The Secret of Kells

[cooltobeyou]

Yeah, this is one of the few movies that is actually worth $25-$30. When the movie first started I was a little underwhelmed by the animation style...but five minutes into the movie, it really started to blow me away. This is one of the most beautiful animated films I've seen in a long time. Its definitely my favorite animated film since Coraline.

[toddly6666]

Originally Posted by shinseiromeo

Hey hey now! Let me come up with some excuses...

12 Rounds was purchased on sale and solely for A/V. Babylon A.D. was a guilty pleasure but admit it was despicable, and Tomb Raider... $5 new at Sam's Club. Love the game series so I figured why not.

Just buy the bluray - you already have pixar-type films on blu. You have a chance to buy an animated masterpiece on bluray which is better than the majority of pixar or recent disney films.

Or you can buy three more crappy b-movie films which add up to 25 bucks!

Would u rather buy 25 crappy b-movies with perfect a/v quality for $1 each or buy one masterpiece with perfect a/v quality for $25?

[neoz]

Originally Posted by smahyt

Sorry to revive an extremely old topic, but I've been looking for this for ages. Has anyone seen this in the wild as of late with a good condition slipcover? I'm assuming all of the online orders don't come with the slip, but I could be wrong with that assumption. There was one on eBay not too long ago, but it had a large crease down the spine and it has been bought up since.

You might want to try some Best Buy's. My local BB has one but it was the last of the ones they had in store and it was pretty bad. I got the last good one there. You could take a chance with Amazon as it probably isn't a highly sought title so it might come with one. As all Amazon orders though it may be 50/50.

[Daikichi Kawachi (河地大吉)]

Originally Posted by smahyt

Sorry to revive an extremely old topic, but I've been looking for this for ages. Has anyone seen this in the wild as of late with a good condition slipcover? I'm assuming all of the online orders don't come with the slip, but I could be wrong with that assumption. There was one on eBay not too long ago, but it had a large crease down the spine and it has been bought up since.

The slipcover is oversized so I suspect most are damaged.

[arcadeforest]

Originally Posted by smahyt

Sorry to revive an extremely old topic, but I've been looking for this for ages. Has anyone seen this in the wild as of late with a good condition slipcover? I'm assuming all of the online orders don't come with the slip, but I could be wrong with that assumption. There was one on eBay not too long ago, but it had a large crease down the spine and it has been bought up since.

As neoz mentioned try Best Buy - such a good film, one of my favorites animation or not over the last few years

[Sinthetic]

Originally Posted by smahyt

Good news, a very nice guy over at one of the external storefronts through Amazon had a great condition copy in stock. Ships out Monday! Excited to finally own this... soon.

It's a seriously good one mate. Any fan of animated films should not miss this.

[labria86]

In case anyone here, like me, was wanting to add this to the collection, it appears Gkids rereleased or printed more of these. With slips no less. I picked mine up at Wal Mart. It was 15.96 and right next to Hitchcock's Vertigo at several stores. Pretty stoked.

[Jim Purcell]

Originally Posted by labria86

In case anyone here, like me, was wanting to add this to the collection, it appears Gkids rereleased or printed more of these. With slips no less. I picked mine up at Wal Mart. It was 15.96 and right next to Hitchcock's Vertigo at several stores. Pretty stoked.

I also discovered these new printings out today as well. Most shocking the slip and the case spine now has the current uniform G-Kids trade dress. So if your old copy was sticking out like a sore thumb among your G-Kids collection, now is the time to patch that.

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by labria86

In case anyone here, like me, was wanting to add this to the collection, it appears Gkids rereleased or printed more of these. With slips no less. I picked mine up at Wal Mart. It was 15.96 and right next to Hitchcock's Vertigo at several stores. Pretty stoked.

Thanks for the heads up.

[svenge]

Looks like Shout Factory (GKIDS' current home-video partner) is putting out a re-release on November 3rd.

[Monterey Jack]

Enjoying Bruno Coulais' gorgeous score on St. Paddy's Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx1GeKu4GhU

[MifuneFan]

Yesterday, I got to see The Secret of Kells in theater (The Metrograph, NYC) from a 35mm Print, with co-Director Tomm Moore there for an intro, and a Q&A after. This was actually my first time seeing the film, and it was really great. It starts off very light, and funny, so I was not expecting it to be that dark in the final chapter. The middle with Aisling and Brendan in the forest were my favorite parts of the film. I loved the animation style, and the use of the colors throughout, as well as Irish motifs and themes everywhere. The 35mm print looked great with colors that looked a bit more natural, and toned down compared to the screenshots I see of the Blu-ray. I honestly did not know the film was inspired by real-life events of the The Book of Kells until Moore discussed it, so I'm looking forward to doing some research on that now too.

