Betamax digitizing help of a rare film.

[DB83]

The thread has somewhat 'wandered' but since he started the 'discussion' he is entitled to end it. Even if his opinion is off-the-scale.

I would also like to read if he manages to see this shorter, sorry original, cut and prove me wrong since I doubt he will report back

[orsetto]

Orsetto, You should give OLED technology a try

I will, someday, when the sizes and prices come down a bit: your satisfaction with it is certainly encouraging! The smallest OLED currently available is 55" (and out of my price range anyway), I need something no larger than 42" and a bit less expensive. Eventually it will reach commodity status, everything does, but so far OLED has taken longer to develop and go mass market than anticipated. When I first saw the Sony XE-1 (11" $2499) back in 2008 I was very impressed: the showroom had it alternating between HD and SD input, and both looked excellent. I'd hoped the technology would soon scale up in size (and down in price), but it hadn't when I urgently needed a new TV in 2011.

As OLED dragged on at an evolutionary pace, there was a lot of chatter from Canon and Toshiba about their very interesting alternative SED display tech (which supposedly had unique high-performance dual-mode SD and HD capability at much lower mfg cost than OLED), but it never came to fruition. Too bad: that might have been perfect for those of us with huge SD libraries. Looks like OLED is the long-term future of displays, so they'll probably offer the configuration I need within a couple more years.

[johnmeyer]

Gosh, I suddenly feel like I'm in the AVS forum, with all the talk about different display technologies.

To Manono: thanks for that bit on frame interpolation being used as a way to change running time of the film, so the dropped frames won't be as noticeable. I can see how that would work.

To dellsam34: I've known about OLED for a long time, but have not experienced it. My 10-year-old Samsung LCD TV was the first to have "local contrast enhancement." It uses a panel of LEDs for the backlight, and in order to increase the contrast, the LEDs are turned off behind pixels that needed to be black. Because LEDs can be switched in microseconds, it works. I have never felt that the picture is washed out. I really like this TV set and like Orsetto with his old Proton CRT, I'll do everything I can to keep it alive if and when it fails. I am an EE, and have been able to keep alive my first Sony 19" color TV that I bought in 1981; my 1960 Wollensak recorder; two 1958 Altec "Sound of the Theater" speakers; and almost a dozen other vintage components that are still running.

Another thing about LCD technology: two years ago I purchased a projector to show a tribute video during my toast at my daughter's wedding. I figured that since I was finally going to own a projector, I might as well spend some extra money and get one that could be used for home theater. After days of research and conversations in the AVS forum I decided to get one of the mid-range ($1,200) Epson LCD projectors. Despite being LCD, I have not found the blacks to be disappointing.

To Orsetto: if you think the "ghosting" (I'm not quite visualizing the artifact, which is why I put that in quotes) is caused by feeding it SD, you could check that by capturing some SD that doesn't play well, up-resn'g that, and then playing the resulting HD. That would at least tell you whether the problem is caused by the scaling circuits. You could also do a fancy deinterlace when you to the up-scaling and that would tell you if the problem is caused by lousy deinterlacing.

As for projected film becoming a rarity, I wouldn't know since I haven't been to a theater this millennium. However, given that Kodak is long gone, and the rest of the film industry has also all but disappeared, I don't think even the revival theaters will last long, except for showing old, faded prints. I shot my last movie film in 2004 for a wedding, and even then, and even despite the mini revival in Super 8 that happened about that time, there were only one or two suppliers and only a handful of labs who could handle my film.

I started working in my dad's darkroom as a kid in the late 1950s, and I so I shall always have a nostalgia for film, but now that I have a professional photographer for a son-in-law, and I see what he can do with a high-end digital camera, if I am totally honest, the technical quality of what he can do with his Canon blows out of the water any 2.25" Hasselblad or Rollei shooting Kodachrome, Verichrome, etc.

And the results from digital photography (or video -- the two are one and the same now) don't have to be grotesquely contrasty, with weird colors, like Soderbergh's fun, but awful-looking, "Oceans" movies, or the two really awful "Charlie's Angels" movies that I keep tuning past on cable TV. Talk about too much contrast and really weird colors!!

Finally, I usually go out of my way not to insult people I am trying to help, but when a person tells me I don't know what I'm talking about, I do get a little prickly.

[DB83]

I just had a thought. Do correct me if I am wide of the mark.

The argument is that the restorers are color-grading how they think it should look. But surely there exists those little things that were quite prominent in the cinemas/theaters back in the day. I refer to 'front-of-house stills' or even general publicity stills. Since these were taken 'on set' with real film in the camera they would be an accurate reflection of what was being filmed.

Surely the studios would not be so careless as to destroy those ?

[orsetto]

if you think the "ghosting" (I'm not quite visualizing the artifact, which is why I put that in quotes) is caused by feeding it SD, you could check that by capturing some SD that doesn't play well, up-resn'g that, and then playing the resulting HD. That would at least tell you whether the problem is caused by the scaling circuits.

In a sense, I do that in hardware by patching my vcrs thru the analog inputs of my Pioneer DVD/HDD recorders, which internally massage the signal and spit it out via HDMI in a form the flat screens seem to prefer to their own direct analog input. You're likely right that the problem is the TV internal scaler or deinterlace circuit: if so, most of these TVs have similarly lousy circuits. Converting the VCR signals to HDMI via dvd recorder passthru significantly reduces the "ghosting" or "lag" vs direct analog to the TV, but is still disappointing compared to how tapes played via the analog inputs of CRT monitors.

This "ghosting" or "lag" issue I'm hypersensitive to is one of those things that's blatantly obvious to one person but invisible to another, so kinda hard to describe. Roughly speaking, its like the "second curtain sync" effect used in still cameras to mix flash and ambient light so that the primary image is sharp and frozen by the flash, but if someone was moving there is a fainter blurry after image behind them exposed by the ambient light. When a LCD HDTV is hostile to SD input, you get that blurry after image behind the movement of actors in full figure or closeup, esp against darker backgrounds, and the after image constantly moves and blurs with the actors. This never, ever happens with CRT or plasma displays but is common with LCD (tho I have not seen this problem with the newer OLED displays). Most noticeable with VCR input. Less noticeable with off-air DVD recordings, minimally noticeable with studio-mastered commercial DVDs. The worst I've seen were the Samsung budget models with CFL backlight: VCR or home recorded dvd played into those was a constant blur of spurious artifacts.

A related artifact is the "temporal distortion" sometimes induced by the TBC/DNR cleanup circuit of the high-end JVC, Mitsubishi and Panasonic SVHS vcrs used to digitize tapes for archiving. When such a pre-processed recording is played into some LCD panels, the result is a muddy hash. One reason I'm no longer as keen on using those VCRs for my transfers: less sophisticated VCRs with less processing give noisier but more natural looking results. It can be a difficult line to walk.

[johnmeyer]

I just had a thought. Do correct me if I am wide of the mark.

