How is a digital remaster done?

[magicka8000]

I hope I'm in the right forum. How does one go about a digital remaster? Is this a process that can even be done at home? I'm not talking about moving home videos to DVDs, but similar to what hollywood and studios do when they come out with a Digital Remaster of an original. Let's say that you have a film that was made in 1987 or was badly recorded. How can you get a result comparable to a studio re-master? Or is it even possible? Of course, I am wanting to put the end result on DVD, but I'm not sure what a person needs to accomplish such a feat. I've done a search online and can't find anything relating to how to do a digital remaster. Appreciate any help. Thanks. Keith.

[greymalkin]

ok..lets think about this logically:

what is a master? The master is simply the original medium the video/audio was recorded to.
usually, the quality of the audio/video on this medium is of much higher quality than what is available to the consumer. Therefore, the video/audio is downgraded to fit the modern consumable format.

Fast forward a few years...now the modern consumer has access to higher quality audio/video players. The original, high quality master is used again to make this higher quality consumable format. It might not be the same quality of the original master, but it's better than the first consumable format. This is a very simplistic example of a re-master.

likewise..many of us are burning our miniDV footage to DVD, but we are holding onto the miniDV tape (master) because we know that just around the corner we'll be able to record it to a higher quality format. We will be "remastering" it.

So..if your original (master) was recorded poorly, then there's really no point in re-mastering..because you're not going to get it any better than that.

[guns1inger]

It depends on how far you want to go, how much time and effort you wish to expend, and how good your source quality is. It might be a little a few simple filters for light noise, a little EQ on the audio to kill tape hiss, and your done. You could call that a home digital remaster.

However it could also capturing using expensive proc amps and TBCs, breaking the capture down by scene or even to the frame level, applying different filters to each, hand painting frames to repair damage, re-recoding portions of the audio etc.


That said, it is a phrase I take with a grain of salt. I have discs at home that claim to be digitally remastered, but it is obvious that the extent of this is to transfer from, at best, ageing one inch tape, and to encode it as is for DVD.

[manono]

Here's what can be done commercially when a lot of work has to be done, and no, it can't be done at home:

The original negative of the film is no longer available, so a new duplicate negative was created with wet gate processing from the original fine-grain master positive. This new high-definition digital transfer was created in 2k resolution on a Spirit Datacine from the new dupe negative. For the extensive restoration of Seven Samurai for this release, several different digital hardware and software solutions were utilized for flicker, instability, dirt, scratches and grain management including: daVinci’s Revival, Discreet’s Fire, Digital Vision’s ASCIII Advanced Scratch and Dirt Concealer, and MTI’s Digital Restoration System. To maintain optimal image quality through the compression process, the picture on this dual-layer DVD-9 was encoded at the highest-possible bit rate for the quantity of material included The new 4.0 mix was created from original optical track recordings, original stereo music masters, and original production sound effects masters. The original monaural soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from an optical soundtrack print. Audio restoration tools were used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle. The Dolby Digital 1.0 signal will be directed to the center channel on surround sound systems, but some viewers may prefer to switch to two-channel playback for a wider dispersal of the mono sound.

http://www.criterionco.com/asp/release.asp?id=2

And as gunslinger says, the phrase "Digitally Remastered" can also be applied to crappy VCR tape captures. I have plenty of retail DVDs like that, and the case proudly proclaims them as "Digitally Remastered".

[edDV]

Remaster assumes you have a master.

Are you talking about 8mm film or camcorder tapes?

[mats.hogberg]

You'll find a fascinating Extra on the Metropolis DVD on how it was remastered/restored. Not to be tried at home, I think...

/Mats

[guns1inger]

Same with Lawrence of Arabia and Rear Window - chemical restoration of colour layers . . . . . a little beyond avisynth scripting. Then it's ready for the digital work.