Introduction and Q&A with Tomm Moore

I've taken several videos of the event, and I've broken them down into sections below. The Q&A was great. Tomm Moore came off as a really nice, and warm guy, and answered questions very thoughtfully. I also felt the audience asked great questions too. Please do forgive the video/audio quality though. The low-lighting and spotlight wreaked havoc on my now-dated camera phone.

Introduction by Moore

Director Tomm Moore introduction to The Secret of Kells (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

On the Real-Life Origins and Inspirations for making The Secret of Kells

Director Tomm Moore on the origins of The Secret of Kells (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

Discussing the Art Style

Director Tomm Moore on the Art Style of The Secret of Kells (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

Discussing the Music of the Film

Director Tomm Moore on the Music of The Secret of Kells (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

Discussing the connections in the Irish Folklore Trilogy

Director Tomm Moore on the connections in the Irish Folklore Trilogy (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

Discussing the emergence and use of A.I. art

Director Tomm Moore discussing A.I. Art (The Metrograph 3/15/25) - YouTube

I wasn't actually going to attend this, as the only seats left were in the front, but I'm so glad I did. My view was perfectly fine, and I had the benefit of being right near to entrance where Moore came out from, and also having a great view for the Q&A. When He first came in,, I heard him whisper that it's a nice turn-out (it was a sold out screening), and while I took a picture of him he was taking a selfie of himself and the audience haha. It was a great time. The Metrograph also screened Song of the Sea after as well, which I didn't attend. Moore was there for an intro for that one too.

(Confession time: I kept seeing Moore drink from a dark glass bottle, and I kept thinking, is he drinking Guiness?! I mean, it wouldn't be the most shocking thing, but reviewing the videos now, I see it was likely just water)

[jorimt]

Anyone notice a potential encoding issue in the latest GKids release?

I ordered two copies from Amazon and one copy from Shout Factory directly, and they all had the same issue.

Frame skipping roughly every second is evident, especially during pans. An example is timestamp 19:38.

Upon inspecting the disc file, I see it is 24.000 FPS flat instead of 23.976 FPS like the 2010 Cinedigm blu-ray release, which doesn't have this issue. My digital iTunes copy also doesn't have it.

I contacted GKids and got no response. After ordering a copy via Shout Factory, I contact them, and they just refunded it today "as a one time courtesy," and are letting me keep it. Weird.

Weirder still, Blu-ray.com reviewed this and did not flag the issue, so I'm wondering if it was introduced in later releases?

I have no experiencing reporting encoding issues, so not sure how to proceed...

EDIT: I wrote back and they responded with "Your messages have been sent to the product manager in charge of this release." I'll update here for the record if/when there is a resolution.

[Misioon_Odisea]

Originally Posted by jorimt

Anyone notice a potential encoding issue in the latest GKids release?

I ordered two copies from Amazon and one copy from Shout Factory directly, and they all had the same issue.

Frame skipping roughly every second is evident, especially during pans. An example is timestamp 19:38.

Upon inspecting the disc file, I see it is 24.000 FPS flat instead of 23.976 FPS like the 2010 Cinedigm blu-ray release, which doesn't have this issue. My digital iTunes copy also doesn't have it.

I contacted GKids and got no response. After ordering a copy via Shout Factory, I contact them, and they just refunded it today "as a one time courtesy," and are letting me keep it. Weird.

Weirder still, Blu-ray.com reviewed this and did not flag the issue, so I'm wondering if it was introduced in later releases?

I have no experiencing reporting encoding issues, so not sure how to proceed...

EDIT: I wrote back and they responded with "Your messages have been sent to the product manager in charge of this release." I'll update here for the record if/when there is a resolution.

Hello, and welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your time here, and unfortunately no, you were not the only one to have noticed the encoding error in Shout's 2020 edition, also included as is later in the now discontinued premium Cartoon Saloon Trilogy set. It has been in fact proven to be an improper PAL 25fps>24fps conversion, and Shout! has not issued a replacement or an improved version since. Here are some quotes of the initial observations back when the error was first detected.

