RU.08

Swift S. Lawliet said:

Okay… But at least the overall quality will still be better.

Yes, almost certainly. Disney animations don’t contain the same level of detail as live-action, they were produced at 2K (2048x1080) and cropped from 1.66:1 to 1.85:1 on film (as per the pics). So I wouldn’t expect to find any more detail than already exists on bluray, at least in terms of luminance, but the chroma detail will be better whereas the BD is already at 8bits per channel - which means they’re crushed and that could prove a problem when regrading. As for grain - I’ve seen BATB, Aladdin and Lion King all projected from 35mm in a cinema and I can tell you the grain is fainter than you’d see on a scan. So in terms of graininess I actually agree the BD is better because it has no grain.

But look with all that said, I expect you could do a de-specialized, I’m just feel you’ll need more 35mm content then you might think! As mentioned, once we get this scanned you’re welcome to a 4K copy for the price of a HDD and you can knock yourself out with whatever projects you like - I don’t mind! You can regrade the scan to something entirely different if that’s to your taste. 😃

g-force said:

You cannot sustain this kind of NR throughout the film without some serious DVNR side effects due to tearing and motion compensation errors.

Well to my eye the de-noised frame looks “plasticy”. I suspect it’s because it makes the out of focus objects appear to be more in-focus than they should. That said it has completely stabilised the chroma, which is one of the many issues with the official Bluray and also an issue with the SSE. So if you kept the chroma, and optimised the settings for the luma it should look really good.

Your ideas are all fine, I’m just letting you know I think they recolored individual stuff - and the coloring is so different to the 35mm that you might loose quite a bit of quality regrading.

Swift S. Lawliet said:

Hey, if Harmy regraded the Star Wars Original Trilogy, someone can do this.

I think this would be a piece of cake compared to even one Star Wars movie.

Well the issue is that these come from modified CAPS files. If they recolor something digitally you will never get it back. From what I’ve seen of the CAPS films I am pretty certain that in particular scenes they have recolored individual items (characters, objects, backgrounds, etc).

If they didn’t do that then yes you can theoretically regrade the BD, but I am pretty sure there are parts that cannot be regraded. Nevertheless once we have the scan you’ll know exactly how it looks and can do whatever you would like. You can get a copy of the 4K files for the price of a hard drive if you want.

Swift S. Lawliet said:

Anyways, my idea for sources for a Despecialized Edition (which I can’t actually do since my laptop is very weak) is:

1. 2010 Diamond Edition Blu-ray
2. 35mm scan
3. 2002 Special Edition HDTV recording
4. LaserDisc of theatrical edition

Right yes, whatever people want to do with it is fine. Personally, I am quite sure the scan will look very good as it is. I’m sending it to the same scanner that scanned THX-1138 for poita who is a professional, and I’ve been told I will not get better results anywhere else. I may have to pay to get the film professionally cleaned (as poita is currently doing for ESB).

I know I’ve said this many times, but there is no home video release of this movie that looks the way the theatrical prints do. Given the extent of recoloring on the BD, I am skeptical that it can be regraded at all!

Swift S. Lawliet said:

I think the 2010 Blu-ray can potentially be the best version of Beauty and the Beast since it came straight from the CAPS files if we fix it.

Well, once I’ve had BATB scanned I should be able to release a 1080p version of it fairly easily. The scan will be available for use to de-specialize the Bluray if anyone wants to do it that way of course.

And if we undo the alterations for the 2002 Special Edition DVD/IMAX and the 2010 Diamond Edition Blu-ray/3D, color correct it to match the LaserDisc or this 35mm print and add in all the alternate mixes.

The LD is not all that accurate either. In particular, the film is quite a bit darker than the LD.

It might be the best version of Beauty and the Beast we can get unless Disney just releases the unaltered version instead of repackaging the Diamond Edition over and over again.

Have you seen the release of Lady and the Tramp on MySpleen? I have personally seen that film on 35mm not that long ago, and I can tell you that is pretty much exactly how it looked. BATB is similar, but since it’s CAPS the coloring is much more stable than hand-done coloring on the older Disney films.

I think the title should be Beauty and the Beast: Despecialized Edition …
Just tell me if you’re interested for doing this kind of project and I can make own thread

I won’t be doing a de-specialized, no. Once I have BATB scanned I have two more Disney films to get scanned and organised. I’ve seen another Disney animation scan (well part of it) that is currently being done by another member, I’m not sure I can tell you anything more about it, and from what I have seen there would be very little benefit in terms of quality in using it to “de-specialize” the BD. Also that is true for Lady and the Tramp.

