CINDERELLA DVD - digital restoration gone too far?

[drsd2kill]

[quote="ichabod"][quote="Lars Vermundsberget"]In some cases restorers need the memories of the original artists for reference. How dependable is that after fifty years?[/quote]

More dependable however are original backgrounds are cels, which are stored safely in the vault. Even though they too are prone to discolouring, in the conditions they are stored they at least will be able to give a 99.9% realistic portrayal of the original colours.[/quote]

Acocrding to someone I knoiw in the know about such matters, Disney doesn't have a huge collection of original cels from CINDERELLA or many other films from that era. They do have many backgrounds, but the impression that they have all of their original cels - some 110,000 or so per movie - safely stored away is just not true or practical. Artists kept some, some were cleaned off after being photographed and reused, and some were sold - like how LADY AND THE TRAMP cels were sold for $5 each (!) when Disneyland opened - lol - Who knew they'd be worth so much? Now even a replica costs several hundred dollars! Crazy...

I don't agree with the assumption that the lines of the animation being thinner means it is due to the image being of "higher resolution". That doesn't make sense at all. Either the lines show up or they don't. If anything, higher resolution would make them more apparent, wouldn't it? Anyone who views a few scenes from the 1995 Laserdisc and the 2005 DVD on any screen larger than 27" will undoubtedly notice the good values of both transfers - as well as the negatives. I just hope the original cleaned-up film is being preserved and not just this digitally enhanced version. After all, the Lowry version can be output to film at 4K resolution. I know it was the Lowry version that was digitally projected in L.A. last fall, though I hear there were a few more corrections done that remain incorrect on the DVD.

Again, the 1995 transfer was from a restored print manufactured directly from the original negatives. And even the 1987 video release wasn't so terrible, although the restored 1995 release was so much cleaner, brighter, and stable. I understand that pure white can be too much to take in Technicolor, but that is why they would usually use an off-white or light gray. But turquoise? I wonder why everyone is rushing to defend what I can only see as an accident in the "digital restoration" phase. The whites of her eyes are sometimes white, sometimes blue - and it varies from shot to shot.

I'm going to compare BAMBI soon to the new DVD. I didn't take a good look at the DVD when it came out. I did notice the incredible soundtrack though. I love the song "I Bring You a Song" and it was impossibly clean sounding. As good as the previous release sounded for a film recorded optically, the new DVD soundtrack - even the "original mono" (which I think is a recomposited mono with slightly different balance, but still) - is a revelation. I just don't know how they got such a full-bodied, rich and crisp - but not shrill or gravely - soundtrack from optical elements.

[Disney Duster]

More dependable however are original backgrounds are cels, which are stored safely in the vault. Even though they too are prone to discolouring, in the conditions they are stored they at least will be able to give a 99.9% realistic portrayal of the original colours.

But deathiemouse(whom I miss on these forums, and thank you for talking to him, 2099net) said:

now as to why colors are different
Cinderella was shot though a red 25 Green 58 and Blue 47 filters (or similar) (the RGB gel filters in some test discs )
into b/w film
thats a color record
then those b/w records were dyed with a set of yellow magenta and cyan dies that was manipulated to get the color you wanted (like playing with Photoshop colors! (a chemical photoshop!)
that was THE TECHNICOLOR IB PRINT AND THATS THE TRUE COLOR REFERENCE
the old videos were maybe made from Eastmancolor prints which look totally diferent
the new DVDs were made by scanning the b/w negatives into video RGB.
and referenced to the cels. not to the technicolor prints
so right there color is f**ked

He's basically saying that if the restorers did look at the original cels and backgrounds, those cels and backgrounds aren't what they should have been looking at. They should have been looking at the Technicolor prints, where the final decision is made on how the colors should look. The colors can be altered from the original cels in the Technicolor prints.

[2099net]

I don't agree with the assumption that the lines of the animation being thinner means it is due to the image being of "higher resolution". That doesn't make sense at all. Either the lines show up or they don't. If anything, higher resolution would make them more apparent, wouldn't it?

This diagram shows how the lower the resolution, the "thicker" a line becomes as detail bleeds into surrounding areas. The bleeding effect would appear to be magnified with movement too.

[ichabod]

Acocrding to someone I knoiw in the know about such matters, Disney doesn't have a huge collection of original cels from CINDERELLA or many other films from that era.

Yes, many have been sold / stolen / given away over the years, however Disney are no so foolish that they would give away the lot. There's still a fair old number stored in the vaults!

The colors can be altered from the original cels in the Technicolor prints.

