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Post by ChrisC on Jan 4, 2006 20:42:50 GMT
Been watching this seires on Men & Motors recently and noticed if you compare The Professionals to some of the other ITV material from the era (Minder/ Sweeney etc.) the colour of the prints has aged very badly and has faded significanltly loosing depth & contrast......
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Post by Lance on Jan 4, 2006 23:11:08 GMT
I maybe wrong but the film masters for some of the Professionals were lost/junked a long time ago, all they have is the old vtr transfers of these.
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Post by Rowan Williams on Jan 4, 2006 23:11:16 GMT
That's how they looked when new!
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Post by ChrisC on Jan 6, 2006 20:35:37 GMT
Is it purely down to shoddy film stock then?
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Post by Lance C on Jan 6, 2006 21:21:56 GMT
Is it purely down to shoddy film stock then? Not so much shoddy film stock as shoddy processing in the film world. Rank was one the best processors in the world but apart from ITC on some productions (can you tell? they did not process The Adventurer) not many TV companies used them , (by the look of some BBC films, they used the back street chemist next to the Chinese Resurant) ;D However in the case of the Professionals its probably a generational thing IE its probably a few copies away from the original master and people have been twiddling along the way. Contrast and definition are not elements that usually fade from film although it does happen to videotape. Something to do with the Earth's magnetic field is to blame, and the effect is creeping, so it will affect the beginning of the reel and the definition improves as the tape comes from further in. This creeping effect can be seen rather ironically on the BBC's 'The Stone Tape' in which the beginning is soft and ill defined with much video noise but things improve as the story moves on. |
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jan 7, 2006 18:29:17 GMT
I had about 1/2 of the series on 16mm film - LPP low-fade prints. They were gorgeous -- orders of magnitude better than the prints they used for the DVDs. I sold them off years ago however -- I knew the show existed and didn't realize that these prints might be better than the ones that they used for the DVDs... These all came from Australia and were from the mid 1980s.
My guess is that the prints they had to make the DVDs were struck in the 70s - during the era of crappy Eastman film stock.
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Post by Stephen Doran on Jan 7, 2006 18:58:51 GMT
most of them were released in the 80s by video gems i thought they looked ok.
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Post by Steve Roberts on Jan 8, 2006 17:14:22 GMT
Contrast and definition are not elements that usually fade from film although it does happen to videotape. Something to do with the Earth's magnetic field is to blame, and the effect is creeping, so it will affect the beginning of the reel and the definition improves as the tape comes from further in. This creeping effect can be seen rather ironically on the BBC's 'The Stone Tape' in which the beginning is soft and ill defined with much video noise but things improve as the story moves on. What a complete and utter load of old bollocks! I've never read anything so daft on here since... well, the last time I was here, probably! 'The Stone Tape' is soft at the beginning purely because the opening shots are on soft outside broadcast cameras and then they move into studio and get to use proper studio cameras! It's a simple as that! Steve |
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Post by Lance on Jan 8, 2006 21:14:55 GMT
Contrast and definition are not elements that usually fade from film although it does happen to videotape. Something to do with the Earth's magnetic field is to blame, and the effect is creeping, so it will affect the beginning of the reel and the definition improves as the tape comes from further in. This creeping effect can be seen rather ironically on the BBC's 'The Stone Tape' in which the beginning is soft and ill defined with much video noise but things improve as the story moves on. What a complete and utter load of old bollocks! I've never read anything so daft on here since... well, the last time I was here, probably! 'The Stone Tape' is soft at the beginning purely because the opening shots are on soft outside broadcast cameras and then they move into studio and get to use proper studio cameras! It's a simple as that! Steve No dont hold yourself back ! I am quite aware that beginning moves from the yard into presumably the studio? I am also aware that the BBC had good eye sight tests at that time and certainly would not have employed someone who engineered shots as soft and woolly as that... and.... if they could only get that standard with OB they would have used film instead. Perhaps you should have a look at a Crossroads DVD (which masters are in good condition) and see what a 1972 OB should like like? Maybe its a phenomenon you have not noticed before , but its there and creeping degradation is quite apparent on the Stone Tape and you can see for yourself that the picture elements improve as its moves away from the beginning of the reel. The other explanation maybe is that the Stone Tape has been patched up with sources of varying quality but only a BBC man like yourslef might know that? |
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Post by Steve Roberts on Jan 8, 2006 22:22:42 GMT
I'm sorry Lance, but I've been a senior BBC videotape engineer for eighteen years and you are talking utter rubbish.
There is NO WAY that some "creeping magnetic field" could cause the FM luminance signal on a quad videotape to degrade in such a way that it would start to lose resolution. The only effect you would see would be an increase in the noise floor, something which is not apparent.
