DVDizzy Forum

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.

That is interesting, two completely opposite reactions.

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

I have a headache from all this technical talk!

Well, if you scratch all the technical talk, lets just say

Grain is your friend

It is almost certain when Bambi was first shown, it had grain on the display. You know, if you look up "restore" it says "to revert to its original state" and removing grain is not reverting it to its original state.

Film grain is natural and in many cases accounted for by the filmmakers and adds atmosphere. Many older films used the grain that they knew would be present on the final prints to hide poor detail or special effect props and rigs. In a 1942 feature, you expect grain. We don't want Bambi looking overtly clean and digital like it has just come off Disney's CAPS system. We want it to look like it did if you saw it in 1942.

Thanks for the translation!

No, its not a translation. It's just my personal view.

Ahhh but what if grain is NOT on the negative, and it's only on the print?

Do you then scan the negative and add artificial grain?

deathie mouse wrote:Ahhh but what if grain is NOT on the negative, and it's only on the print?

Do you then scan the negative and add artificial grain?

Then you leave it as it is. I find it unlikely the negative would be totally grain-free, but who knows?

But I wouldn't complain about a DVD presentation of Bambi with some grain on it.

Now, the appalling Little Mermaid DVD transfer (and reportedly the even Worse Pocahontas Gold Edition DVD transfer) are another issue entirely. Little Mermaid has way too much grain.

What was the story with that?

2099nett wrote:I find it unlikely the negative would be totally grain-free, but who knows?


Now, the appalling Little Mermaid DVD transfer (and reportedly the even Worse Pocahontas Gold Edition DVD transfer) are another issue entirely. Little Mermaid has way too much grain.

What was the story with that?

Well actually if you go by photographic negative area shot alone, lets just say, Bambi's negative if projected onto a movie screen would have 7 times more negative area per image height than The Lord of the Rings or Austin Powers Man of Mistery negatives, so do you remember Austin Powers being grainy? And of course what you saw were prints of those two which are up to 4 generations grainier down from the negatives.
Another way to put it is Bambi per picture height has more negative area than even 70mm film.

it's black magic

Then for DVD you're shrinking that image which your eye is resolving at around a 2000 pixel resolution into a 500 pixel resolution, in other words that grain is being reduced/merged in size/visibility 16 times.

Yes i know film stock has advanced a lot in 60 years, but Bambi was shot in b/w and b/w hasnt changed THAT much (it's color that has come a long way to look as good as b/w (in fact b/w still holds its own and may have the edge in sharpness)
Also live action movies are shot on fast stock, while animation films are shot on the slowest, finer grained stock available cus the animation stand lights and the still-like camera exposure can have all the light they need. Kodachrome (a kind of secret life b/w film that passed as color film ) had ben considered grainless for decades even before Kodak invented "color" negative motion picture film.

And no, Bambi it's not completely grain free from the 2000 pixel samples i saw. But I think it looked pretty damn good


Mmm the Little Mermaid and Pocahontas DVDs (which i havent seen) (TLM i've seen on the original non widescreen LD and all i remember is a clean grain free brighly colored image. Probably made from a brand new interpositive made from the negative?) were probably made from grainy prints? reissue prints? substandart materials? Also mmm depending on the telecine or scanner and settings and source etc many things can interact and grain end up looking MORE visible than it looks on the source (it's black magic) I think there was a lot of complaints of the Aliens' directors cut Laserdisc having grain the size of golfballs well i have it and it's grainy but it added a kind of documentary look to that version. Did it look that way on the theater screen? No way.
(I still like the DarkRedLeatherium Beauty and the Beast disc better too )

deathie mouse wrote:

2099nett wrote:I find it unlikely the negative would be totally grain-free, but who knows?


Now, the appalling Little Mermaid DVD transfer (and reportedly the even Worse Pocahontas Gold Edition DVD transfer) are another issue entirely. Little Mermaid has way too much grain.

What was the story with that?

Well actually if you go by photographic negative area shot alone, lets just say, Bambi's negative if projected onto a movie screen would have 7 times more negative area per image height than The Lord of the Rings or Austin Powers Man of Mistery negatives, so do you remember Austin Powers being grainy? And of course what you saw were prints of those two which are up to 4 generations grainier down from the negatives.
Another way to put it is Bambi per picture height has more negative area than even 70mm film.

