Warner to release Ben-Hur on Blu-ray in 2009 (?), or..... (1 Viewer)

[Paul Hillenbrand]

Information that has been gathered in this thread and apparently based on 2005 technology, is that a scan of a 35mm reduction print could look even sharper than from a 65mm print, - scans of 65mm/70mm large formats can end up with a nicely rendered, but imperfect image, normally with less detail than can be reproduced from 35mm and that the image would generally appear softer than a like image based upon the same scene photographed on 35mm 4 perf.

When the question was asked if technology today has been perfected to where a 70mm print, like "Ben-Hur", could be transferred to (Blu-ray) with the films-native-sharpness and which additionally could carry along more detail, there was an affirmative from Michel_Hafner. -So when you ask "What revelatory transfer technology are you aware of that has become available", all I know is what has been offered here.

Reasonable cost? Didn't ask.

Hopefully, new scanning technology is being used today on classic restoring ventures and I hope it will be used on the 2009 release of Ben-Hur.

Paul

 

[Mark Anthony]

I say again that the detail contained in the Hi-def master used for the current dvd is above and beyond what the current ntsc dvd can show.

Secondly as the O-Neg of ben hur has so much detail that an 8-10K scan might just about manage to contain all of it. So a downconversion to 1080P for blu-ray will still not be showing anywhere near the native sharpness of the camera negative. Even a 35mm reduction print will still be 4K, at best, so that will have lost over half the detail in the conversion process. Which will be reduced again when telecined for hi-def.

So the bottom line is a 35mm transfer of 65mm originated materials may be superior, it also may not be, and given that WB chose to transfer from 65, they must have had there reasons - technical or otherwise.

I also don't see them running the expense of probably several 10's of thousand's of dollars to create a new 35mm interpositive and re-transfer again, for a format with marginal profit returns, when they could have done it that way the last time.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a flawless Ben Hur, but short of a complete ground up photo-chemical restoration and state of the art "no cost is too great" telecine based on new elements from that restoration, it ain't gonna happen!

M

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

Thanks for your realistic & down-to-earth opinion.

Paul

 

[Douglas Monce]

The previous version of Ben-Hur on DVD seemed to have a bit more detail, but the colors not as well rendered, as the newer 4 disc version. This indicates that the transfer from 65mm elements is clearly not rendering the kind of resolution that it should, if its even clear on NTSC dvd.

I would say that just based on this, Ben-Hur would best be re-scanned again either from a 35mm reduction print, or using the 65mm elements on a high quality 65mm telecine machine such as they seem to have a fotokem.

Doug

 

[Michel_Hafner]

I doubt there is much beyond 4K in the negatives of Ben Hur. The film is too old for that.

 

[Mark Anthony]

I would beg to differ! Especially as it's been said that VistaVision (from the same decade as BH) should be scanned in at least at 6K to take in all the detail, a UP neg is even larger and as it contains squeezed footage arguably there is more data to extract than in a flat negative of the same size.

Regardless even if there was only 4K of data, Blu-ray could still only show 25% of it, at best.

M

 

[Vern Dias]

A question for you all participating in this discussion: Has anyone in this discussion ever handled an actual reel of 70mm film? Either for projection or for transfer?

From my experience in 70mm projection and 35 mm transfers:

One of the issues thats works against 70 (65) mm projection and transfer is that the additional width (and height to a lesser extent) of the film frame makes keeping the entire frame perfectly in focus much more difficult than 35mm.

An obvious example of this is the in and out of focus (what little focus there is) of the center of the frame on the 70mm "Oklahoma!" that is clearly caused by the inability to keep the film element perfectly flat during the transfer process. This is caused by a phenomenon called film buckle, which can be far more pronounced in the wider film element.

The additional width of the film also puts increased demands on the optics of the scanner.

The bad color mis-registration on the most recent Ben-Hur is not an artifact caused by anything inherent to DVD. As a matter of fact, if one takes a close look at the right 1/3 of the HD DVD image on Mutiny on the Bounty, color misregistration errors are present there although not to the degree of certain scenes in Ben-Hur. It looks (to me) much more like chromatic abberation in the optics used for the transfer, rather than mis-registraion of color seps.

I think we will just have to wait and see (and hope) that the final results of whatever eklement, and process WB chooses to use are worthy of this outstanding film.

Vern

 

[Vern Dias]

Mark:
are more considerations than film area affecting the available resolution on a frame.