The argument is that the restorers are color-grading how they think it should look. But surely there exists those little things that were quite prominent in the cinemas/theaters back in the day. I refer to 'front-of-house stills' or even general publicity stills. Since these were taken 'on set' with real film in the camera they would be an accurate reflection of what was being filmed.

Surely the studios would not be so careless as to destroy those ?

Are you talking about something that would act a little like a Color Calibration Chart? I was never in the film industry, so I don't know whether it was common practice to photograph these at the start of each reel, or at other points in the process. With video, color bars are quite common, and are often included at the beginning or end of tapes, even those for home distribution. I used some of these when calibrating the analog inputs on that TV set I mentioned to Orsetto in one of my earlier posts.

So, if those charts were included, they would be an even better reference.

My answer to your exact question is, "I don't know."

[LetThemEatCake]

The point is we still do not ANY caps from the OP from his own screen. Given that a screen-cap is only as good as the screen that the cap is taken from should rather close down this fruitless argument.

And it is little surprise that the OP has been banned from various sites. His opinion is contrary to those who actually watch these on proper equipment etc. He actually now admits his viewing platform is less than prime. While one can watch a VHS on an old-school tv it looks less than prime on a HD screen. And the inverse will be true - one can hardly appreciate HD on SD equipment. And if I have this wrong I still request the OP to actually state how he watches these - even an old-school monitor will have some derogatory effect.

No restoration can be perfect since there is an element of 'personalisation'. But to claim that EVERY restoration has been ruined hardly warrants continued discussion.

Still want that German VHS ?

you have a point but, speaking as a photographer myself, while the same image can be seen differently on different monitors, just looking at the images on this thread you can tell that it is not enough of a difference or misadjustment to give a logical explanation to how the film looks like on blu-ray other than it is a revisionist restoration.

I don't think personalisation is an element in restoration, and I don't think the general public thinks personalisation is a part of it either. It's like classic Disney animated films. They are being digitally redrawn from scratch. If the public knew this, they wouldn't buy it. When it says restored the public understands the films have been made to look as close as possible to how they were seen initially. I understood the term as such too, once, but I know now it is not what goes on. What goes on is closer to what that woman did with that jesus christ fresco in italy.

[LetThemEatCake]

why must I watch it on a flat screen tv?? Why and how did we come to this point where it's just one option or else??

Because... that is what happened to TV technology, and we have no choice but to adapt to LCD and try to make the best of it? Unless you have a limitless stash of mint Sony Trinitron studio CRT monitors you can use for the rest of your life. If you would stop reflexively trying to contradict me at every turn, you might notice I agree with you in many respects. The majority of my video enthusiast life (26 years from 1985 thru 2011) was viewed primarily on a gorgeous, calibrated, 27" Proton CRT monitor. I loved that TV more than most humans: it made everything from old beta/vhs to bluray look wonderful. Then it died, and there was no option to repair or directly replace it: I was dragged kicking and screaming to flat panel LCD.

It took a couple months and multiple exchanges at Best Buy (from where I'm now banned) before finally finding a 32" flat panel I could at least tolerate. One of the most devastating drawbacks I was forced to accept is that these panels suck beyond words at displaying standard def analog input like VHS (and worse, Beta): the image is poor at best and abysmal at worst, usually the latter. Overnight, my 3200 VHS and Beta tapes became near useless to me, and I all but ceased bothering to digitize them. Its depressing as all hell, but its where our technology went and theres no turning back.

The advantage of flat panels is size and far better compatibility with widescreen film formats. While "Cleopatra" looked marvelous when I watched the TCM airing letterboxed on my 27" Proton, the BluRay filled my 32" flat screen yesterday with 4x larger actual viewing area and bags more resolution, esp in the red colors. The odd colors and tones shown in screen caps vanished when the actual disc was played on my TV: I saw nothing amiss, and believe me when I tell you I'm more picky and critical than you could ever dream of being.

And how many times do I have to say, I do not care about the quality of that tape. It¿'s not about that. It's about a cut of the film that hasn't been seen since 1963. I couldn't care less if it's not compatible with the latest UBH4K technology.

Again, read what I wrote before flying off the handle: I specifically said this tape quest of yours was more likely to be rewarding as an artifact and guide to matching the editing cuts, rather than a primary viewing source. But hey, if you prefer a rolling tearing picture with 100 white Beta dropout dashes per second, have at it. Your eyes would obviously be much more forgiving than mine, and if you're still using a CRT television that would certainly make it more palatable.

And newsflash: golden age Hollywood films were not made to be seen in your uber flat uber high dynamic range tv. They were not.

Return newsflash: you're right, but it doesn't matter in the least. Not at all. Not enough people care about "original intent" (whatever that may be), and it costs serious money to preserve/restore these films. The money will only be spent if the studio thinks there will be enough sales, so they optimize these restorations for home theater LCD display and digital projection revival theaters. Actual theatrical film projectors are rapidly going the way of home Super 8 movie projectors: the graveyard of history. A few specialty film-projection theaters will remain, scattered throughout the world, but that is a drop in the bucket.

As more years glide by, fewer and fewer physical discs are sold, at declining prices. Less and less people are interested in classic films at all: newer generations have ever more constricted worldviews, which choke off any chance of appreciating older works for their own merit in their own cultural context. Even if they wanted to, the storytelling and editing techniques bore them to death: a seismic, worldwide attitude shift is in progress that will leave "Golden Age" films and TV in the dust. It is tragic, but there's nothing we can do to stem the tide. We're quickly approaching the tipping point where the majority no longer devotes dedicated attention to watching movies or shows on normal large home televisions: they "consume content" on a 6" phone screen or 10" tablet. That will impact the market for "golden-era" product in good and bad ways: perhaps mostly bad. A few years from now, you may find yourself looking back fondly on "those terrible blurays".

So you'd better pace yourself to weather the coming onslaught: if you're this outraged now, you're gonna have a coronary by 2025. Color grading is likely to get sloppier as restoration budgets decline, black and white restorations will get sloppier too (with more of the blocked-up contrast you protested). Even more insidious, we're seeing the beginnings of the end of 4:3 preservation: more and more "nostalgia" outlets are cropping 4:3 source material to 3:5, to reduce the black bars at the sides of now-standard 16:9 displays. Why? For the same reason widescreen films were nearly always cropped and butchered to fill the old 4:3 screens: the overwhelming majority of viewers HATE seeing any sort of black bordering on their screen. They feel it "cheats" them of image size, they care nothing for "original intent" and will happily watch any mess as long as every inch of screen is occupied by movement. Ironic, but predictable: the widescreen TV was designed to free us from letterboxing, but is leading inexorably to the elimination of 4:3 preservation in the broadcast arena.

Adding insult to injury, there's an increasing trend of some stations processing vintage television series and movies to eliminate their natural film-based framerate, resulting in the grotesque "soap opera" distortion. This motion processing feature used to be localized to your HDTV: you could turn it on or off according to your preference. Slowly, some mfrs began eliminating the setting, so some newer TVs motion-flo everything all the time. Recently, little by little, various vintage tv series and movies are becoming motion processed by the broadcast station or studio source: no matter how you set your TV, the video is jarringly artificially smooth when it shouldn't be.

