Star Wars (1977) original Blu ray. Crappier than ever.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by EddieVanHalen, Oct 29, 2017.

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  1. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    The Bond films may have been remastered for 4K but not for UHD as far as we know...
     
  2. zombiemodernist

    zombiemodernist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northeastern USA
    I think it's interesting that iTunes does have this sizable subset of 4K scans in SDR compared to UHD discs. It seems studios really don't want to put out a disc without an HDR "upgrade". Although I like HDR / DV and have a pretty good TV for it, I would also be content with just a well done 4K SDR scan of a lot of films. I'd take anything Criterion scanned in 4K in an SDR version today.
     
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  3. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    4K and UHD are the same things. Maybe you meant HDR?
     
  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Yeah, I'm not sure why these aren't out on 4K Blu-ray. Are these HDR or just "regular"?

    Lowry did a great demo with a Diamonds are Forever segment in 4k, where you could see exactly where Sean Connery's toupee line was at the top of his scalp. It was plainly visible there... not so much in HD.

    I have had industry people chide me because I'll equate 4K with UHD, which is not exactly true. 4K is 4096x2160, and UHD is 3840x2160. Still 2160P.
     
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  5. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I would bet that Deluxe or whoever did the Game of Thrones film scanning kept the original DPX or EXR files, and as long as they were full-range 16-bit (which is standard), you could re-conform all the pieces in 4K and do the show in 4K HDR. But the VFX sequences would have to be recomposited, or at the least uprezzed. I think that's the standard TV workflow nowadays: part in 4K, part in 2K.

    Beware of Apple TV: the 4K model comes preset to tone-map everything to "faux" HDR, and you have to go in and manually turn that off in order to see "normal" untouched images. Some of it looks interesting, but it ain't quite the real thing.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2019
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  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I don't doubt that's the story out there, but from Die Another Day on, all the films were finished in 2K. Skyfall (shot by the great Roger Deakins) was shot on Alexa in 2K anamorphic, so anything from that film would be uprezzed to 4K. Spectre was shot on a combination of Alexa 65 and 35mm film, so it's "possible" they could have done it at 4K. True 4K end-to-end workflows are really hard for massive blockbuster films. It's not so much a question of money: it's time. There is always the chance that the initial theatrical release was just in 2K, and then a couple of months later, the studio finished doing all the 4K work (even though it wasn't actually delivered to theaters).

    MGM/UA/WB went pretty crazy on supervising all their Bond films, so I would bet that the instructions given to whoever did the 4K's would be to match all the color timing that was initially approved on the 2K/HD versions done 15 years ago. There shouldn't be that much of a difference in brightness/contrast/color/saturation and so on. The two things I try to do when I remaster an old title is 1) I'll pop in at most about 5% more dynamic range and detail if I can, just so things don't get as muddy as the old version, and 2) I'll try to show a few pixels more image area overall if there's anything useful there. My philosophy is, nobody who buys the new version on disc will complain if they see more information, but they will complain if they see less. For color, I just try to match it but also use good judgement, particularly if the previous version has obvious mistakes.
     
    Last edited: Feb 2, 2019
  7. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    In the consumer space, though, "4K" and "UHD" are synonymous.
     
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  8. SamS

    SamS Forum Legend

    Location:
    Texas
    They are just regular, no HDR. Although Apple often replaces 'regular' 4K with the HDR/Dolby Vision version when made available by the studio(s).


    For the purposes of home video, and the context of that post, 4K and UHD are equivalent. ;)
     
  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Ehhhhh... technical precision is important. That's why we have to ask where films are going to be shown when we deliver them in post. I literally just had this situation a few hours ago when I rendered a short, and the director got flustered when I pointed out there are about 9 different kinds of 4K. We opted for 4096 x 1714, because this is going to be shown at a film festival in 4K. For home video, they'll scale it down to 1920 x 1080, with a 1920 x 803 image inside it. Resolution and aspect ratios will give anybody a headache.
     
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  10. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    Don't start with me ;)...
     
  11. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    Apparently - according to some knowledgeable folks here and elsewhere that I've read - all the 4K masters for the Bond films were finished by 2012... so it could well have been Lowry who handled the complete series.

    What would Skyfall look like uprezzed to 4K, I wonder? As you said, it was shot digitally at 2K, so there simply isn't any 4K resolution on that film, unlike all the others that were shot on 35mm film?

    Frankly, this whole 4K/UHD/HDR thing has become a vastly overrated niche, in my opinion; I find a well-mastered 1080p transfer more than sufficient (and not all films warrant 4K treatment for technical reasons, like Superman: The Movie, as the recent UHD release proved!)... just how good can they get it before it's deemed good enough?
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2019
  12. budwhite

    budwhite Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

    Location:
    Götaland, Sverige
    I'm with you there. Though I haven't seen 4K HDR :kilroy:
     
  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    As I said above, Skyfall was shot by the great Roger Deakins in 2K on Alexa XT digital. No film was involved for the most part (though a handful of slow-motion explosions might have been shot on 35mm negative). Uprezzing does not make it look like 4K, but it doesn't look worse than the 2K.

    I think the UHD HDR of Superman looked very good for the most part, but it did have some borderline-grainy moments. Color and detail were terrific. As I've often said, for decades, I'm not sure there was really 4K of real resolution in a lot of films, particularly anamorphic films (like Superman) due to limitations in emulsion technology and glass. Somewhere in the late 1980s, average MTF went up, and I think by the time the Kodak Vision negatives came out in 1992, they really could deliver 4K of resolution... arguably more under perfect conditions.
     
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  14. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    Here's a nice video by Mike Verta, that shows the amount of detail that is on the negative, recovered here from a set of release prints, that's not visible for the bluray, but should be resolved at 4K resolution:

     
  15. gabacabriel

    gabacabriel Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bristol, UK
    That's the same door (repainted) that the robots hide behind in Mos Eisley.

