lurker77

Ah, but the wait!!

Erikstormtrooper said:

R A H?

I highly doubt it. Remember, we're dealing with release prints here, way below the standard for RAH...

You going to keep an eye on that theatrical bootleg tape (PS78)? Sounds like a near-perfect colour source... :)

IMO, you shouldn't stress yourself on this one. It IS a 35 year old tape, y'know.

Just taking out only the very worst flaws should be fine. The colours are the most important part here (in other words, it's probably better as a reference than for actually watching as a movie).

ESB looks great! :D

Puggo - Jar Jar's Yoda said:

This may be the most sophisticated VHS restoration of all time.

Indeed.

negative1 said:

lurker77 said:

Of course, my ideas are only good when the end result is projected film. Since this specific project will be digitally viewed no matter what, not much to say except "do a good job".

;)

 

if we were REALLY CRAZY, (as if we aren't already),

we would get it printed back to 35mm film..

If I had original prints of the OT, I'd do an analog preservation - do a wet gate transfer to fine-grain stock peforming shot-by-shot colour correction with coloured lights. ;)

Of course, my ideas are only good when the end result is projected film. Since this specific project will be digitally viewed no matter what, not much to say except "do a good job".

;)

canofhumdingers said:

I should also mention that, when scanning film the quality of the source material is incredibly important. Working with a high quality OCN or IP can certainly provide enough information to make 4k scans or better worthwhile. It's just important to understand you're not seeing anything NEAR that at even the best theater. Which then opens the debate of should the goal of home video be to reproduce what you would've seen opening night? Or provide the best possible viewing experience, even if it's technically significantly BETTER than even an absolutely perfect theatrical presentation?

Depends on when the film was made. Like I said, recent-er films go through a digital intermediate for colour correction, so what you get at the theater is no better than whatever resolution the DI was made at. Older films are analog from negative to print, so even though perceivable information drops, you're still getting a "pure" transfer - it's more of a softening than a downrezzing...

Here's a way that I like to put the debate. If you watched Star Wars in 1977, the photons from the studio lights bounced off of Mark Hamill, and were chemically transferred to film. Then that image was chemically transferred down several generations to the theatrical print. Along this line, the film that was on the set naturally reacted through each successive generation eventually into your eyes, so what you got to see was the equivalent of sitting on the set, with a hazy filter set up in front of you.

If you went to see Attack of the Clones, the studio lights bounced off of...one of the actors, and each photon was mechanically estimated almost exactly the same way each time by a digital sensor. What you got you see was a very sharp binary equivalent of the set.

So what would you prefer? A blurry direct view of the action, or a very accurate estimation of the action by a group of transistors?

4k is fine for "good enough" reproduction of 35mm - it will capture most of the perceivable information. But the subconscious mind WILL know that there's something missing.

captainsolo said:

The Faces Widescreen box is really great though. One of my favorites that just looks fantastic on the shelf.

I agree.

As to its content, seems to be from the same master as GOUT (severely desaturated + DVNR), but since it's VHS, no MPEG2 compression, more "warmth".

If I may give my 2 cents on the digital vs. film debate...

People keep saying that "digital has better resolution than film prints that are many generations removed from the negative".

First, the majority of digital projections are in 2K, which is barely above 1080p, and not higher than a film print in any sense. Second, film has infinite resolution. People may count grains, but the grains themselves are not uniform. Information on film goes down to the atomic level. Although, most films these days go through a digital intermediate for colour correction, so the resolution will be stuck at that level no matter what.

Also, "digital is more stable and has better contrast/no scratches". To me at least, watching a perfectly stable film is distracting. It's like a moving painting. As to the image quality beyond just the resolution, although no scratches are nice, contrast & colour are locked to a certain range, which no matter what that range is, can be as distracting as the lack of movement. Film has very slight variations in every aspect of the image, aka "warmth", which is more natural to look at and therefore less fatiguing to the eye. I find that listening to lots of digital music, especially compressed, is fatiguing to my ears. Vinyl & cassette doesn't do that.

The 1997 special edition restoration started by washing the film in a 104 degree sulfur bath.

Scratches are normally filled by printing or scanning the film while it's passing through dry-cleaning fluid, aka "wet gate".

For the 1989 Lawrence of Arabia restoration, when it came time to copy the negative to new stock, it started to tear apart from age & heavy wear - they were barely able to finish it...

SilverWook said:

I want to believe!

Keep the faith, brother!!!

^ That article explains perfectly what I was concerned about when I heard these guys were using an off-the-shelf digital camera instead of a professional scanner.

Bayer filter chips use fancy algorithms to cheat on image resolution, leading to colour inaccuracy. It's not horrible, but it's not the real thing.