This is most apparent on the bizarrely-processed reruns of "Charlie's Angels" syndicated in USA, and several other vintage series in current rotation. I've also seen it done to a few old movies, and its awful. No idea what could be prompting this, unless its some kind of preparation to accommodate UHD-TV (another "who asked for it?" development). More likely its simple pandering to mass market viewers: ugh. Who could have imagined the rise of HDTV would result in more destructive tampering, not less? But thats "Average Joes" for ya: always count on them to piss in the punchbowl.

And it's not even the classic films, the latest bluray of Batman 1989 was completely digitally re recorded and altered. The original mono soundtrack is gone.

Unlikely the 1989 Batman had "an original mono soundtrack" - not at that budget, not with Danny Elfman and Prince doing the score (with CD sales in mind during pre-production) and blockbuster theater surround sound already being the norm. Agree what we often lose in DVD and Bluray releases is a good plain stereo mix with decipherable dialog: the 3:1, 5:1 mixes standard on disc do not always decode so well for those not connected to a home theater surround system.

actually, the best blurays are the ones who had no restoration budget and they just scanned the film as is, which is how it should be. Someone released a bluray of 1980's The Mirror Crack'd, without any alterations, and while the grain was bothersome, the colors were correct and the whites were whites. Now a new bluray was just released, and this had restoration budget, and of course, they destroyed it.

I apologize, I do not know if the original Batman soundtrack was mono or what but there is a big uproar in the Batman community because the current blurays do not carry the option of the original 1989 audio.

[LetThemEatCake]

The majority of my video enthusiast life (26 years from 1985 thru 2011) was viewed primarily on a gorgeous, calibrated, 27" Proton CRT monitor ... It was dragged kicking and screaming to flat panel LCD.

I still have my 31" Sony Wega in my bedroom and watch it almost every day. However, like the "Borg," perhaps I've been assimilated because, after several years of adjusting to the 55" Samsung LCD in my family room, I prefer it for everything except the old SD sources (more on that below).

... I was forced to accept is that these panels suck beyond words at displaying standard def analog input like VHS (and worse, Beta): the image is poor at best and abysmal at worst, usually the latter.

What analog connections does your LCD have? I bought my Samsung LCD ten years ago, and back then Samsungs still had a fairly wide range of analog inputs. While it does not have S-Video, it does have both RGB and composite input. I was able to find a connection and some settings that make the SD video look reasonably decent. (Side note: I still don't understand why it is not possible to engineer an LCD where odd and even pixel rows can be addressed separately so interlaced video could be displayed natively, something that would remove at least one artifact from the "SD on LCD" equation).

As more years glide by, fewer and fewer physical discs are sold, at declining prices. Less and less people are interested in classic films at all: newer generations have ever more constricted worldviews, which choke off any chance of appreciating older works for their own merit in their own cultural context. Even if they wanted to, the storytelling and editing techniques bore them to death: a seismic, worldwide attitude shift is in progress that will leave "Golden Age" films and TV in the dust.

I think you are being overly pessimistic. As proof, look at all the money that has been spent on restorations over the years, and how much is still being spent. The film at the center of this increasingly ridiculous thread is a prime example because "Cleopatra" is a stinker of a movie if ever there was one and yet, according to the article I quoted in an earlier post, Fox spent over a million bucks on the restoration. I'm sure that some of the people who have posted about the "horrible quality" of these restorations, without having done any of it and without having the training to have the faintest clue as to what they're talking about, will say that really isn't much money and that the people doing it don't know what they are doing, and the restoration looks horrible.

Yeah, right.

Having looked at hundreds of "before/after" featurettes on countless films (I still have over 50 Criterion laserdiscs which I purchased just so I could see these restorations), it is self-evident and obvious that these people are dead wrong. (P.S. I do film transfers and restorations and have posted links in other threads to my own "before/after", so I know more than a little about this subject.)

The industry is definitely reaching a tipping point, but it is for a completely different reason, and one that is at odds with what the OP keeps nattering about. The fact is, inflation adjusted ticket sales have been flat for a quarter century:

https://www.the-numbers.com/market/

Actual attendance is at its lowest level in twenty-seven years:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/3/16844662/movie-theater-attendance-2017-low-netflix-streaming

The industry tried to stem this tide by making more and more "video game" superhero movies, and even turned to the thrice-failed 3D technology to bail them out. As I predicted a dozen years ago in another forum, that failed (and also failed in the home market).

So I would argue that there is actually a pretty strong incentive for the studios to continue to upgrade and maintain their classic movies because, while not a gigantic market, there is a tried-and-true market for these films. What's more, it isn't just us old Medicare idiots who watch these: I just found out that my 30-something daughter and her husband have taken to watching classic movies. I suspect that they are not completely atypical.

Adding insult to injury, there's an increasing trend of some stations processing vintage television series and movies to eliminate their natural film-based framerate, resulting in the grotesque "soap opera" distortion.

I'm not sure that is going to be widespread. Even my 10-year old TV has the ability to interpolate frames, so the technology has been available for a long time. But despite having been around for at least a decade, it's still only been used on a few films and transfers. I think the mostly negative reaction to the 48 fps "Hobbit" movie has cooled most movie maker's ardor for this latest gimmick. And, unlike another technology gimmick, colorization, which supporters claimed increased the market for B&W movies, I don't think making old movies look like they were taken on video brings in an audience. Also, I'm pretty sure that most producers and directors understand that, while 24 fps was arrived at through compromise and accident, it just so happens that it imparts a wonderful "once removed" feeling to the production, and this is great for storytelling.

Unlikely the 1989 Batman had "an original mono soundtrack" - not at that budget, not with Danny Elfman and Prince doing the score (with CD sales in mind during pre-production) and blockbuster theater surround sound already being the norm. Agree what we often lose in DVD and Bluray releases is a good plain stereo mix with decipherable dialog: the 3:1, 5:1 mixes standard on disc do not always decode so well for those not connected to a home theater surround system.

Even with all the dumb things said by the OP, this one jumps to the top of the list. One click on the IMDB site reveals that it is 100% completely untrue:

Batman Technical Specs

He pretended to be upset when I mentioned that he might be trolling, but this proves it.

Perhaps the moderators will do us all a favor and shut this thread down because of trolling. However, I'd love to continue to discuss movies with YOU, anytime, any place.

aww, you need to call on the moderators because you can't deal with anyone going off your 'user's manual' dogma? that's sad.

[poisondeathray]

I have here more pictures from the internet, they were sourced from different pages and I would say different tv sets and dvd editions and as you can see the results are consistent. They are also consistent with what my dvd looked like, and what existing files on the internet look like. The colors in these images are also consistent with on set stills. Most notably is the colors in the images taken place in Cleopatra's boudouir. In the original film, Elizabeth's skin is normal and the drapes are clearly red. In the bluray her skin is a nasty magenta and so are the drapes.

