It's not on 4k UHD - but it should be! What's on your wishlist?

I think a 66-year-old film shot on glass that old and emulsions that old ain't gonna have any resolution even remotely approaching 4K. As I've often said, the only films that really will benefit are those shot in spherical 65mm or films shot after at least 1980 (or maybe even 1990). I don't think the MTF of those emulsions and lenses can yield much more than 2K resolution, even in the raw negative.

I don't think it hurts to release old films in 4K, but one issue with Dolby Vision or HDR is that it will tend to make the film grain even more visible. I watched Close Encounters and Starship Troopers in 4K HDR, and they were grainy as hell, just radioactive in some scenes. It's fair to say that there are differing factions in the restoration community as to whether to use grain reduction to control this problem, and if so, how much. My take is, "use a little when necessary, but turn it off the rest of the time." Nobody wants a picture that's 100% grain free, because it looks too plastic and artificial... but at the same time, nobody wants to see a picture so grainy and ugly that it actually distracts you from the story.

If I could show you the exact same mastering in HD or 4K, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Better mastering is better mastering, period, and if the studio did it right, it could well look better in some ways than the last time they mastered the project. But from a retail standpoint, it's another way to sell you a remastered copy. HDR is very dangerous with film properties because it exaggerates the noise problems even further. Having said that: I decided a while back that we're no longer going to buy HD Blu-rays and are going to standardize on 4K HDR Blu-ray from this point forward. Old films will be an individual decision, and there's some that I think are not going to benefit from the process.

4K HDR can work fine with digitally-captured material, because they inherently have less grain than a film-captured project. I'm a huge fan of Dolby Vision and in fact am talking to them about certification, and I think it's a great process for anything made in the last 25 years. But the noise aspects are a concern.

 

I'm just talking about Paramount releasing catalog titles on blu. They got some heavy hitters that haven't seen the light of day on that format. Personally, I'm indifferent to 4k UHD (and rolling my eyes at the 8k TV that's been released).

 

oh please yes!

 

Yes, I'd have no problem with them releasing anything on HD Blu-ray, going back to hundreds of silent films. Paramount/Viacom has a massive library they're doing very little with, both TV and feature films. There is a very real difference in picture quality for just about any movie on HD vs. standard-def.

 

I caved and bought the Arrow. Looks great.

 

I don’t think that Jackson is going to do that myself.

 

Yeah they’ve under delivered in that regard much like Fox with their Tv properties (The Orville which truly needs to be seen in Bd at least)

 

I do have to say though that films like Apocalypse Now look marvelous in 4K perhaps it has more to it being a more recent scan though.

 

Beautiful remastering work by Warner MPI in Burbank.

 

I buy a lot of 4k titles and i gotta say, the last few months have been extremely encouraging for us film lovers and the future (at least near term) of 4k discs. During all the years that I've upgraded favorite films from one format to a newer one, I don't recall ever being as impressed with an upgrade as i was with both Apocalypse Now and Casino... i mean, dayum, to me it wasn't degrees of improvement....it was night and day! Several other recent catalog titles were right up there as well (The Wizard of Oz, The Shining, hell even Scarface looked absolutely amazing considering the source). Going back further there are other examples of 4k releases that are also reference and absolute must upgrades, but i wanted to point out how in recent months there seems to be a quickening of top level 4k titles being released by the studios.

Considering what I've seen lately with 4k, I'd really love to see:
Once Upon A Time In The West
Once Upon A Time In America
Barry Lyndon
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Amadeus
Boogie Nights
Pink Floyd's The Wall
Ragtime
Fried Green Tomatoes
Miller's Crossing
Bonnie and Clyde
The Last Picture Show
Paper Moon
The Man Who Wasn't There (any Coen Bros. really)

And if I'm dreaming, I'd add:
The Wicker Man
Das Boot
Scorcese's After Hours
Inland Empire
Marie Antoinette
Fitzcarraldo
Aguirre, The Wrath of God
Southern Comfort
.....how I'd love to see these films given the attention to make them look the best they could!

 

Details are murky online, but I'm pretty certain that Fellowship wasn't done with a DI fully like the later two films were.

Either way both releases of the film are "off" in some capacity. The theatrical disc has some nasty edge-enhacement and lack of detail compared to the second and third films, and the EE has altered color timing, but a huge uptick in detail and genuine sharpness. Some people theorized on HTF years ago that the theatrical BR was scanned from a film-out, and that the EE had a differnt source. No clue if that is true but the theatrical disc does look quite poor upscaled to 4K. Personally I don't get too bent up over director approved color timing changes, but in the case of the EE it's just inconsistent to the later films. I'd rather them all align to each other in this case, revised or not.

I also greatly prefer all the theatrical cuts and feel like those have gotten the short end of the stick with encodes so an upgrade to 4K HDR with the same base source as the EEs would be nice.

 

I love almost averything in your list, but this, Inland Empire, was shot on Standard Definition video with run-of-the-mill, outdated even for the time, DV cameras, so 4K will really, really be useless in this case.

 

I wonder how Star Wars Attack Of The Clones will look on UHD BD. The CineAlta cameras used to shoot AOTC had a resolution (if I'm not mistaken) of 1440p, less than full HD 1080p, I don't know at what bit depth they captured picture, most likely over 8 bit, 10 bit maybe. The current BD edition looks soft, I doubt upscaling and doing an HDR pass for UHD BD would make a great difference.

