Sleepy Hollow 4K UHD (1999)

[Mierzwiak]

Originally Posted by Cplhicks

It's pronounced Bouquet.

[jonam]

The best version is the Japanese BLU-RAY. It has bitrates that peaks at 80!! and consistently stays around 35+. The audio is loud with Dolby Tru-Hd. I can't see the 4K topping this as the Japanese probably have better encoders.

The only downside is that the resolution is in 1080i.

[happydood]

Originally Posted by Kyle15

I like the orange banner better than the silver ones at least. Those are so tacky.

The flat grey on Scream releases is the worst.

[Medality]

Originally Posted by jonam

The best version is the Japanese BLU-RAY. It has bitrates that peaks at 80!! and consistently stays around 35+. The audio is loud with Dolby Tru-Hd. I can't see the 4K topping this as the Japanese probably have better encoders.

The only downside is that the resolution is in 1080i.

The JP Blu-ray is using an old master. Just look at the caps, it's clear the new 4K has a lot more detail than any of the Blu-rays.
I'd rather have a medium encoding of a high quality source than a 10/10 encoding of a medium source.
The 4K will absolutely top the JP disc.

[Rusty100]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Not that Paramount don’t love the DNR stick - because they’d smack anything and everything with it if they could - but I think a fair bit of what we might perceive to be “grain management” is these dire B-team encodes frittering away the grain in brighter areas of the signal. I don’t mean anything in Sleepy Hollow per se as I’d rather watch it in motion before passing judgement , but in general.

Yeah this is what I think has happend too. Accidental DNR by way of shitty encode

[NeilZ]

Originally Posted by Rusty100

Yeah this is what I think has happend too. Accidental DNR by way of shitty encode

If that’s the case it might look fine in Dolby Vision. Same thing has happened with numerous Paramount titles such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Double Jeopardy, 48h, and others, which looked really good in DV but had some encode issues giving at time a softer image and less defined grain in hdr10.

[KootiePie]

Originally Posted by steve_dave

The US/CAN release has the commentary because the US/CAN Blu-ray discs are the 2006 discs. Meaning those wanting a better Blu-ray are out of luck, the BD is lossy audio only. Meanwhile the European market gets a new disc with lossless audio but sacrifices the commentary for it.

Does Europe really get a new disc? The old one already had DTS-HD MA. I'm betting they also won't bother given all discs are by Paramount. Not buying this only to find out I got the shaft with the 2k. If the disc pops up in certain places I'll check. The US showed up hours ago and indeed it's the old wreck.

Meanwhile I'm keeping the JP. The caps I'm seeing aren't setting my loins on fire anyway.

[andreasy969]

Originally Posted by NeilZ

If that’s the case it might look fine in Dolby Vision

I'm afraid not, since the caps at caps state +FEL, which has been confirmed means that those are incl. the EL. So if anything, it might be even worse in HDR10.


Someone really needs to rescue us from these poor Paramount encodes. Especially since Paramount often (as is the case here) doesn't even give us a properly encoded BD with the new master. Except for not actually owning anything, with this kind of disc quality, one might just as well switch to streaming...

[Geoff D]

I've said it before but the homebrew encoders who knock out tiny file sizes for whatever rip are 1000x betterer than whatever authoring house Paramount uses for these B-team encodes. When they do get their A-team involved - usually signified by the presence of MaxCLL and MaxFALL metadata on the disc - then the compression is fine. Not always amazing, but fine.

It's such a shame that Paramount did this total u-turn on catalogue product (remember when they got Warners to distribute their stuff years ago?), pumping out stuff like crazy on 4K but farming out the encoding of the material to some clowntown outfit. Add to that all the other stuff that Paramount indulge in and, well, gift horses and looking in mouths comes to mind. We shouldn't be grumbling as physical media continues to wither and die by the day but if one of the main USPs of physical - robust encoding - is being disregarded then what's the point?

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by jonam

The best version is the Japanese BLU-RAY. It has bitrates that peaks at 80!! and consistently stays around 35+. The audio is loud with Dolby Tru-Hd. I can't see the 4K topping this as the Japanese probably have better encoders.

The only downside is that the resolution is in 1080i.

If you can only enjoy a disc by looking at bitrate alone, sure.

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.

That's the the Japanese Blu-ray is. Lipstick on a shitty master.

[Rusty100]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I've said it before but the homebrew encoders who knock out tiny file sizes for whatever rip are 1000x betterer than whatever authoring house Paramount uses for these B-team encodes. When they do get their A-team involved - usually signified by the presence of MaxCLL and MaxFALL metadata on the disc - then the compression is fine. Not always amazing, but fine.

