Around 2000 or so, when Lucas was re-releasing the Star Wars Special Edition trilogy on VHS there were a number of bootleg DVD's already circulating, authored from the previously released 1997 Laserdisc. At this time, a page on starwars.com appeared (unfortunately I've been unable to locate an archive of it at this time) which said that the bootleg DVD's circulating are not full DVD quality, even though they do represent an improvement over VHS quality. There was even a bootleg DVD of the Phantom Menace made from a rip of the Japanese Laserdisc.
Lucas's insane plan at the time was to release all 6 films on DVD at the same time, he had to cave in and release Phantom Menace on DVD in 2001. He initially gave everyone VHS (except Japan which got the Laserdisc).
In 2006 Lucas re-released the unaltered trilogy on DVD, taken from the 1993 D-2 tapes (I think that's correct). The tapes were produced directly from a telecine and used to author the 1993 and 1995 Laserdisc releases. Even in 1993 it was far from being a state-of-the-art transfer. So the 2006 job was marginally better than the decent quality LD rips.
Now here's where it gets interesting.
Beauty And The Beast WIP...
As with many Disney movies, the original version has been long-since dead and unreleased since Laserdisc. Yet someone discovered that the Bluray has the WIP video stream hidden on it, and ripped it here (that link is just the WIP video stream, you need to rip the Audio from the Bluray or the NTSC DVD and mux it if you want to use it). I have not yet watched this version, but I am excited to have the opportunity to see it. For those unfamiliar with it, it's the original version released theatrically before all the animation was complete.
Exorcist II: The Heretic, Special Edition ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DKR_kyVeRM
Contains: The original cut of the film never released on home video and the theatrical cut which hasn't been seen on home video since before 1993. Both are in true 1080p High Definition. Certainly not the best movie, however I'm interested to see this version.
Although he ripped the main movie from an online commercial HD stream, Dr. Sapirstein didn't say where he got the 1080p video for the "Director's Cut" from. It's almost certain he had a 35mm print scanned, possibly by this guy who bought a $400,000 film scanner off eBay for $1,000 and has already used it to scan prints of the Star Wars Trilogy as well as other films. This is not new, Mike Verta, a Lucasfilm employee has also scanned his own film copy of Star Wars (for his personal use), and then provided abundant evidence that the 2004 restoration done for the DVD could have been done "better" (particularly with the colour - and I don't mean colour grading, I mean chrominance, and that has to do with both the settings at the time of scanning and the filtration, the filters used for the 2004 DVD destroyed a lot of chroma information in the process).
As with Mike Verta, in the past companies have been reluctant to scan commercial prints for private individuals - Verta scanned his own print/prints. He does help other film preservationists with his expertise. The second example is of a private individual owning a film scanner who will scan film prints for anyone who wants their prints scanned.
This trend in film preservation seems to be here to stay. If companies are not going to release movies in High Definition on BlyRay, or the quality is not acceptable, then they'll still end up scanned and released by the public. It's true, of course, that you can never get as good a scan from a print than from the original negative, and of course that the work involved in post-processing (removing scratches, layers of grain, etc) is very labour intensive.
But it's also true that re-using old digital masters is one of the laziest things to do, and the quality is sub-standard. The "Original Trilogy" Blurays were mastered straight from the 2004 digital master.
Here's a scene from Fantasia that so far has been censored in every home video release made by Disney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdi3zX9DKm8
One day there will be a version of the film with the original scene as it was originally made released, it's just a question of whether Disney will do it or let the "pirates" do it for them.
Lucas's insane plan at the time was to release all 6 films on DVD at the same time, he had to cave in and release Phantom Menace on DVD in 2001. He initially gave everyone VHS (except Japan which got the Laserdisc).
In 2006 Lucas re-released the unaltered trilogy on DVD, taken from the 1993 D-2 tapes (I think that's correct). The tapes were produced directly from a telecine and used to author the 1993 and 1995 Laserdisc releases. Even in 1993 it was far from being a state-of-the-art transfer. So the 2006 job was marginally better than the decent quality LD rips.
Now here's where it gets interesting.
Beauty And The Beast WIP...
As with many Disney movies, the original version has been long-since dead and unreleased since Laserdisc. Yet someone discovered that the Bluray has the WIP video stream hidden on it, and ripped it here (that link is just the WIP video stream, you need to rip the Audio from the Bluray or the NTSC DVD and mux it if you want to use it). I have not yet watched this version, but I am excited to have the opportunity to see it. For those unfamiliar with it, it's the original version released theatrically before all the animation was complete.
Exorcist II: The Heretic, Special Edition ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DKR_kyVeRM
Contains: The original cut of the film never released on home video and the theatrical cut which hasn't been seen on home video since before 1993. Both are in true 1080p High Definition. Certainly not the best movie, however I'm interested to see this version.
Although he ripped the main movie from an online commercial HD stream, Dr. Sapirstein didn't say where he got the 1080p video for the "Director's Cut" from. It's almost certain he had a 35mm print scanned, possibly by this guy who bought a $400,000 film scanner off eBay for $1,000 and has already used it to scan prints of the Star Wars Trilogy as well as other films. This is not new, Mike Verta, a Lucasfilm employee has also scanned his own film copy of Star Wars (for his personal use), and then provided abundant evidence that the 2004 restoration done for the DVD could have been done "better" (particularly with the colour - and I don't mean colour grading, I mean chrominance, and that has to do with both the settings at the time of scanning and the filtration, the filters used for the 2004 DVD destroyed a lot of chroma information in the process).
As with Mike Verta, in the past companies have been reluctant to scan commercial prints for private individuals - Verta scanned his own print/prints. He does help other film preservationists with his expertise. The second example is of a private individual owning a film scanner who will scan film prints for anyone who wants their prints scanned.
This trend in film preservation seems to be here to stay. If companies are not going to release movies in High Definition on BlyRay, or the quality is not acceptable, then they'll still end up scanned and released by the public. It's true, of course, that you can never get as good a scan from a print than from the original negative, and of course that the work involved in post-processing (removing scratches, layers of grain, etc) is very labour intensive.
But it's also true that re-using old digital masters is one of the laziest things to do, and the quality is sub-standard. The "Original Trilogy" Blurays were mastered straight from the 2004 digital master.
Here's a scene from Fantasia that so far has been censored in every home video release made by Disney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdi3zX9DKm8
One day there will be a version of the film with the original scene as it was originally made released, it's just a question of whether Disney will do it or let the "pirates" do it for them.
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
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