poita

This is the scanning setup window, for anyone that is interested.

Leia

Your scan looks a lot worse than mine at 4K, you can’t really see the pattern at 4K on your scan.
That appears to be the very beat-up IB print that was scanned of a DFT scanity, which is a terrible scanner for prints, and struggles a bit with smearing due to its line scanner, unlike the area scanner of the Arri or the Director.

I don’t want to come across as a dick, its just that all we do is scan and restore film, that is literally our job, and we regularly get detail that is one pixel high on a 4K scan from a print, and at 5K on negs.

The 10K scanner is really only that high for oversampling reasons, but up to 5K there is detail on a good negative that cannot be resolved properly if you resize to a lower resolution.
We often get referred to reports or tests done that ‘prove’ that film cannot resolve this level of detail, yet we see it resolved in our daily work. The tests are often very specific, or done by people with not a lot of film experience, or by companies that make sensors in digital cameras, and test specific film stocks at specific labs and specific lens combinations, which is all great, but it leads to conclusions that are often off-base, or are correct for a specific setup, and they then generalise out.

Yes, generally films resolving power on any given shoot isn’t pixel perfect at 4K, often there is around 3K of detail (full aperture) , it is a lot more complex than that due to grain structures and channel issues, processing and light, but generally if you look at a single frame, often 2K would be enough to represent what you can see on the film as a final delivery (if you scanned at 4K or 6K and down sampled properly).

Not particularly rare though, especially on original negatives, are single frame images that cannot be accurately represented at 2K, or even at UHD resolution, especially cinemascope or full frame images that end up at less than 1500 lines on a 4K UHD Blu-ray. This is not theory, this happens in the restoration process that we do.

When you get something like that door-frame, and the alternating lines of the pattern are about 1 pixel high when scanning at 3500 lines of resolution, no processing will keep that pattern at Blu-ray resolutions.

I know I’m banging on, but it drives me nuts sometimes to be told, repeatedly over the years, that film is not capable of doing something we see it do regularly in our work.

Anyway, my gut feel is that for the SE, if it didn’t come from the neg, which I’m not sure a lot of it did, I think we will not need more than 2K as the final delivery to make it indistinguishable from the film, but to do that we would need to scan at 4K anyway, even if it was mastered at 2K.
So to answer the oringal question, we would want to scan it at least at 4K either way.

I’m really hoping we will get better resolution than the IB scans we have of the OUT, we will know soon.

My point is that we regularly have details when scanning at 4K that are only 1 pixel high.

Sorry, but I think that demonstrates that the pattern is absent at 2K.

No, you can see the ribbing quite clearly when projected, unless the projector had very sloppy registration.

Anyway, I disagree with Steve, he is a capable guy, but he is a DP, and has only really been once since 2002, his experience with actual film is very little.
I’m not a DP, my day job is film restoration, I work with negs that far exceed 4K resolution on a daily basis, we can and do measure it. I certainly wouldn’t argue cameras or lenses with Steve, that is very much his domain, but when it comes to his knowledge of film stocks and their attributes, his experience isn’t extensive.
The ITU did tests back in 2000 that gave a vertical resolution of around 2700 lines for a scope print, and considerably higher for a negative.

Plenty of films, especially release prints look little different at 2K, but others have striking differences, text that is not readable below 3K, but is clear at 5K, the details like those in the doorframe, there is actually no way to keep that detail at 2K, even if you were rendering it directly from a computer model, there just isn’t enough pixels, and again, those are in the release print, not the neg. The neg would have superior resolution again.

With this particular print of the SE, we will do what we usually do, scan it at 6K, 4K and 2K and take a look at the scans, and see how much detail the print actually has. If it was in fact mastered at 2K, I won’t expect to see any difference between a 6K scan and 4K scan at all.
We would still scan it at 4K if it was 2K mastered though, otherwise we would absolutely lose details just due to the nature of scanning.

Projection is up for debate, there is no easy way to measure it, though attempt have been made, but so much depends on the equipment, screen, light and seating position.
It doesn’t really interest me though, I am an archivist, and if it is there on the print, I need it there in the scan, regardless of if that detail can be seen or not by a particular audience member in a particular cinema.

