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The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.
Making our own 35mm preservation--my crazy proposal — Page 7
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Originally posted by: THX
DV isn't "True SD" because it's compressed, and because it's shot with a chip with less lines of resolution than the broadcast standard.
DV isn't "True SD" because it's compressed, and because it's shot with a chip with less lines of resolution than the broadcast standard.
That's incorrect. Think about it--DV and DVDs are both compressed, and both the same resolution, and both are Standard Definition. If they weren't, then HD-DVD and Blu-Ray wouldn't be "True HD," because they're compressed. Neither would anything broadcast on any HDTV channel. Compression is used by broadcasters in both HD and SD, and nothing in the technical standards of HD or SD has any limitations on compression. Further, DV meets the required resolution for SD (regardless of the chip in the camera), and HDV meets the required resolution for HD.
More on broadcast standards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_definition
I understand your frustration at the idea that any crappy image can be upsampled to HD and, technically, be HD. The FCC is forcing television stations to conform to HD standards, and over the next several years, all stations will comply to these standards, but some of the smaller ones will just be upsampling their SD broadcasts to HD. This irks me too. But that's the way it is, it's true.
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Remember like eight years ago when DV looked SO GOOD? R.I.P.
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Things would certainly be a lot simpler if Lucas would just stop the insane behavior and deliver a first-class transfer of the non-SE trilogy from the pristine fully restored master film prints. But if he won't, then someone else will. 
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Originally posted by: mcfly89
The FCC is forcing television stations to conform to HD standards, and over the next several years, all stations will comply to these standards [...].
The FCC is forcing television stations to conform to HD standards, and over the next several years, all stations will comply to these standards [...].
I don't think that's right. What the FCC is mandating is that all over the air TV stations conform to a (the ATSC?) digital standard. ATSC covers both SD and HD digital resolutions. So SD could be with us for quite some time to come, and TV stations will not be forced to upsample SD to HD.
And of course all bets are off when it comes to cable or satellite or IPTV. Although I guess of those, only cable still has a large analog subscriber base.
Edit: Ha, ha: I said "us," even though I'm Canadian, and therefore the FCC has no (direct) power over me...
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I even know someone who could do the transfer for us.
We could never obtain the 35mm prints though.
If anyone DOES know someone with them, please PM me.
I hope this happens.
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Originally posted by: Karyudo
I don't think that's right. What the FCC is mandating is that all over the air TV stations conform to a (the ATSC?) digital standard. ATSC covers both SD and HD digital resolutions. So SD could be with us for quite some time to come, and TV stations will not be forced to upsample SD to HD.
Originally posted by: mcfly89
The FCC is forcing television stations to conform to HD standards, and over the next several years, all stations will comply to these standards [...].
The FCC is forcing television stations to conform to HD standards, and over the next several years, all stations will comply to these standards [...].
I don't think that's right. What the FCC is mandating is that all over the air TV stations conform to a (the ATSC?) digital standard. ATSC covers both SD and HD digital resolutions. So SD could be with us for quite some time to come, and TV stations will not be forced to upsample SD to HD.
You're probably right about that--it just occured to me that my only source for that one bit of info was a friend of mine. He was the general manager of a public access station, but he also has a penchant for, shall we say, "creative storytelling."
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Originally posted by: DarkGruson
I even know someone who could do the transfer for us. [...] We could never obtain the 35mm prints though.
I even know someone who could do the transfer for us. [...] We could never obtain the 35mm prints though.
How about this: find a reel of 35mm film—any copyrighted movie on 35mm—hand that to your contact, and see how that turns out. If that's a smashing success (post some frames here for an opinion on just how smashing?), then collectively we can concentrate on getting a 35mm print of the droids we're all looking for.
All these film project ideas have suffered from this cart-before-the-horse problem. It's like thinking, "Gee, it'd be so cool to drive around in a Formula 1 car," then buying the hugely-expensive F1 car without first figuring out the equally tricky (but probably cheaper) problem of where to drive it.
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Simple test for anyone wanting to get into doing a transfer from 35mm, or who believes they know someone who would.
Buy one of the 35mm Star Wars or related trailers from ebay, (There are 350 35mm trailers on there right now) they crop up there all the time and don't sell for very much - a Star Trek Insurrection trailer is on there with a buy it now price of $5.
The trailer is guaranteed to be in far better shape than any SW print out there.
Get that transferred to HD and post back here with the results. Preferably pick up an older trailer like the gremlin's one for about $40 which will be closer in condition to a SW print.
