Tweet Question about HD from non-HD source

I've noticed that many movies/TV shows get released on Blu-Ray, or are shown on HD channels, that were not filmed on HD cameras. How can they make a HD version when the source was not HD? This especially applies to silent films. Isn't true HD always at a resolution that fills up the screen, instead of SD, which has bars on the side and/or top and bottom? I think my question shows that I am not fully educated on the subject.

This should really go in the "Tech Talk" folder.

"Standard definition" or SD, is a defined resolution—namely, 640x480 (4:3) as the American Standard.

HD can be anything that's higher resolution than SD. The most common format now is 1080p (1920 x 1080). In order for a film to be presented in HD, the film element has to be transferred in HD. Film, in itself, is high resolution, with the best stocks resolving in the 4,000-line range.

Since the aspect ratio for films before the '50s is generally 1.33-1 or 1.37-1, pillarboxing is necessary to maintain all the image. But if a silent film is transferred in HD, you're still going to have resolutions that are 1080 pixels high.

Tks for the response. And sorry I put it in the wrong forum, and I'm sure it will be moved the proper one.

Meanwhile, think of it this way: A 35mm film image contains much more detail than standard-definition video can reproduce; high-definition video can reproduce much more of it - still not as much as is on the film itself, generally, but significantly more.

[Christopher Jacobs]

And always remember -- and be sure to tell all your friends -- that the video quality with today's so-called "high definition" HDTV is only now (over the past decade) just barely reaching about the same quality that properly manufactured and processed 35mm film was already at a hundred years ago! Movies shot on film fifty years ago will look as good as or better than today's best HDTV, if the original negatives survive in good condition. Genuine film today goes far beyond what HD video can reproduce. Video from just a decade or two ago, however (standard definition), is drastically fuzzier-looking than the quality of today's HD video and a tiny fraction of 35mm film quality. Many old movies, of course, no longer survive in original camera negatives, so the existing copies are often copied from other copies of other copies of other copies, getting grainier and contrastier each time, and thus they no longer look anything close to what they did when they were made. That's merely a by-product of the copying process, and not of the film format itself.

In other words, real film has always been HD or "high definition" (except in the case of special films designed to be extra-sensitive in low-light conditions, which will look grainier than normal film, whether on real film or in an HD video transfer). Video has always been a cost-effective compromise until just the past couple of years or so when the newest HD video cameras have been rivalling film quality (except that new film emulsions have also been improving so the current HDTV standard is now far below what today's film can achieve).

Hi. I'm getting to this discussion kind of late, but here's my rule:

If a movie was shot with the intention of theatrical release, the video version should be shown at home in HD. Anything intended to look good on a giant theater screen was shot in something with considerably more detail than standard def can show.

If something was shot for TV before HD, standard def is probably good enough. Even if it was shot in 35mm and therefore contains better-than-HD-level details, those details aren't going to be all that important. The people who made the picture knew they wouldn't be visible.

Lincoln

If something was shot for TV before HD, standard def is probably good enough. Even if it was shot in 35mm and therefore contains better-than-HD-level details, those details aren't going to be all that important. The people who made the picture knew they wouldn't be visible.

Twilight Zone, which was shot in 35mm (except for 6 episodes done in video), looks absolutely beautiful in HD. Easily comparable to 35mm theatrical films in HD vs. SD.

Yeah, I have to agree... I haven't seen a lot of HD-from-film TV shows, but I've seen a number of 35mm prints of TV shows and have to say, depending on the show of course, the quality that went into TV shows was quite cinematic. Keep in mind, it was in vogue in the late '60s that if your show went bust, you could edit the episodes into a theatrical film (such as the Robert Goulet war show "The Blue Light" which was turned into I DEAL IN DANGER).

[Danny Burk]

I don't agree with "good enough" - I think it should look the best it possibly can, even though it may not have looked that good upon original screening. Filmmakers also knew that certain artifacts (wires, etc) wouldn't show up in release prints due to limits of resolution. Now that we're able to see better defined images thanks to Blu-Ray, those wires do show up...their presence or absence isn't relevant here, my point being that we're now seeing superior quality in these films than ever before, and for the better to my way of thinking.

