State of the Art Telecine?
 

The public have never been more quality-conscious than now when it comes to what they expect when watching archived film entertainment: Now they expect noise and grain free 4k, and even 8k renditions from classic early film/television! What is the 'state of the art' for sourcing this? Is it still some iteration of the Philips/Bosch/Thomson CCD based machine?

Question: What happens if they run a color-negative print on a telecine, can they derive a normal picture like they can with a B&W-negative?

I don't know the answer to what is the latest being used to scan film.

However, I WANT to see the original grain in HD or higher resolution versions of classic films. It is an important part of the character of the film process.

I think that Kodak determined decades ago what resolution is needed to carry the negative character including grain through all intermediate stages, and equipment to do it it has been available for a long time. IIRC, the figure determined for 35 mm motion picture film was approximately 4K resolution (without MPEG compression) such that the initial scan and multiple-generation intermediate stages would not visibly degrade the initial negative image or its grain structure.

At first, the final bottleneck for digital delivery was the standard definition DVD MPEG coding, but now Blu Ray discs (HD resolution) provide a quite faithful reproduction of the original film character.

The inversion process should be the same as photographic negative scanners (my Nikon Coolscan units come to mind), so yes they can.

I’m not sure if this is “state of the art”, but the 4K restoration of Wizard of Oz was scanned in 8K, 16 bit color. The machine used is profiled in this link: http://www.lasergraphics.com/director-features.html
I can vouch for the quality which is stunning.

https://i1.wp.com/visions4netjournal...8BE.jpeg?ssl=1

https://i1.wp.com/visions4netjournal...E58.jpeg?ssl=1

As MIPS said, yes.

If shooting on film today, normal practice is to scan the negatives and do all subsequent processes digitally ("digital intermediates").

When restoring old three strip Technicolor, best technique is to scan the three original black and white negatives, assuming they are well preserved. When restoring film that was shot on color negative but printed by Technicolor, they have to examine which of the available elements is in better condition, the color negative or the secondary three strip intermediates. Use of three strip cameras stopped in the early 1950s, plus they could not be used for widescreen processes like Cinemascope and VistaVision.

It's pleasing to hear they can master from color-Neg film (such as Studio archive prints), I'm thinking of being able to obtain UHD files from not only 70mm, but from the VistaVision [VV] catalogue. Because I understand mainly (reduced res) standard 35mm positives were struck from VV masters. More distressing, the latest 8k telecine's will not run 8-perf VV, but earlier 2k machines would (thus for instance the sparkling 2k? 8-perf? scan of DeMille's VV Ten Commandments, though of course 2k too low.)

Thanks for links, good to see another company making a UHD scanner.
How is this 4k Wizard distributed/available?
What did they do with the grain, is some present, or is it fully de-grained?

The 4K version of Oz is available at Amazon. Two disc set, the making of, restoration, actor comments, etc.

The grain is very apparent on the 4K version, which I don’t see on the older HD disc. This SS begins to show the grain in the blue sky. Tough to capture. https://visions4netjournal.com/wp-co...ACA70CFAD.jpeg

Oops, I didn't know Blu-ray supported 4k, do they play reliably?

The traditional concept of a telecine - transduction of film-to-television in real time - is now almost irrelevant, as is pointed out at the Lasergraphics site. In fact running at normal speed would be at cross-purposes to obtaining quality UHD scans of successive frames, which must be individually precisely aligned in place before scanning!

I remember visiting a teleproduction house in Atlanta when I worked at a TV station down the street. They were doing film to tape transfers for Turner Classic Movies via a Rank Cintel telecine. The operator was called a "colorist" and he did scene by scene color correction. AND I think they also did colorizing of B/W films. Clients just wouldn't buy spots in B/W movies at the time.

TCM hasn't had advertising in the time I've watched it. Was there a time when they did?

TCM has been around about 25 years. It was started by Ted Turner, but is now owned by AT&T.
I tried to get a job with the production company but didn't. Actually TV station employment is better because they have a constant cash flow, unlike production houses whose revenue comes and goes in spurts.

According to this documentary, Paramount had "original camera negatives" of DeMille's high-res vistaVision classic "scanned at 6k". The clips they include are stunning, no visible noise or grain.