Info: Recommended Editions of Disney Animated (and Partially Animated) Features — Page 22

Hello y'all.

I was searching for what alterations Disney made to Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast over google and ended up here. Now I'm terrified about this horrific thing.

I live in Brazil and I'm thinking about getting the 2010 DVD release of Alice in Wonderland. Can someone confirm if the R4 NTSC release uses the same restoration used on the previous release (without the digital alterations of the effects like glass)?

Also, there is a laserdisc rip of The Lion King floating around? I didn't knew Disney remade animation for this film. Same with Aladdin :(

Doctor M said:

Disney still has unaltered/unrestored film scans somewhere of their oldest films that may yet get a proper restoration.  I fear the newer films that were modified for IMAX have had their digital data altered and might not be able to be restored to their theatrical version.

Even if the CAPS files were altered, original 35mm film-out elements of the post-TLM films must still exist in the vault. (And keep in mind, truly theatrically-accurate versions of those films would have to come from film, not digital files. Sure, they wouldn't look crystal-clear perfect like Disney seems to want everything to appear these days, but hey, they never looked like that in the first place!)

I know it will almost certainly never happen, but it would be neat to see "original theatrical versions" of at least BATB, Aladdin and TLK, scanned from the 90s film elements (and not de-grained!)

Doctor M said:

  I don't know enough Spanish and zero Portuguese to go through sites that might have reviews.

 You need to check out Google Chrome.  It instantly translates sites to your language.  I use Firefox and Chrome but I only use Chrome for translating sites.

I'm a big fan of film grain and feel Disney's scrubbing has done a terrible disservice to their films, but once you're talking digital sources, the grain is an indication of degradation not fidelity.

I'm probably alone on this one.

Nope. That's also what I think, starting perhaps with some early 1980's of 1990's animated features.

When did the digital work on animation began with the Disney features ?

Doctor M said:

Since CAPS films aren't animated with the slight differences in shading for cells on different layers, what exactly distinguishes a 'theatrically accurate' version of a CAPS film?

By the mid 90's film stock was pretty mature.  Unlikely Technicolor in its infancy that required answer prints, the difference between what the CAPS computer generated and the final film print should not have been that different.

Then why does every digital transfer of Beauty and the Beast not only look different from the theatrical timing, but from the other digital transfers? Were they regraded at the DI stage for no reason in particular?

Also, the early-90s films still had a traditional color timer. Dale Grahn had to have done SOMETHING.

You're probably right, I may just be partial to the way film degrades the image and makes it look more "filmic", even if that may not be what the filmmakers fully intended.

skyjedi2005 said:

What about Disney/Lucasfilm they could  re-render the horrid star wars prequels for higher resolution but the price tag would not be worth it.

In case you're serious, at least Episodes II and III were filmed digitally at only 2K... so there's no way to make at least the live-action elements higher resolution.

Also, why would we want to see them at higher res anyway? ;)

Well, since Disney are supposedly so awesome at preserving, they probably do.

And they probably have prints and digital conversions of those prints.

The WIP from the BD attests to that.

Another 35mm print of The Great Mouse Detective showed up on eBay. This one is incomplete, but it's interesting because...well, look at the sample frame.

In recent years, there has been a degree of snobbery about how certain animated titles should have been open-matte (Transformers: The Movie, The Secret of NIMH, etc. - more amusing if you remember that a few years prior people were complaining that the original DVDs were full-frame!)

But this is proof that for animation releases, 4:3 does not always mean open-matte. If it were truly open-matte, you would see stuff like this (and in fact, some 4:3 releases do have this problem, can't remember which ones though). The films were composed and protected for widescreen (even if some of them look unnaturally tight at that ratio - not Disney, but An American Tail is a great example. It's sometimes too cramped at 1.85, but quite often too loose at 1.33...)

As to "cropped" - the eBay picture is obviously not the entire frame.

Look at the bottom of that screengrab - you can see the frame line, and a sliver of the next frame under it. It seems that the full frame was exposed, including outside the area that was intended to be shown.

My point was that for a lot of pre-digital animation, showing the full exposed frame is not a good idea.

With TGMD, it's clear that the 2002 transfer cuts off picture on all four sides. But even in a theater, picture might be cropped on the sides depending on the aperture plate, or even the dimensions/curvature of the theater screen itself - the SMPTE projector safe area accounts for this.

A lot of people tend to treat OAR as if it's some kind of immutable law of nature, when it isn't anything of the sort.

Hi, a few searches for this subject led me to this thread/forum. 

I ordered a few pre-Lowry laserdiscs, I'll see how they compare. 

The Jungle Book Blu-ray is the same restoration as the 2007 DVD (I'm sure there are a few minor tweaks but I no longer have the old disc for reference). The DNR'd line work doesn't hold up as well in 1080p compared to its non-Xerox based predecessors, soft shots are especially deteriorated. Color timing seems to be okay and doesn't have any glaring consequences because the film had flat lighting to begin with.

I'll post my thoughts on the 1992 laserdisc when it arrives. 

I'm not so sure it will ever happen as their only truly filmic transfer had to have been an accident (Rescuers Down Under). I'll definitely try to post a few screencaps, equipment's good to go.

As in the old set of screencaps, there's a HUGE difference with colors in Peter Pan. Vibrant colors on the LD without being oversaturated.

(Left: 1990 LD, Right: 2013 DVD)

It could be toned down slightly (might be my capture settings too), but there's enough dullness present that it couldn't be a uniformly boosted transfer. I'm not willing to say that it's the right color timing, but it's hard to argue that Wendy's dress is supposed to be grey instead of blue. It's like reverse Cinderella.

edit: for clarification I think that the general palette of the Diamond could be correct, it's just a poor representation of that timing.