Star Wars 1977 releases on 35mm — Page 12

I've been inundated with messages asking me about this, so I just want to let people know that I am currently scanning all three films.

I have more prints at the moment than I do HDDs to store them on, if anyone sees good deals on 5TB HDDs, please let me know, I need another 60TB just to be able to scan the films I have in the queue.

As posted in the other thread, this is how a scan looks at SD

and here is how it looks at about half resolution (i.e. 3983 x 1740).

http://i.imgur.com/WCqVvw8.jpg

The full resolution scans are @ 4096 x 3488

I'll post some of the requested scenes as soon as I can make/acquire some more disc space, should be able to put some more images up next month.

To answer another question, if I can get the space, I am 90% confident that the restorations will be complete by mid next year.

poita said:

To answer another question, if I can get the space, I am 90% confident that the restorations will be complete by mid next year.

 I am 90% confident that you will do it by that date. Awesome!

^ Best user name and avatar on the site.

I'm not a 35mm reel ;^)

They vary a lot. I have paid for some prints, but most are from collectors and I have paid to access them.

I put this reply into the correct on-topic thread. :)

poita said:

There is a definite drop in detail from 4K to 2K, quite a lot actually. Even going from full aperture 4K to DCI 4K native loses some detail.

There is still extra detail being resolved at 10K vs 4K, but not really enough to justify a full 10K scan, it is mainly just defining the grain better.

As it is scanning is being done at double the 'standard' 4K, over 14 Megapixels per frame, and with a huge dynamic range, so we really should be getting all the detail that is likely to be extracted from the prints.
This also allows things like stabilisation to be applied without the sub-pixel smearing that you would get if scanning at the lower 4096x2160 resolution, (or the much much lower 2K resolution)

It certainly isn't a competition, a lot of sharing of materials, knowledge and techniques goes on behind the scenes that people don't see here. Mike V, Harmy, Adywan, myself etc. all help each other out and none of us work completely in isolation. Work done by anyone benefits pretty much everyone.

Yes, from what you've said before the detail resolves to higher than 2k but lower than 4k. Interesting you mention "not really enough to justify a full 10K scan" that implies you are selectively scanning some scenes at 10k, would that be correct?

And great news on the time-frame, like MikeV keeps saying I hope it motivates Disney/Fox to do an official release.

happycube said:

How good's the lossless compression available to you?

 Because of the grain, the compression isn't great, you are still looking at around 12-18TB for 6 reels, and being compressed slows everything down a bit.

RU.08 said:

I put this reply into the correct on-topic thread. :)

poita said:

There is a definite drop in detail from 4K to 2K, quite a lot actually. Even going from full aperture 4K to DCI 4K native loses some detail.

There is still extra detail being resolved at 10K vs 4K, but not really enough to justify a full 10K scan, it is mainly just defining the grain better.

As it is scanning is being done at double the 'standard' 4K, over 14 Megapixels per frame, and with a huge dynamic range, so we really should be getting all the detail that is likely to be extracted from the prints.
This also allows things like stabilisation to be applied without the sub-pixel smearing that you would get if scanning at the lower 4096x2160 resolution, (or the much much lower 2K resolution)

It certainly isn't a competition, a lot of sharing of materials, knowledge and techniques goes on behind the scenes that people don't see here. Mike V, Harmy, Adywan, myself etc. all help each other out and none of us work completely in isolation. Work done by anyone benefits pretty much everyone.

Yes, from what you've said before the detail resolves to higher than 2k but lower than 4k. Interesting you mention "not really enough to justify a full 10K scan" that implies you are selectively scanning some scenes at 10k, would that be correct?

And great news on the time-frame, like MikeV keeps saying I hope it motivates Disney/Fox to do an official release.

 Yeah, even after all the work I have put in, and the stupid amounts of time and money, I'd be as happy as anyone if Disney would undertake a Criterion-style resotration in 4K of the OUT.

Detail and resolution are funny things, there is detail that is lost if you scan at DCI 4K Flat or UHD resolutions, what most people think of as 4K, scanning 4K full aperture really does seem to pick up any detail that is there.

It is true that the Bluray in some cases has more 'detail' but because of its low resolution, there are places that it has considerably less detail.

For example, there are some explosions on the prints that are 'blown out' at the core, there is very little 'detail' in the explosion centre, it is mostly blown out to white. This appears to be a conscious decision for the prints, but the explosions were exposed wide on the neg, you can see this as there is more 'detail' on the laserdisc release! You can see the details in the core of the explosion on laserdisc that are not visible on the prints. But it was never shown that way in the cinema...

In other areas though, there are tiny details on the print, for example in the stormtrooper uniforms, around the belt area, small details on the costumes and props, that are completely lost on the Bluray, because the detail is smaller than one pixel in size @1080P. In these cases the print reveals details that were definitely visible in the cinema in '77, but haven't been seen since. Only a 4K restoration will preserve those details.

So it is a bit of a mixed bag, but scanning at 'double' 4K resolution by scanning at full aperture '4K', you really do resolve all of the detail that is available and useful. Scanning at 'standard 4K' (i.e. nearly half that resolution) you lose some of that. Going to 10K doesn't seem to bring anything more to the table.

Newegg is having a promotion on 5TB HDDs for $119, if anyone can help me out in the US as I need to order 5, and newegg won't ship to where I want them to go...

DrDre- Yes he's a professional - he seems to have worked with film for most of his life.

Poita- Thanks for the very detailed information.

I've been criticized here for removing grain from my encodes...

As poita said, you take a big compression hit by leaving in the grain so it's a bit of a tradeoff whether you want a more filmic appearance, vs. better compression, and I tend to prefer a sweet spot that still has a little bit of grain, it's not swimming in it like say the Dragon Ball Z Levels, or the Puggo 16mm encodes, but it's not completely grainless, flat and looking like video.

Of course for the master preservation from which everything else derives, you want everything intact :P - you can take something away, but you can't add it back later.

Just an opinion on my end.

Thanks to everyone, I have ten drives organised, which is as much as I can afford to purchase at the moment.

I'll need another ten soon, but that will have to wait :)

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I can solve that womp-rat problem you are having.