Top-of-the-line film scanners use three sensors, one for each color. No cheating, full accuracy. But they cost millions of dollars, thanks not only to the extra sensors, but elaborate film gates, precise alignment of the sensors, an elaborate prism to split the colours between the sensors, and most of all, insanely good build quality.

The next best thing that can be done is something that the article touches on - oversampling. Simply, if you use a 12 megapixel digital camera to capture a 4K image, it will turn out almost as good as a 3-chip scanner. Today's DSLRs do 12 megapixels.

EDIT: My mistake. 12 megapixels is not the same thing as 12,000 pixels per line. That would be 48 megapixels, beyond what any off-the-shelf camera can do ATM.

TServo2049 said:

Lucas claims the cyan record is out of sync or out of alignment or something, so it's impossible to use the seps. Impossible my foot - it's just another one of George's lame excuses.

Any time he says it's "impossible" to restore the original versions, it means "I don't want to because I have an irrational hatred of them."

Pollyanna had a defective magenta sep. Thankfully, the colours in the negative fade at different rates, with yellow (which determines positive blue) going first. Enough magenta was left in the negative to fix the problem.

Even if the negative, seps, dupes, prints, IB prints are all too faded/damaged/contrasty to use, the damage can be fixed by Lowry (at the expense of grain), and the movie can be digitally colourized (at the expense of looking somewhat fake). Just get Bob Harris or Ron Smith or Grover Crisp or someone else who knows what they're doing to supervise the process.

BTW, Lucas is not an artist - he's a businessman. He'll release the original versions when he's done milking the others.

When all else fails, use Separation Masters - a backup of the negative made before copying which consists of the three colours that make up a full colour picture separated onto three strips of black & white film. Pollyanna & Spartacus were restored by recombining the seps because the negatives were faded beyond use.

It's not perfect, because this adds more grain, misalignment can cause rainbowed edges, and it's expensive, but like I said, when all else fails.

red5-626 said:

Will at least the Newer color film will not spontaneously combust like Nitrate

 

It's a matter of sudden destruction vs. slow destruction (dissolving into vinegar).

Barring it starting on fire, nitrate can last decades longer than safety under proper storage.

red5-626 said:

 

any one see this ?

http://www.yourdiscovery.com/video/how-do-they-do-it-restoring-film-at-the-bfi/

A very basic restoration. Newer color footage is actually more prone to problems than old black & white nitrate. Check out the large format projects that Robert A. Harris has worked on. In particular, Spartacus had to be restored from black & white separation masters that had all shrunk at different rates. They had to build a special rig in order to get them to match. The audio for a deleted scene had to be re-recorded as well.

Also, check out these great articles he's written:

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/index.html

Although any and all restorations are welcome, I doubt this one will be the end-all & be-all.

1. You claim that the absolute best element in the world is Lucas' IB print. I've read that IB prints are actually bad sources for restorations due to high contrast. They are very useful as a colour reference, however.

2. You claim that the original negative is gone. It was last scanned in 2004, and the result, although degrained, looks great. There are some pieces missing (certain scenes were shot on high-fade Color Reversal Intermediate stock, which was replaced with new recomposited/altered negative in 1997), but I'm sure that there exist several usable dupes in the archives (likely including last-resort separation masters).

3. You claim that even the newest scanners can't see what's *really* on film. Maybe to a certain degree, but heavily used, high production volume release prints most certainly can't reflect what the movie should really look like, even with colour timing based on original props (they can, of course, show us how it looked in the theaters). As "off" as the special editon restorations are (due to bad advice from the powers that be), they were made (mostly) from the o-neg, by professional film restorers. I don't know what your profession is, but I do know that you haven't given us any film restoration credentials...

George Lucas is a slick businessman. He knows exactly how to milk Star Wars fans dry. His next move will be Star Wars in 3D, followed by an OOT restoration, as that is all he has left in the tank. Expect it in 2017 (40th anniversary).

4K Spirit Datacines for everyone! :D

http://www.dft-film.com/scanners/spirit_4k.php

In 2004, the price was $1.3 million...

Pardon my suspicious attitude, but was ESB originally printed on Fuji stock?

Just as a point of reference, the master for the 1980 AC/DC concert film "Let There Be Rock" was said to be lost for the longest time, only existing on VHS and possibly one or more worn-down release prints.

It was released on DVD & Blu-ray this year, fully restored from the original negative. The explanation?

The guy who shot the film refused to allow a release scanned from the negative which he possessed. His rights to it just recently expired.

So you never know what the heck's going on behind the scenes...

In any case, if that still from that idiot's thread really was fake, I'm outta here - none of the DC, GOUT, or 16mm projects interest me enough to stick around.

Theatrical or bust!

Well, what now?

:|