A Few Words About A few words about...™ Cover Girl -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Eastmancolor]

I thought the Library of Congress still had the original nitrate YCM negatives and that is what was recently scanned in 4k.

Grover Crisp ran several of the musical numbers at the Association of Moving Image Archivists "Reel Thing" seminar last Summer in Hollywood and it was beautiful. Didn't look like it came from a dupe.

The new British Blu-ray is superior visually to the out of print Twilight Time as the recent 4k work hadn't been completed by the time TT released their disc.

 

[Will Krupp]

I just got the 2017 Eureka/Masters of Cinema disc and I can't concur with the other posters enough. It blew me away. Dazzling, deep colors, just gorgeous! Great job by Sony. The only imperfections I see are the (to be expected) dupey optical dissolves and an occasional "creeping up" of the black level here and there to dull the picture. These imperfections are isolated and so fleeting they're barely worth mentioning and shouldn't dissuade any fan of this who can play Region B discs from grabbing this stunner ASAP.

It was so gorgeous that it's one of the rare blu-rays I wanted to start over again immediately after finishing it, and DID! If only all Technicolor could look this satisfying on disc!

 

[Paul Penna]

The only imperfections I see are the (to be expected) dupey optical dissolves ...

I thought that didn't happen with three-strip Technicolor?

 

[Will Krupp]

I thought that didn't happen with three-strip Technicolor?

Sure it does. The difference with Technicolor is that their dupe section starts all the way back at the last clean cut before going in to the dissolve and continues until the first clean cut after going out. That's what I was referring to, the expected dupey quality of that whole section where the grain increases and the color flattens out. It's worth noting that those sections are much less distracting than in most transfers. I will say that I saw at least one instance of an optical "pop" during a dissolve so who knows what that was about.

 

[Paul Penna]

Sure it does. The difference with Technicolor is that their dupe section starts all the way back at the last clean cut before going in to the dissolve and continues until the first clean cut after going out. That's what I was referring to, the expected dupey quality of that whole section where the grain increases and the color flattens out. It's worth noting that those sections are much less distracting than in most transfers. I will say that I saw at least one instance of an optical "pop" during a dissolve so who knows what that was about.

Ah, OK. I was thinking of this process, which I see was implemented later. Richard W. Haines, writing in a DVD Savant article:

Beginning in 1955 Technicolor began to A & B roll the original negative so they could make the fades and dissolves directly onto the matrix stock and avoid grainy duplicating film. In the early sixties they used an auto-select process for the same effect, to avoid the double A & B rolls. The entire shot would be included on the camera negative and the fades and dissolves would be made in the printer only. That means every fade and dissolve in a film printed in this manner, must be re-created from scratch for the digital restoration.