Bram Stoker's Dracula 4K UHD (1992) (25th Anniversary Edition)

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Hedrox

Also, by upscaling it themselves they can control how it will look, bypassing the TV's own (potentially dodgy) internal upscaling. FiM like doing this on their releases.

Yep, David would much prefer to control the uprezzing himself. But as said, it's not like content providers have a choice when it comes to putting legacy extras onto a 4K disc because SD is literally not supported.

Originally Posted by PonyoBellanote

I disagree. I honestly prefer the original SD and let the TV and my player do a job. A lot, if not most encodes of SD content to 1080p are just bloated garbage. And sometimes the encode ****s up something that wasn't in the source and in the encode, it'll be baked in. You gotta stick with it. Like how Sony put extras in The Last Action Hero and the aspect ratio is wrong.. that's baked in and you cannot fix it.

Some players are bloody awful at it, the Panasonic 4K players struggle with rendering native SD from DVD (and don't have any kind of aspect ratio control at all, unlike the OPPO, say) but reading SD stored on a Blu-ray Disc is even worse, it's basically broken.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by PonyoBellanote

I disagree. I honestly prefer the original SD and let the TV and my player do a job. A lot, if not most encodes of SD content to 1080p are just bloated garbage. And sometimes the encode ****s up something that wasn't in the source and in the encode, it'll be baked in. You gotta stick with it. Like how Sony put extras in The Last Action Hero and the aspect ratio is wrong.. that's baked in and you cannot fix it.

Don't think of it as just "bloated". Those extra pixels don't mean it automatically needs loads more space as they would losslessly. The compression can be pretty well tailored for extras so it doesn't bite away at the main feature. Since you aren't encoding a high resolution image, you can compress higher without massive loss in perceptual quality with AVC but especially HEVC, and still end up with something that looks better than raw SD.

Obviously they can botch it, but blame the user, not the process itself. My own bugbear is when they deinterlace "video" extras the wrong way. Like deinterlaced to 24p, losing the "video" look when they could have deinterlaced to 60p*, a method that preserves original 60i video look in a progressive container and 4K UHD can easily handle (in fact UHD drops interlaced support). Professional level upscale to 60p can deliver better scaling of interlaced sources. Consumer gear can sometimes struggle to figure out if it should display "film" or "video" when the source is interlaced, basically because you are forcing those 60 discrete temporal frames instead of leaving it to the consumer-level deinterlacers to figure out whether it should display a 24p or 60p image. When it gets it wrong you get either judder or motion blur, anyone who watched a lot of archive TV content that mixes video with film should be aware of the effect as their TV struggles to resync.

*Swap 60p with 50p for PAL material, thankfully UHD now supports 25p and 50p whereas BD meant you had to use 50i containers to preserve 25p framerate, which is fine if the AV gear correctly deinterlaces to 25p display but you've got that room for error again with the consumer scaling.

[Hedrox]

When it comes to studio releases, pretty much none of them utilize the disc's full capacity to maximize video bitrate anyway (except maybe Disney when they squeeze 3 hour movies on BD66s).

It's as if they're all aiming for that BD66 when they're creating the encode and they'll later decide between 66 and 100 depending on how many dub tracks they have to add.

[PonyoBellanote]

I think these days, most studios use BD-66, only use BD-100 when they have to add lot of dubs (maybe if some of them are in lossless, rare chances) or in the case of Universal, because of upscaling extras in the UHD.

But making a feature take full use of a BD-100? Nah. That was some years ago, now that the UHD is more in the market, they don't need to anymore, I guess.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by PonyoBellanote

I think these days, most studios use BD-66, only use BD-100 when they have to add lot of dubs (maybe if some of them are in lossless, rare chances) or in the case of Universal, because of upscaling extras in the UHD.

But making a feature take full use of a BD-100? Nah. That was some years ago, now that the UHD is more in the market, they don't need to anymore, I guess.

Eh? The studios haven't been maxing out stuff since forever, and not just on 4K. But if a UHD100 is not used by any particular outfit (though Disnee are off limits as we know!) then most of the time it's because it's not needed, movies at two hours or under with a smattering of foreign tracks and no extras can usually be ably represented on a UHD66. Not always, but often. The trends you mention re: extras and audio tracks have literally been the case for the last few years, almost since the start with audio and Universal have been putting the extras on the 4K discs for almost as long.

