I just got to check out a copy of Sleeping Beauty on BD this morning. On the whole, it looks astonishing. Disney has used scans of the original negatives to create a very video-like, but very pleasing presentation of this film. Cel animation in 2.55:1 is just gorgeous.
For the most part, you can expect to see this sort of quality:
There is one very harshly degrained optical shot, which only lasts for a few seconds. It's interesting when the filtering processes used get exposed like this. It looks like Disney have used a spatial median filter to de-grain the cel-based portions of the image. The advantage to this is that such a filtering method will not create time-based smearing. The disadvantage is that, if the threshold is set too high (or if the original shot was incredibly grainy), the end result will look a bit rough. (The same filter process appears to have been used on The Nightmare Before Christmas BD recently).
Such a filter works by blocking out the frequencies in which the grain lies - and retaining only the info the operator wants to keep, in this case, the paint and the outlines. That works well for most of the film.
This is the worst looking shot. The reason for this one looking so weird is that the original source was an optical special effects shot (so, much more grain). Since Disney were intent on removing all the grain, compromises result.
And here's what happens on an out-of-focus shot (look at the eyes):
I can't wait to watch it tonight - this'll be the first time I've seen this film in years. Kudos to Disney for creating a (mostly) stunning video presentation.
BTW, there's a great article on The Digital Bits about the cleanup process.
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