Ask questions to The Digital Bits team (Bill Hunt, Jeff Kleist et.al.)

[AKORIS]

Originally Posted by depooter

Alice dropped nearly 50 % this weekend. It took Avatar nearly 3 months to see a drop like that. Now we can eliminate the thought that all big tentpole 3D films will have legs like Avatar showed.

hardly anything is going to have "legs" like AVATAR. The bottom line is that
ALICE is already considered a huge hit....

(and btw I could give a rip about 3-D....)

[jaaguir]

Jeff, this year it's the 65th Anniversary of "Anchors aweigh", an MGM technicolor musical starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra (the one with the animated Jerry mouse dancing with Kelly). I believe this movie never got the Ultra-Resolution/special edition treatment on dvd, I don't know why. Any chance of it being released on blu this year? It's my favorite musical.
I guess it's more likely we'll have to wait for 5 more years, or even until they make a "Warner archives" program for blu...

Thanks

[Jeff Kleist]

There isn't even the tech yet for Blu on demand. It'll be at least 5 years till there is

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I don’t quite understand what you’re talking about because I think you may be somewhat confused with the terminology.
Do you mean rather “3K is nice, but why don't transferrers and restorers master 35mm films at 8K (Baraka, the new Lawrence restoration), so they will have a very future-proof digital master for when Blu-ray is obsolete?

Well, first of all, even if 8k ‘mastering’ digital tools (i.e. for color grading, etc.) were readily available to all commercially, the cost of such a venture would have to be reconciled against its value for a 35mm. film. At best, I think many would consider such a project to be *an experiment* in the value of oversampling, at worst, complete over-kill and a waste of money. In fact, there is debate among mastering folk and archivists as to the value of even 6k when the film source is 35mm CinemaScope. I’ll see if I can find a pertinent link for you later on my computer at work.

As to high resolution scanning for large format films (65mm, IMAX) such as Baraka, etc., something that I think you should keep in mind is that in the past, some online *experts* have invariably considered *deficiencies* in the picture quality of the Blu-rays to be due to or caused by....

As per the bolded sentence above, here you go –
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/fea...-about-6k.html
^ I wasn’t at all surprised with the positions expressed by the interviewees in the article above, nor Ned P.’s carefully worded statement obtained afterwards which is included essentially as an addendum to the original piece.

I actually saved this link because I was quite surprised with the author (Leslie Shapiro) of the article in being so astute as to the merits of the 35mm stock, Kodak Vision3 500T as early as July 2008 and if I was to ever run into said author, I planned on complementing her/him? for that tidbit of technical acumen on the relatively new film stock (at that point in time). The comment seemed rather ‘cutting-edge’ for the summer of ’08 to be expressed by a journalist in what I presume is a consumer audio video magazine.

[DenonCI]

Penton,

Thanks for the link. Great information on the technology.

What do you think if upping the frame rate to 48fps? Sounds interesting.

[garyrc]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

^ I wasn’t at all surprised with the positions expressed by the interviewees in the article above, nor Ned P.’s carefully worded statement obtained afterwards which is included essentially as an addendum to the original piece.

Thanks, Penton-man.

So, I guess that Harris scanned LoA in 8K, because it was on 65mm about or > 2 times the area of 35mm, if the resolution of the film stock is held equal? I realize this degree of resolution won't get on the BD ... but the future ...

Interesting point about dynamic range.

As the article says, lenses made a difference, and I would add film stocks. I'm not sure of how great a variety of film stocks were available to Hollywood in the '50s & '60s but as a still photographer back then, & know there were great differences in resolution in film stocks (that could be easily detected by eye if one had a Leica or a Nikon lens), e.g., Kodachrome II v.s. Ektachrome v.s. High speed Ektachrome, or, in B & W. Panatomic X v.s Plus X v.s. Tri X. Likewise the difference between 35 mm and 2 1/4 with the same stock.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

Penton,
Thanks for the link. Great information on the technology.

