Sony Black Crush on late-2014 / early-2015 BDs

[metallic]

Last one for now. A comparison between the Sony title card on the Fury Blu-ray and Captain Philips, another Sony Mi4K Blu-ray with excellent picture quality.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/113265

Ignore the colour and framing differences, but note all the missing shadow detail in the dark areas of the clouds. If it was just this you "could" say it is intentional and they wanted to crush the detail for artistic reasons, and if that is the case fine, but with the special feature scenes matching in every way except for the black detail I think it's fairly obvious that there has been a error somewhere with the encoding of the Blu-ray versions.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

Doesn't affect the capture, but if the viewing monitor is LCD (like almost all are) then it affects how well blacks are displayed.

Yes but it doesn't affect the capture, there's a notion that the capture comes from what's displayed on the monitor and that's not true. Generally speaking (as I have no idea what professionals use), if the average consumer with video players press capture or Print Screen (or whatever) then the monitor can affect the image captured. That's not the case. Now how those captures are displayed is a completely different ball of wax!

The other factors can be major factor in capturing. You can use three different programs all set at default and get three different results.

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by chip75

Yes but it doesn't affect the capture, there's a notion that the capture comes from what's displayed on the monitor and that's not true. Generally speaking (as I have no idea what professionals use), if the average consumer with video players press capture or Print Screen (or whatever) then the monitor can affect the image captured. That's not the case. Now how those captures are displayed is a completely different ball of wax!

The other factors can be major factor in capturing. You can use three different programs all set at default and get three different results.

Yes! Some people in this thread think that the Prnt Scrn button is like a camera photo of your monitor. It's actually a shot of the data, even before it reaches the monitor.

[James Luckard]

I found a number for THE INTERVIEW cinematographer's manager and called today. However it turned out not to be an office number but a direct number. He must have assumed I was some sort of crazy fan, as he hung up on me as I was explaining why I was calling, lol

Not deterred, will continue trying to get in touch with reps for the cinematographer and directors this week. I remain convinced that when they see these caps, they will be shocked at how their film is being sold, and that they will be grateful to learn this, as Roman Polanski was when I brought the defective FRANTIC BD to his office's attention.

[Snicket]

Originally Posted by James Luckard

I found a number for THE INTERVIEW cinematographer's manager and called today. However it turned out not to be an office number but a direct number. He must have assumed I was some sort of crazy fan, as he hung up on me as I was explaining why I was calling, lol

Not deterred, will continue trying to get in touch with reps for the cinematographer and directors this week. I remain convinced that when they see these caps, they will be shocked at how their film is being sold, and that they will be grateful to learn this, as Roman Polanski was when I brought the defective FRANTIC BD to his office's attention.

What in the world would give him that impression?

[Snicket]

Originally Posted by bruceames.

Yet Fury BD got a 5 star PQ rating from this site and several others.

I actually thought Fury looked fine. (here come all the elitist comments about how my eyes are not trained to professional levels, yeah you can tell the difference between 50 shades of black, you are the best)

Originally Posted by jscoggins

Point? Many websites don't want to be cut off from getting future BDs if they go negative.

You think studios care what you say in a review for a BD? No way they do. I really doubt the PR people even read them.

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by Snicket

You think studios care what you say in a review for a BD? No way they do. I really doubt the PR people even read them.

They actually do.

[Snicket]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

They actually do.

And they care enough to not send them? The only time I have heard of someone in the press not getting sent movies was when they asked the studio to stop. It's really petty of them if they stop sending movie because of a bad review, and its counter productive to their intentions.

A rep won't ask you to stop showing up for screenings if you give their films a bad review.

[jscoggins]

Originally Posted by Snicket

That's not close to what we are describing here though, we are talking about sites not receiving discs because they give negative reviews. The link you posted was talking about discs (of catalog titles mind you) not being sent out due to limited quantities, not because the site in question was posting negative reviews.

There have been other instances as well.

Anyway, there's no need to belabor the issue.

There are some sites that purchase BDs and DVDs for their reviewers, precisely so that their writers never feel the pressure to skew positive for the sake of continued access.

[Sman]

Looks like High-Def Digest's review mentions the crush from The Interview. I've watched it on Netflix and planned on buying the Blu-Ray based on the review from here but after this thread and Digest I'm glad I didn't. Fury seems to get a glowing review from them though.

[amoergosum]

Originally Posted by Sman

Looks like High-Def Digest's review mentions the crush from The Interview.