The DVD and BD are graded differently. Whether or not one is closer to the theatre version is debatable.

It's ok to prefer a certain look over another.

The DVD/TV screenshots posted look consistently saturated and warm . But some of them are oversaturated and illegal for DVD/TV . Some have blown out details. Unlikely that it was broadcast or put on DVD like that. Probably user error in taking the screenshot. There are dozens of factors that can affect how a screenshot is taken. If that's what you call "representative", it's clearly wrong on technical grounds. If you want irrefutable, objective , measureable facts - examine that 4th shot with the "red" curtain in the outdoor shot with a vectorscope. Or look at a waveform monitor , examine some of the clipped "gold" highlights on the other shots. This does not depend on your display or settings or hardware; the actual values in the images are analyzed - not the visual reproduction or display of them .

This film has been DESTROYED on blu-ray. DESTROYED.

If you have the BD, you can adjust it to look however you want. Give Cleo some Bart Simpson jaundiced skin? No problem

If you like that saturated warm look depicted by those screenshots - it would be quite easy to do with the BD. You can "UNDESTROY" it It's possible here because color and detail in those BD screenshots look good. "Good" being used here in the objective or technical sense - meaning nothing looks crushed or blown out. But other BD's that have crushed blacks, clipped channels - those are the ones I would argue are "destroyed" . Not this one.



Let's pretend those DVD/TV screenshots were your "goal".

1) You can do it manually , even with various free tools (eg. free version of Resolve is enough, the Studio version was probably used for both the DVD the BD in the first place) .

2a) There are various free and commercial "automatic" color matching plugins that should get you anywhere between 66%-95% of the way there in a few clicks. You don't even need matching frames, or perspective, or camera framing for some of them. e.g. the DVD/TV versions of these shot below were overcropped compared to the BD version . How can you match something not even in the frame? No problem with some of the plugins, as long as you have roughly more than half of the frame in view.

I used some lower quality HD streaming version to take target screenshots from. If you used the high quality BD screenshots posted here or those review sites ( I have no idea if any of the screenshots, HD or SD were taken correctly, but it doesn't matter - the point is you can match something to something else if it wasn't really clipped or crushed in some channels), you will see this "do-over" is even higher quality, because those BD screenshots and from review sites look good in terms of details and color (again in the technical sense, to start working from) . Or if you started with the actual DVD, instead of low quality jpeg's for the donor material, it would likely look better too. .


eg These were basically few clicks with an auto colormatch plugin in after effects. No other filters applied except for the plugin . Normally you would make minor adjustments to make it a closer match .



This one is technically wrong, because the glare off the necklace has clipping. The HD source version has details, but the DVD version is blown out. I left the matched version blown out "as is" (essentially 1 click) , but you'd normally fix that by reducing the amount applied to highlights

=> You should avoid destroying details of the original . Blowing out is destroying. You could more argue that in fact that DVD version posted is the one doing the "destroying", not the BD. A grade can be reversed/adjusted if nothing is clipped or crushed to oblivion.


cnsmovie_cleopatra_07

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cnsmovie_cleopatra_08

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If I was so bent out of shape about some favorite movies, I'd spend more time learning instead of complaining. If there are a group of like minded enthusiasts who feel strongly and the same way about this, often you can find them on message boards. Chances are this work has been done for you already, maybe already exported 1 or more LUT's for difference scenes.

[LetThemEatCake]

I just had a thought. Do correct me if I am wide of the mark.

The argument is that the restorers are color-grading how they think it should look. But surely there exists those little things that were quite prominent in the cinemas/theaters back in the day. I refer to 'front-of-house stills' or even general publicity stills. Since these were taken 'on set' with real film in the camera they would be an accurate reflection of what was being filmed.

Surely the studios would not be so careless as to destroy those ?

stills and on set shots aren't necessarily indicative of how the finished film looks, for instance if you look at stills of 'Batman Returns', the lighting is really bright and not how the finished film is, so stills aren't necessarily what they use for this, I don't know what they use, but they do alter it to fit their tastes and the dogma they've been taught and of course their love of hardware.

For instance, Frankenstein from 1931 is one of those films destroyed by revisionism. The opening sequence on the graveyard was probably deemed not 'realistic enough' by the restorer emeritus from the Quentin Tarantino school of film, so the sequence was darkened to oblivion, to take away any notion of artificial lighting, but you can't do changes like this without massive drawbacks. For example, the fire that the undertaker lits now looks dull, opaque and grey, whereas in the original dvds of the film, it looked bright white, like fire does.

Ultimately, these people look down on classic films. They think of them as fake, not art, bad, rudimentary. I was watching a documentary on Josef Von Sternberg's films and some moron expert was talking about Marlene's star moment in Shanghai Express as if that's all it was. Not once did it ocurred to him that there was a technical or artistic reason for that famous moment where she smokes lit from above, or that this is a proper movie. Quite sad actually.

[LetThemEatCake]

I started working in my dad's darkroom as a kid in the late 1950s, and I so I shall always have a nostalgia for film, but now that I have a professional photographer for a son-in-law, and I see what he can do with a high-end digital camera, if I am totally honest, the technical quality of what he can do with his Canon blows out of the water any 2.25" Hasselblad or Rollei shooting Kodachrome, Verichrome, etc.

.

How sad it is to study something all your life, and still just repeat verbatim the salesman copy dogma that will always prefer newer technology to the past, new doesn't always mean better and in creating an image, it most certainly doesn't mean better. You think ANYONE with your digital equipment will be able to create something like Alfred Hitch****'s Vertigo?' lol.

[LetThemEatCake]

I have here more pictures from the internet, they were sourced from different pages and I would say different tv sets and dvd editions and as you can see the results are consistent. They are also consistent with what my dvd looked like, and what existing files on the internet look like. The colors in these images are also consistent with on set stills. Most notably is the colors in the images taken place in Cleopatra's boudouir. In the original film, Elizabeth's skin is normal and the drapes are clearly red. In the bluray her skin is a nasty magenta and so are the drapes.

The DVD and BD are graded differently. Whether or not one is closer to the theatre version is debatable.

It's ok to prefer a certain look over another.

The DVD/TV screenshots posted look consistently saturated and warm . But some of them are oversaturated and illegal for DVD/TV . Some have blown out details. Unlikely that it was broadcast or put on DVD like that. Probably user error in taking the screenshot. There are dozens of factors that can affect how a screenshot is taken. If that's what you call "representative", it's clearly wrong on technical grounds. If you want irrefutable, objective , measureable facts - examine that 4th shot with the "red" curtain in the outdoor shot with a vectorscope. Or look at a waveform monitor , examine some of the clipped "gold" highlights on the other shots. This does not depend on your display or settings or hardware; the actual values in the images are analyzed - not the visual reproduction or display of them .

This film has been DESTROYED on blu-ray. DESTROYED.

