Le Cercle Rouge 4K UHD (1970)

[The Great Owl]

Oh my dear sweet Lord.... I'm just now seeing this thread. Off to order the UK edition, because this is one of my all-time favorite films.

EDIT: Maybe I'll wait a bit. It's out of stock on Amazon UK, and I want to read more about the picture quality.

[javi92]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Oh my dear sweet Lord.... I'm just now seeing this thread. Off to order the UK edition, because this is one of my all-time favorite films.

EDIT: Maybe I'll wait a bit. It's out of stock on Amazon UK, and I want to read more about the picture quality.

Diabolik has it for US people if you don’t want to go the Amazon UK route.

[Gacivory]

Originally Posted by javi92

Diabolik has it for US people if you don’t want to go the Amazon UK route.

It’s been sold out for awhile. Just like it’s sold out on Amazon UK.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

I suppose that last frame you captured is an I-Frame and that most of the encoding issues are because the P- and B-frames are poorly predicted (because the encoder is poorly setup). It'd explain also why it's bigger, but I think the causality is in this way and not the other way around.

I'm not a compressionist, but I don’t think the SC compression problems are I-frame related. There are piss poor frames all over the place, there’s not a single proper frame in said scene and I think they are doing sth completely wrong with the DV FEL encode (I'm also sure the rebuilt frames/caps won't be half in size). And I guess if one isn't competent enough to do proper encodes without the complexity of the dual layer encodes, they will (obviously) fail completely with it.

And they shouldn't use it in the first place. It's been stated by David M and I think one also doesn't have to be a genius to see why DV FEL (aka colour precision) is rather pointless with film aka grainy movies, because 12 bit helps only with posterization, but guess what, that's not an actual/big issue with film, since it comes with natural dithering. A total waste is what it is IMHO and the bits should go elsewhere (not that it would help much with SC's encodes, but at least one wouldn't get such complete HDR10 **** ups).

[Liersi]

In case more people like The Great Owl are scanning this thread, thinking they need to avoid this release altogether: not in my opinion.

Yes, the compression is an SC high-wire act. Mostly fine, always a bit shaky, and at least that one time in the beginning it falls off completely and goes splat for a few seconds. The source is strong, though, which is easy to see whenever compression keeps it together. Super fine, nice texture, solid blacks, and although it's warmer skewing yellow a bit, skin tones and whites say it never goes blanket yellow. I'm deliberately giving the color accuracy discussion a wide berth. I will say colour and lighting effectively supports the narrative in this presentation. While skin tones remain natural, everything else looks suitably drab and colourless. The darkness eats away at the light in every scene, like a cancer sucking the life and colour out of the characters. None of this is lost in this presentation. It's neither colourful, nor brightened or piss-stained. The blacks haven't been milked. Hiventy, who sign responsible for this restoration, aren't L'immagine ritrovata.

Just wanted to add that for perspective. The criticism for the compression is well deserved.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by Liersi

although it's warmer skewing yellow a bit, skin tones and whites say it never goes blanket yellow. I'm deliberately giving the color accuracy discussion a wide berth. I will say colour and lighting effectively supports the narrative in this presentation. While skin tones remain natural, everything else looks suitably drab and colourless. The darkness eats away at the light in every scene, like a cancer sucking the life and colour out of the characters. None of this is lost in this presentation. It's neither colourful, nor brightened or piss-stained. The blacks haven't been milked.

Thanks for this input. As you wrote, Hiventy aren't Ritrovata and from what the trailer (and some of Svet's caps are showing), it does seem like this isn't as heavy a signature as what Ritrovata would have done, despite the yellow drift that peers through the available elements (trailers and captures) so far. I'm quite eager to watch the full movie to see how much of it can be perceived as really off, especially considering (though it remains to be taken with a pinch of salt, seeing how some Ritrovata and Eclair gradings can be "supervised by" or based on reference prints and still look, well, like Ritrovata and Eclair gradings before anything else) Hiventy states they used as references a vintage print and a 2000 print approved by Pierre Lhomme.

[McCrutchy]

Originally Posted by The Great Owl

Oh my dear sweet Lord.... I'm just now seeing this thread. Off to order the UK edition, because this is one of my all-time favorite films.

EDIT: Maybe I'll wait a bit. It's out of stock on Amazon UK, and I want to read more about the picture quality.

Originally Posted by Gacivory

It’s been sold out for awhile. Just like it’s sold out on Amazon UK.

It's not "sold out", it's in stock for delivery as fast as tomorrow.

If you key in a UK postcode, you'll see the product listing magically go from out of stock or "Temporarily out of stock" to available, just like that. Virtually all titles are in stock and available for delivery to the UK, but many are showing out of stock or "Temporarily out of stock" to the USA, and probably other countries.

In other words, Amazon.co.uk is pulling the same shit they've been pulling since August. I guess they got tired of people complaining about the red delivery restriction messages on the listings, so they set most of the restricted items to simply show as available from third parties or "Temporarily out of stock" even though they themselves have plenty.

[PowellPressburger]

Have we fully confirmed the 4K disc is a BD66 or BD100 ? Only asking because specs for the site listing show BD100 but I think others pointed out that the file size of the film doesn't get much more than 50GB of space...which if true that the transfer wouldn't be much better than a former BLU edition?

