Blu-ray question

[IdolEyes787]

I know this is the wrong section so move as necessary but I thought I'd probably have the best chance of getting it answered here so....

I noticed a 720p x264 of the 1954 movie Prince Valiant and since I'm pretty sure the original film never existed in that kind of resolution I was wondering ( without getting too technical) how is that possible? :unsure:

[Quarterquack]

I'm glad you asked, instead of assuming. A lot of people don't understand this, so don't worry about coming off as ignorant. (I didn't understand it till recently, a yearish or so ago, myself).

Most movies (with the exception of recent ones like avatar) are shot on film, instead of with digital cameras. These films then can be scanned with varying amounts of vertical lines, that ultimately determine the final resolution. Therefore old films can still be produced on UHD when it rolls around as the next big thing.

[Aristocles]

Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens.

From AVS:

"Film > BD

1080p is 2 Megapixels. Compare a 2 Megapixel digital 4x6 photo to a 35mm film one sometime.

While 1080p and BD are "high" definition for a TV.... they are extremely low resolution.

Imagine a 12 Megapixel camera in 16x9 mode. That's 4616 x 2600 compared to Blu-rays 1920 x 1080."

[Tokeman]

Movies were shot on 35mm film, which has a higher resolution then HD IIRC. So as long as the master film is intact and in good shape, they can make it into HD even if its an old move.

[IdolEyes787]

So older movies are only grainy because the film has begun to deteriorate?

[Aristocles]

IE787:

Check out Battleship Potemkin, Sunrise, etc. I believe Metropolis is due out in November?

[IdolEyes787]

IE787:

Check out Battleship Potemkin, Sunrise, etc. I believe Metropolis is due out in November?

I noticed that supposedly in wide release too.1927's answer to Avatar

Just doing some quick browsing I found this which seems to say :unsure: that 35mm resolution is more or less the same as digital HD

http://www.filmschooldirect.com/sample_lessons/sample_lesson_HD_vs_35mm.htm

[Quarterquack]

Older movies are grainy because of the way they were produced/developed, degradation etc.

Also, will people stop saying film has higher resolution? Film has no resolution at all, since it's analog, and resolution relates to the amount/density of pixels. The answer I gave before was perfectly fine. HD movies are still possible because when being produced as digital media movies are usually converted from film into high "resolution" 4000+ scan line images/frames, then the resolution is pulled down to general HD viewer media levels (1080/720).

[Aristocles]

Older movies are grainy because of the way they were produced/developed, degradation etc.

Also, will people stop saying film has higher resolution? Film has no resolution at all, since it's analog, and resolution relates to the amount/density of pixels. The answer I gave before was perfectly fine. HD movies are still possible because when being produced as digital media movies are usually converted from film into high "resolution" 4000+ scan line images/frames, then the resolution is pulled down to general HD viewer media levels (1080/720).

Listen up pedant:

Analog film is spoken of this way because: Although "film is an analog medium, so it doesn't have "pixels" per se,...film scanners have pixels and a specific resolution."

Now while your delicate sensibilities may be forever dulled by such mannerisms, such is life...

[Quarterquack]

Great. So we agree that your previous reply was all wrong, right? The film itself doesn't relate to the resolution, it's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution.

Since you started with the hostility, allow me to retort at a similar level.


Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens.

...

Imagine a 12 Megapixel camera in 16x9 mode. That's 4616 x 2600 compared to Blu-rays 1920 x 1080."

I'm not really the one who needs to do the learning, now, am I?

The question in this thread was clear. He wanted to understand how film pre-HD-fanatic era can still be scaled to a "high definition" resolution. Arguing that it's because those movies were made for big screens (which is a property of light, by the way), and comparing them to digital cameras only highlights an outstanding mind.

[Aristocles]

Great. So we agree that your previous reply was all wrong, right? The film itself doesn't relate to the resolution, it's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution.

Since you started with the hostility, allow me to retort at a similar level.


Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens.

...

Imagine a 12 Megapixel camera in 16x9 mode. That's 4616 x 2600 compared to Blu-rays 1920 x 1080."

I'm not really the one who needs to do the learning, now, am I?

The question in this thread was clear. He wanted to understand how film pre-HD-fanatic era can still be scaled to a "high definition" resolution. Arguing that it's because those movies were made for big screens (which is a property of light, by the way), and comparing them to digital cameras only highlights an outstanding mind.

