have TNT in high definition and the movies really look much better than DVDs. Considering most so called HDTVs can't even do 1280x720, the lowest HD spec, it's good to know that these films are being future proofed.
For what it's worth, if you want the best picture quality in an HDTV get a tube, they're big and heavy but they can actually do 1080i. Think nosehairs on CSI.
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Please tell me that there was a ton of sarcasm in that statement. There are NUMBEROUS products out there to be analog-to-digital bridges for the exact purpose of transferring old VHS material to DVD.
Pinnacle Studio AV/DV Deluxe is but one of the many.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
When George Lucas red did the original trilogy onto DVD he used something similar to what you are asking for. It found (or was pointed out to it) the dirt spots and it went a few frames forwards and backwards to see what should be there and interpolated the pixels.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Regarding my previous comment, Pinnacle has since renamed the AV/DV Deluxe to the MovieBox DV.
Don't get me wrong - there are others out there that are NOT from Pinnacle. But Pinnacle is one of the better companies IMHO - and they've bought out some of the more prevalent competition, like Dazzle.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Your family shot your home movies in three strip Technicolor?
Are you Cecil B. DeMille III or something?
Seriously, the article is about old movies shot in Technicolor, which used a separate strip of film for each of the primary colors. Aligning those three strips is a pain. For regular 8mm home movies, you can use what's called a telecine. You can get inexpensive ones that attach to a video camera to do it yourself, or there are services that transfer 8mm to video.
Posted anon, as I work for this firm; Alchemist Ph.C has algorithms to track things like suspension wires without removing things like telegraph poles.
The negative was preserved in a climate-controlled vault for 60 years. When it was finally opened, they found that fungus had grown on the negative.
The negative was chemically cleaned. Then, it was digitized in a wet-gate telecine. This is an impressive bit of optical technology: the film is immersed in a fluid with the same refractive index as the film itself. The fluid fills pits and scratches in the film, and they disappear.
The resulting digital movie went through an algorithmic "dust-buster" process, and then the reels with the worst damage were retouched by hand frame-by-frame. An operator got about 90 seconds to retouch a frame. There are 24 frames per second of film. This stretched the computer technology at the time, MIPS-based Sun or SGI workstations with clock speeds of a few hundred MHz, as it was difficult to simply read and write the film frame in sufficient time. It would be easier today on a fast PC.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
No, you are not! You can transfer 8mm and 16mm at home. It's not the most technical method, but I've done it before for a friend of mine and it worked beautifully.
Just project the 8mm/16mm film images onto a bright-white screen that has a lot of reflectivity to it, physically place a camcorder directly above the project - or slightly above and slightly behind - to minimize the "trapezoid" effect, record the projection with the camcorder, then use one of the many analog-to-digital bridges out there to transfer it to your PC.
If there is any audio, you can capture the audio either through the camcorder or through the PC's sound card and then synchronize.
This is not going to give you anywhere near the quality of a telecine transfer, but it work beautifully, particularly if the editing software that you use can enhance brightness, contract, and color.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
George Lucas used Shake made by Apple to remove the all the dirt spot and clean up the image. It was somewhat automated, but I there was quite a bit of hard manual work done too.
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
Ninty percent of the slashdot crowd wouldn't have a clue as to what Techincolor was and why it was so great.
If anyone is interested, Google will tell you plenty. Technicolor is like the PDP 10 of moviemaking. It's a technically intricate process that delivers very beautiful results, probably the best results.
My daughter, when she was 10, could look at a movie on television and tell me whether or not it was shot in Technicolor.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Most big city headquarters libraries have the equipment for this.
You need to prepare everything beforehand. That is put everything on one big roll so once in go in your feed the film and hit go. They don't want you editing in there at a time. You only get an hour, plan to convert as much as you can in that time.
Big city and headquarters is key. Your local branch is unlikely to have it, and they might not even know who has it. Call the headquarters and ask though.
But it's not like 40 year old super 8 stock is known for clarity or color fastness anyway.
