Disney "Digital Restorations" (1 Viewer)

[ScottR]

I've posted this before and I will again..I was a projectionist in 1997, and I ran the Star Wars Special Edition. The blue tint was present on the Special Edition prints. In fact, it was WORSE than the 2004 dvd's. So, that wasn't the fault of the dvd colorist.

 

[MielR]

That may be true, but that's not the way the films looked in 77/80/83, and that's also the point I think a lot of the posters here are trying to make regarding the Disney DVDs: whether or not they accurately reflect the way the films looked when they were brand new.

If it's true that the theatrical SW Special Editions were as blue as the '04 DVDs, Lowry is at the very least guilty of not fixing the faulty color balance, nor did they help matters by making the tranfers too dark.

 

[Patrick McCart]

LDI only did image restoration such as repairs, dirt/scratch removal, detail enhancement, grain reduction, etc. ILM, though, handled the digital color timing and extra digital effects work. LDI seems to do color work on some projects, but not on all. Disney has tried to "improve" on some LDI work like Mary Poppins by messing with the compression and adding more noise reduction. It's also likely the edge enhancement problems on The Spy Who Loved Me SE were introduced by MGM (since LDI's enhancement software never adds sharpening artifacts like that).

 

[DeeF]

I've looked at the comparisons.

This must be the most alarming trend I've noted since I jumped on the home theater bandwagon in 1999. That shot of Pinocchio with the flame is... well, it's just a shame. It's like changing the Mona Lisa.

 

[Chuck Pennington]

I'm going to re-do my Laserdisc captures once I receive my new (well, not NEW, but it's new to me) player this weekend. Laserdisc image quality varied greatly player to player, and the one I own now is just on the average side. The one I'm getting in is rated as above average, so we'll see...

 

[ScottR]

How do you guys feel about changing credits and logos? On The Little Mermaid, for example, the 1998 re-release credits were used on the Platinum edition (although the original end music was restored). On these credits, the Dolby Digital logo was added, restoration credits were added, and the Disney soundtrack logo was changed to omit "Available on cassette and compact disc."

 

[DeeF]

One of the more alarming comparisons, for me, is the shot of Cinderella in her carriage. On the LD version (reflective of the original movie), the roof of the gold carriage shows white, because it's reflecting light from above. Sunlight, or moonlight -- I don't know, but it's clearly a painter's job to make that carriage look 3 dimensional.

On the digital version, that white reflected light on the roof of the carriage is gone. The carriage itself has lost all shading, and reveals a coloring-book image, perfect consistent color between the lines.

I'm completely dismayed.

 

[ScottR]

How much of the image was cropped on the Sleeping Beauty dvd? I know that some image is missing from the bottom of the frame (it is identifiable during the opening credits because the MPAA info is cropped on the widescreen version but appears on the pan and scan version.)

 

[Brian Borst]

It's a shame how Disney is treating it's movies. Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are the worst. Cinderella's dress at the end should be white, not a kind of gray. The scene in BatB when Belle asks Beast to step into the light doesn't work at all in the dvd, he just steps from a bit darker light towards the light, instead of from darkness.
The most remarkable thing was the bashing Little Mermaid got about it's transfer, considering it's one of the best that Disney has put out. Complaints about grain filling the screen (yeah, well duh!) and colors that were kind of dark were moot points. The colors were supposed to look that way. Bambi is also great looking, and probably the best one in the bunch.
I'm a bit frightened about how the new restoration of Sleeping Beauty is going to look like. The previous one looked great, but the more recent restorations (Peter Pan, for instance) looked awful.
I also noticed nobody mentioned The Lion King. While the picture looks great, there were several changes made in the animation, despite the fact that Don Hahn (producer of that film and several other Disneys) promised us that we would have the original theatrical versions. The 'SFX' in the dust was simply cut out (not reanimated, there is now a jarring cut left), the alligators in the 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King' sequence were changed (they now look awful, and don't even fit into the sequence) also the waterfall (during 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight') was changed, it is now more realistic, while it was more stylized before. And the opening logo is now the orange one on the black background, instead of the regular white on blue.
But Disney had already made it very clear that they don't want to have the movies look the way they used to be, but how they should look for today's audience, as if they were made today. And that's just wrong with me.

 

[GoboFraggle1983]

Disney didn't have to deal with a faded negative of ANY of these films. They were all short sequential exposure Technicolor. I think SLEEPING BEAUTY is the most successful of the restorations, but perhaps because it was done pre-Lowry and back to film. The framing on the DVD crops a bit off of the top and bottom of the image, especially when compared to the P/S 1987 Laserdisc. Still, it was framed for 2.35:1, and the DVD is very close to that. I'm all for matting if it is what was intended and done properly.

As far as removing film grain, I think it is dangerous. Look at how flat the DVD's look with none of the subtlety in shadow or lighting. Colors have been changed and an effort was made to make them more uniform throughout the films - but different lighting situations and scenes and such means they wouldn't be the same at all. Blocks of color have been recolored to remove any painstrokes, but this process also removes some of the outline around the colors.

The DVD's of many of these films no longer look like films - they look like made-for-video "product". CINDERELLA III looks like the DVD of the first CINDERELLA, and that should not be the case. Check out how whites or lighter shades fair on the DVD's - PETER PAN has grayish skin tones, and CINDERELLA (which I will post in the next few days) has whites that are gray and way off. Look at the pink flame in PINOCCHIO! :-(

Cel dust shows up more than ever partly because of sidestepping the old Technicolor printing process - but also from brightening the film. I'm not saying the oldest releases are the best - but there has got to be a point where someone steps in and stops the plastic surgery.

I'm not even going to BEGIN talking about the sound remixes....

For a sample (I don't have the 1989 Laserdisc yet, which is what I'm waiting on to post a bunch of screenshots on UltimateDisney.com), check these out:

1995 CAV Laserdisc (enclosed book says it was restored on film):


2005 DVD


1995 Laserdisc


2005 DVD


1995 Laserdisc


2005 DVD


There will be a lot more when I have compared all 3 video releases and post on UltimateDisney.com in a few days. I just wish they had done a new digital transfer of the restored element and done mabe a little dirt and scratch removal - and left things at that. Transfer technology has imporved so much since 1995 that there would still be a giant leap in quality, but it seems they instead have made the leap into made-for-video, plastic and artificial quality.

Oh, and what do you see that looks quite wrong in the 2005 DVD capture here?

1995 Laserdisc


2005 DVD


Also, all of these images were captured using VLC with no additional color/contrast/brightness work.

Chuck

Do you still have the laserdisc editions of "Dumbo" and "Robin Hood"? I tried to view the screenshots on Photobucket, but they've all been converted to black-and-white. Is there any way you can re-post them here?