It's such a shame that Paramount did this total u-turn on catalogue product (remember when they got Warners to distribute their stuff years ago?), pumping out stuff like crazy on 4K but farming out the encoding of the material to some clowntown outfit. Add to that all the other stuff that Paramount indulge in and, well, gift horses and looking in mouths comes to mind. We shouldn't be grumbling as physical media continues to wither and die by the day but if one of the main USPs of physical - robust encoding - is being disregarded then what's the point?

Yeah. I'm not in charge of any film transfers working in advertising, but compressing video is a huge part of my job, and it's really not that hard!! You really have to leave the encoder on full auto to get some of these hatchet jobs.
But whenever I get an export from an editor, it's so much bigger, and worse looking, than it needs to be, because it's just untouched adobe h.264 output. it's crazy how few people can encode things properly.

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

robust encoding - is being disregarded then what's the point?

Robust encoding is not even in the the checklist of those (the vast majority) who only care about brightness and pop

Chatting to people who set Reality Creation at 100 and complaining about strange artifiacts has been the norm these days lol.

[banjo!]

Originally Posted by colormeandrew

What a disaster to my tea and light refreshments.

Originally Posted by GrouchoFan

The Bucket woman?!?

Originally Posted by Cplhicks

It's pronounced Bouquet.

Also, looking at the screenshots it looks a lot better than the old BD to me. Not stretched, better color, none of the halos and murky sharpening stuff I see on the old disc. I didn't check every single shot but to me it looks like a big step up.

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

Not that anyone can tell with how much horror I watch, but Keeping Up Appearances is maybe my favorite show ever. So you all made my day!

[NeilZ]

Originally Posted by andreasy969

I'm afraid not, since the caps at caps state +FEL, which has been confirmed means that those are incl. the EL. So if anything, it might be even worse in HDR10.


Someone really needs to rescue us from these poor Paramount encodes. Especially since Paramount often (as is the case here) doesn't even give us a properly encoded BD with the new master. Except for not actually owning anything, with this kind of disc quality, one might just as well switch to streaming...

Oh yeah you're right. This is news to me I didn't know it was possible to get proper caps with the FEL.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Rusty100

Yeah. I'm not in charge of any film transfers working in advertising, but compressing video is a huge part of my job, and it's really not that hard!! You really have to leave the encoder on full auto to get some of these hatchet jobs.
But whenever I get an export from an editor, it's so much bigger, and worse looking, than it needs to be, because it's just untouched adobe h.264 output. it's crazy how few people can encode things properly.

I get the sense with Paramount's B team there is no feedback going back to them about how sh*tty of a job they are doing. Must be nice to work with no accountability.

[oddbox83]

You’d imagine a high quality HEVC encode with processing time and manual checking would take a week or so at least for a very high quality output. I wouldn’t be surprised if some churn them out within a day.

[JRcanReid]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

I get the sense with Paramount's B team there is no feedback going back to them about how sh*tty of a job they are doing. Must be nice to work with no accountability.

How are they going to get us to buy the Phase 2 "enhanced" 4K UHD's (2026-2035) with the proper encoding if they give us the last copy we'll ever need to buy right now?

[Filmmaker]

Okay, whatever the technical term is for this Steelbook that’s not a Steelbook, it’s gorgeous beyond all reason and every standard Steelbook from this point forward will leave me disappointed.

[AKORIS]

this comes out in a few days... are there no reviews anywhere for this disc?

Makes me a little nervous...

[Fjodor2000]

Originally Posted by Rusty100

Yeah. I'm not in charge of any film transfers working in advertising, but compressing video is a huge part of my job, and it's really not that hard!! You really have to leave the encoder on full auto to get some of these hatchet jobs.

Agreed that it's not that hard. But I'm actually more worried that they are not leaving the encoder on full auto (in the sense that I mean). I'm suspecting they are manually tinkering with encoder settings that they do not know how to properly select, so they mess things up.

A lot of the crappy encodes I've seen would be much better if they just would have selected good default settings and let the encoder do the rest. Just select "constant quality" and what quality level you desire, while still fitting the output file in the storage space desired. Then the encoder will handle the rest. Analyzing image complexity for each section of the movie, selecting appropriate bitrate, appropriate encoding features, etc.

It almost seems like some production companies are intentionally f*cking up the encodes by manually tinkering with the settings. Cannot be too good on first 4K BD release. Gotta leave some incentive for a new 4K BD re-master/encode in a few year's time, so people can upgrade and double-dip?

Note that the above is a general comment. Does not apply specifically to Sleepy Hollow 4K BD. Looking at the caps of that particular movie, I've seen far worse 4K BD encodes.