poita

DrDre said:

Looks great poita! Do you plan to do the trilogy in one go or will you be releasing them one at a time?

 As mentioened previously, I have about a year's worth of work to get 1977 finished, and will work on the others after that.

The main priority for me is getting all three movies scanned at archival quality, my big problem at the moment is getting enough HDDs to be able to have a backup, and I'm also paying for a print today.

You might have seen in the 'other preservations' threads that Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, The Matrix, Lady and the Tramp, Jurassic Park and Star Trek III have all been scanned, so data space is getting a bit insane. I still have Cinderella to get to as well.

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

ShaneLSD said:

excuse my ignorance but i just put the original b&w 16mm scans together and from buck rogers to the end credits its 86min my LD is 85min the so called WB cut was cut by 5mins even with differences people have mentioned its nowhere near 5 mins so it is my belief that this is not the WB cut that george lucas said is 5min shorter it simply is not 5 min shorter. can someone correct me please? i dont understand.

 My gut feel is that the 5 minutes supposedly cut, were not necessarily cut from the running time as such, perhaps it was roughly 5 minutes of changes, or just a sloppy metaphor for "they changed my film a bunch and I am crabby about it".

The 16mm version and the Tech IB appear to be identical, both also have the Buck Rogers sequence, which is mentioned in the reviews of the day, so it would appear that the 16mm is the release version that hit cinemas in 1971.

The version Lucas put out post Star Wars is significantly different in the details, so in all likelihood I think we are now, finally, seeing the version that was released in 1971, and like many pieces of history, what has been reported and re-reported, without hard evidence, may in fact end up being more myth than fact.

junh1024 said:

Hello & thank you Poita & others for sourcing and helping with Fantasia.

I'm interested in Disney audio because recent BD releases leave something to be desired, especially fantasia. I was alerted to this thread by an existing member.

As you know, Fantasound is really 3ch + control tones (possibly for panning & dynamics?). How do you plan on applying that to the captured print or is that already taken care of?

Is there a predetermined audio capture format that you're planning on using/have used (samplerate/depth/channels)?

Would it be possible to upload semi/raw audio, perhaps after panning & dynamics (& sync) but before denoising (& EQ) so that me &/ others can tinker with the audio?

Are there any other changes (perhaps according to audio documents?) that should be applied to the audio to sound proper (ie, EQ curves, ?)

---

I've had a look at FNT audio from the BDs, and it's relatively easy to make it sound somewhat like the 2000 DVDs by simple channel swapping/mixing, etc.

The phonerip has a gentle roll-off after 8k, and the strings sound strange, which I'm hoping this mag cap will better.

The '89 version by Irwin Kostal (CD) somehow won't sync to the BD, even though it was apparently targeted for theatrical & home release.

I capped a 'selections from fantasia' LP ('70), which ofc won't sync.

----

I don't have much BW per month so sharing my changes as HQ audio files may be difficult. I can upload small files, though.

 Yes, it was 3 track with a control track to 'live' mix sections of the Front Centre, Left and Right channels to the surround channels.

Basically what has been done for the audio, is that we now have 4 channels of sound, the 4th channel is now the 'baked in' version incorporating the control-track, if you know what I mean.

So you could encode it to DTS or Dolby surround and get the same effect as the original.

I do this kind of thing as an archive library for researchers and restorationists, so raw captures are there for educational purposes should anyone wish to work on them.

And I owe them to so many others.

DoomBot said:

"The audience was literally moved to tears", that right there says a hell of alot about the importance of film preservation. Thanks poita

These are exciting times, i just hope we don't see the end of them.

 Grown men actually cried during the screening. It is a beautiful thing, we have forgotten how cinema can move the soul I think.

It was the result of a 5 year search, and then about 5 years earnings as well :)

I couldn't get the scan I really would have wanted, (it for example has no damage matte, and is only @ DCI 4K) but the audio is excellent and the scan is good, and the window of opportunity was small.

So it will be a good archive for people to then get onto restoring one day.

The print's new owner will look after it better than probably anyone else could, so although I lost a *lot* on it, the print itself will be preserved for as long as possible, and, just as importantly, able to be viewed if the opportunity should ever arise. That was of the utmost importance to me.

It was also acquired to help out someone who was intimately involved with the original fantasia, who is now battling with dementia, and I wanted them to be able to see the movie again, they way they remembered it. Through another friend, that should be possible, and that will make it all worth it.

(I won't be sharing names, so please don't ask).

At any rate, it is all raw at the moment, and had to be scanned dry, so there are plenty of dirt and scratches to be repaired, but it is still a lovely thing to behold.

The print I had literally should never have existed. It had 4 track mag sound, and I cannot find an official reference to it *anywhere*, even among the crazy collectors.

Unfortunately I had to sell it for way, way less than I paid for it, but it went to a really good home, and a private screening was had and some of the audience was literally moved to tears during the presentation. It is such a shame no-one can see it the way it was intended any more.

Capturing it and the audio was a real challenge, and I still have to sync all of the separate tracks as we had to capture them separately, big props again to the guy who did all the work on the ground, I was mainly tracking down old equipment, doing research and supplying materials to make it possible, he did all of the actual work.

If you really want it to feel like Christmas, stay tuned... Matrix, Star Trek III and Alice in Wonderland news soon.

Coming soon, a complete Fantasia, with the original Fantasound audio, but in Mag soundtrack.

I took a bath on this one cost wise, but I think it will be worth it.

Organising scanning was tricky, had to purchase a Simplex 35mm mag-penthouse to get the sound, and ship those parts to the guy that was doing the scanning, and he had to wire it all up and align it all to get the best possible audio out of it.

