Oz color difference
 

i have two different screen shots of what I call "Bye To Oz". One is a screen shot taken directly from my CTC-4, and the other was posted on this blog. The one with the white clouds is the one I got from the blog, and the other is the CTC-4 shot. Wondering if I'm crazy, or if there is a good reason for the difference in color.
Kevin:scratch2:

I recall being at nicks (likely during the color proto-CRT test) and hearing that a while back OZ had been remastered with the original technicolor footage(I seem to recall that this footage had one film strip per-primary like color TV), and that the older tapes and discs of it were copied from lower quality film and the color looked lousy in comparison.

I could have some details wrong from my recall, but I think the difference is the recordings the sets are playing.

I could joke about the nick name for NTSC, "Never Twice the Same Color", but what you see is probably a mix of several reasons. One is the gray-scale/color-temperature difference between the two sets as well as differences in basics such as color level and contrast settings. The next is differences in how one camera records a picture compared to another. The third is what Tom mentioned, that The Wizard Of Oz has been remastered, in fact more than once in the last twenty years if I remember right. There are even two different versions in HD, not to even count versions on DVD, Laser Disc, or SD broadcast.

I'm curious to know more about there being two different HD versions. The only one I am aware of is the Warner Blu-Ray version.
Is there one by another distributor?

Cliff

Obviously, yr CTC-4 is DEFECTIVE...Please send it IMMEDIATELY down here to me, I will take care of it...Seriously, it could just be the difference in sets, broadcast qualities, whatever.

I am no expert in this area, but I would doubt that the issue is the DVD.

It has been my experience that if you have the correct alignment in the color section of your chassis, you will get good color balance. I have had this sort of problem when the quadrature adjustment is off. If that adjustment is off you will not be able to get the correct balance between the 3 colors.

You can use a scope, as John Folsom has taught me, to view the stairstep waveform on a scope to balance the colors correctly, which is a more accurate way to get the perfect balance.

You can tell easily if you put a NTSC color bar pattern on the screen. I try to get the proper color balance by looking at the yellow bar on the left, the aqua bar to the immediate right of the yellow, and the magenta bar between the blue and the red. IF those 3 colors are ballanced properly, with the 3 primarys red, blue and green, then you will have a fairly correct representation of the color that your DVD is producing.

Then I go to the first scene in OZ when Dorthy first opens the door and walks into OZ. There are some large green leaves and a couple large yellow flowers. I compare the color of the leaves and the yellow flowers to the same image on a properly set up modern color set and if the roundie is fairly close to the benchmark, then I am happy.

I would say the color alignment in your set is off. But color is a subjective thing, and if you like it that way, I say whatever floats your boat.

a vectorscope with a keyed rainbow pattern is another way to see how well the set is demodulating the colors. Looks to me like one of those pix is not producing enough green.

Some of the home video releases of feature films were made from prints struck who only knows when using color processes that are known to age less than gracefully.

Assuming that the two sets were setup with the loving care known to be present here, I would point toward a really old, faded print used in the video transfer and a tech that did what they could to make up for a trash print at the time.

If those two photos were taken with different cameras under different lighting conditions, that alone could result in different colors. If I photograph a B/W set playing, my digital camera makes the screen look blue!

Phil Nelson

Modern video transfers are usually created from film masters and not from prints.

I'd say there are multiple causes for the differences in the two frame captures.

The set labeled "BYE TO OZ_CTC4(Small)", is out of convergence especially in the lower right quadrant and has the color level set very high and the contrast is slightly high.

The image labeled "BYE TO OZ_wierd color(Medium)" seems to have both color and contrast set very low and the hue adjusted very green.

I also suspect that both are not from the same restoration of the film. Each restoration of this title has produced quite different colors. This film was shot with three strip Technicolor (three B&W negatives) and therefore when MGM restored the film there is a huge latitude in color available. Neither shot comes close to the colors that an original Technicolor imbibition color print would have had.

Then the 1939 Technicolor IB prints did not match the circa 1954 Technicolor reissue prints, because of changes in the dyes used. Modern Eastman color prints will have a still different look, and if you see this in a theater today, the digital projection will be different still! (For the record: I've seen both an original circa 1954 Technicolor IB print projected and a modern digital print projected.)

In short, the primary colors used in Technicolor prints, Eastman color prints, NTSC and HD, and theatrical projection, all are slightly different, so when you do the conversion, something is always lost.

