Videokarma.org

Go Back   Videokarma.org TV - Video - Vintage Television & Radio Forums > Early Color Television

We appreciate your help

in keeping this site going.
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #76  
Old 03-02-2017, 07:07 PM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
Resident Lunatic
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Quote:
Originally Posted by etype2 View Post
Thanks for the advice, both of you. We will try a modulator first and see how that works out. Checking them out now.

I think Tomcomm did the adaptor to bypass RF/IF. Interesting.
He did. It's a very simple chassis, but sort of "cheating". I would personally use a BT modulator hardwired to your sets, but that's just my preference. I can echo Tom in that channel two seems to be weaker, but I usually got better performance with higher channels, thus 12 was strongest, followed by 9, 7, 4 then 2.
Reply With Quote
  #77  
Old 03-12-2017, 04:31 PM
etype2's Avatar
etype2 etype2 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Valley of the Sun, formerly Silicon Valley, formerly Packer Land.
Posts: 1,487
Yesterday, we pulled an old good quality Sony DVD player and found a cheap Radio Shack wired RF modulator in my pile of stuff. No wireless purchased as yet. Popped in the Wizard and got very good results. The obligatory Dorthy shot now has less of a blue cast and very good geometry.

Several more shots within the movie were captured. This time I had freeze frame and I could set each individual capture exposure by eye to match what we were seeing on the screen. The camera is an iPhone 6 Plus. The green is improved but could be better. We are working on that. I didn't want to take up a lot of space with the shots on this forum, but you can see full resolution shots on my site.



https://visions4netjournal.com/vinta...tv-page-two-2/
__________________
Personal website dedicated to Vintage Television https://visions4netjournal.com
Reply With Quote
  #78  
Old 03-29-2017, 03:18 AM
etype2's Avatar
etype2 etype2 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Valley of the Sun, formerly Silicon Valley, formerly Packer Land.
Posts: 1,487
We have green! and a new “Dorothy” reference screenshot.

So we went out and purchased the old version of Joe Kane’s Video Essentials on DVD. We have the Blu Ray version, but it was not compatible with my current DVD player hooked up to the 21CT55. Using the supplied blue filter film, we calibrated the blue gun of the 21AXP22. If the color decoder is working correctly, the other two colors should “fall into place”. Our green gun was not displaying green as well as it should and in our latest adjustment/calibration, we took a different approach. This time instead of increasing the green gain, we decreased the green gain and increased the green background controls to get proper color balance on the SMPTE-C color bars displayed by the DVD. This greatly improved the green reproduction on the various programming we viewed after the calibration.

We tested using the Wizard of Oz, The Red Shoes and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, all great Technicolor films. The recently discovered Red Shoes film from 1948 is a gem of a movie to evaluate an old color roundie television. The color is simply beautiful and there is one scene in particular that replicates the standard “Dorothy” facial shot from the Wizard of Oz which many collectors use to judge their televisions. The color tones and gradations are superior in this authors opinion. The scene we are referring to is the lead actress in the film. We will be using this movie, The Red Shoes, to evaluate current and future color televisions in and for our collection. Below, the first screenshot is what we call the “new Dorothy reference screenshot” and additional screenshots from the three movies. The scenes have more depth and look less flat now that we have good green reproduction. We still see color decoder errors, but Marilyn’s pink (a difficult color to reproduce) satin dress is reproduced reasonably well for a 62 year old television and it’s technology. Trees, shrubbery and scenic scenes now have good green color reproduction. Full resolution screenshots can be seen here: https://visions4netjournal.com/vinta...tv-page-two-2/

Very large page. Scroll to bottom for latest update. You need a medium to fast internet speed to view. 20mbps.











__________________
Personal website dedicated to Vintage Television https://visions4netjournal.com

Last edited by etype2; 03-29-2017 at 03:39 AM.
Reply With Quote
  #79  
Old 03-29-2017, 05:19 AM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
Resident Lunatic
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Some of us have been using "The Red Shoes" all along... not exactly a newly unearthed film. Good luck getting anyone else to use it for reference shots.

