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  1. I have a D2 master of a 35mm documentary film I made many years ago. I would like to transfer or restore it to the highest res, usable video format possible. My question is what's possible?
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    D2 is SD resolution (aka 720/704 x 480-NTSC or x 576-PAL). It is also Composite. So it is not going to be as good as D1 or most other digital component formats or ANY HD format, and probably won't look as good as Betacam/SP or MII, but it probably will look equivalent to a clean 1" C. And it may be better or worse than 3/4", and other Y/C or S-Video formats (S-VHS, Ed-Beta, Hi8), but would certainly be better than VHS,Betamax or video8.

    Have a service transfer this via SDI if possible to YUV422 uncompressed or losslessly compressed format in its native SD rez, and that will be the best you can hope for as an original.


    Scott
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  3. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    Yes the best way is to dump the tape into hard drive using SDI and from there work your magic of software restoration, It won't look like the original 35mm though, wish you kept that film roll don't ya?
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  4. Thank you both for your help.

    I have the 35mm print. The movie was originally shot in Super 16 and blown-up to 35mm. It rendered beautifully. We made the D2 from the internegative, which was lost long ago. So, I have the D2 and one 35mm print but, being the only print, it saw a fair amount of use and scratching from being passed to too many hands back in the day. It needs a cleaning and restoration itself, which is just not in the cards.
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  5. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    What is the aspect ratio of the original footage and what did you use to trnasfer it to D2? Telecine machine? Well D2 is 8 bit composite digital video at a bandwidth of around 14MHz, It is not that bad, better than DV and DVD if decoded correctly but for 16mm grain you want at least HD scanning but since the film is worn out that option is no longer on the table, It can be saved but it will cost a lot of Deneros.

    What deck are you going to be using, You want something that exploit that bandwidth and do a great job at converting it to a proper digital format with a defined resolution 720x480 @ 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, remeber D2 doesn't have horizontal resolution or chroma sub as mentioned above, it is digital composite, The purpose of being digital is to elimeniate the generational loss when editing.
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  6. aBigMeanie aedipuss's Avatar
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    if it was shot with an arri or bolex s16mm it might have been ok. but unless you can come up with the original s16mm film stock you are pretty much out of luck. as you seem to know frame by frame film restoration is big bucks, and D2 is low quality youtube material at best, but depending on the intended vision and age of the film maybe some dropouts and a soft focus wouldn't be bad?
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  7. The cinematographer shot with an Arriflex. It is a documentary about commercial fishermen on the Hudson River, narrated by Alec Baldwin. A few years ago, I asked a video house to do a conversion for me from the D2 and it handed me back an AVI that was of poor quality, with ruined effects, blurriness, etc. It's on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KS3c3adpUd4 However, the original conversion to D2 was done at Duart in NYC. Even though I was there for the frame by frame conversion, I am now fighting with my memory -- it was 30 years ago. But I believe we took two tries at the conversion. The first, from the 35mm print was underwhelming. There was never a Super 16 print. An internegative was created for the enlargment to 35. The engineer had the idea of instead using the internegative for the conversion and it was lovely when we played back the D2 in their studio. I then used the D2 to make VHS cassettes, a big step down. As I said, because the 35mm film was passed around at festivals, etc., it is not in good shape. No one was showing video-shot, high quality documentaries 30 years ago. It is a good piece. One of the five runners-up just below the documentary short nominations in Academy voting. Mainly, I would like to re-cut it to make a shorter piece about some of the people in the film.
    Last edited by croninjj; 31st Jan 2022 at 21:51.
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  8. Hi,
    If you can scan the 35mm, there may be ways to restore it without the out of reach expense of a frame by frame restoration. To someone with the skillsset of avisynth scripting, a potential approach is to do a frame by frame compare with the (lores) D2 master as compared to the film frame. In those areas with major , pixel by pixel agreement, you can create a mask and use the pixels of the film frame. Where there are major dirt splotches or scratches, you can substitute a blurry mask of pixels from the video. However, I don't feel it would be acceptable to watch it in this way, so here's more ideas. You could use the masks to interpolate with an a.i. upscaled version of the pixels, or use the mask for a scratch repairing script (which would, hopefully more accurate mask detection than they normally would).
    I think the amazing talent in this community might come up with something. In the end, why not try digitizing a roll, or even part, just as a small investment into the project and to do a test? Put out a reward for the best result for a given sample? Crowdsource the project!
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  9. You need a good professional restoration software like PF Clean, lots of time ahead and a good scan imo ,see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbGPOmHwV4&ab_channel=AMTECNOLOGIA
    *** DIGITIZING VHS / ANALOG VIDEOS SINCE 2001**** GEAR: JVC HR-S7700MS, TOSHIBA V733EF AND MORE
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