The Latest James Bond Headlines 
Bond HD DVD Details
Lowry Digital Images Inc. will remaster all 20 Bond DVDs for release in 2006
News Category: Multimedia NewsPosted on August 9, 2005 2:04 PM
The Lowry Digital Group is planning on remastering all 20 James Bond movie DVDs in high definition. The project, which is more than a year in the making will hopefully be completed by sometime in late 2006. BM first reported on the Bond HD DVDs in April of 2004.
Now, i an interview with Sound and Vision Magazine, head of the Lowry Group, John Lowry explains the process of using "a room full of computers to get movies ready to handle high-def DVD and beyond."
What is the restoration process entail? Fomr the article:
DVD transfers are usually scanned using the 480p (progressive) enhanced-definition or 1080i (interlaced) high-def formats. Why do you scan films at 4K, or 4,096 pixels, horizontal resolution - more than twice the 1,920-pixel resolution of the 1080i HDTV format?
If I'm going to restore a film, my objective is to capture everything that is on that negative, which probably has a limit somewhere in the 3- to 4K range. If you scan it at high-def or even 2K, there's all kinds of information on that film that you just haven't got. If you scan at 4K, it captures everything on the film - everything. Most of the work we're currently doing is scanning the original final-cut camera negative - whenever possible we get back to the camera negative. We use a couple of 4K scanners that were selected for their very gentle handling of film. We create a digital master of everything on the negative, process it, and make a new "digital negative" that is just as good as the original camera negative in terms of resolution and grain structure, but without all the changes caused by age and wear and tear. We want it to look like what the director saw when he first screened his dailies - the first print made from the negative.
If I'm going to restore a film, my objective is to capture everything that is on that negative, which probably has a limit somewhere in the 3- to 4K range. If you scan it at high-def or even 2K, there's all kinds of information on that film that you just haven't got. If you scan at 4K, it captures everything on the film - everything. Most of the work we're currently doing is scanning the original final-cut camera negative - whenever possible we get back to the camera negative. We use a couple of 4K scanners that were selected for their very gentle handling of film. We create a digital master of everything on the negative, process it, and make a new "digital negative" that is just as good as the original camera negative in terms of resolution and grain structure, but without all the changes caused by age and wear and tear. We want it to look like what the director saw when he first screened his dailies - the first print made from the negative.
What are the details about the Bond DVDs? From the article:
Can you tell me what movies you're working on at the moment?
We are doing work for four major studios, but I can't talk about most of those yet. We are working on Aliens of the Deep for Jim Cameron. The other work that I can talk about is on three James Bond movies that are in various stages of restoration.
Which ones?
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, and we're finishing up some work on Goldfinger.
The picture quality of the previous DVD releases was disappointing.
These are stunning - they'll blow your socks off. We're doing all 20 James Bond movies - nine with 4K scanning, the others in high-definition.
Do the nine include all the Sean Connery ones?
I believe they're all in that group, yes. They wanted the older films to be restored as well as they could be. But keep in mind that Dr. No was a relatively low-budget film, made with no concept that this would lead to the parade of films that followed. So it was shot in a hurry and has some real challenges, like hairs in the film gate. By the time we got to the third and fourth Bond movies, the quality had improved immensely - very professional by the time of, say, Thunderball.
Describe the differences we'd see between the previous Bond DVDs and the images you're creating now.
The major difference we get using high-definition scanning and processing is the higher resolution that migrates to the DVD. It breaks the rules, but it works. You Only Live Twice was one of the films we worked on to demonstrate the process to studio executives. We scanned and enhanced the material, and then reduced it to DVD resolution to show the folks at MGM what the DVD would look like. Comparing that with the prior results - it was like a brand-new movie. It has to do with whether you process at high-def or you process at 2K or 4K and then reduce to high-def. Certainly the best results we get - for HDTV broadcasting and future high-def DVDs - are on things we process at a higher resolution. The fine detail does migrate down to the next level, without question.
We are doing work for four major studios, but I can't talk about most of those yet. We are working on Aliens of the Deep for Jim Cameron. The other work that I can talk about is on three James Bond movies that are in various stages of restoration.
Which ones?
On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, and we're finishing up some work on Goldfinger.
The picture quality of the previous DVD releases was disappointing.
These are stunning - they'll blow your socks off. We're doing all 20 James Bond movies - nine with 4K scanning, the others in high-definition.
Do the nine include all the Sean Connery ones?
I believe they're all in that group, yes. They wanted the older films to be restored as well as they could be. But keep in mind that Dr. No was a relatively low-budget film, made with no concept that this would lead to the parade of films that followed. So it was shot in a hurry and has some real challenges, like hairs in the film gate. By the time we got to the third and fourth Bond movies, the quality had improved immensely - very professional by the time of, say, Thunderball.
Describe the differences we'd see between the previous Bond DVDs and the images you're creating now.
The major difference we get using high-definition scanning and processing is the higher resolution that migrates to the DVD. It breaks the rules, but it works. You Only Live Twice was one of the films we worked on to demonstrate the process to studio executives. We scanned and enhanced the material, and then reduced it to DVD resolution to show the folks at MGM what the DVD would look like. Comparing that with the prior results - it was like a brand-new movie. It has to do with whether you process at high-def or you process at 2K or 4K and then reduce to high-def. Certainly the best results we get - for HDTV broadcasting and future high-def DVDs - are on things we process at a higher resolution. The fine detail does migrate down to the next level, without question.
Looks like my 007 DVD collection will be refreshed in a year...
