Film vs videotape

musicvid10 wrote on 8/20/2014, 8:42 PM

The original Arri 16 revolutionized series filming. The quality of the film is hard to fault even these days. Anyone remember "I Spy"? The zoom lenses were incredible. Video from the same era looks pretty dismal by comparison.

johnmeyer wrote on 8/20/2014, 8:55 PM

I have a slightly different take, although I end up agreeing with how great film looks.

1. Film for TV looks better than NTSC videotape because 16mm film has a LOT more resolution, color fidelity, and gamut than did NTSC video.

2. Star Trek, Seinfeld, and many other popular shows that were filmed on 16mm (or 35mm) film were often shot in a somewhat wide format. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but because the film had so much more resolution, they wanted to have some safe areas that they could crop to. As a result, some of these shows have been remastered in HD 16:9, without needing much cropping. You actually get to see parts of the set never before seen.

3. The big thing, however, is the revolution in digital restoration of film. Just watch the Military Channel some night and look at the old WWII footage. I've spent the last eight years doing this stuff, and it is really amazing how much better you can make film look that it ever did when it was first projected. You can stabilize it to remove gate weave; remove dirt and scratches; correct gamma so it looks better on TV; sharpen it; reduce grain, and much more.

If you really want to go nuts, you can even synthesize frames to make it appear to actually be video. There are two companies (one in the UK, one in the USA) that will take Kinescopes and synthesize what looks like actual video from that source. I have done this many times, and with some source material, the effect is pretty darned impressive (I'm complimenting the technology, not my skills!!). The same technique also works for regular 24p film.

Former user wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:03 PM

Johnmeyer, that is what I was trying to say.

I have not seen much of the kinescope restoration, at least not that I know of. I also did not think about the extra area of film that was cropped for 4:3 Tv, but that is an interesting point as well.

Although there is the story about the movie that Spielberg did call "Duel". It was shot for TV. When it was shown in a theater people asked who the gremlin was in the backseat of the car. Turns out Spielberg was riding in back giving directions to Denis Weaver but you did not see it in TV aspect, but in theater it was in the framed shot.

(now they would just "fix it in post")

johnmeyer wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:39 PM

This shows how Seinfeld was recomposed, from the original film, from 4:3 to 16:9. Note the "new" image on the sides, although some cropping at top and bottom was also done. I'm sure they moved the cropping around, from scene to scene.

No soup for you!!

My favorite old show restoration is "Charlie's Angels." The production values on that were actually better than Seinfeld, and even though the film is almost two decades older, the quality is actually better.

Chienworks wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:47 PM

Slightly related, slightly not ... was just having a conversation with my musician and fellow-techophile brother about what to do with our eventual retirements. One thing we're considering doing is starting a factory to produce analog tape recorders. Putting a few feelers out and it looks like we'd get a pretty strong and rabid (if not enormous) market pretty quickly. Part of it is sentiment. In particular i got my start at all things techie when my dad let me play with his Roberts 1040 reel-to-reel machine when i was 2 years old, and the fascination has never left me. There also seems to be a growing feeling in some circles that digital just isn't living up to its promise of clear, realistic sound.

So, old school ... here's to a comeback!

flyingski wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:50 PM

Restoring R-8 and S8 film is one of the most rewarding "video" jobs I do. Even home movies had a crop of sorts applied by the projector's film gate. If the entire film is captured sometimes interesting details show up on the edges but usually it allows you to loose the previously unseen areas in the stabilization process and nobody knows the difference.

The years I've been doing this have only increased my appreciation for film's unique qualities and modern technology for helping me capture it. ... and sometimes you run across a real gem. Like Tom Mix and Tony performing for an audience of one!

Former user wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:54 PM

Chienworks,

I have not followed audio tech much, but is there a lot of magnetic tape still being produced? (for analog recording)

Chienworks wrote on 8/20/2014, 9:58 PM

Dave, there are two companies producing it. It's not cheap! About $27-$28 for an 1800 foot 7"x1/4" reel, and $380 for a 3600 foot 10.5"x2" reel. Then again if you take the $9 i used to pay 30 years ago for the 7" reel of good tape and adjust it for inflation perhaps $27 isn't that high after all.

