What's new

Sleeping Beauty S.E. DVD not properly Scanned!!! (1 Viewer)

EnricoE

Supporting Actor
Joined
Oct 14, 2003
Messages
530
i wont say anything about the restoration quality itself as it looks fantastic. but there is a hick-up and it kinda bothers me ...

i just made a trailer re-edit for the little mermaid theatrical trailer as the the trailer on the dvd is in horrible shape. therefor i needed the scenes from various disney classics including sleeping beauty. while editing i wondered why the top of the new s.b. is so much cut off. so i made a comparison using the original trailer from the little mermaid, the widescreen and fullscreen version of sleeping beauty s.e. and mixed it all together in photoshop.

this pic here was the result

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/a/a4/htf_imgcache_2164.jpeg] [/url]

red - pan&scan sleeping beauty s.e. dvd
green - widescreen sleeping beauty s.e. dvd
yellow - footage used in little mermaid trailer

as you can see, the mermaid footage shows quite alot more footage at the top and some extra pixels at the bottom.

personally i think disney should do a new version of the movie with the proper aspect ratio

update

found the old review thread from david boulet and it was talked about the problem of cropping the movie.
 

Lord Dalek

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2005
Messages
7,093
Real Name
Joel Henderson
Well considering the way Technirama worked (an anamorphic squeeze applied to a VistaVision-type frame yeilding 2.25:1), it would be completely impossible not to have some form of cropping, either to 2.35:1 or 2.20:1 (Super Technirama 70) . The 2.30:1 image on the dvd is a sort of happy medium between these two extremes and I am more than happy with it.
 

ScottR

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2000
Messages
2,646
Yeah, but the problem is that it cuts too much off of the bottom (see the opening credits), too much off of the top, and cropping on both sides.
 

cafink

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,044
Real Name
Carl Fink

Why? There is certainly no technical limitation of the DVD format to prevent a picture from being framed at 2.25:1, or any aspect ratio at all, for that matter. Where exactly does this impossibility lie?
 

Chuck Pennington

Screenwriter
Joined
May 11, 2001
Messages
1,048
If you watch the restoration featurette, you'll see how they removed the animation from the backgrounds then recomposited it over "cleaned" backgrounds. It is possible this wasn't done precisely and that could account for some of these framing differences.
 

Stephen_J_H

All Things Film Junkie
Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jul 30, 2003
Messages
7,871
Location
North of the 49th
Real Name
Stephen J. Hill
Dollars and cents. Disney would have to transfer a 70mm element to get the correct AR. As Robert Harris explained in numerous threads involving large format films (the Ben-Hur 4-disc comes to mind), HD res 70mm scanning equipment isn't all that common, and scanning 70mm is expensive if and when you can get the equipment. One would assume that for legacy purposes the Mouse House would want to scan their films in HD res.

The current transfer of Sleeping Beauty is from a 35mm reduction print. the time and money to do a proper 70mm transfer was deemed cost-prohibitive by Disney, especially since they would have to track down a suitable 70mm element for the transfer, get the proper equipment to do an HD scan and then do digital cleanup.

Would I love a transfer from 70mm elements? Absolutely, but I also understand that this is a business, and will gladly wait until Disney deems it fiscally sensible to go back to the 70mm elements for an HD transfer. The current transfer is good enough for my present equipment.
 

Brian Sharp

Second Unit
Joined
Oct 1, 2005
Messages
264
Location
Robin Hood Country
Real Name
Brian Sharp
If I remember correctly the image did not consistently fill the the 70mm frame; there was occasional masking at the bottom. We had special aperture plates to mask to something closer to 2.35:1
 

cafink

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 19, 1999
Messages
3,044
Real Name
Carl Fink
Thanks for the information, Stephen. Based on your comments, it sounds like a precisely-framed 2.25:1 transfer would be prohibitively expensive, not "completely impossible."
 

Patrick McCart

Premium
Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 16, 2001
Messages
8,196
Location
Georgia (the state)
Real Name
Patrick McCart

That doesn't make sense. Technirama used an anamorphic lens, which means there would be slight distortion on the edges (as is the case with CinemaScope, Panavision, and Ultra Panavision films). If there's a pan/tilt or a zoom, the geometry chnges.
 

Simon Howson

Screenwriter
Joined
Feb 19, 2004
Messages
1,780

Wasn't one of the benefits of Technirama that it only used a 1.5 X anamorphic factor, and a prism based anamorphic lens. Hence it avoided many of the distortion inherent in 2X CinemaScope lenses.
 
Joined
Oct 10, 2006
Messages
28
Real Name
Robert
Don't know if this helps or not, but Sleeping Beauty was announced by Walt himself as being shot in "Technirama 70", the same process used for The Black Cauldron.

I don't know what the hell Technirama 70 is, or what impact that would have on the discussion. Just thought I would throw it out there.
 

Lord Dalek

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Apr 4, 2005
Messages
7,093
Real Name
Joel Henderson
Super Technirama 70 is basically just regular Technirama reframed to 2.20:1 (the negative aspect ratio is 2.25:1) when printing and adding 6-track stereo. It could be considered a forerunner of the 70mm Blow-up system due to the o-negs being 35mm originally (albeit printed VistaVision style).
 

john a hunter

Screenwriter
Joined
Oct 11, 2005
Messages
1,462
The Technirama lenses were made in Holland by Delrama and were famed for their quality-no anamorphic mumps there and certainly not any edge distortion! They were prismatic not cylindrical and Panavision copied the idea for some of their Ultra Panavision/Camera 65 lenses.The problem was that the prisms absorbed a lot of light and fell out of favour for that reason.
 

SteveJKo

Second Unit
Joined
May 5, 2005
Messages
449

Joel, I believe the term blow-up would be somewhat misleading when it comes to Technirama in it's 70mm form. The Technirama frame was at least just as tall as the 65mm frame, leading to an extremely crisp image. Some might say that it was just as clear as original Todd-AO, Super Panavision photography.
 

Simon Caleb

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Nov 8, 1999
Messages
214

Thank you for highlighting just 'how much' picture information is missing from the otherwise delightful SB special edition.
I think it's very shoddy. And I'm shocked at Disney/Sleeping Beauty fans who feel this released edition is fine or even acceptable!
It isn't. And once you become aware of the upper matte and how it continually cuts/crops into the picture, as far as I'm concerned the magic of watching this classic is lost.

I actually contributed to the previous thread and attempted to highlight the cropping. But you've done a perfect job EnricoE.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Latest Articles

Forum statistics

Threads
356,815
Messages
5,123,815
Members
144,184
Latest member
H-508
Recent bookmarks
0
Top