Disney Classics Screenshot Comparisons

[yumny]

Originally Posted by Lnds500

I went from Gold Collection DVD to Blu-ray and the leap is equally astounding. The 10th Anniversary release was a digital-to-digital transfer and it was pretty impressive but it was never released here so I never actually saw it.

I posted a comparison when I got my hands on the Blu-ray. These are not exact frames but you get the difference.

Might do a full comparison of this one

You oughta! If so, including VHS pictures and 10th Amniversary pictures would make it even sweeter.
To people who haven't seen it yet, Pocahontas is a visual treat of the highest order on Blu-Ray. I cannot believe my eyes everytime I see it. Certain scenes I can just watch over and over, like the scene where John and Pocahontas meet, or the scene they wave goodbye in the very end..

[Freddy2]

Originally Posted by Lnds500

I posted a comparison when I got my hands on the Blu-ray. These are not exact frames but you get the difference.

I remember having seen these back then, but I forgot about them. Thanks for posting it again!...

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by yumny

Anyway to come back to topic, it's interesting to talk to someone who caught these movies in cinemas. I don't know if Lion King / Pocahontas originally had grain in cinemas; you're implying that they did. Either way I would not have liked them all grainy.

Yumny -- the CAPS films were digital information, but physical negatives were created from these, and from these negatives, the film prints were created that everyone saw in the theaters all across the world. Since everyone in the early 90's saw these via film, and all film has film grain, of course The Lion King and the others had grain in cinemas. Believe it or not, Toy Story had grain in the cinemas. It wasn't until the advent of digital projection that you could go see a "digital" movie without film grain.

Hope that helps.

Best, ER3

[yumny]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

Yumny -- the CAPS films were digital information, but physical negatives were created from these, and from these negatives, the film prints were created that everyone saw in the theaters all across the world. Since everyone in the early 90's saw these via film, and all film has film grain, of course The Lion King and the others had grain in cinemas. Believe it or not, Toy Story had grain in the cinemas. It wasn't until the advent of digital projection that you could go see a "digital" movie without film grain.

Hope that helps.

Best, ER3

It does. I'm not an expert on film and I hope I don't sound too ignorant asking these kind of questions, but I like having this kind of knowledge. I will definitely research this some more.

[miniroll32]

Originally Posted by Lnds500

So you are saying that the film + grain is a more accurate representation of the film?

To put it simpler, although the CAPS system was a production element in this movie (a contributor to its production), it was not the master to which copies were made for media/screenings, unlike today. The master was a positive film print struck from the digital files, and that is where subsequent dupes came from.

Therefore, a 'faithful' representation of the movie would come from those master film elements. But today, it would be deemed a waste of time and effort transferring those film elements because the digital files already exist. So, although you're seeing the the movie in it's original digital form, it will look unlike anything we have seen before purely because the analogue dupes of the time altered the look of the movie.

[Lnds500]

Originally Posted by miniroll32

To put it simpler, although the CAPS system was a production element in this movie (a contributor to its production), it was not the master to which copies were made for media/screenings, unlike today. The master was a positive film print struck from the digital files, and that is where subsequent dupes came from.

Therefore, a 'faithful' representation of the movie would come from those master film elements. But today, it would be deemed a waste of time and effort transferring those film elements because the digital files already exist. So, although you're seeing the the movie in it's original digital form, it will look unlike anything we have seen before purely because the analogue dupes of the time altered the look of the movie.

the film was the master and that's only because they could use the caps files at the time. So, the BD is a faitful (?) representation of how the film looked in cinemas, not of the actual source. The source was the CAPS system. A faithful representation of the film lies in those CAPS files.

You wouldn't call Pixar's Brave a faithful reproduction if the BD was sourced from a film print right?

[Freddy2]

Originally Posted by Lnds500

the film was the master and that's only because they couldn't use the caps files at the time. So, the BD is a faitful (?) representation of how the film looked in cinemas, not of the actual source. The source was the CAPS system. A faithful representation of the film lies in those CAPS files.

