Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

blu-ray.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 306 posts

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#231

Post by rbanffy »

schlauerfox wrote: post #212
Aurornis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X-Files went the opposite way: The streaming release was remastered from higher quality originals that had been prepared ahead of time for the eventual arrival of higher resolution TV. I’m not surprised that some shows were never archived at higher quality, though. The entertainment industry has a lot of people who just want to get their job done and go home, just like any other industry. Many classic series were…

I know most productions now run so tight they rent their stuff, so once the edit is done and shipped most of the raw footage is all purged. No outtakes or extra footage exist. Actors prefer this for their image, studios will not pay to store any of it, but what a loss.

A case for having a couple LTO-9 drives on hand.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#232

Post by BHSPitMonkey »

toyg wrote: post #134
xattt wrote: post #82

Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…

> can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to video tape The first few seasons were meant to be just a segment inside a sketch-based tv show (i.e. some of the most disposable, worst-aging, least-resyndicated material that tv studios will ever produce) and the budget was very small.

What you're referring to came before "the first few seasons". Season 1 and onward are the standalone TV show, spun off from the Tracey Ullman Show shorts.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#233

Post by rbanffy »

gnomesteel wrote: post #159
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're solidly pre-digital. Somewhere, the individual frames were drawn/painted on cel, were they not? In principle, remastering should still be possible.

I shouldn't have said never had a film negative. They likely scanned hand-drawn cells to film, then transferred that to tape. At the time they likely saw the NTSC tape as the master.

The same way that today we rescan originals at 4 or 8K is also telling we aren’t thinking about 16K or 32K with 30 bits per hyperspectral channel.

Even though you need really great quality originals to make it work.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#234

Post by matheusmoreira »

xattt wrote: post #82

Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…

> unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for

> Were studios really that reckless with their properties?

These corporations could not care less, it's just money to them. Streaming services will take your money and ship you "high definition" nonsense that's so horribly compressed it has artifacts in 90% black frames.

If you want quality, you need to find the obsessives out there who will not be satisfied unless they have the absolute best version of everything. These are the people who will track down and scan the negatives the company left lying around to rot using equipment worth tens of thousands of dollars.

https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k77/

These people really put these billion dollar corporations to shame.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#235

Post by rbanffy »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #140
xattt wrote: post #82

Re: negative re-masters I can’t help but notice that a number of older and very prominent shows on streaming services are clearly ripped from a video cassette. For example, the older Simpsons episodes on Disney Plus. Some of the episodes have very prominent dot crawl which is unacceptable for a digital format that you pay for. I also can’t imagine the film masters were trashed, or that the show was composited to vide…

They're at their best when they're reckless... it gets so much worse. There was a 4th tv network in the 1950s that died quite soon, and they had a Jackie Gleason show of their own that is now lost to time. At some point in the early 1960s, they had a board meeting to discuss what to do with the accumulation of taped archives (quadruplex I guess?), and the lawyer spoke up "I'll take care of it". He loaded them up into…

We might need to build faster than light ships and great radio telescopes to get those broadcasts recorded.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#236

Post by cwe »

Cyphase wrote: post #38

When I was a kid we had a VHS recording of Sneakers, with the beginning of an episode of Letterman at the end. I remember my mom liking it. Fond memories. I need to watch it again. A couple of scenes: Carl: We've got customers. Martin: Shoes? Carl: Expensive. Martin: *fixes tie* Look busy, guys. And another: *after apparently inconveniencing Liz, the group is walking out* Cosmo: We'll call you a cab. Liz: "Thank you.…

I’ve always hated the thing about computer dating. Why would that have been so unreasonable?

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#237

Post by dylan604 »

rbanffy wrote: post #228
doublerabbit wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O/T: I've discovered that the animation studio I had a gig for has shut it's doors recently to liquidation. They had a killer render archival server with archives from 2000-onwards show casing what the studio had studio made. Cartoons, Movies; a collection of praised possessions. It pains me to think that the studio has handed this over to the liquidators only for it to be shredded and now how many OG copies have now…

I’d assume the hard drives live now in someone’s basement. A lot of people save things like that from destruction.

Just because you buy content on the auction block does not mean you own the rights to release that content. You've only purchased the physical media, not the rights. I know someone that has been down that very road after purchasing stuff from an auction after the death of a studio.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#238

Post by MisterTea »

joshstrange wrote: post #222

I cannot hear the word "verify" and/or "passport" without saying "My voice is my passport, verify me" under my breath.

Heard a Verizon tech on a phone call to tech-tech (tech^2?) support and the automated attendant stated "Repeat after me, my voice is my password" and the tech responded "my voice is my password" then had to wait on hold. Felt a little dystopian.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#239

Post by rbanffy »

dylan604 wrote: post #237
rbanffy wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d assume the hard drives live now in someone’s basement. A lot of people save things like that from destruction.

Just because you buy content on the auction block does not mean you own the rights to release that content. You've only purchased the physical media, not the rights. I know someone that has been down that very road after purchasing stuff from an auction after the death of a studio.

They might be unable to release it, but they can still preserve it.

Re: Sneakers (1992) – 4K makeover sourced from the original camera negative

#240

Post by KennyBlanken »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #180
Cyphase wrote: post #38

When I was a kid we had a VHS recording of Sneakers, with the beginning of an episode of Letterman at the end. I remember my mom liking it. Fond memories. I need to watch it again. A couple of scenes: Carl: We've got customers. Martin: Shoes? Carl: Expensive. Martin: *fixes tie* Look busy, guys. And another: *after apparently inconveniencing Liz, the group is walking out* Cosmo: We'll call you a cab. Liz: "Thank you.…

> "A computer matched her with him? I don't think so." When I first watched this movie, I felt like this was a weak moment in the film. "Computer dating" at the time was laughably bad, so seeing a character regard it as infallible ruined the immersion. With age and experience, I now see that some people just throw themselves behind certain technologies, and fail to find flaw. So maybe this character was just a misgui…

Keep in mind the script was from a top-shelf writer who worked on it for ages. It's established earlier in the film that the crew think it's completely plausible a computer dating service would set the two of them up.

"...Fellas. Fellas, look at this man's trash. He's not looking for "buff." The man who folded this tube of Crest...is looking for someone...meticulous. Refined. Anal. ...What?"

I think Cosmo's comment - note he's extremely vain, how he dresses, his office is practically a modern art gallery, he's got the organization's Cray sitting on display, etc - just further shows how vain he is, thinking someone as attractive as Liz couldn't possibly be a good match for a nerd like Werner, when it's established that they're actually quite alike/compatible.

One could imagine that Liz also obeys all speed limits and comes to complete stops at every stop sign...

Post reply on HN