Kinda puts dem pixels in proper perspective.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by garyrc

Thanks, Penton-man.
So, I guess that Harris scanned LoA in 8K....

No.
Generally all the large format scanning at 8k in the U.S. is performed by David Keighley Productions 70MM Inc. or FotoKem.

Like I said, I can not specially comment on LoA.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by garyrc

As the article says, lenses made a difference

This is usually under-emphasized or even downright forgotten and dismissed by many folks who don’t work in the business and really can not be repeated too much.

[Batman1980]

Penton-Man, not a release date question but more of a business practice in general question. Right now Disney is focusing on bringing classic catalog animated films to blu-ray, when can we expect them to turn their focus to recent live-action releases?

[Elandyll]

I was wondering if there was any word at all on the streets about one of my favorite B movies from the 80's making it to Blu-Ray, aka "The Hidden".
I know it's a long shot for these kind of movies (and I'm sorry to ask about an "unanounced title"), but I was kind of hoping that with Blu-Ray reaching a bigger place in the market that very good B-movies titles from the 80s/ 90s could see the Blu-Ray treatment.
I have to admit some days that seeing the SyFy saturday night programming make it and not some of the little gems of the past can be ... distressing

Thanks!!

[jd213]

Jeff, is there any chance that White on Rice will be coming to Blu? Haven't heard much about its release, but so far I've only seen DVD mentioned.

[Jeff Kleist]

Not in the US I'm afraid. Japan might have better luck whenever it hits there tho

[jd213]

Yeah, that's kinda what I figured. I haven't heard anything about when it's coming to Japan though, I don't think it's even had a festival screening yet [edit: scratch that, it's actually being shown this weekend, not sure if I'd be able to get tickets though and I'd probably rather watch it on Blu with my girlfriend].

[Jeff Kleist]

Maybe I should go :P Instead I'm going to be seeing Morning Musume in Shinjuku, my good friend is a member of their management. Why is it that none of the bands that I'm dying to see play while I'm in town?

So you going to marry that girlfriend JD? Seems you're already there, may as well lock the ball and chain :P

[jd213]

Well, maybe. Need to see how my career pans out, but it's looking pretty positive.

[FourToedStatue]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

No, not at all David, you misunderstood the post I made a page back or so about setting the bias on the downsampling filter for going from 8k -> HD.
Jeff is correct, i.e. one poor misguided soul who thought he was doing nice work on the old General.

The sad part about Patton was that it got played out on the internet at the time, that Fox was intentionally catering to “the gamer group” or whatever grain challenged demographic you want to call it and they purposely scrubbed the grain from Patton to appease those particular folks.

In the promotion of this ‘conspiracy’ theory to defraud enthusiasts of their grain, they all conveniently forgot that The Sand Pebbles (also distributed by Fox folks) streeted on Blu-ray around the same time (perhaps, the same week?) and showed no evidence of such excessive DNR application.

Yeah I never bought that theory. If they were really dingo that then why not do it to a film like Predator? I mean when I think gamer crowd i don't think Patton, that's for sure.

[DenonCI]

Jeff, I forgot to ask you. What did you think of "Heroes" this season? While better than last year I doubt they'll get me for another season (if it's even renewed).

[Banjo]

Any word on if the special features for the upcoming Avatar is subtitled in English? Fox has a poor track record when it comes to subtitling the special features in English for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The movie has made $2.6 billion worldwide so far. They better come to their senses and finally start subtitling the special features since we, deaf customers have to pay the same price as everybody else. They should be 100% accessible.

Just saying.

[SpaceDog]

Originally Posted by Banjo

Any word on if the special features for the upcoming Avatar is subtitled in English? Fox has a poor track record when it comes to subtitling the special features in English for the deaf and hard of hearing.

The movie has made $2.6 billion worldwide so far. They better come to their senses and finally start subtitling the special features since we, deaf customers have to pay the same price as everybody else. They should be 100% accessible.

Just saying.

No special features on the first Avatar.