Augustes

My question is simple -


How are older classic films that were NOT filmed with digital equipment, or hi res in mind going to look on HD DVD, or blu ray ??? There are lots of great older films that have a pretty lame ass looking transfer on DVD.... so hows it going to look on HD DVD ? What extra mechanisms will they use to really ensure an even greater transfer or increase in PQ ?

???

redford

Since film has a higher resolution than anything filmed today with digital equipment, "classic" movies can look damn good in HD assuming they are mastered properly.

Nero

well film doesnt really have resolution, its film. what im wondering though is - are they going to do a better job with the transfer process from the film reel to HDDVD than they did with film reel to DVD? I mean, alot of DVDs paticularly old b movies and horror movies dont really look that great, they are barely a step up from VHS. I suppose they are just limited to how the master film reel looks huh? unless they want to pay an effects house to painstakingly correct all the scratches and defects in the film, etc.

Nimbus

Obviously it will depend on the quality of the available elements, but film quality is higher than any digital output an HDTV can produce so as long as the film elements are good and the transfer is done properly the films should look as good as things filmed with digital cameras.

The old movies you have seen that look VHS quality are usually mastered from 16mm elements. That is why they are so blurry.

redford

Not in the sense of pixels, but the equivalent is much, much higher than HD.

Some of the older movies I've seen in high-definition (continuing with your horror example, including some of Universal's Hammer titles) look drop-dead gorgeous...a huge, huge improvement over DVD.

Augustes

I agree with everyone else. It's not as if every movie made before "Attack of the Clones" was etched frame by frame into stone by cavemen. Thirty-five millimeter film is much high resolution than DVD.

If you have specific examples of inferior transfers of older films, feel free to share them with us by title. Time has not been kind to every movie --- many were stored improperly, leading to degradation --- and studios have not always made a great effort to do older films justice when they've transferred them to DVD.

Nero

a while back i read something about a group figuring out what film's digital equivalent is. i don't remember the resolution or whatever, but i remember each frame was equivalent to something crazy lile 1 or 2gb. 1 FRAME. so needless to say, HD doesn't compare at all.

Nimbus

Film is not measured in terms of resolution but in grain. Generally speaking, scanning a frame at a resolution of around 4000 DPI should yield an image similiar to the original 35mm frame. Essentially, what this means is that any DVD, when compared to the original 35mm print, will look like ratshit no matter the age of the film.

I'm still eagerly awaiting the post-HDDVD format!

Edit: Just to note, film should be capable of somewhere up to 6K but since it is an analog medium, it can vary wildly depending on lenses and lighting.

redford

It all depend on who is doing the mastering. I have an import of a remastered Shaw Brothers film that look simply amazing, while other masters look horrible in comparison. If they take the time to do digital correction to the film, they can get some amazing images.

Nero

But you have to remember that with age can come deterioration. But as long as care is taken with the restoration of the film and the transfer is done well, the age of the film has no bearing. This is one of those things that keeps coming up, like the year 2000 was magic and all films since then are the only ones capable of gaining from a HD presentation.

Believe me, when that HD version of Citizen Kane is released, I'm there.