Discussione tecnica BD: restauri e trasferimenti da riferimento

[vincent89]

ma suggerisco che si potrebbe fare un elenco con articoli tecnici, notizie, comunicati stampa, interviste e spiegazioni caso per caso, poi quello che c'è da dire su un film o l'altro rimane sul thread del singolo film

Su questo sono daccordo
Vorrei segnalare infatti che nel primo post ci sono svariati link.

[pyoung]

Da aggiungere

Quelli della San Pablo => restauro 4k dei negativi originali da 35mm (Panavision) by Ascent Media
articolo
(si tratta del primo film in assoluto ad essere restaurato a 4K (nel 2006) perché prima di allora i restauri erano tutti 2K)

Poi ci sono i restauri delle 3 stagioni della serie originale di Star Trek (solo che non ho trovato articoli con specifiche sul procedimento se è 2K o 4K)
Star Trek TOS - Stagione 1
Star Trek TOS - Stagione 2
Star Trek TOS - Stagione 3 (so che non è ancora nei negozi ma manca poco all'uscita)

E poi in base a cosa hai deciso se inserire o meno c'è
Star Trek 2 - L'Ira di Khan => restauro 4k da 35mm

[vincent89]

Inseriti, ottimo grazie
Per Star Trek 2 - L'Ira di Khan non ho avuto tempo di guardare. Appena vedo se il dnr ha rovinato o meno questo restauro vedò se inserirlo.
Tu cosa ne dici. Lo hai visto?


Quelli della San Pablo:

"The Sand Pebbles" just completed it's restoration. It's historically important
in that it was the first film to restored at 4K resolution. Previous restorations
were all at the 2K resolution. What does this mean for consumers and archivists?

2K wasn't really enough to generate the full resolution of 35mm camera negative
regardless of whether it was flat or scope. For example, "The Adventures of
Robin Hood" restoration was at 2K and at a distance it looked great but if you got
too close to the screen you'd see the pixels that made up the image on film. While it was
technically sharper than the original nitrate 35mm Technicolor prints, the actual
grain structure was not as good. Kodak stated that to replicate a 35mm negative,
4K resolution was necessary. Three years ago, this was implemented on the first
feature to utilize it, namely this Robert Wise epic from 1966. Wise was supervising
the project until he died last year. He wasn't able to see the final
result which is quite spectacular.

"The Sand Pebbles" was his adventure based on the Robert McKenna novel which
I read as an adolsecent. It's interesting that the lead character, Jake Holman, almost
fits the description of Steve McQueen as described by the author. I belive it's his best
role right down to the reform school background of the character. It was apparently
a very difficult shoot in Taiwan with Red Chinese communist spies keeping an eye on
the proceedings from the mainland. They built an actual boat for the film which was
the most expensive 'prop' as of 1965. The engine was saved, the rest of the vessel
destroyed after the shoot. Fox had created "CinemaScope" in 1953 by purchasing the
lenses and patents from a French inventor. Basically, a standard 3 x 4 (square) image
was filmed with an anamorphic squeeze. When unsqueezed by the projection lens,
it generated a wide 2.35 image which impressed viewers and got them away from the
usurping television medium. Unfortunately, the original Baucsh and Lomb lenses distorted
the image to a great degree. Close ups made the actors look fat and wide shots made the
edges look skinny. In 1957, the Panavisio company corrected these problems and introduced
improved anamorphic lenses. However, Fox continued to use their substandard CinemaScope
units. Wise wanted to shoot "The Sand Pebbles" in 70mm but Fox rejected it because of
the foreign locations. So Wise insisted on shooting with Panavision instead of CinemaScope
units. The studio agreed and by 1967, they had switched to the other company and abandoned
CinemaScope for it's features. The last CinemaScope movie for them was "In Like Flint".

This movie was a Fox film and thus 'Color by De Luxe'. What this meant back in 1966
was that all prints (including the blow up 70mm Roadshow copy) were struck directly
from the 35mm Panavision camera negative. We're talking three to four hundred prints
struck from the original which really wore it out. In comparison, Technicolor movies only
used the camera negative to make a set of matrices for dye transfer prints. As a result,
their originals remained in much better condition.