Yes I'm perfectly aware the colour of the actual cel would not necessarily be a true representation of the film print. I don't think I was too clear in my post. The point I meant to address was that a 60 year old memory of the colours of the paint, would not be necessary when the actual cels are available to look at.

[Poppins#1]

Yes I'm perfectly aware the colour of the actual cel would not necessarily be a true representation of the film print. I don't think I was too clear in my post. The point I meant to address was that a 60 year old memory of the colours of the paint, would not be necessary when the actual cels are available to look at.

I would think that Disney's cross-reference color chart of paint to film still exists, unless of course that has faded too!

[drsd2kill]

I don't agree with the assumption that the lines of the animation being thinner means it is due to the image being of "higher resolution". That doesn't make sense at all. Either the lines show up or they don't. If anything, higher resolution would make them more apparent, wouldn't it?

This diagram shows how the lower the resolution, the "thicker" a line becomes as detail bleeds into surrounding areas. The bleeding effect would appear to be magnified with movement too.

The pictures you created prove nothing at all. DVD is only a bit higher in resolution than Laserdisc. Even though the new CINDERELLA master is downconverted from an HD master, it is still just 720x480 on the DVD.

And let's not forget the size of painted cels. Are we really to believe the animation had hair-thin lines that were inked and painted around on a microcosmic level?

And now for my own demonstration, albeit using actual images from the LD (upscaled to match the 480 resolution of the DVD) and the DVD. I enlarged the images by 2x and have these unaltered images to show. The left shows the DVD while the Laserdisc is on the right. Hmmm.... Those lines on the DVD sure do look slimmer, nearly gone entirely, now don't they?

Again, it's amazing how there are people that will rush to defend anything Disney has done at any point. I'm not trying to say "Laserdiscs are better than DVD", I'm just concerned that the mastered used for the DVD - which COULD look so much better - has been tweaked and altered so much that it isn't the same film. The DVD has the potentional to be so much sharper and clearer with the advances in transfer technology in the past 10 years, but instead we are left with an image that looks like it was produced for television.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f112/ ... Ylines.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>

[Poppins#1]

And now for my own demonstration, albeit using actual images from the LD (upscaled to match the 480 resolution of the DVD) and the DVD. I enlarged the images by 2x and have these unaltered images to show. The left shows the DVD while the Laserdisc is on the right. Hmmm.... Those lines on the DVD sure do look slimmer, nearly gone entirely, now don't they?

Not to my eyes. The lines look to be the exact same thickness to me. Unless you are talking about the lines in the veil. Because the color of the veil was changed from white to a silver/grey the lines are blending and somewhat disappear. I'm not saying this is desirable, but may have been unavoidable.

Again, it's amazing how there are people that will rush to defend anything Disney has done at any point.

There you are absolutely wrong. Just because most of us are very happy with the Cinderella DVD, doesn't mean we don't regularly criticize Disney for their very poor-looking non-OAR 20-year old transfers of catalog titles being slopped onto DVD with no care whatsoever.
One could say that you seem hell-bent on convincing everybody that the DVD is a horribly altered travesty. Please allow us to respectfully disagree.
As you are a film purist, you can petition Disney to release a new version for you that faithfully represents the 1950 film stock (albeit digitally at standard DVD resolution) with all the film flaws, specks, grain and a reproduction of the original optical soundtrack with all the hiss, pops and crackles that were on the original prints.

[Fflewduur]

As you are a film purist, you can petition Disney to release a new version for you that faithfully represents the 1950 film stock (albeit digitally at standard DVD resolution) with all the film flaws, specks, grain and a reproduction of the original optical soundtrack with all the hiss, pops and crackles that were on the original prints.

Which brings to mind the Buckingham-Nicks bootleg CD for which I paid too much money several years ago---all the convenience of digital with all the hiss, pops and crackles of vinyl!

[drsd2kill]

There is a difference between using digital restoration tools to restore a film and remake it. I am not asking them to put the 1995 Laserdisc master onto DVD. I'm not saying I'm gaga over dirt, scratches, and grain. Oh, but a cleaned up original mono soundtrack - which, yes, would have been optical in origin, I would like as an OPTION.

I wonder if you ever owned the Laserdisc edition, or if you had only seen the film on video via VHS before the DVD. I don't agree that "most people are happy" with the DVD at all. I posted images for people to compare, although seeing the film in motion shows a much better comparison. I probably should make a DVD using the m2v video and ac3 audio tracks from the DVD and put the LD transfer as an alternate angle.... Eh, too much work.

I don't see how thinning out the lines of animation are "unavoidable" in a digital restoration of a film.

