Johnnie To Films on Blu-ray

[spannick]

i ordered both now, in hope they are not as bad as FULL ALERT.
after all, BIO ZOMBIE is a very good encode, and it came out later, from what I remember.

[Futurhythm]

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Spectrum's Full Alert?

Do any of Spectrum's other releases have major issues? (Apart from Bride with White Hair's colours).

[spannick]

Originally Posted by Futurhythm

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Spectrum's Full Alert?

Do any of Spectrum's other releases have major issues? (Apart from Bride with White Hair's colours).

Full Alert has a terrible encode with massive pixelation issues due to bad grain management, which is especially visible in the final scene at the harbor. I was really expecting much better from Spectrum. Yes i compared it to the Mei Ah, which is, although not optimal, much better in that regard. I don't check for colors and stuff on releases. I can't think of any other Spectrum which i was basically angry at for wasting $$$ on.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by spannick

Full Alert has a terrible encode with massive pixelation issues due to bad grain management, which is especially visible in the final scene at the harbor. I was really expecting much better from Spectrum.

I don't recall any of that. It is, however, a very grainy scene while the rest of the movie often looks on the opposite spectrum of things, ie digitally smoothed and sharpened, but other than that, I didn't see any "massive pixelation" (though their encodes probably aren't anything particularly exceptional as a whole).
Also, I doubt the digital filtering of the movie is coming from Spectrum, but was most likely baked in the master they received from the right-holder.

Do you have any screencaps to illustrate precisely the intensity of the pixelation you're talking about ?

[spannick]

Originally Posted by johnpaul2

I don't recall any of that. It is, however, a very grainy scene while the rest of the movie often looks on the opposite spectrum of things, ie digitally smoothed and sharpened, but other than that, I didn't see any "massive pixelation" (though their encodes probably aren't anything particularly exceptional as a whole).
Also, I doubt the digital filtering of the movie is coming from Spectrum, but was most likely baked in the master they received from the right-holder.

Do you have any screencaps to illustrate precisely the intensity of the pixelation you're talking about ?

No. Got no time to rip & compare that piece of crap (it's not worth my time).

And yes, it is massively bad, and even if it's "only" the harbor finale, it's way too much to accept in that price range. If you don't see it, good for you. I don't care if it's their work or the delivered master was bad; as i have the HK Disc also, which is much better, i know it did exist unscathed. If the 2 i ordered now from them are as bad, i am very sure it's their doing.

I'm not a "forum hero who has no clue", i work with raw and clean HD masters often and see bad encodes without comparions - and a bluray with such a huge bitrate can handle this amount of grain quite easily if correctly done.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by spannick

and a bluray with such a huge bitrate can handle this amount of grain quite easily if correctly done.

Most of the new master has been quite noticeably DNRed (and most likely EEd), so it clearly won't be prone to challenge the encode anyway. Only some section have a texture that might be challenging to encode, which is why I'm extremely surprised by your claim. It might be more noticeable in the final sequence, because it's one of the few scenes with some filmic texture (though to be fair, the grain field looks a tad thick and electronic), but the rest of the movie is unlikely to generate intense issues.
Also, Full Alert doesn't show, even in its most granular frames, the usual issue visible on many French encodes which is a cyclic compression effect, with 1 frame being fine followed by several poorly compressed and then again 1 frame being fine (which is likely to be a GOP issue, the 1 frame being fine being the I-frame and the other ones poorly predicted B- and P- frames).

I'm not asking you to be a forum hero but to support your claims with exemples You're talking of this release as having extreme issues, almost as if they'd warrant a recall and a replacement, and you've now repeatedly talked about it in this manner. You might some clues and might work with raw HD masters but still have gone hyperbolic on this one, and I'd have believed it would have been only fair to illustrate your point with concrete exemples.

But since you don't want to take the time to illustrate exactly what you're claiming to be an "awful subpar" encode and prefer to simply pile heavily on this disc without illustrating precisely why you think so poorly of it, I guess I'll do it myself and post the result here.

And it's not a question of "not seeing it". I actually got my share of discussing encodes with labels (including Spectrum, for that matter, but they're far from the only ones I've discussed this with), but the intensity of the issues, if any, being far from what you're describing, and in any case certainly not coming from the grain management applied most likely at the remaster level on the picture.

Originally Posted by spannick

No. Got no time to rip & compare that piece of crap (it's not worth my time).