Green does look much better though, etype2.
Reply With Quote
  #80  
Old 03-29-2017, 03:03 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
"The Red Shoes" has some very nice color, making it a good demo piece, but IIRC, does not have the variety of greens and yellows that Oz has. (I don't have a copy to verify that, but I saw the restoration release at a SMPTE meeting a few years back.)

Use of Oz reminds me of the stereo hi-fi engineers at Motorola in the 60s, who used Tijuana Brass records for testing, not because they had the most beautiful music, but because they had instruments in every frequency range.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
  #81  
Old 03-29-2017, 03:07 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
Oh - I forgot to say NICE results! Marilyn's magenta-pink dress is a particularly difficult item to keep right.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote
  #82  
Old 03-29-2017, 03:21 PM
etype2's Avatar
etype2 etype2 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Valley of the Sun, formerly Silicon Valley, formerly Packer Land.
Posts: 1,487
Ben: Thanks and to your comment. I read a few reviews of The Red Shoes and wanted to see it for myself, so I just saw the movie for the first time recently.

Wayne: Thank you. I agree, The Red Shoes is subtle in color application and Oz does have a wide range of colors. I think the color gradation of Shoes, for lack of a true technical color description on my part looks very good to my eyes. I read that Natalie Klamus objected to adding color in movies just for colors sake. She wanted things "refined" in color films. Those are her words, not mine.

Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.
__________________
Personal website dedicated to Vintage Television https://visions4netjournal.com

Last edited by etype2; 03-29-2017 at 03:31 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #83  
Old 03-29-2017, 03:58 PM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
Resident Lunatic
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Quote:
Originally Posted by etype2 View Post
Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.
This is precisely why, for comparison's sake, bars or a color videotape can't be beat. There are too many variables when restoring a Technicolor film; each restoration, each print, each DVD/Blu-Ray/LD release will look slightly different. The nicest "Wizard of Oz" I have, in terms of color timing, is on a CAV LD. It was sourced from a then-surviving, now-lost, 1939 35mm print. It has the very dense look that projected IB Technicolor prints exhibit.

It's hard to say what you're seeing on the digital restorations.
Reply With Quote
  #84  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:04 PM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
Resident Lunatic
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut View Post
"The Red Shoes" has some very nice color, making it a good demo piece, but IIRC, does not have the variety of greens and yellows that Oz has. (I don't have a copy to verify that, but I saw the restoration release at a SMPTE meeting a few years back.)

Use of Oz reminds me of the stereo hi-fi engineers at Motorola in the 60s, who used Tijuana Brass records for testing, not because they had the most beautiful music, but because they had instruments in every frequency range.
That's a nice analogy Wayne; "The Wizard of Oz" is like one of those hokey stereophonic demonstration records from RCA, whereas "The Red Shoes" or "Meet Me In St. Lois" or even "DuBarry Was a Lady" are like a good recording of a Mahler symphony or a Neruda concerto.

It's not terribly intuitive to understand initially (at least it wasn't for me), but in general, I have found that the gaudier the color, the worse the set can perform before I notice. Very subtle color, relying more accuracy in the color sections, can be terribly difficult to get correct on a vintage set. This is why I prefer "The Red Shoes"; any pile of garbage can make "The Wizard of Oz" look passable, whereas "The Red Shoes" is a veritable workout for the color demod sections.
Reply With Quote
  #85  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:04 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
Quote:
Originally Posted by etype2 View Post
...
Edit: In Oz, at the early part of the film, when the witch goes to the shed for the first time and then turns back, I see about 2 seconds where it looks like they forgot to restore the film in my copy. It looks very dark and blurry. Can anyone confirm that?

In Shoes, there is one scene where the ballet dancer overhears a conversation at the train station. She is behind a black lace veil and her nose looks grey and unnatural, but the rest of her face looks very good in terms of color. I got the impression it's a flaw in the restoration and they did not catch it.
I don't see anything unusual in the scene where the witch first approaches the house and says "Who killed my sister?" But when she goes back to get the slippers and turns to say "They're gone!" the lighting is much harder, her costume is very dark with almost no detail, and the house is very out of focus. This appears as if it may have been a process shot (the house an image on a rear-projection screen) for some reason. I wonder if the original shot was no good and they had to recreate it later after the set was struck.

