A question for film buffs, re: deterioration

[takearushfan]

Hi all,
Does anyone know how many generations a studio will let go by and still be willing to release a film on DVD? I'm of course referring to a copy of a copy of a copy of a print, etc. Just wondering
- Justin

[deadrats]

i'm guessing they try and keep the number of generations between master and dvd to a minimum; i would guess that the process would probably be master to dvd.

[jagabo]

If there's demand for a movie and prints exist they'll make the DVD regardless of the quality. Keep in mind that film doesn't normally go through generations of copies. Ie, they don't copy from print to print.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JDaOOw0MEE

[edDV]

Hi all,
Does anyone know how many generations a studio will let go by and still be willing to release a film on DVD? I'm of course referring to a copy of a copy of a copy of a print, etc. Just wondering
- Justin

At what point in the past?

Today film is transferred direct to a digital intermediate that can handle several generations during production.

[lordsmurf]

Almost never anything less than a broadcast master.
A lot comes from film.

[manono]

I have hundreds of retail DVDs made from VHS tapes which themselves were made from old worn out film.

[Noahtuck]

I have hundreds of retail DVDs made from VHS tapes which themselves were made from old worn out film.

Yep.

The original Pumkinhead dvd, OMG it looks WORSE than a VHS tape!!!!
I actually just found out they remastered it and released it in widescreen with 5.1 back in 2008 and the screenshots look much better than the original.
I am ordering it next week but i am not hoping for a lot as i have seen quite a few movies where they just took the full screen version and cropped off the top and bottom to make a WS version
Can anyone say Phantasm ?!?!
LOL!!

I have many officially released dvd's that were sourced from Laserdisc!!
I have 3 versions of the same movie, and on the first released version in the middle of the movie it goes black, then you see the spinning "optical disc" and it say's flip over the disc, then the movie starts again.
Exactly like my LD copy i have!!

LOL!!

[lordsmurf]

I highly doubt it was from VHS.
Tape, yes -- like D1, D2, etc.
VHS, no.

Laserdisc resource was common because it was already remastered.

[manono]

I highly doubt it was from VHS.
Tape, yes -- like D1, D2, etc.
VHS, no..

Then you know nothing of the Indian DVD companies and their practices. But there's no reason why you should. Perhaps 99% of the DVDs and VCDs of classic films from before about 1970 and the majority for many years after that are made directly from VHS tapes. And what's worse, they take the 25fps VHS tapes and run them through a cheap standards converter box or DVD recorder maybe to give us back field-blended NTSC DVDs.

One of the companies (Friends) even runs scrolling ads from time to time during the movies advertising for people to offer them their VHS tapes. When I said I have hundreds made directly from VHS tapes, I wasn't kidding. And the fools know nothing about capping them properly.

[takearushfan]

The film on the DVD is from '79.
I know I'm no expert, hence my asking here in the first place, but there's no way they used the master print. The DVD is bare-bones and it seems that they just sort of "spit it out there" in the rare case that someone may actually purchase it...
There are moments of significant damage and artifacts. The whole thing is grain which yes, I know isn't that uncommon for a transfer from that time period, but this is really bad. There's even a stretch of about 15 seconds where you can see scratch marks lingering on the sides of the picture.
However, in the unlikely case that this was taken from the master, I can't believe that they'd let it get this bad. I can't imagine what storage procedures were used.

[edDV]

The film on the DVD is from '79.
I know I'm no expert, hence my asking here in the first place, but there's no way they used the master print. The DVD is bare-bones and it seems that they just sort of "spit it out there" in the rare case that someone may actually purchase it...

You need to identify the product so we can research it. They could use many options depending on the original film, their source format and their attention to quality.

There are moments of significant damage and artifacts. The whole thing is grain which yes, I know isn't that uncommon for a transfer from that time period, but this is really bad. There's even a stretch of about 15 seconds where you can see scratch marks lingering on the sides of the picture.
However, in the unlikely case that this was taken from the master, I can't believe that they'd let it get this bad. I can't imagine what storage procedures were used.

Seems like source was a well worn theater print that wasn't destroyed per contract.

We need to know the movie and the publisher.

[lordsmurf]

Then you know nothing of the Indian DVD companies and their practices. But there's no reason why you should. Perhaps 99% of the DVDs and VCDs of classic films from before about 1970 and the majority for many years after that are made directly from VHS tapes. And what's worse, they take the 25fps VHS tapes and run them through a cheap standards converter box or DVD recorder maybe to give us back field-blended NTSC DVDs.

