Fantasia / Fantasia 2000 (1940-1999) (Special Edition)

[Penglynns]

Originally Posted by tomrule123

I actually have the same Blu-ray player model. I'm going to check on this myself.

That's convenient. What did you find?

Ironically I played the 2010 The Sorcerer's Apprentice bluray last night and it more or less froze up after the menu screen the first time and I had to turn off the player and back on and then it was fine. Two brand new Disney bluray's, at least one problem playing two of the three total discs. Have had no issues with any others Blus from other manufacturers or older Disney Blus that we own.

[bigshot]

Three Strip technicolor is a dye transfer process that does not fade. Vintage IB Tech prints look the same today as they did in the 30s and 40s. I work in the animation business and I'm an animation historian. I've seen what the original prints of these films look like at the UCLA Film and Television Archive and at the LA County Museum of Art, as well as 16mm prints in private collections. All of those IB Tech prints have a consistent color palette that is more subtle and balanced than the modern transfers. The reason that the early home video releases had well balanced color was because they were struck from IB Tech positives. This means that they were fuzzier, but retained the original color balance. The reason that modern transfers are sharp but have unbalanced color is because they are working with the three B&W negatives without the benefit of the original color timing settings that would be used by the lab to strike a film print. They're recreating the colors into something that looks good to them. People who aren't familiar with the look of the original films might actually like it better, but that doesn't mean that it's an accurate restoration.

I have heard from people over at Disney that they are aware of the problem and are trying to address it. There's no reason they can't create an accurate transfer. They just have to want to and be willing to take the time to color correct to a proper reference.

[bigshot]

By the way, I've done considerable research into the color of Disney films and how it compares to the original artwork. The main difference is in the reds and purples. Technicolor seems to shift reds to the warm side. I suspect there is a similar shift in very brilliant greens, but I haven't had a lot of those to compare. Disney usually used more subdued greens.

Another correction was in whites. They never used pure white for eyes or clothing. They always mixed gray or brown into them to keep them rich and to prevent them from blowing out.

Occasionally, Disney would shift the color timing to create a night look, but usually they keyed those lighting situations into the palette. A good example of this is Captain Hook sneaking up behind Peter Pan in Skull Rock. Hook's colors change on the artwork with just about every scene cut as he moves into shadow. The sequence starts with a standard grayed red coat and by the end it's a deep magenta. I saw a Japanese laserdisc release where the telecine colorist tried to match the reds as they shifted in color. It ended up making the backgrounds all the wrong color.

Two of the colors I look for in Sorcerer's Apprentice are on the hat. The brim of the hat is a different hue of electric blue than the hat itself. Also the moons and stars on the hat are pale grayed yellow greens. There were specific reasons for the color choices. They worked warms against cools and tried to gray colors with complements to keep the brilliancy up without using straight colors. All of this comes through on vintage IB Tech prints.

They had two sets of colors at Disneu... Top colors were relatively pure and were only used for mixing, not painting. Desk colors were carefully combined top colors that created a specific hue for use on cels. Those were then adjusted with white to create letdowns to adjust the shade. Each desk color had a name and was custom mixed in quantity for each feature. Disney used a few dozen different pigments to create their paint, which they manufactured in house.

Color is a very involved subject. Not much research has been done into it because most film historians aren't artists. A lot of the information would have been lost in the Eisner era when they dumped the ink and paint department and started shipping to China, but I was able to convince the ink and paint ladies and the head chemist to share their secrets with me.

[Ernest Rister]

Disney Studios is in the middle of a multi-year project to do full 4K scans and full digital clean-up, working closely with Lowry Digital for restoration. Fantasia is currently getting the full digital treatment, the 10th title thus far. For the first time in decades, Disney is going back to the nitrate negative, which is between 50 and 75 years old in many cases. Though some nitrate has deteriorated beyond salvation or is missing, the elements available, after a 4K scan, have revealed a level of detail in each cel previously not seen.

