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Old Film to DVD Transfers Examined

Posted by Zonk on from the high-quality-maltese-falcons dept.

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."

58 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. Would love to see ... by dcarey · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd personally like to see how you can do this as a home user. There's got to be a software program that does this sort of thing (ok maybe not the the extent that hollywood giants can do) or at least approaches it.

    I've got tons of home movies I'd like to put on DvD and man I'd love to restore them. Unfortunately I think I'm stuck with them as as.

    --

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    1. Re:Would love to see ... by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

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    2. Re:Would love to see ... by swb · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't think he meant VHS, I think he might have actually meant *film*, as in one of the 8mm variants.

    3. Re:Would love to see ... by tinrobot · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Would love to see ... by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually, the same method can be done for transferring 8mm with only one extra step.

      I've done it by doing nothing more than shooting the 8mm image onto a bright-white screen, recording it with my camcorder, then transferring it to DVD. It certainly is not the same as a direct telecine transfer or the method that Warner is using, but for home use it works beautifully.

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    5. Re:Would love to see ... by dcarey · · Score: 4, Funny

      Your family shot your home movies in three strip Technicolor?

      Are you Cecil B. DeMille III or something?
      Nope sorry just us Barrymores here ...

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    6. Re:Would love to see ... by HotNeedleOfInquiry · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
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    7. Re:Would love to see ... by Gemini · · Score: 2, Informative

      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.

    8. Re:Would love to see ... by atomic_toaster · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, if you have lots of time on your hands and you want a really nice end product, you could do it this way:

      1) Use a good negative scanner to scan each individual frame from your 8mm or 16mm film at the highest resolution that you can manage.
      2) Use Adobe Photoshop or your favorite image editing program to tweak the images.
      3) Import the images into Adobe After Effects or your favorite an animation program.
      4) Depending on the frame rate that you shot the original film at, make each image the appropriate length so that the final product plays back at 30fps. e.g. If you originally shot the film at 15fps, each frame of film should last 2 frames in the After Effects project. This might be a little rough-looking, but it'll keep the video from being sped up. If you shot at 24fps, the smoothest way to transfer the video is to use 3-2 pulldown (you can find instructions about how to do this through Google), which is how the film industry has been transferring film to video for years. It might take a little research and some calculations to get the smoothest result depending on your original frame rate, but it's worth it.
      5) Tweak until you are satisfied with the results, using the "preview" option often.
      6) Add titles and effects if you so desire.
      7) Render out the video to whatever format you need in order to make your DVD.
      8) Burn DVD.

      Sorry for being so Adobe-centered, they just happen to be the programs that I am most familiar with since I work with them every day. I am sure that there are other programs that work equally well, I just don't know about them!

    9. Re:Would love to see ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's easy to spot a lot of Technicolor films not because the film itself it so much better - especially when viewed on an analog NTSC TV - but because the directors usually found the temptation to play with their new toy irresistable. So, the films are loaded with all sorts of highly saturated colors, bright primaries in the costumes and sets that you didn't have before, designed to show off the process and dazzle the masses.

      The giveaway is the flinging about of pigment, not the quality of the process itself.

    10. Re:Would love to see ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      > 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...

  2. Color alignment? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    And here I've been thinking all those movies were 3-d! Apparently it was just a red/blue misalignment.

  3. Digital mapping of film grain? by lawpoop · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm no expert in film, but I'm wondering if there's a more robust way to digitize film. Depending on how large the color crystals are, I don't think it would be too hard to plot each crystal's location. You could either plot the center, or try to draw the geometric shape of the grain using shape ananlysis algorithms. It's that's too much data for now, just wait a few years for storage process to drop ;)

    A bonus of this technique is that it would allow for near-perfect analogue re-creation of the original film by plotting grains for exposure on new film. 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?

    --
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    1. Re:Digital mapping of film grain? by Noose+For+A+Neck · · Score: 2, Interesting
      That's quite a cool idea. Sort of reminds me of Richard Feynman's essay There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom, where he discusses a hypothetical limit on data storage using the arrangement of individual atoms in various crystalline structures. If we can get all the information about the film down to the molecular scale (which is rapidly becoming feasable with the advance of digital storage technology) we would finally be able to make a perfect analogue reproduction instead of the (reasonable, for today's technology) approximations offered by current optical scanning technology.

      (BTW, the Feynman essay can be found in the excellent collection of essays entitled The Pleasure of Finding Things Out .)

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    2. Re:Digital mapping of film grain? by Dun+Malg · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

      --
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    3. Re:Digital mapping of film grain? by Illserve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Digital mapping of film grain? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Informative
      This would bring a completely unnecessary level of noise into the process. Film grain is noisy and doesn't contribute extra information once you can resolve a single crystal. What you really should do is defocus just enough so that the grain noise is averaged out, or digitize at a higher resolution than the grain and then filter out the frequency band of the grain noise. The effect of those two processes might be identical.

