Space History Footage In HD

The Discovery Channel has done a deal with NASA to enhance old film footage from the space program up to the standards of HD. Discovery will air, in HD, a 6-part special called "When We Left Earth," beginning June 8. Judging by the trailer it should be pretty spectacular, a good introduction to the wonders of space exploration for a new generation. After the show airs, NASA gets the improved footage for their archives.

So....

in HD, will we finally be able to see the wires helping Armstrong look like he is on the moon? :P

Re:So....

I'm hoping to see 30% more explosions, and some laser fights :)

Sorry...

They blew the special effects budget on the new Doctor Who story, "The Doctor's Daughter".

Obligatory

I'm hoping to see 30% more explosions, and some laser fights :)

Armstrong shot first!

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in HD, will we finally be able to see the wires helping Armstrong look like he is on the moon? :P


Possibly, but I am just convinced the special effects will be better. After that I am just just waiting for a George Lucas style Director's cut ;)

Commercial venture for the greater good

It's so rare to see a public-private venture in media/entertainment that ultimately benefits everyone. I doubt if most of us would have a chance to peruse the NASA archives otherwise. And the US taxpayer gets historically significant data upgraded to a modern, longer lasting medium for free. A win-win all around.

+1 ironic

historically significant data upgraded to a modern, longer lasting medium for free.

I agree with most of your comment. And I promise I am not trying to be pedantic-- but digital archiving is definitely NOT a longer lasting medium. (I work in digital cinema, so this is an issue I deal with almost daily) Digital cinema is still in its infancy, and everyone is trying to standardize their own workflows now, the end link in this chain being long term archive. The nice thing about film is that it has changed relatively little as a format over the last 50-100 years, and that even if you can't deal with the format (say something with very weird perforations, or the perforations have deformed in a way that a normal scanner can't advance the film properly anymore), it is completely optical and still can be easily read with a bit of engineering. Digital archiving is prettymuch all being done to tape now, either to some proprietary format (Sony's HDCAMSR, for instance), which I don't support... or to an open format, such as LTO (which is my preference). Even with proper archive conditions (temp, humidity, etc), tape doesn't have quite the same longevity of film (although it is close in ideal conditions), and you must "format float" every five to ten years, or risk your archived material being unreadable.

So, in summary, the irony here is that for archiving purposes, the safest and cheapest way to store this material is probably on film. If this were my project, I would make redundant LTO-3/4 masters of all of the material, as well as print the digital scans to black and white film separations for each color channel. Of course, that assumption is based on this having received a proper scan (4k, pin registered) and not a cheap HDtelecine. Given the importance of the footage, I'd hope it would have.. but given my experience with the type of people who set budgets for these sort of projects (and their propensity to say things like "no one can tell the difference anyway, so we're using the cheaper option,"), my offhand guess would be this was telecined directly to compressed HD tape (ughhhhhh).

Re:

Along a different line, the DVD series "Trinity and Beyond - The Atomic Bomb Movie" is a similar endeavor. Lots of old and degraded footage cleaned up and brought back to life for transfer to digital.

Not so much of the "benefits everyone" aspect, but st

Re:Commercial venture for the greater good

"Can anyone explain why we saw colour pictures in some fidelity, yet the sound was worse than CB quality?"

Because the pictures were mostly shot on 16mm film or better, while the sound was typically recorded on analogue tape after transmission over a low-bandwidth radio link from space to ground?

"enhance?"

...enhance old film footage from the spacee program up to the standards of HD...

I just want to take a brief issue with the wording here. There is likely little "enhancement" done for this film to reach "HD standards." Of course it depends on the film format, and how it has been stored, but assuming it has been taken care of properly, and is 16mm or larger, there would be no enhancing required.

(A few lightly technical ramblings) Film is better than today's HD video, in virtually every regard, except cost (assuming we are talking about 35mm, not super8 ;) ...35mm stocks from the 1960s were quite good even by today's standards. The major breakthroughs in film have been more along the lines of packing more light sensitivity into finer grained films. Which is to say today's ASA500 looks as good as 1975's ASA100. Which means that ASA100 film from 1975 doesn't need any "enhancing" to look good in HD (most HD tv shows that air nowadays are shot ASA500 and scanned directly to HD). I saw a scan of The Sound of Music negative a year or two ago, and it looked GLORIOUS (it was shot 70mm). Anyway, some brief searching on NASA's site does seem to show that they may have used 9.5mm single perf film at times (I found a transcript that has a statement referencing 9mm footage), but I am having difficulty confirming this anywhere else. Long story short, the trailer looked nice, this footage is a great treasure to all mankind, and one should probably not downplay the quality of film used then. It seems to me their archiving-for-all-posterity budget has experienced a shrink commensurate to the other budgetary aspects, because I can tell you firsthand some of the equipment they are flying (or considering flying) now I wouldn't use for videos of my dogs playing in the yard!

