Why Some Films Can Never Be Remastered - Video Tech Explained

Some old films and shows are able to be "remastered" to increase their resolution for modern screens. But there are also a wide range of films which can likely never be remastered beyond their original resolution. In this video, we discuss how film remastering works and why it sometimes isn't possible.

== Navigation ==
00:00 Introduction
01:22 The Resolution of Film
04:31 The Problem with TV
06:06 How Remastering Works
08:18 The Prequels & Digital Filmmaking
12:23 The Sequels & the Modern Era
13:17 Closing

== Links ==

[minecrafter]

Well the reason the prequels can’t be remastered is because anakin was never granted the rank of master in the first place, but as the last remaining member of the council, Vader was able to elect himself as a master, meaning the original trilogy could be remastered.

[johnrehwinkel]

The SFX for Empire and Return were shot on better than 35mm resolution. They resurrected the old VistaVision format, which ran the film horizontally (IMAX style), using 8 perforations per frame without anamorphic lenses, making the postprocessing simpler and gaining additional resolution. They ran out of old VistaVision cameras and ended up building more (which they called "Empire cameras"). It's a great format.

[madaemon]

A similar dynamic happened with the "Special Editions": the CGI added in 1997 made the movie look far more dated in ten years than any of the original effects ever did in twenty.

[ebinrock]

I'll always be blown away by (and grateful for) what CBS Digital did with Star Trek: The Next Generation on blu-ray. The whole series was shot on 35mm film, but was transferred to standard-def (SD) videotape for all editing and effects, since back in the 80s-90s, it was only going to SD television broadcast. When the project came up to release ST:TNG in HD, the post-production crew did some upscaling tests, but deemed that the results looked unsuitable. So they unbelievably got CBS to put the money up to *rescan* all the raw film negative in HD, including the raw bluescreen shots, and *recut each and every shot* according to the scripts and extensive production notes, and they redesigned and recomposited all the effects! There'll *never* be a restoration/uprez project with this kind of money and effort put to it ever again! Needless to say, I bought all 7 seasons. The results are stunning.

[LordHeath]

Well explained, educational video. No adverts, no sponsors, no begging for likes, comments or and included actual footage from the films for example. A good length and well presented. PERFECT.

[Alienkiwi]

The sharp film look of Phantom is fantastic. The weird creamy, smoothness of Clones and Revenge stick out way too much

[Phredreeke]

Fun fact: the visual effects in the original trilogy (and lots of films after that) were shot in VistaVision, a system that runs 35mm horizontally through the camera and exposes an area of the film roughly twice that of normal 35mm. The advantage being a reduced generation loss when the different film elements were composited together

[gunsort]

A colleague of mine rescanned the O negs of the original trilogy for the versions of what you see today both in theatrical re-release and HD and UHD video. The original Star Wars negative was thrashed. 20th was not prepared for the film's popularity and was striking new film elements to fulfill the demand for prints as the IP and IN elements were constantly wearing out. The scanning and digital repair process was done at Lowry Digital. Lowry created a process to remove and add back grain and increase the resolution of images without what amounts to adding aperture correction on horizontal and vertical lines as done in the past. The process uses the different information from adjacent frames (the grain in each frame is in a different position) in a shot to augment the resolution of all frames in that shot. 35mm film doesn't always have 4K resolution, particularly opticals. When restoring films in this manner, the disparate elements are brought together by adding back resolution to match and making the grain structure uniform. Lowry was also able to increase the resolution of 35mm film for 70mm 15 perf IMAX film presentations. It was worlds better than a blowup using the photochemical process.

[BvousBrainSystems]

There are reasons to shoot in 8k other than the potential for future media, like being able to zoom into the footage in editing.
But i really love this video, the flow and clarity of ideas is incredible

[DugrozReports]

My wife & I were married in 2001. We were given the choice of film or digital, and we chose film. I'm very glad we did.
A family member was married 2 years later & had digital photos -- they are noticeably worse.

[Case_]

The question of how much resolution film has is also further complicated by the quality of the lenses used, because that can affect the captured "resolution" greatly. Especially when we're talking older and/or lower budget movies.

[ebinrock]

Actually, what you're describing as the film master is an internegative, from which the theatrical release prints are made. So that movie you saw in the theater (pre-digital cinema) was actually a *4th* generation film. Because you have the original camera negative, right? Then that has to be printed to an interpositive, then that has to be printed to an internegative, so that when you make multiple copies, they can all look right (i.e., positive prints). And of course, let's face it, VHS was horrible. So was Beta and even laserdisc compared to what we can get today. If done right, and if all the elements are there and in good shape, think about it, we can actually get a direct scan of the original camera negative, digitally cleaned up (although it should theoretically be already pretty clean since it's the least touched of the films) and digitally "flipped" to make a positive, then the digital bits go directly to your blu-ray or 4K disc or streaming (video compression schemes notwithstanding). So you're getting pretty much what the DP and director saw in the dailies.

[Niosai]

Completely blindsided by that Cotton Eye Joe joke. Bravo. Absolute masterpiece. Instantly subscribed lmao

[CaptainFabulous]

I think as AI upscaling gets better and better over time there will be fewer and fewer of these issues with older digital and video content. Which is a good thing, especially for TV shows that were shot on video tape.

[MaavBR]

Besides, to the "shooting at 8K" point, 8K (or even 12K) cameras are great allies in post-production, as they allow for cropping/reframing/zooming shots with no detail lost. Meaning an 8K master might allow you to have less takes and an overall faster (and consequently cheaper) production process, given that video editing workstations can work with such huge viewports nowadays.

[roellemaire]

What also makes film look sharper over digital is the fact the grain is not in a square matrix like digital pixels, which makes it a lot nicer when viewing diagonal lines/shapes.

[keithrivera]

My man this really is quality content, this channel deserves way more views.

[christianfieldhouse]

I think AoTC and Revenge could benefit from re-renderings, especially in the Geonosis arena and the Mustafar scenes, I think most of those movies still look fine. At least, it doesn't seem like it's at as much of a deficit against present-day 4K in comparison to the older SD -> HD shift.

[enricotartarotti]

This video and this channel are just amazing!

[jason_v]

I really appreciate this presenter's delivery style. His choice of intonation really helps make the meaning of the message clear.