That changes the conversation.
I refer specifically to North American releases. (And the same applies to UK and Japan.)

[guns1inger]

There are a lot of independent or low budget films that are not looked after particularly well by distributors and owners. The rights for DVD release are often sold to low budget authoring houses, who take whatever elements are available and do quick and nasty transfers that include no restoration or even basic image processing. They may use poor quality 35 mm prints (not masters or internegatives, but old prints that have been run through projectors countless times) or even 16 mm prints. They may use 1 inch tape as source. I have a couple of discs that are 'special editions' that have a mixture or 35mm and 1 inch source material intercut. The quality is markedly different in these scenes.

The transfers are often poorly compressed as well, which adds to the quality issues. I have noticed with certain budget DVD companies a distinct visual pattern in the compressed video that appears across all titles they release.

When you consider that a full chemical restoration (as was done for Rear Window and Lawrence of Arabia) or digital restoration (Casablanca et al) can run into high 6 figures or more per film, it is not hard to see why budget releases and films that won't be big sellers don't get the best treatment.

That said, I have budget releases that proclaim 'digitally remastered from the best available elements', which to me translates as "quickly transferred with no imaging processing from a 16mm print a mate had from his old high school rummage sale". I have seen better work done by members of this forum using virtualdub and avisynth. Hell, I have restored VHS tapes to better quality than some of these releases.

But if these are the only versions available, and you want to own a copy, then sometimes you take what you can get.

[jagabo]

They may use 1 inch tape as source... The transfers are often poorly compressed as well, which adds to the quality issues.

Without an inverse telecine even. So they're encoded interlaced.

[takearushfan]

I own a copy of Black Christmas (the original) on DVD which isn't "bare", but the print doesn't look too good. However, from talking to the guy the owns the rights I think it looks "good enough". Not only is it from '74 but it's been through a lot.

The Day After looks good, with the exception of the stock footage. Considering that it's made for TV I think it looks very good; would've been nice to have a least one single bonus feature; '83.

The original version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is supposedly "remastered" looks decent. I think that's '74...?

Finally, the film I'm posting about is the original version of When a Stranger Calls, '79.

Sony owns When a Stranger Calls and MGM owns The Day After. Both studios did what I referred to as "spitting out" a release. That is, as long as the film is on there, "it'll do". I can almost visualize an Exec. mouthing those words.

Is it a bummer that there are no "extras", of course. However, the quality of the print is what I'm obviously more concerned about. It's not just picture but the audio too. Eh, something's just not "right" about the situation.

I remember watching it on VHS around '91 and while I can't recall the picture well enough to compare, I do vividly recall the sound and yes, it was better than on the DVD. I swear I'm not crazy. There's a moment that freaked me out when viewing on VHS that you can no longer hear on DVD unless you crank your volume to 11.

Here's an interesting thought that occurred to me the other day...

Though it'll probably take 30 years to gain enough interest, what will happen when the demand for the film to be released on Blu-Ray comes along? People have very high expectations of the content a Blu-Ray contains. If they put such a "tremendous" (har-har) effort into the DVD, what'll happen as far as the Blu-Ray is concerned?!

[edDV]

I'll research that film and post later. You might enjoy reading some of my related posts from the past on VHS, Laserdisc and DVD mastering for context.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/196072-Laserdisc-is-analogue-but-how?
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/240629-What-resolution-is-TV-shot-at?

Also this from 2007

...
I just NEED somebody to say to me - once and for all - that what I'm seeing IS definitely as good as it gets for the current tech...AND that no amount of extra conversion tricks or buying of new superior equipment will really solve these more minor picture imperfections much at all.

You are nowhere close to multiplex theater quality let alone as good as it gets.

I'm doing this to put your problems into perspective.

Big studios don't even expect to get prefect transfers from film. That is why they save the film if they think it has future value.

The old film gets pulled from the vault about every 10-15 years for a restoration and transfer to the latest format of the day. Then it goes back into the vault for temperature controlled storage.

Historical transfer formats have been

- 2" Quadruplex (mono then again for color)
- 1" type C composite (followed later by D2/D3 composite)
- D1 (720x480/576) 4:2:2 YCbCr uncomprssed (followed later by compressed Digital Betacam)
- HDCAM 1080i 3:1:1
- 2k (1920x1080 uncompressed 4:4:4 transfer)
- 4k (~4000x2000 uncompressed 4:4:4 transfer)
This is about it for historical film stock

Now there is talk of 8kx4k for new film technology. Production HDTV acquisition is still at HDCAM SR level (4:4:4 1920x1080p/24 440-880 Mb/s)

Since 2007, most movie transfers are to "2K" (2048×1080) for Blu-Ray, and/or "4K" (4096×2160) for digital cinema. They are saved as digital intermediate data with bit depths ranging from 10-14 bits.

