Star Wars: The Complete Saga (1977-2005)

[vaati64]

Haha I just realized something quite humorous. I ordered my set from amazon.co.uk. The outer box is definitely the uk version, with the "12" ratings logos on the outside of the box, but the inner box, with the discs, is from the French set. It says "L'Intégrale De La Saga" but the booklet is in English, and says "the complete saga." of course my ridiculous paranoia is kicking in a bit now. There's no reason to believe the set is counterfeit, right? Just a simple mixup?

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by 42041

Grain or noise, we can both agree that digital cameras thus far are not the magic bullet for fuzzy noisy stuff on screen. It will be economics, not image quality, that kills film. Grain is, essentially, a non-issue these days; a DP who knows what he's doing can make it barely noticeable.

Not to mention that film grain can be really beautiful and add to the style of the film. Digital noise is just an unwanted and ugly artifact.

[Nicolawicz]

Originally Posted by therainberg

The highest measurable resolution 35mm film projection can achieve according to human sight perception is around 875 lines/PH. That's higher than 720p but lover than full HD. The average cinema is around 750 lines/PH. Blu-Ray is better than 35mm film projection.

All I know is that films started to look blurry at the cinema when they started doing (2K) digital intermediates. And 2K is more resolution than Blu-ray. Have you seen a Blu-ray projected at the size of a theater screen?

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by therainberg

A digital file can't deteriorate for crying out loud. That movie I downloaded from itunes last week is breaking down on my hard drive as we speak is it? It will look the same today as it will 50 years from now if I keep it.

Maybe not the file in and of itself, but what about the storage medium? Hard drives will not last 50 years, and even solid state memory has its share of failures. And let's say that you've got the perfect storage system which will last in perpetuity - are you sure that the codec to play your file (or the physical means to read certain standalone media) will be around in 50 years?

That last point is very pertinent re: Hollywood. With film tech advancing on an almost daily basis it's possible that something you shoot today could be all but unplayable in a few years' time. Don't believe me? This is already a reality for domestic users. I dunno about North America, but if you were after something that played VHS-C, Video 8, Hi8, Digital8 or even Mini-DV you'd be hard pressed to find anything on the average UK high street.

[budious]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Maybe not the file in and of itself, but what about the storage medium? Hard drives will not last 50 years, and even solid state memory has its share of failures. And let's say that you've got the perfect storage system which will last in perpetuity - are you sure that the codec to play your file (or the physical means to read certain standalone media) will be around in 50 years?

If the file being stored is being archived then there is no reason to have the disk powered on, so long it is stored safely in climate controlled and electromagnetic shielded environment the shelf life should be considerably long. Many advanced filesystems now support cluster checksumming so if one small portion of the file becomes corrupt it can be repaired from a secondary copy with relative ease.

Codecs aren't used as far as masters are concerned, they are uncompressed raw data streams and so long as the format is documented (see RFCs, etc.) then you will always be able to access the data or easily program a substitute decoder. Even most deprecated and unpopular codecs will probably still be supported in the future through some kind of "dirty" codec package, at least under open source, so I leave the fear mongering to you Windows type users while Linux plays all my files.

[Geoff D]

Why did the Academy commission those reports about Hollywood's "Digital Dilemma" if it was all so hunky-dorey? While you hipster Linux types are able to play everything ever, the movie industry as a whole has only just started to get to grips with the threat of digital data extinction.

[budious]

I'm not familar with those reports but from a quick search the first appears to have been published in 2007. Most of the recent developments in high reliability file systems have come in the past two years. See Btrfs or ZFS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

[Strevlac]

Originally Posted by therainberg

Same can be said about the new Titanic master print in cinemas now everyone is raving about. After its clean up it looks like RED camera footage without all that grain.

The digital master is inferior. I saw it this weekend and while it's good it's not as a good as 35mm. Believe it or not the 35mm version is sharper, especially in the darker scenes. The underwater footage of the wreckage looks like it was shot on low res video cameras. The actual film footage is beautiful.

[42041]

Originally Posted by therainberg

A lack of a sand storm over a video sequence of images is hideous? Digital noise is rare and is always eliminated in post. The crazies always come out whenever a new digital way of doing something gains in prominence. There is a great feature on the Jurassic park Blu-Ray where they talk about how industry professionals who should have known better resisted superior digital tools and effect work for a long time until they came around and accepted the facts.

Digital noise is not "rare", it is a direct effect of turning up the camera's sensitivity. It tends to be pretty ugly and non-uniform.
At the time of Jurassic Park, when a high-end workstation had a fraction of the power of a smartphone, those industry professionals would have been right. Early digital FX work rarely holds up, even The Phantom Menace is looking long in the tooth.
Either way, I'm not some anti-digital luddite, I just don't think the issue is so clear-cut. Film has some legitimate advantages... for instance, I've yet to see digital projectors match the contrast ratio of a high-quality print, and digital cameras are much more prone to clip highlights. Ultimately I feel like the people harping on about how digital is "clearer" are using an engineering measuring stick for an artistic endeavor. I like grain, I like how film sees colors, I like the look of 24fps. I don't care if digital cameras can shoot something that looks like real life, real life isn't cinema.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by therainberg

I don't care if someone has a preference for film. There are plenty of films shot digitally that are sharper and have greater picture clarity than film.

