New Back to The Future transfer

[whatchitfoool]

This is all hypothetical and best case.
Lets suppose we on the forums could bend the ear of Universal, and had to put a presentation together on why and how BTTF should get a new transfer from their best source.
what would be in the presentation, in full detail?

all 3 parts were shot open matte, and all struck prints are the same.
I would assume their current best source is the IP print that already has already been physically "cleaned and polished" (for the 25th bluray).

a standard 35mm print would have about 2k of detail, so a 4k scan would capture all of it.
The Inter-Positive, maybe 3-4k detail. 8k open matte transfer would be preferred (but would never happen). so 4k scan for a UHD release.

Of course, the thing to get is a digital "Backup" of all the negatives in 16k. at ~100 lines/mm,  the negatives hold about 7-8k of information.  16k scan would be ideal then for the capture before any further damage happens to the negative.

[Feallan]

Well hypothetically, if I was trying to convince some suits to spend money, I would need not only to provide comparison screenshots from other movies who got new transfers and how much better they look (to get them interested), but also concrete data proving that a good profit can be made this way. Otherwise they wouldn't care.

[Valeyard]

I would assume their best source is the one that already has had the film stock physically "cleaned" and polished (for the 25th bluray).

Nope, you'd have to go through all the vaulted film material for the film to find the best elements. In the best case scenario you might find camera negatives - if they're in good condition they would be the best for shots with no effects. Then for each type of shot you'd work your way down from there - you might find master positives for effects shots - those will be better than the o-neg, etc. It depends on what you're working with. But for a film like BTTF I would assume they have lots of material vaulted. Also though, it might take months just to sort through the film material to work out what you have.

[IcePrick]

The current transfer looks pretty dated. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a 4k (or higher) remaster down the line.

[whatchitfoool]

What resolution would the original negative stock need to be scanned at to have an identical digitization?

Does anyone know of moives that film studios have done a respective high quality remaster for release on say 4k?

[spoRv]

AFAIK the state of the art film-to-digital scan resolution is 8K, but it seems few studios uses it; but an expert is needed here, to be more specific.

[whatchitfoool]

Is anyone aware of a studio doing 16k scans?


How does anyone feel about the jaws release a few years back?

[CSchmidlapp]

Loved the Jaws restoration, probably one of the best there is.

Ive never heard of 16k scans.
From my knowledge on such matters, it would be completely pointless scanning even a iMAX piece of film at this resolution.

[whatchitfoool]

A scan would need to be done past the point of the captured detail so aliasing doesn't appear. but the same is true for the film grain aliasing.
The film grain of the negative stock is finer than the detail captured from shooting, especially after you account for the lens, focus, exposure, ect.

So If I did my back of the envelope calculations correctly, the negative stock would have to be scanned at about 16k 1.37:1 to have an indistinguishable digital backup.
Of course, not nearly that much detail would be present for any type of release. Id say 8k on the high side.

http://gizmodo.com/5250780/how-regular-m...imax-films
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_transfer_function
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_rate

[CSchmidlapp]

Good stuff whatchitfoool, i can not argue with your numbers.

I would have said 8K was on the high side for scanning a S35mm negative, nevermind a release resolution.