[Christopher Jacobs]

Yes, the Twilight Zone episodes shot on 35mm look like short theatrical (or film festival) films, with the hour-long episodes the equivalent of 5-reel features, and of course the OCCURRENCE AT OWL CREEK BRIDGE episode actually was an Oscar-winning theatrical film. The people who made them may well have known that audiences watching on TV at home couldn't see all the details (or even the edges of the frame for that matter) but they got to watch them in their network screening rooms on 35mm film and if they also watched the TV broadcasts they knew it was only a reminder of what they had actually done.

Other old TV on Blu-ray, like the original Star Trek and The Prisoner, look like little movies on Blu-ray, and I would never want to watch a VHS or even a DVD of them ever again (much less internet streaming video), even though the VHS copies look better than the first time I saw them over-the-air on black-and-white TV with less-than-perfect reception, periodic electrical snow, and other forms of interference. I've seen 16mm kinescopes that looked far better than what I remember seeing over the air for the same show, even if they're not 35mm or Blu-ray quality, and was glad to see them in a better form than the original broadcasts. I've also seen 35mm prints of TV shows that were actually released to theatres as short subjects. Why would I ever want to sit through a 1950 TV quality image blown up to the size of a theatre screen if I could see a 35mm print struck from the camera negative? Why did they even bother to shoot on 35mm if they knew that 16mm was already much sharper than people could see on their home TV sets and that good 8mm film could probably do just as well?

When watching the shows broadcast back in the 1960s-70s, all we knew was "standard definition" TV quality in an often degraded version, yet we mentally filled in the details that were not possible to see, partly from our memories of what movies looked like in theatres. Now that we can actually have the opportunity to see those details first-hand, why should we settle for less? People who go to movies in theatres and sit in the back rows can't make out any details sharper than standard-definition video can show, so why bother to put any movies in HD? Who cares, anyway? Low quality is good enough for the masses, so let them have it. It's cheaper, too.

It should be mentioned here that the presence of "black bars" on the sides of the picture, or top and bottom of the picture is IN NO WAY suggesting that the presentation is any less than HD, if the film is a Blu-Ray HD transfer. This just means that the original "format" of the film does not fit the current TV screen shape, and the mastering of the program places the black bars so as to not have to crop the original image to "fit" the screen.

I've noticed that many movies/TV shows get released on Blu-Ray, or are shown on HD channels, that were not filmed on HD cameras. How can they make a HD version when the source was not HD? This especially applies to silent films. Isn't true HD always at a resolution that fills up the screen, instead of SD, which has bars on the side and/or top and bottom? I think my question shows that I am not fully educated on the subject.

High definition is a video term that essentially refers to any line resolution higher than 525 lines (standard NTSC picture resolution). 2K and 4K refer to total pixel counts. For example, an Academy aperture 35mm 1.37 film image in a 2K scan would result in an image that is 2048 X 1494 pixels and a 4K image that is 4096 X 2988 pixels. BUT, 2K and 4K resolutions are calculated at 72 dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixels per inch), so in an Academy aperture frame scan at 4K you end up with a 72 dpi image that measures approximately 57 inches by 41.5 inches. The high definition comes, in layman's terms, from densely cramming this large, relatively low resolution image, into the space of a 35mm Academy aperture frame of .864 X .630 inches.

The closest "home brew" equivalent I can give is images from your Digital still camera. If you bring those images into Photoshop, you can print a snapshot sized 4x6 inch image that looks quite nice, but the source image (if you check the image size) will be more like the huge size but low-resolution scan described above.

You can, of course, re-size you D-SLR image to 300 dpi at 8x10 inches (or any other resolution you might choose) and obtain an image that is easier to work with than something that is 50+ inches by 40+ inches--but the basic thing to remember is that the High-Def comes from packing the total pixel count into a smaller space than the Raw digital photo.