[Disney Duster]

Not to my eyes. The lines look to be the exact same thickness to me. Unless you are talking about the lines in the veil. Because the color of the veil was changed from white to a silver/grey the lines are blending and somewhat disappear. I'm not saying this is desirable, but may have been unavoidable.

So you're fine with a wedding dress that would traditionally be white now looking gray? Anyway, The specific spots you should look at are the area around her waist (the lines are completely gone), the line on her skirt closest to the right (the middle of it is gone), the outline of her skirt just under her arm (part of it gone) and the line on her left shoulder (that's gone too).

Also, check back at the previous posts. The shawl around the stepmother had very light lines before. In the DVD restoration, not only do they look choppy, but much darker, almost the same color as the shawl.

On a side note, these screencaps show how much warmer the old restoration looked. I would rather watch the movie with warm colors that warmed my heart.

[Poppins#1]

I don't agree that "most people are happy" with the DVD at all.

From Webster's dictionary -
Most 1: geatest in quantity, extent, or degree <the most ability> 2: the majority of <most people>

51% constitutes a majority. I think my statement is accurate.

[Poppins#1]

So you're fine with a wedding dress that would traditionally be white now looking gray?

If the restoration team decided that was the original intent, then no I don't have a problem with it.

But nit-picking the shade of every color is really not constructive. And as for the slightly blue tinge to the white of the Stepmother's eyes, quite frankly, watching the DVD I didn't even notice it.

[2099net]

This diagram shows how the lower the resolution, the "thicker" a line becomes as detail bleeds into surrounding areas. The bleeding effect would appear to be magnified with movement too.

The pictures you created prove nothing at all. DVD is only a bit higher in resolution than Laserdisc. Even though the new CINDERELLA master is downconverted from an HD master, it is still just 720x480 on the DVD.

Well, you're sort of right, the diagram doesn't prove anything, but it shows how colours can bleed at lower resolutions. But of course, old CRT TVs and VHS, even production quality analog tapes (and most likely LDs) don't work on a true pixel grid like computers do. When the horizontal line is being drawn it simply "pulses" the different colours as it travels across. Therefore any "fine" horizontal resolution is lost and colours are much more likely to bleed.

I happened to be watching Singing in the Rain last night, a Technicolor film. I've also got Warner's Adventures of Robin Hood and of course The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. All technicolour films on DVD which have unnaturally bright colours. Especially the trailer for Robin Hood on the Robin Hood disc. It seems to me, Technicolor simply produces "louder" colours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technicolo ... nd_decline

Here it says "Technicolor eventually fell out of favor in the United States as being too expensive and too slow in turning out prints. While paying audience numbers were decreasing, the number of movie screens in the US was increasing. And while dye-transfer printing yielded superior color printing, the number of high speed prints that could be struck in labs all over the country outweighed the fewer, slower number of prints that could only be had in Technicolor's labs. The last new American film released before Technicolor closed their dye plant was The Godfather, Part II (1974)." which confirms Technicolor did have "superior colour printing".

Also The Aviator the film has stylised colours in places to emulate the look of Technicolor as detailed here

"The visual aesthetic of dye transfer Technicolor continues to be used in Hollywood, usually in films set in the mid-20th century. Parts of The Aviator, the 2004 biopic of Howard Hughes, were digitally manipulated to imitate color processes that were available during the periods each scene takes place. The two-color look of the film is incorrectly cited as looking like Technicolor's two-color systems, and is in fact a facsimile of Hughes' own color system, Multicolor. The "three-strip" Technicolor look begins after the newsreel footage of Hughes making the first flight around the world."

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aviator#Style (notice it says saturated):

"Many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor."

I really don't see how you can complain that the original colours are not being presented when you've never seen the original presentation. All you've seen is most likely a transfer of a copy - and as DeathieMouse said on my AIM chat, most likely a inferior Eastmancolor copy of the original Technicolor.

[tale_as_old_as_time993]

Seeing those original screencaps was definately my nostalgia! I think that the recolouring of the film was to maintain the interest of little kids, as they get bored a lot faster nowadays. Espiecially in the scene where Gus and Jaq are collecting corn.
I preferred the original screencaps, as like I said, they were my nostalgia, as when I grew up watching Cinderella, the colours were more vibrant and less pastal and I grew up seeing all the scratchy lines you find on a VHS, instead of the quality perfections you find on the P.E DVD.

Also, I've always wanted to know this, do they re-draw every single cell? Or are the films just redefined on computers? btw, what was wrong with Beauty and the Beast's re-animation?

