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

[hollywoodguy]

Originally Posted by Rob Tomlin

+1

Lowry is capable of some amazing work.

Lowry is also capable of some less than stellar work.

Anyway, I hope to receive my copy of Patton early next week.

What looked amazing in 480i can suddenly show its seams in 1080p. It will be interesting to see what some of the confirmed "Lowry deluxe" titles look like on BD. Life of Brian had an interesting look to it, for sure.

Enjoy Patton!

[WickyWoo]

I got the impression Life of Brian was more of a touchup/light degraining rather than a fullon Lowry work

[hollywoodguy]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

I got the impression Life of Brian was more of a touchup/light degraining rather than a fullon Lowry work

I think you are right, but it still had that Lowry look in certain areas if you ask me.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

Make sure you send the "I loved this wonderful disc, the high detail without unnecessary DNR or sharpening really helped bring out the best in my system and my investment in Blu-ray"

After reading this, the first thought into my head was:

"What disc of Warner Bros. could you say this about?"

I guess "Shoot 'Em Up" from New Line could count...

~Alan<~~~~~~~Who received "The Golden Compass" on Blu-ray today...

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by hollywoodguy

I think you are right, but it still had that Lowry look in certain areas if you ask me.

Life of Brian came out de-grained and sharpened, post Lowry processing.
I have no idea if the reviewers picked up on any DNR resultant artifacts or annoying edge enhancement but, the later is clearly evident on several scenes.

[lgans316]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=3504 - Nailed it.

[mhafner]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

In the meantime, might I suggest that the Blu-ray version should be a substantial improvement over the DVD version (which as we have seen with other titles, is not always the case), so I wouldn’t let any perceived picture inadequacies by some, defer you from renting or buying the disc if you are a fan of this title.

Renting is fine or borrowing. I always want to see with my own eyes how things look. I don't want to finance DNR with purchases. Renting is a no go where I live. Borrowing difficult since my fellow videophiles detest DNR as well. What to do, what to do...

[Deciazulado]

Originally Posted by mhafner

Interesting reading. But where does that 6K figure come from? Negative was not going beyond 2400 L/PH on the charts. That's roughly 3.5 K of resolution. About the same as the 4K Red camera. Everything else had steep drops from there. Especially shocking how one copy stage to the IP loses so much. There is no substitute for scanning the original negative, folks, if you want the most detail. Forget the IP and all INs.
(And that test was ideal insofar as a perfectly focused stationary object was shot. Not typical for motion picture photography.)

2400 lines (1200 line pairs) per 11.3 mm height (0.446") x Full Camera Aperture (used in Super 35) 24.9 mm width = 5275 lines /width

Now those are film resolution lines, not digital pixels. Remember I mentioned a fudge factor when transferring from infinite variable position lines into fixed discrete pixels on a grid. If you want to record (preserve) without loss you need slightly more. 6K is closer to the ballpark. Remember we are talking about making a full preservation element here. One that can take the place of the original if it gets damaged. And if you massage the MTF, you could get more. Shadowself examined MTF curves and reached a similar conclusion. At one point people said that 16bit sound was enough. Well for posterity I prefer 24 or 32 bit safetys.

Originally Posted by mhafner

Especially shocking how one copy stage to the IP loses so much. There is no substitute for scanning the original negative, folks, if you want the most detail.

Agreed. Just make sure the original color timing is kept.


Ps. if you want to calculate for 70, 2X

[mhafner]

Concerning DNR... Well, there are different kinds. My main problem with it is that the results usually don't look like the same film shot on less grainy stock, or almost grainless stock, but simply not like any kind of film anymore. Either because it's so clean that only digital cameras look like this, or because it has become a mixture of grain and processing artifacts on top, sometimes very obvious and distracting artifacts (smearing, weird noise patterns moving unnaturally, ghosting, flickering, waxy oil painting look, snapping in and out of focus...). DNR really well done is DNR you can't see unless you are familiar with the unprocessed look of the film. So, maybe there is good DNR around on titles we don't talk about because we have not noticed there is any.
What seems to be on the way out is stone age DNR with heavy artifacts all around as used on some DVD titles, originating from real time systems. What seems to be used more and more is sophisticated DNR with less obvious artifacts, more or less providing a smooth look but no big motion errors or noise anomalies or overly waxy look.
I had the chance to check out ~20 minutes of BD tests for a film with 4K DI, all of which has been DNRed as the director likes the smooth look. It looked pretty good, sometimes very good. But there is no fine grain detail. It's gone. The picture is still fairly detailed and sharp, though, without ugly sharpening as well. Motion looks ok too.
I would have preferred to see the unfiltered DI, but as it is it's definitely watchable, just not the way film looks, more like a digital 2K camera. It did not have the typical HD camera look (which I dislike, unlike the Genesis or Viper or Red look).

