Jurassic Park Collection 4K UHD (1993-2015)

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by SynViks

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comp....php?id=113889

But there is no grain in that pic, no grain at all. It has been completely DNRed because DNR = not Sony grain and -- no I don't care that the grain is so finely resolved you can see the chroma R+G & B pattern in the structure IT'S BEEN DNRed OKAY! Waxed and smoothed over, 1/10, BUYER BEWARE!

You're kidding, right?

[SynViks]

If you read the post of mine that pawel86ck was responding to, you'll have your answer. Was making fun of the frankly absurd reactions to the JP1 transfer.

[s_har]

Originally Posted by Joshjp

Ohh nice..its a good price to...wish the 4k version had that.

Yeah, I've had the pleasure of checking out that set myself (the UK version) and it is actually a very well crafted and nice looking set. Much nicer look and exclusive feel to it than both the US and UK UHD sets (judging the last two by pics only, haven't checked them out in person). The only downside is that it contains a cardboard 'booklet' of sorts that you stick each individual disc into which I fear could lead to scratches to the discs with frequent use. Other than that it's a very nice packaging that is unfortunately 'wasted' on those old BDs. Should have used it for the UHDs instead.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by SynViks

If you look at the Close Encounters 4K UHD vs the Blu, you'll notice that the blu has blacks that seem clipped vs the UHD, even though it's just an SDR conversion of the UHD. I'd wager tone mapping can come in to play with more than just the brighter tones (depending on the method of course as hard clipping shouldn't effect them).

In anycase, have you had your display calibrated or measured with a spectra profiled colormeter?

Tone mapping at the display end is a different situation from a hinky remapping at source that's baked in to the signal. No display should have to crush blacks as part of mapping the signal because black is black, nothing has changed in that regard with display technology and EOTFs in general, but whatever people wanna do with the SDR pass at source is up to them. As for CE3K's new Blu you might wanna look at this post of mine in the Matrix thread : https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...4#post15080734

My display has been profiled with a Colormunki Photo and subsequently calibrated with a Colormunki Display and HCFR software in both SDR and HDR. I'm very confident that what I'm seeing is closer to the truth than not, which I cannot say for the vast majority of commentators up in here. Not throwing any shade at anyone in particular, just telling it like it is.

BTW I was one of the only people who noticed the heavily crushed blacks on the UHD of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and then as now most people reacted like I had two heads or something, only for the Screenshot Science™ to prove me absolutely right:

Originally Posted by andreasy969

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2:

UHD-BD (madVR/SDR/100 nits) left, BD (upscaled) right:

https://s2.imagebanana.com/file/180312/pKLdWpjD.png https://s2.imagebanana.com/file/180312/ggyn9Xy9.png

https://s1.imagebanana.com/file/180312/1VfJ08V6.png https://s2.imagebanana.com/file/180312/eqQCUqrs.png

https://s1.imagebanana.com/file/180312/ljJpGZOV.png https://s2.imagebanana.com/file/180312/NEOvAqwn.png

The thing that gets my Geoffy Sense tingling is how the shadow detail is just suddenly swallowed up and doesn't have a nice gradual roll-off from light to dark, instead leaving this harsh demarcation between the two and both Lost World and JPIII are pretty chronic for it. Will anyone care apart from me? Probably not. But it's definitely there.

[jayman3]

Originally Posted by Joshjp

Ohh nice..its a good price to...wish the 4k version had that.

https://youtu.be/cFZ_GF96Su8

[JohnCarpenterFan]

Not really seeing any dastardly DNR in those screenshots of the original. Interestingly enough, I read a comment from someone involved in filmmaking on another forum and they were talking about how it's not reasonable for people (on this site specifically) to expect everything to have the grain of a Sony scan and that basically it's messing with peoples' perceptions of how film actually looks.

With Sony scans you're getting a 4K or higher scan of the original element (prints are multiple generations removed with much less resolved grain to the point that you may not even be aware of its presence), on some of these Sony scans it doesn't even look as if there's been any noise reduction whatsoever as it appears that scanner noise is still visible. On top of that, quite a few Sony 4K remasters have been artificially sharpened which accentuates the grain and noise even more. Add in Sony's tendency to really pump up the contrast/brightness for HDR and things can get really ugly depending on what equipment you have.

