Blu Ray transfer from 35mm Film

[J. P. Sendall]

Just a quickie to test my eye against others.

Wandering around my local Hi-Fi store and I see a couple of Blu Ray discs playing copies of Vertical Limit and Talladega Nights. Now to my eye they look wonderfully sharp but like video! I checked the tech specs and both use film all the way through, no Genesis, Viper etc. Is it just the sharpness that doing this to my brain or am I missing something about Blu Ray, like is it doing something else that gives me that impression.

What amuses me is that the Blu Ray makes film look videoish and we are all trying to make HD/Digital look filmish

In some ways I am beginning to desire downgrading the image (in a good way) that doesn't make certain things stand out so much. Am I alone in this or am I just getting old?

 

[Eric.T]

i think it has more to do with the refresh rate of the LCD/plasma tv's.

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

Plasma more than LCD - I watched a bit of Transformers on a huge screen at Fry's and it looked like 60p - super smooth motion on everything... almost like "open gate" on the RED.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Store displays are very difficult to judge by. Many new HDTVs have 120Hz refresh capabilities (but not 120Hz input) and the store people put it into that mode, either because they are instructed to or they don't know any better. That really makes films look like video, even worse in many cases. Even the 50/60Hz TVs have this effect with all the "adaptive motion compensation" and "picture tuning" features. The other thing with 1080p transfers onto a 1080p display is the amount of detail. In many cases, you are actually seeing more detail than what was visible at the cinema. Flaws in the film just stick out. FX work really shows, etc..

And then there's the problem of how these new HD transfers are being made. Most studios are over-processing with heavy sharpening, edge enhancements, etc... Lots of techniques that plagued early DVD releases. It seems that two things could be happening... One is that the people doing the conversions have not yet realized that as detail / resolution increases, that the amount of sharpening needed declines. Or they are designing the transfer to look best on a lowest common denominator display. Like a 1366x768 36" LCD TV, which is what has dominated the HDTV market over the past 18 months in terms of general specs purchased (I guess we can blame Wal-Mart). I think the latter is the case.

Look at the Blu-Ray transfer of The Dark Knight. The edge "enhancements" throughout are inexcusable, IMO. On my 71" 1080P DLP it looks like crap. But when sent to my 720p plasma or a 720p LCD in other rooms, it actually looks pretty darn good on those.

 

[Brandon Fraley]

yep, was also going to say that most stores are showing blu rays at fake 60p frame framerates.

 

[Wesley Scoggins]

Was at my local Sam's today, and watched some of Spiderman 3 on a 120hz TV...

And it looked like COMPLETE garbage. The movement was so WEIRD looking, and it looked like it was shot on a Video Camera.

The Special effects looked terrible as well, watched the scene where Spiderman is saving Gwen Stacy, and when he was falling it looked like something that would have been in a really good Spiderman Fan-Film off of YouTube, but looked TERRIBLE on the TV.

It didn't look like that at ALL in the theaters, the Special Effects looked awesome to me, and it looked like a film, but on this TV it just looked BIZARRE.

 

[Alexis Hanawalt]

on this TV it just looked BIZARRE.

I notice what looks like lagginess in the movement on the screen. Like everything's made out of rubber or goo, and almost stretches a little bit as motion occurs. In very dynamic scenes, it looks like lots of ripples.

No, I wasn't dropping acid.

 

[Steve Gal]

It's not the 120hz refresh rate that makes it look weird. It is the auto motion or smooth motion feature that the manufacturers are adding to the monitors that make it look weird. I saw this too a long time ago when 120hz came out and it's not that it looks more like video than film, it is just plain weird looking. too smooth and not natural.

 

[Darren Orange]

Ditch the 120 refresh on films...there is a reason why we like 24fps.