Well well my pedantic asshole, friend. You appear ruffled?

A fellow mental midget: "Film resolution is specified in resolving power in c/mm (cycles per millimeter) or lp/mm (line pairs per millimeter). Diferent stocks have different resolving power. Normally finer grained (slow) film has more resolving power, higher sensitivity (faster) film has less resolving power, etc, all else being equal.

A simplified triangle of image quality capability is made by grain-speed-resolution. If you try to get more speed, graininess usually increases and/or resolution decreases, etc. With advances in film emulsion technology the triangle gets bigger. You get higher speed with the same fine grain, equivalent sharpness, etc.

If you have coarse big grain you get more speed (sensitivity) but the resolving power is decreased, while if you have finer smaller grain, packaged in a more uniform way into a thinner emulsion layer, you get better sharpness and the ability record finer detail per millimeter, but less sensitivity (you need more light) somewhat similar to having more pixels packed into a sensor.

The lens on the camera also has a resolution limit and the combined resolution of the film emulsion and the lens resolution that ends up on the final image on the negative is less than each's.

So having the resolving power of the final image (c/mm) and the size of the image (mm) you can multiply both and get what the resolution of the film/camera/lens system is capable of.

Also what we perceive as grain on photographic images is actually grain clumps as the grains are randomly distributed in irregular patterns within the film emulsion. (The smoothing and more uniform distribution of grain in film emulsions is one of the ways film quality has improved over the years) We're not looking at the individual grains themselves when we look at images in normal picture and movie viewing magnifications. To see the real individual grains you have to use those microscopic enlargements where the image is blown up so much you can barely make any of it.

Additionally, as Penton-Man mentioned in his thread, in color photography today, you normally bleach out the silver grains after development, and what remains are the color dye "clouds" of magenta cyan and yellow that formed and clumped together around them when the film was being developed."

My first comment was possibly a bit flippant and not thought out. Although, film gets discussed this way very often and using these terms. http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html

Notice this quote "It's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution." P-E-D-A-N-T-I-C. Yes, by all means let us skip a convenient way to discuss such in order to violate his parenthetic dictum about not "getting too technical".

Frankly, I hadn't given it a great deal of consideration. Cf. prior post.

As for my prior post being all wrong, well. . .

I wrote: "Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens."

Well, you can't add information that wasn't there in the first place. Film has more image information than HD video and can hence be represented in HD video really well. The amount of information present was actually what I was attempting to express.

As for my citing a frame of film for comparison, yes that is truly the notions and meanderings of a dolt. What kind of idiot would think in search terms? Perhaps the guy on AVS that I quoted from or perhaps others? Lots of them? Perhaps this fellow, would take a frame as a reference?:

"Old movies and most new movies are shot in 35 mm wide negative film. Film negative is a very high resolving medium. Resolution in film is measured in cycles/mm (or line pairs per millimeter one pair consisting of one black line and one white line so one cycle (or one line pair ) could be said to be equivalent to 2 pixels, one black and on white) (It's more complicated than that but that's good enough for the example). Film by itself can commonly resolve from 50 c/mm to 400 c/mm (100 pixels/mm to 800 pixels/mm) depending on emulsion stock. But since the image on film is formed by exposing it through a lens and this lens also has it's own resolution limits, the final resolution on the photographed negative is always less that each component's resolution.

For example 70.7 c/mm (141.4 pixels per mm) for photographed fine grained film. Now to the film formats. Depending on the year and format a movie was made in, the image can vary on 35mm shot film from as big as 24mm x 36 mm for VistaVision/Technirama 8 perforation cameras (same as 35mm still photo film) going down through 18mm x 24mm for Silent Films or Full Frame 4 perforations cameras to as small as 9mm x 21mm in Academy Sound Aperture cameras modified for the Techniscope 2 perforation format. There's also a few films made with bigger than 35mm cameras, like 70mm films (22mm x 48mm) and the couple of times used used 55mm and CINERAMA.

So multiplying the four mayor formats dimensions that have been used in 35mm by the pixels per millimeter gives you approx:

A) Academy Sound (Sound movies before 1955): 15mm x 21mm (1.375) = 2160 x 2970
B) Academy camera US Widescreen: 11mm x 21mm (1.85) = 1605 x 2970
C) Current Anamorphic Panavision ('Scope"): 17.5mm x 21mm (2.39) = 2485 x 2970
D) Super-35 for Anamorphic prints: 10mm x 24mm (2.39) = 1420 x 3390

In the process of making prints for exhibition this negative is copied onto other film (negative -> interpositive -> internegative -> print) so the resolution gets decimated with each emulsion copying step and when the image passes through a lens (for example, on a projector) it's reduced once more. Sometimes the resolution is reduced down to 1/6th of the original negative's resolution, and that's with doing things correctly.

