How close is Blu-ray to the actual film?

[maverick1972]

I'm curious if anyone can answer this question and I know you may get a different answer for different titles. However, I wonder just how close we are to the actual source material.

When I look at a 35mm photograph from the 70s or 80s taken on an expensive film camera. It's pretty darned good. Film is 35mm in most cases. I used to think that they'll never get quality this good in full motion for the consumer. Now, I wonder. I remember DVD being so superior at 480p and even laserdisc at 325i for that matter.

We're now dealing with 1080p and it's jaw dropping quality in many cases compared to what I grew up on. I think we forget the days of banging the side of the set to tune in the Bionic Man while adjusting the rabbit ears.

Let me give bluray a fair advantage here and take two 70 year old movies. "Gone With The Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". How close would my copies be to the original masters in the studio vaults? Are we there yet? Have we gone passed it? Are we getting close?

[J6P]

Blu-ray is still nowhere near the uncompressed file size, but I don't know how much with any precision. A two hour feature shot on the RED digital camera, which equates to scanning a classic film at 4k for archiving, could run over 7 terabytes. That's about 143 50GB Blu discs worth of movie.

This would be an excellent question to put to Robert A. Harris. I'm sure he'd have the answer on the tip of his tongue.

[Marcusarilius]

Can't answer the question, but as a fan of home theater for many years, I CAN tell you that Blu-ray is what I have been waiting for ever since the days of VHS.

SQ (just one) example: The opening credits of Superman the Movie. Seeing this in the theater back in the days of knuckle walking was amazing. OK, on VHS... Very Lame! DVD, Still lame. Blu-ray: Friggen blu me away! Thats what it sounded like in the theater!

PQ: the improved detail in PQ, the beautiful solid color saturation. All wonderful, but one of the aspects of blu-ray PQ that I never was able to get close to with the older formats was the solid blacks and blu-blacks as seen in theaters.

[Rob J in WNY]

Originally Posted by J6P

Blu-ray is still nowhere near the uncompressed file size, but I don't know how much with any precision. A two hour feature shot on the RED digital camera, which equates to scanning a classic film at 4k for archiving, could run over 7 terabytes. That's about 143 50GB Blu discs worth of movie.

This would be an excellent question to put to Robert A. Harris. I'm sure he'd have the answer on the tip of his tongue.

+1

Overwhelmingly true on the video end. Remember, Blu-ray still compresses the frame data not unlike the way JPEG photos are compressed picture data - it's not a lossless compression scheme. Plus, Blu-ray's 1080x1920 image size is reduced from much larger, far more resolute film scans or digital masters. The on-disc space-savings are staggering as a result of this.

Audio is a different story. We have sound which can be as good as the original digital master. Blu-ray truly delivers uncompressed/lossless audio quality, free of compression artifacting and coloration brought about by use of lossy data compression.

Analog sound recordings - let it be known - can be even more resolute, just as film can be more resolute than a digital scan of it. Purists will argue that properly recorded and reproduced analog recordings will, in quality, surpass even a high-resolution digital audio sampling of them. They are right.

[RiseDarthVader]

Just for comparison:

35mm film:
scanned in for editing at 4096 x 2160 or 2048 x 1080(over 90% of movies scanned in at this resolution) with a total pixel count of 8,631,360 or 2,157,840
4K scans requiring terabytes of storage
audio recorded and mixed in 24bit/48Khz PCM

Blu-ray
1920 x 1080 with a total pixel count of 2,073,600
dual layer discs hold 50GB of data.
audio stored in 24bit/48Khz PCM or other lossless audio compression codecs.

[Kryptonic]

For the size of television screens, there will be no discernible difference between film resolution and Blu-Ray. Now, on a 20-30 foot screen....yeah.

Originally Posted by Marcusarilius

SQ (just one) example: The opening credits of Superman the Movie. Seeing this in the theater back in the days of knuckle walking was amazing. OK, on VHS... Very Lame! DVD, Still lame. Blu-ray: Friggen blu me away! Thats what it sounded like in the theater!

Actually it's not because they remixed it for the extended edition in 2000. They added new sound effects and completely remixed the film. It doesn't sound like it did in theaters in 1978. The only version with the original stereo surround mix is on the 2006 DVD with the theatrical version. Also, both the DVD and BD are lossy Dolby Digital, so there's really not much of a difference between the two.

I much prefer the original mix on DVD and hope that they release that on BD in TrueHD in the films original theatrical form like the recent Creepshow BD.

[MiLifeizaMovie]

just the thought of an old movie in a studio vault is creepy..iono y exactly hmmm...

[maverick1972]

Very interesting.

So in other words...The quality that we have now might as well be as good as the masters due to the size of the screens that we are watching them on.

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by maverick1972

I'm curious if anyone can answer this question and I know you may get a different answer for different titles. However, I wonder just how close we are to the actual source material.

When I look at a 35mm photograph from the 70s or 80s taken on an expensive film camera. It's pretty darned good. Film is 35mm in most cases. I used to think that they'll never get quality this good in full motion for the consumer. Now, I wonder. I remember DVD being so superior at 480p and even laserdisc at 325i for that matter.

We're now dealing with 1080p and it's jaw dropping quality in many cases compared to what I grew up on. I think we forget the days of banging the side of the set to tune in the Bionic Man while adjusting the rabbit ears.

Let me give bluray a fair advantage here and take two 70 year old movies. "Gone With The Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz". How close would my copies be to the original masters in the studio vaults? Are we there yet? Have we gone passed it? Are we getting close?

In comparing a 35mm still photograph negative vs 35mm film negative this is approx. their relative size:


35mm Still Camera:

35mmStillPhotography.jpg


vs:


35mm Academy 1.37 (Gone With The Wind/Oz):

Academy1-1.37.gif

35mm Standard Widescreen:

Widescreen1-2.85.gif

35mm Anamorphic:

Scope2.39-2.40.gif

35mm Super-35:

super35.gif



Pretty good I'd say

[Kryptonic]

Originally Posted by maverick1972

Very interesting.

So in other words...The quality that we have now might as well be as good as the masters due to the size of the screens that we are watching them on.

Pretty much. The human eye can only detect so much information in the size of screens in homes today.