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Making our own 35mm preservation--my crazy proposal — Page 3

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Originally posted by: Grinder
I don't know if they color corrected that, I suppose not, but the prints were already 10 years old by then. I expect it to be like this: the earlier the release the closer to the original. My first issue PAL LD's look so damn clear and authentic, it really stunned me though I had already seen nearly all other SW LD's. The crawl and opening shot are even anamorphic widescreen, all the stars are there, I can tell you that. I'm sure that's the best LD representation of the crawl. To the X0 guys: I have three copies of the ANH LD, and a 2950 or 909 to cap it with. I'm planning to capture the whole trilogy and release it next week. I'm telling you guys, this is really something to look forward to! But the point is, I expect that one to be very close to the original: ANH was released in '82 (one of the three copies I have was still in 24 years old shrinkwrap when I got it).
There's no guarantee they were mastered from the original negatives though, and not just a print. It's true a PAL format LaserDisc would store more accurate colour information then an NTSC counter-part, but then your first-release 82 LD's are pan&scan, so are you planning on releasing them as a colour-reference for others? That would be a good idea.

To vbangle, I've discussed on-topic - I've explained why mastering from film is unrealistic (some other members here have explained this far better then I ever could too). There's only so much that can be said about this. If zombie84 wants to go and borrow a telecine, burn lots of dollars and spend years transferring something that will never look as good as the upcoming sep dvd's - then let him try. The 1993 transfer was done by professionals to the best of their abilities at the time. I thought we already got past acknowledging this would be futile?
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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And besides, I think zombie84 was more interested in finding out if this was a possible path to take then to actually suggest we start doing it.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: vbangle
...where's Darth Mallwalker when you need him?
Touché

But since we're talking about "capitalism," where's DanielB when you need him ?

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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I've been at least as guilty as boris on derailing this thread, for which I apologize. The discussion did start from discussing the legality of scanning film, though. It wasn't really a deliberate non sequitur; it just ended up in a place that wasn't exactly on-topic.

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So, the japanese version is the most accurate? That's interesting. Is there a place to see comparison shots for Empire and Jedi? I know the "screenshot" page has some for Star Wars.
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Saving 35mm prints goes beyond the movies as well. I read a story last year concerning the rock band Black Sabbath. Apparently when Dio was singing for them in the early 80's they filmed one of their shows for eventual release. There were a dozen or so canasters of 35mm film done. Well when Dio left the band there were apparenlty hard feelings and they decided to literally dump the project and they threw away all of the film. A collector rescued all of the canasters from the trash and they are still in the hands of a private collector to this day. Legal issues prevent them from distributing it.
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Dio http://utopia.booyaka.com/~blee/headbanger.gif

However, in practice you must take into account the “fuckwit factor”. Just talk to Darth Mallwalker…
-Moth3r

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Originally posted by: Karyudo
I've been at least as guilty as boris on derailing this thread, for which I apologize. The discussion did start from discussing the legality of scanning film, though. It wasn't really a deliberate non sequitur; it just ended up in a place that wasn't exactly on-topic.
Yeah I'm sorry too - but before they blame me again - always remember it takes two to make an argument, not one.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: boris
Originally posted by: Karyudo
I've been at least as guilty as boris on derailing this thread, for which I apologize. The discussion did start from discussing the legality of scanning film, though. It wasn't really a deliberate non sequitur; it just ended up in a place that wasn't exactly on-topic.
Yeah I'm sorry too - but before they blame me again - always remember it takes two to make an argument, not one.


I'm not even sure there was an argument going on -- was there? I'd say it was a discussion. Of things that started out as relevant, and which slowly veered a bit off-topic. No big deal. Happens all the time. That's what the Internet's for, innit?
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Originally posted by: andy_k_250
You know, it might be kind of neat to just have a straight film transfer, scratches and everything.


I'd have to agree with that......very neat....

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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Boris, why do you keep saying that a scan of the prints will be no better than the DVDs being mastered from the D1 laserdisc masters?

The D1 masters were scanned NON-ANAMORPHIC at laserdisc resolution only (so something like 300 lines of picture), and then stored digitally.

A scan of half-decent 35mm print, whether manual or automated, can be done at a very high resolution - better than 1080P for instance. I seem to recall that digital film projection is around 2000 lines, and that 35mm film actually has better resolution than that.

