A Tale of Two Sisters

[RainyDog]

Originally Posted by Bruce Morrison

Another question for you, Hugh. I've just received my Blu-ray copies of 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance' and 'Lady Vengeance'. They both have exactly the same running times as Tartan's corresponding Region 2 PAL DVD editions. But PAL DVDs normally run 4% too fast as they are encoded at 25fps.

So are these Blu-ray editions also running at 25fps - or were your PAL DVDs somehow running at the correct speed after all?

According to the IMDB, the correct running time for 'Sympathy For Mr Vengeance' is 121 minutes, which matches the running time on your DVD and Blu-ray. So it seems that there isn't a problem - but I'm puzzled as to how your PAL DVDs were apparently running at 24fps rather than the usual 25fps! Can you explain this?

Have you checked the actual running times or just going by the listings on the cases? Many UK blu-rays just port the case info from their UK DVD counterparts and are hence wrong as the DVD's were PAL and 4% shorter.

I've not seen the UK DVD's of Sympathy... or Lady Vengeance (I own the US ones), but another and more likely scenario is that they were NTSC>PAL conversions which meant they ran at the original speed but suffered from standards conversion artefacts (interlacing, image ghosting etc). Tartan were notorious for this.

EDIT: Just rechecked the ...Vengeance discs in BDInfo and the running times are definitely correct. So it must've been the UK DVD's that were NTSC>PAL standards conversions.

[Bruce Morrison]

Originally Posted by RainyDog

Have you checked the actual running times or just going by the listings on the cases? Many UK blu-rays just port the case info from their UK DVD counterparts and are hence wrong as the DVD's were PAL and 4% shorter.

I've not seen the UK DVD's of Sympathy... or Lady Vengeance (I own the US ones), but another and more likely scenario is that they were NTSC>PAL conversions which meant they ran at the original speed but suffered from standards conversion artefacts (interlacing, image ghosting etc). Tartan were notorious for this.

EDIT: Just rechecked the ...Vengeance discs in BDInfo and the running times are definitely correct. So it must've been the UK DVD's that were NTSC>PAL standards conversions.

Yes that seems to be the explanation. Well it's good to know that the Blu-rays are correct anyway. Thanks for the clarification.

[Hugh K. David]

Rainy Dog: thanks for raising the issue on the 1080i flag - I'm going to be on the phone tomorrow morning with the authoring house and the replicators, see if this is something across all copies that went out, and what to do about it. If you can send me something to show us your data, that would help immensely, thanks.

BruceMorrison: the transfer was actually done and approved by Tartan before it went under. We at Palisades went back and had the authoring house bring it out of the archive. Personally, I saw it on three different systems (Panasonic Vieja, Sony Bravia, and I think it was an LG) all using both dedicated BD players and PS3s, and while I thought it was dark, it certainly had brighter colours, and far more definition and texture than the old Tartan DVD, which I used for a side-by-side spot check throughout the film. The thing it made me realise was just how dark the original shoot was, and how muted the backgrounds - the director really kept his focus sharp on the actors and the foregrounds, not on the backgrounds so much.

[RainyDog]

Hugh, here's the info you should need. Not sure why the video bitrate isn't being read in BDInfo, but everything else looks present and correct. Cheers for your attention to the matter anyway, it's appreciated.

BDInfo :-

QUICK SUMMARY:

Disc Title: TALE_OF_TWO_SISTERS
Disc Size: 22,567,271,996 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: No
Playlist: 00000.MPLS
Size: 0 bytes
Length: 1:54:31
Total Bitrate: 0.00 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 0 kbps / 1080i / 29.970 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: Korean / DTS-HD Master Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)
Audio: Korean / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 16-bit (AC3 Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps)
Subtitle: English / 0.000 kbps

MediaInfo of the demuxed video stream :-

General
ID : 1
Complete name : S:\Temp\A Tale of Two Sisters.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 16.1 GiB
Duration : 1h 54mn
Overall bit rate : 20.1 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Duration : 1h 54mn
Bit rate : 17.2 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : MBAFF
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.277
Stream size : 13.8 GiB (86%)
colour_primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
transfer_characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
matrix_coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

[RainyDog]

And for reference, here's Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance :-

General
ID : 1
Complete name : S:\Temp\Sympathy for Mr Vengeance.ts
Format : MPEG-TS
File size : 23.1 GiB
Duration : 2h 1mn
Overall bit rate : 27.3 Mbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 35.5 Mbps

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
Duration : 2h 1mn
Bit rate : 23.9 Mbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 24 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.480
Stream size : 20.2 GiB (88%)
colour_primaries : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4, SMPTE RP177
transfer_characteristics : BT.709-5, BT.1361
matrix_coefficients : BT.709-5, BT.1361, IEC 61966-2-4 709, SMPTE RP177

[Bruce Morrison]

I thought we might have heard again from Hugh by now, as he was going to investigate what had happened to the transfer. What have you discovered Hugh (if you're still around)?