Then when you get to the digital camera, it often automatically color corrects to what its dumb computer thinks the picture should be.


Then if you look at these two pictures on two different computers, I'll bet the results are also different.

James.

This is why when I screen cap my TV I always manually white balance the camera to the TV, and then modify it further to actually match what i see on the tv. My desktop Mac is used for photography and is calibrated

The photo on the right came off of my 21ct55 and I can tell you that the photo which is posted is dead nuts on WRT the way the actual color on the screen looked when I took that photo. In the photo of my 21ct55 you will properly note a preponderance of green and not enough blue in the sky. In addition if you look at the "yellow brick road" in the left hand photo, you can see that the yellow brick road has way too much red in it so that the yellow is actually in the range of orange and not yellow.

When I look at the photo on the left it strikes me that the color saturation is also very high. This may also account for a shift to the red if the crt does not track well. I would turn down the color intensity and see if you still have an orange brick road instead of a yellow brick road. The sky is also way to blue and so the white clouds are being oversaturated with blue. Turning down the saturation may also bring back the white balance.

IN the final analysis, if a set has a properly aligned color section, you should be able to get a good color picture with good color balance, if you pay close attention to adjusting the user controls to a "normal" real world picture. Color saturation, fine tuning, contrast and brightness will make a huge difference on getting a proper picture on these very early sets. Pushing the various adjustements to the extreme will get you a picture that does not look natural. By the mid 60's color roundies were a lot more linear and were producing a normal looking picture over a wider range of brightness, contrast and saturation.

Cliff-

There is an HD version that was broadcast on, if I remember right, TNT HD, and the restoration that was put onto the Blu-ray discs as you mentioned. The TNT HD broadcast was before the latest restoration was completed.

You took (all) the words out of my mouth.

Have you seen any technical information on the differences in the dyes, especially actual spectral density curves? Technicolor seems never to have published any detailed info, keeping it proprietary to the end.

I have done the calculations of the color range of known dye sets, to the point of generating sRGB output that can be displayed on a computer monitor.

I will be showing this as part of my presentation at the Early Television Convention, and would love to present bona fide Technicolor as part of it.

I am assuming that the DVD video sources are different. But this has not been confirmed.

Can you identify with more specific detail the DVD's used?

:D and I first thought, when I saw the thread title, we'd be talking about colour TV in Australia aka Oz. That Australia used PAL and not NTSC... :D

"Colour" in English-speaking countries, "color" in the US. :D

Glad to see that a US citizen recognises that his land is not one where English is spoke:banana:

See this excellent video for further information on the subject. I am well aware that the lipsync and flutter leave a lot to be desired. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vh-wEXvdW8

Wayne,

As far as color curves, for Technicolor, I'm not aware of any being published.

Technicolor patented the earlier (late 20's early 30's) single-strip two-color version of Technicolor, and in doing so described the complete process. Kalmus always thought that he accidentally gave away the store, by making it easier for his competitors to duplicate his results and eventually improve on them.

So, later when Technicolor patented the improved three strip version, he patented the process as a whole, but intentionally left out many key details.

Today, it is easy to color correct a Technicolor print digitally, but the biggest problem today is that the younger color correction people have never seen an original Technicolor print and usually get it way too beefy.

In pre-digital days, I occasionally had to make made photographic copies of Technicolor prints where the originals had been lost or damaged and until you actually do tests on each and every job, you can never tell how the color used in the dyes will react on color negative film. This almost always required either a negative contrast mask or a specific color flash or both to keep the color acceptable.

James.

I have a copy of "Colour Cinematography" (1951) by Adrian Cornwell-Clyne, which has an extensive section on Technicolor. It has a diagram of the printing machine. It gives some formulas for dyes, with a warning that they are presented for schematic purposes only and different ones may have been used. It gives no spectral curves.

The closest thing I have is a neutral density spectral curve that was published as part of a BBC paper in the mid 60s about the problems of low deep-red and infrared density of Technicolor dyes causing a red fog when televising these movies. This ND curve is convincing, as it shows the decreasing density towards deep red, which was also a known problem for Technicolor dye sound tracks that caused the use of a silver soundtrack instead. Unfortunately, there is no determinate way to separate the neutral density spectrum into the three individual spectra for Y, C, and M.

Edit: Regarding the variability when printing to chromogenic film, references say the Technicolor dyes were changed significantly in 1946, producing denser and more neutral blacks, and eliminating the need for a silver base image. Technicolor dyes (the later ones, I presume) were also said to produce better color than Kodachrome (which version, they don't say).

