Titanic 4K UHD (1997)

[stevenpaulalejandro]

I looked up the specs on both stocks used for Titanic.
Eastman EXR 50D 5245/7245 Neg. Film
Kodak Vision 500T 5279 Neg. Film
I mean 500 isn't slow at all for sure but Kodak describes them as both fine and low grain films.

"SPEED. WITHOUT BAGGAGE.
You know the trade-offs. When you need the speed of a very
fast motion picture film, you also have to take the “baggage.”
A bit of compromise in sharpness. More grain than you’d
like. No more. KODAK VISION 500T Color Negative Film
gives you all the speed you expect. Plus, fine grain and high
sharpness you’ll find unbelievable"

[thesaxmaniac]

I can’t screen capture, but if anyone can back me up on this that would be cool. Or I’ll just take pics of it later on my phone. Anyone saying this looks perfectly fine and does not have artifacting or looks over sharpened, etc. The scene where they are unloading the Picasso artwork, Billy Zane’s character has an almost comically large halo around his entire body, making him look literally duplicated. Is this normal? Cause it doesn’t look normal to me.

[stevenpaulalejandro]

Originally Posted by thesaxmaniac

I can’t screen capture, but if anyone can back me up on this that would be cool. Or I’ll just take pics of it later on my phone. Anyone saying this looks perfectly fine and does not have artifacting or looks over sharpened, etc. The scene where they are unloading the Picasso artwork, Billy Zane’s character has an almost comically large halo around his entire body, making him literally look duplicated. Is this normal? Cause it doesn’t look like it to me.

I can't testify to that specific moment but there is for sure Haloing in some shots, but i also don't know if that was from the new transfer or baked in from the digital composting from the original source

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by stevenpaulalejandro

I looked up the specs on both stocks used for Titanic.
Eastman EXR 50D 5245/7245 Neg. Film
Kodak Vision 500T 5279 Neg. Film
I mean 500 isn't slow at all for sure but Kodak describes them as both fine and low grain films.

"SPEED. WITHOUT BAGGAGE.
You know the trade-offs. When you need the speed of a very
fast motion picture film, you also have to take the “baggage.”
A bit of compromise in sharpness. More grain than you’d
like. No more. KODAK VISION 500T Color Negative Film
gives you all the speed you expect. Plus, fine grain and high
sharpness you’ll find unbelievable"

The 50-speed daylight stock is so fine-grained as to be almost grainless with a nice fat exposure, that much is true, but for the 500-speed stock used everywhere else there is most definitely grain there. Again, not grain the size of golf balls but the dye clouds in particular are surprisingly prominent. Cameron deliberately overexposed his faster stock (hitting it with more light than it was rated for) to tamp down the noise yet further, but even he couldn't magick the grain away...until now

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by thesaxmaniac

I can’t screen capture, but if anyone can back me up on this that would be cool. Or I’ll just take pics of it later on my phone. Anyone saying this looks perfectly fine and does not have artifacting or looks over sharpened, etc. The scene where they are unloading the Picasso artwork, Billy Zane’s character has an almost comically large halo around his entire body, making him look literally duplicated. Is this normal? Cause it doesn’t look normal to me.

Isn't he backlit very strongly in that scene?

[spanky87]

The Rise of Skywalker is a contemporary VFX-heavy blockbuster shot on 35mm, and the 4K retains the grain and filmic look. Looks beautiful.

[stevenpaulalejandro]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The 50-speed daylight stock is so fine-grained as to be almost grainless with a nice fat exposure, that much is true, but for the 500-speed stock used everywhere else there is most definitely grain there. Again, not grain the size of golf balls but the dye clouds in particular are surprisingly prominent. Cameron deliberately overexposed his faster stock (hitting it with more light than it was rated for) to tamp down the noise yet further, but even he couldn't magick the grain away...until now

See in my viewing I can easily spot grain. I know some are suggesting it's fake grain put in post DNR, but I don't know it looks pretty natural in motion. I'm viewing on a 92" screen from a 9 foot distance. I also think it interesting people are complaining about sharpness levels when Kodak's literature touts the "high sharpness you’ll find unbelievable"
And there definitely is some weird looking shots but is it possible it's the baked in digital effects of the era that are more prominent in a 4K scan?

[stevenpaulalejandro]

Originally Posted by spanky87

The Rise of Skywalker is a contemporary VFX-heavy blockbuster shot on 35mm, and the 4K retains the grain and filmic look. Looks beautiful.

Excellent point. Man whatever people think of the content of the last trilogy those are some beautiful looking films

[stevenpaulalejandro]

Originally Posted by spanky87

The Rise of Skywalker is a contemporary VFX-heavy blockbuster shot on 35mm, and the 4K retains the grain and filmic look. Looks beautiful.