I've been haunting ebay looking for "new old stock" of Maxell UD and picked up a few still factory sealed ones for anywhere from $10 to $20 each, but a lot of them end up going for $50, $70, and even higher. I saw a lot of 20 of them sell for over $800.

johnmeyer wrote on 8/20/2014, 10:15 PM

Even home movies had a crop of sorts applied by the projector's film gate. If the entire film is captured sometimes interesting details show up on the edges but usually it allows you to loose the previously unseen areas in the stabilization process and nobody knows the difference. This is especially true of straight 8mm. Depending on the camera, there can be some amazing lost footage. Here's a great example:

That's the client's mother taking the photo. When the film was projected, all you saw were the hula girls; mom was nowhere to be seen because she was standing between the sprocket holes.

Since 8mm is perfectly square, I can add this extra image without cropping or reducing resolution. The result, as shown above, is almost perfectly 4:3. The problem is, most people don't really want to look at the sprocket holes.

My solution?

Well, the first thing is to mask the holes. I already did that in the image above. Black is much easier on the eyes than the original white-hot sprocket holes (actually, I masked them during the transfer so as to not kill the exposure). I then applied the VirtualDub filter called Delogo. When the background is uniform (e.g., sky), or really dark, the sprocket holes almost completely disappear. However, with an image like this, you end up with a blur, a little like you see on TV when they duplicate and then blur the pillars on 4:3 material shown as 16:9. Here is the result from the image above:

[edit]Actually, I just looked after I posted, and the blurred example is from a few frames later. However, the blur is quite consistent, and looked the same when applied to the original frame.

ushere wrote on 8/20/2014, 10:53 PM

abc (australia) are running a look back at ww1, and using 'coloured' vintage b&w footage....

whilst i appreciate the restoration of the original b&w i think the colouring is a real travesty...

johnmeyer wrote on 8/20/2014, 10:58 PM

I agree about colorization, although the newer techniques are a far cry from the unspeakable things done to old movies by Ted Turner's original process.

Fortunately for all concerned, colorization is way above my pay grade. To my knowledge, it still requires a large team of people to select objects, colors, monitor tracking of those colors from frame-to-frame, etc.

flyingski wrote on 8/20/2014, 11:16 PM

John,

How did you mask the sprocket holes during transfer?

johnmeyer wrote on 8/21/2014, 12:01 AM

How did you mask the sprocket holes during transfer?Very simple, and very low-tech. For small-gauge film, I use Roger Evan's original Workprinter:

The gadget on the right side of the photo is a front-silvered mirror mounted at 45 degrees to the projector that reflects the image into the big "aerial" lens which in turn puts the focal plane for the image about four feet away, where it can be recorded directly by a camera, without using a screen.

At the point were the light enters this contraption, before it gets to the mirror, it is very easy to mask the image simply by taping a business card to the box, at the point where the light first enters.

Analog Tape Recorders

Speaking of Roger Evans and the Workprinter reminds me of the story of how he got started. Rather than making his own transfer system from scratch (which, after ten years, he now does) his original units (like the one shown) were simply built from existing projectors he was able to buy on eBay. He then refurbished and then modified them.

What I would suggest for analog tape recorders is that you do the same. I have rebuilt quite a few tape recorders by recapping the power supplies and replacing all the rubber. This takes time, but the result is a recorder that is as good (or sometimes better) than the original. If you were going to make a business around this, the key is to find a recorder that is readily available, and which can be refurbished without too much trouble. And, of course, it has to sound really good when you are finished with your upgrade.

And finally, while I am the poster boy for preservation and maintaining old things in their original condition, I would be tempted to add modern features: single-ended noise reduction; digital real-time counter; etc.

Grazie wrote on 8/21/2014, 1:21 AM

John? What is: "single-ended noise reduction" ?

Cheers

Grazie

Grazie wrote on 8/21/2014, 1:47 AM

I get it . . .

OK, I found this. It's about AUDIO noise:

"A single-ended process removes noise from your audio prior to committing it to tape, or at the very least, improves the signal to noise ratio without affecting the signal adversely. Which brings us neatly to the volume control..."

