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."
First, there was a plan: how to bring together the different development groups at work? My boss said there was a sort of tension he thought could be eased by some social interaction. Not easy. Almost all of the different development groups despised each other, each thinking its "art" was more important and eloquent than the others'.
There was the kernel extension developer group, coding mostly in C and some PowerPC and x86 assembler. They worked on making our PCI board work with Linux, *BSD, Mac OS X, QNX, and Solaris. They worked "special hours," coming in at one and staying late, supposedly, until seven or eight at night. They enjoyed Red Bull and had a penchant for ThinkGeek t-shirts and cracking jokes about Win32 API calls and the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.
We had XML developers too. They worked on our website, documentation formatting, and simple apps to configure the driver software. They used HTML, XSL, JavaScript, and a bit of Java. They typically dressed casually, drank coffee and tea, and liked to work straight from the spec: no "Learn XSL in 30 Days" books were to be found in their cubicle farm.
Then we had the guys who wrote full-out UNIX apps. These guys and the products they wrote had been acquired from another company, and were the source of most of the tension: they'd never really been integrated into our group except that they were physically present with the rest of us. They all had beards or mullets or long, unwashed hair. Many wore suspenders or the afore-mentioned ThinkGeek clothes; some even had Penguin tatooes or small C app code tattooed on them. Their cubicle farm was known for the bleating laughter that exploded when one of them found a "silly" bug on someone else's code, and for the rotten, fetid stench that could only be compared to three-day-old shit reeking from inside a rotting corpse's abdominal cavity.
So, in order to get the guys to "know each other" my boss had asked me to organize a during-hours, alcohol-friendly party. My ideas ranged from a keg or two to live entertainment, AKA strippers. But as to what to get them to actually talk to each other in a human manner I had no clue. So I let it go til the last minute and decided to let my inherent creativity mull it over in the back of my head.
When the day of the party had arrived, the catering company brought in a few trays of lunch meat, chicken, pizza, and side dishes, I had picked up the kegs (all four) from the local brewery, and the big-screen TV and DVD were set up ready to blast the Matrix into the eyes and ears of my co-workers. The eagerness in the the air was encouraging and I thought that loosening up and smiles going on even now were a good sign. I even saw some of the guys who'd known each other previously begin to bunch up, bringing along the co-workers they knew from everyday work.
The first thing everyone did was hit the food line, loading up their plates and grabbing a cup for beer to wash it down with. A few approached me and thanked me for the food; it seems appeasing the belly really did tame the beast. After a few minutes of silence and eating and a few second and third courses, they guys were ready to sit down and be entertained. After asking if anyone needed anything else before the movie started, the lights went out and the Matrix began playing. I heard a few enthusiastic comments and jokes being told.
About half-way through the movie I noticed a lot of the guys, especially from the UNIX app group, were getting up and presumably going to the restroom. No suprise, as the second keg was history by now and the third was probably half-way gone. I also noticed some of the guys bumping into things and stumbling. Alcohol's the social lubricant, eh? Well, not long after, my bladder beckoned and I answered. As I made my way to the restroom, I had a self-satisfied smile on my face: my little plan was working, my boss would be happy, and it might even a Christmas bonus or a promotion (even if in title only).
Well, as soon as I
"...then the colors and the sharpness are going to be a bit off."
I guess I never really needed that surgery after all...
How dare you keep those negatives locked in a temperature-controlled room? Movies want to be FREE!
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Yeah, nice article on the transfar and cleaning process, but really, who gives a shit? We won't be able to record them, and we'll have the pleasure of sucking from our master's teet to view them on our FCC- and Corporate-approved viewing stations.
Someone wake me up when the content industries don't insist on being a bunch of monopolitive, skull-fucking assholes and *then* I might care about restored, super duper restorations.
Yeah, once you get Geordi in the holodeck, it's virtually assured you can recreate an entire scene from the shadow of a grain of dust on some alien's mole.
suck m y dick you little fag
Tee hee.
-
Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
How to be a good slashdot reader or moderator:
* Linux is fucking great. The best operating system in the
world. Everyone should start using it. You are an exception though,
because you need to use Windows for games, using websites with video
on them, and MS Office (for compatibility of course). You spend a
decent amount of time fucking around with your window manager
settings and trying to make hardware work in Linux though, of
course.
* Macs are also great. You can't understand why anyone would use
anything else. You've read loads of slashdot posts about how good OS
X is, but you've never used it yourself.
* AMD is currently winning the performance battle against Intel, and
this is fucking great. While Intel are a vile corporate entity, AMD
fights for the good of humanity. Everything Intel has ever produced
has always been utter crap which runs at a ridiculously high
temperature (the high-end Athlon XPs don't count). That's why you
only buy AMD - anyone who doesn't is an Intel fanboy.
* Everything should be Open Source. Mainly because it's inconvienient
for you to download commercial software off bittorrent and find the
crack for it.
* Competition is good, except when it's against Linux. Solaris is
therefore crap. You've never used it, or even seen it working, but
you have read plenty of slashdot posts to know that it's crap. It's
pretty disgusting that Sun doesn't want people ripping bits out of
it and putting them into Linux for you too.
* Everyone should buy hardware that's fully compatible with Linux, to
show the vendors that they should support it. You had to buy that
ATI card though, because it gave you an extra 10fps on Half-Life 2.
* Every human being on the planet has the right to download music and
films - information wants to be free. The RIAA/MPAA are utter
bastards for trying to do anything about it. Violation of the GPL,
however should be punnishable by death.
Keep the South Strong.w w.imdb.com/title/tt0068473/
http://www.timelife.com/heehaw
http://w
No more lighters on the planes.
http://connected.msnbc.com
"22 fans, 10 freaks. 32 people with too much free time "
So what does it say about you that you have way more friends/foes than fans/freaks?
To me, it says you're a jackass.
I don't know why Slashdot rejected my story but the creator of the DOS operating system is suing a book author, because he wrote DOS was simply a rip-off of CP/M. Paterson, 48 and now retired, alleges that Evans' facts misrepresent history. He told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer his goal with the lawsuit is to get the truth out. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District court in Seattle seeks unspecified monetary damages. This could be big and might involve even Microsoft. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-03-02-ms-co ding-dis_x.htm
it says he's far, far cooler than you are.
the fact you have a stick up your anus over his sigline proves this fact conclusively.