Foe example:
Vistavision is a spherical process that did not use any anamorphic elements.
MGM Camera 65 used both a prime lens and an anamorphic lens. The additional anamorphic lens would cause some (no one knows how much) loss of resolution in the image captured on the film.

Vern

 

[Mark Anthony]

Sorry Vern i'm not sure what your trying to say. But larger size aside, the fact that an anamorphic lens is used means more picture is being squeezed into the same area, more picture=potentially more detail and therefore a higher scanning resolution is needed to capture it all.

When i'm talking about 8-10K i'm referring about an archival medium to strike new 70mm prints of off, to reduce wear on the negative, which at some point will become unprintable.

But it's all academic, Ben Hur isn't being re-telecined and if it were it might be off 35mm just like WB's other UP films.

M

 

[Patrick McCart]

The 4-disc is actually sharper than the first DVD, but the resolution is slightly lower since the 2001 disc cropped a lot on all four sides and the SE opens it up. Better compression, too, since the 2001 DVD had a lot of jitter in the frame.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

It's on the sheet with the Ridleygram inside the deluxe set.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Here is an excellent comparison of the older and newer DVD versions of Ben-Hur.

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/special/ben-hurdvd.htm

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Thanks. I finely found an interview with the producer of the final cut where he talks about the 65mm elements. Apparently they were actually scanned at 8k.

My understanding however is that the problem with scanning 65mm films isn't that there is no quality equipment to do it, but rather that the cost of using said equipment is prohibitive for a whole feature film.

Doug

 

[MatthewA]

I would suggest they do a limited reissue to promote it, but then I remembered that Warner is no longer making any film prints of repertory titles, and once their last 35mm repertory release prints break, it's all digital. Considering how these prints tend to get trashed part of me can't blame them. However, this is going to come back and bite them in the butt in a BIG way.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

You seem to think that 4K looks 4 times sharper than 2K. That is usually not the case at all. It can, but it rarely does. For example 35mm in 4K looks pretty much the same as 2K concerning sharpness. The difference is rather a smoother more analogue look and no aliasing even in the finest details. Ben Hur scanned at 8K and downsampled to 4K will essentially show the same sharpness and detail as Ben Hur at 8K natively. The difference will be subtle. The MTF on these films from the 50s is not high enough to show a lot of detail beyond 4K. You simply scan noise/grain in these regions.
see also
Matthew Cowan and digital cinema and resolution and film distribution and 2K scans and 4K scans and feature film production and 35mm and lens and camera and Kodak 5245 and Cintel International and Academy Scope and aperture and I/P and MTF curve and

 

[Robert Harris]

Mr. Hafner is correct. We now generally scan 35mm 4 perf at 4k, Vista at 4k, which is occasionally referred to as a 6k scan, but is still 4k perf to perf, and 65mm at 8k.

Is there a visual difference between a 40 -50 year old 65mm frame scanned in 8k as compared to the same frame down-rezzed to 4k?

Definitely.

RAH

 

[Mark Anthony]

Thank you for confirming my figures and thoughts Mr Harris.

Mr Hafner, as I mentioned above, the only purpose for doing an 8K scan on a title such as Ben Hur would be as part of a restoration project and/or to create an archival DI at full resolution that could effectively replace the negative for future creation of digital media and prints.

By scanning at 8K you would ensure that every last bit of detail, grain and noise was there, just as if you were printing off the negative - which would be the only right thing to do for authentic 65mm prints and to save having to scan it again in the short term, for example when someone says next year "hey, we could show ben-hur in imax for it's 50th birthday", as every time these 50 year's old plus elements are handled there is a danger of damage.

As far as the final product on Blu-ray is concerned it would make little difference if it was 8 or 4K.

Regards

M

 

[Douglas Monce]

Thanks for the link, very interesting information. Of course that was written in 2003 and processing power and economics have changed radically since then.

Doug

 

[PaulDA]

Tried to take a look but the link doesn't work.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

RAH,

thanks for joining this thread!

Please use whatever influence you have to encourage WB to spend the money to do a proper, *optimized* large-format scan. A blurry scan that doesn't even do the film justice at 2K is not what the flim, or its fans, deserve.

Hopefully, such optimal large-format scanning technology will become more affordable over time. There are so many 65/70mm films to enjoy in HD... and it would be a shame if we had to rely on multi-generational 35mm reductions as our film source to get the best picture.