In 2005, Fox decided to use "The Sand Pebbles" as their first 4K restoration. The extremelly
faded and worn camera negative was scanned into the digital machine at this resolution.
Then a frame at a time (at 182 minutes) was fixed which is why it took so long. The end
results are outstanding. As good as it looked back in 1966. You have to give Fox credit
for not stopping at the digital master. They also outputted a new 35mm negative (from which
this print was struck) as well as a new set of 35mm black and white separatons (a black and
white negative of each primary color) for the future. Unfortunately, not all
studios are taking this final step. That means as video formats change, they'll
have to go back to the old and worn elements and start from scratch which
is penny wise and pound foolish. All digital restorations should have an outputted
35mm hard copy for the next century to ensure it's survival. Nothing in the
digital domain is archival, only film elements have the possibility of longevity.

I walked up to the screen and didn't see any pixels at this resolution. It look exactly like
a 35mm print struck from the camera negative. And they restored the old four track magnetic
mix to both Dolby Stereo and Digital Stereo on the print. So "The Sand Pebbles" is preserved
for at least another 75 to 100 years (the estimated survival of modern estar film stock).

****************************

Picture:
The original negative for The Sand Pebbles at 4K (4096x3112 pixels per frame) using a Northlight 1 pin-registered film scanner to 10-bit Cineon files. The scanning process takes about seven seconds per frame, and it took 20-30 hours to create the 4K digital files for each reel. The 13 reels of The Sand Pebbles required close to 14 terabytes of disk storage space.

Using the Quantel iQ4 system with Pablo, colorist David Bernstein made a first pass for rough color correction and restoration of the heavier image damage, and removed the reel-end “change-over” cues that were physically punched into the original negative. “The iQ box is a combination of everything Quantel has made over the last 30 years, so there’s a bit of Harry, Henry Paintbox, Editbox and all that stuff,” says Bernstein. “It’s all resolution-independent, so I can bring any resolution from standard definition to 4K into the system, mix and match any of those on the timeline, and output them at any resolution.”

After Bernstein’s initial color-correction and image-restoration steps, the digital files were sent to a contract facility in India for dustbusting. This process removed more than just embedded dirt; the visible, thin-line CinemaScope splice marks were also removed.

“The scans come out kind of flat,” says Bernstein. “Some of the stuff coming out of the scanner looks fairly normal in terms of color balance, [but it’s] very flat. Some of it is [also] heavily biased toward red or green, resulting from different film stocks that the scanner might not have been calibrated for, so I added contrast and balanced the shot-to-shot color variations. I did that so the people doing the dust cleanup could more easily see the white specks, but this sort of broad color correction could also be applied using a lookup table at the cleanup workstation. I think we’ll set it up that way in the future.

“What I did in the initial pass was create a consistent look and eliminate the biases. If there’s a shot where we all of a sudden cut from one scene to a dupe of that scene for an optical, like a dissolve, and the color shifts dramatically between those two elements, I built in a balance there for the first pass. It made my work a little easier when I went back to do the final color pass, giving an overall consistent look to the reel, even though there wasn’t a true shot-by-shot color timing until the end.”

When the dustbusting is complete, Bernstein will make a final pass for color correction and quality control before doing the final transfer to 35mm. For the final color correction, he will compare his timing of the 4K files to a 35mm print of The Sand Pebbles that was made as a color reference from the original negative at Ascent’s Cinetech film laboratory. Fox’s goal is to create a new 35mm negative and separation masters that will retain the image quality inherent in the original camera negative and provide for archival preservation.

Although Bernstein is correcting obvious flaws in the surviving material, he is avoiding any sort of heavy image processing or grain reduction. “It’s not my intention to do any of that,” he says. “To begin with, there’s not a lot of grain structure to The Sand Pebbles, and it looks pretty good. There are a number of grain-reducing tools I could throw at it that would involve additional rendering, but film has a grain structure, and I like to keep as much of that as necessary to maintain the look of film. That’s something Fox is concerned about as well.