Thank you all for the replies! It's a learning experience, for sure. Let me start by saying that the TV does need an alignment of the chroma section, as it has trouble with blues and greens. The RF/IF sections provide a very good and sharp pic, so i won't go there for now.
The DVD I used is from the two-disc set of "Robin Hood" that Warner Bros issued a few years back, and the second disc has a feature about Technicolor, the 6th program including some scenes from "OZ". Today I found some time to run the DVD in my newest computer, and took a few shots. It seems that the camera adds purple and blue to the clouds and hills, but not too much. The shots from the TV are over-saturated, for sure, but not that far off from the clips on this particular DVD. As has been mentioned, perhaps different copies used different parameters, and that's why color is different, but my CTC-4 needs some help :yes:.
I've attached two shots, one from the monitor, and the other from the TV.
Thanks again for all the comments and info! It is much appreciated:yes:.

There are 9 different commercially issued versions of OZ;
the same one on betamax and VHS, two on Laser disk, 4 on DVD
and the 70th anniversary editions on DVD and BluRay.

No two look the same.

Cliff

There are also PAL versions of some of these.

Cliff

Which is what you used to see when watching a telecast of the Wizard of Oz in Oz (Australia)... :D as Oz (Australia) used PAL.

Here's a shot of my CTC-16 of the same scene. 70th anniversary DVD. The color on this set is outstanding. The picture does not do it justice.

I agree with your assessment of the accuracy of the image on your CTC16, based on the following.

Walter Burridge, scenic artist who painted sets for 'The Wizard of Oz', continued the yellow brick road into the valley behind Dorothy and nearly over the horizon and into those white clouds. Dorothy is I believe just a few feet from the beginning of that photographically inserted image when she turned around to wave.

There are also some blue fields far into the painting through which the yellow brick road meanders. The CTC16 image does suggest those patches of blue. Reproducing that rendering with NTSC chrom modulation/demodulation has gotta be one tough job IMO.

For the record, my 'reference' image is from the 70th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray Disc played on a PS3 with component interface to an RCA f38310 (38-in. 9X16 CRT 1999 set which, as I learned at a recent ETF Convention from a former member of the team who designed it, was not considered a true hi-def TV because it didn't qualify pixelwise). Also, my Canon overexposes screen shots for some reason, so for a reference image it appears somewhat unsaturated, which in this case does not compromise sharpness.

It is a 3.37-meg jpeg that may not be allowed by VC. If not, I'll send it if you'll email me.

And. The Oz artist Burridge painted a curtain in a theater here in MI that's still used today. (my daughter plays Cello there sometimes; the connection to the movie was a treat)

Pete

The colors on mine may be a little over saturated(my opinion) but I think they are very close, about as close as you can get from a roundie.. It may be due to the camera. My camera is 14.4 megapixel. I had to reduce the size and that reduces the quality. The pic on your set of course is much better and your PS3 will do a better job than the cheap Phillips player I have with a converter. I only use it because I can turn the macrovision off. Besides yours is not running through the tuner. I may try to add RCA jacks someday. That will increase the picture quality tremendously. Glad that painted curtain is still around and is still in use. VERY cool!

No one answered my original question: what were the original sources? Obviously they were not from the CD. And as it has been cited above, no two DVDs are alike.

OK, here's my version, full 1080p on a 2 year old Plasma.
Probably should have used a Tripod to avoid the pincushion at the bottom but I didn't want to dig it out.

Are you asking about the sources for each release in the various formats mentioned? or the sources that the responders have used in their posts. My source is mentioned in a previous post, a "bonus" DVD that came with the DeLuxe Robin Hood release. The problems with my CTC-4 screen shots are obvious, and the other shots are also interesting, in that no two seem to be the same, allowing, of course, for the differences in the displays used for the shots.
I thank YOU and all others for the info posted, as it seems to indicate that the phrase "Never Twice the Same color" is true to the bitter end :D.
BTW, Ingrid is also over-saturated, but I doubt that anyone cares about THAT screen shot haha.

This really surprises me, Pete. I have seen those sets, and they always looked quite detailed. I would have guessed at least 1280x720 actual resolution (despite the chassis only sending a 1920x1080i signal to the CRT).

Perhaps running my f38310 with velocity modulation disabled accounts for lack of detail you mentioned. While I have no compunction against VCM, it seems, well, more civilized :smoke: without it, although it does make the image crisper.