Dreamaster, I actually saw a film just last week and it had some scenes in it in which there’s one set in particular where the bluray has a neutral grey background, but on film it is green-hued just like your screenshot and these ones from ‘age’. So while the hue may not be accurate for this film there are examples of other films out there with that green-hue.

The other thing to note is that saturation is usually lower on film than it is on digital - your first attempt at a regrade looks way over saturated, and even the second attempt looks a bit too saturated. You’ll notice that often when saturation is boosted dark areas come out as blue or purple (such as Han’s hair in your example) - I don’t think I’ve ever seen that on film and would suggest to me the saturation has been boosted too far.

suFami said:

Too bad about the Australian print. I understand his reasoning though.

I see poita didn’t address this. Poita said in the past that he has had the opportunity to view the print on several occasions and can view it in the future! IMO that makes it hugely valuable for the fact that it provides a reference to grade the faded prints to.

With the TN1 scan they didn’t know how it should look because they didn’t have an opportunity to see an un-faded print. The obvious example of course being should Hoth be blue, or white?

Personally I agree it would be great if there was an avenue to getting it scanned however it still serves a really valuable service to the preservation of this film IMO.

poita said:

The issue is that he won’t take the film out of his storage room except to watch it, and then it goes straight back into cold storage again.

Fair enough! I think the scans of the brick-red faded prints look amazing anyway.

poita said:

The ‘Australian’ print is one of 6 ‘Exhibition’ LPPs that were struck in 1983.

Yay for my guess! That’s pretty much what I was thinking (trilogy screening). I’m not at all surprised the owner is protective given the rarity.

Question - you said it could be scanned if you brought the scanner to him - what if we paid to fly him out to the scanner instead? If that were possible it’d cost a lot less, but then again I suppose he may not be able to keep the film as check baggage which would an issue.

pathustler85 said:

how are the 2 prints you have of empire not faded

They are faded. Badly faded - they would look completely red with no color at all if projected. The scanning process is able to recover the color information by scanning at a high bit rate. Standard consumer bitrate is 8bits per color channel, whereas film scanners can scan at higher bitrates. For example, when I finally get around to having BATB scanned I have the option of having it scanned at 10-bit or at 12-bit, but as BATB is not faded 10-bit is fine. I’m not sure what bitrate poita has scanned these at, but it could be as high as 16bits per channel.

As for the “un-faded Australian print” I have no idea how it’s possible - my guess is it might have been struck much later for example in 1983 or something; or it could be a pre-release print made a year earlier than the release prints, or there could be some other reason.

Shuggy said:

I will be happy to make some kind of contribution to help see this project to its conclusion. These rare Empire materials are endangered and time is clearly of the essence so maybe someone needs to be more aggressive about passing the hat around.

Hi Shuggy, use poita’s paypal.me link - I’m sure he’ll appreciate it!

Who’s ready to chip in? Can we get a show of hands?

It’s unlikely, lol. Just because you don’t see people put up their hands doesn’t mean stuff isn’t happening - I just made a contribution to something else behind the scenes, and I have to start prioritising my own projects now.

poita said:

I normally don’t respond to that kind of thing, but to stop any speculation, here is Reel1 of the UK print with sprockets, soundtrack and audio.

WOW - it also looks amazingly clean for a raw scan! Aside from those ugly glue marks that are in the source (the o-neg). Thanks for sharing it!

I’m uploading it now to a mirror. Feel free to PM me for the link and do not republish it, thanks.

Not just that, but with the ultrasonic cleaning it’ll be amazingly clean as well!

suFami said:

I’m curious, why aren’t you scanning this unfaded print instead of the red faded Kodak print?

I’m pretty sure poita said the owner won’t allow it to be scanned - but it is available for viewing. 😃 By the look of this German print scan though all the picture information is there to be dug out which is terrific news!

Hi, yes we’re creeping towards getting this scanned, funding is holding us up at this point so please feel free to shoot me a message if you’d like to donate to the project.

Also, thank you to pleasehello for your generous donation!

As mentioned in the OP, once this print is scanned I have other disney films to get scanned as well! 😉

I just had a look at the reel you posted poita, and wow does it look great! It looks really clean in comparison to other “raw scans”, notably it has a lack of emulsion lines/distortions present in others. Very, very nice indeed!

