Film colorization how made ?

[AlfredBergman]

Any effort which preserves these oldies is worthwhile. I know a lot of the old silent comedies have already been lost forever. If somebody digitized and preserved these in order to sell plumbing fixtures, I would applaud the process. A good colorization IMO will preserve the impact of older films for future generations, who will themselves judge whether they like the original BW, turn-of-the-century color, or the new Super Whizzo 3000 hologram conversion.

I once talked with a engineer who worked for Cintel (developer of Telecine and motion picture scanners) and he told me that was in favor of scan several less famous films in 2K (2024 pixels horizontal resolution) with some compression factor for each frame (almost lossless) and stock it with regulary recopying to other digital files or to modern digital files that appear in future.
According hin this would be much less expansive than copying to fine grain chemical film masters.

Decades ago many studios intentionally just burned old negatives without make any copy. They simple destroyed the films they thought would have no market anymore. Today this is considered a atrocity.

If colorization of movies helps to generate public interest for old films, the studios will invest more to restore and preserve their classics.

Also, for those ones, colorization critics, that said the digital restoration could help more filmsif they didn't sepnd money colorizing, I was informed by Barry Sandrew, from Legend Films, creator of the colorization process and rebirth of colorization in HD, that the restoration and colorization are made together using the same algorithm to pattern detection.
The development of this new colorization software with this unic avanced almost automate pattern detection, was what made possible to so many titles got digital restoration for a DVD sales comercial budget.

Detail: My complaim, about let original grading spoils colors in some scenes, was about specific situations, like when there is much lack of density On images'with no fog or natural agent to decrese density, or too dazzled brightness scenes without natural agent to cause it. Just situations that can't stand colors well. Those was casual choices for B&W that are not or almost never used for color photography since can disrupt the colors natural look.
The majority of director grading would be keeped for the majority of scenes, like Noir drak look etc.

DOES ANYBODY HAVE THE ESPEICAL EDITION DVD OF CASBLANCA??? IN THE EXTRAS THERE ARE SCENES OF A CASABLANCA SERIES (1983) MADE IN COLOR.
I WOULD LIKE TO COLORIZE A RICK'S CAFE BEAUTIFUL HI-RES STIL USING LIKE BASE THOSE COLORS FROM THIS SERIES, SINCE THE CAFE SET WAS SUPOSED TO BE RECREATED LIKE THE ORIGINAL OF THE 1940 MOVIE. SOME SCREEN CAPTURES WOULD HELP MY WORK.

[edDV]

I think all the controversy would end if the "colorization" industry pledged to first make an optimized monochrome archive print (film negative and digital file) as a first step before colorizing for commercial release. A film library (e.g. AFA or UCLA) could be designated as curator for the monochrome file+print to assure it would not be lost to history.

This would be a major marketing plus for the industry, remove criticism and even turn industry opinion positive.

[DereX888]

I think all the controversy would end if the "colorization" industry pledged to first make an optimized monochrome archive print (film negative and digital file) as a first step before colorizing for commercial release. A film library (e.g. AFA or UCLA) could be designated as curator for the monochrome file+print to assure it would not be lost to history.

This would be a major marketing plus for the industry, remove criticism and even turn industry opinion positive.

Yet another great idea found on this forum

DOES ANYBODY HAVE THE ESPEICAL EDITION DVD OF CASBLANCA??? IN THE EXTRAS THERE ARE SCENES OF A CASABLANCA SERIES (1983) MADE IN COLOR.
I WOULD LIKE TO COLORIZE A RICK'S CAFE BEAUTIFUL HI-RES STIL USING LIKE BASE THOSE COLORS FROM THIS SERIES, SINCE THE CAFE SET WAS SUPOSED TO BE RECREATED LIKE THE ORIGINAL OF THE 1940 MOVIE. SOME SCREEN CAPTURES WOULD HELP MY WORK.