 

AOTC was slightly DNR'ed on the Blu-Ray. Some videophile SW fans prefer the HDTV broadcast which is marginally sharper (a bit noise too) but it's riddled with bad compression. I think Phantom Menace and AOTC could see a slight boost in quality on 4K if Disney goes back to the source files / source scan and doesn't do the DNR pass the Complete Saga box had on those two films. At least my favorite prequel, ROTS looks pretty good to my eyes in the saga box.

 

I'm curious about your insight on this topic. I've totally seen this heavy grain on the Sony UHDs, it's almost like a bug swarm over the frame (I'll add 5th element to the list). Meanwhile other 4K UHD releases of old catalog titles from others (like Warner's recent Shining and Wizard of OZ discs) get the detail uptick without the unwanted noise. I find unfortunately that the combo of the DV grade, high grain and OLED contrast sometimes can create an experience that while "good looking" doesn't look anything like projected film. Is this just a necessary sacrifice to maximize resolution or a purely aesthetic decision?

 

Of course i agree with you, and actually that's the very reason i put it in that second group...some of my favorite films that look the worst. I'm still pissed at David for filming this one the way he did, because i really love the film and i wish it had been lensed similar to Mullholland or BV, of course that would have it maybe lose some of what makes it so uniquely unsettling, but i think it would have taken it to a higher level. I was hoping maybe 4k and other upgrades could overcome some of that look....do you think it could be improved upon even if 4k wasn't necessary. I've been thinking of buying tje import blu-ray as all I've got is the dvd....i never pulled the trigger exactly because i didn't know if the improved resolution would make any difference because of the crappy way it was filmed. Thanks!!!

 

I think it's bad judgement in general. I don't want to get into the details (for political reasons), but let's just say there is a disagreement in the restoration community as to whether grain reduction is necessary for home video & streaming. There is an argument that the grain is in the original element and it sorta "is the way it is," and they feel that correcting it will lead to artifacts and visual flaws.

There's another argument that says "we need to remove all grain because grain is evil, and all we need to see is the original picture, completely cleaned-up and perfect and flawless." The flaw with that is you wind up with a picture that looks kind of over-processed and too digital, which I don't think is what you want with an organic film presentation. A little noise is fine.

I have the argument in between: "use good judgement and use a little grain reduction here and there only where necessary and leave as much of the picture alone as possible." We have the ability to remove grain to just the deep black areas, or to just the midtones, or just the highlights, we can adjust this on a shot-by-shot basis, and we can even confine the grain reduction to just part of the frame. So to me, the answer is on vintage films you need a little grain reduction applied very carefully to certain scenes, but only when necessary. That is basically what Warner MPI did on their releases of films like The Shining and Wizard of Oz.

The excessive film grain I saw on Starship Troopers and Close Encounters was indeed like "bugs swarming all over the frame" (as you say), but it's amazing how very few reviews noticed it or wrote this up on the net. And this is on several calibrated LG UHD OLED displays with no enhancement, no nothing.

 

A 1080p transfer on Blu-Ray would probably enhance the image a bit, if only for the better encoding. Generally I think Standard Def definitely looks better on Blu-Ray than on DVD.
In this case 4K is total overkill, you wouldn't gain anything.

 

Am I mistaken or isn't 1440p higher than 1080p?

 

According to IMDB AOTC was 1080p. IIRC the widescreen is matted down from a 16:9 image.

 

Very interesting. Subjectively I prefer the look of the Warner MPI stuff to the Sony stuff which looks great in some shots and swarmy in others. To your other point, the waxy DNR look of stuff like the Terminator 2 UHD disc is equally unnatural and un-filmlike to my eyes. I'm guessing taste and ethics come into play. I do remember hearing on the HTF podcast with Criterion that Jim Jarmusch specifically requested Criterion add some dirt and grain back to his approved transfers. Still when upscaled from 1080p SDR my Criterion disc of Dead Man looks pretty natural to my own tastes.

When I first saw these films on UHD my thought was the OLED tech itself was exastrabating some of the grain texture through the increased contrast, in a way that a projector or LCD wouldn't. But if I'm correct these types of UHD masters are usually made or checked on an OLED display correct?

 

This is now available in the UK as a 4k/BD 2-disc set! The BD is locked to region B, although the 4K is region free (obviously).

 

thank you, may wait for Region 1 UHD 4K release instead of ending up with non-use [Region B] Blu-Ray disc in uk edition...i can share that with a family member when i upgrade the film.

 

It depends! Both "dual LCD" and OLED are available for mastering displays, and they can each work very well:

Display Daily: If One LCD is Not Enough, Try Two

Trust me, we'll see the grain in 4K if it's there. In general, the home video pass is always done on a broadcast-quality mastering display, even if the show was initially color-timed in a theater.

 

Interesting tech there for LCD! So I guess it really is down to subjective taste of the restorer / grader.

Personally, I think a decent amount is interesting to preserve in certain cases. I was struck by the different grain textures on the exteriors of the UHD Halloween which made it pretty apparent when they were pushing stocks past their limit. That at least felt relative vs a pervasive black swarming effect. Most interestingly though the digital (Apple TV) copies of these Sony titles appear to be be less harsh. Some of this may be that some are in DV vs HDR10, but I suspects some is just the high compression of the image softening the grain. Anyhow I'll still take the native 4K remasters on 4K over BR.