Just to add a little clarity here: yes, the CAPS files CAN be used as an accurate new master, but only AFTER they have been corrected for every effect the original animators knew the transferring to film part would add to their work, like color changes AND subtle grain.

[Lnds500]

Originally Posted by Freddy2

Just to add a little clarity here: yes, the CAPS files CAN be used as an accurate new master, but only AFTER they have been corrected for every effect the original animators knew the transferring to film part would add to their work, like color changes AND subtle grain.

I don't know if the film affected colours but yes, anything would need to be accounted for. Colour timing however would and will happen simply cause TV standards change etc etc

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by Lnds500

I don't know if the film affected colours but yes, anything would need to be accounted for. Colour timing however would and will happen simply cause TV standards change etc etc

The bulb lamp and brightness and temperature of the lamp would affect the color (of an IP). I remember seeing a picture from Disney's camera department during the 1st Golden Age, and they had a wall covered almost floor to ceiling with examples of how colors painted on the cells actually looked like once photographed and projected. In a way, it's almost a mistake to return to the cels and original backgrounds for color timing, because the films were made knowing there'd be color distortion from the Technocolor photography process and exhibition.

I don't want to make assumptions or theories rgearding the modern films, I just have suspicions they were colored with the knowledge they'd undergo a similar process from CRT screen to photography to IPs to theater screen.

[Lnds500]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

The bulb lamp and brightness and temperature of the lamp would affect the color (of an IP). I remember seeing a picture from Disney's camera department during the 1st Golden Age, and they had a wall covered almost floor to ceiling with examples of how colors painted on the cells actually looked like once photographed and projected. In a way, it's almost a mistake to return to the cels and original backgrounds for color timing, because the films were made knowing there'd be color distortion from the Technocolor photography process and exhibition.

I don't want to make assumptions or theories rgearding the modern films, I just have suspicions they were colored with the knowledge they'd undergo a similar process from CRT screen to photography to IPs to theater screen.

Thanks for the clarification!

[gregmasciola]

Originally Posted by yumny

Ha, that would be something, wouldn't it?
To be fair though nowadays I fluctuate between VHS and Blu - Blu because it's the only thing I accept anymore, VHS because it's really nostalgic.
I simply can't bear to watch DVDs anymore, it strains my eyes.

But VHS doesn't?

[yumny]

Originally Posted by gregmasciola

But VHS doesn't?

There's a difference
Watching DVD's on a large HDTV using a Blu-Ray player has become increasingly hard on the eyes because you see all the transfer faults.
But just putting a weary tape in the VCR and watching it on the old tube tv.. well I have been doing that since I was 3 years old, so nostalgia filters out anything that could annoy me.

[yumny]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

The bulb lamp and brightness and temperature of the lamp would affect the color (of an IP). I remember seeing a picture from Disney's camera department during the 1st Golden Age, and they had a wall covered almost floor to ceiling with examples of how colors painted on the cells actually looked like once photographed and projected. In a way, it's almost a mistake to return to the cels and original backgrounds for color timing, because the films were made knowing there'd be color distortion from the Technocolor photography process and exhibition.

I don't want to make assumptions or theories rgearding the modern films, I just have suspicions they were colored with the knowledge they'd undergo a similar process from CRT screen to photography to IPs to theater screen.

That's really interesting to know. Either way, I would still rather have a less warmly-colored CAPS transfer of RDE than the presumably faithful grainy one, but thanks for the explanation.

[superrune]

I thought I'd quickly chime in on this thread, this might be my first post on these forums. I was watching Cinderella with my daughter a couple of days ago, and I thought I recognized the same artifacts that troubled me about the Laserdisc "restorations" some 15 years ago. A quick google led me here.

I used to do a lot of work with post-production for film, where we frequently remove grain to add it back later after a VFX is done. The filtering process is temporal, averaging together details from multiple frames in order to find the non-grained pixel color value. This pumps up the detail massively in areas that are static, but will kill a lot of detail that is fast moving and very thin - and then made worse when it's happening in low-contrast areas. This was happening all over the place on the Laserdiscs (I remember screencaps of Jiminy Crickets hair at the time), and that's the same thing that's happening with the fine lines on the dress. They seem to be doing some pseudo-intelligent re-coloring of the foreground elements as well, I wonder it that's automatic or done by hand. Anyway, it keeps picking the wrong colors.