“Ultimately,” he continues, “Ascent will deliver a new 35mm negative, an answer print, the HD deliverables — three hi-def masters in different aspect ratios of 2.35:1, 1.78:1 and 4-by-3 — and the 4K data files that were used to create the negative, probably stored on LTO-3 tape, or whatever format Fox wants.” With this new restoration, The Sand Pebbles will be set for a return to active duty and live to fight for another 40 years or more.

[alpy]

Innanzitutto complimentoni a Vincent per l'idea del tread. Uno dei più interessanti sul forum indubbiamente.

Sarei interessato ad avere notizie su ST2. Anche io su DVHT ho letto che per lo meno fra i primi sei, è stato l'unico a beneficiare di restauro vero e proprio e la cosa potrebbe farmi propendere all'acquisto. In teoria....

[vincent89]

From dvdbeaver:

Regarding the image - we all knew The Wizard of Oz was going to be done right and it was remastered from the (not original) three-strip Technicolor negatives (cyan, yellow and magenta), and scanned at 8K resolution (like Baraka).

NOTE: Albert tells us in email: "Just a small correction, if you allow me to do, about the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz had the original camera negatives destroyed in a fire in the 70's, just like Singing in The Rain. The best surviving elements were fine grain separation master positive from each Technicolor color strip (RGB) made in 60's. But the fine grain was made without wet gate, and so many scratches were printed in the image. The digital restoration for DVD, and latter ultra resolution restoration (4K) for DVD edition and Blue Ray, removed the scratches and other defects. Black&white fine grain stock of 60's was able to get quite close to the camera negative's details, despite not get so much close as to original negative as modern fine grain film stock of today, which can produce not just a master positive also internegative virtually indistinguishable from original negative. That's way the Blue ray looks so good after digital restoration and precise alignment by Ultra-resolution."

[Greenhornet]

Il secondo film della serie è stato sicuramente restaurato,lo si vede principalmente dal nero molto nero e profondo,il dnr è stato usato con molta parsimonia ma usato.

[pyoung]

Per Star Trek 2 - L'Ira di Khan tu cosa ne dici. Lo hai visto?

Confermo quanto detto da Greenhornet, ci sono svariati elementi visivi che fanno capire che è qualche spanna sopra gli altri. Il Dnr c'è ma con un approccio meno spinto rispetto agli altri titoli

[vincent89]

Aggiunto casablanca e aggiornata la Bond Library

[vincent89]

Prima recensione di "Intrigo Internazionale"

[gattapuffina]

Prima recensione di "Intrigo Internazionale"

Notevole. Zero EE, mentre il DVD ne ha un bel po'...

[GIANGI67]

Vogliamo parlare di 2001?Transfer pazzesco,essendo il mio film preferito in assoluto l'avro' visto 200 volte,ma in Blu-ray ho scoperto dettagli che non avevo scovato prima,piu' che in ogni altra trasposizione HD.Ora non so con precisione se trattasi di restauro,di master eccezionale o di trasferimento da 10 e lode,sta di fatto che il risultato e'..."spaziale".

[alpy]

Stando a quello che leggo dall'opuscolo dell'edizione speciale in dvd (che è lo stesso identico master secondo me) è un telecinema eseguito con Spirit Datacine a 2K (ma nemmeno 2K reali, proprio HD 1920x1080) da un interpositivo 35mm ricavato dal negativo originale 65mm. Certo, una buona base di partenza, ma non è una scansione diretta del negativo a 4 o 8K come "Il mago di OZ" o altri film. Secondo me la resa è buona ma non eccezionale rispetto a quello che potenzialmente potrebbe offrire se fosse ri-scansito con tecniche attuali. Io poi lo vidi in 70mm al cinema quindi.....

[Rosario]

Quindi c'è da aspettarsi un REMASTER?
Un bel DI 8k?

[vincent89]

A Dicembre 2010 infatti è prevista una Collector's Edition di 2001. Speriamo in un vero scan Hanno tutto il tempo per fare un ottimo lavoro

[Rosario]

Questa mi è nuova...
Hai fatto bene a dirlo...