Also as far as films go TDK should be the best film to look at when it comes to Blu-ray....it should be coming from a mix of 4K to 6K masters. If you want to see a bad looking blu-ray look at Transformers. A 2K finish to blu-ray will always be weak. Transformers for some reason is overly grainy and some shots painfully out of focus. No offense to the movie, I love it, but the flaws are there. Judge TDK, with no 120hz.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, a 4K or 6K master isn't going to make a grainy or out-of-focus shot look better -- in fact, it may look worse! The fact that you are seeing flaws in the picture should not necessarily be seen as a defect of the system or transfer process, it may be a sign that it is a particularly accurate transfer.

One aspect I like about watching movies on Blu-Ray is that I can finally see the textures and defects of the original photography. I bought a Blu-Ray of one of my favorite movies for cinematography, "Shawshank Redemption", and popped in the disc... and noticed that the first shot of the movie was slightly out of focus after it pans from the night shot of the lodge house to the profile close-up of Tim Robbins sitting in the car; the focus is slightly off on Tim Robbins. Never noticed that before. Somehow seeing the variations in the original photography makes the movie seem more "human" to me, less machine-made.

 

[michael zaletel]

I agree with you David. These new display technologies are going to separate the men from the boys and require a higher level of skill at every stage throughout the process starting of course with lighting and photography and focus. Perfection in camera moves, sets, costumes, FX, grading, finishing and encoding are going to become more and more critical as we move towards 4K resolution 120" LCD and Plasma screens in the home.

It will be interesting to see, as old films are re-released, which ones were made "just good enough" for cinema display and which were done with absolute excellence at every step.

I see this as a positive for all of us because doing it all perfectly is really, really hard. The harder something is, the more valuable the necessary skills become in the marketplace.

BTW, the "focus in red" feature on this Panasonic BT-LH80 field monitor I just bought IS the answer to the focus problem. I was able to pull manual focus by myself (without a FF) on a nearly impossible 120fps shot yesterday going across a pool deck 5 feet from the camera across a large pool and up a waterfall about 30 feet in the distance with a 100mm lens at f2.3 by simply "keeping it red". Never could have done that with my EVF, my previous monitor or with a tape measure and set focus points. I highly recommend that monitor or any other monitor with that feature.

-shooter

 

[Chris Newman]

The 120Hz/smooth motion "feature" may be something that some consumers want. There has been some discussion about whether or not films should be shot (and projected) higher than 24p. I'd be curious to hear how many consumers like this feature.

BTW, the "focus in red" feature on this Panasonic BT-LH80 field monitor I just bought IS the answer to the focus problem.

My Z1U has that feature, but I kinda forgot about it. I should give it a try next time I have a tough focus pull (as tough as it gets with 1/3"). Maybe this should be a new RED feature?

 

[J. P. Sendall]

Well, a 4K or 6K master isn't going to make a grainy or out-of-focus shot look better -- in fact, it may look worse! The fact that you are seeing flaws in the picture should not necessarily be seen as a defect of the system or transfer process, it may be a sign that it is a particularly accurate transfer.

One aspect I like about watching movies on Blu-Ray is that I can finally see the textures and defects of the original photography. I bought a Blu-Ray of one of my favorite movies for cinematography, "Shawshank Redemption", and popped in the disc... and noticed that the first shot of the movie was slightly out of focus after it pans from the night shot of the lodge house to the profile close-up of Tim Robbins sitting in the car; the focus is slightly off on Tim Robbins. Never noticed that before. Somehow seeing the variations in the original photography makes the movie seem more "human" to me, less machine-made.

I see what you mean but at the same time it looks like the hardware manufacturers and the transfer companies haven't really found a happy standard yet (a cross platform, cross hardware LUT perhaps?). If efx look crap then something is going seriously wrong. I don't trust consumer demand in this area because they are being pushed so called 'choices' that they think makes their images look better when in fact its merely a marketed ploy to make it look like they are better than the competition. Just look at the confusion that people had/have with letterboxing and pan and scan. My partners parents STILL choose to watch things squashed and squeezed on their HDTV.:ranting2:

Thanks for all the interesting responses and eyeballs.