"These days" aren't much different from "the olden days" of six whole years ago when the format debuted. Lionsgate have been using UHD100s for longer than most, and guess what their rationale was? Because they almost always put the extras on the 4K disc too. Look at Kick-Ass, that's a triple decker disc from waaaay back in 2017 but the movie encode itself takes up 67 GB. Huh. It wouldn't surprise me if, when the Universal 2022 disc is scanned, it actually has a slightly higher HDR10 bitrate despite being 'only' on a UHD66.

Ironically enough it's the earlier discs that got their bitrate f*cked in order to squeeze everything onto a UHD66 which devastates the encoding on flicks like ID4, Apollo 13 and Brade Runnah. Boy I wish those generous studios wanting to max everything out were around then!

[PonyoBellanote]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Eh? The studios haven't been maxing out stuff since forever, and not just on 4K. But if a UHD100 is not used by any particular outfit (though Disnee are off limits as we know!) then most of the time it's because it's not needed, movies at two hours or under with a smattering of foreign tracks and no extras can usually be ably represented on a UHD66. Not always, but often. The trends you mention re: extras and audio tracks have literally been the case for the last few years, almost since the start with audio and Universal have been putting the extras on the 4K discs for almost as long.

"These days" aren't much different from "the olden days" of six whole years ago when the format debuted. Lionsgate have been using UHD100s for longer than most, and guess what their rationale was? Because they almost always put the extras on the 4K disc too. Look at Kick-Ass, that's a triple decker disc from waaaay back in 2017 but the movie encode itself takes up 67 GB. Huh. It wouldn't surprise me if, when the Universal 2022 disc is scanned, it actually has a slightly higher HDR10 bitrate despite being 'only' on a UHD66.

Ironically enough it's the earlier discs that got their bitrate f*cked in order to squeeze everything onto a UHD66 which devastates the encoding on flicks like ID4, Apollo 13 and Brade Runnah. Boy I wish those generous studios wanting to max everything out were around then!

[thebarnman]

Recently purchased and watched "Dracula Sucks" (1979) newly restored from the original camera negative from Vinegar Syndrome. Looks gorgeous and is a who's who in adult fanfare as the most star studded X rated film ever made. It's also a very ambitious adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel.

Now I'll do the UHD Blu-ray double dip for Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992) for it's Dolby Vision (improved based on reviews I've read) and original subtitles. I saw a sample of the difference in subtitles where the original are much more stylized.

[oddbox83]

Originally Posted by thebarnman

I saw a sample of the difference in subtitles where the original are much more stylized.

Yeah, me too. Player subs don't bother me as much as some, and it's been so long since I saw Dracula with the original subs, I couldn't really remember what they looked like. So seeing the new caps brought home that they're actually as much a part of the design of the movie as anything else, so that was the decision to upgrade made right there.

[andreasy969]

Disc eventually works and just for the record...

properly burnt-in subs:



and Sony also gives us the good stuff now:

25th anni | 30th anni:

1.

2.

3.

4.



So thanks Sony!

[Show spoiler]But why not right away?

[OutOfBoose]

Gods be praised!

[Mierzwiak]

I did not expected such huge difference in grain and details. Looks great.

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by Mierzwiak

I did not expected such huge difference in grain and details. Looks great.

That's not for the whole transfer though, in case people were wondering. The first 4K UHD disc had a curious case of opticalitis for the opening reel of the film, instead of it switching between optical (for titles/subtitles) and OG neg (for non-optical shots), optical and OG neg and so on, it was just one long dupe instead of the alternating optical/OG footage. As such even the Supreme Cinema series Blu-ray had better quality for this opening reel, while the streaming 4K version also used this alternating method and had the burnt in subtitles to boot. Now they've finally corrected it for the physical 4K re-release.

[grodd]

Dang it! Now I HAVE to buy this again.

[Geoff D]

Yes. Yes, you do.

[OutOfBoose]

How's video quality of "Love Song for a Vampire" music video?

[happydood]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yes. Yes, you do.

^ I hemmed and hawed about how I wasn't going to. Then I walked into my local brick and mortar where I have a lot of credit and I walked out with this disc I didn't think I needed. I watched it last night. It's wonderful. All is well.

[happydood]

Originally Posted by OutOfBoose

How's video quality of "Love Song for a Vampire" music video?

pretty dreadful.

[OutOfBoose]

Originally Posted by happydood

pretty dreadful.

Ouch. Like youtube?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Originally Posted by grodd

Dang it! Now I HAVE to buy this again.

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Yes. Yes, you do.

My thoughts exactly, right when I heard about the original subs (and DV). Later, there was also the glory of OG audio.

So: "God be praised. I am victorious."

[dallywhitty]

Trust me to be working when both my local cinemas are screening the film. I'm this close to ending it all.