Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films?

Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films? - Woods Covered With Snow

I've noticed it in both DVD and Blu-ray transfers of older movies (for example a few spaghetti westerns). Throughout the movie, the transfer quality is very good, and at the last scene (when there is no more dialog, just that very last scene right before the end credits start rolling), it switches back to a less sharp, more noisy transfer, and stays like that, throughout the end credits.

What is the reason behind this? Why does that last scene get a different treatment?

Edit: example screenshots here: https://imgur.com/a/WfP1vA8 (from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly MGM Extended Edition Blu-ray). The quality change seems to effect the scenes including text on screen (hence noticible during end credits in some movies too).

Look at the sky for example. In the second screenshot with the on-screen text, much more noise is present.

Looks Good

Looks Noisy



Best Answer

I will admit that this is a guess, but I have to wonder whether it's an issue with the type of film restoration they do when making the disc. With older prints, there can be a lot of dust, scratches, hairs, etc. on the print. Also, depending on a number of factors about how the movie was filmed, it may be grainier than they wanted, but were limited at the time by budget, technology, etc.

To combat this, during the restoration, they'll use a number of filters and processes to reduce the amount of noise, dust, scratches, etc. This can result in a softening of parts of the image. It may be that when text is displayed, the softening is more obvious or objectionable, so they simply turn it off or turn it down in those scenes. I say that because what I see in your examples is an increase in high frequency noise in the whole image when the credits are displayed.


So I asked a guy I know who won a technical Oscar for his work on film restoration systems. He had this to say:

Most likely [at the end credits noise reduction is] turned off, or the company doing it was lazy. Usually when we did high dollar restorations ..., we’d essentially remove the text/credits, clean the image beneath and then clean the text and re-composite them because they have different characteristics (aka in that time they were likely optical effects, so they had double noise/grain and other foreign problems from the compositing process). But we did have several clients that wanted ‘quick and dirty’ restorations that wouldn’t pay for that level of work, they just wanted everything run with the same settings, which obviously wouldn’t work as well in opticals.

What he refers to as "opticals" are when 2 things (in this case text and footage) are combined using a physical process rather than in a computer. For something like credits over footage, they would have to film the credits, then invert them, film the footage with the inverted credits over them, the project that with the original credits on top. All of these steps were done by projecting and refilming, so each step added more film grain. By the time they were done, it was all very grainy.

He added that a lot of times the client was paying by the frame, and they figured nobody cared about the credits, so as soon as the credits started, they'd just stop the restoration process and leave the credits noisy.




Pictures about "Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films?"

Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films? - Tropical coast of endless ocean
Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films? - Grayscale Photo of Group of People in Recording Session
Why is the last scene (right before and including the end credits) often worse quality in transfers of older films? - A Man and Woman Dancing Inside the Café



Why do they film the last scene first in movies?

The last scene is shot first if, for one example, if the actors at the end of the story need to look distinctly different from what they do throughout the rest of the movie. As a rule movie scenes are seldom shot in sequence.

Why did they move credits to the end of movies?

The purpose of end credits is to show appreciation to the members of the crew who helped create the film. The length of the credits varies depending on the size of the production team. Nonetheless, even with credits that last 15 minutes or more, filmmakers may still leave out hundreds of names.

Is there an ending credit scene in Old?

There is no stinger after the credits of Old.

Why are there credits at the beginning and end of movies?

The opening credits inform the audience which studios or production companies were involved in making the film, and they run the names of the major stars in the cast. The end credits, which appear after the final scene of a film, list everyone involved in the production.



Movie Credits, Explained




Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Images: Mikhail Nilov, Tim Gouw, Pixabay, Ron Lach