Grand Prix - the film

[daveyjay]

Hello all,

Last Sunday, following the death of James Garner, the BBC (I think it was the beeb, it was HD, anyway) aired the film Grand Prix. I caught the last half hour or so and was really impressed with the quality of the image, especially of the racing footage - the picture was so clean, clear and sharp. My question is - considering the film was made in 1966, how/why was the picture quality so excellent? - much better than an awful lot of the far more recent 'HD' content I've seen. Did any of you see the film?

 

[chebby]

Possibly because it was filmed in Super Panavision 70.

The 70mm film had a vast 'acreage' compared to the usual 35mm stock.

 

[Frank Harvey]

Most people think old films don't look very good. The main reason for this view is that they've seen poor versions that have degraded over time repeated on TV, or transferred to DVD (which suffers from heavy compression). Even old movies filmed on (analogue) film are very high resolution. Copies of the original are made which are downscaled and compressed for TV viewing which are reused continually, or transferred to lower resolution home formats. Most people don't get to see the originals in all their glory - the nearest we usually get to see them is the cinema, which is still not as it was recorded. Many old films have suffered due to abuse or poor storage, which is why you see so many films being restored (some more successfully than others). Some that aren't restored and just transferred to Bluray still show the print damage. Of course, with 4K now, we can watch films as they were recorded (many films are now shot digitally in 4K), although how close this will be to the original will depend on the compression used, which will be format dependent.

There are many other aspects that can affect how good a film can look, including how well it was shot in the first place. A film can look very grainy if the camera isn't set up for low light conditions. A good example of this is the scene in Ghostbusters where they're slowly walking down the library isles. They pass under fluorescent lighting, then the picture gets darker in between the lights - the picture looks great under the lights, but between them the picture gets grainy and doesn't look as good. Some films are intentionally grainy though, which can be removed by using digital noise reduction, but ends up in a soft looking picture, and faces can end up with a 'waxy' look to them.

 

[daveyjay]

Mmh, interesting. Did you watch it chebby? Don't want cover already very well covered ground here, but do you think we're going backwards as far picture/sound 'quaility' is concerned?

 

[daveyjay]

Most people think old films don't look very good. The main reason for this view is that they've seen poor versions that have degraded over time repeated on TV, or transferred to DVD (which suffers from heavy compression). Even old movies filmed on (analogue) film are very high resolution. Copies of the original are made which are downscaled and compressed for TV viewing which are reused continually, or transferred to lower resolution home formats. Most people don't get to see the originals in all their glory - the nearest we usually get to see them is the cinema, which is still not as it was recorded. Many old films have suffered due to abuse or poor storage, which is why you see so many films being restored (some more successfully than others). Some that aren't restored and just transferred to Bluray still show the print damage. Of course, with 4K now, we can watch films as they were recorded (many films are now shot digitally in 4K), although how close this will be to the original will depend on the compression used, which will be format dependent.

There are many other aspects that can affect how good a film can look, including how well it was shot in the first place. A film can look very grainy if the camera isn't set up for low light conditions. A good example of this is the scene in Ghostbusters where they're slowly walking down the library isles. They pass under fluorescent lighting, then the picture gets darker in between the lights - the picture looks great under the lights, but between them the picture gets grainy and doesn't look as good. Some films are intentionally grainy though, which can be removed by using digital noise reduction, but ends up in a soft looking picture, and faces can end up with a 'waxy' look to them.

Thanks David. I'm saying the picture looked great.

 

[daveyjay]

Can't get the hang of this quote thing - I only wanted to quote David's first sentence.

 

[Glacialpath]

Can't get the hang of this quote thing - I only wanted to quote David's first sentence.

Hello

Hi there. I think some fims have never looked or sounded better than they do now thanks to restoration and 8K scans of the negative. It's still a shame Picture hasd to be compress either to broadcast it or to put it on disc. I'm not sure if it can be uncompressed for digital cinema though.

I think older films look so good because as said above if they have been shot well in the first place they should look stunning in HD. I find BBC broadcats to be the best in TV and I think it's to do with bandwidth. They only have 4 channels and since the analogue signal was turned off a few years ago means what they send out isn't competeing for air space.

I think channels like ITV may still be outputting the Analogue signal and they have more channels but their PQ is not as clear.

Anyway when quoting. Select quote and scroll down till you see the las bracketed quote word and type below it. see where I have added the word "Hello" in your message because i wrote it above the last (/quote)

If you only want to quote a section of someones post the delete the bits you don't want but leave the top and bottom quotes.

 

[daveyjay]

Thanks for the reply, glacialpath.

 

[bigboss]

Daveyjay, did you hear about Samsung's firmware update (I think 1111) which corrects lip sync issue?

 

[daveyjay]

Please tell me you are joking, bigboss? No, seriously, please tell me you are joking.