That’s already been covered - no they aren’t. They’re taken using different cameras, and lighting might not be set up for filming, etc.

yotsuya said:

For the SE, they went back to the camera negatives, the raw footage, to recomposite most (but not all) of the shots. I’m not sure to what extent they did this with the composited effects shots (which were all done in VistaVision so the final composite would not have increased film grain over non-effects shots) or whether they kept the original composited elements.

They did this extensively, at least in the first film. The whole reason for the garbage mattes disappearing isn’t because they tweaked the black levels, it’s because they re-composited the foreground elements against the background elements. In all space shots you will notice the positions of the elements are slightly different. I’m under the impression that all re-composites it were done digitally rather than optically, but whatever they did they did it to every shot with compositing in SW as far as I can tell anyway.

UnitéD2 said:

So, what we call original negative is not the image directly captured by the camera for each shot.

It can be, or it can be a dupe with the camera negative in stored away. Some films even have more than one ON. Profondo Rosso/Deep Red may have had two entirely different ON’s - I don’t know I haven’t looked into it, the alternative is the director had the ON reconfigured for export. My understanding is it would have had an export ON seeing as the 4K restoration was made from the ‘original negative’ implying that the Italian Cut was intact.

Can a 4K scan of a very good print be as sharp as it is ?

Well clearly it can be. Prints do get scanned and released on Bluray when there’s no ON or IP available. Studies will use whatever they can, depending on the condition and their budgets, but they prefer using the ON or the camera negatives where they can - Robocop 4k was scanned from the camera negative for example. Obviously that could be much more expensive and time consuming than simply scanning the ON because you may have to first catalogue all the camera negatives and find all the pieces that were used in the final cut of the film before you can even start work on scanning it.

UnitéD2 said:

From A print ? Is it not a combination of numerous prints, in order to obtain an image as accurate and sharp as the negative ?

Doesn’t matter how many prints you use it’s still not as sharp as the ON (original negative) or IP (interpositive) they’re made from. With SW there are some scenes that even on the ON are a 3rd, 4th, 5th, or even 6th generation copy of the camera negative (optical wipes for example are at the very least 2nd generation copies and possibly 3rd or 4th generation depending on other factors) - for the 1997 SE they scanned every camera negative they could to replace and re-composite material that suffered from generational loss. That is to say that not even the ON was as sharp as some of the stuff that’s in the 1997 SE ON (such as the speeder sequence through Mos Eisley).

theMaestro said:

They’re even less than 1080p? Wow. I wonder if Lucas has regrets about shooting them that way now.

They are 1080p, and were shot in full 1080p, but most AOTC scenes were compressed with 3:1:1 subsampling (i.e. true resolution of 1440x1080 for chroma and for 960x540 luma) as that was the limitation of the HDCAM tapes. It was not shot using an anamorphic lens, therefore it was cropped from 1080 to 817 vertical lines. For the most part the result looked great (even on IMAX), however the low chroma resolution posed problems for compositing, and those are definitely visible in the end result. But they didn’t always use HDCAM for storage, so some scenes were shot and stored at full 1080p with 4:2:2 subsampling. IIRC the cameras were much larger and more cumbersome when compared with 35mm cameras, so they had a lot of disadvantages, beyond the relatively low resolution of the HDCAM tape storage.

RoTS was shot and stored at full 1080p with 4:4:4 subsampling, also it was not shot using an anamorphic lens, and therefore was cropped to 817 pixels as well. So it’s true that AOTC is mostly below full 1080p resolution (for the live-action stuff), but most/all of ROTS is full 1080p for all live action (minus any occasional scene that was shot early or borrowed from leftover AOTC material).

That sounds like fantastic news!

thxita said:

Not that VHS and Laserdisc were faithful transfers either… but I guess better than the DVD and Bluray versions.

They were faithful but limited by the format and the technology of the day.

Yes that’s true, I’m already more than a 10th of the way there with just two pledged donors so far, so don’t hesitate to contact me about this if you’re interested in contributing something, you can of course remain anonymous as well. It’d be great if the money was raised by the end of the year and the print can be sent to the scanner.

But regardless it will be made available once completed (even if you want the 4K Dnxhr file). And then everyone can see exactly what I’ve been talking about as to how different it really is to the home video releases. So far that I can tell it’s really the most different of the Disney animations compared with the current releases available. There’s a cropped HDTV version of LATT for example (which you’ll find on rutracker) that looks pretty accurate to its film counterpart, but for BATB there’s nothing out there that looks right. There are so many great Disney animations, and my aim is to help get them all scanned. There’s a number I’m aware of that other’s have already had scanned, and there are certainly more to do after this one!