      Bruce

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    5. Re:Digital mapping of film grain? by badasscat · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      I don't see why some of what you suggest wouldn't work (you're basically just talking super-high res scans, for the most part), but it's incredibly wasteful. Plotting the shape of each individual film grain, on a per-frame basis? First of all, it would take forever to do this. Second of all, visible film grain is usually something you want to eliminate during the restoration process, or at least cut back (eliminating it entirely can look a little unnatural, but reducing it can improve things quite a bit). So you're not really gaining anything by your suggestion.

      I suppose this brings up another point, which is that "restoration" is kind of a misnomer in film. The idea isn't usually to restore the film to the way it used to look; the idea is usually to make it better than it ever looked. It's not always the case, but generally the restoration process includes color correction that can remove some of the character of the original film stock (for better or worse... some restorations have really been hack jobs that destroyed the look of the original), it includes grain reduction that reduces visible film grain, it includes scratch reduction that eliminates flaws that may have been present on the original negative, it often includes artificial sharpening (again, for better or worse), contrast enhancement, brightness mid-point adjustment, and a host of other image enhancements that anyone who's worked on still images will be familiar with.

      This may be why Warner calls what they're doing "remastering" rather than "restoring" films. If you use the word "restore", you're bound to piss off some purists when they see the final result, whether it looks better than it ever did or not.

      A bonus of this technique is that it would allow for near-perfect analogue re-creation of the original film by plotting grains for exposure on new film.

      Well, see, this wouldn't work. You can't position film crystals wherever you want on a piece of celluloid; they are where they are. And as they are what carry the actual picture information, you can't just start with a blank gel and start adding crystals one by one. (I suppose someone could invent some kind of new printing process to do this using new materials that mimic film - maybe with a kind of precisely controlled ink whose droplet size and shape could be controlled - but what would be the point?)

      Regardless, once you get to that point I don't much see the advantage over just projecting digitally from the high-resolution digital copy. A standard high-res scan will pick up the film grain as it is, so providing the resolution really is high enough, once you project it it will look indistinguishable from the original analog source. This is what we're moving towards. There's no point in starting analog, scanning into digital, then re-printing into analog.

      btw, I just RTFA, and Slate makes a big deal about "Technicolor" prints being less prone to fading. This is wrong. There's nothing special about Technicolor prints - the company is still in business and prints about 80% of all commercial Hollywood films today, most of which will fade to red within 20 years. There's a big difference between "three strip" Technicolor and the one-strip process that Technicolor uses today, and it's not differentiated clearly in this article at all. The three strip process used three individual film strips sensitive to one light wavelength each - the current process uses three layers of crystals on one film strip. Both are Technicolor processes, though.

  4. I wonder what kind of noise removal they're using by Noose+For+A+Neck · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'd be quite interested to hear about what kind of noise removal algorithms they use to remove all the dirt spots from the high-res film scans. From what I know of the film industry, most effects houses still use someone (or several someones) at a Linux workstation using Cinepaint (nee Film Gimp) to manually paint over suspension wires for films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

    Have they found some way to automate this, or can they not yet trust the algorithms enough yet that they still have to manually go over each frame and correct the dirt spots based on previous and future frames?

    --

    Software piracy is victimless theft.

  5. I know it's possible by dknight · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My grandfather (yes, that's right, my 67 year old grandfather) just recently restored some 8mm home movies from the 50's with his computer setup at his house. I dont know the specifics of what he used to do it, but obviously if he can do it, it must be possible ;)

  6. Criterion by smiley2billion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is this the same process that Criterion uses?

    All of their restored movies look top notch.

    1. Re:Criterion by mako1138 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Criterion's catalog is so large and of such variety that they probably have a whole battery of techniques. They also probably don't do it all themselves. For example, the Criterion release of Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et la Bête" notes that the restoration was done for an anniversary of Cocteau's work. They used a wet projection process and digital scrubbing.

  7. Very nice - but will profits or posterity decide? by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder how I can get one of these for my old home videos! I have all of the original VHS negatives, too! Oh, wait...

    Seriously, though, it's nice to see studios taking such care of their movies. This is a far cry from a lot of what we've been getting for a the past few years. A lot of DVDs were nothing more than the DVD version of their laserdisc counterparts, and some low-budget DVDs were nothing more than transfers from VHS!

    As a movie buff, it's great to see Warner going back to the original negatives do this. The only thing that's a concern for me is how they are going to select which movies will get this. Are they going to do this for posterity and history with all of their movies? Or are they only going to do this only with movies that can be turned around and sold on DVD? Obviously, if they're going be able to make a profit from this, they should. I'm sure that it's a huge effort. But are the more obscure movies that might not be as marketable going to get the same treatment in the future? Or are they going to be relegated to the warehouse never to be seen because "it's not worth it".

