questions about anamorphic telecine

Floyd Diebel · June 28, 2004

i just had an anamorphic film transfer done by my normal lab in san francisco, and it looks really horrible. it was transferred on a bosch quadra (which does not seem to be people's machine of choice, but it usually serves my purposes okay.)

it looks very "digitized" - i think it has something to do with the the compressed image's vertical height being somehow electronically squashed in the machine somewhere to give a normally proportioned, letterboxed image. diagonal lines look absurdly bad, as do most hard edges.

i've transferred anamorphic stuff at this lab previously, and it looked "okay", but i did notice this problem before to a lesser degree, in wide shots. closeups with the background kicked out of focus are fine.

there are a few differences about this footage - the shoot was entirely exterior, mostly wide shots, mid day, pretty contrasty, deeply focused, and shot on 5248 to boot. other stuff i've transferred was either 5293 or 5277, and was pretty low key.

anybody else had weird problems with anamorphic transfers?

note that the problems were visible on the monitor at the lab (not routed through a deck), and when we viewed the footage flat (no compression to 2:35), the problem was gone. i know the heinous NTSC signal is gonna be responsible for some of this problem, but shouldn't i be able to get better than this???

help?

Phil Rhodes · June 28, 2004

Hi,

This sounds less like a transfer problem than an ARC problem. Was the transfer done to 16:9, and you're watching a 4:3 master? If so, how was that conversion done? Are you actually watching a 16:9 tape on a desktop PC's NLE program which has detected the widescreen bits and is doing some horrible conversion?

I can't believe that a professional transfer setup would be visibly bad at the scope extraction (anything's possible, though) and what you describe sounds like bad electronic ARC.

Phil

Floyd Diebel · June 28, 2004

This sounds less like a transfer problem than an ARC problem. Was the transfer done to 16:9, and you're watching a 4:3 master?

the letterboxed image was transferred to 4:3 NTSC. but, the image looked bad in the lab, even before going to tape.

i thought that maybe transferring to 16:9 would help, but i dunno.

what's ARC?

supposedly the engineers at the lab are looking into it today. hopefully they'll find something.

Phil Rhodes · June 28, 2004

Hi,

Aspect ratio conversion. Normally refers to turning a widescreen SD video image into a 4:3 one, or vice versa.

I don't know how the Bosch Quadra works, or what colour correction hardware you had - as it was probably the colour corrector that was doing the rescaling. Ask.

Phil

Floyd Diebel · June 28, 2004

I don't know how the Bosch Quadra works, or what colour correction hardware you had - as it was probably the colour corrector that was doing the rescaling. Ask.

its a copernicus desk. i imagine that's what did the scaling too, but my colorist wasn't sure. he's not really a hardware guy, apparently.

argh.

Phil Rhodes · June 29, 2004

Hi,

For what those guys get paid, he should know that stuff. I'd hazard the guess that if he's that clueless, he could well be overlooking something that's causing the problem. In either case they most certainly owe you a free retransfer, if their equipment is adding noticeable aliasing as a result of it being anamorphic neg.

(Y'know, this whole colourist thing really irritates me. This is the second one I've come across who cultivates a wilfull ignorance of the technology to enhance the tortured-artist image in a job that was formerly considered an engineering task, not a creative one. I mean, c'mon. It's the "Levels" filter from Photoshop, only with a silly trackball interface which makes it really difficult to use, because they want it to look like some Marconi video rack from 1985. I guess if it had a user interface you could manage without needing sextuple-jointed fingers they'd all be out of a job...)

Phil

Floyd Diebel · June 30, 2004

hey phil - thanks for all your replies.

In either case they most certainly owe you a free retransfer, if their equipment is adding noticeable aliasing as a result of it being anamorphic neg.

i talked to the lab yesterday - it appears that my footage is pushing the machine past its limits. they're going to send me a 4:3 full frame transfer of the negative, and i will see if the aspect ratio conversion (ARC, as i learned for you phil) will work better here, from within after effects.

i also learned i am this lab's only client that shoots anamorphic. (!!!) the only other times they do anamorphic conversion is for film prints from bollywood. i guess either 1)the ratio conversion hardware likes prints better than negative, or 2) bollywood producers never noticed/complained.