If you have the BD, you can adjust it to look however you want. Give Cleo some Bart Simpson jaundiced skin? No problem

If you like that saturated warm look depicted by those screenshots - it would be quite easy to do with the BD. You can "UNDESTROY" it It's possible here because color and detail in those BD screenshots look good. "Good" being used here in the objective or technical sense - meaning nothing looks crushed or blown out. But other BD's that have crushed blacks, clipped channels - those are the ones I would argue are "destroyed" . Not this one.



Let's pretend those DVD/TV screenshots were your "goal".

1) You can do it manually , even with various free tools (eg. free version of Resolve is enough, the Studio version was probably used for both the DVD the BD in the first place) .

2a) There are various free and commercial "automatic" color matching plugins that should get you anywhere between 66%-95% of the way there in a few clicks. You don't even need matching frames, or perspective, or camera framing for some of them. e.g. the DVD/TV versions of these shot below were overcropped compared to the BD version . How can you match something not even in the frame? No problem with some of the plugins, as long as you have roughly more than half of the frame in view.

I used some lower quality HD streaming version to take target screenshots from. If you used the high quality BD screenshots posted here or those review sites ( I have no idea if any of the screenshots, HD or SD were taken correctly, but it doesn't matter - the point is you can match something to something else if it wasn't really clipped or crushed in some channels), you will see this "do-over" is even higher quality, because those BD screenshots and from review sites look good in terms of details and color (again in the technical sense, to start working from) . Or if you started with the actual DVD, instead of low quality jpeg's for the donor material, it would likely look better too. .


eg These were basically few clicks with an auto colormatch plugin in after effects. No other filters applied except for the plugin . Normally you would make minor adjustments to make it a closer match .



This one is technically wrong, because the glare off the necklace has clipping. The HD source version has details, but the DVD version is blown out. I left the matched version blown out "as is" (essentially 1 click) , but you'd normally fix that by reducing the amount applied to highlights

=> You should avoid destroying details of the original . Blowing out is destroying. You could more argue that in fact that DVD version posted is the one doing the "destroying", not the BD. A grade can be reversed/adjusted if nothing is clipped or crushed to oblivion.


cnsmovie_cleopatra_07

[Attachment 50092 - Click to enlarge]

cnsmovie_cleopatra_07_HD

[Attachment 50093 - Click to enlarge]

cnsmovie_cleopatra_07_colormatch

[Attachment 50094 - Click to enlarge]




cnsmovie_cleopatra_08

[Attachment 50095 - Click to enlarge]

cnsmovie_cleopatra_08_HD

[Attachment 50096 - Click to enlarge]

cnsmovie_cleopatra_08_colormatch

[Attachment 50097 - Click to enlarge]




If I was so bent out of shape about some favorite movies, I'd spend more time learning instead of complaining. If there are a group of like minded enthusiasts who feel strongly and the same way about this, often you can find them on message boards. Chances are this work has been done for you already, maybe already exported 1 or more LUT's for difference scenes.

Thank you, I am the only person talking about this anywhere, so there are no like minded enthusiasts.

The images you manipulated are absolutely beautiful, it's how the film should look,.

[orsetto]

All due respect to your personal experience, LetThemEatCake: but the Cleopatra bluray I borrowed and played yesterday looks nothing like those cyan/magenta tinted screen caps with ghastly grey skin. I'm very picky about color, particularly skin tones and clean whites, so when I loaded the disc I was prepared to be horrified (based on those screen caps). Instead, what I saw (on all three of my TVs) looks very close to the "corrected" caps thoughtfully provided by poisondeathray. Clean whites, gold and silver, skin tones of all races correct even with many people in the frame: just a tad less saturated. I considered adjusting my display but then decided it looked perfectly OK as is: the restoration team subtly bumped saturation up in scenes where it would be appropriate, and down a bit where it might intrude. I don't doubt you're seeing something awful on your own system, but it really does not look bad at all on mine (which is hardly state of the art).

As an aside, please help us keep this thread manageable by not quoting the entire post you are responding to in your replies. You just need to address the person by name, or just quote a small edited portion in your reply (as you see the rest of us do). When you quote the entire previous post (with screen caps) in several sequential replies, it balloons the size of the thread, making it harder to follow your train of thought and possibly annoying anonymous lurkers who might agitate to have it shut down. I am very interested to hear your detailed opinions of the Magnetic Video transfer once you receive it, so I would be disappointed to see this thread locked before then. With your cooperation in streamlining replies, it will remain available for your future updates. Thanks!

[poisondeathray]

Thank you, I am the only person talking about this anywhere, so there are no like minded enthusiasts.

I would look harder. I'd be surprised if absolutely nobody felt the same way .

This sort of thing happens for other genres. For example , Japanese Anime BD's. You can find groups on fan sites, message boards - feeling strongly about a certain studio's BD release's colors. Someone will make a set of filters or sometimes LUT's to "adjust" for a certain look and share them. It's usually to achieve a more "classic" look. It's similar in many ways to what is going on here. The "classic" DVD colors/tones were the ones everyone is used to, what they grew up with, what their posters and toys look like etc... - so there is an uprising / discontent when colors are different with a different release .

So don't just sit there , do something about it

The images you manipulated are absolutely beautiful, it's how the film should look,.

I don't claim to know how it "should" look. For everyone that claims it should look a certain way, you 're going to find a dozen that say it should look a different way. That's just how it is.

That was just a colormatch plugin (ReVisionFX RE:Match for After Effects). Nothing special. It should get you ~90% of the way there in just a few clicks just like those screenshots. If that's good enough, then leave it. But it takes a bit of work and knowledge about color correction to get the rest of the way. But you can do it if you were so inclined. This is just a "cheat" method that gets you most of the way faster. In this age, with powerful free software like Resolve (basically the same on used on >90% of Hollywood movies), you can do almost anything if you started with some good source material (in terms of no clipping, decent chroma resolution). There are many free tutorials on youtube, vimeo on various color correction, color science. These are things you used to have to take formal classes in university. But if you have a photography background, many of the concepts are the same. Many of the tools are similar to ones found in photoshop.

This BD looks good in terms of quality. The detail is all there , and importantly nothing looks clipped. Even that lower quality HD stream is not too bad. I see no obstacles to adjusting it to however you see fit . And if you have that DVD , that is a suitable reference, or you can make your own minor adjustments. Colorists do this type of thing for fun or practice. They might take some movie and make it look like say Blade Runner , or the Color Purple, or whatever movie

[johnmeyer]

aww, you need to call on the moderators because you can't deal with anyone going off your 'user's manual' dogma? that's sad.

I think there is supposed to be an insult in there somewhere, but I can't be insulted by something that makes absolutely no sense.

How sad it is to study something all your life, and still just repeat verbatim the salesman copy dogma that will always prefer newer technology to the past, new doesn't always mean better and in creating an image, it most certainly doesn't mean better. You think ANYONE with your digital equipment will be able to create something like Alfred Hitch****'s Vertigo?' lol.

