Old Movies released on Blu-ray

[i2lens]

Am I missing something here? If a movie that was filmed before the day of HD is put on BD, how is it HD? The original format for whatever movie that was not filmed in HD must be up-converted to HD, correct? Of course this is done using high-end equipment so the quality should be improved.

I purchased the original PS3 when it came out 2 years ago. I have purchased several BD movies since then. I personally do not see much difference between watching a movie on my PS3 than on my up-converting DVD player. I watch movies on a 108" HD SIM2 projector in 7.1 Surround. Now the sound improvements is worth the price of admission, but the film quality is questionable.

Perhaps someone can explain to me that if the movie was not filmed in HD, what is the process of releasing the film on an HD medium, BD? Do they simply upconvert it and save it on BD.

[Marine Mike]

Please list examples of the Blu-ray movies you are referring to.

[Joe Cain]

Originally Posted by i2lens

Am I missing something here? If a movie that was filmed before the day of HD is put on BD, how is it HD? The original format for whatever movie that was not filmed in HD must be up-converted to HD, correct? Of course this is done using high-end equipment so the quality should be improved.

I purchased the original PS3 when it came out 2 years ago. I have purchased several BD movies since then. I personally do not see much difference between watching a movie on my PS3 than on my up-converting DVD player. I watch movies on a 108" HD SIM2 projector in 7.1 Surround. Now the sound improvements is worth the price of admission, but the film quality is questionable.

Perhaps someone can explain to me that if the movie was not filmed in HD, what is the process of releasing the film on an HD medium, BD? Do they simply upconvert it and save it on BD.

35mm motion picture negative film is exponentially higher resolution than 1080p; even theatrical release prints are more HD than "HD." There is no upconverting involved in preparing a film's BD release---it's actually down-resolved.

[nycomet]

I recently watched Viva Las Vegas (the Elvis Presley / Ann Margaret movie). The transfer was STUNNING, sharp and vibrant. I also watched the BD of Harryhausen's 20 Million Miles to Earth and Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein. These two movies were so grainy that I could not enjoy them at all. The grain is so course that it seemed to shimmer on my 1080p 52-inch Sharp Aquos LCD (my player is the PS3). It is a sad statement, but the oldray DVDs of 20 Million Miles and Young Frankenstein look better than the BDs.

Why is Viva Las Vegas so crystal clear and grain-free when 20 Million Miles and Young Frankenstein have too much grain? Please don't tell me it is because that is the way the director (or director of photography) intended the films to look. I don't buy it.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by nycomet

Why is Viva Las Vegas so crystal clear and grain-free when 20 Million Miles and Young Frankenstein have too much grain? Please don't tell me it is because that is the way the director (or director of photography) intended the films to look. I don't buy it.

Viva Las Vegas was shot on 35mm Anamorphic using Panavision lenses (known as "scope", although its actually not a CinemaScope picture). Young Frankenstein was shot on 35mm flat with the bottom and top cropped to create a 1.85:1 AR. This by itself would give it a grainer pic quality if the same quality film was used as Viva. However, I bet the film makers made it grainy on purpose to make it feel like an older movie (heh I know asked not to be told this but its probably true in this case). I have no idea about 20 Million Miles.

There also could've been some digital noise reduction used in the HD transfer of Viva (I dunno just a guess).

As examples two older films that I've seen that look AWESOME in HD would be Zulu and Grand Prix. Patton is almost as good but theres appears to be some DNR applied.

[DRC72]

I have the move 300 on BD which is a pretty new movie, and there is a lot graininess especially in the darker scenes.

[ricky_rocket]

Goodfellas (1990) looks the same to me on Blu-ray as it does on upconverted DVD. However the SQ is much better.

My philosophy is any new movie I will get on Blu-ray. Any old movie that I do not already own in some other format and I want to own, I will get on Blu-ray. But I'm not going to replace all/any of my existing movies just because they are now on Blu-ray. It's just not worth it.

[lobo81865]

Planet of the Apes looked great too.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by DRC72

I have the move 300 on BD which is a pretty new movie, and there is a lot graininess especially in the darker scenes.

Yeah that was very much the directors choice to make it that grainy. Older movies look the way they are because of the process used to make them. 35mm flat in the 50's or 60's is just going to be grainy, 35mm anamorphic is better, 8-perf 35mm (Technirama, VistaVision) even better (Zulu was made with Technirama for example), 70mm is best.

[DRC72]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Yeah that was very much the directors choice to make it that grainy. Older movies look the way they are because of the process used to make them. 35mm flat in the 50's or 60's is just going to be grainy, 35mm anamorphic is better, 8-perf 35mm (Technirama, VistaVision) even better (Zulu was made with Technirama for example), 70mm is best.

True.... Nonetheless the picture quality is still excellent.

[Blu Titan]

Check out The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, and The Searchers...AMAZING picture quality.

