Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan (wrong aspect ratio)! update- mmm.. nope

[JBL4645]

Apparently there is about 5% loss/missing from the top portion of the frame 2.35:1 on DVD/Bluray. The laserdisc shows far or (5% more) that is rough guess. I am just stunned at how lazy the engineers at Paramount are? It looks like it was put together by someone who is blind.

So go and pull out Star Trek II laserdisc NTSC widescreen and A&B the DVD/Bluray that was mastered this year. I have the laserdisc running at present. While the Bluray is playing only I have the laserdisc mode ON.

I just get fanged to the teeth when (I or us) as consumers get taken for fools.

[LordCrumb]

This is interesting, can you post a screenshot of the laserdisc compared to the BD? cheers

[steve_dave]

The Blu-ray Disc and two disc DVD for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were signed off by director Nicholas Meyer.

The laserdisc, older letterboxed VHS tapes, and original anamorphic DVD presented the film in a modified 2.20:1 aspect ratio to replicate the 70mm experience. The same thing happened with Top Gun where the laserdisc, letterboxed VHS tape, and original non-anamorphic DVD had the modified 2.20:1 aspect ratio.

For the new Director's Edition DVD and Blu-ray Disc of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the new Special Collector's Edition DVD and Blu-ray Disc of Top Gun restore the original 2.35:1 aspect ratios for these films.

Nicholas Meyer approved the 2.35:1 transfers and Tony Scott did the same for Top Gun.

[JBL4645]

Originally Posted by steve_dave

The Blu-ray Disc and two disc DVD for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan were signed off by director Nicholas Meyer.

The laserdisc, older letterboxed VHS tapes, and original anamorphic DVD presented the film in a modified 2.20:1 aspect ratio to replicate the 70mm experience. The same thing happened with Top Gun where the laserdisc, letterboxed VHS tape, and original non-anamorphic DVD had the modified 2.20:1 aspect ratio.

For the new Director's Edition DVD and Blu-ray Disc of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and the new Special Collector's Edition DVD and Blu-ray Disc of Top Gun restore the original 2.35:1 aspect ratios for these films.

Nicholas Meyer approved the 2.35:1 transfers and Tony Scott did the same for Top Gun.

I bet he never really oversaw the transfer and original prints to make sure its transferred (brightness to brightness colour for colour and frame for frame). More likely just popped in for few moments saw what some geek with glasses had produced and said something nice like (WOW) and signed it and then walked out.

If I had £1 pound for ever frame moment of the film I could buy a dual 35/70mm projector and print of the film and be miles happier, but I don’t. Its all mass-produced and manipulation of the image time and time again and its starting to ware thin now

[JBL4645]

The only thing that is giving me high is the six-track Dolby stereo mix and I’ll have to wait till I get one of these 7.1 AVR and something tells me I’m going to be disappointed in that.

The more things change. The more they stay the same.

I’ve patched the video image from the AVR to Kworld device that is patched into pc and audio centre front from AVR patched into Kword device into pc. Got that good! And yes you can see the difference in the cropped off top portion of the image and the colour difference between the two formats.

I’m switching settings on the AVR Video 3 is laserdisc and DVD/CD is the Bluray player.

I’d pick the laserdisc colour and brightness! The Bluray colour transfer master for the DVD as well, looks like it was filtered though a jockstrap! SIGH

Aspect ratio Bluray Laserdisc Khan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMMqP4fbb8M

[BellesPrince]

Have to say that I didn't find a problem at all with The Wrath of Khan. It sounds very much from the other posts as though this is more to do with the laserdisc showing more than you were intended to see rather than any deficiency in the Blu Ray.

[steve_dave]

Originally Posted by JBL4645

I bet he never really oversaw the transfer and original prints to make sure its transferred (brightness to brightness colour for colour and frame for frame). More likely just popped in for few moments saw what some geek with glasses had produced and said something nice like (WOW) and signed it and then walked out.

Director Nicholas Meyer did oversee the transfers because the special edition DVD is the director's cut of the film. So he had to do more than just take a few moments with it.

