How to scan films that were released at 1.85:1 for the theater

[deleted user]

I think you're overthinking this. In almost any software (except maybe manual scripting in AVISynth) you'll just combine both steps. You'll create a timeline with the resolution you want, drop the footage in and then scale and reposition the footage so that it properly fits into it.

[LucasGodzilla]

I do understand what is being said here, however, I would say it kind of doesn't excessively matter for a couple of reasons. For one, in the context of scanning film prints, there is only so much detail on the print to be had that it doesn't excessively matter—in the grand scheme of things—whether or not the scan is being upscaled since as there isn't much detail to be had even if it was scanned cropped in to maximize the resolution.

In the context of first-generation negatives though, I'd say that's where your argument starts holding a bit of water, however, at that point, odds are you'd be scanning with higher-end gear that possibly outputs an image larger than 4K, such as Valeyard's 5K scan for example, in which case it wouldn't matter as the most likely workflow-output would be at around 4K at a maximum, meaning, you are cropping a 5K file to a smaller resolution without needing to upscale the scan like in your Near Dark example.

[Onti]

Therefore, every 1.78:1-1.85:1 movie from 35mm scans that can be found here has been upscaled? And every 1.78:1-1.85:1 Blu-ray release has been upscaled? Upscaling seems common for 4k releases but native 4K exists.

Resolution: Upscaled 4K (2160p)

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Van-Helsi...ay/179121/

[deleted user]

Most scans here were made with a higher than 1080p resolution, therefore are not upscaled. Of course if one were using a method that requires separate steps, one should aim to retain maximum quality, but as I said, in most software these steps are not separate, therefore it is usually not an issue. Only exception I can think of is scripting.

But if we're gonna get very technical ... most scans are done with a Bayer sensor and that theoretically has a lower effective resolution than the pixel count because each color channel gets interpolated from a lower number of pixels. You can google the term Bayer sensor if you want more detail.

Also, yeah 4K Blu Rays are often upscaled and so are some older 1080p Blu Rays I think. Some noticably, some less so. But it's probably more because the scan/master they have simply didn't have more resolution than because of some kind of procedural issue of the correct order of steps.

[Onti]

Suppose I have a film professionally scanned as 4K DPX image files (3840x2160) and I have re-encoded the DPX files to ProRes 4444. After cropping the resolution is 2287x1814. Then, I create a new project like this:









I drop the 2287x1814 clip into my 1920x1080 timeline:










The aspect ratio is 4:3, and I want 16:9. Ok, just scale up.
















How do you get rid of those black bars without scale up your footage? Am I doing something wrong?

[Dr. Cooper]

It seems like Final Cut is downsizing your image to fit the timeline-resolution and when you're trying to get it to 1.85:1 you're upscaling it again. Is there any way to tell Final Cut to keep the original resolution when a video is imported, so you can downscale it in your 1080p timeline?

When I'm working on 35 mm-scans I usually keep the original resolution until the final output when everythings encoded to 1080p. Therefore I'm using AviSynth to crop and resize it.

[bendermac]

@Onti

In FCPX make sure your footage in the timeline is correctly imported. If you need to scale up, then your footage's resolutation is lower then your project's selected resolution.

Select the clip you want to moved into the timeline and go to the info pane. Go down to Spacial Conform -> Type and click on the drop-down menu. Select the one of the 3 options. None is the best option if you don't want FCPX to match the footage to the project resolution. You can do this also in the timeline itself. 1st option is global, 2nd is option is only within the timeline.

In your case Fill might be a good option.

Play around with the 3 option to see which works best for your needs

[Onti]

It seems like Final Cut is downsizing your image to fit the timeline-resolution and when you're trying to get it to 1.85:1 you're upscaling it again. Is there any way to tell Final Cut to keep the original resolution when a video is imported, so you can downscale it in your 1080p timeline?

@Onti

In FCPX make sure your footage in the timeline is correctly imported. If you need to scale up, then your footage's resolutation is lower then your project's selected resolution.

Select the clip you want to moved into the timeline and go to the info pane. Go down to [b]Spacial Conform -> Type and click on the drop-down menu. Select the one of the 3 options.[/b] None is the best option if you don't want FCPX to match the footage to the project resolution. You can do this also in the timeline itself. 1st option is global, 2nd is option is only within the timeline.

In your case Fill might be a good option.

Play around with the 3 option to see which works best for your needs

That's where the problem was! thank you very much!

When I'm working on 35 mm-scans I usually keep the original resolution until the final output when everythings encoded to 1080p. Therefore I'm using AviSynth to crop and resize it.

It's the first time I was considering working on 35 mm scans and I was going crazy over a silly thing. But don't you think it's better to crop and resize first? I think now I was beginning to understand the importance of what spoRv was saying…

Appropriate procedure IMHO:

1. decided which resolution to use: 2K, 4K, 6K etc.
   
2. scan the full frame (with or without optical audio tracks)
   
3. scale back to final resolution (1080p, 2160p)
   
4. crop eventually for 1.78:1, 1.85, or other AR
   

Why do I say this? The aspect ratio is now 16:9 (1.78:1) and the scale is under 100% (86%). But I want to frame for 1.85:1 and with this method I can't. I just want to crop 20-22 pixels top and bottom but you can see that even with 80 pixels the aspect ratio is still 1.78:1. I guess it's because the image is too big.

[deleted user]

I find it utterly pointless to crop before even importing the footage. You'll need another 1-2TB just to save the cropped data and then you basically are using up twice the hard drive space for absolutely no reason. If your original data is raw Bayer data, then the cropped data will end up taking much more space than the raw full size data because it will be RGB. Unless you know of a way to crop raw Bayer files (ssssh, there is one, but don't tell anyone). Just working with the original data is much simpler, quicker and more resource-efficient.

The reason your footage remains 1.78.1 like the timeline is because (I think) those parameters are crop for the entire unresized image, not for the viewport. If you need precision, likely easier to just put some black bars over the image with the right size that you need.

[Onti]

I noticed this yesterday ("The 3 Worlds of Gulliver" Twilight Time release with 2 aspect ratios):

1.78:1



1.66:1



Why isn't the 1.78:1 frame identical to the 1.66:1 frame but without the black bars? If they scaled up the footage to hide the black bars I don't see the point in doing that. Maybe different scans?