So depending on what film element is used for scanning and with what method, the resolution of the image used in the transfer from film can be from less than that of the 1080p x 1920 Blu-ray format to much more. If they use a properly stored and preserved original negative, the BD probably will end up looking better than what you might have seen elsewhere."

Interesting also" http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/productFeatures/dCinema.shtml

Property of light, eh? I guess you typing of projection? Anyway my comment was in reference to the amount of data to fill up a large screen without washing out.

While this reply hasn't reflected what I really wanted to express, (unless, of course you have hear the word CUNT screaming at you) it roughly approximates my thoughts.

[IdolEyes787]

So is the popcorn just as good with liquid coconut psuedo-butter topping stuff as with real butter and if I am already paying to see the movie why do I still have to sit through commercials?
Also at this point who has more hair Bruce Willis or Nicholas Cage?

[Aristocles]

So is the popcorn just as good with liquid coconut psuedo-butter topping stuff as with real butter and if I am already paying to see the movie why do I still have to sit through commercials?
Also at this point who has more hair Bruce Willis or Nicholas Cage?

Sorry, brother.

If my original post was misleading, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Just trying to express a rough explication of a roughly understood notion, on my part.

I allowed myself to be drawn into a rather puerile argument with an interlocutor who has a firm grasp on the obvious limitations of my mental abilities.

I allowed the old self to be peek out! :)

[Artemis]

So is the popcorn just as good with liquid coconut psuedo-butter topping stuff as with real butter and if I am already paying to see the movie why do I still have to sit through commercials?
Also at this point who has more hair Bruce Willis or Nicholas Cage?

Sorry, brother.

If my original post was misleading, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Just trying to express a rough explication of a roughly understood notion, on my part.

I allowed myself to be drawn into a rather puerile argument with an interlocutor who has a firm grasp on the obvious limitations of my mental abilities.

I allowed the old self to be peek out! :)

Sorry to hear about the mental limitations, is it because you were repeatedly struck with a Latin dictionary around the head as a child?

Maybe idol could take you to some of his remedial macrame classes ?

[Aristocles]

Twenty years ago I was awash in those old Latin phrases. Actually, there were numerous Greek phrases also floating around in there. . .

Aristotelian Logic, then Predicate Logic, followed closely by my clear mental limitations that stared ole Bertie Russell and A.N. Whitehead in the face. (Somebody stop him, he's waxing nostalgic!)

Where's that macrame?

[Artemis]

Just pm Idol for times, he'll probably be quite excited. It is his only real chance to get out and about unsupervised.

Helpfully they do have a bus that picks you up...

http://imgur.com/VkK1x.jpg

[Aristocles]

A short one, of course

[mindlock]

you fuckin guys......both answers are great and on the money.....let it go.....off topic, spamming the thread with childish, self-centered behavior....

[Aristocles]

Touche! I'm going fishing.

[Artemis]

you fuckin guys......both answers are great and on the money.....let it go.....off topic, spamming the thread with childish, self-centered behavior....

So with your vast amount of experience at this forum, you are now arbitor of whether a post is valid or not. Once a question has been asked and answered the thread should what ? be locked ? there should be no further posts in case of spam ? as for the 'childish self centered behavior feel free to enlighten me as to what you find self centered.
If you feel the blinding urge to be the spam police feel free to file a report. Incidentally, though since your own post a. contained a swear word for no apparent reason and b. contributed absolutely zero in content to the thread you'd better hurry off and report yourself for spamming too.

[Disme]

Threads like these are why I truly adore FST!

It's like at the movies, sit back, relax and enjoy the 'spectacle'.

GO...Art...GO

[Quarterquack]

you fuckin guys......both answers are great and on the money.....let it go.....off topic, spamming the thread with childish, self-centered behavior....

So with your vast amount of experience at this forum, you are now arbitor of whether a post is valid or not. Once a question has been asked and answered the thread should what ? be locked ? there should be no further posts in case of spam ? as for the 'childish self centered behavior feel free to enlighten me as to what you find self centered.
If you feel the blinding urge to be the spam police feel free to file a report. Incidentally, though since your own post a. contained a swear word for no apparent reason and b. contributed absolutely zero in content to the thread you'd better hurry off and report yourself for spamming too.