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  8. The classic look... by 3nuff · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is fine an well, but the painta of old films are almost part of their character. It's like the sound of a vinyl record, it's part of the experience of seeing a classic film.

    --
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    1. Re:The classic look... by OG · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When you're listening to vinyl, you shouldn't know that you're listening to vinyl. The record and needle should be clean. There should be no pops or fuzz in the sound. What you should get is a great analog signal that has a better frequency range that CD, the tradeoff being a more dynamic limited range.

      I'm more interested in seeing a clean movie that stands on its own than a movie that looks old and depends on accidental nostalgia (and for a time that most of us never even experience firsthand) for its emotional impact.

    2. Re:The classic look... by Jerf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Bah. I'd much rather see the movie that I would have seen if I was alive in 1953 and popped on down to the movie theatre, not what's left of it after 52 years of degrading.

      You want to de-saturate the colors, add dirt spots, and make the audio wobbly, run it through a filter on your own player. The rest of us would rather see an old movie as if it were made yesterday.

      (Even stuff from the 80s is breaking down, I've even seen degradation in stuff from the early 90s, and the DVD is the best way to view it. My wife just bought Thelma and Louise on DVD yesterday (not a bad movie, really, even if there are no space fights :-) ), and it could well have been made yesterday; the colors were right, the detail was sharp, the audio's quality was sharp enough that my audio setup was the limiting factor. It's way better than what I've seen on TV... which surprises me nowadays, how many times the TV will play some crappy version of a movie with an outstanding DVD.)

  9. If you have an HDTV... by KrackHouse · · Score: 3, Informative

    "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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    1. Re:If you have an HDTV... by Datasage · · Score: 2, Informative

      T2 Extreme Edition DVD has a second disc with the film in 1080p. But the downside is that it only plays on your computer and its protected by windows media crap DRM.

      --
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  10. Re:I wonder what kind of noise removal they're usi by Ironsides · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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  11. Re:Would love to see ... UPDATE by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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  12. Re:I wonder what kind of noise removal they're usi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  13. Snow White Restoration by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative
    I worked on the Snow White restoration with Kodak Cinesite while at Pixar. The film was made with nitrate stock, as were all films back then - there wasn't another good method to make clear plastic stock. Nitrate is great organic fertilizer - as well as being chemically quite close to nitroglycerine and a tremendous fire hazard if the projector jams and the hot lamp burns the film.

    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.
    1. Re:Snow White Restoration by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes. It was simply a function of work to do / operator time.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
    2. Re:Snow White Restoration by kurosawdust · · Score: 2, Funny

      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.

  14. Re:what abt charlie chaplin by FidelCatsro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    you could digitally create more Chaplin films , but we really really shouldnt.
    Chaplins films were classics and should remain as such .
    If the studio redigitised them and shoved them on DVD ,I would buy them without pause (infact i better check on amazon to see this has not already been done)

    Also the marks brothers films were great
    The comedy stylings of Groucho , Teito and karl(sorry couldnt resist that joke) are also amongst my all time faviourits.

    Some of the modern Slapstick couldnt even compare to the classics

    Although , ? by now , wouldnt most of the chaplin films be beyond copywright at this point , so couldnt anyone do it .

    --
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  15. But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by tobiasly · · Score: 5, Funny
      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.

      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!

    2. Re:But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by WidescreenFreak · · Score: 3, Informative

      I never did. Most movies transfer at 24 fps, although a lot of older, home formats used 15 fps, but digital camcorders record at 29.97 fps. I'm guessing that the higher speed of the camcorder compensated for that. If you go frame by frame, you might see spots where the projector was switching to the next frame, but at 1/30th of a second it would not be easy to see.

      Regardless, I never did see any flickering of any note. Even if you look at transfered movies on DVD, such as the old Tom and Jerry cartoons, you might see that every sixth frame is a duplicate because of capturing 24 fps within ~30 fps. But it happens so quickly, even at every 1/6th second, that you don't notice it ... well ... I don't notice it. :)

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    3. Re:But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by Feanturi · · Score: 2, Funny

      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. :)

    4. Re:But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by Derling+Whirvish · · Score: 5, Informative

      And if it's old family 8mm movies, have the old folks, Aunts and Uncles, Grandma and Grandpa, sit around and watch it as you show it and record it. Their audio commentary on the new sound track (which with most 8mm would otherwise be silent) is invaluable in sorting out who was who, what was what, and where they were doing something. It's a win-win. They get to see old footage they probably haven't seen in a while and you get a great commentary to go along with your new video version.

