That is interesting, two completely opposite reactions.Ric-Mx wrote:The video transfer for the movie was a HUGE DISSAPOINTMENT... not even close to the Snow White, Alice in Wonderland or Sleeping Beauty transfers. Some scenes look totally awful!!! too much grain and not impressive at all...
by the way, along with Bambi R1 I also got Gone With the Wind 4-Disc Set and that was another major dissapointment for the video transfer. .. it wais "ultra restorarion" and it seems almost identical to the single disc release a few years ago... it was worth only for the extras... but that off topic.
Seems like is't the best we can expect for the old movies... I don't think even HD-DVD or Blu Ray will really bring us the "ultimate" audio and video quality for movies that were made more than 60 yrs ago... !
They did a good job and the movie does look better than ever... but it's not enough!!!
I't could have been "smother" but I guess they didn't wanted to give the "brand new feeling"...
Well... sometimes they go too far... like Beauty and the Beast. B&B looks so bright that you can get the idea of seeing each cel over the backgrounds... it was a great digital restoration but it TOTALLY RUINED the darker feeling of the movie.
Maybe with Bambi the deal was for it too look like an old movie that looks "good enogh"
Here in Mexico a Pinnochio Special Edition (Single disc and not to special) was released about two years ago, the video transfer is supposed to be the best restoration (not the one used for R1 Gold Collection) and it looks great but "un-espectacular" just like Bambi does...
Now I hope that CINDERELLA will really look as one of the "crown jewels" of the studio... it doesn't deserve to have even a little grainy shot.
and MickeyMouseboy wrote:
that's weird ric-mx. To me it looked like there wasnt enough grain. I didn't notice any grain, the picture looked too digital.
I haven't seen the DVD yet but i examined a couple of Cinema quality High Resolution pics of Bambi (courtesy of a very good friend
) which are about 2000 pixels tall by 3000 pixels wide (where you can see the fine grain structure of the film source) and those pictures do not have any grain when reduced to the tiny 500 x 688 pixel size of the DVD cus the fine grain is blended into practically nothingness when reduced 16 times from its original size (that's an automatic noise reduction of 12 dB's alone), why, it probably wouldnt even be truly noticeable on the 2000 pixel tall still images if they were running at 24fps seen from the proper distance!So again, admiting not having seen the DVD yet, but the high resolution "source", to Cousin i say since these transfers are made from the best elements available you probably are seeing the image the closest to its original form, probably much better and grainless than any 35mm print (which after all is a duplicate, or "copy", of the negatives, or even further down, a copy of the internegative copied from the interpositive copied from the negative!) could look. (Which admitely might be shocking). And of course one could argue about if this is a true representation of the original "product", maybe Walt Disney and his artists/cinematographers compensated/planned for the degradation of the prints and the way the final prints looked was what he wanted, or it could be the other way, he just squeezed the best out of the printing technology at the time but wished it could be better, closer to the original negative or actual art work. Art is made to elicit an emotional response and therefore is a subjective thing. So in things like this in which your restoring things 60 years old with modern technology some things might turn out different and for some it may be an improvement and for others it may feel the opposite.
Just one thing: the original Bambi prints were printed in the IB Technicolor printing proccess whose color dyes are much more pure and saturated than normal modern color stock, so mmm this also can come into play, cus prints and/or pre print material (and therefore videos derived from them) made in recent years, lets say the last 25, are on modern color stock, so there can be several possible "looks"
And of course in this digital age where one can "tweak" the look any way you want it with a few sliders/knobs, that adds another layer of "interpretation" as we have seen on the 2 different color renditions of Beauty and The Beast released.
To Ric-Mx , who seems the one who has complained the most about the images being less than spectacular, and with too much grain, again i haven't seen the DVD but after seeing Luke's review captures, plus those High Resolution pics i got well i'm cornfused (maíz!) about all the grain you seem to see.
It's not like Bambi was gonna be a digital render grain/noise free image (tho at DVD sizes, fine grain film negatives/elements should show minimal or no grain) but "too much grain"? And Cousin MMb thinks it has too little? so 
btw, Gone With The Wind received a restoration at the times of the Laserdisc and that video transfer (and i would imagine the previous DVD too) was made from a new interpositive printed from the original Technicolor b/w separation negative (an interpositive is a special kind of modern color stock film element that has an orange dye mask to preserve as much of the color purity and tone quality of the negatives in a single film stock (prints don't have this color purity advantage) and is very slow and sharp and fine grained) so this element is as close as can be to the original negative without being the original, so the newer "Ultra Resolution" DVD made from the b/w separations directly onto RGB video, tho of course being the best, and purer in color less grainy etc, is after all is said and done, just one incremental step better so maybe that's why it may not be a blow the socks off improvement compared to the previous one
Also remember, all these images/transfers are being shrunk into 500 pixel video so at one point the DVD medium itself starts to become the limiting factor too.
A high definition video made from all these original elements of these images would look incredibly good as you could keep increasing their size and blowing them up and they would still hold and show more detail.
Of course, will they have high tensile resolution velcro?
I'll be back
) had ben considered grainless for decades even before Kodak invented "color" negative motion picture film.