This was in response to my statement that my son-in-law's professional pictures, using a digital camera, produce results that are, by any objective measure, better than what could be produced by the best cameras from the bygone film era.

IMAX may still have an edge in terms of its ability to resolve more detail, but 70mm film and high-end digital are pretty darned close to each other in resolution, color, shadow details, highlights, etc.

More important, when talking about movie film instead of still film, digital completely eliminates dust, gate weave, splice marks, projector shutter flicker, flicker from uneven development (mostly old nitrate silent films), projection change marks, etc.

I've spent thousands of hours eliminating those things when I restore movie film and while you can wax poetic all you want about some mystical quality they impart, saying that those artifacts make film better is like saying you prefer the pops on vinyl records or the hiss on analog audio tape (and some people do make that claim too). Yes, we all got used to all of these artifacts, and perhaps have some positive associations with them, but they actually add absolutely nothing to the experience. What's more, having done hundreds of side-by-side comparisons of restored vs. unrestored movie film after I've restored them, I can tell you for a fact -- and this may seem a little strange -- it takes less effort to view restored film (or pristine digital) that isn't weaving around with dirt flecks popping up at random and all sorts of artifacts that subtly take you away from the story.

This is not dogma. I am a scientist and engineer and I only deal in things I can prove by measurement and observation.

As for preferring new technology, in your rush to insult me you totally missed my list of technology I have preserved and still use. Since you missed it, I'll repeat and add:

Two 1956 Altec 605 "Sound of the Theater" speakers, used in theaters throughout the USA in the 50s through 80s and still considered one of the finest ever made;
A 1960 Wollensak tape recorder (tube based)
Two turntables, one of them with several 78 rpm "truncated" cartridges
Five cassette tape players
Multiple VCRs, including a working Betamax (which before you insulted me, and before you realized it was PAL, I offered to use to transfer your tape)
Four working CRT TVs, one of which I bought almost forty years ago, in 1981
A Pioneer laserdisc player and a collection of laserdiscs which, in their day, were considered the "ultimate" way to show films at home.
Three movie projectors (8mm, Super 8, 16mm), two of which I use all the time, and one of which needs to be fixed.

Since you love film so much, how many movie projectors do you own, and how often do you use them?

I would have ditched all this equipment decades ago if I always jumped onto the new technology bandwagon. So, the idea that I don't appreciate the value of older technology is completely wrong, and ludicrously off the mark.

Finally, I'd sure be interested in seeing an article on Disney "redrawing" their classic films using digital technology. You imply that this is some sort of hidden secret that only you know about and that the public hasn't yet discovered.

Well, you are right.

I did a Google search and turned up nothing. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd sure appreciate it if you could provide a link to a credible source which describes this.

[dellsam34]

That Disney redrawing cartoons statement is off the edge dude, this guy is just pulling the £µ½€© right out of his $#%&@.

[lordsmurf]

That Disney redrawing cartoons statement is off the edge dude

Finally, I'd sure be interested in seeing an article on Disney "redrawing" their classic films using digital technology. You imply that this is some sort of hidden secret that only you know about and that the public hasn't yet discovered.

He refers to this: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/disney-ruining-cartoon-classics-140509581.html
It's now-deleted Twitter ramblings/trolling that is mostly nonsense.

This is how it actually works:
Sleeping Beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-z0o26HD40
Bambi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SsfB61PmLU

I really hate video myths.

Note that the Youtube videos also contain "OMG, they're destroying it!!!" comments left by clueless nitwits, which isn't surprising. And people that want to "keep the dirt/grain" are in the tiny minority of the general population.

Restoration is sometimes a misunderstood art.

[johnmeyer]

That Disney redrawing cartoons statement is off the edge dude, this guy is just pulling the £µ½€© right out of his $#%&@.

OK, based on your statement and on what everyone's favorite guru, Lordsmurf said (welcome back!), it is now crystal clear that we've all been sucked into his black troll-hole. However, it's been worth it because I learned a lot from Orsetto and a few others.

[orsetto]

Take away some of his misplaced beliefs (and poor judgement insulting people who are trying to help), bring everything back to step one, and OP simply has an intense obsession with obtaining a copy of the now-rare bowdlerized post-premiere cut of Cleopatra. He joined this forum specifically because he finally tracked it down (on 40 year old Magnetic Video beta cassette, no less), but is frustrated because he couldn't get it digitized properly or quickly where he lives in Panama. He isn't "trolling" in the traditional sense we see here: he's been tilting at the same windmills on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) discussion forums. This guy just really REALLY wants this cut of this movie, and in making his argument for it he keeps diverting the discussion to his distatste for studio restorations. A separate, muddled and contentious issue (whatever we think or know for fact, he sees what he sees, so nothing is going to change his mind).

I'm not happy with some of his aggressive remarks, but the thread branched off into some interesting sub-topics about color correction and myth busting contributed by others, and of course I'm thrilled to see lordsmurf is feeling well enough to pitch in with his personal expertise. And I'm damned curious whether OP ever extracts anything useful from that ancient tape: having worked with Magnetic Video beta releases at retail eons ago, my expectations would be extremely low. For his sake, I hope it works, and he reports back with details of the cuts made to bring running time down from fours hours to three.

[dellsam34]

I've encountered people like this in almost every forum I go to who just like old crusty stuff, old VHS quality with linear audio because HiFi stereo is a devil, dirty faded scratched films ..etc, It's all part of the beauty of the medium, There is a guy at an audio forum who hates Stereo audio, FM and digital audio, according to him AM radio and dull mono audio sound way better than anything else. People like these enjoy the limitation of the medium rather than the material itself so they will never be happy with anything that looks or sounds better.

[lordsmurf]

I've encountered people like this in almost every forum I go to who just like old crusty stuff, old VHS quality with linear audio because HiFi stereo is a devil, dirty faded scratched films ..etc, It's all part of the beauty of the medium, There is a guy at an audio forum who hates Stereo audio, FM and digital audio, according to him AM radio and dull mono audio sound way better than anything else. People like these enjoy the limitation of the medium rather than the material itself so they will never be happy with anything that looks or sounds better.

There's also two kinds of people who like the older mediums.
1. Weird noise/limitation purists.
2. Nostalgists.

Remember, I was a cartoon collector long before I did any sort of pro work. I have tons of VHS (then S-VHS-ET) recordings of Cartoon Network. As an example, while much of Looney Tunes (Bugs Bunny specifically) has been released, restored/remastered to DVD, I often prefer watching my recordings of the June Bugs marathons. Sometimes even the commercials are entertaining. Yes, the content itself is faded (really nothing more than aged/non-restored film dumped to broadcast masters), perhaps edited/censored. But seeing the CN logo on screen, coupled with all the bumpers, gives it a magic. The difference is I obviously know the quality shortcomings, and am not pretending it's a "better version". It just evokes warm-and-fuzzy feelings of an era. Of course, my VHS conversions look excellent, not full of noise or timing errors, having been run through good gear/workflow. Yet VHS/S-VHS limitations are clearly visible (grain, resolution), as are content limitations (shown as broadcast), even if Avisynth is applied (which I didn't do, I mostly dumped those to broadcast/BD spec MPEG-2).