I've got to wonder if this mentality that Sony scans are how film should look (when you'd never see anything like that outside of digital) and that anything less means it isn't filmic, is causing perfectly filmic looking presentations to be unjustifiably shunned. I remember reading comments where people were talking about UHDs such as Unforgiven and the Nolan titles having moderate or distracting DNR. When I was watching them, the acronym DNR never even came to mind (outside of those several distracting moments from Batman Begins), I was just too busy enjoying the films and saw nothing that detracted from the experience.

Of course, I haven't yet seen these Jurassic Park UHDs in motion and it is Universal, so there's that too.

[Geoff D]

Jurassic World, then. Wow. WOW. The movie was finished on a 2.4K DI having been shot on 35mm and 65mm with a smattering of digital for some aerial shots, and boy does it show. The thing that hits you first is the grain, it's beautifully resolved - yes, I'll happily invoke comparisons with the big S here, come at me bros! - and adds so much texture to the images. Detail-wise it really flexes its guns on the wider shots, the images of the park and all the lickle people looking more defined and less mushy than the SDR Blu-ray, which itself is no slouch. The best shots are the ones without a lot of CG mind you, the exterior shots when Masrani is ferrying Claire to the Indo Rex compound in the helicopter have an almost three-dimensional feel to them.

Dynamic range has a decent little extension, people may watch it and wonder just what exactly it's doing because the highlights still look a little burnt, but it's only when you compare it to the SDR Blu that you'll see that the Blu loses even more highlight detail, with clouds and speculars looking extremely flat and devoid of information. And unlike its predecessors the CG shots have all the dynamic range they need to match up with the main body of the feature which is one of the advantages of the DI process in general, VFX is often delivered as a 'raw' image or with a particular show LUT to match the colour science of the main feature and is then colour graded just like any other piece of footage. And I know that the CG in this movie has its detractors but here it looks soooooo good with that filmic overlay and the HDR, and the detail on Blue when Owen is reaching out to him at the end of the film is just phenomenal.

And as for the dreaded Universal black crush...they've only gone and done the opposite! How perverse. Yes, the HDR grade has actually had the blacks lightened a little bit vs the SDR Blu, bringing back some shadow detail in the darkest spots but without killing the blacks completely as there's still a rich level of black to be found. A couple of shots look a bit overly thin, like when the nerdy dude is in the control room talking to Claire late on, or one of the shots of the Raptor chase, but those are outliers. The colour in general is lovely, not seeking to reinvent what was there before but adding a touch more vitality and nuance at the same time.

Photo time! Let me reiterate, for the squillionth time, THAT THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SDR AND HDR IMAGES AS A WHOLE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS DEFINITIVE RECORDS. THEY ARE THERE FOR ME TO SHOW YOU WHAT I'M SEEING SO PAY ATTENTION TO THE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE ATTRIBUTES I WANT TO DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO:

The boys in the bubble, check the clouds in the background:

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Clare in the Unimog with the boys. Please please PLEASE note that I've had to jack up the exposure to silly levels to try and capture the difference in black levels so IGNORE HOW HORRIBLY BLOWN OUT THE HIGHLIGHTS ARE. But you should be able to see how the UHD is drawing out more shadow detail on the back of the boy's head and around her eyes:

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Rexy right at the end, the UHD shot IS NOT THAT DARK IN REALITY but I had to lower the exposure to grab the highlights which beat the BD quite handily. Imagine the brightness of Rexy's face in the SDR photo with the highlight retention of the HDR photo and you've got what the HDR version actually looks like:

[Show spoiler]
BD



UHD

Lastly here are a couple of quick shots that are ONLY designed to show some scratches on the film, pay no attention to what the rest of the image looks like. I've mentioned before that I still see little bits of white (negative) "sparkle" even on brand new movies shot on film and finished on a DI and so it proved here. They're not offputting by any means and all add to the filmic flavour. Y'all know me: The Geoffy Vision™ sees all!

Little blip next to Claire:

[Show spoiler]

Massive hair/scratch underneath Owen's eye:

[Show spoiler]

So, yeah. JW's UHD isn't just a home run, Universal have smashed it out of the (Jurassic) park. That may seem like faint praise considering that most of what we're seeing is down to the original DI finish rather than Uni restoring something from scratch but even so, they still had to get it out without ****ing it up somehow (that must've been VERY difficult for their home video techs, I can imagine them sitting there sweating as all this lovely grain washes over them) and for that I can only commend them.