(Y'know, this whole colourist thing really irritates me. This is the second one I've come across who cultivates a wilfull ignorance of the technology to enhance the tortured-artist image in a job that was formerly considered an engineering task

hm, i get what you're saying, by i have to disagree with you on this. he's not paid to be an engineer - they have an video engineer on staff.

I mean, c'mon. It's the "Levels" filter from Photoshop, only with a silly trackball interface

not really, it's alot more than that, but that's a different thread i guess.

Phil Rhodes · June 30, 2004

Hi,

Jeez, they should really be able to do better than that.

> not really, it's alot more than that, but that's a different thread i guess.

Oh, but it is.

Notice that there are controls there which have no equivalent on most setups without going into special options - yep, it's true, the humble levels filter actually exceeds the capabilities of the primary corrector on most telecines. And what's more, the interface makes sense.

Phil

Floyd Diebel · June 30, 2004

Jeez, they should really be able to do better than that.

yeah, well i guess their machine is uncapable. the problem is that in northern california, we've only got two transfer houses to choose from at the moment. its not like socal. i just wish i actually could get a straight answer as to what the limitations of the machine actually are.

Notice that there are controls there which have no equivalent on most setups without going into special options - yep, it's true, the humble levels filter actually exceeds the capabilities of the primary corrector on most telecines. And what's more, the interface makes sense.

well, i still disagree, (definitely about the interface making sense) but that's okay.

maybe it's just cause, to my eye, using the level filter for anything more than crushing the blacks just looks like crap, so i don't use it much. i might not know how to use it correctly or something.

your attitude makes me curious though, have you ever supervised film transfers with a colorist who you liked or trusted? see, i'm willing to work a little bit with this lab because 1) local options are limited, 2) i have a successful 4 year relationship with them (and this particular colorist) already, 3) i like my colorist - he's a great guy, and 4) they've agreed to let me shoot tests (w/ free lab costs of course) in varying conditions to try and figure out the situation with the aspect ratio conversion.

anyways, that's my story. thanks for the diagnostic help!

oh - and the mean looking girl in your levels window is cool looking!

Marc Wielage · July 4, 2004

it looks very "digitized" - i think it has something to do with the the compressed image's vertical height being somehow electronically squashed in the machine somewhere to give a normally proportioned, letterboxed image. diagonal lines look absurdly bad, as do most hard edges.

The Bosch Quadra is a very, very old machine at this point. I'm guessing it's at least 10 years old, maybe earlier.

Your best bet is to transfer the film from a good color-timed Interpositive, on a Grass Valley Spirit (the much-improved HD version of the Quadra). There are some who prefer the look of a Rank C-Reality, but I would lean more towards the Spirit myself. Each can yield good results in the hands of a competent colorist.

The "Digitized" look you speak of may have to do with noise-reduction artifacts or a set-up problem within the machine. Jagged edges in diagonal lines are a problem due to Aliasing, which (in superficial terms) is a lack of available resolution to create a straight edge. We've found you get better results with a machine that runs internally in HD (like the Spirit) and then outputs NTSC or PAL. For some reason, the results seem to have fewer Aliasing artifacts than transfers done from a native NTSC machine.

Note that for DVD release, we typically do a slight 25% squeeze so that the 2.35 image is rendered correctly on a 1.78 aspect-ratio monitor. This is what it means when you see "optimized for 16x9" on a DVD box. Technically, it's a slight compromise because the pixels are expanded out horizontally slightly, but in real-life, it looks fine. And at least it uses up a little more of the available resolution on a 4x3 transfer.

I thought for sure there were more than two post houses in San Francisco that did telecine. I'll try to check around and find out.

--Marc W.

Phil Rhodes · July 4, 2004

Hi,

To answer the earlier point, I don't do a lot of film work, but I've sat in on perhaps half a dozen transfers and the attitude seems to be almost universal. Talking to colourists at trade shows, they also seem to float along six inches above the ground.

As for Penny - mean-looking? Well, I guess that was kind of the idea. It's England. only dark, depressing work gets any kudos.

Phil