I have watched a D3 copy straight off the 'The Stone Tape' quad master more times than I care to remember and there is no sign of the effect you mention.
Please can you point me to any documentation about this effect, as I'm sure that my fellow videotape engineers and the staff of the BBC archives would be fascinated to learn of this new phenomenon which defies the laws of electromagnetism and FM theory...
Sorry if I sound arsy, but it really annoys me when people spout such bullshit with apparent authority so that other people take it as gospel...
Steve
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Post by ChrisC on Jan 8, 2006 23:25:48 GMT
:eek: what have i started!?
Interesting reading, however I don't think it's anything to do with the proccessing of the film by a lab.
I have also seen the release of the Profesionals on DVD and the quality is a p**s poor on there as well, some of the prints used were worn and very badly faded.
Does anybody know what filmstock it was shot on?
I have one of the Network releases of the Sweeney on DVD from same era and have seen episodes on M&M and the picture quality is in a different league. I originaly thought Sweeney was shot on 35mm as the picture quality is superb.
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Post by Steven Sigel on Jan 9, 2006 3:59:45 GMT
:eek: what have i started!? Interesting reading, however I don't think it's anything to do with the proccessing of the film by a lab. I have also seen the release of the Profesionals on DVD and the quality is a p**s poor on there as well, some of the prints used were worn and very badly faded. Does anybody know what filmstock it was shot on? I have one of the Network releases of the Sweeney on DVD from same era and have seen episodes on M&M and the picture quality is in a different league. I originaly thought Sweeney was shot on 35mm as the picture quality is superb. Film fade is mainly caused by unstable dye couplers that were used in the manufacter of photographic emulsions from the 1950s through the early 80s. The worst culprit was Eastman Kodak. Almost anything printed on Eastman stock in that period has (or will) turn red. Late in 1982, Eastman finally came out with LPP (low-fade Postive Print) film stock which has stable dye couplers. Prints made after this point have not faded (and hopefully wont fade for a long time to come). For completeness, other film stocks that don't fade include IB Dye transfer Technicolor prints ( which were rarely used for TV) which were only made until 1974 in the US, and 1977 in the UK; and Kodachrome (also rarely used for TV). AGFA and Fuji stock from the 1970s tended to hold up better than Eastman stock, but they also fade to some extent as well. From the mid-80s onward, AGFA and Fuji are meant to be fully stable as well. My guess is that the professionals DVDs came from old positive tv prints (most likely Eastman) that had been used in the past for broadcast. Not sure if that means that the original negatives don't exist anymore, or if they simply didn't want to spend the money to make new prints and/or telecine directly from the negatives. Anyone know if this show was shot on 16mm or 35mm? |
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Post by trevmds on Jan 9, 2006 4:05:24 GMT
Just apropos of nothing... I saw an episode of The Professionals broadcast on a public access station last year, and the M&E track was coming out of the left channel while the dialogue track was coming out of the right channel!
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Post by Lance on Jan 9, 2006 11:35:16 GMT
I'm sorry Lance, but I've been a senior BBC videotape engineer for eighteen years and you are talking utter rubbish. There is NO WAY that some "creeping magnetic field" could cause the FM luminance signal on a quad videotape to degrade in such a way that it would start to lose resolution. The only effect you would see would be an increase in the noise floor, something which is not apparent. I have watched a D3 copy straight off the 'The Stone Tape' quad master more times than I care to remember and there is no sign of the effect you mention. Please can you point me to any documentation about this effect, as I'm sure that my fellow videotape engineers and the staff of the BBC archives would be fascinated to learn of this new phenomenon which defies the laws of electromagnetism and FM theory... Sorry if I sound arsy, but it really annoys me when people spout such bullshit with apparent authority so that other people take it as gospel... Steve Well actually Steve I dont expect anyone to take anything as gospel . People I would have thought? are quite sensible enough to take what they want from these boards and make up their own minds. These are discussions after all and not engineering text books, I am certainly not trying to influence anyone just writing my own observations which have not just started with the the stone tape. but with alsorts of magnetic media . Anyone with a very old VHS tape can see (please note..in a few cases not all) that definition has been lost over the years especially at the beginning of the reel. However surely even you cannot dispute in the stone tape that the office scenes (for example ) are of a higher definition nearing the end of the story than the beginning? If you can get the July 72 ed of ATV 's Crossroads have a look at the OB hospital scene, some tiny convergence errors as expected from the cameras and a bit of noise, but beautifully sharp and defined and just how it was broadcast in 72. The stone tapein comparison looks quite..well... yuk. |
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Post by Gary on Jan 9, 2006 13:34:14 GMT
Isnt the BBC Stone Tape master a copy of the BFI quad? Would this make a difference in quality?Just a thought.
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