Carlos E. martinez
Forum Replies Created
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My projector is an Optoma DLP 1080p, designed to be be positioned close to the screen.
As the projector have no zoom, I have it at 2.40m from the wall, and I am planning to get even closer to have less keystone correction.
The projector is now behind a roof fan, so I had to lower it a little from the “no keystone correction” position. So I plan to invert the fan an projector positions, And also gain some more light, the projector being closer to the wall.
In any case, the image I get now is impressive, better than many movie theaters I usually go.
The only problem is that, even if was stepped the sofa back a little, the screen is still “tall” and we have to look up when viewing. But I can’t lower the screen any more, because of the loudspeakers height.
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Oh, I’m very much aware of the lenses that were used along the years in film.
When I mean classic I mean very old films. All shot in 1.33 35mm film, mostly B&W, as you know color was very rare until the mid ’50s. Particularly when they used the Technicolor process, with the three B&W camera rolls.
In the ’50s they started shooting in color negative, even on low budget productions, using color to attract public. It was the time when color Deluxe and Warnercolor appeared, and a few others. Pathe, Afga, etc.
Only in the late ’50s did they start using 70mm negative.
The Arriflex camera started being used in Europe, usually dubbing the films, and their primary lenses were very good. Usually Zeiss.
The lenses I meant were mostly from the B&W era, and they were softer themselves or used with filters on close-ups, particularly feminine ones.
Things in VCR times were very primitive, in a way, and they didn’t pay much attention to the quality of the film they were capturing in video. 100% of them came from positive copies, sometimes even 16mm ones.
With DVD things started to improve a lot, as they started to capture from internegatives, which were much more closer to the shooting film. When they used positive copies they were better ones, and it’s also when the original shooting ratio started to become the norm.
When HD and BD arrived things really improved a lot, particularly because by then the negatives were captured in video, and even if they still released the films in positive for a long time, they produced an HD video master that was used for the BD copies.
This ’79 film DVD in particular, object of my interest, was certainly made from a positive copy. Not an internegative. You got a much better image if you did that, even in DVD’s resolution.
I remember when I started converting HD BD video to DVD that the quality you got was amazing. Probably because it was non-interlaced. I also got angry at the quality of the DVDs they were releasing, as I had proof that they could be much better, and they didn’t care.
The captured images I uploaded were captured on my computer, using Irfanview. Captured from Vegas and from VLC, so they can be used just as reference. The DVD had already been upscaled by me to 720p with Vidcoder. The HD copy is already 1080p, straight from the BD disk. If it through any upscaling it was done by the 20th Century Fox conversion lab. I do guess it might be the case, even if there’s a bit more detail on some years. Quality, for a film of that year, should be much much better than what it is.
As it’s already 1080p, I can process it in Vegas directly, applying all the filters.
The SD to HD upscale I would like to do is for a different film, from ’49. I did get a DVD copy which is quite reasonable. I already did a first processing, just with some sharpening, and the results were quite promising. Didn’t watch them on my large screen projector yet, but I will.
BTW, I project a 4.50 meter wide by 3.00 meter high screen size, directly on the wall, so I can see detail quite well.
When the HD copies are from old good masters, I always think that I’m watching these films with much better quality than on the original movie theaters.
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Hi George,
Does this mean you can’t help me anymore? Even if I do not upload any images?
For me this is a training exercise for Vegas. One if the films is from ’49, certainly with expired copyright. 70 years is quite a long time to still have valid ones.
That film was never released in HD, and it’s the one I had mentioned on my first text. Of course I’m aware SD can’t be turned into HD: you can’t what it’s not there. Except with CGI or things like that, which I’m not interested in.
But you can cheat quite well into make images look “sharper”. It’s how they look that matters, sometimes more than the resolution. Of course I’m not talking about more recent movies, as lenses got also sharper and with more contrast.
Many classic films that have been remastered do not look so far away from the DVDs they were first released in. Probably because of the silk filters they used on the lenses for close-ups.
On a doc I shot, we used an HD as A camera and an SD for close-ups. What I had to do was to de-focus the background on the SD images, and it “looked” up front. I cheated and it worked.
I’m not interested in making the DVD version of this film look like HD, but to make the other look better. Even if I’m not sure if they didn’t use the SD video masters to upscale it to HD, because it doesn’t look that sharp for a film of that era. It should.
Perhaps you, or someone reading this thread, can tell which FX filters I may try. That is the hardest part.
Thanks!
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It seems that I can not upload images from a commercial film to Creativecow.
So the other option might be the only one I can use, putting the links here.
Is that alright?
Some progress: I could import the “water” jpg image to Vegas.
But I think I will have learn a bit about understanding the images through the vectorscope, which might be the precision way to try to equalize both versions.
In fact what I would like is to get them closer, as the DVD image is a bit too saturated. The HD image is more brownish, gloomy and flatter in contrast.
In the water image, equalizing the water color to the SD one might be a way to start. The HD is too green.
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Hi George,
Well, I seem to need some guidance to load the image files, or I will need to run a tutorial on Vegas before anything.
I run the veg file, but it can’t find a file called HD.jpg.
The DVD version is not such a good quality as the HD one. There’s a bit more detail in the HD version, but it certainly is not as high definition, with lots of detail, as I might expect.
It’s possible that what they did was really upscale the SD version, but I don’t think so. But the color correction they did was very poor.
If you look at the images I posted you will not such more detail in the HD version. But it may look better on other frames.
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Hi George,
Many thanks! This is awesome!
Can I put my mail here for you to send the .veg file to? Or is there a way for you to PM me?
Of course I would like to have the file and play with the FX you dialed.
Also of course you have no tone to use as a reference, an issue I also had. That’s why my intention had been to upload several image grabs of both versions, put one below the other, or side by side, to help get a pattern.
Of course you know this is a 1979 movie, called “Breaking away”, not something I shot.
The water is green, not blue, but the whole HD image has a green tint that should be corrected. Maybe the FX tools you used helps me play with that.
There’s a 20th century fox intro at the beginning, before it got fancy and pseudo-3D. It might be a starting reference, perhaps.
OK, I found the image upload icon on the message icons. I hadn’t looked for it there.
Once again: the size of the png file is much bigger than the jpg. You still prefer the png? Isn’t there a size limit for the uploads
Carlos
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Isn’t size a problem with posted images?
The jpg file is 111Kb, the png file is 1542Kb.
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I hosted the first frame comparison here. Is it the way to post photos here?
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Hi George,
For comparing the same image in both versions I do it simply: I play them in VLC, capture the screens, open them separately in Irfanview, then paste them one below the other.
That’s what I could upload here right away, if I knew how.
Then someone really experienced in Vegas could try some filters and tricks on the HD image, and tell me how to do it.
I’m a quick learner, and I certainly won’t be passive in all this, but learning to use the tools. After one or two examples I will get trying things on my own.
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Your suggestions are great, George. Both.
Unfortunately for the first one, using Photoshop, making the corrections and exporting the LUT, I would have to learn to use PS, which I don’t. But this would be an optimum reason for a crash course.
For the second, grabbing and posting two same frames of both versions, please tell me how to do it.
I already have two images to start a comparison between the SD and HD files.
It would probably have to be a few of them, involving interiors and exteriors, to get to some idea of what are the differences.