If you can't get a 2 minute trailer transferred, then it doesn't bode well for getting 120 minutes done. If you can get it done then it will give you an idea of wether the quality of transfer is going to be worth it or not.
Buying a cheap trailer and trying to get it transferred is an almost no risk way to see if you could get a SW transfer done, and could be a lot of fun.
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Take back the trilogy. Execute Order '77
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OK short version.
Colour on film VS video.
HD, DVD and DV all compress the hell out of colour. In the PAL world they are 4:2:0 instead of 4:4:4 (in NTSC they are the same except DV which is 4:1:1, so if you take NTSC DV and make a DVD from it you end up with 4:1:0!!), *and* are only effectively a little less than 8bit colour (256 shades of Red Green and Blue).
To wrap one's head around this, do the following. Create a 720x480 image in photoshop. Let's say it is a pattern of 720 x 480 individually coloured pixels, with the first pixel being red, the next green, then next blue and then repeated.). If you looked at a black and white version of the image you created, you could see each individual pixel. If you looked at just the colour information you would also see each discrete pixel clearly.
Now convert that image to DV or DVD. In B&W you can still see each pixel clearly (mpeg2 compression notwithstanding) but suddenly there is not a pixel for each piece of colour information - there might be as little as one piece of colour information for every *four* pixels of black and shite information. If you looked at just the colour information it would look really blocky and low rez. (Studio cameras may be 4:4:4 or 4:2:2, but nothing in the consumer realm is.)
Now even if DVD etc. were 4:4:4, (i.e. keeping the colour and luminance informatio at the same resolution) film hold a lot more than 8bit colour can. To capture film properly you need at least 12bit colour, and many prefer to work in 16bit.
This is why CG effects that look great in the cinema often look hokey on DVD - a lot of the detailed colour information that fooled your brain into seeing the CG as real has been thrown away in the transfer to DVD.
As for exposure/latitude/dynamic range, the sensor in your video camera cannot handle the wide range that film can. So you either end up crushing the blacks or blowing out the whites.
This means that in a scene like the trash compactor you may lose a lot of the detail as that scen is dark, or that you end up with lost detail on the white stormtroopers armour. it is especially bad in scenes where you have a mixture of dark and light parts of the one image.
To get around this, you can make multiple captures - in layman's terms one dark capture, one middle of the range capture and one bright capture.
You can then merge them together intelligently into a single HDR file that keeps all of the information from the really dark detail to the fine lighter details.
Thankfully there is an open source way to store this, the openexr format. You can do more reading here. http://www.openexr.com/samples.html
Take a look at the stained glass image on that page , if doing a single pass to capture that from film, you would have to choose one of those three outcomes, by using HDR you can map it all down to keep the dark and light details, retaining as much information from the film as possible.
Below the left image is Paul Debevec's shot of a Stanford cathedral interior, by doing multiple exposures you can get all of the information and tone map it down to 8bit like the image on the right. It works the same for transferring film to video.
There are some more examples here http://www.hdrsoft.com/examples.html
and a nice introduction to HDR here.
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range.htm
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Where were you in '77?
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“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.
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DarkGruson: If it can be proven through a trial run on some 35mm trailer film or such that this person you speak of has the skill, equipment and willingness to do a high quality scan of all three movies, then please get to it without further delay!
Just make sure you bring plenty of big reliable hard drives with you to store the scans (which then must be backed up onto multiple sets of additional drives at several secure locations ASAP once you are safely off-site, so that it's effectively impossible for anything to happen to the scans once they are gotten). And, of course, keep all discussions of this private and tell only those who absolutely must know about it. The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.
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Originally posted by: Dunedain
...and tell only those who absolutely must know about it.
...and tell only those who absolutely must know about it.
Like Laserman.
(And me!)
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Originally posted by: SilverWook
Since the same problems apply, would a super 8 or 16mm transfer be worth the effort at this point?
Since the same problems apply, would a super 8 or 16mm transfer be worth the effort at this point?
Super8: no. 16mm: if you have a pristine print, yes - it should still have better resolution than HD (unless you're boris
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The problem is most 16mm prints are reductions from theatrical prints (not from negatives) so a lot of detail is lost (e.g. starfields) and there is a big grain increase - but the upside with 16mm is that it is possible to buy a legal copy, and you can get 16mm equipment fairly easily - far easier than 35mm.
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Where were you in '77?
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If you can find a 16mm print taken from that then it would be truly amazing, a super8 print could make a great DVD transfer, but it wouldn't be worth trying a HD transfer, the grain eats up the LOD.
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“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.
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“I love Darth Editous and I’m not ashamed to admit it.” ~ADigitalMan
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The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.