So - if we are conservative and say 1000 lines - how is that not better than 300 lines?

Darth Lucas: I am altering the trilogy. Pray I don't alter it further.
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Originally posted by: ronlaw
Boris, why do you keep saying that a scan of the prints will be no better than the DVDs being mastered from the D1 laserdisc masters?

The D1 masters were scanned NON-ANAMORPHIC at laserdisc resolution only (so something like 300 lines of picture), and then stored digitally.
Because it's not the resolution alone that gives the transfer its quality.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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“I love Darth Editous and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” ~ADigitalMan

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Actually, I think boris is right. Resolution is not the end-all and be-all of a good transfer. Unless you start with a good print and use good equipment and take some particular care in the post-processing, it is entirely possible to have a wonderful, glorious, 1080p capture of crap.

I have seen raw 2k captures of contemporary 35mm first-generation film that look pretty lame. Anyone who thinks it's as easy as finding film, sticking it in the scanner, pressing a button and hey, presto! you've got yourself a masterpiece, is sadly, hopelessly, irretrievably naive.

That said, I think good results could be had, with enough time and effort. And a little luck.
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Let me put it to you like this. We all know that for everything Lucas is, he's a perfectionist - right? Quality to Lucas comes well before any other sensibilities. However he's also artistic which is why he's a filmmaker - though he often tries to do "too much" himself and in my opinion could benefit from the input of others. With this in mind, Lucas shot both ep 2 and ep 3 in HD. That's in 1080p. Now, there are many obvious advantages to digital such as being able to see what you've shot right away, being able to edit scenes earlier, you don't have the problem of being on your last reel of film, etc - and it's cheaper then traditional filming (though as it was "cutting edge technology" this may not have been a draw card at the time). And the quality is amazing, as far as digital is concerned. Even at "laserdisc resolution" (roughly equal to non-anamorphic DVD) you can show a movie theatrically.

Now obviously shooting in HD, Lucas believed he was capturing a clearer sharper image then if he had to transfer from traditional film. With this in mind, we're comparing to technology as of 2000ish. Now some people would agree that 35MM film today holds more detail then HD (though if this is actually the case then the difference is probably tiny anyway), and it's often not as sharp as you can focus on digital. Ep 2 and 3 are also much more clear with more picture information then you will find in the O-OT. When you saw Star Wars in cinemas in 1977, there's every chance the projector projected an image no-greater then DVD anyway. In fact, I'm sure that this time last decade (ie ~1996) that most cinemas I went to showed images no greater then DVD is now.

I'm certain that any 35MM print will not have as much picture information as 720p, let alone 1080p. Although there's a clear difference in quality with the 2004 DVD's to the 1993 LD's - most of that was achieved through digital filtering and image processing. If they transferred it again, and only removed large, visible, obvious deformities - it wouldn't be that different to the 1993 master, even if it was scanned at 720p or 1080p.
Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Originally posted by: boris
In fact, I'm sure that this time last decade (ie ~1996) that most cinemas I went to showed images no greater then DVD is now.

I'm certain that any 35MM print will not have as much picture information as 720p, let alone 1080p. Although there's a clear difference in quality with the 2004 DVD's to the 1993 LD's - most of that was achieved through digital filtering and image processing. If they transferred it again, and only removed large, visible, obvious deformities - it wouldn't be that different to the 1993 master, even if it was scanned at 720p or 1080p.

Boris, when it comes to the subject of "resolution", you have no idea what you are talking about....ZERO. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....

Educate yourself by visiting this link

and just in case you don't make it that far, here's a little part that you'll want to know about...

Resolution in various media

* DVDs have roughly 500 lines (or TV lines, or lines per picture height).
* High definition television has 1,080 lines.
* 35mm movie film is scanned for release on DVD at 1080 or 2000 lines as of 2005.
* 35mm optical camera negative motion picture film can resolve up to 6,000 lines.
* 35mm projection positive motion picture film has about 2,000 lines which results from the analogue printing from the camera negative of an interpositive, and possibly an internegative, then a projection positive.
* Newer films are scanned at 4,000 lines, called 4K scanning, anticipating any advances in digital projection or higher resolution in flat panel display.


Let's see DVD = 500 lines of resolution ...... 35mm motion picture film has about 2,000 lines of resolution

Take the time to learn about something BEFORE you make a fool of yourself.

I love everybody. Lets all smoke some reefer and chill. Hug and kisses for everybody.