"I'm no fool. No sir-ee.
I'm going to defer to death-he-eeee"

You make some points (which I never even knew about). But I still say some people here are expecting Beauty and the Beast/Aladdin style "restorations" (I still think that that word is wrong for the direct digital DVD transfers) and you're simply not going to get it on a film like Bambi. And I also still say if you could get it, the film would suffer.

I like SOME grain, for nostalgic reasons. It would be wrong if the movie would be completely grain-free. I thought the transfer looked wonderful. I think the obsession for perfectly clear transfers is a little stupid, we're talking about a movie wich is over 60 years old. hello.

Okay whoever the poster was who said that walmart has half glue and half velcro and wants to buy the movie again let me tell you something, you don't have to do that. If you have not opened the plastic cover you can return it for a refund and make sure you buy one with Velcro either at Walmart or anywhere they have one. If you have opened the plastic you can't get a refund at walmart but you still can return it to walmart and exchang it for the same item within 30 days ( if you have your sales slip with you ) so just do that and make sure you get one with a velcro

Wow, great restoration! I almost wept at the absolute gloriousness of this movie! What a movie! I haven't even touched the extras, but I can safely say, this is my favorite of the pre-90 Disney films. Bravo and well done, Disney!

Flower's Friend wrote:Okay whoever the poster was who said that walmart has half glue and half velcro and wants to buy the movie again let me tell you something, you don't have to do that. If you have not opened the plastic cover you can return it for a refund and make sure you buy one with Velcro either at Walmart or anywhere they have one. If you have opened the plastic you can't get a refund at walmart but you still can return it to walmart and exchang it for the same item within 30 days ( if you have your sales slip with you ) so just do that and make sure you get one with a velcro

I bought my DVD from Best Buy (I wanted the free Thumper). I was just so happy to get the movie i didn't even bother to check if they had the Velcro kind, people here said that none of them came with it, so i just didn't check. plus i had a busy day so i just walked in, paid then walked out.

then Wednesday i was at walmart and that is when i realized they had the velcro dvd cover. i will call Disney first and see if they will deliver me one, if not then i will do the Walmart thing.

My sleepcover also came with the glue thing. As with the Treasures last year, it seems Disney is trying to cheapen their product more and more.

Well, I've gone through the entire DVD already and plan to post my thoughts on it tomorrow.

Personally I thought Bambi looked great I mean for as old of a movie as it is the colors were super bright and the sound was great I absolutely loved it i mean loved it I think I will watch it again

I called Disney again today, this time they offered to send a couple of velcro snaps my way. =D It just annoys me that they used that little bit of glue, it wore off in less than a day... I went to Michaels and they didn't have anything remotely like the snaps on other Disney DVDs.

Anyways...in other news, according to Disc 2 of the Platinum Edition of Bambi...I am most like Spring! I always saw myself as Fall or Winter, but who am I to argue?

Hmmm, Ric mx I think you need to clean your DVD player if your seeing a lot of grain. I saw a little bit in a couple of spots but I compared it to a DVD pirated copy from a laserdisc and it was a massive improvement.

Sound was pretty good considering it started out in mono.

I loved the idea of finding a way for Walt, Frank Thomas, Eric Larson and others to do the audio commentary. Only watched a half hour of it(although thats the farthest I ever made it into an audio commentary).
but it was great to see their thoughts and concepts of the movie.

Watched a bit of the making of but I have seen so many Disney making ofs recently that they have gotten kind of stale. Too many other movies to move on to.

I'm a summer person accoding to that season profile on Disc 2. I always did see myself as a summer person. I really like going swimming at the lake in the summer.

Ahh. A fellow British Columbian, and a fellow summer person. Personally I go for kayaking and surfing. Which part of the province you from?

Well, the grain still doesn't make any sense. Just compare Bambi to Snow White, wich is around 5 yrs older. SW shows less than half of the grain that Bambi shows.

Anyway thnks to Deathie Mouse and 2099net for giving specs about cleaning process and grain in old movies.

My point was that the video transfer of Snow White, Alice, and Sleeping Beauty were breathtaking, and Bambi is not. It doesn't mean that it's a bad tranfer, I mean it's really good.

But as I learned from the other topic I posted recently (the gay issue) many people here tend to think that if you say "It is not white" is the same as saying "It is black" whitout giving any chance for any shade of gray...

Just like here I said "It was not as good as..." many people react like "How does he dare to say it is a bad transfer!!!" LOL