Personally, I'm Not the biggest Cinderella fan, but I was when I was young. Looking at the original prints and today's prints are like you said helping you remember the movie. And though the new prints are crisp and clean, they still don't make the art like it used to. The scenery isn't as defined, meaning that I think they just want you to see the whole movie like it was a 2-D film from today that just isn't elaborate or use CAPS scenery. But if cleaner picture is better then its feel from the era it was made I'll never know.

[2099net]

Once you open a doorway to the "Twilight Zone" it seems it's hard to close it. I can see I'm going to have to study the Exorcist films tonight, to learn how to rid my flat of spirits (well, all apart from Exorcist II, because its crap).

Anyhow, while dodging flying books, taps with flowing blood and killer posessed <strike>dolls</strike> - *ahem* I mean "Action Figures" - and other "hilarious" pranks from the spirit world, I was contacted by the Mouse of Death again! And this time without the aid of a Ouiji board!

Here follows his eerie wisdom from what can only be described as "the beyond", as much as I can remember it:

On my "crude" diagram
...thinner lines usually means higher resolution because when resolution is higher the edge spread function is thinner.
...example was good but you should have increased the contrast of the thicker interpolated lines to make people see your point better .Their lower contrast (lower darkness) throws the example off.

when asked about "bleed" on TV screens
...well its edge spread function
...but it happens on b/w and colour
...when sharpness is lower the light (or the silver that darkens on a negative, phosphoer scanning beam spot etc, is lower in contrast and it spreads (imnagine a thin colum (a line of resolution) melting, so its spreads to the sides as it "melts"
...in Video the high frequencies dont have high/fast/sharp enough rise times
...on the wave



The Grim Squeaker also had a message "from beyond" for drsd2kill

"Ask that dude (drsd2kill) if his eMac and/or Apple DVD Player is calibrated to NTSC standarts

(yes he has an eMac. How do i know? I know everything."

It would appear that DeathieMouse can, indeed see all from his residence in the Twilight Zone!

The picture above is the DVD screencape posted by drsd2kill simply altered by DeathieMouse.( I shrunk it down, because I'm hosting it). It has an increased white (to about 90%) and slightly increased colours (just like you can on a TV or monitor with the colour and contrast settings - i.e. no fancy photoshop filters).

[drsd2kill]

Yes, my eMac is calibrated to NTSC standards. I had to go in and change it when doing some video work because the image as it was on my monitor was too dark. I didn't alter the color or levels of any of the images I have posted. I know the JPEG file contains information on what computer I'm using, so it doesn't take a genious to figure that out - lol.

If anyone is interested, here's another original RKO card.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f112/ ... 133384.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>

[Disneykid]

That title card isn't as rare as Cinderella's, though, since the Peter Pan DVD has it on there. We'll have to wait and see if Lowry's doing a new restoration on the film for the re-release next year. If they are, then the RKO logo will certainly be dropped, leaving Alice in Wonderland as one of the few Disney films to still retain its original one.

[Disney Duster]

Well, this is completely off topic, but Disneykid, I just realized that your signature begins and ends with a blonde girl closing her eyes. Also, they're heads are both tilted and directed to the inside of the signature. Did you purposely do that? Very clever and appealing to the eye.

[musicradio77]

If anyone is interested, here's another original RKO card.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f112/ ... 133384.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>

Great find. That was from the "Peter Pan" DVD that I don't have as well as on the VCD. That comes after the Walt Disney Pictures old logo.

[Disneykid]

Well, this is completely off topic, but Disneykid, I just realized that your signature begins and ends with a blonde girl closing her eyes. Also, they're heads are both tilted and directed to the inside of the signature. Did you purposely do that? Very clever and appealing to the eye.

Thanks! Yeah, I did it on purpose, though it wasn't my original plan. With both Alice and Cinderella, I was having trouble finding good closeups of them. With Alice, she was constantly either looking annoyed or confused. The few shots where she DOES smile weren't even captured by the DVD screencap site I went to. The shot of her sleeping is my favorite of her, anyhow. As for Cindy, she was even harder. Although she's constantly smiling, there are amazingly very few closeups of her in the film despite her being the title character. I kept looking for a nice closeup of her in her ballgown, but the best ones are of her entering the palace and the (very) tight closeup of her dancing with the prince. I didn't like the way the restoration handled the former (see, this post is on-topic, afterall!), and the prince took up half the frame in the latter. When I saw the screencap of her with the pillow, I thought it was great and then realized that she'd offer a nice counterbalance to Alice. So I guess it really partially an accident and partially intentional.