It has been a generally accepted standard over the past several years that 2K resolution is a sufficient scan size to capture Black & White film images (though in truth it only approaches 35mm resolution--and not all that closely in terms of overall sharpness). But the bottom line is that the "high definition" comes from the scan and is related to the 35mm film image only in what pixel count that image was captured.

As mentioned above, the "pillar box" or "window box" or "smile box" images on your hi-def set only adjust the screen so that it adequately reflects the proper aspect ratio of the original source material. It is the equivalent of black masking in a film theater setting.

To expand on Christopher's notes on old tv shows a bit ...

Shows that originated on 35mm film, like "The Prisoner" and "Star Trek" or "Twilight Zone", are really enjoyable in high definition.

Even though standard def NTSC video isn't that great compared to what we have now, you could tell a big difference between something originating on 35mm and 16mm back when these shows were originally broadcast - a movie or syndicated rerun from a local tv station looked (and sounded) quite different from a network broadcast of a first-run show or movie. I remember how strange it was in the 1980s when syndicated reruns for local stations went to distribution on satellite and video, mastered from the 35mm prints. It was a big step up in quality.

An area where HD/Blu Ray could make a big difference would be with kinescopes.

Kinescopes were made by filming a specialized form of tv monitor. The original show would run at 30 fps; the film ran at 24 fps. With the conversion back to video for viewing on old style NTSC tvs or blu-ray, the film has to be converted back to 30fps.

I've seen original kinescopes on film and they are much clearer and the motion artifacts fewer than the transfers you see on videotapes or most dvd releases. The Kovacs Collections are some of the best kinescope transfers I've seen on dvd, but would actually look a little better in HD - you'd get the source frame rate, since HD can have variable frame rates, and the extra detail that's left in the film frame.

[Christopher Jacobs]

To expand on Christopher's notes on old tv shows a bit ...

Shows that originated on 35mm film, like "The Prisoner" and "Star Trek" or "Twilight Zone", are really enjoyable in high definition.

Even though standard def NTSC video isn't that great compared to what we have now, you could tell a big difference between something originating on 35mm and 16mm back when these shows were originally broadcast - a movie or syndicated rerun from a local tv station looked (and sounded) quite different from a network broadcast of a first-run show or movie. I remember how strange it was in the 1980s when syndicated reruns for local stations went to distribution on satellite and video, mastered from the 35mm prints. It was a big step up in quality.

An area where HD/Blu Ray could make a big difference would be with kinescopes.

Kinescopes were made by filming a specialized form of tv monitor. The original show would run at 30 fps; the film ran at 24 fps. With the conversion back to video for viewing on old style NTSC tvs or blu-ray, the film has to be converted back to 30fps.

I've seen original kinescopes on film and they are much clearer and the motion artifacts fewer than the transfers you see on videotapes or most dvd releases. The Kovacs Collections are some of the best kinescope transfers I've seen on dvd, but would actually look a little better in HD - you'd get the source frame rate, since HD can have variable frame rates, and the extra detail that's left in the film frame.

A major reason the network 35mm TV broadcasts looked substantially better than local TV station 16mm broadcasts was more than just the size of the film. The biggest variable would be in the quality and condition of the video camera and electronics used in the film chain, and the commercial networks would have much stricter quality control (and engineering know-how) than small-town local TV stations ever could afford. Local TV broadcasts of movies would often become noticeably lower and lower in quality over a period of a year or two until they replaced and serviced their film chain camera tubes. Then suddenly they might look pretty good again for a while (or perhaps would continue to get worse and worse until barely watchable).

The best identical 16mm TV prints could look very good indeed, but appear on TV broadcasts vastly different from one station to another or one month to the next at the same station. When stations started getting network-supplied pre-recorded tapes made on high-quality film chains, that took out their weak points (but of course meant that they were also stuck with standard-definition video-resolution copies instead of the much higher-resolution 16mm film prints (even if they could never reproduce the sharpness of those 16mm prints over the air using their own equipment).