On top of that, Wrath of Khan's Blu-ray Disc master was restored from the original negatives and personally overseen by Nicholas Meyer himself. Furthermore, Nicholas Meyer himself recorded a new commentary with Manny Coto for this Blu-ray Disc and Meyer helped produce not only most of the special editions DVDs but the Blu-ray Discs themselves.

If Paramount narrowed the height of the image any further it would look like, Ben-Hur.

You keep blaming Paramount but they had nothing to do with the aspect ratio for this film. You are seeing the wrong picture information on the laserdisc because it was transferred at 2.20:1 to replicate a 70mm experience. The new DVDs and BD present the film in its original intended aspect ratio as per director Nicholas Meyer.

End of story.

[JBL4645]

Originally Posted by steve_dave

Director Nicholas Meyer did oversee the transfers because the special edition DVD is the director's cut of the film. So he had to do more than just take a few moments with it.

On top of that, Wrath of Khan's Blu-ray Disc master was restored from the original negatives and personally overseen by Nicholas Meyer himself. Furthermore, Nicholas Meyer himself recorded a new commentary with Manny Coto for this Blu-ray Disc and Meyer helped produce not only most of the special editions DVDs but the Blu-ray Discs themselves.



You keep blaming Paramount but they had nothing to do with the aspect ratio for this film. You are seeing the wrong picture information on the laserdisc because it was transferred at 2.20:1 to replicate a 70mm experience. The new DVDs and BD present the film in its original intended aspect ratio as per director Nicholas Meyer.

End of story.

Snake oil!I doubt you’ve even seen it in 70mm!

[BluBonnet]

5%?!?!?!?! The horror... the horror...

Originally Posted by steve_dave

You keep blaming Paramount but they had nothing to do with the aspect ratio for this film. You are seeing the wrong picture information on the laserdisc because it was transferred at 2.20:1 to replicate a 70mm experience. The new DVDs and BD present the film in its original intended aspect ratio as per director Nicholas Meyer.

End of story.

[JBL4645]

Originally Posted by KaiGusto

This is interesting, can you post a screenshot of the laserdisc compared to the BD? cheers

Mmmm now that is tough one. The only way I can do this is to use the Kworld device and take a few moments from Wrath of Khan no, not the Khann! Khann! Yelling moment.

At least you’ll be able to see the slight image height information.

Wow it’s like taking a £1million pound painting and having someone cut a huge piece out of the artwork.

I’d think someone would be mighty pissed off, if you ask me.

Anyway I’m pre-cooking the Christmas dinner for tomorrow so if I get some time this afternoon I’ll have it up around evening for you to watch. (And yes, yes, yes I know Youtube is low grade) but what I’ve seen with Bluray so far…They better start pulling their socks up!

Fortunate I only paid £50.00 pounds for the box-set (The original price was £100.00 RIP OFF)!…but then again, I only paid £10.00 pounds at the Empire Leicester Square to see all 5 Star Trek films 4 of them in 70mm Dolby A/SR motion picture optical twin track Dolby A and the THX and it was out of this world! (Sunday 8th October 1989) Now then!

[Deciazulado]

The original aspect ratio Projector Aperture would be 2.39:1. Cropping up to 5% from the Projector Aperture OAR is accepted practice. (Furthermore, the actual Camera Aperture exposes about 5% more image on the negative than is seen when 100% of the Projector Aperture OAR is shown. That extra image might/could be used on some transfers).

If you saw shots were the splice lines are visible on the top and bottom, you would have a near idea of the correct 100% OAR PA height, and from that the 100% OAR PA width

[Deciazulado]

Seeing that Bill, Ricardo and our fellow projectionistè are about to blow a gasket I took the provided BD and LD images and enlisted Rudolph to shed some light to the issue. Blowing up the low resolution images and eliminating distortion so the images matched you can see that the LD is showing a little more top than the BD, but that the LD is missing part of the bottom (see the left bottom corner on the 3rd image (LD) compared to the second image (BD)), and the LD is also showing less width than the BD. So the BD has bottom and sides that are missing on the LD. Compositing both images together and assuming the spliced picture (top image) represents the full height we can also calculate the full width, and can now measure what's err.. "missing"

(I turned down the color to make comparisons easier)

Composite of both: Top
Blu-ray only: Middle
LD only: Bottom



Based on the composite, the LD would be showing 97% of the full height and the BD 97%

And the LD would be showing 94% of the full width and the BD 97%.