Although...
“Synthetic CG animated and VFX elements are crisp and clean when they are emitted from the computer and can often look false when combined with digital live action. But the improvements in film scanning, combined with post treatment using grain patterns and filmic emulations, mean that the CG and VFX elements blend incredibly well with the live action shot on celluloid. The results look real and alive, and you simply cannot see the join. There are times when I ask myself, ‘Did I shoot that for real, or did they generate that in post?’”

https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog...-of-skywalker/

[spanky87]

Originally Posted by stevenpaulalejandro

Excellent point. Man whatever people think of the content of the last trilogy those are some beautiful looking films

Even The Last Jedi which was mostly shot digital (despite the intial claim of 35mm) looks convincingly like film, more so than the Cameron’s, due to the DP’s expertise at film emulation.

Originally Posted by stevenpaulalejandro

Although...
“Synthetic CG animated and VFX elements are crisp and clean when they are emitted from the computer and can often look false when combined with digital live action. But the improvements in film scanning, combined with post treatment using grain patterns and filmic emulations, mean that the CG and VFX elements blend incredibly well with the live action shot on celluloid. The results look real and alive, and you simply cannot see the join. There are times when I ask myself, ‘Did I shoot that for real, or did they generate that in post?’”

https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/blog...-of-skywalker/

This is something for someone like Geoff to address. All I know is that the results are stunning and looks better than any big-budget event films these days. I’ve often wondered how exactly they achieve it though since they have to digitally remove and add so much to the 35mm image in post.

Is it as simple as them being able to scan the original film and extract the grain into a seperate layer, and then they reapply that layer after all the CG work is done? What you posted seems to imply that some fake grain was used.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by spanky87

Even The Last Jedi which was mostly shot digital (despite the intial claim of 35mm) looks convincingly like film, more so than the Cameron’s, due to the DP’s expertise at film emulation.



This is something for Geoff to address. All I know is that the results as stunning. I’ve often wondered how exactly they achieve it though since they have to digitally remove and add so much to the 35mm image in post.

Is it as simple as them being able to scan the original film and extract the grain into a seperate layer, and then they reapply that layer after all the CG work is done? What you posted seems to imply that some fake grain was used.

Synthetic grain is added back to the CG images, they don't extract the 'real' grain from the original. But they do this using film emulation techniques that have been around for quite a few years and they don't just emulate grain either, in order to have the CG elements match the distortion of the anamorphic capture (in the case of the Star Warses, not Titanic) they need to map every lens used on the shoot so they know exactly what level of distortion to apply and where.

[starmike]

Welp, after reading this thread while on vacation, my reaction is...



There have been heated discussions about this on other sites, so it's not just here.

My take: this transfer is about as "Switzerland" as you can get. If you took the + and - about this transfer, I think it would even out to 50/50. At this point, I don't even know what more there is to say.

There's only one saving grace to this and that's watching it on a 4K TV vs. a projector. I'm not saying that every problem melts away from a projection viewing, but it is a little less noticeable.

EDIT: anyhoo, I forgot to ask - is there an odd yellowish tint to some of the movie? I didn't see a definitive answer on this.
EDIT2: I also forgot to mention that all the points people make in here about any point I noticed myself. I guess it all comes down to what people expect and what bothers you.

Thanks for all the offline support

[Kris Deering]

I am watching on a projector (JVC NZ9/Lumagen Radiance Pro) and it definitely does NOT make the issue look better. If it does I could only imagine how bad it would look on a flat panel. I'll have to take a look on my OLED, I had not gotten around to that yet.

[starmike]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

I am watching on a projector (JVC NZ9/Lumagen Radiance Pro) and it definitely does NOT make the issue look better. If it does I could only imagine how bad it would look on a flat panel. I'll have to take a look on my OLED, I had not gotten around to that yet.

What's your throw and screen size?

I think my throw is 15 feet and the screen is 120" (10 feet).

[dalemc]

Originally Posted by thesaxmaniac

I can’t screen capture, but if anyone can back me up on this that would be cool. Or I’ll just take pics of it later on my phone. Anyone saying this looks perfectly fine and does not have artifacting or looks over sharpened, etc. The scene where they are unloading the Picasso artwork, Billy Zane’s character has an almost comically large halo around his entire body, making him look literally duplicated. Is this normal? Cause it doesn’t look normal to me.

