Superman: The Movie 4K UHD (1978)

[Sky_Captain]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What about the sunrise shot, Cap? Be a darling and show us how that looks on your telly.

Oh, the 'banding' is definitely there, with the column on the left being the worst offender as it's visible throughout that shot.
Getting it to appear in a photo was a pain in the bum, though.

[Geoff D]

I can still see it there, ta muchly!

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by MisterXDTV

I will call you "Hawk-Eye".

From a detailed article about the 2001 Special Edition DVD (interview to Michael Thau)

What can I say? I see things, things other people wouldn't see.

It cracks me up that the scene looks so much more consistent in the TV version though. Some people might well say "the TV version is lower quality anyway, maybe that scene just doesn't stand out as much?" but the lines look so clean in comparison. What I mean is that the replaced section has a kind of 'fringing' effect that marks it out as a dupe (from the separations not being in register, as Thau said) whereas the TV cut looks sharper and is so much more precisely aligned. It's a pity no-one at Warners clocked that when putting the 4K transfer together, although given the new errors that were added while they were fixing others they would probably have found something to foul up, just to even it out like.

[MisterXDTV]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

What can I say? I see things, things other people wouldn't see.

It cracks me up that the scene looks so much more consistent in the TV version though. Some people might well say "the TV version is lower quality anyway, maybe that scene just doesn't stand out as much?" but the lines look so clean in comparison. What I mean is that the replaced section has a kind of 'fringing' effect that marks it out as a dupe (from the separations not being in register, as Thau said) whereas the TV cut looks sharper and is so much more precisely aligned. It's a pity no-one at Warners clocked that when putting the 4K transfer together, although given the new errors that were added while they were fixing others they would probably have found something to foul up, just to even it out like.

According to Thau in 2001 they used another (older) IP to replace that section:

There was six tons of stuff that was just Superman I. That includes the negative. They shot 1.8 million feet of negative. Not all of it was used, a lot of it wasn't even printed: "b-neg", the bad takes not worth printing. At first, they gave me the inventory of the stuff and they said, "Why don't you have them send over what will help you start your work now and then we'll have the rest of it sent over on a boat because they didn't want to have everything sent over via plane because it was SIX TONS! The inventory of the negative was pretty simple, there was only six or seven items listed. One item was something like 4,232 boxes of negative. But what this huge catalog was mostly was the positive from the cutting room.

When the six tons came over, we found that none of the negative was documented properly. There was a couple million feet of negative and we weren't sure if it was mixed with Superman II. Luckily, they had kept it relatively apart but that was only half of the confusion. We never knew if all of the negative was all together, or in another lab. Joe Botano is an old lab guy who can handles negative and knows all this stuff and he spent months going through every piece of negative and documenting it. This is where my assistant, Elaine, with Joe's help eventually found Chris' original screen test footage, which they had kept from those early tests shoots.

We went thru the cut negative and there was a lot of non-visual effects opticals, like flops, speed-ups, slow-downs. Stuart is notorious for tricking out film with, as I call it, editorial opticals. These had been made on a stock popular used only in the late ®70's called CRI, Color Reversal Internegative, instead of IP. Many of these opticals had stained over the years. So in all those cases, we tried to find the original negative, which drove Joe crazy, and we remade the opticals on IP and then cut the dupe neg in to the original negative, which we had to do in a very particular way. There was an older IP of the entire movie and, luckily, it was made before the Lex Luthor / kryptonite section was damaged. We used this as a good element for that area.

I then retimed the whole film in the lab and that gave me an IP that we could fine tune even farther as we did the transfer for the DVD. Normally you cut a film as a single strand negative. So "Reel 1" is one piece of negative, "Reel 2" is one piece of negative¾ Superman was done as A/B printing in the lab which meant that anytime there was a dissolve or a fade out or a fade in, that was done in the lab. There's tons of dissolves in Superman and what happens in the lab, there's an "A" strand of "Reel 1" and a "B" strand of "Reel 1." So when you get to a dissolve, the shot that you're dissolving out of is on the "A" strand, the incoming part of the dissolve is on the "B" strand and the lab does the cross in printing.

That way, you don't gain a generation on what would normally be an optical dissolve. That's not uncommon for films. Mark Solomon, head of feature postproduction, didn't want me to cut into any of the negative. So when I replaced a shot, I couldn't cut out the old shot and a lot of times it was too complicated to put it in the opposite "A" strand and "B" strand, so I actually created the "C" strand that has most of the new negative. But the old negative is still there with all the stains and all the grainy shots and tears. It's still there and someone can get their hands on it if they really want to.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Sky_Captain

SDR converted caps or not, there's some bullshit flying around here.

This guy was overreacting in the “Supergirl” thread awhile back about color timing. The shots look fine and I can’t wait to finally add this film in my collection.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by MisterXDTV

According to Thau in 2001 they used another (older) IP to replace that section:

Still looks very much like a dupe in any case, it wouldn't surprise me if the new transfer was done from those original A/B rolls with the poorer quality Lex's lair dupe rather than the new C strand that was created with all the redone opticals - [edit] hence the sunrise shot looking like ass with all that banding, hence the garbage mattes now being visible as the ship flies away from Krypton - and the TV cut version still manages to looks better there to my eyes. Incidentally, note that my hunch about it being cut to A/B rolls was also correct

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The opticals make the grain coarser, natch, as does an apparent dupe section right when Luthor opens the chest with the Kryptonite in, and the rest of that scene looks noticeably worse off. Thankfully the myriad dissolves in the movie hold up brilliantly and never drop a generation or three, so I would guess that this was originally cut to A and B rolls to maintain this quality.