Wow...they actually mentioned it >>>

Sony has given this movie quite an oversaturated transfer in terms of color, making almost every scene look much darker than it should and giving many scenes so much black crush, you literally can't see any details because the image is so dark. Also of note is the fact that the UV copy provided here (as well as the digital version I watched back at Christmastime) do not suffer from the crushed blacks this transfer does, so it's easy enough to make a comparison. This may be one of the few Blu-ray releases to date where the accompanying digital version is actually a more satisfying view than the Blu-ray disc.

It's a shame about the crushed blacks, because otherwise this could have been a really nice transfer.

Link:
http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/17046/theinterview.html

[grrrarg]

If I was cynical, I might think Sony knew about this and that is why the price is so low on The Interview at walmart

[Poya]

The ungraded deleted scene actually looks better than the final film imo. I prefer films shot on celluloid when they're not done with a DI.

[tenia]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

This makes me wonder if people with Panasonic plasma TVs have their usual settings too bright.

To be fair, I navigate between -6 and -3 on my G20.
I don't have any calibration tools nor knowledge, only a more general "self-made" background. I thus used THX Optimizer patterns from the Wall E BD.
I recently verified my settings when I watched the Criterion BD of Eraserhead and found out I might have my brightness a tad too low and that -3 might be better.

However, for Fury, I had to increase to 0, and even at some point to +2 (but it was too high). At 0, it was better but shadow details were visibly lost in the blacks. I think I should have gone further and start tweaking also my contrast settings but to be honest, I have no wish to unsettle my standard setup for a non-standard case.

[sjconstable]

Originally Posted by tenia

To be fair, I navigate between -6 and -3 on my G20.
I don't have any calibration tools nor knowledge, only a more general "self-made" background. I thus used THX Optimizer patterns from the Wall E BD.
I recently verified my settings when I watched the Criterion BD of Eraserhead and found out I might have my brightness a tad too low and that -3 might be better.

However, for Fury, I had to increase to 0, and even at some point to +2 (but it was too high). At 0, it was better but shadow details were visibly lost in the blacks. I think I should have gone further and start tweaking also my contrast settings but to be honest, I have no wish to unsettle my standard setup for a non-standard case.

Turning up the brightness won't do anything if a disc has black crush - the picture information simply isn't there.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by jscoggins

Yes! Some people in this thread think that the Prnt Scrn button is like a camera photo of your monitor. It's actually a shot of the data, even before it reaches the monitor.

There is more than one way to capture directly, look at dvd beavers bs caps sometime

[chip75]

Originally Posted by dvdmike

There is more than one way to capture directly, look at dvd beavers bs caps sometime

I think people sometimes have an issue with how DVDBeaver present their captures (they're compressed .jpgs), not how they capture them.

[tenia]

Originally Posted by sjconstable

Turning up the brightness won't do anything if a disc has black crush - the picture information simply isn't there.

Except if it's not only a black crush issue but a brightness authoring issue such as on The Lady From Shanghai.

I can accept my Plasma being set too dark by a few points so increasing the brightness clearly helped me for Fury to get stuff back outside of the crushed black.
But it also seemed to me I've been able to get a few stuff back in the darker spots within the frame. Might be my eyes, might be my setup, but that was my overall impression. Of course, since I don't have a calibrated setup, this is to take with a pinch of salt.

This being said, indeed : if it's not there it's not there. I'm no magician.

Originally Posted by chip75

I think people sometimes have an issue with how DVDBeaver present their captures (they're compressed .jpgs), not how they capture them.

It is clearly how it is captured. blu-ray.com also provides JPEG caps, and that's no problem. You can also toggle on caps-a-holic between the JPEG and PNG caps, and you'll never see the kind of things people have against Beaver caps.

However, there are many things parasiting screen caps, and I'm quite sure Gary has some, either due to the software he's using or his graphic card pilot / settings.
This being said, he might also be simply compressing too much his JPEG caps, but I also don't think it is the issue.

[Sky_Captain]

Received The Interview today.

At first I was like "This doesn't look too bad."

That quickly turned into "What the f***?!"

Entire scenes where you either can't see the actor's eyes, or they look like they have two black eyes.

Good lord, Sony.

[dvdmike]

Originally Posted by chip75

I think people sometimes have an issue with how DVDBeaver present their captures (they're compressed .jpgs), not how they capture them.

Nope, it's how they take them