Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: DCI Classic Transfers Good and Bad

This is topic DCI Classic Transfers Good and Bad in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 03-05-2014, 10:44 AM:

We've had several threads about the quality of DCI transfers of classics and rep, hoping we can create one for those of us running classics on digital can reference.

My starter: In The Heat of the Night. Looks like a bad DVD (not blu-ray) source. Color fringing on all of the high contrast areas (like white collar on Sidney Portier's skin). Smudgy resolution. Even has jump and weave. Even without my glasses, I can see artifacts. The whole thing looks like it was over sharpened in Photoshop.

FWIW, tried to get the 35mm print, but was told it was in bad condition.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-05-2014, 06:15 PM:

2001: A Space Odyssey was a disappointment. VERY noticeably compressed. It's a do-over.

In fact, all of the 70mm to DCP's (even the "good" ones) are do-overs if they aren't full width. This business of formatting them inside 1.85 and 16x9 makes no sense to me.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-06-2014, 07:14 AM:

The 4K DCP of Lawrence of Arabia is garbage...bad image artifacts and the sound is none too good either.

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 03-06-2014, 12:18 PM:

The DCP of The Blues Brothers which was in 2 channel stereo sounded awful.I hear they made a new one but I was sent the old version even after the new version was created.
It was labelled 5.1.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-06-2014, 05:32 PM:

Yeah. We also had this discussion about how mono sound and 4.0 mixes were improperly handled. Especially by Universal.

Basically they gave us dual mono and Lt/Rt instead of discrete tracks.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 03-21-2014, 04:39 AM:

Is this considered a "classic?"

The 2K 5.1 DCP of "Fight Club" from FOX is a beautiful transfer. No reduction in noise or grain... this is the best I've ever seen this movie look. [beer]

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 03-21-2014, 02:20 PM:

I recently ran a minty 35mm print of Fight Club. It's a very good looking film from a time possibly pre 2k DI becoming prevalent.
Training Day is another example. It looks amazing in 35mm.

At the time they came out I made mental notes about them looking good but now I watch them projected and think they look bloody amazing!
As if I had taken that kind of picture quality for granted at the time.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 03-21-2014, 04:02 PM:

Fight Club was released in late 1999, a year before O Brother, Where Art Thou? became the first Hollywood studio release to put the entire movie through a digital intermediate process.

Fight Club had some memorable computer based effects sequences. Those sequences had to be grafted into otherwise old school analog color timed pieces of film. This made color control in the post production work flow very important and arguably more challenging than it is in an all digital DI-only pipeline.