Is Pocahontas being digitally restored?

Lady · Post by **Lady** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 5:34 pm

On the main page it says that for the Pocahontas Special Edition DVD, the movie will receive a new "anamorphic transfer". Is this the same as "digital restoration"?

Basically, I'm wondering if Pocahontas will be given the same painstaking restoration treatment that we saw with the Platinum titles, Sleeping Beauty and now Alice in Wonderland.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 6:14 pm

"Anamorphic transfer" means a widescreen transfer that is encoded with special visual information to fit a widescreen TV. "Digital restoration" is an entirely different thing: it's simply a clean-up of a film print digitally.

And yes, Pocahontas has supposedly gone through this treatment. Wether or not anything has actuall been changed ala BATB & TLK is yet to be seen.

Lady · Post by **Lady** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 6:38 pm

Jack wrote:"Anamorphic transfer" means a widescreen transfer that is encoded with special visual information to fit a widescreen TV. "Digital restoration" is an entirely different thing: it's simply a clean-up of a film print digitally.

And yes, Pocahontas has supposedly gone through this treatment. Wether or not anything has actuall been changed ala BATB & TLK is yet to be seen.

In that case I hope they do both an anamorphic transfer AND a digital restoration. They will be including a new animation/song sequence ("If I Never Knew You"), which will look more seamless if they improve the picture quality of the original movie.

Mushu2083 · Post by **Mushu2083** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 7:32 pm

You'd think they'd do a digital restoration to the film for an SE release. I heard that it will have this nature trivia game. I hope they'll have deleted scenes too. I like those.

Joe Carioca · Post by **Joe Carioca** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 8:54 pm

To tell you the truth, "Pocahontas" needs no restoration, as neither "Beauty and the Beast" nor "The Lion King" needed. All the films produced since "The Rescuers Down Under" are stored on CDs. All Disney needs to do is to produce a digital transfer using this material. But, in the case of the movies I mentioned, they were "touched up" for special IMAX releases, adding more detail and, occasionally, restoring the picture itself.

And yes, I believe we will see an all-new digital transfer made to “Pocahontas”! And I simply can’t wait!

Disney Guru · Post by **Disney Guru** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 11:10 pm

I hope that they do as good of a job on it as they did on the Alice In WOnderland Masterpiece Edition DVD. I just bought my Alice In Wonderland @ WalMart and I love it.

rodis · Post by **rodis** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 4:57 am

Joe Carioca wrote:To tell you the truth, "Pocahontas" needs no restoration, as neither "Beauty and the Beast" nor "The Lion King" needed. All the films produced since "The Rescuers Down Under" as stored on CDs.

Strangely enough, Pocahontas suffers from a fair amount of grain. It strikes me everytime how a film which was released right after The Lion King can look so grainy at times.

Joe Carioca · Post by **Joe Carioca** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 5:42 am

rodis wrote:
Joe Carioca wrote:To tell you the truth, "Pocahontas" needs no restoration, as neither "Beauty and the Beast" nor "The Lion King" needed. All the films produced since "The Rescuers Down Under" are stored on CDs.
Strangely enough, Pocahontas suffers from a fair amount of grain. It strikes me everytime how a film which was released right after The Lion King can look so grainy at times.

Yeah, I agree with you, but that is because they used the same transfer from the LD, which wasn't a digital transfer (and even if it was, it wouldn't be a digital transfer anymore if transfered directly to DVD).

All the Disney movies released since "A Bug's Life" received digital transfers, and so did "Snow White", "Pinocchio" (Special Edition), "Alice", "Sleeping Beauty", "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King".

2099net · Post by **2099net** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:16 am

The UK Pocahontas disc has hardly any grain. This is probably more because they ran the transfer through a filter rather then making a new one, but it's way better than most films. Certainly way better than the R1 Little Mermaid for grain.