Preservation has different goals to commercial releases, for a commercial release, 2K would probably satisfy just about any audience.

This is what the doorframe around the Tantive door looks like just before it blows

(thanks to MV for the image)

If you scan at 3K, it is just a blur, at 4K you can see the pattern and at 6K the pattern is clear.

This is from a 1977 print, it will be interesting to see if the SE print has this level of detail or not.

The negative would have far more detail again.

Actually I do know about that 😃 I’ve scanned many prints that easily resolve above 3K, and negatives that far exceed 4K.

The SE prints may well have been finished at 2K, we won’t know until we look at the scans, but if they weren’t we should get good resolution from them.

There are many details in the IB Tech prints from 1977 that exceed the 2160 lines of UHD, there is no way to scale them down to 4K BD and not lose some of that detail.

The area around the Tantive door is an easy place to see this, at 2K the doorframe is a uniform grey, with a 6K scan, you can see it is ribbed, rather like a vacuum cleaner tube.

Some prints are terrible and struggle to have much in the way of resolution, others have far in excess of 2K, and many, many negatives we have scanned exceed 4K and need to be scanned at 6K or even 10K to keep the resolution evident in the negatives.

We have studied all sorts of theories on this, but it comes down to actual practice, 35mm prints and negs often have details that are lost if you dip below 4K.

It wasn’t in the camera negative as the story goes, but again, it will be interesting to find out.
It will be clear from the scan if this was digitally repaired or not.

I think we will learn quite a lot from the SE, even about the OUT.

No, I do not think they were, I think it is a common misconception but we will soon find out. (I could be wrong, but I am pretty sure they weren’t)

The new CGI sequences would have been done in 2K full aperture, but the rest of the film was done traditionally, and even the new wipes were done optically, so apart from the new effects, it should resolve well above 2K.

Yeah, it is nice to be able to watch a scan in 4:4:4 uncompressed 😃

Well, it depends a lot on the print, but there is often far more resolution in the vertical on the print than on the Blue-ray, but when the BD is sourced from a neg, it will often have more detail in some areas that were not on the print.

I’ll put some examples of both up when I get the focus issue sorted.

3500 lines aren’t enough? 😉

The final scans will be in ACES colourspace.

Had a problem with the scanner losing focus, here are the same two frames in 4K full aperture for anyone that wants a look.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/8bad18e09779095debf89911357095d820171103234102/730b533d782543071a2b68c76aa0af2d20171103234102/2d68a2

Here are two frames, straight out of the scanner, just scaled down to 4K from the 6K scan.

No colour adjustment done, these are 16bit TIFF files, so you will need to adjust the curves to see what the colour looks like, no LUT has been applied.

https://wetransfer.com/downloads/4439bd1fcbe67500b855a017435ad9eb20171103051735/43a198a695fde783651cf7d98d01a37120171103051735/9e0795
I really do need help on meeting the costs on this, I’d like to be able to get all the reels done, and then move onto ESB and ROTJ.

Any help appreciated, see my sig for details.

Oh, just to clarify, the $400 is just the cost of shipping the print.

Thanks,
Quite a few pledges haven’t come in yet, I’m currently going through and inspecting each reel and checking for any damage etc.
The ANH print is headed off for cleaning and will hopefully start scanning next week.
I’d like to get TPM print off for cleaning not long after.

I didn’t get a PM, JOE.

I will be posting a few images from the other reels over the weekend.

Another big-arse 16bit TIFF
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/cefb9915bb0a6c0a4467b3fabfa139ff20171025235717/04f305617b1cedb1a88c9292b14afeea20171025235717/049a72

A few more quick snaps.

This image is not from the scanner, I just pointed my camera at the film spool to see how it looked. The film has to be cleaned and prepped and then scanned.
Yes, scanning will get a lot more detail, but I don’t think it will be as detailed as the BD.
It should look way less like a soap opera though.

I think this is one film that will have tons more detail on the BD than in the print, especially in the shadows and highlights.

If anyone wants a big arse tiff file for their own weird reasons…
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/1f5f07ac749d97227e0f347f684622b020171025150939/28eb531b0f00f237d36997833b1c539020171025150939/ec28b5