Depends on the stock. Old super 8 ektachrome fades after a few years. Kodachrome seems to last and look beautiful forever. Kodachrome is wonderful stuff.
"Unfortunately, remastering music or films often take a part of their souls.
:)
No wander why many music fans (I'm thinking Jazz, Classic music) are still buying used vinyl discs.. The music seems to have more "spirit" that way. It feels roots
There's even a software that immitates the glitches from vinyls discs and plays MP3 that way, adding noise. (The good thing is that the MP3 won't slowly decay to finally become unreadable... oh yeah it will but it will take much longer and can easily be transfered to a newer support)."
Ah, the glory of so-called "audiophiles".
The reason why vinyl is useful is greater dynamic range, NOT scratches and other artifacts. Crackles and pops do not make a "soul".
"Engineers estimate that if you digitally reproduced all the information on a frame of 35mm film, you'd need about 4,000 lines of data. In other words, at least theoretically (and for more on this caveat, click here), 4K scanning captures everything that's on a film."
Bullshit. As a photographer I know thats a bunch of bull. What kind of engineer stated this? Engineer of peanut butter?
35mm even old larger grain stuff has far greater usable resolution that that. Factually, the resolution is infinite as it is an analog source, but there is a "limit" to where gain is negligible. 4000ppi isnt it. Try 8000.
There is also a question of dynamic range. Although older films lack in that department, there will always be degradation in analog to digital conversion. Always. Depending on the scanners used, 8000ppi can output less quality than a 4000ppi scan.
Too much is dependant on the scanner to give one bullshit number and say hey that = quality. Thats exactly the same myth attached to MHz and Mega Pixels.
The system they use identifies potential noise, dirt, scratches, spots, etc. in each frame but requires a person to verify each one. The reason for this is that many visual artifacts that look like noise are actually supposed to be there: a flickering candle, the shimmer of light off a water droplet, etc. might have elements that only last one frame and would be mistaken for noise.
The results were passable but not great. The apparent resolution is below broadcast TV, not nearly as sharp as a DVD of a commercial film. Your grandfather might have used a similar method, projecting into the lense of a digitial video camera, or even projecting onto a screen and just recording the image from there. I couldn't say whether the fuzziness is due to the film or the transfer method since our old projector is in poor shape and might eat anything it played.
I've heard of mail-order processors who will digitize more directly from the film itself. Ideally they would scan each frame individually (and at staggeringly high resolution) like Warner Brothers is doing. But I doubt that any processor catering to home movies is nearly that advanced.
Also, home 8mm films are in color, so they wouldn't have the advantages of Technicolor movies that were recorded onto three black & white negatives. Plus, the average basement or attic is a far worse place for film than a climate-controlled professional storage facility. Still, it's probably wise to digitize your home movies now before they get any worse.
AlpineR
It has.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
I have seen this version of the film and found it to very good. The sharpness of the B&W images is excellent and there is very little "noise" on screen (ie. dirt and hair)
This movie has awesome special effects for the time period. That mechanical suit that actress wears was made out of balsa wood!
The official site of this reproduction can be found at Kino.com. They have some great production stills.
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
Because it uses three strips of film, you actually have more film area with which to record color information. This gives you better dynamic range, which gives you more vivid colors.
It's similar to the way a 3-chip professional TV camera gets better color than a one-chip consumer camera.
Well, not entirely, although you do have a valid point, and I'd estimate that it accounts for a large percentage of the difference.
But, if I remember correctly, the earlier color processes were mostly two-primary systems, which lost quite a bit of color detail from reality. Which means that, even if you shot the footage at the same time with both a two-primary process, and Technicolor, and the only difference was the process used, the Technicolor print should have somewhat better color saturation. But no doubt you're still right, in that many directors did overdo the colors, to make them 'pop out' more, so to speak.
Lucas used Lowry Digital Images. Apple has an article on it. http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lowry/starwars/
d tsacquire slowry.html
Doing a quick google for Lowry's website turned up results for articles dealing with DTS' aquisition of Lowry Digital Images.
http://www.digitalcinemareport.com/news/