OTHER TECH

Joe Kane, founder of the Imaging Science Foundation and creator of the Digital Video Essentials DVD, discovered that when he created a video master without oversampling, he lost resolution. "A transfer done at 1,080p by 1,920 resolution produced only 800 to 900 lines of resolution," he says. The solution: Make a digital master at 4K resolution ("4K" refers to 4,096 pixels of horizontal resolution) and down-rez it to create the disc. When you see the pictures on a 1080p display, "there's a day-and-night difference," Kane says. "There's detail in the picture - it looks a lot more real."

John Lowry, a film restorer and chief technology officer of DTS Digital Images in Burbank, California, uses 4K transfers to restore damaged film prints to pristine quality. Creating a new 20-title collection of James Bond DVDs for release this fall, Lowry worked in 4K for the films that were in the worst shape because he needed as much resolution as possible to remove scratches and other artifacts from the masters. "Dr. No, made in 1962, was almost a B movie," Lowry said. "No one knew they had a major franchise when they made it. There was a tremendous amount of dirt and film-gate hairs all over the place."

Lowry uses 4K mastering to create both standard- and high-def discs. This lets him improve the picture by filling in information missing from one frame by transferring it from another, nearby frame. Lowry and his team have developed their own software, which runs on a fleet of 700 Macintosh G5 machines. Material is stored on 700 terabytes of disc space running off a Linux operating system.

If 4K transfers are great, wouldn't a 6K or 8K transfer be nirvana? Nope. According to Lowry and others, 4K is even higher than the resolution 35mm film can capture. So transferring at a higher resolution would just be a waste of time. "In the real world, I've rarely found any material that exceeds 3.5K in resolution," Lowry says.