There's actually a few songs I prefer to hear on lower AM radio quality, where tone is muffled some, mono quality. I just heard those that way many, many times. When I heard the "real" version (of one of the songs) years later, I was aghast. It was so pitchy, stereo sounds wavering between speakers. Ugh. SoundForge fixed that right up. I've never even considered this to be better or worse, just how I preferred to listen to it.

This isn't something I do often, but for a few specific shows/songs, nostalgia wins over content. However, again, it has to be a quality conversion, without annoyances like chroma or timing errors. Those errors would ruin the nostalgia.

Lordsmurf (welcome back!)

I'm thrilled to see lordsmurf is feeling well enough

Not fully back yet, but getting there.

[johnmeyer]

I too have a fondness for AM radio and recorded quite a bit of it (WLS Chicago) in the 60s using that Wollensak I referenced earlier. I hooked the recorder to the speaker leads on my Hallicrafters SX-100 ham radio (which I also still have and use).

Then, forty years later when the Internet got going I discovered "airchecks," which are recordings made by DJs of their own work, as well as amateur recordings like mine, made off the air. Some of these include the entire radio show including songs, while some of them are "scoped," meaning that the music was deleted, except for the portions where the DJ talks over the music during the intro (common practice in top-40 radio).

I then took my entire collection (many dozens of airchecks) and for those which had the music removed, I "re-scoped" them, using modern versions of the music. It was a little work to get the modern music to fade in appropriately especially since many of the airchecks are slightly off speed due to variations in the speed of tape recorders, etc.

I've read many discussions about the pros and cons of every music format from Edison discs to DVD audio, and skimmed some of the audiophile chatter about why tubes are better than transistors (some truth to that one because of even- vs. odd-order harmonics). Bottom line: modern high-end technology (i.e., NOT MP3 audio), produces sound that is more enjoyable to listen to in every way. I don't think I would ever willingly listen to a tape or vinyl record if I had the same exact thing on CD. However, some of the older recordings are mastered differently and so, long ago, I transferred ALL of my tapes, 78s, and vinyl to WAV, and restored them as well. This gives me the advantages of the sound and mastering of the original release, but without the baggage of all the artifacts. Pops and clicks can be removed without any residual artifacts. There is zero downside to doing this, as long as you use good software (iZotope RX, in my case). Single-ended hiss reduction is not as successful and requires a lot of restraint so as not to make everything sound worse.

One final note is that if you really get into restoration, some 78 rpm recordings can be made to sound remarkably good. There was a guy (Jeff Lichtman) who used to release about half a dozen recordings a month, under a copyright license he obtained. He found really rare recordings that were never transferred and then, using all the proper equalizers and truncated needles, made wonderful transfers. I could never quite duplicate his efforts. Here is one of my restored film transfers, this one showing San Francisco in 1930, using one of his recordings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2moHDbxUodk

[DB83]

^^ Nice clip John.

Now expect the OP to come in and say you got the colors all wrong

[LetThemEatCake]

All due respect to your personal experience, LetThemEatCake: but the Cleopatra bluray I borrowed and played yesterday looks nothing like those cyan/magenta tinted screen caps with ghastly grey skin. I'm very picky about color, particularly skin tones and clean whites, so when I loaded the disc I was prepared to be horrified (based on those screen caps). Instead, what I saw (on all three of my TVs) looks very close to the "corrected" caps thoughtfully provided by poisondeathray. Clean whites, gold and silver, skin tones of all races correct even with many people in the frame: just a tad less saturated. I considered adjusting my display but then decided it looked perfectly OK as is: the restoration team subtly bumped saturation up in scenes where it would be appropriate, and down a bit where it might intrude. I don't doubt you're seeing something awful on your own system, but it really does not look bad at all on mine (which is hardly state of the art).

As an aside, please help us keep this thread manageable by not quoting the entire post you are responding to in your replies. You just need to address the person by name, or just quote a small edited portion in your reply (as you see the rest of us do). When you quote the entire previous post (with screen caps) in several sequential replies, it balloons the size of the thread, making it harder to follow your train of thought and possibly annoying anonymous lurkers who might agitate to have it shut down. I am very interested to hear your detailed opinions of the Magnetic Video transfer once you receive it, so I would be disappointed to see this thread locked before then. With your cooperation in streamlining replies, it will remain available for your future updates. Thanks!

Well I'm glad you are happy with it, I will accept I never played the bluray on any tv screen, but have seen it in different computers/ipads and on the internet, I assume they should still look the same, at least from the blu-ray manufacturer end.

[LetThemEatCake]

Thank you, I am the only person talking about this anywhere, so there are no like minded enthusiasts.

I would look harder. I'd be surprised if absolutely nobody felt the same way .

This sort of thing happens for other genres. For example , Japanese Anime BD's. You can find groups on fan sites, message boards - feeling strongly about a certain studio's BD release's colors. Someone will make a set of filters or sometimes LUT's to "adjust" for a certain look and share them. It's usually to achieve a more "classic" look. It's similar in many ways to what is going on here. The "classic" DVD colors/tones were the ones everyone is used to, what they grew up with, what their posters and toys look like etc... - so there is an uprising / discontent when colors are different with a different release .

So don't just sit there , do something about it

The images you manipulated are absolutely beautiful, it's how the film should look,.

I don't claim to know how it "should" look. For everyone that claims it should look a certain way, you 're going to find a dozen that say it should look a different way. That's just how it is.

That was just a colormatch plugin (ReVisionFX RE:Match for After Effects). Nothing special. It should get you ~90% of the way there in just a few clicks just like those screenshots. If that's good enough, then leave it. But it takes a bit of work and knowledge about color correction to get the rest of the way. But you can do it if you were so inclined. This is just a "cheat" method that gets you most of the way faster. In this age, with powerful free software like Resolve (basically the same on used on >90% of Hollywood movies), you can do almost anything if you started with some good source material (in terms of no clipping, decent chroma resolution). There are many free tutorials on youtube, vimeo on various color correction, color science. These are things you used to have to take formal classes in university. But if you have a photography background, many of the concepts are the same. Many of the tools are similar to ones found in photoshop.

This BD looks good in terms of quality. The detail is all there , and importantly nothing looks clipped. Even that lower quality HD stream is not too bad. I see no obstacles to adjusting it to however you see fit . And if you have that DVD , that is a suitable reference, or you can make your own minor adjustments. Colorists do this type of thing for fun or practice. They might take some movie and make it look like say Blade Runner , or the Color Purple, or whatever movie

I haven't seen anyone anywhere discussing this like I am, other than the Disney guy, and mind you, I did NOT complain about films not looking like the VHS/DVD, which, if it was a certain deteriorated print, would not look like it should either. No. This is a homogenous look that is being given to old films clearly based on modern standards, and which is destroying cinema.

