"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[Paul H]

Chill people!
There are reasons for what was said "ON Line".

Look for yourself.

Recent Posts have been removed from threads in question.

Paul

[Robert Harris]

I find it interesting that while anonymity can have value in certain scenarios, it also seems to be an impetus toward poor manners.

[Alan Gordon]

Now now people, there's no reason to be mean to RAH...

The posts I made highlighting Penton-Man's comments were meant to be HELPFUL to Robert as I get the feeling that he should REALLY ask Bill what Penton-Man meant about taking it off-line...

~Alan

[Ben]

Okay everyone. This is not the place for an all out war. Both Mr. Harris and Penton-Man are respected members of the film community and we expect each and every one of you to treat them with the respect that they deserve and have earned.

It is never okay to tell anyone to get off this forum - - regardless of them being an insider or otherwise.

For those of you who have attempted to get this thread back on track - - thanks!

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Thanks, Penton. Nice to have you back.

HeavyHitter, in reply to your previous question about a dead American general and a “re-do”, if by that you mean some sort of exchange, I would highly, highly doubt it since the disc in question from what I’ve been told has had better than expected sales figures (irrespective of any positive or negative online chatter) given its status as a catalogue title.

But you know dem studios, in the proper climate, they often seem to do something bigger and even better for 40th Anniversary Editions.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by DenonCI

The replacement of TFE was a great gesture on Sony's part and it should be commended, not vilified.

Well, thank you very much for that kind comment and I’ll be sure to pass your exact words onto the person directly involved/responsible who continues in my estimation, to spearhead the utmost quality in Blu-ray production……….. at the same time, while working within real-world budgetary concerns that all successful departments and businesses must contend with.

[Penton-Man]

Now back to our previously scheduled program.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=4640

The parade of nations is next.
Sorry, no time now to check PM’s from anyone, as I’m trying to fit the above in during commercial breaks.

[Brain Sturgeon]

Olympic opening and closing ceremonies generally bore me to death, but let me be the first to congratulate Zhāng Xiān-shēng (sorry my Pinyin is rusty) and the Zhong Guo Ren (Chinese people) with one out-friggen-standing, jaw-dropping show.

I think Costas said it best when he said something on the order of "just retire the award given for outstanding opening ceremony now!".

Hear, hear! Bravo!

[BluDomain]

Originally Posted by Brain Sturgeon

...I think Costas said it best when he said something on the order of "just retire the award given for outstanding opening ceremony now!"...

Costas should check with the Head Video Janitor before handing out awards. I noticed excessive DNR and EE. Bit rate was inadequate with all the macro-blocking to say nothing of the lossy audio. Then the excessive use of pyrotechnics only catered to the gamer crowd, and the ensuing pollution that contributed to global warming. CGI terrible as the wires weren't edited out from the green screen. And the widescreen had been cropped to fit my television. Heresy.

Seriously, it was impressive. I had tuned in to only take a peek, but ended up watching the whole damn 4½ hours. A true test of the worth of a Pause button on a remote.

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by BluDomain

Costas should check with the Head Video Janitor before handing out awards. I noticed excessive DNR and EE. Bit rate was inadequate with all the macro-blocking to say nothing of the lossy audio. Then the excessive use of pyrotechnics only catered to the gamer crowd, and the ensuing pollution that contributed to global warming. CGI terrible as the wires weren't edited out from the green screen. And the widescreen had been cropped to fit my television. Heresy.

Seriously, it was impressive. I had tuned in to only take a peek, but ended up watching the whole damn 4½ hours. A true test of the worth of a Pause button on a remote.

They definitely need to retire the Opening Ceremony trophy. I can't imagine this one being topped. However, in line with BluDomain's posting (lol), I need to ask where the hell was the missing grain?

[whippersnapper]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Before I forget, here’s a heads-up for those interested and were unaware.
Zhang Yimou is the chief Director for the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics.

Anyway, the Opening Ceremony may well be worth tuning in to see if it is truly unique compared to others in the past. I don’t know if it will but, I’m hoping so, as I normally find the Opening Ceremony to be like watching grass grow. Should be interesting at least to see how they light the Olympic cauldron.
If you don’t recognize the name………. Zhang Yimou, then think of the beautiful colorful imagery of Raise the Red Lantern, which was outstanding!

P.S.
In case the broadcast appears soft or fuzzy, I really doubt that the lensers used any Pro-Mist® filters on those Sony HD cams or there was any post production “digital processing”.
Just think old fashioned atmospheric alteration by man.

There you go again Penton-Man, making me want to go out and buy another video (well, maybe the Opening Ceremony was just a tiny portion of what is motivating me) Too bad that apparently it's not available on Blu-ray yet.

[Seretur]

Penton --

I haven't been posting much for the past couple of months, both due to having oodles of cool work to do and to not actually having a player, as I'd returned my old PS3 to my employer early this year, and was waiting for the BD50 to be released over in the States. I see by the tone of this page that the usual gripes haven't gone away in the meantime, which is saddening.