The Blu-ray is in the correct 2.39:1 ratio (I just measured an actual screencapture)

The LD capture, showing a lot of the empty wall behind the captain with his head almost in the middle of the screen looks to me more unbalanced than the BD one showing more of Captain Terrell. On the LD I keep looking at the A. Probably the intention of the scene




About the 3% I'll quote the TAP projection guidelines again:

Screen image (Image quality, aspect ratios & dimensions)

The desired condition is to precisely project the following common image dimensions:

35mm Anamorphic image (2.39:1): 0.690" x 0.825" 17.53mm x 20.96mm

The projected image on the screen should have sharp edges, and the corners should be square (90º angles). The dimensions above should correspond to the placement of the masking when the 35-PA test film is projected on screen. Note: The screen size limitations, aperture plate dimensions, masking placement and image distortion should not cause the projected image to be cropped more than 5% (3% cropping is the maximum preferred).

In other words, photography makes provision for this.

As if you think theaters show movies without these slight croppings go measure one.
(I measured once one with 20% missing)


One last comment, looking at the LD, seems Cptn. Terrell redecorated the Reliant's walls with a beige scheme
Pavel must have helped.

[JBL4645]

Only if the aperture plate or the masking was on the piss in the cinema would it be wrong. I’m yet to see one that has crocked plates or masking.

Interesting (black & white) blow up.

You don’t want to see the first edition DVD and the second one my god what a shambles of mess. Its easier to own the 35mm or 70mm print and we can crop it size to till one of us are blue in face with it.

Merry Christmas

[JBL4645]

Since I don’t have software to take direct screen capture shot from the laserdisc player to my pc and the youtube option was the best I could think to show the difference.

The screenshot captures here are from the (first to second director edition and new original motion picture editions)

Not the sly extra tiny information and yet the laserdisc showed a bit more height information but, slightly less width okay.

And yes the sly colour tint does bother me also! The first edition looks like it came from an NTSC version for region 2 DVD. (Never Twice Same Colour)

I removed the black boarder bars top and bottom except for the first edition, which displays black bars vertically on the image.
You can see there vertical bars are cropping off image detail.



Between the first two editions the height seems to be the same except for the width in the first edition release region 2, not sure of course if the region 1 had the same cropped off sides?



Also note the size of captain Terrell is getting smaller and the rest of the image expanding because that is how it should be. But they had to do it didn’t they! They had to slyly crop off the top of the image, so that they will get floods of emails telephone call, complaints!



Merry Christmas

[LordCrumb]

[BellesPrince]

The only person I can see complaining here is the original poster.

[garyrc]

Well, you'd have to get inside the director's head -- or ask -- to answer the following question, but ..... at a time when many films -- especially Sci Fi & Sci Fant in the wake of Star Wars 5 years before -- premiered in 70 mm (the Bay Area had 8 theaters capable of 70 mm and they often had 70 mm running), which AR would the director have foremost in his mind while shooting? If and when there was a conflict, which would the director favor in composing shots, if s/he was active in the fine details of composition? Which would the DP and the operators favor?

I can't answer for them, but If I expected my film to premiere in 70 mm, expected the metro film buffs, critics, film professors, film historians, etc., to see it in 70 mm, and expected the 35 mm prints to be distributed in that geographical area anywhere from a month to many months later, I would visualize it in 70 mm @ 2.20:1, and favor that shape in composition, if 2.20:1 and 2.39:1 were not equally effective in some shots. Even though most 70 mm films of that time were (regrettably) blow-ups from 35 mm anamorphic camera film, if I had the assurances of the studio that there would be 70 mm, 2.20:1, prints, I would look to my intentions, and consider 2.20:1 to be the OAR, given that it was the original in my mind's eye.