classic movie DVD releases for sale sometimes copied from NTSC-PAL masters?

AnthonyUK

the_r_sole wrote: »

they are preserved, just in their original form, why should they waste money to remaster old films every time there's a step in technology?

I have seen digitally restored versions of backcatalogue stuff issued on DVD/BluRay and many of them look (and sound) a hell of a lot better than the original film print issues;crisp clear and clean sharp images,vivid colours,true-to-life encompassing surround sound-what's wrong with that?:cool:

System

nothing wrong with that, just that they won't do it unless it makes financial sense - I too have seen old films that have been remastered, but tbh I can't see xanadu making a good enough case in terms of sales or significance in the film industry - you should invest in some old equipment to watch these films the way they were intended to be consumed

S0litaire

AnthonyUK wrote: »

I don't think moviestudios would make the mistake of dumping perfect good serviceable film prints and/or burning them! Good moviestudios would restore them digitally clean up the sound and create good clean quality masters for dvd/bluray transfer and/or tv transmission sales. ITV1 use a PAL master for transmission of Xanadu as do paytv entertainment/movie channels.:D

Lol you don't know movie bosses do you...
you'll be lucky to find pristine 35m prints of most movies over 30 years old. Many were destroyed to save on storage costs, but the majority of loss is due to wear and tear and environmental issues.

Digital transfers were very sloppy when they first started transfering film to tape (literally pointing a video camera at a screen)

Very few movies had frame by frame digitizing, unless it was for a LaserDisk master (laser Disks held each frame as an uncompressed image.) Some studios are going back to their old Laserdisk back catalogue to try and recover films when they can't find any usable projector prints.

Most studios won't put the extra money into cleaning up an old movie unless their is a specific demand (i.e. anniversary edition or back catalogue of a recently departed actor.)

googler

AnthonyUK wrote: »

I don't think moviestudios would make the mistake of dumping perfect good serviceable film prints and/or burning them! Good moviestudios would restore them digitally clean up the sound and create good clean quality masters for dvd/bluray transfer and/or tv transmission sales. ITV1 use a PAL master for transmission of Xanadu as do paytv entertainment/movie channels.:D

You'd be surprised ...

Nilrem

the_r_sole wrote: »

they are preserved, just in their original form, why should they waste money to remaster old films every time there's a step in technology?

They do actually remaster them, usually these days at something like 4k resolution (about what is used for cinema digital projection at the moment).
IIRC several of the big studios are having major projects to rescan back catalogue titles (they can then remaster at leisure), but obviously starting with the "big" titles, things like Bond (you really wouldn't think the early bond films are from 50 year old film with the remasters), whilst lesser titles are often left until they reach a milestone.

Note I say "big studios", as they tended to take better care of the original films, at least for the finished titles, so are often available, baring problems like the prints being lost in fires...
Smaller studios and indies may not have original prints due to things like change of owners, or even just storage costs

The problem is for some older back catalogue titles the distributor in one country may not have access to the original masters digital or film, or may not wish to pay for the conversion from film to digital themselves but only have access to older digital masters.

For an example of the first problem, when Spirited Away was new, the Japanese DVD release had a red tint due to an idiot at Disney deciding to master it for a specific setting on LCD/Plasma TV's* when most people still had CRT's.
The R4 (Aus) distributor tried to get around that issue by creating their own digital masters, but had to give up because the first one was from subpar film stock (IE film that had been shown a lot, and had too much visible damage/artifacts), then the second source turned out to be based on the Japanese version or something (IIRC by that point they'd already spent a small fortune on trying to create their own masters and were running out of time till it's release date).

With niche titles especially the companies may not wish to pay for a new PAL master at all, and thus use a standards conversion - this is something you see a fair bit with US TV shows, although when done well it shouldn't be too noticeable.

The real problem comes when the masters used to do the conversion are subpar to begin with, and sometimes that's what we get.

Oddly enough I have seen some cult shows get massive remaster (or even just releases) projects, usually funded in a kickstarter style, where the distributor solicits it directly, with people paying upfront in the understanding that if not enough copies are bought work won't go ahead and they will get refunded.



*IIRC you needed to set your Plasma to 9300k, when most sets at the time were only able to do 6400k.