Le Magnifique (1973) 4K UHD

[TheBondFan]

Coming from StudioCanal

Fnac

[grahams76]

An opportunity to correct the blu-ray’s modernised tint. Probably unlikely though.

[Magyalmar]

Originally Posted by grahams76

An opportunity to correct the blu-ray’s modernised tint. Probably unlikely though.

Bisset will look wonderful in 4K regardless of the tint.

[MifuneFan]

https://www.amazon.fr/Magnifique-4K-...%2C747&sr=1-69

[Nocheduro]

But will it be English friendly?

[Ruined]

Originally Posted by Nocheduro

But will it be English friendly?

specs say no

[Nocheduro]

Originally Posted by Ruined

specs say no

Disappointing but not surprising. It’s frustrating because the Kino release is from an old master.

[nicwood]

Received my copy of the UHD. Disc is a BD-66, has Dolby Vision and is compatible for France and Germany in audio and subtitles.

The scan and restoration was done by L’imagine Ritrovata and looks like that more than it doesn’t. It’s not their worst work but far from the better ones (The Conformist as an example). Svet will not like this - I thought of him the minute I saw the color of pool water in an early scene.

Encoding was 100% certainly done by the same facility that ruined Breathless and made Contempt look quite flat and ugly, meaning that all OCN footage looks exceptional (with even a little detail in the highlights but they’re nonetheless clipped) and optical shots are horrible. The opening titles for example are laughably bad with bitrates diving down to 5 Mbps! In addition, Ritrovata grain-managed the opticals and made them look like Paramount’s. Again, the OCN shots look good and have very pleasing detail.

Knowing myself I will probably enjoy this presentation more than any old master despite the issues but it’s obviously a mediocre effort all around and far from an easy recommendation.

[vector72]

Originally Posted by nicwood

Received my copy of the UHD. Disc is a BD-66, has Dolby Vision and is compatible for France and Germany in audio and subtitles.

Encoding was 100% certainly done by the same facility that ruined Breathless and made Contempt look quite flat and ugly... The opening titles for example are laughably bad with bitrates diving down to 5 Mbps! In addition, Ritrovata grain-managed the opticals and made them look like Paramount’s. Again, the OCN shots look good and have very pleasing detail.

Knowing myself I will probably enjoy this presentation more than any old master despite the issues but it’s obviously a mediocre effort all around and far from an easy recommendation.

Many SC discs have bitrate drops into the single digits. Hiventy has not changed their encode settings since UHDs were introduced. Not every disc is impacted equally, but the bitrates will drop randomly and even spike at times, well over 100 Mbps. There is no reason for this other than Hiventy using the same process for every single encode, for years now.

[grahams76]

Originally Posted by nicwood

Received my copy of the UHD. Disc is a BD-66, has Dolby Vision and is compatible for France and Germany in audio and subtitles.

The scan and restoration was done by L’imagine Ritrovata and looks like that more than it doesn’t. It’s not their worst work but far from the better ones (The Conformist as an example). Svet will not like this - I thought of him the minute I saw the color of pool water in an early scene.

So similar colours to the Kino blu from 2021?

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Le-Ma...lu-ray/284900/

[nicwood]

Originally Posted by grahams76

So similar colours to the Kino blu from 2021?

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Le-Ma...lu-ray/284900/

No - it definitely leans more green- and yellow-ish than the very natural (and rather drab) old master. It’s not completely unwatchable though - there are far worse examples.

[kmhofmann]

Just had a brief look at the disc. I find the intermittent grain management much more worrying than the grading, which looks very film print-like.

[nicwood]

Originally Posted by kmhofmann

Just had a brief look at the disc. I find the intermittent grain management much more worrying than the grading, which looks very film print-like.

Just watched the whole thing and I’d say it’s the opposite: The grading is worse than the grain management. The latter is only visibly present during the optical shots (in addition to the horrendous encode during these sections) but the grading is terribly inconsistent throughout. It’s sometimes more yellow, then less - same with the greenish blues. One shot has skies looking fairly normal, then intensely green. It’s just sloppy and careless work. There’s one exterior shot of Belmondo doing jet ski that’s so horribly yellow and green that it rivals Ritrovata’s work on Violent City, the Charles Bronson film. The consistent flatness of the images obviously is another byproduct but that’s the same with other Ritrovata jobs as well.