Grazie

John_Cline wrote on 8/21/2014, 2:38 AM

Typically, a single-ended noise reduction system has a program-content-controlled variable low-pass audio filter. Devices like the SAE 5000A and the Burwen TNE-7000 also had tick and pop reduction for playing phonograph records.

Grazie wrote on 8/21/2014, 3:04 AM

Thank you JC. Just to really nail this in place, where does or why is this called "single-ended"? What does the SE refer to?

TIA

G

RalphM wrote on 8/21/2014, 7:27 AM

My retirement business of about 10 years was digitizing old home movie film and analog (VHS and Beta) tapes. What struck me was how good properly developed and stored film from the 1930's could be (assuming reasonable shooting techniques).

Conversely, 25 year old VHS tape frequently had to be returned with a note that there was really nothing salvageable on the tape.

A frequent comment was "Now I can throw away those old films!" To which I would note that they had already outlasted at least 5 generations of video tape, and were a free backup against future loss of the transfers.

Former user wrote on 8/21/2014, 7:53 AM

Ralph,
I tell everybody not to get rid of original films or tapes. I just don't have the faith in digital storage media that others seem to have.

Although I have the same problem with VHS tapes, they just don't play as well as they used to.

farss wrote on 8/21/2014, 9:40 AM

Both film and tape needs to be stored properly or it can degrade quite quickly.
There's quite a range of things that can eat away film emulsion as well as tape. Sometimes the damage done can still leave the media in a recoverable state in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. In incompetent hands it will be destroyed forever.
Apart from the storage issues a lot of the problems arise from the poor understanding of chemistry decades ago. Pretty well any film that used nitrate stock is long turned to dust. There was video tape stock that over the years the binder would fail, try to play the tapes and the oxide layer would part company with the backing media.

I've got a small collection of very old DAT tapes and a Fostex player. I've never had an issue with DAT which is more than I can say for any analogue audio or video tape format or film.

What not considered in these kinds of discussion is the unavoidable problem with anything analogue of generational loss and the damage done simply by playing the media. For sure old movies can be remastered and they look great. Actually they can very well look much better than what anyone saw when they were originally released. By going back to the camera original film, scanning that at high resolution all the losses in the optical printing process are removed. Sadly for many movies the studio never saw the value in keeping the camera original, so rereleases are done from a release print, yuck.

The argument for always keeping the original isn't that digital archives are unreliable, they are. The argument is that some future technology might have a better way to extract the sound or image from the old media. I would say up until around 20 years ago that held true but not today.

Bob.

Chienworks wrote on 8/21/2014, 11:10 AM

I have some early Maxell CD-R discs that have simply ... faded. What was once an audio CD now simply shows as 'no disc' when inserted. If you look at them you can't see the burned portion anymore; visually they look virgin again. They were stored well enough, never abused. It's just that whatever chemistry was used on these batches 10 years ago had no durability.

I came across a 1970's add for Teac, obviously an attempt to off-put would-be purchasers records with the claim that "Tape never fades and never wears out! Whatever you record on it today will be just as crystal clear in the future no matter how many times it's played." Ha! That sure proved false. I've been purchasing some old commercial reels lately and a disappointing number of them have tape that just crumbles, and most of these are less than 40 years old.

Then there's storage space. My ever-growing collection of 60+ tapes now comprises probably 45 hours of music. The boxes fill 5 feet of shelf space. A 32GB MicroSD would hold all that material in uncompressed WAV format taking up about 1/650,000th the volume. In high-bitrate MP3 format (despite what the critics say, it's virtually indistinguishable quality from these old tapes) a 128MB card could hold the equivalent of over 2000 tapes in 1/24 millionth the space. Analog tape is not a game for people wanting to conserve their footprint!

And of course ease of access. I can take that 128MB card and access any one of 25,000 songs in mere seconds anywhere i have my pocket size player or internet access.

Digital does have a lot going for it.

Former user wrote on 8/21/2014, 11:24 AM

Chienworks,
I am not denying that digital has many, many advantages over previous forms of media. And it is definitely here to stay replacing film, videotape and discs for sure.