I know they are different codecs but really for such a long film that is an atrocious

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PowellPressburger

Have we fully confirmed the 4K disc is a BD66 or BD100 ? Only asking because specs for the site listing show BD100 but I think others pointed out that the file size of the film doesn't get much more than 50GB of space...which if true that the transfer wouldn't be much better than a former BLU edition?

I know they are different codecs but really for such a long film that is an atrocious

As always: the site listing is just placeholder information, an edumacated guess until someone gets the disc in hand.

[Indiana Jonezzz...]

Originally Posted by PowellPressburger

Have we fully confirmed the 4K disc is a BD66 or BD100 ? Only asking because specs for the site listing show BD100 but I think others pointed out that the file size of the film doesn't get much more than 50GB of space...which if true that the transfer wouldn't be much better than a former BLU edition?

I know they are different codecs but really for such a long film that is an atrocious

Someone said a couple of pages back that the disc only had 2 rings, which means it’s a BD66:

Originally Posted by McCrutchy

One thing I was rather shocked by, the UHD appears to have only two rings, so it must be a 66 GB disc.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by Liersi

In case more people like The Great Owl are scanning this thread, thinking they need to avoid this release altogether: not in my opinion.

Just wanted to add that for perspective. The criticism for the compression is well deserved.

I'm also sure that DV users will be fine anyway, so I also won't say one should avoid this. But with HDR10 there's one major distraction at any rate and the criticism is indeed well deserved.

In the long run, I think all devices and even projectors will support DV anyway (there's a subpar Chinese one already), but until then, it's a major and completely unnecessary annoyance. For now, here's hoping that DV users will confirm that DV gets rid of the major **** ups (with Condor I can basically tell already), so I can consider the release to be kinda "future-proof".

[vector72]

I pre-ordered from Diobolik (US) weeks ago, they won't actually get any copies until "mid December".

[nebulousdawn]

Originally Posted by vector72

I pre-ordered from Diobolik (US) weeks ago, they won't actually get any copies until "mid December".

Ugh, same here.

[silverlakephil]

It’s available from Deff.com if you can’t order it from Amazon UK. Unfortunately Royal Airmail cost just as much as the 4K Blu-ray itself.

[bytor]

Is it possible they make the base HDR10 layer look like crap as a monetary agreement with Dolby? Mine shipped from Amazon today though so I'll be able to check it out in DV next week.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by bytor

Is it possible they make the base HDR10 layer look like crap as a monetary agreement with Dolby? Mine shipped from Amazon today though so I'll be able to check it out in DV next week.

Are you being serious right now? lolz, StudioCanal's encoders are just gloriously incompetent.

[bytor]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Are you being serious right now? lolz, StudioCanal's encoders are just gloriously incompetent.

Haha half-serious. I've only went region free in the past year so I'm still new to StudioCanal and didn't know they have a history of bad encoding. It just seems fishy when a lot of these smaller studios have releases where the DV FEL fixes things up so much.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by bytor

Haha half-serious. I've only went region free in the past year so I'm still new to StudioCanal and didn't know they have a history of bad encoding. It just seems fishy when a lot of these smaller studios have releases where the DV FEL fixes things up so much.

But that's the point tho: it's because they're not using the same authoring houses as the major studios that these problems are consistently occuring. And it's not like StudioCanal didn't listen to the initial complaints, they wouldn't have otherwise employed compression maestro David Mackenzie of Fidelity in Motion to produce several of their discs (he did their UHDs of Flash Gordon, Don't Look Now, Ladykillers, Elephant Man, Fifth Element and maybe one or two more that I'm forgetting).

And the DV is just doing what it's supposed to be doing, but because it's in DV I get the feeling the authoring houses are not paying any attention, at all, to the base layer encodes, i.e. it's just something to be farted out as quickly as possible while they concentrate on the DV. So I don't think anyone's getting paid to wreck anything (though I wouldn't pay these idiots at all given how poor this stuff can get), it's just good old fashioned incompetence.

Why not keep using David M then? The trouble is that David can't be everywhere at once, now that Arrow have started doing UHDs his workload has increased and so StudioCanal have resorted to their usual M.O. of hiring a blind baboon to do their UHDs.

[rip63]

I'll be keeping the original UK blu, because there's nothing wrong with it. This is a travesty though... What the hell were they thinking?

[brainofj72]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

But that's the point tho: it's because they're not using the same authoring houses as the major studios that these problems are consistently occuring. And it's not like StudioCanal didn't listen to the initial complaints, they wouldn't have otherwise employed compression maestro David Mackenzie of Fidelity in Motion to produce several of their discs (he did their UHDs of Flash Gordon, Don't Look Now, Ladykillers, Elephant Man, Fifth Element and maybe one or two more that I'm forgetting).

And the DV is just doing what it's supposed to be doing, but because it's in DV I get the feeling the authoring houses are not paying any attention, at all, to the base layer encodes, i.e. it's just something to be farted out as quickly as possible while they concentrate on the DV. So I don't think anyone's getting paid to wreck anything (though I wouldn't pay these idiots at all given how poor this stuff can get), it's just good old fashioned incompetence.

Why not keep using David M then? The trouble is that David can't be everywhere at once, now that Arrow have started doing UHDs his workload has increased and so StudioCanal have resorted to their usual M.O. of hiring a blind baboon to do their UHDs.

And sadly it’s not just StudioCanal. I’ve encountered some horrible chroma compression in HDR10 on some discs where it doesn’t seem to be an issue at all for people with DV setups. I’m thinking of Spartacus and Days of Thunder specifically.