Le Cercle Rouge 4K UHD (1970)

[Geoff D]

Reviewers, such as they are, have rarely been bothered with silly things like compression. I mean they don't want to look too nerdy and drive away their audience by getting too technical, heaven forbid.

@ Liersi

Is that the HDR10 layer or the DV rebuild?

[Liersi]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

@ Liersi

Is that the HDR10 layer or the DV rebuild?

That's the HDR10 layer. Haven't checked the DV in that scene yet.

[Fat Phil]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Reviewers, such as they are, have rarely been bothered with silly things like compression. I mean they don't want to look too nerdy and drive away their audience by getting too technical, heaven forbid.

I'd be curious to watch a movie through their eyes, Being John Malkovich style. To be unfazed by an image so poorly compressed that is sporadically falls apart. What joy. Then I could just focus on the really important stuff like 'fluidity' - whatever that is.

[Show spoiler]

[Liersi]

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

Then I could just focus on the really important stuff like 'fluidity' - whatever that is.

I didn't dare to ask for fear of exposing my ignorance, but I have no idea what it means, either. Lends it an air of erudition, though, doesn't it? I can see this nonsense, though.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Liersi

I didn't dare to ask for fear of exposing my ignorance, but I have no idea what it means, either. Lends it an air of erudition, though, doesn't it? I can see this nonsense, though.

The only person who actually knows what that means is Svet. Usually you see buzzwords from reviewers get picked up by people when they understand what it means, or even think they understand what it means, but Svet's "fluidity"? He's on his own there. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

[benkell]

Originally Posted by KENTA

Stuff like this bugs me way more than the new color timing ever could and no reviewer ever talks about it.

I mean, holy shit. I've bought four Studio Canal UHDs in the last months and each of them has glimpses of VC-1 Blu-ray/Netflix compression.
To make matters even worse, once you pop in the regular Blu-ray, the compression becomes less shitty in the same scenes.
The future is indeed now.

Which other releases are you referring to?

[KENTA]

Originally Posted by benkell

Which other releases are you referring to?

Breathless, Total Recall, Three Days of Condor and this one.

With Breathless, even my girlfriend asked me what was going on with the sudden dip in picture quality. Example 1, Example 2

[Azores26]

Does anyone know which release has the most accurate color grading, the new 4K or the older blu-ray? From what I've read, it seems that the older blu-ray is more accurate to the director's intentions, but I really have no idea what the original theatrical version looked like.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by grahams76

I first saw this film on DVD in the mid-2000s and remember how blue I thought the first Studio Canal blu-ray was a decade ago. I've no idea what's "correct". Somewhere between the two, most likely?

Originally Posted by Azores26

Does anyone know which release has the most accurate color grading, the new 4K or the older blu-ray? From what I've read, it seems that the older blu-ray is more accurate to the director's intentions, but I really have no idea what the original theatrical version looked like.

Most likely none of them.

The older discs (both the Studio Canal and the Criterion) certainly were products of their era of production when it comes to the grading, so it's likely they weren't correct either. Were they more correct than the new grading ? Hard to say. Is something in the middle likely to be correct ? Who know either ?

Originally Posted by Fat Phil

I'd be curious to watch a movie through their eyes, Being John Malkovich style. To be unfazed by an image so poorly compressed that is sporadically falls apart. What joy.

I'd love to be able not to see anymore (and be bothered by) the cyclic compression issues I see on many French BDs, and then having to explain to people who can't spot them even with PNG caps carefully chosen to show this clearly that yes, it's there, no I haven't dreamt it, and yes, it's not just the caps you can spot in in motion even on a "simple" Full HD screen. I can't even imagine how bothering this could look on a more discriminating screen.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Reviewers, such as they are, have rarely been bothered with silly things like compression. I mean they don't want to look too nerdy and drive away their audience by getting too technical, heaven forbid.

The worst is that Svet can spot compression issues, has shown he can spot it, and definitely told he spotted it when he wanted to. Unfortunately, I found lately many of his reviews to seem almost cut short, and this one is part of them. It's as if he focused on something for so long he forgot to mention anything else in the review. Here, it's quite a nice and hefty PQ review but once you take out all the part about the grading, there's about 2 lines left.
And since he has recently been simply C+Ping his 4K reviews onto the BD release review, having 2 reviews to discuss something else doesn't even help him being more thorough.

It's a shame because he's clearly knowledgeable enough for this stuff and have proved it in the past, and he also proved he wasn't afraid of being "nerdily" picky in his reviews.

[benkell]

Originally Posted by KENTA

Breathless, Total Recall, Three Days of Condor and this one.

With Breathless, even my girlfriend asked me what was going on with the sudden dip in picture quality. Example 1, Example 2

Thank You for the info, i haven't had time to keep up on these boards lately!

