Alphaville 4K UHD (1965) (Kino Studio Classics)

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by SpaceBlackKnight

The Graduate is MGM in the US and Criterion reportedly nabbed 4k for that one.

That is fine with me. Criterion encodes aren’t perfect but they are better than Kino. And that Criterion BD that would likely be paired with it was solid. I guess there’s always the risk of a FIM joint coming out in UK, being SC and all. Wish these boutiques released around the same time.

[vinvanveen]

I got an Amazon notification that the release has been delayed until August 27.

[SpookyDollhouse]

Originally Posted by vinvanveen

I got an Amazon notification that the release has been delayed until August 27.

The UHD page on Kino's website has also been changed to the 8/27 date

[tama]

My copy arrives tomorrow from Amazon. Won't be able to do a complete watch but will scan and skip around and compare to the BD.

[kmhofmann]

Had a quick look at the disc today. First impressions:

It looks like a master that has been thoroughly degrained and then re-grained by whoever "restored" it. A lot of swizzling grain around contours of people, etc.

Unfortunately, compression is average in most down to catastrophic in certain sequences.

[bergman864]

Originally Posted by kmhofmann

Had a quick look at the disc today. First impressions:

It looks like a master that has been thoroughly degrained and then re-grained by whoever "restored" it. A lot of swizzling grain around contours of people, etc.

Unfortunately, compression is average in most down to catastrophic in certain sequences.

That'd be odd for Studio Canal to de-grain and re-grain a film. When it comes to SC transfers it's usually the color grade that gets questioned.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by bergman864

That'd be odd for Studio Canal to de-grain and re-grain a film. When it comes to SC transfers it's usually the color grade that gets questioned.

It's happened before several times; Falbalas comes to mind immediately. Also, it's more down to the restoration house that SC commissioned and whoever decided to do terrible things there.

[Matt89]

That's weird. Damn I was planning on picking this up, hope they did a better job with Last Year at Marienbad. That's the one I REALLY want.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by Matt89

That's weird. Damn I was planning on picking this up, hope they did a better job with Last Year at Marienbad. That's the one I REALLY want.

First-glance impressions: Marienbad looks significantly better, both from a supplied master as well as encoding perspective.

[nicwood]

Originally Posted by Matt89

That's weird. Damn I was planning on picking this up, hope they did a better job with Last Year at Marienbad. That's the one I REALLY want.

The reason Marienbad and the Melville titles turned out fine is because the master is SDR. All of KL’s problems are due to HDR and the brighter highlights that are a nightmare for their encoding software.

[Matt89]

Originally Posted by nicwood

The reason Marienbad and the Melville titles turned out fine is because the master is SDR. All of KL’s problems are due to HDR and the brighter highlights that are a nightmare for their encoding software.

Ahh that's a good point. Their recent SDR discs (like Narrow Margin and yes, the other Melville titles) look fantastic.

[tama]

Watched my copy tonight, and with the exception that yes in some scenes there's this magnetic force of grain that moves with people, it wasn't a constant thing or distraction.

I'm opposite of what been said. This new master kicks that absolute living shit out of the previous Kino BD from a few years ago that was also advertised as a 4K master. There clearly different. I don't like the use of the word denoise here because it gives a false sense of maybe waxness or smearing which isn't the case at all. Plenty of improved detail and texture.

Watch in DV and had very little complaint about compression overall.

[kmhofmann]

Originally Posted by tama

There clearly different.

Yes, they are different and the scan that was made for the new master is clearly much better.

Originally Posted by tama

I don't like the use of the word denoise here because it gives a false sense of maybe waxness or smearing which isn't the case at all.

However, the post-processing on the new scan contains loads of degraining and re-graining, in my estimation. I believe this is baked into the new master and further exacerbated by Kino's wonky compression.

The re-graining gives the false impression that there is a lot of detail in the de-grained master. That is incorrect. Yes, a lot of scenes still contain vastly improved detail and texture - today's de-graining algorithms aren't as dumb as the DNR of 10 years ago. (Instead, they produce dead give-away artifacts like the swirling grain clouds we see here.)

But large parts of the movie look like this (even ignoring the out-of-focus bits in the first screencap):


Note there is barely any detail behind the fine layer of "grain".

[tama]

Originally Posted by kmhofmann

Yes, they are different and the scan that was made for the new master is clearly much better.


However, the post-processing on the new scan contains loads of degraining and re-graining, in my estimation. I believe this is baked into the new master and further exacerbated by Kino's wonky compression.