“The big breakthrough was putting up the original nitrate negative and scanning it,” says [Theo] Gluck [Director of Library Restoration and Preservation] . “The sharpness is there that you don’t have from the intermediate transfer. The line detail and line art is much more visible. Also the background is more detailed. The other thing that became apparent was the color shifts of all that intermediate stock. We had to do weeks of research to find the real color for our D-Cinema timing. We looked at original backgrounds and cels, pored over books, worked with animators. We got true color accuracy by going back to that original nitrate.”

-- http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news...nes/11958.html

[Strevlac]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

We had to do weeks of research to find the real color for our D-Cinema timing. We looked at original backgrounds and cels, pored over books, worked with animators. We got true color accuracy by going back to that original nitrate.”[/i]

-- http://www.studiodaily.com/main/news...nes/11958.html

Which was a lot of work when all they had to do was look at an IB Tech print.

[bigshot]

Wow! Weeks of work! Amazing. Sheesh!

The Animation Research Library doesn't have any cels from Fantasia. They were buried in barrels at the Golden Oak Ranch in the sixties after the Fire Marshal told them they couldn't store nitrate in the morgue. There are a few cels in the archives I imagine, but they have probably been repainted back in the 50s and 60s using the current palette. They did that a lot when paint started to chip.

It is quite easy to color correct when you have samples of the paint being used. Swatches were photographed and then the swatches were sent to the Technicolor consultant so they could time the print as close as possible. When the film process wasn't able to match, the paints were adjusted to try to overcome the limitations of the process. But that was the exception rather than the rule.

Color matching without being able to use the original film color timing is a very big job. But modern Disney doesn't always seem to care. They dont have a modern equivalent of a Technicolor consultant. Sometimes they hire artists like Toby Bluth and Ron Dias, and that's better than leaving it to a video engineer, but they have their own subjective color preferences. Disney's attitude is that they aren't restoring films for historical reasons, they're creating a new product for the modern market.... which makes sense for the corporation. That's why facilities like the UCLA Film and Television Archives are so vital.

[bigshot]

Traditionally Technicolor was always a little grainier than other processes, because there were three negatives with three sets of grain patterns stacked up on three dye transfer emulsions. Digital technology allows them to analyze the image that is common to all three negatives and filter out the grain pattern that is unique to each negative.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by bigshot

They have their own subjective color preferences.

And you don't? You seem very comfortable with the 1990 YCM restoration, which is unnaturally dark. Neither the YCM 1990 version nor the Lowry 2010 Blu version approximate what viewers actually saw 70 years ago. You seem to imply the 1990 version is correct, while Disney's own director of restoration says otherwise.

[trekdude]

Help me figure out the problem.

Put a new Fantasia blu-ray into my Sony BDP-350 player this morning and it said loading for 5-minutes. At that point I gave in and used the DVD.

The player is sometimes slow to load blu-rays, but never this slow.

Is it a bad blu-ray disc or a problem with the player?

[Marcus Wright]

Originally Posted by trekdude

Help me figure out the problem.

Put a new Fantasia blu-ray into my Sony BDP-350 player this morning and it said loading for 5-minutes. At that point I gave in and used the DVD.

The player is sometimes slow to load blu-rays, but never this slow.

Is it a bad blu-ray disc or a problem with the player?

I would say a combination of both.
Fantasia takes more time to load but in no way that long, so smth is wrong with your player as well.

P.S. Creating a new thread for this question was not necessary at all, you could have gotten an answer by posting in Fantasia thread.

[bigshot]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

And you don't? You seem very comfortable with the 1990 YCM restoration, which is unnaturally dark. Neither the YCM 1990 version nor the Lowry 2010 Blu version approximate what viewers actually saw 70 years ago.

it's easier to turn up the brightness on an overall dark transfer than it is to try to color correct a disk where the colors keep changing from scene to scene or where individual colors are shifted independent of the colors around them.

In animation art restoration, I was required to set my personal subjective preferences aside and match the original pallette as close as humanly possible. It was a painstaking process, but it wasn't impossible. Disney could do the same with their video releases if they wanted to. But they would have to spend more than a couple of weeks working on it.

[trekdude]

I have a probelm with my player or a bad disc.