[LetThemEatCake]

aww, you need to call on the moderators because you can't deal with anyone going off your 'user's manual' dogma? that's sad.

I think there is supposed to be an insult in there somewhere, but I can't be insulted by something that makes absolutely no sense.

How sad it is to study something all your life, and still just repeat verbatim the salesman copy dogma that will always prefer newer technology to the past, new doesn't always mean better and in creating an image, it most certainly doesn't mean better. You think ANYONE with your digital equipment will be able to create something like Alfred Hitch****'s Vertigo?' lol.

This was in response to my statement that my son-in-law's professional pictures, using a digital camera, produce results that are, by any objective measure, better than what could be produced by the best cameras from the bygone film era.

IMAX may still have an edge in terms of its ability to resolve more detail, but 70mm film and high-end digital are pretty darned close to each other in resolution, color, shadow details, highlights, etc.

More important, when talking about movie film instead of still film, digital completely eliminates dust, gate weave, splice marks, projector shutter flicker, flicker from uneven development (mostly old nitrate silent films), projection change marks, etc.

I've spent thousands of hours eliminating those things when I restore movie film and while you can wax poetic all you want about some mystical quality they impart, saying that those artifacts make film better is like saying you prefer the pops on vinyl records or the hiss on analog audio tape (and some people do make that claim too). Yes, we all got used to all of these artifacts, and perhaps have some positive associations with them, but they actually add absolutely nothing to the experience. What's more, having done hundreds of side-by-side comparisons of restored vs. unrestored movie film after I've restored them, I can tell you for a fact -- and this may seem a little strange -- it takes less effort to view restored film (or pristine digital) that isn't weaving around with dirt flecks popping up at random and all sorts of artifacts that subtly take you away from the story.

This is not dogma. I am a scientist and engineer and I only deal in things I can prove by measurement and observation.

As for preferring new technology, in your rush to insult me you totally missed my list of technology I have preserved and still use. Since you missed it, I'll repeat and add:

Two 1956 Altec 605 "Sound of the Theater" speakers, used in theaters throughout the USA in the 50s through 80s and still considered one of the finest ever made;
A 1960 Wollensak tape recorder (tube based)
Two turntables, one of them with several 78 rpm "truncated" cartridges
Five cassette tape players
Multiple VCRs, including a working Betamax (which before you insulted me, and before you realized it was PAL, I offered to use to transfer your tape)
Four working CRT TVs, one of which I bought almost forty years ago, in 1981
A Pioneer laserdisc player and a collection of laserdiscs which, in their day, were considered the "ultimate" way to show films at home.
Three movie projectors (8mm, Super 8, 16mm), two of which I use all the time, and one of which needs to be fixed.

Since you love film so much, how many movie projectors do you own, and how often do you use them?

I would have ditched all this equipment decades ago if I always jumped onto the new technology bandwagon. So, the idea that I don't appreciate the value of older technology is completely wrong, and ludicrously off the mark.

Finally, I'd sure be interested in seeing an article on Disney "redrawing" their classic films using digital technology. You imply that this is some sort of hidden secret that only you know about and that the public hasn't yet discovered.

Well, you are right.

I did a Google search and turned up nothing. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd sure appreciate it if you could provide a link to a credible source which describes this.

I'm not even going to bother reading it all, your statement that digital can compare to 70 mm is just laughable, so I am not even going to bother. Digital will never come close to film on anything, not color range, not lightness range, not resolution, nothing. And this is MY personal theory, you can dismiss it if you want but I know it to be true, I always wondered why is the digital image flat? why does it always look so weird and ugly? And then it hit me. It doesn't capture volume. And it never will. There is something about those fine grains of light sensitive material that capture volume and depth that those digital 0s and 1s never will. What we see in the real world is physical after all, not 0s and 1s, even if it's just brain signals in our eyes, it comes reflected from a real place, just like pictures come from real physical objects like film. So yeah, it will NEVER come close to equate it.

[LetThemEatCake]

That Disney redrawing cartoons statement is off the edge dude

Finally, I'd sure be interested in seeing an article on Disney "redrawing" their classic films using digital technology. You imply that this is some sort of hidden secret that only you know about and that the public hasn't yet discovered.

He refers to this: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/disney-ruining-cartoon-classics-140509581.html
It's now-deleted Twitter ramblings/trolling that was debunked as nonsense.

This is how it actually works:
Sleeping Beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-z0o26HD40
Bambi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SsfB61PmLU

I really hate video myths.

Note that the Youtube videos also contain "OMG, they're destroying it!!!" comments left by clueless nitwits, which isn't surprising. And people that want to "keep the dirt/grain" are in the tiny minority of the general population.

Restoration is sometimes a misunderstood art.

The twitter thread has NOT been deleted, it's still there and can still be seen, and the videos you shared are doing exactly what the twitter thread is saying!!!! LOL!!! These films ARE being redrawn, and repainted and the process IS destructive to the original films. It's a fact. How can it be denied??

[dellsam34]

Did you get a chance to look at this post, I haven't read most of you posts just because of the excessive quoting:

As an aside, please help us keep this thread manageable by not quoting the entire post you are responding to in your replies. You just need to address the person by name, or just quote a small edited portion in your reply (as you see the rest of us do). When you quote the entire previous post (with screen caps) in several sequential replies, it balloons the size of the thread, making it harder to follow your train of thought and possibly annoying anonymous lurkers who might agitate to have it shut down. I am very interested to hear your detailed opinions of the Magnetic Video transfer once you receive it, so I would be disappointed to see this thread locked before then. With your cooperation in streamlining replies, it will remain available for your future updates. Thanks!

[LetThemEatCake]

Take away some of his misplaced beliefs (and poor judgement insulting people who are trying to help), bring everything back to step one, and OP simply has an intense obsession with obtaining a copy of the now-rare bowdlerized post-premiere cut of Cleopatra. He joined this forum specifically because he finally tracked it down (on 40 year old Magnetic Video beta cassette, no less), but is frustrated because he couldn't get it digitized properly or quickly where he lives in Panama. He isn't "trolling" in the traditional sense we see here: he's been tilting at the same windmills on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) discussion forums. This guy just really REALLY wants this cut of this movie, and in making his argument for it he keeps diverting the discussion to his distatste for studio restorations. A separate, muddled and contentious issue (whatever we think or know for fact, he sees what he sees, so nothing is going to change his mind).

I'm not happy with some of his aggressive remarks, but the thread branched off into some interesting sub-topics about color correction and myth busting contributed by others, and of course I'm thrilled to see lordsmurf is feeling well enough to pitch in with his personal expertise. And I'm damned curious whether OP ever extracts anything useful from that ancient tape: having worked with Magnetic Video beta releases at retail eons ago, my expectations would be extremely low. For his sake, I hope it works, and he reports back with details of the cuts made to bring running time down from fours hours to three.

I apologize, I don't mean to be aggressive. Still no word on if the digitizing worked, but I'll find out soon.