Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Quality of recent movies on Blu Ray

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 09-27-2009, 06:26 PM:

It has been at least six months since I started to watch high definition movies at home in Blu Ray on my 1080p Samsung set and every night has been a pure joy when I view old and recent movies. One of the thing I had noticed about movies in BD is the fact that they are not the same especially current movies. While most have very impressive picture quality, some have an image that look like I was watching a upconverted DVD. One such movie was last week's GHOST OF GIRLFRIEND PAST. THe picture quality was good but I never had a feeling I was watching a movie in Blu Ray. They were many like them recently and I am very puzzled why they could not have better picture quality. On the other hand, I have seen some very striking Blu Ray discs of old movies. One of them was THE DEEP. It has been years since I last saw the movie in a theatre and on laserdiscs and recall the image to be just average. Because I wanted to see Miss Bissett in a wet T Shirt again [Smile]

, I rented the movie in Blu Ray and was pleasantly surprised how gorgeous the picture quality was. It looked much better than most recent movies and a disc one can use as a BD demo. I am really looking forward to THE WIZZARD OF QZ this week and SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFF next week. They both should look terrific,

-Claude

Posted by James Westbrook (Member # 3690) on 09-28-2009, 01:39 AM:

I have a hunch it's due to the current crop of movies being shot digitally, in lower resolution than what film has been capable of.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-28-2009, 12:33 PM:

I respectfully disagree.

Although digital cameras have their problems, their resolutions are all at the level of HD. What you would observe wouldn't be a quality loss, per se, but an inability to handle highlights (bright objects in frame) as well.

As for 35mm productions, they used to be scanned from the master positive, 2nd generation master of the film.

Now that most 35mm-acquired productions go through the digital intermediate process, the HD transfers are coming directly from the master digital file, with only added compression.

So they would, arguably, look better, better in fact, than the movie when you see it on the big screen, because that same master will have been degraded by two or three generations of copying.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 09-28-2009, 03:40 PM:

quote: Karl Borowski
their resolutions are all at the level of HD.

Hmmm, I wonder why Baraka would do an 8K scan instead of a 2K scan which is at the level of HD. Baraka is 70mm, so I wonder why it also looks noticeably better than 35mm sourced transfers to Blu-ray if even 35mm is way above HD?

The mind boggles.

Posted by Karl Borowski (Member # 5424) on 09-28-2009, 03:54 PM:

They didn't do it for television viewers, that's for sure.

I'm sure you could see the difference between 4K and 8K on a 70mm or IMAX print, though.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-12-2009, 04:07 PM:

I had heard the set was excellent but did not get the Spiderman Trilogy on Blu Ray until last week end I fully concur after I had seen SPIDERMAN and SPIDERMAN 2.1 during the past two nights. I will watch SPIDERMAN 3 tonight. I saw all three movies in a theatre and found the presentation at home much better than The theatrical presentation because of the excellent Blu Ray transfer by Sony. I also got HOOSIERS on BD with the Spiderman set and the basketball film was a double dip after I had bought the two disc special edition DVD about two years ago. HOOSIERS and RUDY has a special place in my heart because they were directed by David Anspaugh, the son of two of my dearest friends, the late Mr. & Mrs Lawrence Anspaugh of Decatur Indiana. I even have a personally autographed movie poster of HOOSIERS that read "To Claude, A Hoosier at Heart! --- David Anspaugh"
The HOOSIERS BD had turned out to be THE worst Blu Ray disc I had seen. The picture is dark and does not even come close to the beautiful upconverted image from the DVD when I had compared the two the other night. To add insult to injury, the BD only has the theatrical trailer and nothing else. I only paid $12.95 for it but I believe it was originally priced at $29.95. It was not a big deal because I did not pay too much for it on BD but I really wanted to have the the movie with the best image quality but I guess I will have to be satisfied with the DVD. THE BD of RUDY is excellent and at least I have that.

-Claude

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-12-2009, 05:56 PM:

Unless the video camera is shooting footage at resolutions significantly higher than 1080 HD or the relatively similar 2K that video camera will not maximize the detail capable of 1080 HD.

One of the chief limitations involved is the square "Bayer pattern" pixel grid and how it behaves toward imagery that doesn't run perfectly vertical or horizontal. It's usually better to acquire (or scan) an image at a higher native resolution and then down-sample it to the target resolution. You can overcome problems, such jagged fine lines or moire showing up in striped patterns, with the over-sampling approach.

This PDF article from Arri goes into some detail about the subject, but is mainly a paper designed to promote the use of 4K and 6K digital intermediate use:
4K+ systems theory basics for motion picture imaging

I found that article, produced by Arri, at the website of E-Film, one of the leading film scanning and digital intermediate companies.

I'm used to dealing with this sort of thing from the direction of print publishing. If a halftone screen or line screen in use is 133 lpi you don't feed it a photo image at only 133 ppi. It's better to scan the image at a level at least 150% higher in resolution than the line screen. In this example the photo image should have a native resolution of at least 200ppi. The photo will RIP with far fewer problems.

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 10-14-2009, 12:36 PM:

So, in The DEEP, is the wet tshirt's see through qualities in even more detail on BluRay? Now if they did an X Ray vision edition!

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 10-14-2009, 02:00 PM:

[Smile]

-Claude