RU.08

Did you see my PM? Click the speech bubble at the top of the page next to your avatar.

Looking forward to hearing an email from you. If you can help out in London it would be very much appreciated as I’ve got a decent cheap scanner available in London but we would like to have someone who doesn’t mind picking up the film and shipping it or helping out to sell it afterwards etc if needed. That would be a really big help to anyone who wants to do a scan in the UK without having to ship their print to Europe or the US.

I don’t think he bought the print.

I don’t think I’ve seen this movie before myself, but I do like the first two Halloween films. NCFan is doing this on a Scanstation, have you seen a print scanned off a current model before? They will be way easier to grade etc compared with older tech and the quality is very professional. You may like to see how they scan compared with the Tech used with where you work which is based on Trilinear CCD, the Scanstations are not quite as sharp as the RGB scanners but if sharpness is your thing you can always do some modest sharpening in post after colour correction. That won’t look anything like projection though if that’s what you’re going for as projection softens the image a little bit even when you have a sharp print.

For anyone who’s interested in this film I’d suggest donating towards the scanning cost. Most people don’t know this, but individual machines vary a lot and how they’re operated makes a big difference. This is one operated to a professional restoration standard compared with many others which are operated to lower standards and often produce vastly inferior results as a consequence. This scan will look vastly superior to most other fan scans.

declanfiore said:

Thank you for the welcome! From what I’ve seen, the people that are actually doing the restorations themselves don’t have any knowledge on fan restorations/projects. But the guys I work with are very specific with their work and hate using tools such as NR which I was very appreciative to find out. The head of digital restoration here said he can count on one hand how many times he’s used NR and hates doing it due to compromising detail.

I’d love to raise awareness of fan projects and spread the word, but we mostly work with Arrow Video who are one of the few companies that actually take good care of their restorations!

I’m sending you a PM. Check the speech-bubble near your avatar at the top of the page.

FWIW I’m doing all my scanning professionally at the moment. I want to get into restoration as well down the line.

I’m doing some more Disney scanning this month. If you’re interested in knowing more and contributing shoot me a private message.

Hopefully I can get some releases ready this month as well for donors from some of the older scans. Everyone’s busy at the moment, but will be nice to see a couple of the classics that people love.

Interesting how my comments have aged! Haha. I’d like to correct a mistake I made - I said it wasn’t designed for prints - that’s partly correct, but it’s not the full story. The scanner has a setting for prints, that isn’t it’s purpose though and it was designed to scan good condition negatives not for film older than 30-40 years. Take a look at what Blackmagic said it was designed for in 2015 when they launched it, and also the 2014 pre-launch tech preview.

ilovewaterslides said:

I think this scanner should work like a charm with 35mm copies but they’re not going to tell: “Now you can finally scan all your 35mm theatrical copies for a reasonable price” on their site since it’s not completely legal to own one. That was the goal of my initial post.

Actually, most professional scanner manufacturers are the ones that really don’t care about prints since they’re owned by archives instead of by wealthy rightsholders who can afford to pay for premium scanning, and in most cases you never need to scan a print for restoration. So if it did do a fantastic job for prints then Blackmagic would not be shy about using it as a selling point (Lasergraphics uses it as a selling point), prints are much more difficult to scan well compared to negatives so if a scanning machine can scan prints well then it can definitely scan negatives well.

The seller is reputable FWIW if someone wants to bid and is interested in the item.

I wouldn’t suggest fund-raising without buying the print first, if you get outbid you’d have to return all the donations. Are you in the UK? Also, how do you plan to get it scanned?

Bobson Dugnutt said:

Where’d you get your scanning prices from? I think if you get in touch with Willarob, TomArrow, or those guys who have done some great scanning recently, it only costs a few hundred.

Just so you’re aware those aren’t the full facts. NCFan reached out and I’m going to get a quote for them with a company I know. The scanner Williarob uses charges about $.22/ft commercially, the “fan rate” comes with conditions and isn’t the best scanner for prints. NCFan actually has a competitive quote from a good company, but we can likely do a better price at a different company.

It’s a US TV movie, the proper speed is 23.976fps/59.94i.

IIRC Doctor Who 1996 PAL uses a DEFT standards conversion which I describe here. I don’t know if they’ve changed that for later releases, but the native format of the movie is 59.94i so I suggest finding the highest quality NTSC source and starting there. You can IVTC most of that, but the special effects shots and credits will be 30 fps so you have to make a choice about how to convert those, and really should do those scenes separately to the rest of the film.

I think the original region 1 DVD release was converted from the PAL master so be aware of that, you may need to get the VHS or a broadcast recording to get the best version.

Hifi tapes have two audio tracks, record it through a mono-VCR to get the mono track as well.

I’ll be doing more scans soon. We have Covid delays again but I have access to good scanners and to prints.

I’m thinking about setting up a subscription payment system to get things rolling. The goal will be to do every Disney classic - and where possible to scan multiple prints. I might re-scan Pinoke next year as well.