[Hardback247]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

And unlike its predecessors the CG shots have all the dynamic range they need to match up with the main body of the feature which is one of the advantages of the DI process in general, VFX is often delivered as a 'raw' image or with a particular show LUT to match the colour science of the main feature and is then colour graded just like any other piece of footage. And I know that the CG in this movie has its detractors but here it looks soooooo good with that filmic overlay and the HDR, and the detail on Blue when Owen is reaching out to him at the end of the film is just phenomenal.

So the CGI in this transfer actually looks better than on the regular Blu-Ray?

Oh, and Blue is not a "him."

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Not really seeing any dastardly DNR in those screenshots of the original. Interestingly enough, I read a comment from someone involved in filmmaking on another forum and they were talking about how it's not reasonable for people (on this site specifically) to expect everything to have the grain of a Sony scan and that basically it's messing with peoples' perceptions of how film actually looks.

With Sony scans you're getting a 4K or higher scan of the original element (prints are multiple generations removed with much less resolved grain to the point that you may not even be aware of its presence), on some of these Sony scans it doesn't even look as if there's been any noise reduction whatsoever as it appears that scanner noise is still visible. On top of that, quite a few Sony 4K remasters have been artificially sharpened which accentuates the grain and noise even more. Add in Sony's tendency to really pump up the contrast/brightness for HDR and things can get really ugly depending on what equipment you have.

I've got to wonder if this mentality that Sony scans are how film should look (when you'd never see anything like that outside of digital) and that anything less means it isn't filmic, is causing perfectly filmic looking presentations to be unjustifiably shunned. I remember reading comments where people were talking about UHDs such as Unforgiven and the Nolan titles having moderate or distracting DNR. When I was watching them, the acronym DNR never even came to mind (outside of those several distracting moments from Batman Begins), I was just too busy enjoying the films and saw nothing that detracted from the experience.

Of course, I haven't yet seen these Jurassic Park UHDs in motion and it is Universal, so there's that too.

Interesting thoughts. I never heard before that newer 4K+ scanning adds noise.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Not really seeing any dastardly DNR in those screenshots of the original. Interestingly enough, I read a comment from someone involved in filmmaking on another forum and they were talking about how it's not reasonable for people (on this site specifically) to expect everything to have the grain of a Sony scan and that basically it's messing with peoples' perceptions of how film actually looks.

With Sony scans you're getting a 4K or higher scan of the original element (prints are multiple generations removed with much less resolved grain to the point that you may not even be aware of its presence), on some of these Sony scans it doesn't even look as if there's been any noise reduction whatsoever as it appears that scanner noise is still visible. On top of that, quite a few Sony 4K remasters have been artificially sharpened which accentuates the grain and noise even more. Add in Sony's tendency to really pump up the contrast/brightness for HDR and things can get really ugly depending on what equipment you have.

I've got to wonder if this mentality that Sony scans are how film should look (when you'd never see anything like that outside of digital) and that anything less means it isn't filmic, is causing perfectly filmic looking presentations to be unjustifiably shunned. I remember reading comments where people were talking about UHDs such as Unforgiven and the Nolan titles having moderate or distracting DNR. When I was watching them, the acronym DNR never even came to mind (outside of those several distracting moments from Batman Begins), I was just too busy enjoying the films and saw nothing that detracted from the experience.

Of course, I haven't yet seen these Jurassic Park UHDs in motion and it is Universal, so there's that too.

And those are fair points JCF, ones I've agreed with before, although I don't recall a lot of people saying that Unforgiven was DNR'ed, at least not originally as that goofy new "List of DNR" thread doesn't count as people are seeing the DNR boogeyman everywhere now . As for the Nolans, there's a definite rolling off of the grain in most of them because it just doesn't look natural, it shouldn't clump and freeze and crawl around like it does, that's simply not the behaviour of natural organic grain on film (a step-printed still frame aside ) but entirely is the result of processes applied in the video domain after the fact. Batman Begins' worst moments are the extreme end of the "grain management" that has been deployed across the Nolan UHDs, with honourable exceptions to Inception and Dunkirk (the latter being all large format anyway so it doesn't need to **** with the grain).

