This is Burns' comment:
"But I will say what was shocking was – and I think this speaks to the whole issue of restoration – those brief scenes that we used from the pre-Special Edition, in our mind's eye, they looked a lot better than they do when you go back and revisit them and you do see how the quality of the print and the quality of the negative really doesn't hold up the way you think it might. So you kind of understand why things have been revised and digitally restored."
Not exactly sure what he means. Is he saying the footage looks good because the original negatives look so bad? That'd be somewhat contradictory.