[edDV]

...

Finally, the film I'm posting about is the original version of When a Stranger Calls, '79.

Sony owns When a Stranger Calls and MGM owns The Day After. Both studios did what I referred to as "spitting out" a release. That is, as long as the film is on there, "it'll do". I can almost visualize an Exec. mouthing those words.

Is it a bummer that there are no "extras", of course. However, the quality of the print is what I'm obviously more concerned about. It's not just picture but the audio too. Eh, something's just not "right" about the situation.

I remember watching it on VHS around '91 and while I can't recall the picture well enough to compare, I do vividly recall the sound and yes, it was better than on the DVD. I swear I'm not crazy. There's a moment that freaked me out when viewing on VHS that you can no longer hear on DVD unless you crank your volume to 11.

Which DVD release do you have?

This was the original. I haven't yet found a release date for this one.



This one has a DVD release date of 2001. It was mastered 1.85:1 letterbox.



There was also a 2006 DVD release with both wide and full screen on opposite sides. It had different artwork. Sound was Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono.



There was also a Laserdisc with similar artwork to the VHS and original DVD. The Laserdisc was mastered pan and scan 1.33:1 "Full Screen". My bet is the original DVD used the same pan/scan transfer. The original movie was shot 1.85:1. Sound was mono.



My best guess is the 2001 wide screen DVD version was a fresh transfer. Recording format was probably DigiBeta.

The "Full Screen" pan/scan version was probably from the analog 1" TV distribution master tape.

[takearushfan]

I have the 2001 version, with the artwork in the second image you posted. However this version does contain both full and widescreen versions. Like you said, full on one side and wide on the other; 2.0 Mono. I looked into the '06 version but didn't bother with it as all they did was change the artwork.

So you mean that even though the transfer has that long shot with the scratch marks, it was still a fresh transfer? Yikes... how did they let that happen?

[edDV]

I have the 2001 version, with the artwork in the second image you posted. However this version does contain both full and widescreen versions. Like you said, full on one side and wide on the other; 2.0 Mono. I looked into the '06 version but didn't bother with it as all they did was change the artwork.

So you mean that even though the transfer has that long shot with the scratch marks, it was still a fresh transfer? Yikes... how did they let that happen?

Probably the film negative was scratched. That can usually be digitally corrected. Someone didn't want to pay up. Probably cost them a couple grand.

Can you post the clip? 30MB attachment is allowed here. (2-5 seconds of DVD MPeg2)

[guns1inger]

I have Black Christmas on bluray. While it is nice to have it in widescreen, it certainly doesn't look better than a good quality DVD upscaled. The same goes for Halloween on BD. Nice print, but not great.

TCM was shot on 16 mm, and even the best transfers of it are grainy and soft.

Part of the issue is that with HD cameras and improvements in film stock and equipment over the past few years, and the fact that pretty much every film released nowadays gets digitised for editing or colour grading well before DVD/BD production commences, we have become accustomed to seeing very sharp, clean images. We forget that older films, especially low budget films, didn't look that great to begin with. Movies like TCM or When a Stranger Calls were aimed at the drive-in/grind circuits where quality wasn't that big a deal anyway. The Day After was shot on 35 mm film stock, but on a TV budget. While they have a cult following, they are never going to recoup the cost of a half decent restoration. Something like the Bond franchise, on the other hand, will easily make back the cost of the hand crafted Lowry process they were subjected to.

In an ideal world, every movie would be mastered from the best available elements, with at least a basic clean up. As a consumer I always feel a little cheated when an obviously bad transfer is passed off as something acceptable. But the bottom line is simply will enough people buy that film on DVD to justify the cost of searching for the best copies, combining these into a complete product, cleaning it all up, encoding it properly, taking the time to author it with a little creativity, and sending it out the door. In a lot of cases the answer is, at least as far as the distributor is concerned, no.

Of course I then look at outfits like Blue Underground or Criterion, who specialise in the restoration and releasing of obscure and cult material, and wonder if that argument is just so much bullshit . . . .