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The more lines you scan off a film negative, the more accurate the result. It's better to scan more lines and scale down then it is to scan only the lines you need, because the result is more accurate. You could scan it at 10,000 lines if you so desired, but the accuracy increase becomes exponentially less and less as you add more and more lines until it's almost entirely meaningless (and in terms of perceptual difference it is entirely meaningless).

When scanning a film for DVD release, they scan at about 1080 (like the OT was for the 2004 SSE) because that’s the point at which there’s no further noticeable benefit (or at least it's a good enough rough point for a rule-of-thumb, plus it's already HD-ready - however for HD it would be even better to scan at a higher resolution still of about 2000 lines and scale down to 1080). I agree with Lucas, and Coppola that high definition digital filming is more detailed then 35MM film. I saw Superman Returns just the other day, and I can't say I've ever seen more detail on screen. At least half the DVD's in my collection I would have no intentions ever of replacing with HD versions later on in years to come, simply because I don't have faith that their film stock would hold the detail to warrant it - in fact, the only real difference in many instances would be that the compression would be much better with newer HD technology.

The point is that the 35MM master negatives for the OOT - in my personal opinion - are less detailed and contain less picture information then 720p high-definition. Personally I think the only reason some directors would favour film over HD isn't for the resolution, but for how well it actually picks up the locations you're shooting on - outside or in sets - digital doesn't like natural lighting as much as film.

Anyway, you're welcome to your opinion that film can hold six times the information as 1080p – I just don't share it, and it's not because I don't know as much as you, it's because HD looks more detailed.

Some were not blessed with brains.
<blockquote>Originally posted by: BadAssKeith

You are passing up on a great opportunity to makes lots of money,
make Lucas lose a lot of his money
and make him look bad to the entire world
and you could be well known and liked

None of us here like Lucas or Lucasfilm.
I have death wishes on Lucas and Macullum.
we could all probably get 10s of thousands of dollars!
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Time
Post link
Boris, i think you are a bit misguided in the belief that "I'm certain that any 35MM print will not have as much picture information as 720p, let alone 1080p.". Unfortunatley you are dead wrong on that score.
A few quick points on 'HD', DVD and film.
Film holds a far greater colour depth and a far greater resolution than DVD - this is true of 16mm and exponentially more so for 35mm. Even Super8 holds far more colour resolution than DVD.

For a start, DVD is 4:2:0, even consumer HDTV (1080i or 720p) is only 4:2:0 so your colour resolution is horribly, horribly compromised compared to film where there is effectively a 1:1 resolution match for colour to picture information.

A good quality theatrical print can easily resolve greater than 4000 lines of detail. You can point a camera at a 4K test pattern and actually resolve 4000 lines on the film, you certainly cannot do that with DVD. Weave reduces the resolution of film, but it is still way higher than 2000 lines.

Lucas didn't shoot on digital because he believed it was 'better quality' than 35mm film, but because it saved an estimated 1-2 million dollars in film stock costs (compared to digital tape) and also was 'ready to go' into post production, which saved a fortune on scanning costs and time, which is a big deal on a effects heavy feature like a Star Wars movie.

Also, when you say Lucas shot the prequels on HD, we are not talking conumer HD (i.e. 4:2:0 1920 x 1080 interlaced and heavily compressed.)
Even the aging Sony cinealta 950 camera captures colour in 4:4:4 RGB, and it is really old hat these days. The newer arri rigs shoot uncompressed 4:4:4 at over 3000x2200 (I can't remember the exact rez) in 12 bit colour (actually colour is better than that via the algorithms they use).

The newer SXRD Sony projectors used in digital cinemas run at 4096x2160 , although the early projectors were 2K (and IMHO look pretty ordinary).

In short, even 16mm film leaves DVD in the dust quality wise.

"If they transferred it again, and only removed large, visible, obvious deformities - it wouldn't be that different to the 1993 master, even if it was scanned at 720p or 1080p."
This is something a lot of people incorrectly assume.
If they fed the OT through one of the new arriscan machines, it would look immeasurably better than the 1993 transfers.
Just look at the extra detail in the newer scans of the OT used for the 'official DVD' vs the laserdisc transfers - even if you scale them down to 277 lines they have a lot more detail than the laserdisc or the D2 tapes. This is because of advances in scanning technology, and because the film holds more resolution and colour than any DVD of HD-DVD/BluRay format is capable of holding.