[mhafner]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

2400 lines (1200 line pairs) per 11.3 mm height (0.446") x Full Camera Aperture (used in Super 35) 24.9 mm width = 5275 lines /width
Now those are film resolution lines, not digital pixels. Remember I mentioned a fudge factor when transferring from infinite variable position lines into fixed discrete pixels on a grid. If you want to record (preserve) without loss you need slightly more. 6K is closer to the ballpark.

I see your point. There is no direct relationship between the lines on film and pixel rows. So you might indeed need 6K for the faint information to look the same. On the other hand the 6K can do what the 35mm can not at all. Have 100% percent modulation at 6K on the master (CGI). The apparent resolution of 35mm as seen by humans is < 4K. If you watch full res 4K it looks like 70mm, not 35mm. But if you want to position the lines with subpixel precision and see no aliasing problems you have to go >= 4K to get the 35mm equivalent under ideal conditions (static charts, perfectly focused).

[WickyWoo]

Life of Brian came out de-grained and sharpened, post Lowry processing.
I have no idea if the reviewers picked up on any DNR resultant artifacts or annoying edge enhancement but, the later is clearly evident on several scenes.

I saw it. I found it much more distracting on Gattaca though, probably because the halos showed up against dark lines so were more evident

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by hollywoodguy

When I alluded to Patton possibly being a contender for "best overall PQ" of any Blu-ray title some time ago, I was basing this on a few snippets of a screener that I saw and word from Fox that they were ecstatic how well it turned out.

Me too!
And that’s another thing that is so disconcerting to me.
I was told the same thing, i.e. “It looks grrrrrreat!”

So, there is some sort of disconnect going on here in regards to the tech people in the Fox home media division and one (or more?) reviewers.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mhafner

Renting is fine or borrowing. I always want to see with my own eyes how things look. I don't want to finance DNR with purchases. Renting is a no go where I live. Borrowing difficult since my fellow videophiles detest DNR as well. What to do, what to do...

With all due respect michel, I have sympathy for your inability to rent given your genuine love for film. However, you or the regular (200-300 ?) internet junkies that bounce from forum to forum expressing their opinions have a rat’s ass amount of purchasing power.

I wouldn’t be afraid of “financing” DNR by making a purchase on something that you feel has excessive digital noise reduction. Rather, don’t purchase it because you are hypersensitive to this particular form of post processing, given your background on the subject.

If you want to make a difference independently, on your own, then address your complaints in writing to the product fulfillment department, at least the letter will get routed to the correct location rather than ending up on some intern's desk or in the circular file.

[Penton-Man]

^
No offense to any interns out there.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mhafner

So, maybe there is good DNR around on titles we don't talk about because we have not noticed there is any.

Did any of the reviewers that are hyper-sensitive to DNR, or what they think is DNR catch it or make reference to its commonly known resultant displeasing artifacts for the title ………Zodiac ? I’m asking because I don’t know as I generally very seldom read movie reviews, other than to get a quick synopsis of the story to see if it would interest me.

It would be interesting to go back to see what all the reviewers noted about Zodiac, as that title received heavy-duty digital noise reduction.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mhafner

Concerning DNR... I had the chance to check out ~20 minutes of BD tests for a film with 4K DI, all of which has been DNRed as the director likes the smooth look. It looked pretty good, sometimes very good. But there is no fine grain detail. It's gone. The picture is still fairly detailed and sharp, though, without ugly sharpening as well. Motion looks ok too.
I would have preferred to see the unfiltered DI,

Get used to it and thank HD television shows.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by mhafner

It did not have the typical HD camera look (which I dislike, unlike the Genesis or Viper or Red look).

No love for the F-23 ?

The F-23 has more range and less noise than the Viper, that’s undeniable.
In fact the F-23 was used to shoot the last scene in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button.
(I’ve got to plug the motion picture and the camera, for friends ).

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by lgans316

Looks like WB have actually started releasing on Blu-ray

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRe...rs_blu-ray.htm

To keep everything in perspective, I applaud WB for facilitating things like this……………..
https://forum.blu-ray.com/announcement.php?f=61

[hollywoodguy]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Me too!
And that’s another thing that is so disconcerting to me.
I was told the same thing, i.e. “It looks grrrrrreat!”

So, there is some sort of disconnect going on here in regards to the tech people in the Fox home media division and one (or more?) reviewers.

The way you phrased that we might have heard from the same person.

Here's the general problem, marketing wants things shiny and clean to look good on 42 inch Vizio displays, because that's what (they think?) the mass market wants from "HD". Tech generally wants things faithful to the source and is concerned about compression artifacts etc.

The good fight will be to convince marketing and the decision makers that a faithful film-like representation of the source should be the ultimate goal. And not in the WB/VC-1 way where the encode might be faithful to the master, but the master already has a thick layer of DNR applied to it.

(P.S.: The "official reviews" for Patton have been favorable so far, have they not? Edit: With reviews like this https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/movie...79&show=review or this http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1341/patton.html, it will be hard to convince anyone that they did something wrong...)

[WickyWoo]

Penton did Zodiac recieve it for the theatrical or the HD DVD? My memory of theatrical is somewhat hazy but I remember grainy