A note on the Red Shoes restoration. If you could see the original prints they had to work with, you would not believe it. Every frame had mold splotches and damage that looked like water puddles, and variable fading from frame to frame. During the showing, Warner Bros. of course did not give details of their software, but they did indicate it took months of work by hundreds of people directing the operation of the software by eye. Does the DVD have a special feature on the restoration? I'm heading off to smile.amazon to order a copy.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
  #86  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:08 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
Quote:
Originally Posted by benman94 View Post
... "The Red Shoes" is a veritable workout for the color demod sections.
I would say rather it's a workout for the gray scale tracking and CRT color purity. When we demo these old sets today, we actually have a better chance of good pictures, because all the gray scale and shading problems that often cropped up in tube broadcast gear are non-existent in modern restorations.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote
  #87  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:17 PM
benman94's Avatar
benman94 benman94 is offline
Resident Lunatic
 
Join Date: Jun 2011
Location: Detroit, MI
Posts: 1,190
Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut View Post
I would say rather it's a workout for the gray scale tracking and CRT color purity. When we demo these old sets today, we actually have a better chance of good pictures, because all the gray scale and shading problems that often cropped up in tube broadcast gear are non-existent in modern restorations.
That's fair. That said, I've found matrix issues to be MUCH more noticeable with very subtle color.

I've seen tape from a TK-26; it was... interesting looking, to say the least.

Even the Astaire and Eisenhower tapes reveal a lot of issues that would probably have gone unnoticed by the average viewer at home.
Reply With Quote
  #88  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:34 PM
old_tv_nut's Avatar
old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
See yourself on Color TV!
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
Posts: 7,184
One thing to add: although the variations in the video gear are gone in modern copies, many Technicolor movie videos still have color "breathing" - the color balance changing slightly and somewhat randomly over a time frame of a second or so. The DVD of "DuBarry Was a Lady" that I have has that and color registration that changes from scene to scene and also is not the same everywhere in the frame. The variable registration is often not noticeable on top of minor convergence issues on an old set, but is very visible if I view the disc on my flat screen.

Warner Bros. is now capable of restoring the color registration to better than what could be achieved in the Technicolor printing process, even when the negatives were new and had not shrunk. As a result, they discovered in "Robin Hood" that Maid Marian's costume had gold threads woven into the fabric, which were obscured in all previous prints.
__________________
www.bretl.com
Old TV literature, New York World's Fair, and other miscellany
Reply With Quote
  #89  
Old 03-29-2017, 04:57 PM
etype2's Avatar
etype2 etype2 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Location: Valley of the Sun, formerly Silicon Valley, formerly Packer Land.
Posts: 1,487
I lean to the subtle and well considered color mastering. Interesting analogies drawn, remembering "ping pong stereo" demo vinyl disk. Herb Albert and the Brass, yes bought all his releases.

Wayne, you are seeing what I tried to describe in the Oz scene and in the Shoe scene, it may possibly be the film was so damaged where her nose was and totally destroyed.

Yes there is a nice presentation booklet with two disks. It's available in DVD and Blu Ray. I bought the DVD version so I cold play it in my pre Blu Ray era DVD player. Watching the Shoes on a calibrated flat screen is a real treat, a must have DVD and makes the old roundie look good. Buy the Criterian collection version.
__________________
Personal website dedicated to Vintage Television https://visions4netjournal.com
Reply With Quote
  #90  
Old 03-29-2017, 07:31 PM
Dave A's Avatar
Dave A Dave A is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: SE Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,529
Another overlooked Technicolor movie is Kiss Me Kate (1953). A full spectrum of colors in the stage dance sequences and darker colors in the off-stage scenes. And a fun movie. Two pix below.

And honorable mention also goes to The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1947) from the same Powell/Pressberger that produced Red Shoes. It is British Technicolor which is just different to me. Not sure what they did differently.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg vlcsnap-2017-03-29-20h21m37s174.jpg (56.3 KB, 34 views)
File Type: jpg vlcsnap-2017-03-29-20h22m37s760.jpg (32.9 KB, 28 views)
__________________
“Once you eliminate the impossible...whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." Sherlock Holmes.
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:59 AM.



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
©Copyright 2012 VideoKarma.org, All rights reserved.