Basically there doesn't seem to be a wide range of levels of how grain is treated by most studios on their HDR remasters of photochemical shows thus far, they seem to be leaving it untouched (with all that entails inc scanner noise) or managing it down to virtual invisibility. While I would LOVE for a middle ground to be struck, I truly would, if I had to choose between a Nolan'ed 35mm show or a Sony'd 35mm then in my ignorance I'd pick the Sony every damned time. Why? I'd rather have too much than too little because at least too much can be tamed, whereas too little cannot be reclaimed no matter how many grain dances someone performs.

[edit] The recent releases of Grease and Grease 2 (on BD only) are a case in point: Grease has had the grain suppressed extremely heavily in multiple shots throughout the movie, causing various temporal artefacts to be left behind, and while Grease 2 has also had a noise reduction pass it's still got a healthy layer of grain that preserves the intrinsic filmic texture quite beautifully. I can't say the same for the UHDs of JP1 and JP3, for although they're not wax-faced monstrosities the grain has absolutely been rolled off and what's left behind doesn't always look kosher. It's not the rolling off itself that I have an inherent problem with, it's HOW these things are achieved that's the key thing and with the state of certain releases it's like we've gone backwards 10 years to the bad old DNR days of yore.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by HeavyHitter

Interesting thoughts. I never heard before that newer 4K+ scanning adds noise.

I know what you're thinking...and that's not the cause of the weird-ass colour blocking that I've been complaining about recently, it's a compression issue with the chroma channels specifically.

[ROSS.T.G.]

Yeah I don’t think Unforgiven was DNR’d. It looks lovely.

[JJ]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Photo time! Let me reiterate, for the squillionth time, THAT THESE PHOTOS ARE NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE SDR AND HDR IMAGES AS A WHOLE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED AS DEFINITIVE RECORDS. THEY ARE THERE FOR ME TO SHOW YOU WHAT I'M SEEING SO PAY ATTENTION TO THE SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE ATTRIBUTES I WANT TO DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO:

I bet people will still not read this.

[Geoff D]

I'm thinking you're right.

[SynViks]

Originally Posted by JohnCarpenterFan

Not really seeing any dastardly DNR in those screenshots of the original. Interestingly enough, I read a comment from someone involved in filmmaking on another forum and they were talking about how it's not reasonable for people (on this site specifically) to expect everything to have the grain of a Sony scan and that basically it's messing with peoples' perceptions of how film actually looks.

With Sony scans you're getting a 4K or higher scan of the original element (prints are multiple generations removed with much less resolved grain to the point that you may not even be aware of its presence), on some of these Sony scans it doesn't even look as if there's been any noise reduction whatsoever as it appears that scanner noise is still visible. On top of that, quite a few Sony 4K remasters have been artificially sharpened which accentuates the grain and noise even more. Add in Sony's tendency to really pump up the contrast/brightness for HDR and things can get really ugly depending on what equipment you have.

I've got to wonder if this mentality that Sony scans are how film should look (when you'd never see anything like that outside of digital) and that anything less means it isn't filmic, is causing perfectly filmic looking presentations to be unjustifiably shunned. I remember reading comments where people were talking about UHDs such as Unforgiven and the Nolan titles having moderate or distracting DNR. When I was watching them, the acronym DNR never even came to mind (outside of those several distracting moments from Batman Begins), I was just too busy enjoying the films and saw nothing that detracted from the experience.

Of course, I haven't yet seen these Jurassic Park UHDs in motion and it is Universal, so there's that too.

These are excellent points, and only serve to hammer home the point that just because a release doesn't have Sony Grain (tm) doesn't mean it's been DNRed. I'd like to also add a couple more peculiar aspect about the Sony grain I'm seeing:

If you look at the transfers of Nolan's films shot in 35mm, you can see the grain is a bit squished vertically. This is because he shoots in anamorphic, and when the image is expanded out, the grain will stretch on the x axis. However, if you look at Ghost Busters for example (which, according to what I've read, was shot on anamorphic), you can't see the similar stretching and the grain looks circular as opposed to oval.

I've heard that, in some grading workflows, the goal is to remove the grain so you can color correct and reinsert afterwards to avoid the grain becoming agitated by the correction process. I wonder if this is an indication of what Sony is doing? Given that a heavier grain increases perceived sharpness, I wouldn't be surprised if Sony pumped up the grain so as to make their UHDs appear sharper.