[takearushfan]

The MPEG2 was too large, so I had to compress the footage using XviD. Unfortunately doing so makes it more difficult to notice the scratches. However, you still should get a fair idea of what I'm talking about.

[takearushfan]

Criterion can work wonders. I own their version of Carnival of Souls. I'm still dumbfounded at how amazing the picture is. The sound is excellent too.

[edDV]

The MPEG2 was too large, so I had to compress the footage using XviD. Unfortunately doing so makes it more difficult to notice the scratches. However, you still should get a fair idea of what I'm talking about.

Typical scratched film, Could have been corrected.

[guns1inger]

I have Legend's Carnival of Souls, which has a restored black and white version, and their colourised version. They also did quite a job on the restoration.

[takearushfan]

I had both Legend's and Criterion's. I sold the Legend version once I saw the Criterion version. Criterion's is only in black and white, but the restoration job is mind-blowing.

[takearushfan]

The MPEG2 was too large, so I had to compress the footage using XviD. Unfortunately doing so makes it more difficult to notice the scratches. However, you still should get a fair idea of what I'm talking about.

Typical scratched film, Could have been corrected.

So even though the film is scratched it's probably still from the master?
How much do you think Sony would've had to shell out to correct that flaw?

[intracube]

Typical scratched film, Could have been corrected.

So even though the film is scratched it's probably still from the master?
How much do you think Sony would've had to shell out to correct that flaw?

Not that much, I'd guess.

There's commercial solutions like Snell Archangel that do a great job (going by their own promotional material ) of removing dirt, scratches, film flicker and grain as long as the defects aren't too severe - see the HD before/after samples at the bottom of the page.

Although it's not completely automatic, it looks like it removes the need to go through a video a frame at a time and painstakingly touch up blemishes by hand (99% of the work).

[edDV]

The movie was shot with 35mm Panaflex cameras using Kodak Eastmancolor ECN-2 negative film.

Normally the original negative is transferred to video via flying spot scanner (e.g. Rank Cintel) but if unavailable, a distribution positive print can be scanned. The scratch was on the film.


http://www.danalee.ca/ttt/film_for_television.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_DataCine

Devices like the Snell Archangel Ph.C process the image in either auto or manual assist modes but in almost all cases color grading (correction) is done by a human specialist using a device like the Davinci Resolve.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

[takearushfan]

Okay. Fast-forwarding to '09, what am I seeing in the attached clip here? Where in the filmmaking process does it look like the scratches took place? Or are they even scratches that I'm seeing? It's odd looking. This was shot with Super 16.

[mazinz]

I own a copy of Black Christmas (the original) on DVD which isn't "bare", but the print doesn't look too good. However, from talking to the guy the owns the rights I think it looks "good enough". Not only is it from '74 but it's been through a lot.

The Day After looks good, with the exception of the stock footage. Considering that it's made for TV I think it looks very good; would've been nice to have a least one single bonus feature; '83.

The original version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is supposedly "remastered" looks decent. I think that's '74...?

Finally, the film I'm posting about is the original version of When a Stranger Calls, '79.

Sony owns When a Stranger Calls and MGM owns The Day After. Both studios did what I referred to as "spitting out" a release. That is, as long as the film is on there, "it'll do". I can almost visualize an Exec. mouthing those words.

Is it a bummer that there are no "extras", of course. However, the quality of the print is what I'm obviously more concerned about. It's not just picture but the audio too. Eh, something's just not "right" about the situation.

I remember watching it on VHS around '91 and while I can't recall the picture well enough to compare, I do vividly recall the sound and yes, it was better than on the DVD. I swear I'm not crazy. There's a moment that freaked me out when viewing on VHS that you can no longer hear on DVD unless you crank your volume to 11.

Here's an interesting thought that occurred to me the other day...

Though it'll probably take 30 years to gain enough interest, what will happen when the demand for the film to be released on Blu-Ray comes along? People have very high expectations of the content a Blu-Ray contains. If they put such a "tremendous" (har-har) effort into the DVD, what'll happen as far as the Blu-Ray is concerned?!

Hey takearushfan,
For records sake, the Day after was shot in a true 1:75:1 ratio, despite it being a US tv film (and a European theatrical release with the 1:75:1 ratio). The Image laserdisc and the region 4 dvd present the film in this format. I did do a shot by shot compare using the laserdisc and MGM dvd where I was able to verify it did indeed have a true widescreen ratio and was not a matted pic. Laserdisc also had a commentary track by the director since you mentioned the dvd lacking any real extras