That is one of the beauties of shooting on film vs on digital. When attack of the clones was shot, 1080P was as good as you could get with a digital cine camera. Because they used that format, all of the elements shot on it are stuck at that point in technology, forever.They will never be able to get a 4K or 8K image with 16 bit colour out of it, because it is a 1080P master.
If they had shot it on film, then as scanning technology improved, so could a digital transfer. Had they shot AOTC on pin registered 35mm they could scan it today and get a 8K master with 4:4:4 12 bit colour, and it would have a lot more detail than the 1080P master they have now.

"Even at "laserdisc resolution" (roughly equal to non-anamorphic DVD) you can show a movie theatrically."

Um no - you really really can't. Even on a 10foot wide screen the 277 lines or so of a scope laserdisc looks appalling, you have to run it through a good scaler to make it even watchable. On a theater screen it would be a total joke.
Full frame DVD resolution (720x480 NTSC) is also a block-fest on a theatre screen, each pixel on a 24 ft wide screen is around half an inch wide (1.2cm or so) . You can scale it and so forth, but it still doesn't look any good.

Even for a good home theatre projector like a Sony G90 standard DVD is almost unwatchable unless you scale it up first, and even then DVD through a great scaler looks crapola compared to a decent HD-DVD or DTheater title at 1080i.
(BluRay doesn't look much better than DVD at the moment as it is currently only single layer and MPEGII - what on earth is Sony thinking?!?!). So no, a non-anamorphic DVD transfer could not be shown theatrically - it will look awful.

Moving back onto the thread topic

The problems for a preservationist looking at a film transfer however are a multi headed hydra.

As pointed out the sheer number of frames and storage is daunting.
172,800 frames for a two hour film. Scanning, processing and saving a frame every minute (which seems reasonable including stabilisation and super basic cleanup and reassembly into a 'movie' file) equates to 360 days of working 8 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Then there is the quality of a surviving print. 35mm prints of Star Wars were *never* offered for sale. Ever. This means any surviving print was stolen or *ahem* obtained. It also means that unless it was stolen extremely early in the piece, it went through the projector a *lot* of times. This was a popular movie folks!
It also means the print will be well over 20 years old. Any Eastman prints will now be pink. There will be surviving prints on other stock with the colour in good shape, and perhaps even ones that have not been through a projector more than 20 or 30 times, but they will be beyond rare.

Even if you got hold of one of those ultra rare prints, they will still be covered in an unimaginable amount of dirt, scratches and crud. What a collector would consider a 'mint' print will look very dirty under a scanner, and will require extensive cleanup. A 'good' quality print would need nearly every frame touched.
I don't own a 35mm print of SW, but have had access to some in the past, and while they were useful as a colour reference, none would have been good enought for a high quality scan.

Legality. I've been in the industry a lot of years, and I don't know *anyone* who would scan a 35mm print of Star Wars that is working professionally. They wouldn't just be risking their job, they would be risking their entire career.
They would also be risking a gaol term. If the print got into the wild, I'm pretty sure Lucasfilm would put a lot of resources into tracking down where it was done. They are quite forgiving of the 'home' user making his own versions and playing with laserdiscs, but if a film facility scanned a print I'm pretty sure all hell would break loose. (Speculation on my part of course)

It isn't point and shoot. Scanning a film isn't a 'put it an and press the button' proposition. Even a straight telecine requires tweaking almost on a scene by scene basis to get a good result from a print and not a neg. Scanning is even worse.
Newer scanners like the arriscan out at Weta make the job a lot easier, but there is still a lot of work to do. Even just getting the LUTs right is an artform.
It also means that it would be difficult for an employee to just 'run it through the scanner' during downtime (even ignoring that most scanners keep a frame count of frames scanned too, which is used for costings, maintenance etc. and a few hundred thousand extra frames gets noticed). It takes a lot of setup and work and is hard to do 'on the quiet'. You can get away with scanning your 5 minute short film project, but 6 or more reels of 35mm is hard to stuff up your jumper when people look in your direction. It is also hard to use up that much disk storage without being noticed, and then smuggle the files and film reels back out again.

None of the above means it is impossible. I reckon it is impractical and improbable, but I've been wrong many times in the past.