As for grain in general, I feel like it's helpful to take a look at this still from the Dawn of the Dead IP, which, aside from having a simple balancing, is straight from the scanner with no "DNR":



Note that the grain isn't as contrasted as the Sony grain. It's very fine, and is very noticeable in the chroma as well as the luma (whereas Sony grain seems far more visible in the chroma). Obviously the rules by which the grain manifests are governed partly by the stock used...

It's important to remember that, when compressing a grained image, the HEVC encoder will smudge the grain a little bit and potentially lessen the chroma component since the chroma resolution is HD.

That's why I feel the Jurassic Park transfer is a good example of proper grain management on UHD:
-It's very fine
-It's very visible in the chroma component
-It doesn't look like noise

Obviously if the grain were finer or more resolute I'd prefer that, but there are compromises that have to be accepted with compressed video.

[Agent Kay]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Resolving 4000 nits or less has absolutely nothing to do with how black can be resolved. The information is simply not there in the signal vs the previous SDR grades. And when I get to my Jurassic World review you'll understand why my TV isn't doing anything untoward.

But for now a one word review of JW will suffice: WOW.

Teal-y?

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I know what you're thinking...and that's not the cause of the weird-ass colour blocking that I've been complaining about recently, it's a compression issue with the chroma channels specifically.

I was also thinking along the lines of added artifacts outside of that which were more common in the older days as I understood it.

[pawel86ck]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Resolving 4000 nits or less has absolutely nothing to do with how black can be resolved. The information is simply not there in the signal vs the previous SDR grades. And when I get to my Jurassic World review you'll understand why my TV isn't doing anything untoward.

But for now a one word review of JW will suffice: WOW.

I'm not an expert on HDTV's, but I have seen very interesting video suggesting the amount of nits on HDTV display indeed makes a difference when it comes to resolving shadow details. HDTV experts from my country have compared 3 different HDTV's (300, 700 and 1000 nits) running the same HDR content. Entry level HDTV (300 nits) was crushing shadow details like crazy, and the same dark scene was clearly brighter on more cappable 700 and 1000 nits HDTVs. I also remember reading HDR monitor review, when reviewer have pointed out this particular monitor was crushing a lot of shadow details in HDR mode because of just 300 nits. So based on these informations I have concluded that nits are indeed impacting the amount of shadow detail HDTV can resolve. Of course I may be wrong in my conclusion and something different was impacting black levels and shadows details, but then I will gladly listen to your more accurate explanation

https://hdtvpolska.com/test-dolby-vi...ra-hd-blu-ray/
This article is in Polish, but I want you to see just Dolby vision, LG active HDR and HDR10 interactive comparison.

This one in particular. With standard HDR10 picture is more dark and shadow details are crushed. With Dolby vision picture is brighter and has more shadow details at the same time. But LG active HDR feature make HDR10 content bright as in Dolby Vision mode and you can see shadow details that you could not see before without active HDR enabled. So these shadow details were there before in HDR content, and it was simply HDTV that could not resolve all shadow details without dynamic meta data.

Your ZD9 is very cappable HDTV, it may not crush details in 1000 nits HDR mastered content (because it simply has enough nits) but there are also some UHD movies mastered at 4000 nits. I dont know if SONY ZD9 has similar feature like active HDR (feature that make dynamic metadata on the fly and because of that is able to adjust picture brightness to your particular display), because if jurassic park movies are mastered at 4000 nits, feature like that would help to resolve more shadow details.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by SynViks

These are excellent points, and only serve to hammer home the point that just because a release doesn't have Sony Grain (tm) doesn't mean it's been DNRed. I'd like to also add a couple more peculiar aspect about the Sony grain I'm seeing:

And yet the grain in Nolan's UHD movies - from IP's all - doesn't look anything like as well resolved as that DOTD grab does, and while you're right about the anamorphosis squashing down the grain on Mr N's shows it doesn't make it invisible or conspicuously crawly all of a sudden.

Look, clearly people are pushing and pulling in their respective directions on this issue but the middle ground is what I reckon most folks would ultimately prefer, including myself, like that seen on Die Hard, say. Plenty of the grainy stuff floating about but never as strong as that seen on most Sony joints.

[wildphantom]

Watching Jurassic World now. Holy god!
The shot when the kid opens the shutters and we fly over the park in all its glory - indescribable until you see it with your own eyes. Wow.