Space History Footage In HD

The Discovery Channel has done a deal with NASA to enhance old film footage from the space program up to the standards of HD. Discovery will air, in HD, a 6-part special called "When We Left Earth," beginning June 8. Judging by the trailer it should be pretty spectacular, a good introduction to the wonders of space exploration for a new generation. After the show airs, NASA gets the improved footage for their archives.

Comments

So....

[TheCrip]

in HD, will we finally be able to see the wires helping Armstrong look like he is on the moon? :P

Commercial venture for the greater good

[BearRanger]

It's so rare to see a public-private venture in media/entertainment that ultimately benefits everyone. I doubt if most of us would have a chance to peruse the NASA archives otherwise. And the US taxpayer gets historically significant data upgraded to a modern, longer lasting medium for free. A win-win all around.

"enhance?"

[adam]

...enhance old film footage from the spacee program up to the standards of HD...

I just want to take a brief issue with the wording here. There is likely little "enhancement" done for this film to reach "HD standards." Of course it depends on the film format, and how it has been stored, but assuming it has been taken care of properly, and is 16mm or larger, there would be no enhancing required.

(A few lightly technical ramblings) Film is better than today's HD video, in virtually every regard, except cost (assuming we are talking about 35mm, not super8 ;) ...35mm stocks from the 1960s were quite good even by today's standards. The major breakthroughs in film have been more along the lines of packing more light sensitivity into finer grained films. Which is to say today's ASA500 looks as good as 1975's ASA100. Which means that ASA100 film from 1975 doesn't need any "enhancing" to look good in HD (most HD tv shows that air nowadays are shot ASA500 and scanned directly to HD). I saw a scan of The Sound of Music negative a year or two ago, and it looked GLORIOUS (it was shot 70mm). Anyway, some brief searching on NASA's site does seem to show that they may have used 9.5mm single perf film at times (I found a transcript that has a statement referencing 9mm footage), but I am having difficulty confirming this anywhere else. Long story short, the trailer looked nice, this footage is a great treasure to all mankind, and one should probably not downplay the quality of film used then. It seems to me their archiving-for-all-posterity budget has experienced a shrink commensurate to the other budgetary aspects, because I can tell you firsthand some of the equipment they are flying (or considering flying) now I wouldn't use for videos of my dogs playing in the yard!

+1 ironic

[adam]

historically significant data upgraded to a modern, longer lasting medium for free. I agree with most of your comment. And I promise I am not trying to be pedantic-- but digital archiving is definitely NOT a longer lasting medium. (I work in digital cinema, so this is an issue I deal with almost daily) Digital cinema is still in its infancy, and everyone is trying to standardize their own workflows now, the end link in this chain being long term archive. The nice thing about film is that it has changed relatively little as a format over the last 50-100 years, and that even if you can't deal with the format (say something with very weird perforations, or the perforations have deformed in a way that a normal scanner can't advance the film properly anymore), it is completely optical and still can be easily read with a bit of engineering. Digital archiving is prettymuch all being done to tape now, either to some proprietary format (Sony's HDCAMSR, for instance), which I don't support... or to an open format, such as LTO (which is my preference). Even with proper archive conditions (temp, humidity, etc), tape doesn't have quite the same longevity of film (although it is close in ideal conditions), and you must "format float" every five to ten years, or risk your archived material being unreadable.

So, in summary, the irony here is that for archiving purposes, the safest and cheapest way to store this material is probably on film. If this were my project, I would make redundant LTO-3/4 masters of all of the material, as well as print the digital scans to black and white film separations for each color channel. Of course, that assumption is based on this having received a proper scan (4k, pin registered) and not a cheap HDtelecine. Given the importance of the footage, I'd hope it would have.. but given my experience with the type of people who set budgets for these sort of projects (and their propensity to say things like "no one can tell the difference anyway, so we're using the cheaper option,"), my offhand guess would be this was telecined directly to compressed HD tape (ughhhhhh).

misleading wording.

[adam]

Almost everytime I post a comment, there are a few replies that strike me as "off base," but I generally refrain from commenting because they are almost never modded up, and thus I imagine that most people (or at least mods) realize they are off base. I'm replying to you, though, as you seem to have been modded up pretty quickly, and I want to clarify some issues for anyone NOT in cinema who is reading this thread

there's probably been a substantial amount of grading and cleanup done to footage Yes, absolutely, any film shot 30+ years ago is quite possibly going to require cleanup for any sort of professional presentation. This could normally include dust busting (removing scratches, dust specs, etc on the negative. Everytime the negative passes through a scanner, projector, etc, it gets more of these). It could also include color correction (to fix color substrate fading issues, as the color bias will generally shift during aging) as well as color grading to correct for mold/haze or any other nastyness.

My issue is that *NONE OF THAT STUFF* counts as "enhancing for HD standards." If this film was going to be shown in theatres (which would mean it would be mostly seen projected on film prints), all of that stuff would still take place. The "HD standards" statement implies that HD has "so much resolution" the film must be "up rezzed" or similar, and that was the implication I took issue with. They should have just said, "NASA has scanned and restored the original film negatives to be shown in breathtaking HD quality on the Discovery Channel" or something similar-- more technically correct than the original statement, and it still sells the whole "OMG HIGH DEF!!!" aspect.

Knowing the importance of this film, I should hope it was stored well.. but I recall vaguely that some of the original moon landing stuff is potentially lost forever so perhaps you are right and it hasn't been stored terribly well.