Othello - Restored v. Laserdisc

[Welles Fan]

Cole: the credits for Othello are at the end in the LD version. Also, Welles' spoken introduction appears, and I think (but am not sure) that it was absent from the European version.

Jaime-did you see my post above? Have you watched Filming Othello lately? The shots from Othello that Welles is commenting on in the documentary (at least the excerpts the Criterion uses) look like hell. There is no gray because the film appears to be 3rd or 4th generation copy. You can scarcely tell the difference between Mac Liammor and Coote (or the guy that plays Cassio)!

A more luminous effect in the film may (or may not) be a desirable thing, but I am convinced that the luminosity on the clips in the documentary excerpts is an accident due to the poor quality of the footage. It looks at times like some of the more ragged elements of the restoration of Abel Gance's Napoleon.

Personally, I like the detail of the bathed in grey version.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

why did DVD ever come out? is DVD supposed to make the movie look better?

according to almost all of your comments, DVD isn't working very well

if this is what the future is doing to television, or Orson Welles movies, forget it. ill sure miss alot of movies, though. 'cause most of them are coming out on the DVD

i'll stick to my VCR and videos

im sorry you guys are having all the problems and complain to the companies like crazy and get the money back.

i don't know. bye now.

[Fredric]

DVDs are great. We just want the best versions of the films transferred onto them.

[jaime marzol]

i'm my copy of filming othello, not a new copy, the clips look beautifull. i like the luminous effect. there are several sources quoting what welles wanted for the film, and "no grey" seems to have come from his mouth on many of his films.

when i saw huston's pastel AFRICAN QUEEN i thought there was something wrong with the tape.

don't dig the bathed in grey look. i'm always bringing down the brightness and craking up the contrast as a matter of habit, but that doesn't give you the luminance effect i saw in the clips welles used in filming othello.

[nathan_h]

I found it was so hard to decide exactly what, if any, processing to do on it when I transferred my laserdisc to DVD this last week that I just left it "as is". Of course, I add the color bars to the DVD, on the assumption that the laserdisc's image is calibrated to the color bars on the laserdisc, so if I have those color bars, I can calibrate any display *exactly* as the original telecine operator intended.

[jaime marzol]

how did you turn your laser into dvd, i ask, while wringing my hands like a pawn broker.

[Fredric]

...and will you do it for all of us? I've got a nice, shiny Beatrice Welles version that you can have for that dirty, old Criterion version.

Chuckle.

[Jeff Wilson]

My junk mail box on my email has been bombarded with messages lately about burning my own DVDs, and if it's the same thing Nathan is mentioning, I think this refers to making either a VCD or DIV-X copy of material. It is not of DVD quality. DVD-recorders are coming, but they're by no means cheap. So do spill it, Nathan, as to your methods, and let us in on your secrets...

[nathan_h]

It's a real DVD, not one of those burn a DVD onto a CD thingys:

I use an outboard MPEG2 encoder called "ADS Instant DVD". It looks a little hokey, but it turns out the guts contain one of the best hardware-based MPEG encoders around, in the under $1k world.

This feeds into my PC, which is equipped with *basic* DVD-authoring software. (I can do a main menu with different Titles, but not chapter marks -- and my software doesn't let me do multiple audio tracks, etc.)

I then burn the movie to a DVD-R, which is surpisingly compatible with most set-top DVD players.

Downsides:

Other than those eluded to above...

DVD-R blanks can only be "single-layer". You know those discs you see that say "double-layer"... they have twice as much capacity on a side as do the DVD-R blanks. This ain't so bad, if all one wants on the disc is the movie, but it means I wouldn't bother with extras, as they would take up too much space (reducing the space for, and thus the image quality of, the movie).

Since I'm using real-time MPEG encoding, I miss the benefits of multiple pass VBR encoding (better quality in less space).

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Bottom line: It ain't going to fool anyone into thinking it's a real commercial DVD. At the same time, it's way better than when I used to copy my LDs to VHS, and a little better than SVHS, imo, though one could argue about plusses and minuses (ie, more detailed image on the DVD-R but maybe a little digital artifacting on complicated scenes).

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Yeah, it's all a little pricey still. Barely $200 for the encoder, and still about $400 for a DVD-R drive for a computer. (One could cut corners on the outboard encoder, getting a cheaper video-capture unit --c $50 -- that requires more processing inside the computer.) Blanks are getting cheaper (always findable for $5 or $6 these days).

What I find annoying is that it takes several steps & too much time unless one is really dedicated. It's not like making a VHS tape, or even a homemade audio CD. And it took more than a month of evenings fiddling with it in order to figure out what those steps are!

(If I had it to do over again, I might be tempted to get a stand along DVD burner, though it would add to the cost -- I think they're at $750 online, these days.)

[jaime marzol]

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thanks for the info.

i tried to do it with OTHELLO also, i used premiere. i reset the exposures, zoomed back to get rid of tv overscan. looked great. but consumes lots of hard drive, and lots of rendering time. i wasn't going to burn to mpg2, i was happy to just have it on video, but it's very time consuming. finally you say screw it and convince yourself you can live without it.

ambersons is one film that would greatly improve if they zommed back to get rid of tv overscan. the difference is quite exciting.

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[nathan_h]

Ambersons is/was the one I really wanted to mess with -- get it back into the proper order, as close as possible, etc. etc. (in another topic I wax poetic about that).

But I have yet to find an editing application for MPEG2 (that's affordable) that would be flexible enough. Last I checked, my copy of Premiere didn't want to manipulate MPEG2 files.... ah well.

For a while I tried to capture stuff as AVI. But that meant I could only fit about 45 minutes of video on a 50GB drive... Plus, to get it onto a DVD, I'd then have to do software conversion to MPEG2 -- which, while the best quality way to do it, took more than 24 hours to process! With MPEG2 direct conversion, I can fit 100 minutes of video in less than 4GB of disc space, and then really only need to do minor rendering (<1 hour) to get things into shape for DVD.

[jaime marzol]

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yeap, same problem with premiere. i can export mpg2, but if i try to open it, or work with it in premiere, premire stumbles, gags, pukes, curses at me.

i have some of the ambersons done, up to the party scene.

recreated the missing scenes using scrolling text and story board pics. works pretty well, considering this is the only way possible to experience the narrative welles intended.

would actually be cheap to restore ambersons. recreating missing footage is cheaper than fixing exhisting footage, in that it would require a less talented person with less sophisticated equipment.

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[jaime marzol]

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less talent, less sophisticated equipment, ahhh, i fit the bill perfectly.

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there is a plugin for adobe premiere to be able to work with mpg2.

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[nathan_h]

If that plugin is "cheap" I might go there... but I have yet to find it for purchase, so it's tough to guage.

[jaime marzol]

first part of post about stealing software, was removed by order of altamonte springs police department.

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then once you have all this high end software with no manuals, do you pull your hair out and curse at your pets in frustration, of course not. you go to www.vtc.com, join the site, and sit through on-line tutorials for hundreds of high end software. they have serious tutorials, premieire is 9 hrs, after effects 12 hrs. besides wellesnet, it's the most usefull site i've found.

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don't hesitate, go steal, steal, steal.