[MisterXDTV]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Still looks very much like a dupe in any case, and the TV cut version still manages to looks better there to my eyes. Incidentally, note that my hunch about it being cut to A/B rolls was also correct

I mean, what more can I say? You make me angry...

[Geoff D]

Thanks a LOT for posting those bits about the SE restoration though, it's making things a lot clearer as to why the 4K transfer of STM has the errors that it does.

[MisterXDTV]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Thanks a LOT for posting those bits about the restoration though, it's making things a lot clearer as to why the 4K transfer of STM has the errors that it does.

The article is truly amazing. I was able to recover it using Web Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030727...port/superman/

Here is the "Thau" section about the work done for the 2001 SE (5 pages)

https://web.archive.org/web/20041206...an/thau_1.html

[Geoff D]

Awesome work dude, will give that a proper read when I get home from work.

[punisher]

Originally Posted by Sky_Captain

Oh, the 'banding' is definitely there, with the column on the left being the worst offender as it's visible throughout that shot.
Getting it to appear in a photo was a pain in the bum, though.

I'm blind....or too smart to care.

[5x10]

Those Blu Ray shots look better than the uhd, I’m gonna have to watch it today to see if it’s any better

[Yojimbo68]

So I made my obligatory annual purchase of Superman: The Movie this week.

I was going to pass on this at first (or at least wait for a price plunge) but the inclusion of the original 70mm audio for the first time in any video format made me take the release date week bait. Even though the 70mm audio is presented in the lossy format, I found it quite robust. I even turned on the buttkickers for a lark and got some surprisingly nice nudges, most notably in the Krypton demise and earthquake sequences. I have never been of fan of the revisionist Superman: The Movie audio changes. For me it's right up there with The Terminator as far as bad audio decisions go. So this "new" lossy 5.1 track is the way I'll be watching the film from here on in. I'll give the Dolby Atoms track a spin at some point just because...any excuse to watch this movie is a good thing..

As far as video goes, I'm still in the stone age of 1080P resolution, so I watched the 4K disc without the help of HDR. Most 4K stuff displayed on my projector set up is a tad too dark so I have to set the gamma up a few notches. Keep this in mind as I'm not offering a definitive critique on the 4K video. Just impressions on a non HDR viewing of the 4K disc. First off, It looks 10 times better than some of the caps presented here. Yeah, it's a bit washed out compared to a new shiny brand spanking new flick shot in 8K but it does seem faithful to Geoffrey Unsworth's original intention. I did get more glow on those Krypton costumes than some of the 4K screen grabs I've seen with HDR enabled. Supes costume looked great and some of the best looking sequences were the opening credits and the POV Brando time and space scenes. I did get some weird black shading on Brando's face in the opening sequence but I think that's my now decade old projector trying to keep up with the 4K goodness.


Overall I enjoyed this 4K disc and the real star for me is the original 70mm audio. I love this movie and it's great to have a 4K scan available at my fingertips. I've come a long way from picking up that widescreen laserdisc release...

[Croweyes1121]

Originally Posted by Agent Kay

They are direct HDR caps

They look like that as the HDR cannot be seen on an SDR display

So you’re comparing shots in the correct color space to ones in the incorrect color space. Makes sense.

[HunterTech]

Originally Posted by punisher

I'm blind....or too smart to care.

I'm barely awake, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Seriously, how much longer are the "just enjoy the movie man" folks gonna go before they go to a release that even they would find inexcusable? Not many are even saying Supes looks like complete garbage, so what's the issue with pointing out the faults in an otherwise decent release?

[Mocorongo]

Originally Posted by 5x10

Those Blu Ray shots look better than the uhd, I’m gonna have to watch it today to see if it’s any better

I'll post 2 samples here and 1 in the 2001: A Space Odyssey thread later...

I got the Blu-ray, so the picture below is not lossy, it's lossless just like the UHD-HD.

At least in my PC the Matroska from both look like this...

UHD:



Blu-ray:



UHD:



Blu-ray:



UHD:



Blu-ray:



Has anyone checked in a PC?

Warner was accused in the past of inserting a green tint in the Lord of the Rings Blu-ray.

LOTR - Green Cast Comparison (Extended Left vs Theatrical Right) - YouTube

If this isn't the case then please tell me what I must do to improve this picture. I checked the 2001: A Space Odyssey 4K Blu-ray in my PC and it doesn't look it has been altered this way.

[punisher]

your PC doesn't look up to the task of watching a 4K disc. Either you need a better video card or somethings set wrong. Your UHD shots look like a VHS tape.

[ROSS.T.G.]

The movie did not looked washed out at all on my display. Not in the slightest.

[Noremac Mij]

@Mocorongo, could you do us all a favor and stop posting these nonsense caps? Thanks!

[Mocorongo]

Originally Posted by punisher

your PC doesn't look up to the task of watching a 4K disc. Either you need a better video card or somethings set wrong. Your UHD shots look like a VHS tape.

This is what it looks like:

-

#2:
-

And this is from the Blu-ray:

#1:
-

#2:
-

Don't try to stream. Download all files and then try playing them.

I knew there was something fishy going on...

Felt like I was watching Dracula (1979)

Originally Posted by ROSS.T.G.

The movie did not looked washed out at all on my display. Not in the slightest.

Where can I find some real caps from this 4K disc? If they look OK then the problem is here.

You can't have two different screenshots from the same disc, unless you are either altering the photos or not using the same source. With screenshots captured from this 4K disc anyone will know for sure how this movie looks like.

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

@Mocorongo, could you do us all a favor and stop posting these nonsense caps? Thanks!

Why? Are you working for Warner?