The story surrounding the 38-in. diagonal wide-screen RCA/Thomson-developed CRT has gotta be fascinating, but my knowledge is fragmented. I know there were at least three different versions: the RCA f38310, the Proscan P38000, and a German variant I once saw in a high-end video retailer, Harvey Electronics, in an Eatontown NJ store.

I had both an early production P38000 (made I suspect about or before August 2001) and a late production f38310 (June 2002) side-by-side in my living room for a week or so around September 2002. The P38000 outshone the f38310 by a shocking margin; my 'test' signals were simply ATSC transmissions available in the New York City area. WCBS-DT was particularly important as CBS was converting their programming to digital much ahead of the competition.

Anyway, the 'German' version and the early Proscan (I heard there was no difference between 'later' Proscan's and the f38310's) were the most impressive performers. The f38310 in my A-B viewing tests came in a noticeable second compared to the early P38000. That same f38310 is the one from which the screen shot in this thread came.

If memory serves, I understood it was these sets inability to display a million pixels that disqualified them as true hi-def ATSC sets. It would be interesting to learn more of the RCA/Thomson-era ATSC history.

Pete

James,

What source did they use in the early 80's to transfer the film to home video (before they cared about quality) or before for broadcast? Did they simply recycle an old working negative from the 50's? I thought that they didn't touch the 3 strip negative until they did the restoration and subsequent modern re-release?

My uncle was a projectionist from the 50's to the early 80's used to curse the day they stopped using IB prints. He claimed that there wasn't an Eastmancolor print he liked and he hated the prints even more the older they got. Heck, he resisted Xenon lighting until forced to stop carbon arc.

Are there any surviving '39 IB prints still around in any condition?

It's really a shame that a kid today going to a cinema will likely never see real film grain on the screen.

From Wikipedia's article on Oz:

"It was also very common (and even an FCC requirement for early color broadcasters) for TV stations to turn off the color portion of their transmission when broadcasting a black and white show or movie. This was because unusual colors or "color noise" could be seen during the showing of black-and-white programming under some conditions. Though the opening Kansas scenes in The Wizard of Oz were meant to be shown in sepia and though the sepia was restored to the film in 1989 for the film's 50th anniversary VHS and laserdisc reissue, a few local CBS affiliates still showed the sepia portion of the film with the color signal disabled for many years.[citation needed] Most of these were small market affiliates that ran some syndicated black-and-white shows as these stations were used to turning the color modes off during black-and-white programming. One CBS affiliate, WGNX, transmitted the opening Kansas scenes in black and white as recently as its 1996 showing because this station was an independent station that ran a moderate number of black-and-white films before becoming a CBS affiliate.

"Unusual colors" would include the generally poor shading of vidicon telecine chains.
Analog cable/satellite systems later got excellent black and white transfers of some syndicated programs (e.g., "Father Knows Best") but left the burst on, resulting in strong cross-color on fabrics and other fine detail. If I had watched those more, I would have been one of I'd guess a handful of people who would bother turning down the color on the receiver to get rid of it. This practice gave the only purpose I have ever thought of for having a color control that goes all the way to zero.

The "I Love Lucy" re-runs on Hallmark channel show the slight green tint of the prints, which helped accent the contrast when run in B/W camera chains. I used to turn off the chroma, but it now I don't care about it. I agree that some B/W prints are very sharp, and some are still as entertaining as when first shown.
I'm now looking for a decent 21 inch B/W set, mid to late 50s, to add to the collection so I can view B/w material without using a color set. An in-law has a 1957 RCA in his barn, but the CRT has to be OK, or no deal lol.:nono:

Mine has a weak CRT, here it has a brightner. http://www.wa2ise.com/radios/rca21t8395.jpg

The FCC finally ended the practice of turning off burst for B&W programs in the early 1980s because the broadcast studio TV gear being manufactured then required the incoming signal to contain "sync coherent subcarrier". This means that the color subcarrier and the sync signal had to be locked together and mathematically related or the equipment would not pass the video signal. To broadcast a B&W film, I devised a way to turn off the I and Q video in the filmchain camera while still leaving the color burst on in the monochrome video output. This way the color shading problems in the filmchain camera were not visible to the viewers with color sets.
Cliff

Bless you!

By the way, is there a problem with your personal email? I copied you on a couple of things recently and saw no response.