How is it that 40 year old movies look so awesome in a new blu ray disc?

[True Colors]

The movie "Patton" was originally filmed back in 1970. It is now available in high definition blu ray. The new blu ray looks absolutely amazing.

How is it that they can take a movie that is SO old like that and make it look so perfect now?.......... You would swear that this thing was just filmed yesterday.

TC

[edDV]

I got a blu ray of the movie "Patton" with George C. Scott. It looks absolutely amazing in blu ray HD.

How is it that they can take such an old movie like that and make it look like it was just filmed yesterday?

TC

It was shot and edited on 35mm or 70mm film. Over time the original film fades so must be restored with frame by frame digital labor (8640 frames per hour). Then it is remastered to the current medium which is 1920x1080 Blu-Ray.

This needs to be repeated every decade or so to the latest recording technology.

They shot on film so it would survive into the future.

[wulf109]

I suspect you can thank the old Technicolor 3-color process. It's why old restored movies look so good. Later movies made after the Technicolor process stopped being used will not look nearly as good when "restored".

[filmboss80]

If kept well, celluloid acetate motion picture film is always a superior source from which video recordings can be derived. In other words, film is already high definition. Its only drawbacks are color fading, scratches, and dust spots over time. Those things can be cleaned up once the film is transferred to the digital media.

However, if you look at TV shows shot on videotape 10 to 15 years ago, the original master recordings are standard definition and cannot be turned into high def, although they can be visually enhanced to look much better.

There is also the case of TV shows and movies shot on film, but transferred to standard definition video (Star Trek: The Next Generation comes to mind). If someone spends the time and funds to re-scan the film negatives and update the special effects, it is possible to come up with a high-def version. It appears to my eyes that the Seinfeld show has been remastered for widescreen HD. I would assume they went back to the film negatives to accomplish this.

Lots and lots of old films can be redone on high-def, though the ones made before the 1950s will likely have a 4:3 aspect ratio, and decisions will have to be made as to whether they will end up as pillarboxed images on widescreen TVs (as the latest restored version of The Wizard of Oz remains) or if there will be recropping and reframing to fill a 16:9 screen.

I have 16mm film archives that have held up over time far, far better than videotapes I recorded just a few years back.

Film, baby, film!