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...enhance old film footage from the spacee program up to the standards of HD...

I just want to take a brief issue with the wording here. There is likely little "enhancement" done for this film to reach "HD standards."

And the word "spacee" didn't set off any red lights?

misleading wording.

Almost everytime I post a comment, there are a few replies that strike me as "off base," but I generally refrain from commenting because they are almost never modded up, and thus I imagine that most people (or at least mods) realize they are off base. I'm replying to you, though, as you seem to have been modded up pretty quickly, and I want to clarify some issues for anyone NOT in cinema who is reading this thread

there's probably been a substantial amount of grading and cleanup done to footage

Yes, absolutely, any film shot 30+ years ago is quite possibly going to require cleanup for any sort of professional presentation. This could normally include dust busting (removing scratches, dust specs, etc on the negative. Everytime the negative passes through a scanner, projector, etc, it gets more of these). It could also include color correction (to fix color substrate fading issues, as the color bias will generally shift during aging) as well as color grading to correct for mold/haze or any other nastyness.

My issue is that *NONE OF THAT STUFF* counts as "enhancing for HD standards." If this film was going to be shown in theatres (which would mean it would be mostly seen projected on film prints), all of that stuff would still take place. The "HD standards" statement implies that HD has "so much resolution" the film must be "up rezzed" or similar, and that was the implication I took issue with. They should have just said, "NASA has scanned and restored the original film negatives to be shown in breathtaking HD quality on the Discovery Channel" or something similar-- more technically correct than the original statement, and it still sells the whole "OMG HIGH DEF!!!" aspect.

Knowing the importance of this film, I should hope it was stored well.. but I recall vaguely that some of the original moon landing stuff is potentially lost forever [washingtonpost.com] so perhaps you are right and it hasn't been stored terribly well.

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"They should have just said, "NASA has scanned and restored the original film negatives to be shown in breathtaking HD quality on the Discovery Channel" or something similar"

Except, uh, NASA has done nothing of the kind; they let the Discovery Channel tele

Looks like they did a great job on the footage...

Judging from the trailer, it's not just a matter of doing an HD video transfer; in fact, that may well be the least of it. What it looks like is that the footage has been seriously color-corrected & restored.

After you get used to seeing those clips from old, battered & faded prints, it's remarkable to see them cleaned up, corrected and smoothed out. Like getting used to seeing old faded color prints in an album, and then suddenly they look like recent shots. Almost like a time machine.

I'm really looking forward to this.

What Does That Mean?

NASA gets the improved footage for their archives.

What does this mean? Is it not NASA's footage to begin with? Are you telling me that the Discovery Channel's people went back in time and refilmed the Apollo missions and created some sort of copyrighted work?

On top of this, the statement seems to imply that the Discovery Channel is being gracious by returning the footage to NASA. This is as if you borrow my shirt and imply that because you washed it, it is now yours and that you are doing me a favour by returning it to me.

It is nice to know the Discovery Channel is so gracious. :-/

Re:What Does That Mean?

"What does this mean? Is it not NASA's footage to begin with? Are you telling me that the Discovery Channel's people went back in time and refilmed the Apollo missions and created some sort of copyrighted work?"

Technically, yes. As I understand it, NASA footage is generally in the public domain, but if you pay to telecine that footage from film to tape and then clean it up, you have copyright over that specific copy of the footage; there's no legal responsibility to give NASA a copy.

It may sound silly, but that's copyright law for you.

Re:What Does That Mean?

So, derivatives of copyrighted works remain copyrighted, but derivatives of Public Domain works do not remain in the Public Domain.

I think the Public is getting ripped off.

Re:What Does That Mean?

You are correct. That's why the GPL is specifically written to be "viral", to prevent this sort of thing from happening.

"Public Domain" means that the original work is 100% free from any claim of copyright, for any use whatsoever. NOBODY "owns" it.

However, in order to qualify for copyright, there has to be "substantially different" from another work. Merely "cleaning up" would likely not qualify. (That's why if you were to publish a photograph of a public domain painting, for example, if your photograph is EXACTLY of the painting, with no extra artistic work added, then your photograph is not copyrightable. But if you take it from an angle, then you can claim that your angle is an artistic addition, therefore placing your photograph under copyright.)

