When films are remastered to Blu, are the titles rotoscoped or? ...

[takearushfan]

Is the scanning alone enough to make the titles appear "clean"?
That is, I've noticed it often looks "fake", as if they manually went in and flood-filled the titles frame-by-frame. I'm not sure if rotoscoping is the right term but that's what I'm referring to: not relying on the "purity" of the original print but rather fixing them manually.
Eh, you're all used to my poor wording so I won't apologize this time

[jman98]

Can you give an example of this? This is not normal. I suppose it's certainly possible that for some films they could generate new titles, but to be honest with you I don't really understand what you are trying to describe. It may depend on the film and how the titles were generated. You seem to be interested a lot in music videos so maybe the original titles were done on video tape and they'll look bad blown up to HD resolutions (Star Trek The Next Generation is redoing all the special effects for this reason). If you really mean films and not music videos, all I can say is that I am not aware of this being done on old movies at all, but when I say "old" I am referring to films before 1970.

[takearushfan]

Nah, I don't have any interest in music videos. I have an interest in video, music and audio (in general) but not music videos. I'm referring to A Nightmare On Elm Street ('84), Black Christmas ('74), Wargames ('83), Warlock ('89), etc...
What I mean is that with some Blu-rays, it doesn't look like the clarity of the titles' appearance is due to the scanning/telecine process of an original print, but rather that they "improved" the titles by manually cleaning them via software.

[hello_hello]

I don't think there's a general rule you can apply. Some Bluray releases look pretty good, many don't. In my opinion the quality of Bluray titles seems to be fairly disappointing, on average. The 40 Year Old Virgin is one title which comes to mind because it received quite a bit of criticism when it was released. And it was awful. It looked like a standard definition copy which was heavily noise filtered, upscaled from standard definition and over-sharpened in the process. http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=144068

The age of the movie itself doesn't necessarily seem to have a direct correlation to the quality. I've got a few discs of movies from the 60s and 70s which look quite good and a couple of recent releases which look quite ordinary.

[jman98]

Maybe edDV will get interested and comment as he might have specific knowledge here. I can only say that in general titles look different to me from the 1970s onward, but I have no knowledge about the process used. I suppose it's possible that such titles have been specially treated, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Consumers don't complain about old mono soundtracks being faked into 5.1 audio so you are likely in the minority if you don't like this practice of fixing titles to look better.

Maybe I remember wrong (always possible) but your name stands out as I think you started a thread about trying to replace the soundtrack in a music video in what was a fairly complicated job so I just assumed that you have a big interest in music videos.

[takearushfan]

Oh sh*t... it didn't occur to me that "titles" can (of course) be interpreted as "the entire film". What I'm talking about are the credits, not the overall restoration quality *blush*

[filmboss80]

Before the digital age, titles and credits, like special effects, were separate film elements that were overlayed onto other filmed sequences using optical printers. If the studios preserved all the separate film elements, they could do the new HD digital remasters by scanning those original title elements, then digitally overlaying them (with computer generated mattes), as opposed to the old technique of using optical printers (with hand-rotoscoped mattes).

In the case of Star Wars, Ep. IV, V, and VI, George Lucas kept all the separate film elements and re-layered them digitally for the newer masters. However, in the cases of some of the films you mentioned, the title and effects elements may have been thrown out by the studios, and all that was available to scan for HD were the compiled masters used for striking release prints. That is, they could only scan the final title sequences that were already overlayed using optical printers. They could not re-digitize the separate elements, and thus the optical mattes created softer edges than digital mattes would have.

So, to remaster for bluray, studios often have to use what is available. Or, even if the separate elements are still available for digital layering, the studios must determine if the demand for a film justifies the expense of an extensive digital restoration.

[takearushfan]

jman98: I like to tinker with film soundtracks, but not music videos.

filmboss80: That makes perfect sense. Attached are a few examples of ones that seem to use the digital overlay technique. Do you agree? The Twilight Zone one looks much more authentic, but the Elm Street and Warlock ones very much look like they did what you described. The Twilight Zone one might've used the same technique, but perhaps they managed to make it look less obvious...?

[filmboss80]

Well, the Warlock titles are very crisp, and it is likely the title mattes were digitized. Hard to tell on the 2 others, although they seem (IMO) to be very good transfers of titles that were overlaid through optical printing.

When each movie was first made, there was a stage where a dupe negative was created with no titles whatsoever, so that foreign-language versions of the titles could be overlaid. Again, if the studios kept all of the separate elements, they would have the option (if budget allowed) to do a very nice digital restoration for bluray.

Are you familiar with www.dvdbeaver.com ? It is a good site for examining the quality of film transfers for DVD and Bluray.

[takearushfan]

Yep, I use dvdbeaver every now and then. I'm pretty sure the Elm Street credits were done as the Warlock ones were. I remember when I saw it for the first time in HD, it struck me as very obvious that they had been touched up. I just didn't know how it's done.