Originally Posted by BlueEyedGingerSP

So I just recently got my copy of the Irish Folklore Trilogy, the GKids North American version. I admit I haven't thoroughly read through this entire forum thread to see if anyone's brought this up yet (skimming didn't turn it up, apologies if it has been addressed) but comparing the copy of The Secret of Kells in this release with my old standalone BD shows something a bit off. The runtime's shorter at about 1h15m instead of 1h19m and the audio is pitched slightly higher. That would suggest PAL speedup, but the disc is definitely encoded at 24fps. I ripped both discs and stepped through the video frame by frame from each and found that yes the new disc is just missing 1 frame out of every 25, 1 per second. Needless to say I'll be holding onto my standalone disc...

Originally Posted by BlueEyedGingerSP

OK, yeah just looked up the specs for the Shout Factory standalone disc and they list the runtime as 75 minutes which matches what's in this Trilogy set.
https://www.shoutfactory.com/product...roduct_id=7477

Meanwhile someone over in the forum thread for StudioCanal's UK release of the Trilogy was kind enough to post BDInfo scans of the discs in that set. Sure enough the UK release has the longer runtime, so Shout screwed up their standalone release and since they didn't get called out on it just reused that faulty disc for this set. SMH

Since The Secret of Kells is one of my favorite films and one I consider to be a pinnacle and must-have staple of home video, I myself have too much to say about this problem, not necessarily regarding the disc itself but certainly about the many circumstances surrounding it, but since you're new around here, I'll spare you the pages and pages of passional, candid and possibly defiant text walls about the matter. However, you may ask me about anything you may need to know, particularly about which animation projects to keep an eye on or about being in the forums, and I'll try to help you out where possible.

Sometimes it happens that Blu-ray.com's official reviews may miss a defect on the technical presentation of the discs, such as in this case, so you could look up on the forums here to see if anything went unmentioned.

I think you did right by writing directly to the companies involved, which may be the best available course of action we can take to report these problems, even if often nothing seems to come out of it. They may not issue a replacement for this given the age of the release, but at least we can let them know where they went wrong so they can avoid making this mistake again. Great to see that Shout! replied to your message, and we'll keep an eye out here in case they follow you up on the matter. Hopefully, any potential 4K UltraHD Blu-ray reissue of the film won't suffer from the same error present in Shout's current disc.

[jorimt]

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

Hello, and welcome to the forums! I hope you enjoy your time here

Thanks. Long time lurker. I've had an account for years, but haven't had a reason to post till now.

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

unfortunately no, you were not the only one to have noticed the encoding error in Shout's 2020 edition, also included as is later in the now discontinued premium Cartoon Saloon Trilogy set. It has been in fact proven to be an improper PAL 25fps>24fps conversion, and Shout! has not issued a replacement or an improved version since.

Well shoot, thanks for the confirmation. Makes sense then. 25 > 24 FPS seems to be all too common of a conversion issue.

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

Here are some quotes of the initial observations back when the error was first detected.

Ah, no wonder I missed these. I always check the forums by going to the movie page in question and navigating directly to the available topics in the "Forums" tab. I couldn't find anything by Googling this either.

Seeing as the issue with this release is known and unresolved several years later, I now realize my chances with support are pretty low, but, again, I'll post here if/when they follow-up.

[jorimt]

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

It has been in fact proven to be an improper PAL 25fps>24fps conversion

I forgot to initially ask if you're aware of the optimal UK release of the blu-ray to purchase?

I'm based in the US, but my setup is not region-locked and is capable of proper 25 FPS playback, so I could essentially bypass this entirely for now by importing a copy.

I just went with the GKids release initially, because it's cheaper, readily available here, and matches my other GKids releases, so seemed like a no-brainer until I discovered the issue.

[Misioon_Odisea]

Originally Posted by jorimt

I forgot to initially ask if you're aware of the optimal UK release of the blu-ray to purchase?

I'm based in the US, but my setup is not region-locked and is capable of proper 25 FPS playback, so I could essentially bypass this entirely for now by importing a copy.

I just went with the GKids release initially, because it's cheaper, readily available here, and matches my other GKids releases, so seemed like a no-brainer until I discovered the issue.

Hello. Sorry, I'm not familiar with releases of the film outside of the U.S., but skimming over some reviews of the disc you mentioned, it appears to not have any glaring problems other than the 5.1 audio track not being encoded with a lossless codec. I haven't seen anything mentioning 25 fps about it however, but it doesn't hurt to try and import it if you're interested in it as a viable alternative to the Shout! disc.

[jorimt]

Originally Posted by Misioon_Odisea

it doesn't hurt to try and import it if you're interested in it as a viable alternative to the Shout! disc.

Thanks. Amazon US had https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Carto...lu-ray/331491/ available for import via Amazon Germany, so I'll give that edition a shot and see how it goes (I wanted all three anyway).