Porn Preservation

[James_Lewis]

I guess if there is a Porn Preservation Society this forum is it. Since we're at a fairly critical juncture for all such efforts, as analog turns to digital, I was wondering what people here thought about the overall state of porno preservation.

1- Are the right materials being digitized or are too many classics falling through the cracks?

2- Is there anything which can be done to preserve the stuff that you like in DVD quality (not low Q VHS rip quality)?

I'm specifically thinking about loops and certain starlets like Dana Lynn and Roxanne Blaze who have seen fairly few releases to DVD.

In loops I'm principally interested in the "Pretty Girls" series. I've seen seen CC and SE releases in pretty HQ DVD form, but never any of the Pretty Girls stuff. Blue Vanities has released low Q versions of some of the loops, but not all. When I was seeing these loops for the first time, in the peep booths, there were glass cases in the front of the video booth area displaying the box covers of the films being shown. These films were available for purchase in 8MM or Super 8 or whatever formats they had. Does anyone still sell these original films? If you could get hold of them is there any way to digitize them, a service which would deal with adult materials?

I was looking into the film "Girls on Fire" recently. I'd seen a DVD rip, but the quality was very poor. After reading reviews of the DVD I realized that it wasn't the quality of the rip that was to blame but the mastering of the DVD. They apparently used a poor quality VHS tape as their source for the DVD. I'm sure it must be possible to find a better source for transfer.

I've also seen some DVD releases of the infamous Traci, apparently made in Germany, and a number of other "boutique" releases of classic films where clearly the people releasing the material had no copyright. Just access to good quality source materials and the required transfer equipment. Are such things practical for the individual porn collector?

[ashtonmoffat]

It's a shame this subject hasn't generated more interest. Why isn't a greater effort being made to digitally remaster vintage porn? Is it just that there is no money in it?

It just seems like the transfers of those 70's and 80's flicks from film and videotape to DVD are very subpar when compared to mainstream films of that era. Also, why have so few of those classics been transferred to Blu Ray?

[burpman]

I think the ones to be most concerned with are the loops. The original loops themselves were never good quality to begin with. Some attempts were made in the 80s to make some good transfers and some of the best of those were Beta format. I think with current technology, a frame by frame digital cleanup could be done with many of these.

[DARPA]

8mm? I dunno. That's a really small area of film real estate to try and clean up. The resolution sucks to begin with. Anything less than 16mm is going to look subpar no matter how much you clean it.

For me, myself, I use Premiere Pro try to clean up every 8mm loop I acquire for posterity. The biggest problem is getting the red out of aged loops. Some can be fixed. Others really can't. Anything I clean up I end up posting back here. But my focus is extremely limited so I don't do a lot of 8mm.

I've also started cleaning up 80s/90s video I have. This is a longer term deal. So much video is oversaturated and/or tinted wrong.

Ultimately, no professional is going to waste time cleaning up footage if they can't make money off it. Vinnegar$yndrome does this better than anyone. Unfortunately they also are insistent on butchering the footage they clean up by forcing 4x3 aspect ratio film into 16x9 aspect ratio in order to keep any black bars from appearing on the sides of the TV. This means they cut off the top and bottom of the film to make that work. I find the practice abhorrent.

[bagpuss12]

I recently discovered a film online that I had actually remembered the title of from seeing on a ropey VHS in the 90's. Sessions of Love Therapy. When I had last seen it, not only was it on a ropey VHS it had been taken from a very poor quality film print having been made, so I discovered, in 1971. The version online was pristine and upscaled to 1080 HD. It looked stunning. Sadly I can't imagine it's something anyone with a commercial eye is going to want to take on long term.

[burpman]

Originally Posted by bagpuss12

I recently discovered a film online that I had actually remembered the title of from seeing on a ropey VHS in the 90's. Sessions of Love Therapy. When I had last seen it, not only was it on a ropey VHS it had been taken from a very poor quality film print having been made, so I discovered, in 1971. The version online was pristine and upscaled to 1080 HD. It looked stunning. Sadly I can't imagine it's something anyone with a commercial eye is going to want to take on long term.

The technology has gotten to the point where it is viable for restoration. It isn't yet at the point and click stage yet but with enough technical acumen the determined hobbyist can do some fairly good restoration. We discussed some color restoration in another help thread and even that goes quite a long way nowadays. Add to that the AI upscaling tech and you can clean up some fairly degraded footage.

[DARPA]

No..No...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Upscaling is a FRAUD!

FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!

You cannot get more detail out of an image by blowing it up. All the algorithms in the world can't insert/replace what doesn't exist, never existed, and never will exist.

It's a fake out. Illegitimate. People think they can blow up an NTSC image and get a 1080 or 720p quality image. No. They never could and never will. What they get is a blurry 1080 or 720p image of NTSC quality footage.

This is a real sore point with me because I keep running into situations online with increasing frequency where I grab something that's been billed as 720 or 1080p only to get it and realize it's not 720 or 1080p but upscaled NTSC resolution. Then I have to waste time fixing it and returning it to its proper shot at resolution.

There are members over at PS who do this quite a bit with NTSC footage. Most of them label their stuff as upconverted (and watching it looks like someone took NTSC footage and hit an imaginary magnifying glass button a few times too many). But not all label it properly and some may have gotten it second hand not knowing it was upconverted and believing it really was HD even though it's obvious it's not.

I do my own Blu-Rays. For that I will take an NTSC piece of footage and upscale it to 720p. But that's only because I don't like having to manually toggle settings on my player from NTSC 480i to Blu-Ray 720p and back again. Plus the hi-def TV, due to technological issues I don't quite understand, doesn't always interpolate 480i video as well as the same footage upscaled to 720i/p. So I do believe there are (limited) valid reasons and uses to upscale NTSC footage.

But in terms of improving image quality? No. Upscaling just makes the imperfections more visible. This is why I hate what Vinnegar Syndrome has been doing. They do 2K scans, which is fine. But then they upscale and crop the footage so that they don't have black bars on the screen since the footage they work on is rarely 16:9 aspect ratio. And you can see the imperfections in the footage while watching it precisely because they upscaled it too much. Tainster has been spending some time pulling the same stunt on some of its older stuff from 10 years ago and repackaging it as HD (blown up and cropped of course to make the 4:3 footage fit in a 16x9 aspect ratio). One look at it and you can see all the interlacing that was caused by the upconversion. Terrible.

So, no. Upconverting gains you nothing but a larger picture. And if having a larger picture to more fill your screen is all you want, fine. Go for it. But have no illusions. You don't get more detail. You can never get more detail. It's impossible.