    5. Re:But you CAN transfer film to DVD at home by justforaday · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Seriously, not a bad idea at all. Set up a mic and capture the commentary. Also capture the original audio track directly, either simultaneously, or do another pass for that. Then author the DVD with two tracks -- original or w/commentary. That'd be sure to impress everyone in the family.

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  16. Re:I wonder what kind of noise removal they're usi by mojowantshappy · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

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  17. Re:Terry Gilliam... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  18. Ask the library by bluGill · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  19. Re:Just like Vinyl to CD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "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".

  20. Re:I wonder what kind of noise removal they're usi by Chuckstar · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  21. They've been doing that with porn for years by GatesGhost · · Score: 2, Funny

    that industry's way ahead of hollywood on this one.

  22. Turns out John Wane looked better in the fuzzy. by bigmike_f · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  23. Possible but variable quality by AlpineR · · Score: 2, Informative
    A couple Christmases ago my sister and I paid to get our family 8mm films transferred to DVD. We used a local, small video studio rather than sending them out (and possibly losing them) to a mail-order processor. The technique they used was basically to run the films through a projector and direct the light onto a CCD.

    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

    1. Re:Possible but variable quality by Phreakiture · · Score: 3, Interesting

      8mm film is very poor quality. At best, you might get a VCD-quality playback, plus the frame rate is only 16fps.

      That said, if you got a good scan of each frame, and wanted to take the time to do it, you could probably clean up the frames individually, and then use motion vector tracing to upconvert the framerate to 24/25/30/50/60/whatever. Alas, I don't know of any software for this purpose.

      --
      www.wavefront-av.com
    2. Re:Possible but variable quality by MrResistor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The device to do this is called a telecine, and the technology is as old as television (how do you think they did it before video tape?) Newer ones that convert straight to digital are called datacines.

      Until recently I worked for Technicolor (actually Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions, which operates under the brand names Technicolor and Grass Valley) and actually helped service the machine that's being used to do this, the Spirit 4k datacine (minor suport role, it wasn't my primary product).

      You could have your films scanned on one of these if you wanted to, though it would cost you a bit. IIRC the base model is about $1.2M, and there are maybe 100-250 of them in the world (I never had a need to look at sales data, that's just what I heard, and that number includes the older 2k line model.) They are mostly privately owned, though, and can be hired by anyone who wants to pay the price.

      I wouldn't recommend it though. See, when the 2k model was first seeing action in the real world there were some complaints of occasional odd visual distortions. Analysis revealed that it was actually because at that resolution the scanner was starting to pick up the grain of the film. Obviously, that sort of thing can be delt with in post-processing, so it's not like it's totally pointless to go to those resolutions. I do think it would be a bit too much for 8mm, though.

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
  24. Re:what abt charlie chaplin by AceCaseOR · · Score: 2, Informative
    If the studio redigitised them and shoved them on DVD ,I would buy them without pause (infact i better check on amazon to see this has not already been done)

    It has.

    --
    Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
  25. Re:Metropolis by 3nuff · · Score: 2, Informative

    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."
  26. Re:Just like Vinyl to CD by cirby · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When CDs started to get popular, the "audiophile" stores were making a big effort to sell high-end turntables for "discriminating" listeners. They had a turntable and a CD player with the same tunes playing, and would switch back and forth to show the difference in the sound, talking about how much "warmer" the LP sounded than the CD.

    Sooooo... I set up a little test. First, I rolled the high frequencies off of the CD player, then added a bit more low end. When switching between the LP and the CD, most folks couldn't tell the difference, even the supposed "golden ear" audiophiles selling the equipment.

    You *can* have an LP sound better than a CD, but most of the time, you don't.

  27. Re:Bad information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "As a photographer I know thats a bunch of bull."

    As a photographer you are wrong. You've probably gotten mixed up between the frame sizes of 35mm still film and 35mm cine film. 35mm still film is about 1.6 times larger than cine film and has more detail. I'm a visual effects artist and I can tell you for sure that it's not worth scanning 35mm film above 4k. You just can't tell the difference You see more detailed grain but thats about it.

  28. Technicolor has more dynamic range by tinrobot · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  29. Re:I wonder what kind of noise removal they're usi by PhatBhuda · · Score: 2, Informative

    Lucas used Lowry Digital Images. Apple has an article on it. http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lowry/starwars/

    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/d tsacquire slowry.html

  30. Doctor Who by Magnifico · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The Doctor Who Restoration Team has been actively involved in the recovery and restoration of Doctor Who, Quartermass, and other BBC programmes. Some of their earlier work was been in creating a good colour print by combining black and white film with color NTSC betamax video. Recently they have been restoring the quality to B&W programmes. In addition to the video, they also have worked to restore the shows' sound track. More information is on their website: http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/.