I obviously don't know your equipment, but it'll take me about 5 minutes to generate dozens of Full HD screencaps of the Spectrum BD, with no need to rip it, especially since you already explained what is the most worrying scene.
If it's so intense, the macroblocking will show up in an obvious manner on my caps, with no need to compare it with anything. If not and it actually requires a comparison, then... well it might just not be that terrible to begin with... But don't come and rant I haven't taken the right frames or haven't captured the frames properly afterwards if you don't want to solidify your claims yourself.
(I mean, Criterion's encodes' blockiness doesn't require a comparison to be spotted, so if Full Alert requires one, then it's better than those to begin with)

If I can, I'll try and get the HK disc to be able to compare with it, since I do care about who is to blame if there's an issue, but also because I doubt it's as massively better as you claim it to be (but I might be wrong).

[spannick]

i just hope it's a one time problem, nothing else - waiting for my 2 Johnnies from Spectrum now in hope they are great as usual before FULL ALERT.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by spannick

i just hope it's a one time problem, nothing else

I can understand that, but my issue is whether there is a problem to hope for it to be a one-time problem to begin with.

I re-checked my Spectrum BD and indeed, while the encode isn't spectacular, there is no "massive pixelation", including in the final harbor scene. There are however clear evidence of digital tampering, with the "grain" moving in particularly unnatural fashion and most likely having been as eliminated as possible, which can cause at times some frames to look quite un-evenly covered by grain, but I doubt this isn't baked-in the source and thus present in the HK BD too.

In any case, if there is no massive problem here to begin with, I guess there isn't much to worry for your 2 upcoming purchases either.

[BleedOrange11]

Some French Blu-ray reviews with screencaps. Seems to be written by the same poster on the dvdclassik forums. The Longest Nite has HKV DVD comparisons.

http://retro-hd.com/tests/blu-ray/31...gest-nite.html
http://retro-hd.com/tests/blu-ray/31...nexpected.html
http://retro-hd.com/tests/blu-ray/3105-judo.html

[BleedOrange11]

According to a poster on DVDClassik:

Pour The longest Nite, Spectrum Films attend la réponse de l’ayant droit sur le mix pour voir s'il accepte de le refaire.

"For The Longest Nite, Spectrum Films is waiting for the response from the beneficiary on the mix to see if he agrees to do it again."

[BleedOrange11]

Originally Posted by spannick

5.1 is original audio mix, it was a downmix on the HK Video DVD. The rest does not sound so promising.

The Longest Nite was originally mono. The Hong Kong DVD only has a 5.1 remix, but the French DVD has a dual-channel mono track. You're saying that mono track is just a downmix of the Hong Kong DVD's remix?

[spannick]

Originally Posted by BleedOrange11

The Longest Nite was originally mono. The Hong Kong DVD only has a 5.1 remix, but the French DVD has a dual-channel mono track. You're saying that mono track is just a downmix of the Hong Kong DVD's remix?

too long ago, then i'm sorry if it was Mono.

here are some screenshots i just made of the Blu.
it is a bit zoomed, i guess, but have nothing to really compare to anymore. The encode is better than Full Alert in grainy night scenes so all seems ok, for now. Expect shots of Unexpected later also. I guess this was tampered with in HK before delivery, of course, because the daylight stuff looks hardly degrained on Bluray.

http://www.imagebam.com/gallery/qugf...suftrp3baqv02m

[Liersi]

Originally Posted by BleedOrange11

According to a poster on DVDClassik:

"For The Longest Nite, Spectrum Films is waiting for the response from the beneficiary on the mix to see if he agrees to do it again."

I just read through the review you linked previously, and it says exactly what I came here to say, so I'll repeat in English for the users here: the new audio mix on The Longest Nite is clearly a mistake that needs to be corrected. When you listen to it, all arguments about intentional changes go out the window. The effect is so pronounced that the reviewer used the same metaphors to describe it that came to mind when I watched the film: the music sounds like a radio a few rooms away, or like those remote sounding background soundtracks they use in malls waiting rooms. Robbed of all presence and power, the music in this mix is now elevator music.

All three films are otherwise upgrades from DVDs, but not up to the standards of other HK remasters of the recent past. All three look highly contrasted, exhibiting the tell-tale crushed blacks and hot whites. Detail is decent to good, actually, no complaints there, and there's good texture most of the time. The framing is odd, opened up a little from 235. I'm satisfied overall, especially considering the alternatives, but the sound on TLN is an outright mistake that needs to be corrected.