:ohmy:

Sparingly so, I sometimes see a post that would have made me proud if I were the one who wrote it. This was one of them.

[The_Martinator]

At least Idol got his answer. :lol:

[IdolEyes787]

you fuckin guys......both answers are great and on the money.....let it go.....off topic, spamming the thread with childish, self-centered behavior....

Actually though I appreciate those that went to the trouble to try and enlighten me , honestly I get more of what I find personally worthwhile ( that being a smile and a bit of friendliness) out of the so called spam.Your post being the glaring exception.
Also, hope I'm not being too self-centered here ( although it being my thread perhaps I'm entitled a bit of leeway) but having been around the block more times than I'd like to admit to I've come to the conclusion that the only people always telling others to behave themselves ,besides making the absolute worst leaders and are the ones that likely never have had any fun themselves.

@Martin No one answered the important Willis/Cage hair debate question.

[The_Martinator]

Cage has more hair, but there's also the question of it really being his hair...

[IdolEyes787]

He owns it so I guess technically it's his .

[Burnsy]

So with your vast amount of experience at this forum, you are now arbitor of whether a post is valid or not. Once a question has been asked and answered the thread should what ? be locked ? there should be no further posts in case of spam ?

For God's sake NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.....

Surely that would go against everything FST stands for??? Locking topics? Ending spamming? Finishing off discussions on a polite and friendly note?

I think the current method of incessant spamming, with the occasional answer thrown in, the regular arguments of "who knows best", followed by various people picking any one of an infinite number of tangents to go off on is fine as it is...

I couldn't think of things being any other way on here... :lol:

[Aristocles]

"Touche! I'm going fishing."

Caught three, the largest being 5 pounds (LB). Darn, it was cold in that boat. This is the fishing thread, right?

[Quarterquack]

Went fishing last summer with a couple of my professors, who are huge fans of it as a sport. Three hours into it, I get my first nibble, 5 minutes later a 22" inch trout is sitting in our boat. Got a picture somewhere, will upload it when I find it (rearranging my hard drive).

[Artemis]

"Touche! I'm going fishing."

..... This is the fishing thread, right?

Yep, hooked me a 10 pound large spotted spastic earlier in this thread.

:geptardrod:

[worthlessone]

Great. So we agree that your previous reply was all wrong, right? The film itself doesn't relate to the resolution, it's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution.

Since you started with the hostility, allow me to retort at a similar level.



I'm not really the one who needs to do the learning, now, am I?

The question in this thread was clear. He wanted to understand how film pre-HD-fanatic era can still be scaled to a "high definition" resolution. Arguing that it's because those movies were made for big screens (which is a property of light, by the way), and comparing them to digital cameras only highlights an outstanding mind.

Well well my pedantic asshole, friend. You appear ruffled?

A fellow mental midget: "Film resolution is specified in resolving power in c/mm (cycles per millimeter) or lp/mm (line pairs per millimeter). Diferent stocks have different resolving power. Normally finer grained (slow) film has more resolving power, higher sensitivity (faster) film has less resolving power, etc, all else being equal.

A simplified triangle of image quality capability is made by grain-speed-resolution. If you try to get more speed, graininess usually increases and/or resolution decreases, etc. With advances in film emulsion technology the triangle gets bigger. You get higher speed with the same fine grain, equivalent sharpness, etc.

If you have coarse big grain you get more speed (sensitivity) but the resolving power is decreased, while if you have finer smaller grain, packaged in a more uniform way into a thinner emulsion layer, you get better sharpness and the ability record finer detail per millimeter, but less sensitivity (you need more light) somewhat similar to having more pixels packed into a sensor.

The lens on the camera also has a resolution limit and the combined resolution of the film emulsion and the lens resolution that ends up on the final image on the negative is less than each's.

So having the resolving power of the final image (c/mm) and the size of the image (mm) you can multiply both and get what the resolution of the film/camera/lens system is capable of.

Also what we perceive as grain on photographic images is actually grain clumps as the grains are randomly distributed in irregular patterns within the film emulsion. (The smoothing and more uniform distribution of grain in film emulsions is one of the ways film quality has improved over the years) We're not looking at the individual grains themselves when we look at images in normal picture and movie viewing magnifications. To see the real individual grains you have to use those microscopic enlargements where the image is blown up so much you can barely make any of it.