I still can't believe that Lucasfilm didn't scan all of the original camera negs, or that they cut up the original negs with new footage - it would be an act of vandalism to do so, but if he believes it is his film and he can do what he likes with it, there would be nothing stopping him just setting it on fire if he wanted to I guess.

So in short, if you are still keen then locating a print is the first step, and checking out the quality.You really can't get anywhere without a decent print or two to work from.

Step two would be to keep it to yourself lest Lucasfilm come after you to get their print back (it will still belong to them under the law I would think, and it wouldn't be the first time privately held 35mm features where 'recovered' by a studio).
Then look at what would be involved with getting a transfer done.

(BTW. a huge thanks to everyone here, I'm not officially back, and promise not to take this thread any further off topic - but I borrowed a computer and thought I'd drop in and say hi. Hopefully I'll be back properly in a couple of months and will rejoin the fray.)



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Originally posted by: Laserman
Hopefully I'll be back properly in a couple of months and will rejoin the fray.
It's great to see you post again LM, and I look forward to your "proper" return!

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Welcome back Laserman! Seeing your name (and good ol' snowtrooper icon) on a post brought a smile to my face.

Thanks also for (as always) presenting relevant, readable and accurate information.
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This may be off topic, but were do you get copys of movies in 16mm or 35mm? I'm really interested in getting some of these for presonal enjoyment.

But on topic, the main problem that I picked up is that the quality of the film is probably degraded over time. So we could all heroicly donate $50, 000 (which would be awesome by the way), but if we have to invest even more money in restoration would it have been worth it? Honestly I probably would enjoy it in a raw state simply because of the authenticity and the hard work put in to even make it.
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"Do you remember, when DVD first came out many people argued that Laserdisc was actually still better quality and people wouldn't upgrade because they were happier with the quality of their LD's?"

Do you remember that many of the first DVDs that came out were straight LD ports, most of which lacked al the extras that the original LDs came with? In this regard, the LDs were of similar video/audio quality and yet had tremendously better value. In fact, many - though certainly not all, early LDs were of superior quality than the comparable DVDs, both in terms of video and audio.

"But since we're talking about "capitalism," where's DanielB when you need him ?"

LOL!

"always remember it takes two to make an argument, not one."

No, it doesn't!

"Actually, I think boris is right. Resolution is not the end-all and be-all of a good transfer."

In and of itself, no. But, even a current non-anamorphic transfer, as opposed to a 12-year-old transfer, could certainly benefit from today's advanced scanning technology. On top of that, I don't hear anyone complaining about the lack of detail in the '04 DVDs (this being the one good thing I have to say about them.)

"When scanning a film for DVD release, they scan at about 1080 (like the OT was for the 2004 SSE) because that’s the point at which there’s no further noticeable benefit (or at least it's a good enough rough point for a rule-of-thumb, plus it's already HD-ready - however for HD it would be even better to scan at a higher resolution still of about 2000 lines and scale down to 1080)."

For the record:
Sound & Vision : So the Star Wars films were processed at high-def, but not at the 4K level — four times high-def resolution — that you've been using for some other films?

John Lowry : At high-def, yes. - Link

"and also was 'ready to go' into post production"

This was a major biggie, as far as Lucas was concerned...

"Also, when you say Lucas shot the prequels on HD, we are not talking conumer HD (i.e. 4:2:0 1920 x 1080 interlaced and heavily compressed.)
Even the aging Sony cinealta 950 camera captures colour in 4:4:4 RGB, and it is really old hat these days. The newer arri rigs shoot uncompressed 4:4:4 at over 3000x2200 (I can't remember the exact rez) in 12 bit colour (actually colour is better than that via the algorithms they use)."

It would seem all the films are scanned as such:

Sound & Vision :Did George Lucas actually let you borrow the original camera negatives of his Star Wars films to do your high-resolution scan for the restoration?

John Lowry : No. We sent one of our 6-terabyte servers up to Skywalker Ranch in San Rafael , California, where they loaded it with full RGB [red, green, and blue] data without having to go through the component output that tape masters would demand.Link

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: Sadly, I believe the prequels are beyond repair.
<span class=“Bold”>JediRandy: They’re certainly beyond any repair you’re capable of making.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>MeBeJedi: You aren’t one of us.
<span class=“Bold”>Go-Mer-Tonic: I can’t say I find that very disappointing.</span></span>

<span class=“Italics”>JediRandy: I won’t suck as much as a fan edit.</span>