The re-graining gives the false impression that there is a lot of detail in the de-grained master. That is incorrect. Yes, a lot of scenes still contain vastly improved detail and texture - today's de-graining algorithms aren't as dumb as the DNR of 10 years ago. (Instead, they produce dead give-away artifacts like the swirling grain clouds we see here.)

But large parts of the movie look like this (even ignoring the out-of-focus bits in the first screencap):


Note there is barely any detail behind the fine layer of "grain".

That first pic hallway scene which happens around the 13:10 mark on the original BD from Kino is very mushy/moldy looking. Now because I have two players that can turn off DV (which is how I watched this last night) I was able to compare.

Like Paramount encodes, it wets the bed in HDR10 and looks just like your pic. Lego city. However in DV it recovers well enough. Grain is there and moves naturally enough in this scene at least. Go back a minute with Mr. Johnson close up and you can see clearly the magnetic grain that gets dragged around when his head moves. I'd roll the dice and say about 80% of the encode recovers in DV.

So if you can't display DV then I would pass on this title.

[Egbert Souse]

The 4K UHD looks great to my eyes. I didn't see the "magnetic grain" effect at all, despite it being pretty obvious on Kino's Invasion of the Body Snatchers '56.

I'm watching in standard HDR with Dolby Vision turned off, if that helps.

[mande2013]

The reactions to this release are clearly a mixed bag, and it doesn’t sound like it’s worth the 40-odd euro import price tag in any case. I’ll stick with the KL Blu-ray for now. This is definitely a situation where I’ll hold out for the film to be available in 4K on digital platforms.

[nicwood]

This is a tough one to crack. To put this straight right away, I can also confirm that the master was sadly messed with grain management which results in the magnetic, swarmy grain field. Yes, Egbert, it’s clearly there and VERY visible. I’m happy for you that you don’t see it. It’s no classic DNR case with wiped-out grain but they probably wanted to give the entire film an “even” grain field. Hiventy is the guilty party and Alphaville marks the 3rd out of 3 messed up Godard films. I don’t like the grading very much either, it’s often unnecessarily dim, particularly in low-light scenes, but the grain management heightens that impression. However, when compared to the KL BD, it’s nonetheless an improvement.

I’ve done an extensive comparison and the old 4K master is indeed quite significantly inferior because the underlying scan of whatever was used at the time isn’t the most detailed one. I’m pretty sure it was not the negative as the difference in detail between the two masters is occasionally astonishing. Despite the grain management, which as usual affects higher-generation material (opticals) the most, during OCN segments there’s so much detail it’s actually a little surreal. Particularly close-up’s are remarkably beautiful.

I’ve long thought about with which version I’ll go in the future and even though the BD has the more organic look and the UHD master terrible flaws, I just can’t go back to that mushy look when knowing that the film can look that much better and in its best moments actually does. It’s a pick your poison thing. Since this is a new SC master I’m sure they’re also putting this out soon, however knowing French authoring houses, grain-managed masters like this usually lead to even worse encodes because their authoring software mistakes fine (managed) grain with no detail and therefore the bitrates plummet into single-digits. I fully expect that the same incompetent house that did Breathless and Contempt will do Alphaville as well since SC seemingly pair restoration houses with authoring houses. (This explains why restorations done in England and Silver Salt are all encoded by FiM or VDMS). KL on the other hand throw all possible bits at the master and encode the entire thing at 80-90 MB/s, which prevents the bitrate-dependent blockiness across entire frames that plague Paramount and SC’s worst UHDs. The only real issues with the KL encode are the typically blocky highlights. (I’m calling right now that the KL encode remains the better one once SC’s UHD comes out).

[PNguyen]

Sounds real botched, I'll wait for the SC.

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by PNguyen

Sounds real botched, I'll wait for the SC.

Some of this bad stuff appears baked into the restoration, bad compression aside. Better compression won't necessarily fix it if that's what it is.

[nicwood]

Originally Posted by PNguyen

Sounds real botched, I'll wait for the SC.

What Kyle said. The majority of the anomalies are in the master and KL’s ultra-high bitrate encode didn’t enhance the grain management further as they’re throwing all the bits at this master so you’re essentially seeing what the lab did. Don’t get me wrong, the better-looking moments are still affected by the KL compression but in this case the encode definitely is the lesser evil all in all. Masters like this are usually horribly encoded by SC with single-digit bitrates during the most managed moments as there’s less grain and their encoding software is tuned to throttle the bitrates. Such encoding ruined Godard’s Breathless in 4K among others and I fully expect SC and Hiventy or whoever did this new sh*tshow to do it all over again.