So the raw act of cleaning the footage probably didn't add copyright, but all of the other stuff did. (Performing color balancing and other tasks other than pure physical 'cleaning' of the film stock.)

Re:What Does That Mean?

'So the raw act of cleaning the footage probably didn't add copyright, but all of the other stuff did. (Performing color balancing and other tasks other than pure physical 'cleaning' of the film stock.)'

I've been wondering how this sort of thing affects audio recordings. Here in the UK, we're in the interesting position of having a 50 year limit on recording copyright, and there are several companies that do a very good job of restoring and re-releasing out of copyright material (often better than the major labels that continue to sell overpriced and poorly transferred CDs of 'their' artists). Some of this material is still very marketable (e.g. classical and jazz from the 50s), and will soon include major artists/cash cows from the 60s (early Beatles records in 2013). Reputable companies that lack access to the masters will usually try to get hold of the best preserved publicly released vinyl or shellac discs they can find and restore from them. Less reputable companies casually 'pirate' the CDs released by the restorers, avoiding the substantial amount of work that goes into a typical restoration. The legality of the latter seems to be something of a grey area, at least in the UK:

http://www.copyright.mediarights.co.uk/ [mediarights.co.uk]

'It is debatable as to whether merely removing "clicks and crackle" from an old record would [establish a new copyright claim]...It is possible, however, that the creative use of equalisation or special effects...or even the making of an analogue to digital transfer, might well be sufficient...Currently there is evidence that some commercial re-issues of restored public domain sound recordings are being openly pirated, perhaps on the assumption that no copyright can exist in these copies...[this] has yet to be tested in the courts.'

It'll be interesting to see how this pans out in a few years time, when people start openly posting mp3s of Beatles albums on UK sites, selling cheap compilations in Asda, and distributing lovingly restored audiophile transfers from the original vinyl (as already happens illegally). Will there be legal moves to block international distribution (e.g. to the US, where the recordings will still be in copyright)? Will (as I assume) the current CD transfers from the 80s still be judged to be in copyright? Is the recent (and yet to be released) remastering (/remixing?) project from the original masters basically a ploy to extend copyright on the 'definitive' versions by another 50 years?

Re:

How is the public getting ripped off? Someone is spending time, money and effort to take the same source anyone else can and enhance it - why should that added time, money and effort then be freely available to anyone else? Everyone has access to the sam

Re:What Does That Mean?

The question is whether enhancing a work without adding any creative information makes it a new work. Obviously, in the case under discussion, the film footage was all taken by NASA. All the Discovery Channel is doing is running it through a few computers. Can this be considered art? If I write a computer program that makes random art, can I claim copyright on the art that the computer creates? Certainly, the computer has no rights, but is a creator of a program entitled to copyright the program's output?

My program [sourceforge.net] automagically turns Public Domain books into a collection of HTML documents. Am I entitled to copyright Public Domain works after they have been run through my program? I expended time and effort writing the program.

Re:What Does That Mean?

Maybe I don't understand what you are asking, because this all seems pretty clear to me.

Basically Discovery Channel, in return for access to all of the materials, will give NASA one or more copies of the final work.

NASA could do all of the restoration themselves but it would be very costly and I doubt, in this time of BushCo budget cuts, that NASA has the spare change to pay for the restoration.

This agreement allows both parties to benefit - a nice result.

Obviously nobody went back in time. DC used their extensive A/V resources to restore the NASA footage.

And Fox TV are also showing

...their new TV programme, "The day we didn't leave Earth" at the same time.

Improved footage public domain?

The way I understand it, the majority of NASA's work is placed in the public domain. If the Discovery Channel is giving NASA a copy of their restored HD footage for their archives, will this copy be public domain as well, or will it remain under the copyright of the Discovery Channel?

restoration or enhancement

Imagine if the archaeologists of the 18th century didn't just keep pottery, but "enhanced it" by making it closer to what they imagined it would have looked like originally. Well some of them did. And destroyed information in the process.
 
It is impossible to restore lost information. Color can be corrected to what is probably was, lines can be completed, etc, but thats entirely new, best guess, information, and covers up the real information that was there before it. They should store the originals for longer term storage with the highest possible digital resolution, just as they are. If they want to enhanse things for a more attractive picture, fine, but don't store it for posterity. Posterity will be very angry.