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."

Comments

Re:Digital mapping of film grain?

[Dun Malg]

Depending on how large the color crystals are, I don't think it would be too hard to plot each crystal's location. ...If you want to get really fancy, you can look at the arrangement of the crystals, try to reverse-engineer the light as it struck the film, and virtually re-expose the image by plotting a new grain map on film.

Would this work?

Sure, but really, it's going to an absolutely unnecessary extreme. You could plot the details of the grain like that, but the original prints were never expected to show anywhere near that much detail. At some point it just becomes gratuitous.

Re:Digital mapping of film grain?

[Illserve]

It's still about visual resolution at the end of the day. You could show me atomic level recreations of films and I couldn't tell the difference from modern digital remasterings.

The art of this process is in learning what has to be preserved for perfect perception, not slavishly reproducing every physical detail of the original.

And remember, crystal level resolution is BAD. They are effectively a blotchy quantal reproduction of what is really a smooth analog transition from one colour to the next. But of course, people tend to confuse "original" with "good", and seem intent on dragging the baggage of previous, shitty technologies into the digital age. Same story with vacuum tubes and audio equipment.

Re:Terry Gilliam...

[Jeremy Erwin]

Seems that those Monty Python folks are really quite interested in film preservation and restoration. There's another documentary on the "Meaning of Life" that explains all the nitty gritty. Is it worth it? I say yes. Going from unrestored faded film to a pristine new master is just as dramatic as the shift from black and white to color film.