Indiana Jones Forum

Just as soon as the Revenge of the Sith wrapped up and the last lightsaber was sheathed, the fedora and the whip were picked up again for Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Though the live-action Star Wars TV show is still taxying for a runway, when it ever does get put together, the production model’s going to be just like The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles’ was.  

The two series have a symbiosis. What happens to one will eventually happen to the other. So, even though this bit about a 3D re-release of all the Indiana Jones movies from Blue Sky Disney is very much rumor, who honestly doesn't believe it's going to happen eventually?

Rather than gripe about 3D, I'd actually rather gripe about another format these movies are inevitability heading to--Blu-ray.  Have any of you ever watched an old movie on Blu-ray? It’s a freaky head trip. They clean the image up so much that it honestly looks like somebody went into a time machine (a DeLorean perhaps?) and re-shot the entire movie on some “prosumer” camera you'd buy at Best Buy. And after all that restoration work, it looks about as appealing as something shot on that kind of camera.  

I'm less leery of seeing a 3D Indy as I am of seeing a Raiders of the Lost Ark whose picture feel is almost indistinguishable from that feature-length, home movie remake those kids did however many years ago. 

Good transfers such as Warner Brother's catalog titles, Criterion's work and even Blue Underground don't have the DNR slathering you are mentioning it seems odd to hold that against the format when it's the disc producers fault. 

I totally get what you mean about old movies on Blu-Ray! I thought I was the only person that noticed stuff like that.

I'm with Tom, re-releasing old films on bluray and up-converting them just makes it look wrong.

You're probably watching those movies on the 120HZ/240HZ screens, which I think ruins all films by making them look like Digital Home Video camare footage. There are times where I walk into a Best Buy and see these displays and think, for some reason, that they are showing a behind the scenes special feature, but it is, in fact, the actual movie. My older 60HZ TV plays old movies quite well. Nice crisp images, clear details, but still feeling very real and genuine. Those newer TVs make even new movies look like absolute shit.

@damswedon said:

" I'm with Tom, re-releasing old films on bluray and up-converting them just makes it look wrong. "

It is still a down convert as film has a much higher resolution than blu-ray. Whatever discs he is talking about either have DNR issues or the TV issues @Duecenage mentioned though if you have a 120/240hz screen it should do the pulldown to show the movie in a pure 24fps avoiding all that crappy motion filters. 

@swoon said:

" @damswedon said:

" I'm with Tom, re-releasing old films on bluray and up-converting them just makes it look wrong. "

It is still a down convert as film has a much higher resolution than blu-ray. Whatever discs he is talking about either have DNR issues or the TV issues @Duecenage mentioned though if you have a 120/240hz screen it should do the pulldown to show the movie in a pure 24fps avoiding all that crappy motion filters.  "  

1. You know what I meant, whatever they do to make the video more "crisp" and those other buzz words the studios use to sell the Blurays just feel wrong when I watch them. I just couldn't remember the term for it.
2. It's 25 frames per second.

Film is (dare I say it?) a dirty medium and when you remove the dirt it is something other... brrrrr...
 
What does the average Jane/Joe care about? Well from all I can tell it's: Does it look pretty? ("Make it sharper! Why does that movie from 1972 not look all supersmooth?" Have you seen what was done to the LotR movies on the HD release? Ugh. And those are "new" movies.); Does it fill my screen? ("Ick, black bars! Where is the damn zoom button? What balls are supposed to be ovoid, right? Gee, I wish I could be tall and skinny like all the Hollywood stars! Why is everyone in those old movies so short and fat? Oh, well."); Black and White is icky (Okay, I swear I DO NOT GET THIS ONE AT ALL! "Black and white hurts my eyes!" A quote from a reply here on screened: "I really like Seven Samurai, but it's sometimes hard to watch older black and white samurai movies unless there is humor in them like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo." WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN?!!!? The only thing between us and colorization making a comeback is the "If it was made before Star Wars it isn't a real movie." attitude that is all too prevalent so it's not a money maker to do so.)
 
Get used to it if you like (older) movies to really be presented in a format consistent with the original presentation. With few exceptions the preferences of the lowest common will prevail.
 
GET OFF MY LAWN! <stupid kids>

@swoon: 
I'm not sure if we're on the same page. When a TV does 120/240hz it has to digitally add frames to fill in the gaps. You end up with the very fake, digital output that looks absolutely terrible. I think they do have an option to drop it back down to 60hz(at least for the time being) which is what everyone, who has a keen eye, should do to avoid getting that effect. 
 