If you want to know more about the Fantasound process, you can read it all here:

http://s1362.photobucket.com/user/threedarchive/media/american22asch_00642_zps45eb4e75.jpg.html

It is a Stokowski Fantasound print, so in addition to the audio, it was designed to have a lens switch in and out during different scenes for a ‘widescreen’ effect, so there will be some work to be done.

As well as the standard cleanup and restoration etc. which is all yet to be done.

Thanks again to everyone that has worked on this so far, you will never have seen Fantasia quite like this 😃

SilverWook said:

Not to derail the thread, but is everyone here who's a fan of The Shining on AMPS already? Wanted to start a new thread for that, but not sure if I should do it here or there...

 I'd go for both.

msycamore said:

AntcuFaalb said:

My knowledge of this film isn't great. What evidence do we have of the 81min cut being released in the US besides word-of-mouth?

It's definitely not a word-of-mouth thing, it is well known that WB took the film and cut 4-5 minutes. The issues young Lucas faced with the studio system has been covered in tons of interviews, documentaries and books over the years. But exactly what Warner did and what was excised has gone undocumented as far as I know.

A few examples mentioned in the links in one of my earlier posts...

An upset Lucas in the documentary Maker of Films from '71:

"Walter Murch did most of the sound work, montages, what have you. The one problem is, that's one of the things Warner Brothers altered considerably, it was much more abstract and much more musical. The film was designed as a kind of opera you know, kind of a musical science fiction film. And the soundtrack was composed under purely musical concepts and they didn't quite understand that, they thought they all had to tell the story. So essentially the biggest change is that they have injected more story, what they thought was the story, that's the story of... they took out all of the humor and the happiness and people laughing and stuff because they didn't..." (the interviewer interrupts him)

^ I recommend it, I think it is still available on the Spleen. It's worth it just to see a young and skinny nerd before his real breakthrough.

In the book Skywalking by Dale Pollock, he writes on p.97 (first printing) how Warner turned the film over to in-house editor Rudi Fehr:

"Fehr cut only four minutes from THX, mostly scenes in the White Limbo and some of George's bizarre attempts at humor."

It's nothing concrete though.

poita said:

The 16mm and the 35mm IB have Buck Rogers at the start, the reviews from '71 I can find say it was Buck Rogers, I'd like to see if the review in Rolling Stone Issue 81, which I used to own, but now can't find, mentions it as well.

Good to hear Buck Rogers is there. I'm really surprised that 1971 35mm IB Tech prints were even struck, the studio hated the film, it wasn't a hit with audiences, and IB Techs were expensive to produce. I could understand if Lucas had a few prints struck around the same time as Star Wars in late '77, but '71? That is awesome. This 16mm print is apparently dated '71 and it's the unmolested cut, so I guess I should stop being surprised.

Also, great job on the scan, Poita! I've only seen a small sized 720p re-encode but even that is beautiful. If only there was a good cure for the fading.

 I just organised the scan, I didn't do it myself, credit goes to the guy who actually did the work :)

However, I am planning to scan it myself at some point with a different light-source and sensor to try and recover more of the colour at the scanning phase.

Apparently the IB was part of the original deal for THX1138, so thankfully there were some struck at the time.

The sources for the changes are pretty much Lucas himself and whomever Dale had as his source, but it has never been documented by comparing actual releases, and many other stories, like the Buck Rogers/Things to come stuff that doesn't seem to hold up to actual evidence.

It was a big part of the reason I tracked down these prints in the first place, was to finally get some concrete evidence as to the differences.

The running times published are all over the place, and almost never correct, so I wouldn't take those as meaning anything.

Wazzles said:

poita said:

Easiest way would be to output the Bluray via composite video and capture that, or run the composite video into an old VCR and record it, then capture *that*.

The 'hardware' downgrading will do most of the work for you.

 It's not exactly what I would call easy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the only BD device that can output composite are older models of the PS3. So in order to do what you are suggesting, you would need one of those older models.

There are tons of BD players with composite outputs on them, the LG BD610, a bunch of Pioneer, Magnavox and other models as well.

The 16mm and the 35mm IB have Buck Rogers at the start, the reviews from '71 I can find say it was Buck Rogers, I'd like to see if the review in Rolling Stone Issue 81, which I used to own, but now can't find, mentions it as well.

If anyone has that issue and can check, it would be appreciated.

I can do it here to SuperVHS, but it would be PAL....

You could always make a copy of your DVD and then use the copy I guess if macrovision causes problems. Then destroy the copy :)

Easiest way would be to output the Bluray via composite video and capture that, or run the composite video into an old VCR and record it, then capture *that*.

The 'hardware' downgrading will do most of the work for you.

The Kodak 16mm film edge codes place it in Rochester NY in 1971.

_,,,^..^,,,_ said:

Although ld-decode job is great, X0 capture is incredibly good! I can't remember which capture card was used for the X0 project, so I'm curious to know if someone else can...

I wonder if, using a better LD player for the ld-decode, quality will increase - I think so, but I'm not ready to mod my MUSE player!!!

 I'd be up for modding the X9 if there are instructions somewhere. It is just sitting idle these days.

I think an X1 would be a great candidate, unfortunately mine is broken.

team_negative1 said:

We have hit a milestone with the first pass of Reel 1.

------------------------------------------------------------------

4 Original starfield scenes (which are going to have some replacements)

 Cool bananas!

BTW, what does the above mean, re replacements?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178587&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=IGNEFL052815&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL052815&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL052815-_-EMC-052815-index-_-DesktopExternalHardDrives-_-22178587-S0F

Extra savings w/ promo code EMCASNW42, ends 6/3

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 :)

No, we used to process full 4K .DPX files on the trusty G5.

That was cool.

And yes, that is the exact model of my scanner, funnily enough.

Thankfully we aren't stuck with 250GB HDDs though!

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...

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.

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.