I have it.
However, the colorized version is still under the copyrights (and will be long after we all die, thanks to greed of current ruling corpocracy), so if I post them officially, I could be in trouble
*but*
since you are my friend, I think the law doesn't forbid (yet) me from lending you my computer (via remote access) with both DVDs in the drives?

(helloooooo Adam! Your opinion is needed )

[AlfredBergman]

Maybe few people know, but The Godfather, despite the great DVD treatment about 2 years ago, was only digitaly restored, andthe negative wasn't cared about. Film restorer Robert Harris made several critics about the studios digitally clean films in SD and HD and let the negatives still in poor conditions.
The most successfull realise was a film, the most damaged was it's negatvie, since they used to print thousand prints from the original negative, without make a interpositive and internegative.

To get all image definition of a 35mm films it's need 2K (2024 pixels right to left) or sometimes even 4K (4048 pixels right to left) Modern films emulsion have finer grain particles and so higher resolution than film brands from 60's to 80's.
HD don't get all definition of a fim.

Hey, that's the image I want to colorize. If get natural will be great. I spend a lot of time until get the right colors, since all colorization softwares for home, even Photoshop, are just dumb to colorization, and we need to precisilly sellect and guess each hue and saturation grading for each element, in a poor interface that is very limited. That's why most Home digital colorization are mostly awful.

With so many object will be a hell's work But I will try.
I already enhanced the B&W image a little bit in sharpness, using a quality special plug-in filter, and contrast, also correcting also some whitned on the edge of the photo.

I think there must be a scene very similar this still in the Casablanca (1983) color series.

Thank you for offer help with the DVD extras screen captures. If we don't publis will not make any harm. Anyway if the colorization get great it will help to promotwe Casablanca. So everybody will be happy about.

my email: albertodarce@hotmail.com

www.doctormacro.info/Images/Bogart,%20Humphrey/Annex/Annex%20-%20Bogart,%20Humphrey%20(Casablanca)_06.jpg

[Barry Sandrew]

Alfred -

To quote my good friend Ray Harryhausen...

"Legend's new colorization is a wonderful innovative process and I'm happy that I can finally see my black and white films the way I originally envisioned them; in color. Some films will benefit greatly by colorization and others will not. One simply needs the wisdom to know the difference."

'nough said.

[gll99]

Alfred -

To quote my good friend Ray Harryhausen...

"Legend's new colorization is a wonderful innovative process and I'm happy that I can finally see my black and white films the way I originally envisioned them; in color. Some films will benefit greatly by colorization and others will not. One simply needs the wisdom to know the difference."

'nough said.

I can vouch that this is a valid quote. There was a timely article by James Portman in the local paper on July 28, 2007 where it's clear that Mr Harryhausen and Producer Charles Schneer chose b/w when making 20 Million Miles to Earth because of lack of funds and not as a creative choice. He is obviously very happy with the results. "Very impressed" are the words he used and said he was an active participant with Legend Films in choosing the colour palette in the colourizing process.

The article speaks glowingly of a splendidly restored b/w version in addition to the colourized version and gives due credit to Legend Films of San Diego. Apparently the DVD version allows the switching between colour and b/w while the disc is playing without interrupting the action.

For me, the only thing wrong is that it's released by spit petewee $ony.

[somebodeez]

...Any effort which preserves these oldies is worthwhile.

Amen

[AlfredBergman]

"Legend's new colorization is a wonderful innovative process and I'm happy that I can finally see my black and white films the way I originally envisioned them; in color. Some films will benefit greatly by colorization and others will not. One simply needs the wisdom to know the difference."

Barry, I found a nice idea, but a bit morbid to think about. Anyway I will tell all you:

Most old film producers are very old or dead, and todays new generation are quite a shame, considering the poor artistic producion of todays cinema, special in USA (no ofense).
I think that there is more caes of several B&W films shot this way due budget limitations.

