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by mixtur2021 1549 days ago
Indeed. Kodak basically invented digital intermediate. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cineon

They had an end-to-end (scanning, compositing, film out) 4K system back in the early 90s. They were able to crack the colour technology allowing for an image to be accurately represented and recorded back out to film without deterioration. I believe they pioneered using Lasers for this (Kodak Lightning Film Recorder).
1 comments
dylan604 1549 days ago
I used to work at a facility that had one of the first 16-bit laser recorders. It was very finicky about things like humidity levels and what not. Working for this company I learned that when films are digitally remastered they are often saved back out to film masters; except not color negatives. They instead are separated into RGB* channels with each channel being recorded back to its own B&W negative. When restored from negatives, they have to scan each bit of film to be recombined for a final image. This in itself poses new issues as film behaves differently when stored for long periods of time and can actually shrink. Times 3. So the recombining of the final image can be a bit "tricky".

*I don't know if it was actually RGB or a YUV type of format. I never asked. I was just told separate color channels, and assumed RGB on my own.

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mixtur2021 1549 days ago
Indeed. 35mm is actually a good archiving format if stored correctly; good for 100 years. No need to continually change tape formats every couple of years.

I've heard for some of the 3 strip technicolor restorations, they scan the 3 individual B&W camera negative rolls separately (red, green, blue) and do the technicolor printing process in software effectively. This can give better results if the final technicolor print has issues.

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dylan604 1549 days ago
IIRC, Snow White was the first digital corrected film that went through this process. Each frame scanned from negative, stored as digital file, digitally restored*, rescanned into channel separate negatives via laser recorder.

*Restoration has multiple stages like film scratch removal, dust removal, color correction, shape restoration from any warping/shrinking in the film being scanned, etc. Lots of work goes into this that most people never even consider

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