Well it’s 3K or 3.2K if you want to describe it that way, but the most common 4K 35mm scanner is the Blackmagic Cintel and it’s not as good since it has a rather noisy camera that hasn’t been changed in 4 or 5 years. So getting a better 4K scan in Europe right now isn’t that easy. Most other 4K scanners aren’t designed for prints either, so they have a range of issues dealing with print that they don’t have with negative. Most of the 4K places you have seen or talked to probably won’t be able to do as good a job.

The resolution doesn’t really matter I might add, your print won’t resolve a full 3K let alone 4K so you won’t be missing much detail. Scanning at higher resolution can improve the debayering but not much else.

Good luck, and again you will be happy with this scan, this scanner works really well with prints.

You’ll be very happy with the scan quality, it has a good Sony Pregius imager with a low noise floor and a very good backlight which also makes a big difference.

LexX said:

Maybe williarob could help, if not for anything else other than as a test to scan 70mm.

They don’t have a 70mm scanner, unless you send it over to Europe or they set up the old system again.

KittyLeiaLady said:

I have this hunk - I used to go see the movie so often, I knew the projectionists. I have several frames, including the title centered! What is the best way to preserve these? The 10 foot hunk - that must be worth something. It’s the scene right after the milleneum falcon had landed in the bay of the Death Star after being ‘tractored in.’ Darth Vader is talking to a guy who is giving his ‘report.’ One of those guys who looks like he’s wearing a Peter Pan suit…

Unfortunately they did that with some 70mm prints - sliced them up and sold them as frames and clips in the lobby. Some places did that on their own once they were told to destroy the prints.

There aren’t many good 70mm scanners around. The Director is probably the only decent commercial scanner for it, especially for print.

I don’t think it’s “finished” Wazzles.

If anyone wants to do a new higher quality scan send me a message. I don’t have funding for this right now, but I can do it with a bit of help.

JonathanArthur19 said:

Apparently the original files are just gone, apparently they had digital backups of all their movies and their backups failed. Pixar also keep their original digital files for the first two Toy Story films and just re-rendered the film at 2K / 1080p for Blu-Ray which was a smart move IMO.

Toy Story was rendered at lower resolution for 35mm though, so it would be good to scan it to have to proper render.

I’m still waiting for things on my end, the scan (along with my print) has been shipped by sea. I didn’t ask for it to be sent that way, but that’s how it was sent.

I didn’t promise people a complete copy of this or that right away, sorry if it’s a bit slow. I should hopefully have another BATB print this year … but again that’s up to the seller and then I have to arrange to get it scanned as well. 😃 It takes time and a lot of expenses which are often out-of-reach.

I should be able to do something from the old scans soon, but they have issues as many people know.

Sorry to hear you’re down on your luck. 😦

MattMahdi said:

Interesting idea. My only fear – and I did just vote in the affirmative – is a completely closed system. I know that there have been times at OT when I have arrived just in time for projects such as would be featured here, and others where I have just arrived too late and that was that. I’d hope there would be a way for new enthusiasts to occasionally join. (Thinking of a certain private torrent site, frequently mentioned here, that’s been devoid of any invitations for years.)

The idea would be a forum for active participants in classic animation scanning so everyone can meet in one place. I’d probably set it up without any regular donors to begin with and then let the forum decide who they’re comfortable with inviting.

It’s not envisioned as a forum for release, rather as a safe private space for people organising projects and others who may want to participate.

I’m thinking about setting up a new forum for Disney scanning. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

This is how it will work. I would set up a forum on a VPS and start inviting people over, everyone there must bring something to be a member. This would include collectors/people with film, scanners who want to be on the forum, people who do Disney projects, people who help in practical ways including working on releases, and people who donate towards costs. I will set-up a simple recurring payment system for the latter group to ensure everyone is actively participating in some way. The forum itself would be private and not visible to non-members. It would allow me to bring together people from a variety of places into one place with a common purpose.

Record your vote here. It’s an external poll as I’m posting this question across a few places.

Feel free to discuss the idea.

The HDR scan of Cindy will be pretty definitive.

A donor encode is now available (well I can make it available to all donors in a couple of hours - PM me if you donated). This is not considered a final version at this stage and was the result of 2 separate print scans.

We’re not using VHS or LD or anything other than film as the reference for theatrical colour timing. The operator of a SD telecine was literally called a “colourist” because they would grade the transfer on-the-fly for home video or broadcast. There’s nothing at all theatrically accurate about that process, and they come from what are known as “TV prints” which are 16mm prints struck specifically for telecine.

I know all details of the TB scan of SW. It’s not at a quality that I personally would be happy with and I feel we can improve upon it even if I was to borrow the same print (a 1975 print if I’m not mistaken) and do a fresh transfer. I’m not bashing the scan at all, but it’s pretty basic especially if you care about early theatrical colours since by the 70’s they were recoloured. That’s a technical limitation of the film material itself.