[vector72]

Originally Posted by grahams76

I've just had a look at the 4K disc and the blu-ray from the Melville Essential Collection boxset. There is a difference - the former is much browner/warmer in scenes in the countryside, while the latter is almost blue and gives off a much colder appearance.

I first saw this film on DVD in the mid-2000s and remember how blue I thought the first Studio Canal blu-ray was a decade ago. I've no idea what's "correct". Somewhere between the two, most likely?

I haven't seen this film. Reportedly, Melville wanted his color films to be neutral or monochromatic, to have the feel of a b&w movie. The cinematographer argued for the blue tone. The US Criterion got the grading wrong, as has this new 4k.

Personally, I hate yellow, but adjusting my OLED should be easy enough, if I feel the need. Other than that, the PQ sounds amazing and the caps look great. Really excited to get my import copy this month.

[johnpaul2]

The claim that Melville's look is supposed to be "monochromatic" has often been from second-hand sources. For instance, Coutard saw Le cercle rouge from the Janus (then released on BD by Criterion) master and deemed it too colorful because "he knew Decae and Melville and they would have never shot it like that", yet, Criterion merely timed their restoration based on a reference print they matched.

[JimDiGriz]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The only person who actually knows what that means is Svet. Usually you see buzzwords from reviewers get picked up by people when they understand what it means, or even think they understand what it means, but Svet's "fluidity"? He's on his own there. Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Genuinely laughed reading that Geoff!

[JimDiGriz]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

Most likely none of them.

The older discs (both the Studio Canal and the Criterion) certainly were products of their era of production when it comes to the grading, so it's likely they weren't correct either. Were they more correct than the new grading ? Hard to say. Is something in the middle likely to be correct ? Who know either ?


I'd love to be able not to see anymore (and be bothered by) the cyclic compression issues I see on many French BDs, and then having to explain to people who can't spot them even with PNG caps carefully chosen to show this clearly that yes, it's there, no I haven't dreamt it, and yes, it's not just the caps you can spot in in motion even on a "simple" Full HD screen. I can't even imagine how bothering this could look on a more discriminating screen.


The worst is that Svet can spot compression issues, has shown he can spot it, and definitely told he spotted it when he wanted to. Unfortunately, I found lately many of his reviews to seem almost cut short, and this one is part of them. It's as if he focused on something for so long he forgot to mention anything else in the review. Here, it's quite a nice and hefty PQ review but once you take out all the part about the grading, there's about 2 lines left.
And since he has recently been simply C+Ping his 4K reviews onto the BD release review, having 2 reviews to discuss something else doesn't even help him being more thorough.

It's a shame because he's clearly knowledgeable enough for this stuff and have proved it in the past, and he also proved he wasn't afraid of being "nerdily" picky in his reviews.

Yeah he seems to find a 'story' to tell with some reviews and seems so focussed on that that he forgets to tell us about the uh film in question...

Not to mention the C&P as you say which is slightly altered each time...

[JimDiGriz]

Keeping my old blu-ray for now. I wish I didn't have to..

[I KEEL YOU]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

The claim that Melville's look is supposed to be "monochromatic" has often been from second-hand sources.

Even if it was from the first-handiest source imaginable people would still complain if they found it distracting - see first blu ray release of The French Connection, which William Friedkin insisted the film is supposed to look, yet random internet forum members claimed that they knew better than Friedkin on how the film is supposed to look.

[Reddington]

Originally Posted by I KEEL YOU

Even if it was from the first-handiest source imaginable people would still complain if they found it distracting - see first blu ray release of The French Connection, which William Friedkin insisted the film is supposed to look, yet random internet forum members claimed that they knew better than Friedkin on how the film is supposed to look.

A lot more to the story than that, including Friedkin's climbdown.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by Liersi

Still haven't had time to watch this, but wanted to leave this here. Mind you, this is during the opening credits so the detail is in no way representative of what comes after, but the compression shits the bed so hard at this point that even I took notice. It's even better in motion, the whole wall starts dancing and pumping like the Bee Gees are playing.

[Show spoiler]

I can often live with the SC compression and consider some stuff a little overrated, but it is really getting ridiculous now. Above scene really is a joke compression wise.

The issue here is that not only is this not only isolated frames:



No, it's every single ****ing frame for seconds (aka the whole ****ing scene) on top of it:



If one doesn't have DV, one can also switch to streaming (and might get better compression) instead of spending money on such crap encodes.

While bad enough already, I for one can really live with the typical SC stuff like this (next one) in motion, but above scene (or the one-frame-Condor-**** up) is, I'm repeating myself, just ridiculous (in HDR10 at any rate):



Didn't take a DV layer cap with the former **** up, but I'm quite sure DV will clean up the latter:



Which helps people without DV: zilch...

That saddest part is that when the compression doesn't ruin it completely, it looks like this, as in the master itself is fine:



And oh, what a mircale, the cap is twice as big.

[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.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Reddington

A lot more to the story than that, including Friedkin's bullshit.

Fixed.