Yip, this is from the camera lense and has been in there since day one I promise its not a disc/transfer fault 👍 though I'd say, this uhd enhancing has made it look suuuuper noticeable now

[dorian]

Originally Posted by spanky87

Is it as simple as them being able to scan the original film and extract the grain into a seperate layer, and then they reapply that layer after all the CG work is done? What you posted seems to imply that some fake grain was used.

You can't really extract grain from an image because they're intertwined. The grain in chromogenic film are dye clouds that form around the silver crystals before they're washed out during development. The process not only produces visible grain but all detail within the image. If you try something like extracting only high frequency information, you'll run into artefacts from other HF information in the scene.

Scanning a roll of film that contains a blank grey field and overlaying the grain over clean digital footage is a simple and common method. It's a little flawed, though. The grain is usually monochromatic, it has to be looped, dust specks, etc.

VFX guys usually use project specific, pre-rendered grain and multiply by the curve of each RGB channel for every frame. That's why it looks so convincing.

[stevenpaulalejandro]

From the Kodak literature on the 500 speed stock:

'In VISION 500T Film, the measured granularity is very low.'

And on the 50D film stock

'EASTMAN EXR 50D Film 5245 and 7245 is a low-speed
daylight-balanced color negative camera film with
micro-fine grain, very high sharpness'


And that was my viewing experience. Some scenes have very very low levels of grain, but still grain visible to my naked eye. And some scenes certainly that seem near grain free, but if they used 500 for some and 50 for others that would make sense especially when reading Kodak's assessment of the film stock's properties ie, generally low grain and high sharpness

[Cortiz]

Per Bill Hunt at the Digital Bits.....

Titanic was shot on 35 mm photochemical film (specifically Eastman EXR 50D 5245 and Kodak Vision 500T 5279) in Super 35 format by cinematographer Russell Carpenter (True Lies, Avatar: The Way of Water) using Arriflex 35 III, Panavision Panaflex Gold II, and Panavision Panaflex Platinum cameras, with Panavision Primo spherical lenses, and it was finished on film at the 2.39:1 aspect ratio for its initial theatrical release back in 1997 (which included 35 mm anamorphic release prints, as well as 70 mm blow-ups).

I’ve recently had the chance to speak with Lightstorm’s SVP of Production Services & Technology, Geoff Burdick, about the process involved in bringing this film to the 4K Ultra HD format, and have confirmed that the new Titanic UHD remaster is built upon the 2K digital intermediate work done in 2012 for the theatrical 3D release, which began with native 4K scans of original camera negative and the best available VFX footage (including interpositive material were available and useful). At the time however, Stereo-D could only work in 2K resolution. So the important thing to understand here is that work on this film has essentially been ongoing in the years since, with the overall goal always to bring the image up to the current ‘state of the art’ using the latest available mastering technology.

A new 4K digital intermediate has since been built using the original scan data. And VFX footage was never simply ‘uprezed’ or completely redone, but new details were often added (back in 2012) to enhance the shots at Cameron’s direction. An example is the scene where Cal looks out the window of his First Class private promenade deck—as originally filmed, the view outside was just a painted blue card. A little bit of detail, movement, and specularity has been added to the ocean’s surface. Another example involves the night sky as seen at the end of the film, when Rose is awaiting rescue—the stars above are now ‘correct’ for that date and time in history (thus fixing an infamous error pointed out previously by a popular online science communicator).

More recently, Lightstorm has worked with Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post to optimize the 4K image in a hands-on and closely-supervised process that involved remastering the film scene by scene, and shot by shot—sometimes working on different areas within the same frame—to ensure that every bit of detail in the negative is visible, while managing but never eliminating organic grain (which, it should be noted, was intended to be very fine given the film stocks used).

The specific techniques applied were different for each shot, but involve propriety deep-learning algorithms developed by Park Road. The point is, shot-by-shot throughout the film, the Lightstorm and Park Road teams have worked together to maximize the film’s 4K image quality to Cameron’s specific standards and preferences, which includes a new high dynamic range color grade that’s available on this disc in Dolby Vision format (with the usual HDR10 base layer). And the resulting image was directly approved by Cameron and producer Jon Landau.

[stevenpaulalejandro]

Originally Posted by starmike

There's only one saving grace to this and that's watching it on a 4K TV vs. a projector. I'm not saying that every problem melts away from a projection viewing, but it is a little less noticeable.

Thanks for all the offline support

That was my experience

[videopat]

Originally Posted by stevenpaulalejandro

if they used 500 for some and 50 for others that would make sense especially when reading Kodak's assessment of the film stock's properties ie, generally low grain and high sharpness

I think that “low grain and high sharpness” was clearly Cameron’s intended original look of the film, and he’s continued to digitally push the movie further in that direction over the years with subsequent re-releases and home video formats.