Billy Moon · Post by **Billy Moon** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:19 am

If they (please, please, please let it be so...) add the duet song into the film, then I'm sure a new transfer will also be used for the rest of the film.
If they left the film as it is on the currently available DVD, it wouldn't make any sense to release it in the UK so soon, since the current release already has much of the bonus material.
I'm quite confident we'll be getting a new digital anamorphic transfer, with an option to watch the film with the new song sequence.

rodis · Post by **rodis** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:37 am

Joe Carioca wrote:All the Disney movies released since "A Bug's Life" received digital transfers, and so did "Snow White", "Pinocchio" (Special Edition), "Alice", "Sleeping Beauty", "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King".

Wait, I thought Snow White and Sleeping Beauty got a different restoration from Beauty & the Beast and The Lion King??
So they all got a digital restoration but BB & LK just got re-animated in parts and had details added to the background because of the IMAX release? That's the whole difference?

Can anyone tell me what are the most common restorations?

Uh, I'm never gonna learn this stuff

Billy Moon · Post by **Billy Moon** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 6:54 am

When a film is restored, it means it is being cleaned up and returned to look like it originally did, or as close to the way it originally was as possible.
Why they're calling what they did to Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King restoration is beyond me.

Lady · Post by **Lady** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 8:59 am

Billy Moon wrote:If they (please, please, please let it be so...) add the duet song into the film, then I'm sure a new transfer will also be used for the rest of the film.
If they left the film as it is on the currently available DVD, it wouldn't make any sense to release it in the UK so soon, since the current release already has much of the bonus material.
I'm quite confident we'll be getting a new digital anamorphic transfer, with an option to watch the film with the new song sequence.

is there an audio commentary on the current Pocahontas UK DVD?

englishboy · Post by **englishboy** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 9:33 am

I, too, am confused by this statement of digital restoration. From what I understand the prints for all films after TLM were produced from a digital source. The hand-drawn images were scanned, then computer colored, then set up and edited on computer. The negative was print from this material. So no restoration should be needed for any of these films, whereas, before TLM, with true negatives, the original images might have deteriorated.

Joe Carioca · Post by **Joe Carioca** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 12:31 pm

englishboy wrote:I, too, am confused by this statement of digital restoration. From what I understand the prints for all films after TLM were produced from a digital source. The hand-drawn images were scanned, then computer colored, then set up and edited on computer. The negative was print from this material. So no restoration should be needed for any of these films, whereas, before TLM, with true negatives, the original images might have deteriorated.

Yeah, basically that’s it. Even if the post-Resucers Down Under films need no real restoration (they still can look as – or almost as – good as “Tarzan” or “A Bug’s Life”), it is great that Disney decides to do so. I mean, now they can look and sound close to perfection.

Billy Moon · Post by **Billy Moon** » Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:33 pm

Lady wrote:is there an audio commentary on the current Pocahontas UK DVD?

No, there isn't. It doesn't have all of the bonus material from the laserdisc, but much more than most 1-disc releases.

chrisrose · Post by **chrisrose** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 5:54 am

I wish I had been able to collect these Laserdiscs when they first started coming out (I was a kid and had no money) - since it seems Disney will never put as many extras on their DVDs as they put on their LDs. It kills me to know there's more stuff I'll never get to see.

WHY? It's not like they have to dig through the vaults looking for bonus footage ... that work's already been done... Is it so hard to just take everything that's already on the laserdisc and fill up the damn DVD?! Damn it.

I wonder if the Making of Pocahontas will be edited. Yeah I'm one of those people who suspects the special edition was delayed in order to remove any mention/footage of Roy.

Can't understand what else could cause a delay so close to the release date.

2099net · Post by **2099net** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 9:48 am

It's been a while since I've watched my R2 Pocahontas, but I don't think the Making Of has any footage of Roy anyway.

I may watch and confirm/deny this later.

PheR · Post by **PheR** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 10:34 am

I really hope so!!!!

the american Gold collection DVD looks, horrible!!!!!!!!, actually it is the worst image quality I've seen on DVD.

Joe Carioca · Post by **Joe Carioca** » Thu Jan 29, 2004 11:38 am

2099net wrote:It's been a while since I've watched my R2 Pocahontas, but I don't think the Making Of has any footage of Roy anyway.

I may watch and confirm/deny this later.

I have already seen it, and yes, it does!

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