When is a movie too OLD for Blu-Ray?

Anything shot on film can look great on BD but like you said in most cases the older the film is it generally needs more love and care to get to looking like something Criterion would generally release.

So I guess yes and no?

I don't think there's any limit. If anything, the older and more damaged films benefit MORE from Blu Ray. They look more like you're watching an actual print, dirt, damage and all. Newer ones are pristine and will still look decent on DVD.

No film is too old, my blu-ray of SUNRISE (1929) can attest to that.

Depends on the film: there are a couple that I suspect don't exist in any form that contains more resolution than you'll get on SD. This is more down to original filming techniques and storage rather than age though.

Unfortunately two of them are favourites of mine:

"Treasure of the Seirra Madre" and "Seven Samurai" don't have much more to offer beyond what you find on the latest dvd releases: You'll get benefits from the lack of interlacing, newer codecs and bit rates that BD offers but I doubt there is much more than SD left on any of the remaining film elements. I'd love to be proven wrong on this though.

Lost film


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_film

See link for titles listed and such.

What elements are there for those movies? Dr. Strangelove and Becket are two examples of films where there is no surviving negative.


Irrelevant.

By that definition, neither Treasure of the Sierra Madre nor Seven Samurai are "lost films."

Not to mention that it is inherently impossible to have a BD of a "lost film." Because it is lost altogether, let alone in hidef.

Does the Interpositive exist for those two films? If so they can work from that as long as it is not too far gone.


Relevant to those that want to see some trivia, especially the list of incomplete films like HELP! and 2001.

Nope.

Strangelove was pieced together using a fine-grain master positive, a duplicate negative and a print; each element "a different number of generations away from the original negative, resulting in wide variations in density and contrast."

Becket was restored using YCM separation protection masters, from which a new interpositive was created.

What do you think about those two Blu-rays? Oh, sorry...

Interesting - thanks.


Oh gee . . . a cheap shot/one line zinger.

Once you get into the silent era, you're talking about 16mm copies of prints that were often near death excluding some prints that were meticulously cared for (like everything D.W. Griffith ever released). For example I'd be surprised if there is a print of Metropolis (from the same year as Sunrise) that would look much better in HD.

But I like surprises!

heh...

Slightly OT and not moving pictures; Interesting story on some of the first color technologies for film. No after colorization. Remarkable quality.






part1.
http://quazen.com/arts/photography/t...okudin-gorsky/

part2.
http://quazen.com/arts/photography/t...gorsky-part-2/

Well let me take a look in my own private film vault... nope sorry can't find those two.




That wasn't his point. What's yours exactly?

A "fine grain master positive" is an interpositive. Interpositives are usually fine grain stocks.

The duplicate negative would in fact be an internegative and as such one generation down on the IP. These would have the same contrast .

The print would be higher con but I don't think the contrast paradigm with B/W is quite as extreme as it would be with colour.

This is a common approach to preserve color film. B&W fine grain film is very stable. I suppose the process will eventually be replaced by DI. Preservation to YCMs is quite labor intensive as each record needs to be QC'd, then a test IP is created to be sure it actually worked.

I surely hope Hollywood won't abandon YCM preservation masters for the time being.

I don't trust ANY current file format, Cineon, DPX, DNG, TIFF, etc, to be perfectly readable a few years in the future, as digital technology is in a constant flux.

Also, DIs finalized in 2K don't have nearly resolution enough to be long archival masters, and that's the bulk of all intermediates being done today.

Suppose in the future you need to strike a IMAX or 70mm print from a 2K DI, or even if you wanted to make a 4K DCI master? It'd look terrible.

You're the one that brought them up and claimed that they "don't have much more to offer beyond what you find on the latest dvd releases." Why'd you say that?

Not to mention all the features shot on 2K digital tape based cameras (no RAW) when they want to release them on future HT media & TV standards in 4K or 8K. From 2megapixel capture to 10megapixel media, that's a lot of information that needs to be added to the original.

Possibility great regrets in the future when a decade or more of a large number of features just can't be up-converted to look satisfactory.

I'm quite clear in my post.

From the captures of Sierra Madre on DVDBeaver I'd say a decent HD version would look pretty good. At least as good as Casablanca.

I'd say the cineon and dpx formats are standardised and recognized globally to the extent that its unlikely that they would ever be in danger of being unreadable in themselves.

I would say there is a certain level of risk in the data itself becoming corrupted but in all honesty if a few years down the line we had trouble with DPX files its likely because we were all reduced to living in caves and image data formats would be the least of our concerns.

An even better example is Wages of Fear, which is closer to TTotSM in production year, theme and geographical setting.

There is some second hand info regarding Treasure that suggests Bob Harris thinks the negative is in pretty good condition. Whether this is true and whether it still means that even in good condition the negative ever contained significantly greater resolution than SD remains to be seen.

But as I said I'd like to be surprised.

Casablanca was mainly studio shot. Treasure was studio and a large part location : the differences in image from scene to scene are quite obvious even on SD.

Wages of Fear (again)
The Searchers
The Third Man

Shot on location.

Yeah see the thing is Grubert I'm not really interested into entering into some sort of meaningless tit for tat argument with you. This thread is not about that and no-one else on here apart from your good self has tried to pull it into that direction.

No, I'm serious. I honestly want to know, why do you think that The Treasure of the Sierra Madre will not benefit from HD?

If it isn't because of the year, the cinematography, or the studio, why is it?

Especially if you say there is a usable negative.

Why?

You can't just come out and lob a comment like that and then refuse to explain.

Back to the subject at hand . . .

When is a movie too OLD for Blu-Ray?

The answer would be based on the ROI from the studios standpoint. So this becomes a subjective question. Some old movies have a very high appeal while others have almost none.

The studio has to gauge interest in a movie before it committs it's resources and money to bring that title to BD. And of course, the issue of restoration and film elements condition plays a big part in that. I am sure WB spent a bunch of money on the Wizard of Oz because they knew this has a large audience. The same with Casablanca. i am sure we could all list the films that would be added to that list - the classics that people have bought before and will buy again.

So IMO - the age of the movie has nothing to do with BD. It will be the size of the potential market that will buy the movie on BD - that is all that counts.

Quite remarkable--thanks for sharing that, coolscan.

Photography ,filmstock, storage. I suspect that even of the neg for treasure aand certainly seven samurai was pristine it would possibly not contain any more resolvable detail than SD.

This is not the case for every film of these sort of ages or even older. The reasons for this vary from film to film depending on a lot of less than obvious factors. For example developments in one are of film technology (latitude) often have a compromising effect on oher aspects (resolution) and it can take a bit of time before one improvement is optimised enough to not impact other areas.