Anyway -- the new Panasonic player arrived today, and is a thing of beauty. Does everything a Blu-ray player has to, does it quickly, and does it flawlessly. Extremely easy to operate and a joy to have. Had it up and running within two minutes. So please extend my thanks to the good people of Panasonic for a great piece of tech. Hope it serves all my Blu-ray needs for years to come.

Also, I finally got to check the more recent arrivals in my collection. Watched both Patton and The Golden Compass, among others, and was floored by how good both titles looked. The latter had so much better color nuance and so fewer issues with excessive graininess and contrast that plagued the theatrical prints that played here. And, of course, Patton was better than at any of the archival print screenings I got to see ages ago -- in both cases, the films lived and breathed on my Bravia much more than they ever did on the silver screen.

So I frankly trust the judgement of the people at Fox and New Line, or whoever encoded them, as the images represented the full quality of the original negative / best archival elements / digital intermediate, as the case may be, without burdening the digital presentation with the detrimental parts of the photochemical process. And going through the rest of my library, I was so very pleased to be able to discern the peculiarities of the various stocks the films were shot on over the years. So thanks to Sony for the good screen, thanks to Panasonic for the Uniphier chip, and thanks to the labs who encode the good movies of the past and present with care and understanding.

I think it's going to be hard for me to get back to work on Monday with this kind of gorgeosity just waiting in my living room. But it's not going to be hard to completely avoid the board bickerings from now on -- if anything, it's going to be easier than ever.

Thank you and your colleagues for the good work, and for still taking the time to post here, in this climate. And thanks to the staff of this site for having provided a great resource that did tide me over during my playerless months.

Pouring a glass of good Croatian wine for the night, now.
Cheers!

[lgans316]

Watched both Patton and The Golden Compass, among others, and was floored by how good both titles looked. The latter had so much better color nuance and so fewer issues with excessive graininess and contrast that plagued the theatrical prints that played here.

I hope you weren't joking.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by BluDomain

Costas should check with the Head Video Janitor before handing out awards. I noticed excessive DNR and EE. Bit rate was inadequate with all the macro-blocking to say nothing of the lossy audio. Then the excessive use of pyrotechnics only catered to the gamer crowd, and the ensuing pollution that contributed to global warming. CGI terrible as the wires weren't edited out from the green screen. And the widescreen had been cropped to fit my television. Heresy.

Seriously, it was impressive. I had tuned in to only take a peek, but ended up watching the whole damn 4½ hours. A true test of the worth of a Pause button on a remote.

I just was “taken out” of the whole live cinematic experience by the Clarus video pre-processing with its enhanced DNR, and image-enhancing techniques such as single-slice video processing architecture, multi-pass analysis, etc. from that MPEG-4 AVC contribution feed encoding. I’m sorry, but it was just too painful to endure. I just had to switch it off after 5 minutes.

I would dissuade anyone from watching the Closing Ceremony until we can put pressure on NBC Universal and the cable companies to give us higher bitrates and a complete MPEG-4 AVC solution from the raw video to the cable headends and all the way into the displays in our homes……..now.
All these people need to be ‘educated’……………………
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...r+&btnG=Search

Seriously, it was the most stunning ‘live’ (semantics aside) visual cinematic experience I can recall.
Zhang Yimou (the Director) and the people of China truly delivered on all counts including the little 9-year-old injured “hall monitor” (that apparently contributed to saving some of his classmates’ lives during the last earthquake) who was accompanied by Yao Ming and led out the Chinese athletes………
http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/xw/t464066.htm

I believe that screenshots or photos (unless Pulitzer Prize winning) rarely do justice to the emotion of a moving visual/audio experience displayed on our TV sets at home but, for those that missed the Opening Ceremony, these are some photos that might give you an idea of the visual imagery (warning, could be a long load time, you may even have to click that ‘refresh’ button thingee on your PC’s)………
http://boston.com/bigpicture/2008/08..._ceremony.html

[DenonCI]

Any fast moving objects look like shit with bad compression. Ouch!

[horseflesh]

Watching the golf Penton??
Harrington in with a shout again

[saprano]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Michael's gone ..........you're stuck with me.

To answer your question -
I see a phrase get bandied about somewhat regularly now, i.e.……………..
“A transfer should be as true to the master as possible” or some variant of that concept –
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...7&postcount=99

which just goes to show that few here (if any) have actually seen an archival quality video master esp. of some catalogue Super35 feature films.
The fact is that in my experience, when there has been an opportunity to show in a screening room the 4:4:4 on a typical high-end consumer display (the size being generally irrelevant) to the filmmaker……. is that he/she is quite surprised as to how grainy the appearance of their baby is as projected. I believe that paidgeek also made a reference to this fact months ago when he used to post regularly.