But if you have all of your 25000 songs on one memory card and that memory card gets lost, zapped or corrupted, you lose it all. So now you have to worry about backing it up. How many backups are safe and what formats? We have had this discussion before and will continue I am sure to discuss because in the past, you stored the physical media with no backups (how many people had multiple vinyl copies of albums or multiple copies of pictures just in case).

Film has shown that even though it degrades, it can be restored up to a point. Videotape does not restore as well. That was my original thoughts.

Chienworks wrote on 8/21/2014, 11:35 AM

Oh, the whole point of the smallness and cheapness of digital is that i'll probably have 10 or 15 copies of my music library lying around in more than a few different physical formats.

On the other hand, there's no way i have space to store multiple physical copies of 7" reels of tape, or 12" vinyl albums, or VHS cassettes. So i'm definitely better protected against loss now even with all those eggs in one basket, because i can easily, quickly, cheaply make identical lossless copies of that whole basket!

johnmeyer wrote on 8/21/2014, 12:19 PM

What is: "single-ended noise reduction" ? ... where does or why is this called "single-ended"? What does the SE refer to?This is easier to answer by defining double-ended noise reduction. Double-ended noise reduction, like Dolby®, modifies the signal before it is recorded (e.g., boosts the high frequencies) and then reverses that process when the program material is played back. The same thing was done for phonograph records. So the "double-ended" refers to the two ends of the process: the recording and the playback. "Single-ended" means that noise reduction is only done at the playback stage. This can never produce results which are as good and as artifact-free as double-ended. As already pointed out, old-fashioned single-ended noise reduction involved nothing more than cutting the treble. In more sophisticated versions, the treble was cut more during quiet passages.

What struck me was how good properly developed and stored film from the 1930's could be (assuming reasonable shooting techniques).I have transferred still photo film from the late 1800s and 16mm home movie film from 1928. In both cases, I could not tell the difference from film that had been exposed yesterday. Here is some 1928 film. Except for the slow playback speed (12 fps) which imparts a jerky quality, the film looks amazingly good:

A frequent comment was "Now I can throw away those old films!" To which I would note that they had already outlasted at least 5 generations of video tape, and were a free backup against future loss of the transfers.Arrrrrghhh!! I've heard the same comment, and after I quit screaming, I deliver pretty much the same speech Bob just gave:

"The argument for always keeping the original isn't that digital archives are unreliable, they are. The argument is that some future technology might have a better way to extract the sound or image from the old media."

I agree completely. A great example of this is the ability the pros have to create a 3D image from 2D material. I don't yet have the tools or technique to do that, but the capability does exist. If they had thrown away the original film, they might not have been able to do this, or at least not do it as well.

Although I have the same problem with VHS tapes, they just don't play as well as they used to.For all analog media, the difference between media quality can be huge. For instance, Kodachrome looks as good as the day it was taken, but most movie stock used for making theater prints has faded, leasing only the red layer.

In most cases, I have found that video and audio tape remain essentially unchanged. The two biggest reasons that most people think their video tapes have degraded is that they are now accustomed to watching HD, and VHS (or Beta) home video tapes were pretty awful compared to broadcast SD, and broadcast SD is pretty awful compared to HD. So, when they watch VHS tapes (most of which seem to have been recorded in the 6-hour mode), it looks much worse to them than it did before they became accustomed to HD.

The other problem is that many people's VCRs are degrading due to bad rubber (introduces tracking and other playback problems), dirty heads, etc.

As for media variations, Bob has mentioned many times in previous posts having to bake video tape before playback. That problem actually only happens with tape made in the 1970s. Earlier tape formulations used a different adhesive that hasn't broken down. I transferred family audio tape that my dad created in the late 1940s with the very first home analog tape recorder (real tape, not wire). It played back perfectly and sounds as good as the day it was recorded. So, that Teac ad actually was pretty accurate, at least in my restoration experience.

Film has shown that even though it degrades, it can be restored up to a point. Videotape does not restore as well. That was my original thoughts.I have found techniques that can perform near-miracles on both types of media. However, 16mm film has so much more information than does consumer videotape that I can do a lot more tricks because of all that detail. There is something to that silk purse and sow's ear figure of speech ...