Additionally, as Penton-Man mentioned in his thread, in color photography today, you normally bleach out the silver grains after development, and what remains are the color dye "clouds" of magenta cyan and yellow that formed and clumped together around them when the film was being developed."

My first comment was possibly a bit flippant and not thought out. Although, film gets discussed this way very often and using these terms. http://pic.templetons.com/brad/photo/pixels.html

Notice this quote "It's the way it's converted to digital viewer media, and it's the dependence on the quality/accuracy of the scanner that dictates its final resolution." P-E-D-A-N-T-I-C. Yes, by all means let us skip a convenient way to discuss such in order to violate his parenthetic dictum about not "getting too technical".

Frankly, I hadn't given it a great deal of consideration. Cf. prior post.

As for my prior post being all wrong, well. . .

I wrote: "Old films are still higher resolution than 1080p, they were made for giant screens."

Well, you can't add information that wasn't there in the first place. Film has more image information than HD video and can hence be represented in HD video really well. The amount of information present was actually what I was attempting to express.

As for my citing a frame of film for comparison, yes that is truly the notions and meanderings of a dolt. What kind of idiot would think in search terms? Perhaps the guy on AVS that I quoted from or perhaps others? Lots of them? Perhaps this fellow, would take a frame as a reference?:

"Old movies and most new movies are shot in 35 mm wide negative film. Film negative is a very high resolving medium. Resolution in film is measured in cycles/mm (or line pairs per millimeter one pair consisting of one black line and one white line so one cycle (or one line pair ) could be said to be equivalent to 2 pixels, one black and on white) (It's more complicated than that but that's good enough for the example). Film by itself can commonly resolve from 50 c/mm to 400 c/mm (100 pixels/mm to 800 pixels/mm) depending on emulsion stock. But since the image on film is formed by exposing it through a lens and this lens also has it's own resolution limits, the final resolution on the photographed negative is always less that each component's resolution.

For example 70.7 c/mm (141.4 pixels per mm) for photographed fine grained film. Now to the film formats. Depending on the year and format a movie was made in, the image can vary on 35mm shot film from as big as 24mm x 36 mm for VistaVision/Technirama 8 perforation cameras (same as 35mm still photo film) going down through 18mm x 24mm for Silent Films or Full Frame 4 perforations cameras to as small as 9mm x 21mm in Academy Sound Aperture cameras modified for the Techniscope 2 perforation format. There's also a few films made with bigger than 35mm cameras, like 70mm films (22mm x 48mm) and the couple of times used used 55mm and CINERAMA.

So multiplying the four mayor formats dimensions that have been used in 35mm by the pixels per millimeter gives you approx:

A) Academy Sound (Sound movies before 1955): 15mm x 21mm (1.375) = 2160 x 2970
B) Academy camera US Widescreen: 11mm x 21mm (1.85) = 1605 x 2970
C) Current Anamorphic Panavision ('Scope"): 17.5mm x 21mm (2.39) = 2485 x 2970
D) Super-35 for Anamorphic prints: 10mm x 24mm (2.39) = 1420 x 3390

In the process of making prints for exhibition this negative is copied onto other film (negative -> interpositive -> internegative -> print) so the resolution gets decimated with each emulsion copying step and when the image passes through a lens (for example, on a projector) it's reduced once more. Sometimes the resolution is reduced down to 1/6th of the original negative's resolution, and that's with doing things correctly.

So depending on what film element is used for scanning and with what method, the resolution of the image used in the transfer from film can be from less than that of the 1080p x 1920 Blu-ray format to much more. If they use a properly stored and preserved original negative, the BD probably will end up looking better than what you might have seen elsewhere."

Interesting also" http://www.kodak.com/US/en/corp/researchDevelopment/productFeatures/dCinema.shtml

Property of light, eh? I guess you typing of projection? Anyway my comment was in reference to the amount of data to fill up a large screen without washing out.

While this reply hasn't reflected what I really wanted to express, (unless, of course you have hear the word CUNT screaming at you) it roughly approximates my thoughts.
Dimensions of film that you gave is all wrong.You cant measure 35mm or 70mm.You can just guess.Res. of film depends on scanning etc.
True Dimensions of 35mm 16mm 135mm and others..

http://red.cachefly.net/A/Chart.jpg

[Disme]

Listen to the man, he's Belgian!!!