    Small galaxy!
     
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  16. zombiemodernist

    zombiemodernist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northeastern USA
    I only saw the caps of Superman but there did seem to be smaller gap between the Blu-Ray and 4K copy than a lot of other catalog titles. Something like Blade Runner was amazingly better on UHD despite having the same source scan, so the mileage seems to vary from film to film. It’s also a bit frustrating to see the same catalog action films trotted out with every format change, since as Superman proves, they are rarely the most visually rich.

    For me the real big game changer with all this is 4K streaming. I am far less passionate about physical media for films because I’m rarely compelled to watch a film more than once. iTunes has opened the door to renting streaming at very high quality for the same price as HD. So even a 1% increase in quality is worth it in that scenario.
     
  17. Encuentro

    Encuentro Forum Resident

    Has Verta offered any updates in recent months? Is there any reason to hope that his restoration seeing the light of day is even a remote possibility? Last I read, he’d shown his restoration, or parts of his restoration, to industry insiders.
     
  18. thxdave

    thxdave "One black, one white, one blonde"

    Hey Vidiot! One slightly off-topic question: Which Bay area theater did you see the original SW release? Weird to think we might have been there the same night!
    Dave (say "Hi" to Mike!)
     
  19. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    That's still the last word. We know the people at Disney are interested in his methodology, and he's stated he's willing to work with them as long as the unaltered films are part of the package.
     
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  20. The Hermit

    The Hermit Wavin' that magick glowstick since 1976

    What source(s) was Mike Verta working from on his 4K restoration?

    Hey Disney/Lucasfilm, you say you care about film restoration and preservation, then prove it; hire that guy officially, give him the existing interpositives of the OT theatrical versions, and set him to work...
     
  21. Season 1 of game of Thrones was shot digitally using HDCAM SR I'm not sure if at 1080p or 2K and I don't remember if at 10 or 12 bits.
    As far as I know no season of Game Of Thrones has been shot to film but I may be wrong.
     
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  22. DrDre

    DrDre Forum Resident

    Location:
    Amsterdam
    He used professional scans of at leasr five release prints, including a number of technicolor prints, and combined the information on these prints to reconstruct the information on the negative. His 4K restoration is apparently superior to the bluray in detail, and fidelity, and faithful to the original photography. He's worked with many of the people involved with the film's creation, and had access to the LFM archives to view and accurately photograph props. He also attended screenings of technicolor prints and took several thousand photographs with a color calibrated camera to capture the colors of the projected film. He's been working on this for over fifteen years.

    This vimeo channel gives great insight into his restoration through a large number of videos:

    Star Wars - Legacy Edition 4K Restoration
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2019
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  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    You know, I was absolutely mistaken: all of Game of Thrones has been shot on Alexa. Here's a shot from the set:

    [​IMG]

    They generally finish shows like this and then render out to HDCam-SR, which is a traditional "network TV" workflow used for about 15 years. Starting about 5 years ago, most vendors have abandoned tape in lieu of file digital delivery. I worked on a pilot 5 years ago where we did a file delivery but also had an HDCam-SR tape as "backup," because Warner Bros. asked for it.

    There have very definitely been high-end HBO series shot entirely on film: Sopranos, True Blood, Rome, and many others. But there are good reasons to shoot digitally on Alexa nowadays. As much as I consider myself to be a film guy, I think the very best 2019 digital cameras out there (Alexa LF, Sony Venice, Red Helium) are all extremely good. One little secret: a common trick on a lot of digitally-shot shows is to use a little bit of lens diffusion during the shoot, and then in post they apply a degree of artificial grain as the last step to take off what some call "the digital edge." That way, the final results are not so clean, and you get an "organic" feel to it. Even sitcoms are doing this, which might surprise some people.
     
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  24. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I'm seeing enhancement in this scan, so all bets are off. I can take a little aperture correction, but enhancement is not a good idea for an initial scan. This has also been color corrected, and the problem there is that the correction actually affects apparent sharpness, because of the added contrast. Again: this is not a simple equation. There's a lot of careful judgement and experience that has to be involved.

    Two things I did not like about the 2004 Star Wars scans I had to work with were: 1) I felt the levels were a bit too high, so I had to fight to get the color back in the lightsabers; and 2) the scans were not pin-registered, and that alone will affect apparent sharpness. A lot of that was done just because of the (somewhat) rushed schedule, but those decisions were made before I was part of the project. I think the work ultimately looked good, but it definitely could have been better if just those two things had been addressed. Nowadays, I would go a step further and go for a 2-pass HDR scan, where you get one pass optimized for black detail, and one pass optimized for highlights, then the software averages the two together. Having a pin-registered log film scan of the Star Wars negatives done that way would preserve all the nuances very well, and I would bet that's what would be done. It takes a huge, huge amount of time to do that: I would guess about 48 hours minimum per 20-minute reel, including digital processing.

    There are always armchair critics who believe something can be done better, but as for me, having worked with real Technicolor prints before, I can tell you they are dark and dense and too plugged-up to provide enough detail. Unless you can work with the camera negative (OCN), it's all bogus. (The 35mm interpositive -- a finegrain contact print struck directly off the OCN -- is arguably the next best thing and ten times better than a print.) The only thing I'd used the print for is an A/B comparison screen to check to see how close the video version is to the film projection. But even then... you're at the mercy of the chemical changes within the print over time, as well as the color of the light source in the projector (nominally 5400°). We work at 6500° in digital video and at a much higher brightness level, so it's not a direct match.
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2019
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  25. JediJoker

    JediJoker Audio Engineer/Enthusiast

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    Kelvin is not measured in degrees. It's an absolute unit.
     
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