Put a new Fantasia blu-ray into my Sony BDP-350 player this morning and it tried loading for 5-minutes before I gave up and used the DVD.

The player is sometimes slow, especially with Disney blu-rays, but it's never been this slow.

Any idea if the problem is the player or a bad disc?

Thanks

[rpneuss]

Originally Posted by trekdude

I have a probelm with my player or a bad disc.

Put a new Fantasia blu-ray into my Sony BDP-350 player this morning and it tried loading for 5-minutes before I gave up and used the DVD.

The player is sometimes slow, especially with Disney blu-rays, but it's never been this slow.

Any idea if the problem is the player or a bad disc?

Thanks

Are you just spamming? I swear you already posted this earlier. Am I in the Twilight Zone?

[Rizor]

Have you updated firmware?

I had no problem over the weekend on either Fantasia disc on the same model player.

[trekdude]

Originally Posted by rpneuss

Are you just spamming? I swear you already posted this earlier. Am I in the Twilight Zone?

You're not in the Twilight Zone. I tried posting, but my Explorer locked up and I thought the post was lost.

Sorry, if I posted twice.

I hope Wal-Mart will let me do an exchange to get a disc that works. My wife likes the movie, I'm indifferent.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by bigshot

it's easier to turn up the brightness on an overall dark transfer than it is to try to color correct a disk where the colors keep changing from scene to scene or where individual colors are shifted independent of the colors around them.

In animation art restoration, I was required to set my personal subjective preferences aside and match the original pallette as close as humanly possible. It was a painstaking process, but it wasn't impossible. Disney could do the same with their video releases if they wanted to. But they would have to spend more than a couple of weeks working on it.

"Quality-wise, Disney's new Blu-ray is stunning, with audio to match. Modern technology has met a 70 year old original negative, and the marriage has worked. Nothing necessary to make this perfect has been spared. Hats off to the entire crew behind this extraordinary release.
- film restoration legend Robert Harris at the Home Theater Forum
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/foru...sia-in-blu-ray

By the way, Stephen, any news about Disney re-joining the Annie Awards this year? Or are they still not going to participate?

[Rinzler]

I figure this is the best place to ask this question, I have a BB gift card burning a hole in my pocket and I missed out on the crazy deals on this and Sorcerer's Apprentice, and I can only get one... which should I get???? I want the 3 disc version of TSA which is at a crazy price right now...... this would almost be free with my 25 dollar gift card..... what should I do? The one I don't get will likely be an xmas gift from my parents..... HELP!

[RBBrittain]

Originally Posted by KennedyZL

I figure this is the best place to ask this question, I have a BB gift card burning a hole in my pocket and I missed out on the crazy deals on this and Sorcerer's Apprentice, and I can only get one... which should I get???? I want the 3 disc version of TSA which is at a crazy price right now...... this would almost be free with my 25 dollar gift card..... what should I do? The one I don't get will likely be an xmas gift from my parents..... HELP!

Get this one, as it's going back in the vault on March 15 (yes, after only 3-1/2 months--IIRC, the shortest Disney release window since the "Limited Issue" DVDs of a decade ago); TSA should be around awhile longer. (Not to mention F40 and F2K are probably each better than TSA, unless you're a die-hard Nic Cage fan.)

[Riddler95]

Overall Fantasia & Fantasia 2000 look and sound terrific on Blu-Ray. My discs worked perfectly on my Playstation 3 with no problems. I am really happy to finally own these movies on Blu-Ray & DVD, but I do have one complaint.

My biggest complaint of the Blu-Ray set is the Virtual Vault, It is really annoying watching the bonus features because it takes forever to load them up, they still have to load even when you've watched a few minutes of it, and I hate that they don't fill the entire HDTV screen.

The bonus features should have been included on a third disc, I was really looking forward to them. I really hope that Disney provides a service so we can get the Virtual Vault bonus features on a Blu-Ray Disc or even a DVD.

[hurm]

Is anyone having the same problem? Fantasia won't load. Sometimes, some discs take some time, but I let it loading for 10 minutes and nothing. On the other hand, Fantasia 2000 does work. Does anybody know if this is a player or a disc problem?