And the surprise is not one of delight but of horror because what they see on current 1080p displays (esp. LCD’s) with the archival video masters running, in many cases is not what they intended audiences to see and was not the appearance of the theatrical presentation in which the grain is mitigated. The video masters often times appear not just overall more grainy but grain is more heterogeneous (sometimes almost asymmetrical in the low lights) from shot to shot and scene to scene compared to the grain as shown at the film theatrical presentation………which is what they intended the *look* to be. So, the *expertise* often times comes in striking that balance between the theatrical presentation look (what the Director intended) and the transparency of the video master itself. Some major studios (and their contracted post houses) have done a better job out of the gate with that technical struggle than others have but, I think as time goes by it (DNR) will not be an *issue* in regards to an overall trend with any of the major content providers.

Wow so were not really seeing the look of the theatrical presentation at home? is that with all movies? i have a some blu's that look like what i saw in the theater,but my eyes may not be trained enough so who know's.

why does this happen? i thought blu-ray was more than capable of mimicking what we see in the theater?( though to me i think it does a perfect job)

and whats wrong with LCD's that make's it worse?

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by saprano

Wow so were not really seeing the look of the theatrical presentation at home? is that with all movies? i have a some blu's that look like what i saw in the theater,but my eyes may not be trained enough so who know's.

why does this happen? i thought blu-ray was more than capable of mimicking what we see in the theater?( though to me i think it does a perfect job)

and whats wrong with LCD's that make's it worse?

I believe you are forming some extrapolated conclusions, in a question form, from a post in which I was specifically speaking about the appearance of grain on some archival quality video masters from which some Blu-rays are eventually struck.

I really don’t know what more I can offer to help you understand other than to say that feature films are shot and made for the theatrical screen first and different tools are used in the post production process to different degrees at post houses that result in a final video master. How this process affects how a given film will translate to video, and thence to Blu-ray, will vary from feature film to feature film.

It’s possible that some of your Blu-ray movies can look better than your typical film theatrical presentation at public venues……depending on your display.

Sometimes characteristics are revealed on some HD masters that were not intended by the filmmaker. Today’s full resolution consumer displays showing their Blu-ray movies running in their Blu-ray players are more "capable" of "mimicking" the video master than the film theatrical presentation, for one, due to the film out process for release prints and the inherent nature of theatrical presentation with its weave, optics and projector light output.

Bottom line, it’s all about the video masters.
The final outcome in optimal cases can be better or similar to the theatrical presentation (hypersensitivity disorders aside), so, in essence your "eyes are trained well enough" and I wouldn’t worry about your visual acuity or the format in general.

[Rob Tomlin]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

It’s possible that some of your Blu-ray movies can look better than your typical film theatrical presentation at public venues……depending on your display.

..

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

I really don’t know what more I can offer to help you understand other than to say that feature films are shot and made for the theatrical screen first and different tools are used in the post production process to different degrees at post houses that result in a final video master. How this process affects how a given film will translate to video, and thence to Blu-ray, will vary from feature film to feature film.

It’s possible that some of your Blu-ray movies can look better than your typical film theatrical presentation at public venues……depending on your display.

Sometimes characteristics are revealed on some HD masters that were not intended by the filmmaker. Today’s full resolution consumer displays showing their Blu-ray movies running in their Blu-ray players are more "capable" of "mimicking" the video master than the film theatrical presentation, for one, due to the film out process for release prints and the inherent nature of theatrical presentation with its weave, optics and projector light output.

Bottom line, it’s all about the video masters.
The final outcome in optimal cases can be better or similar to the theatrical presentation (hypersensitivity disorders aside), so, in essence your "eyes are trained well enough" and I wouldn’t worry about your visual acuity or the format in general.

Direct view sets like LCDs can represent pixels at 100% MTF contrast (amplitude), in other words a flat frequency response 1080 x 1920, while film projection has a gentler sloping curve that decreases in amplitude as frequency goes up. To compensate somewhat for that you could use chemical (edge adjacency effects in the film emulsion) or electronic sharpening (on the DI). Or use a larger format.

A very simplified chart:

Originally Posted by Rob Tomlin

I think the vast majority of movies that we are getting on Blu-ray look much better than what I can see at my local cineplex, for a variety of reasons.

You have to go to a very high quality theater (such as The Samuel Goldwyn Theater ) to get a top notch film presentation these days.....and even then, Blu-ray can still look better for technical reasons. I very much expect that this may be the case with OUATIA due to the nature of that film's restoration.

HDTV and MTF - Why Projection HDTV Displays Can Never Be As Good

Talking about those $$ medical displays, Picture Archive and Communication Systems: Image Display shows a MTF chart of LCDs on page 7

Barco's Characteristics of CRT and LCD displays page 5: LCD: Perfect Modulation Transfer (MTF = 1)