My daughter didn't mind of course, and so won't 99.9% of the people buying this Blu-Ray. But I hope that Disney some time in the future does some restoration that is more fair to the films - keeping more of the grain and as a result getting the detail back.

If anyone has the opportunity, it would be very interesting to compare the VHS and Blu grabs to the actual scanned frames that are shown in the Disney animation books. The colors will be wrong, but I think there are even more details that could be missing from the animation.

[Lnds500]

Originally Posted by superrune

I thought I'd quickly chime in on this thread, this might be my first post on these forums. I was watching Cinderella with my daughter a couple of days ago, and I thought I recognized the same artifacts that troubled me about the Laserdisc "restorations" some 15 years ago. A quick google led me here.

I used to do a lot of work with post-production for film, where we frequently remove grain to add it back later after a VFX is done. The filtering process is temporal, averaging together details from multiple frames in order to find the non-grained pixel color value. This pumps up the detail massively in areas that are static, but will kill a lot of detail that is fast moving and very thin - and then made worse when it's happening in low-contrast areas. This was happening all over the place on the Laserdiscs (I remember screencaps of Jiminy Crickets hair at the time), and that's the same thing that's happening with the fine lines on the dress. They seem to be doing some pseudo-intelligent re-coloring of the foreground elements as well, I wonder it that's automatic or done by hand. Anyway, it keeps picking the wrong colors.

My daughter didn't mind of course, and so won't 99.9% of the people buying this Blu-Ray. But I hope that Disney some time in the future does some restoration that is more fair to the films - keeping more of the grain and as a result getting the detail back.

If anyone has the opportunity, it would be very interesting to compare the VHS and Blu grabs to the actual scanned frames that are shown in the Disney animation books. The colors will be wrong, but I think there are even more details that could be missing from the animation.

Thanks for the info! Could you direct me to a book like the one you refer to?

[superrune]

The Art of Walt Disney by Christopher Finch has a stunning two-page spread on pages 288-289, with smaller stills around them. Some could be promo stills, but I don't think so.

Treasures of Disney Animation Art by John Canemaker and Robert Abrams also has two huge stills on pages 250-251. The detail in those two are amazing. This is a archival book, supposed to feature only actual film production artwork.

The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas also has some stills (This book is considered the Disney animation bible, I have several copies actually!). Page 216 show Cinderella with fairy godmother, and show the proper details in the dress. 249 and 378 clearly show the different colors of her skirt.

I collected Disney art books in the nineties, and these are from the largest format books I own.

I'll see if I can pop some of these into the scanner later in the week. Days are a bit busy around here though, so no guarantees..

[superrune]

I took a quick look at my old CAV special edition laserdisc (there can't be many of you with those lying around...), and inside there's a both an art book and a "lithograph" (= cheap digital print).

The print has the transformation scene, so that's a great thing to scan. The book has a lot of retouched/airbrushed artwork, but also plenty of stills that seem original. Will see if I can show you some of those as well.

[Ernest Rister]

Originally Posted by yumny

That's really interesting to know. Either way, I would still rather have a less warmly-colored CAPS transfer of RDE than the presumably faithful grainy one, but thanks for the explanation.

I'm in the opposite camp - I'd rather have grain and intention, than no grain and inaccurate. That DVD was hideous. I'd hate to see the thing only sharper. That would be like fingernails on the chalkboard inside my brain.

[yumny]

Originally Posted by Ernest Rister

I'm in the opposite camp - I'd rather have grain and intention, than no grain and inaccurate. That DVD was hideous. I'd hate to see the thing only sharper. That would be like fingernails on the chalkboard inside my brain.

Making me think about the DVD only hurts my head.

[Lnds500]

35) Hercules (1997)

-------- DVD --------------- HDTVrip






















Sources: - Hercules DVD
---------- Hercules.1997.720p.HDTV.DD5.1.x264-CtrlHD (Greek)