A Few Words About A few words about... Gone with the Wind (1 Viewer)

[Alejandro]

Jay, allow me to quote myself in the GWTW old thread when discussing about the emotion of Hattie Mc Danield's speeech. I said to fellow forum user Will Krupp I thought it was fake:

 

[Michel_Hafner]

I have seen a digital projection of the restored GWTW on
Saturday at the NFT in London. Rob Hummel was there too.
He's in charge of these Warner Brothers restorations with the ultra resolution system.
The source was a D5 HD tape projected with a 2K DLP
projector. That means the resolution of the picture was 1440*1080 pixels which is considerably less than the 2048*1536 of the best digital master element. In addition it was about 5 times compressed and color subsampled (D5 is 4:2:2). Despite all this it looked most of the time... very very nice. Colors were gorgeous, the pictures mostly crisp and digital nasties were pretty much absent. I was sitting too far away though for critical evaluation (~6 screen heights). In the opening shot with Scarlett on the porch just look at her ribbon. A wonderful red and so clean and well defined. The digital projection was outstanding in the color department. But it also sucked big time in another department: Black level and shadow detail. The darker scenes had crushed blacks/grays and black itself was medium gray. It robbed dark pictures of the 3d effect and looked washed out. Digital projectors are simply not yet up to the task of decent contrast in dark material. If the contrast were proper I would rate the projection excellent. As it is that applies only to the brighter parts. The NFT also has lighted exit signs on the sides of the screen and left some dimmed lights on in the back. That also screwed up contrast. :-(
As long as there are no 4K projectors with good contrast we can't really see how good this restoration can look. We can get an idea with the DVD and HD DVD soon if we have a CRT projector. Especially the HD on a 9 inch CRT will look drop dead gorgeous.
Something else. This is not the last restoration of the film. The next is already announced! Tests showed that using 4K resolution for scanning and processing will get a better 2K image in the end. So they are redoing the whole show in 4K in the near future. The current restoration is 2K only.
Wait till you see the 4K master on a 4K projector. That will be the ultimate GWTW experience.
There is also some room left for fixing color balance issues in the digital domain. The original negatives have built in density fluctuations which become visible as color fluctuations on projectors as precise as these digital DLPs. It should also be visible on the DVD that small color changes happen in some shots. That can be fixed.
Mr. Hummel also showed clips from other restorations they did or had done: Casablanca, Singing in the Rain, Robin Hood and Wizard of Oz (work in progress). Especially Robin Hood looked smashing in parts. One clip was shown from 35mm with the best analogue alignment of the negatives and then the digital version. The difference was as big as NTSC versus HD: HUGE! The old restoration looked very fuzzy and with poor color. The digital version was popping with color and crispness. Extremely impressive. The 35mm was so bad that I wonder if this was really directly from the negatives or not rather from an internegative. It looked more like DVD resolution than 35mm. Casablanca and Singing looked good but had digital artifacts (these were done by Lowry Digital by the way, which use temporal filtering). That's all for now.

 

[Jamie Cole]

Resurrecting this thread to let everyone know that Target has the GWTW set for 24.95 again this week (12/19--). Perfect last minute Christmas present... that's why I bought it...

...um, for myself.

Merry Christmas!

 

[Ravi K]

Gave this for my dad for his birthday this week. I think this is the first time he has ever listened to a commentary track. I haven't perused the disc myself, but what I've seen of the feature looks excellent.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Are you sure it's not just the presentation that was 2K, rather than the restoration? The restoration featurette on the DVD mentioned that 4K was used, if I recall correctly.

 

[Sean Patrick]

is everyone sure there is ZERO edge enhancement on the new remastered dvd?

i thought it looked great, but i saw halos on any screen text on my projector. it's on a 106" screen so even the smallest EE is visible, and i am sure my setup isn't adding any artifacting (maybe i am just seeing mpeg artifacts?)

thanks
sean

 

[Rob Tomlin]

I can't say I am 100% positive that there is absolutely zero EE, but I didn't notice any on my 123" screen.

I was extremely impressed with what Warner has done here. A definite contender for DVD of the year!

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I thought they said they used 4k for this one as well. Perhaps what they are getting at is that 2k was used for the digital work done for select portions (such as the "as God as my witness" moment shortly before the intermission)of the late 90s pseudo/quasi-restoration and theatrical release.

Has anyone done any tests as far as how good 4k is at not only making printable elements, but what subsequent photochemical generations of these elements look like?

Regards,

 

[Anthony Neilson]

Did anybody else notice a shocking and horrible "glitch" at about 18.11 into the first disc ? Or is mine defective ?

 

[ScottR]

I'm resurrecting this because of a question...according to the widescreenmuseum article in this thread, there was a silent Intermission card that ran for 10 ft. Has that been lost? Does anyone know what it looked like?

 

[widescreenforever]

You mean at the end of I'll never be hungry again'.., Well I have seen that 'card ' a number of times including the 50th anniversary VHS /laser disc edition,, but don't know about the sp.ed. dvd at this moment.. Seems to be part of the original 222 minutes version., I know the music ,from the first half, played during that intermission, and I remember the fonts for Intermission was the same fonts used for GWTW main title.

 

[ScottR]

I don't think the card used for home video is the same, as it is shown over a still from the film.

 

[ScottR]

I don't think the card used for home video is the same, as it is shown over a still from the film.

 

[Thane101]

Alright, when are we going to see this one in HD. Anyone have a clue? It seems to me to be the perfect cantidate.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Well when I saw the film theatrically in 1998 there was no intermission intertitle, so if it has been "lost", it must have been back then.

Besides... does it really matter? Most earlier video releases of this prior to the 1999 dvd don't even have the intermission music.