In nearly every case, digital still can't match the picture quality of film. There are a few advantages to shooting digitally, of course, such as being able to shoot with less light or in more confined spaces. But, as for picture quality, film still has far more advantages over digital.

Originally Posted by therainberg

A digital file can't deteriorate for crying out loud. That movie I downloaded from itunes last week is breaking down on my hard drive as we speak is it? It will look the same today as it will 50 years from now if I keep it.

You seriously don't know that any digital file *can* and *will* deteriorate over time? Really? You honestly think a CD or DVD or any hard drive can simply be relied to last forever? Sorry, you're way out of touch with the basic reality that digital storage is still far from perfect. Please learn a bit about the fragility of digital storage:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/preserving/1.php

Originally Posted by therainberg

The highest measurable resolution 35mm film projection can achieve according to human sight perception is around 875 lines/PH. That's higher than 720p but lover than full HD. The average cinema is around 750 lines/PH. Blu-Ray is better than 35mm film projection.

Those figures are pure nonsense. Film is estimated to be capable of holding up to 12 million pixels; 1080p's mere 2 million pixels is but a fraction of what 35mm is capable of.

And that's not even going into the special formats, such as 70mm, IMAX, etc.

[42041]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

Those figures are pure nonsense. Film is estimated to be capable of holding up to 12 million pixels; 1080p's mere 2 million pixels is but a fraction of what 35mm is capable of.

And that's not even going into the special formats, such as 70mm, IMAX, etc.

I think he's talking about film projection. The negative is high resolution but you lose much of it by the time the image hits the screen.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by 42041

I think he's talking about film projection. The negative is high resolution but you lose much of it by the time the image hits the screen.

Well, I don't disagree about that! However, generally speaking film still has a lot more "resolution" than a blu-ray. Think how many classic movies nowadays are scanned at 4K or higher, even though that's more than you could put on a blu-ray.

And no I'm no anti-digital Luddite, either, it's a format that has some advantages, mostly in regards to convenience, but still can't forget that digital can't match film in terms of resolution, or that digital isn't a reliable format for archival purposes.

[Tim H.]

Originally Posted by budious

Just as reference for those proclaiming the excellent PQ, while the resolution is great, the black crush and color timing are horrendous.

2006 Original Trilogy Theatrical Cut DVD


2004 Special Edition HDTV scaled to DVD

So that's what "black crush" looks like, I didn't really understand what that term meant. Thanks for posting those.

[gregmasciola]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

You seriously don't know that any digital file *can* and *will* deteriorate over time? Really? You honestly think a CD or DVD or any hard drive can simply be relied to last forever? Sorry, you're way out of touch with the basic reality that digital storage is still far from perfect. Please learn a bit about the fragility of digital storage:

He's talking about the actual quality of the file. Sure, a CD or DVD can become damaged and unplayable, but if it is taken care of and not scratched at all, the sound/video quality will always remain the same. Same with digital storage. Files can become corrupt or hard drives can stop working, but as long as the files are still fine, the video quality of them will still be exactly the same.

[Geoff D]

Sure, but a file doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has to be stored on something, and right now there isn't a foolproof method of archiving digital data for the long term. Not that film is indestructible, but a properly preserved set of elements will last for decades.

[42041]

Originally Posted by therainberg

* Film projection is dim and has lower contrast ratios then high frame rate digital. Film or low frame rate projection is dim because it has to do this to hide the strobing from low frame rates.

Clearly you haven't seen good film projection.

[42041]

Originally Posted by therainberg

Well, sorry, you're completely wrong. Perhaps you've been going to too many ratty multiplexes with shoddy equipment and incompetent staff, good film projection is not dim or flickery, and with a high-quality print the black levels spank my Pioneer 9G Kuro Elite. That's something I haven't seen digital projectors do and I've seen plenty of them at work. Maybe when they figure out laser projection it'll get there, but DLP isn't there.

[crazyBLUE]

Glad I have this at home ~ Who needs a movie theater ~ Right

Image is 8 feet wide & over 3 feet tall.....

[Gold Ranger]

Originally Posted by budious

Just as reference for those proclaiming the excellent PQ, while the resolution is great, the black crush and color timing are horrendous.

2006 Original Trilogy Theatrical Cut DVD


2004 Special Edition HDTV scaled to DVD

The Top one has more Side (left-to-right) info while the Bottom has more Side (top-to-bottom) info.

Both blacks are terrible though...

[crazyBLUE]

Originally Posted by Kinetic_Blue

The Top one has more Side (left-to-right) info while the Bottom has more Side (top-to-bottom) info.

Both blacks are terrible though...

Personally I don't trust shots pulled off the internet just because no one has any idea how that image has been screwed with & in what way it was altered.

This is the same movie off my screen with no alterations & the blacks are fine IMO...