Well, If to color design a film we need just a kind of storyboard, using B&W frames and colorizing as stills, and it's quite cheap compared to colorize the entire film (140.000 frames average), it's possible to just register the intented color desired by a director.

On Brazil for example, I would like to personally talk with some director and ask if they intented their movies in color but was forced to use B&W, like Ray Harryhousen, or if would like to at least register the color design.
Case there is no budget or case the technology need some years to become 100% convincing to the most accurate eyes, they wish would be registered for a future colorization project.
On Brazil B&W was used much more even up to late 60's and early 70's, since brazilian movies had very limited budget. Probably other countries have a similar case.

The morbid in all of this, is cause give a feeling of: We need hurry to register their intention while they are still alive.
With the technology to accurate colorize the "storyboard stills film frames" we could register the director's artistic choice. Their could work would have a alternate view by their own art in a future colorization of the entire film.

Personally I think it's important to allow old directors to "work again", to show their artistic ability once more. Actual film industry it's so poor that perhaps some rework from the past could be a example, a reminds of what is really cinema.


Alfred Bergman

[konig]

how much storage will be needed for storing a film like that to preserve at top quality and what format do they use at big bucks productions, i ve been told that modern films are stored at 400mbytes raid boxes is this true. how powerful are the computer to handles these massive files

[Cornucopia]

At a guess, Storage space needed:

24fps * 4096x2048 (aka 4k) * 3bytes (48bit color) * ~135min. * 2 films (at a time) * 20% overhead = 11,741,366,845,440 Bytes or ~10.6TB.

Bitrate pipeline needed (when uncompressed):

9663676416 bps or 9Gbps to video port

Probably ~1.5Gbps (undecoded slightly lossy compression) to HD/Buss

This requires probably 4x RAID arrays, Fibre Channel, and the fastest Xeon or Quad core computers, etc. That's why it's not for everybody. These guys use Storage Networks, Distributed processing, etc.

Scott

[arturjose]

somebody already discovered, the secret to do that?
thank you

[arturjose]

Finally, one software to do
look:
http://www.fdshows.com/film-colorization.html

Film Colorization Software
Filmcolorist is a colorisation/colorization software for adding new life to old or black and white Movies or Videos. Filmcolorist uses Latest technologies in image processing to attain quality results in less amount of processing time. some of the best features in Filmcolorist

Supports Large Image & Multimedia formats and Log sequences including Cineon files
Selective Colorization
Multithreading architecture (enables parellel rendering of Multiple Frames at a time)
Advanced Motion Tracking
Advanced Segmentaion Support
Extensive Color Pallete
Huge Range of special Effects support
Image sequence and Video Colorization
2k and 4k Resolution support
Flexible Licencing Model to suit all kinds of resolutions and Market needs
Online Brochure
[/url]

[guns1inger]

Not exactly cheap - 15,000 Euros and a minimum order of two units.

And that is without doing any restoration of the original film before colorization. It also has a tendency to look colorized, although given the misery size of the samples it is hard to get a real feel for what it might be capable of.

[arturjose]

Dear guns1inger
I see, is much money, but they have one advise, "Now 4500 Euros"
but guns1inger they have one software to restore, here:

http://www.fdshows.com/film-restoration.html
And thank you to your comentary [/url]

[DereX888]

@arturjose
You know, you can take output each frame as bitmaps, and colorize each one of them in photoshop.
I guess it'll take you years to colorize feature film in your leisure time, but hey - you won't need $15,000 and you can start it right away.


@Barry Sandrew
I recently saw your colorized Legend's version of SHE (took me awhile to find this thread lol) and I must say I'm impressed.
And I'm not easily impressed ever!
Yes, there are few scenes that could have been made better, but I guess the problem lies in what was said some posts earlier (AlfredBergman post). Regardless, it is still damn fine work on your company's part.
I bet Mr. Harryhausen was very happy to see it in full color *almost* exactly as he envisioned it half a century ago!