I remember seeing a car chase sequence in Batman Begins that literally looked like the footage was just sped up. There was no blur or anything. It looks purely artificial. I know I've seen it a few times on my own TV and it's never jumped out at me there.
 
All this has got me looking into things a little further.. all I know is that I've seen movies that I already own(And look and move great/awesome) look like shit on some of these new TVs with the 120Hz and 240Hz refresh rates. I only assume why that is.

@Duecenage said:

" @swoon:  I'm not sure if we're on the same page. When a TV does 120/240hz it has to digitally add frames to fill in the gaps. You end up with the very fake, digital output that looks absolutely terrible. I think they do have an option to drop it back down to 60hz(at least for the time being) which is what everyone, who has a keen eye, should do to avoid getting that effect.   I remember seeing a car chase sequence in Batman Begins that literally looked like the footage was just sped up. There was no blur or anything. It looks purely artificial. I know I've seen it a few times on my own TV and it's never jumped out at me there. "

Because 120/240hz is are mutiples of 24, they can actually do the step down to display 24fps without the jitter of that occurs when 24fps is displayed at 60hz, providing you turn off the terrible looking interpolation, so if the disc producer didn't smear DNR all over the picture - and the settings on the blu-ray player and tv are set correctly you should get a more stable and film-like picture at 120/240 than 60. 

@swoon: 
Yeah, after looking it up, it totally makes sense. I've never noticed any issues with my 60Hz, but it does seem to be that shitty assed interpolation. It's good to have that finally sorted out. Biggest scare.. walking into a sony store and huge as wall, ceiling to floor, full of TV with that damn interpolation turned on.. my eyeballs almost melted.

@damswedon said:

" @swoon said:

" @damswedon said:

" I'm with Tom, re-releasing old films on bluray and up-converting them just makes it look wrong. "

It is still a down convert as film has a much higher resolution than blu-ray. Whatever discs he is talking about either have DNR issues or the TV issues @Duecenage mentioned though if you have a 120/240hz screen it should do the pulldown to show the movie in a pure 24fps avoiding all that crappy motion filters.  "  

1. You know what I meant, whatever they do to make the video more "crisp" and those other buzz words the studios use to sell the Blurays just feel wrong when I watch them. I just couldn't remember the term for it.
2. It's 25 frames per second.

"

1. I actually didn't, but yeah we are on the same page then.  
2. It's still 24 frames over spread out over 25 frames.  for film shot on film at 24 anyway. 

@damswedon said:

It's 25 frames per second. "

Edit: whoops, see you were talking video FPS rather than film... reading too fast...
 
Bzzzzz! Thanks for playing. :-) It's 24 ( wikipedia). Yes, in pre-sound days you would see anything from 16 to 22fps (and before motorized cameras <which at the dawn of sound made the sound dudes very unhappy being as they were LOUD> a camerman who could crank at a consistent speed was like gold). There have been other processes that ran film at other speeds (60fps was used for some movie in the 80's <cannot drag it out of my brain> for a "hyper-realistic" look).
 
In a country with a PAL video system, rather than do a 3:2 pulldown when converting films to video they just do a straight 1:1 and run it at the 25fps that PAL does. This causes you to view films at a 4% speedup (which for a fogie like me is not a good thing - I should probably just get a film room set up in the house so I can solve all these problems).
 
Followup: A display that can show a film at 24 (or multiple thereof <IOW repeating the frame 4 times) is the best way to go... digital "cleanup" trickery is (when overused - and it seems to be overused more than underused) evil.

The modern art of blu ray remastering is also known as face plasticisation.

I like Screened conversations. 

Don't ever use 120hz! Turn that shit off, Tom. It ruins HDTVs and makes movies look like they were filmed on a handheld, or stuck in fastforward.  
 
You should be able to turn it off and go back to normal 60hz.

@victorfries: 
Actually, after looking into it.. that videocamera effect is a processing feature, called motion interpolation,  that is on the TVs. For some all the manufacturers seem to think people need it. It can be turned off and the 120/240hz should look just fine. 
 
I was just talking about this with a co-worker while heading out to lunch, but the average person can't even tell the difference. He had a buddy who had it turned on, then he turned it off and his buddy never perceived any difference.

Reading this made me ever so glad that I still have Last Crusade on vhs somewhere.

I hate the word "prosumer".  I just pisses me off whenever I hear it. 

3D conversion=horrible