When looking at the caps of the old master though, I’d personally say that the new master is the lesser evil.

[nicwood]

For Nocheduro: Two English subtitle files synced to the 4K UHD. Unfortunately, neither of these are perfect files. I've looked at all the English subs I could find of the film and unfortunately no perfect file exists as of today.

I've therefore made you two you should test and see which one you prefer.

One file consists of the English subs that are on the KL disc. However, they weren't carefully made like so many of their discs themselves. The timings aren't always ideal and maybe the language too but I can't confirm.

The second file has the film's subtitles from a DVD and this file suffers that subtitles go on for way too long whenever somebody's speaking in a dialogue for example. The timings aren't problematic as a result but after someone finishes speaking, there'd normally be a pause in the subtitles until the next person speaks. These DVD subs omit these pauses and have a continuous stream of subtitles in dialogues or moments with lengthier spoken phases. One subtitle follows the other, so to speak. It's not perfect but it may be better than the KL subs which can start too early. This is a bit complicated to explain. I'm sure you get what I mean when you see it.

If I had to choose between the two options, the lesser evil is probably the DVD file.
The issues I described can be fixed but only by doing very time-consuming manual readjustments. If you really love the film, it may be worth it.

I'm sorry I don't have a better English option. The German subtitles on the UHD are perfect from timing, pauses, language etc. but I wouldn't want to auto-translate them into English to call it a day. In case you'd like to have a go at this despite possible mistranslations, I can do it for you. Just let me know.

[Nocheduro]

Originally Posted by nicwood

For Nocheduro: Two English subtitle files synced to the 4K UHD. Unfortunately, neither of these are perfect files. I've looked at all the English subs I could find of the film and unfortunately no perfect file exists as of today.

I've therefore made you two you should test and see which one you prefer.

One file consists of the English subs that are on the KL disc. However, they weren't carefully made like so many of their discs themselves. The timings aren't always ideal and maybe the language too but I can't confirm.

The second file has the film's subtitles from a DVD and this file suffers that subtitles go on for way too long whenever somebody's speaking in a dialogue for example. The timings aren't problematic as a result but after someone finishes speaking, there'd normally be a pause in the subtitles until the next person speaks. These DVD subs omit these pauses and have a continuous stream of subtitles in dialogues or moments with lengthier spoken phases. One subtitle follows the other, so to speak. It's not perfect but it may be better than the KL subs which can start too early. This is a bit complicated to explain. I'm sure you get what I mean when you see it.

If I had to choose between the two options, the lesser evil is probably the DVD file.
The issues I described can be fixed but only by doing very time-consuming manual readjustments. If you really love the film, it may be worth it.

I'm sorry I don't have a better English option. The German subtitles on the UHD are perfect from timing, pauses, language etc. but I wouldn't want to auto-translate them into English to call it a day. In case you'd like to have a go at this despite possible mistranslations, I can do it for you. Just let me know.

Thanks for all the effort you put into this. You’ve gone above and beyond

I never had a problem with the KL subs while watching that disc so they would probably be fine. Unfortunately my Panasonic UB9000 seems to lack an external sub feature. Some of the Panny’s do seem to have this looking in the forums, must be a firmware issue, although I am running the latest region free version 1.76 from 220 electronics.

[nicwood]

Originally Posted by Nocheduro

Thanks for all the effort you put into this. You’ve gone above and beyond

I never had a problem with the KL subs while watching that disc so they would probably be fine. Unfortunately my Panasonic UB9000 seems to lack an external sub feature. Some of the Panny’s do seem to have this looking in the forums, must be a firmware issue, although I am running the latest region free version 1.76 from 220 electronics.

Yes, the Panasonic lacking this feature is really annoying.

Can’t help you with player softwares unfortunately. What I do is importing the disc and play the file + subtitles via a NAS.