[Anthony P]

Am I missing something here? If a movie that was filmed before the day of HD is put on BD, how is it HD?

yes you are missing somerthing

Perhaps someone can explain to me that if the movie was not filmed in HD, what is the process of releasing the film on an HD medium, BD? Do they simply upconvert it and save it on BD.

movies are usualy and traditionaly filmed on film which is why they are also called films. Film has no real resolution so it is not SD or HD or anything. Think of it this way (might make it easier) in the old days there where film cameras. You took a pic and you could enlarge it, because the detail was there, then the first digital cameras came out and they where around 1MP and if you enlarged the picture it looked like crap, so they made 2MP... 12MP and now there is enough info recorded to be able to enlarge them quite a bit.

the same with films, they are also on film (with few recent exceptions). The film master can have much more detail then what is represented on SD and even HD. The film master is then taken and scanned and a digital master is made, during the days of DVD most digital masters where 2k (1080p is just under 2k-it is under 1920 while 2k is just over 2000) and more recently many are scanned at 4k and some at 8k. Since this is done for archiving purposes (it is easier to maintain a digital copy then film which can deteriorate with time) they tend to use the best resolution they can. There is also an advantage to downconvert during compression.

I purchased the original PS3 when it came out 2 years ago. I have purchased several BD movies since then. I personally do not see much difference between watching a movie on my PS3 than on my up-converting DVD player. I watch movies on a 108" HD SIM2 projector in 7.1 Surround. Now the sound improvements is worth the price of admission, but the film quality is questionable.

there can always be questionable titles, but honestly I have seen a few BDs and I have never seen any where there is no appreciable difference between the BD and DVD. Are you sure there is no issue in your set-up.

PS, what sim2 do you have?

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

Film has no real resolution

Film resolution can be measured.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by DRC72

I have the move 300 on BD which is a pretty new movie, and there is a lot graininess especially in the darker scenes.

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Yeah that was very much the directors choice to make it that grainy. Older movies look the way they are because of the process used to make them.

According to PentonMan, it wasn't the director's choice to make 300 that grainy.

Originally Posted by PentonMan

Although the filmmakers shot the movie 300 on 35mm Kodak 500T 5229 (for the most part) which is a low contrast stock with a fine grain structure, they still had major issues with grain which they even publicly admitted to during a past industry conference in L.A.
This was in part due to the fact that so much of the motion picture was shot overcranked (50 – 150 fps) and they didn’t have/use enough light to expose correctly and without enough light, grain became a big problem.

[DRC72]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

According to PentonMan, it wasn't the director's choice to make 300 that grainy.

LOL!!!! Well I'm glad it's not my setup that is causing this.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by 4K2K

According to PentonMan, it wasn't the director's choice to make 300 that grainy.

Hmm, I'd like to see some links backing that up. I'm sure I've read the look of the film was created in digital post-processing. A technique nicknamed "the crush".

[Anthony P]

Film resolution can be measured

depends on your definition of measured. what is talked about is the approximate equivalence. i.e. if you scan the print at resolution X then you will get more or less all the detail that is on the film, if you scan at a higher resolution then chances are that there won't be any more information (adjacent pixels will look the same), the same way that if someone forgot a lens cap on and had a 100% black picture then 1 pixel could easily represent all the detail in the pic and even if you had 100M pixels it would still look exactly the same. The "approximate" resolution will depend on many factors
1) size of film: a 70mm film can have higher resolution then 8mm
2) quality of film: how fine the grain is, lenses used, lighting....
3) generation of film: film is like photocopies, each time you make a copy of a copy the image deteriorates a bit, the flaws of each film and generation are cumulative
4) age of film: as time passes a film can deteriorate, think of scratches and stuff that are easily visible on a film that has played many times, then realize that at the much smaller level it happens even more and not just because of play back. So some finer detail can be lost with time if not properly taken care of, maintained and restored.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Hmm, I'd like to see some links backing that up. I'm sure I've read the look of the film was created in digital post-processing. A technique nicknamed "the crush".

Here's one link to where PentonMan was saying how the grain was caused mostly by shooting at high speed 50-150fps without sufficient light
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=6669

"The crush" - wouldn't that mean crushing the blacks or making less details visible in the blacks - a seperate thing from whether or not a film was grainy or had added grain in post.

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Anthony P

depends on your definition of measured.

One way is lines per-picture height but for that I think you'd need to point the camera at a test chart - so it might not work on existing films except if they shot a test chart I suppose you could shoot a test shot with the same camera, film, lighting, lens, filters, focusing and pointing at a test chart and measure the resolution afterwards.

The other way is sort of like you said - scan at different resolutions and see the point at which no more detail is resolvable. As you said, 70mm film could have have higher res than 8mm film (but perhaps not if the lens cap was on or lots of filters were on the lens on lots of digital filtering was applied in post - in the later case it wouldn't matter how high res the film was if too much filtering was applied in post so you lost all that res).

Another method for determining res that I read about is the down-scale then upscale method. eg. do a downscale from 1080p to 720p then resize back to 1080p. If you look at the original 1080p image and compare to the upscaled 1080p image and there's no more detail in the original 1080p than the one upscaled from 720p, you could say there was no more than about 720p of actual detail/resolution in that frame.