30 / BD 150 Buster Keaton: Complete Short Films 1917-1923

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Steven H
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#126 Post by Steven H » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:04 am

peerpee wrote:After writing a piece in the book explaining exactly the situation with materials...
This should be brought up in the review.

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greggster59
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:37 pm

#127 Post by greggster59 » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:44 am

peerpee wrote:Our choice was basically to do interlaced transfers (which Arte had already done), to deinterlace and make a progressive transfer (which is what we did), or not to release anything at all. Keen to know about this "much better job" we could have done, Gregg?
There is significant loss of detail in many of the MOC transfers compared to the interlaced set from Arte. This was true viewing it both on a PC monitor and 50 inch HDTV. The one clear exception was Cops. It is also true that the MOC average bit rate was lower. I suspect this is the cause.

So much work was put in to this set and it shows. When I express disappointment with the technical work done for this release, I am referring to the low bit rate transfer process. I have a hunch that a higher bit rate might have addressed this issue. This has nothing to do with the source material.

Best,
GF

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vogler
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#128 Post by vogler » Tue Dec 05, 2006 10:47 am

peerpee wrote:After writing a piece in the book explaining exactly the situation with materials, and spending the last 3 months on this project doing everything possible to make it as good as it could be, it's very disheartening to read comments like: "I believe that they could have done a much better job on the technical side of this project than they did."
I just read the review and to be honest this is the typical kind of review I expect from Beaver when reviewing silents. I feel 100% certain that you did the best you could given the available materials, especially since it is obvious that these are films that you care about and the set is obviously very important to you. The screen captures look great to me. Beaver always seems to judge dvds on the same technical criteria but it seems unfair to expect a dvd set of extremely old and rare Keaton shorts to even begin to approach the quality of all the well known and loved 'art-house' classics that companies such as Criterion regularly release.

The Rediscover Jacques Feyder set comes to mind also. The beaver review proclaims 'I think there are some valid reasons to shake our collective fists at Image Entertainment on this one.' but I think if you ask the opinion of any real fan of silent film you will get a very different response. For example see Schreck's comments on the Feyder thread here and a number of the comments after that. My response would be something like 'there are many valid reasons for silent fans to be eternally grateful for this wonderful set of French classics'. In addition the Feyder set wasn't even progressive and this Keaton set is. I can't wait to get my copy.

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colinr0380
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#129 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Dec 05, 2006 2:23 pm

vogler wrote:I just read the review and to be honest this is the typical kind of review I expect from Beaver when reviewing silents.
I would sadly say this is typical of the Beaver reviews as a whole. They do an excellent job of showing menu screens, providing links to other information and doing frame grabs. They are also invaluable for their comparisons. However they do get bogged down in hyperbole when it comes to the review side of things, and do seem to get a bit petty with some of the comments, and recently I just don't bother to read the reviews at all.

I would say again though that their comparisons showing us exactly what will be on the DVD we'll be paying out for are what make the site extremely important, not the views expressed on what they think of the film, or even some of the extreme nitpicking that occurs that perhaps very few other people would notice (without a projector or other expensive equipment). It is great they point these things out but again the over the top pronouncements or petitions or boycotts do seem a bit extreme.

Plus, as politics show, a strong 'belief' in something doesn't necessarily make it true!

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vogler
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#130 Post by vogler » Tue Dec 05, 2006 2:41 pm

colinr0380 wrote:I would say again though that their comparisons showing us exactly what will be on the DVD we'll be paying out for are what make the site extremely important, not the views expressed on what they think of the film, or even some of the extreme nitpicking that occurs that perhaps very few other people would notice
I totally agree with this and I find DVDbeaver to be a very valuable resource in this respect. I don't really have any interest in criticising DVDbeaver, I just feel that MOC deserve more credit for the huge amount of time and effort they put into projects like this rather than having their efforts dismissed with comments such as the aforementioned 'I believe that they could have done a much better job on the technical side of this project than they did.'

Bleddyn Williams
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#131 Post by Bleddyn Williams » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:56 pm

To lose yourself in a collection of films you've never seen, and enjoy a good long read about them... this is the definition of a great Xmas present for me, so I've asked for it.

I understand that the set might not be technically perfect, but it just looks like it has too much to enjoy to miss out on! :D

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greggster59
Joined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 1:37 pm

#132 Post by greggster59 » Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:08 pm

vogler wrote: I don't really have any interest in criticising DVDbeaver, I just feel that MOC deserve more credit for the huge amount of time and effort they put into projects like this rather than having their efforts dismissed with comments such as the aforementioned 'I believe that they could have done a much better job on the technical side of this project than they did.'


My comment was not a dismissal. It was a criticism. The transfers in the MOC release were deinterlaced but were also compressed more then the Arte interlaced set. This higher compression rate, IMO, was at least partly responsible for my conclusion. I have no complaints with regards to the source material.

Check out "The Bellboy" from 1918 on disc one of the MOC set. I did not use captures from this short in the review. The bit rate here is very high at an average of 6.26mb/s. Even through the print damage, the image looks pretty good thanks to less video compression. By comparison, look at 'The Playhouse' from 1921 on disc three. Even though the print of this short is superior to the one used in 'The Bellboy' the comparatively high compression applied to 'The Playhouse's" video transfer (4.19mb/s average) overly softens the image and obscures some fine detail.

My criticism is directed at the decision to use so much compression in the progressive transfer. If the bit rate for the entire set averaged around 6mb/s, I think it would have been a noticeable improvement over the Arte release all around. Our goal at DVDBeaver is to critique DVD transfers of films and artists that we are enthusiastic about. If I wasn't prepared to nitpick, I would have no reason to do the review. The evidence is presented in the form of still captures to help readers decide for themselves if they agree with the reviewer or not.

That said, I feel that the MOC release of the Buster Keaton shorts is a very important archival set. Do not hesitate to buy it if you are at all interested in Buster Keaton. But I stand by my critique.

Best,
GF

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Arn777
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#133 Post by Arn777 » Tue Dec 05, 2006 6:53 pm

I personaly prefer a slight loss in details but get a progressive transfer. Interlaced transfers create very distracting effects and give me headaches.

peerpee
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#134 Post by peerpee » Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:40 pm

greggster59 wrote:My comment was not a dismissal. It was a criticism. The transfers in the MOC release were deinterlaced but were also compressed more then the Arte interlaced set. This higher compression rate, IMO, was at least partly responsible for my conclusion. I have no complaints with regards to the source material.
"Lower bitrate" does not necessarily equal a "more visually destructive compression". Especially in this case, as Arte's encodes were done over 5 years ago, and ours utilise excellent new Cinemacraft multi-pass software.

My criticism is directed at the decision to use so much compression in the progressive transfer. If the bit rate for the entire set averaged around 6mb/s, I think it would have been a noticeable improvement over the Arte release all around. Our goal at DVDBeaver is to critique DVD transfers of films and artists that we are enthusiastic about. If I wasn't prepared to nitpick, I would have no reason to do the review. The evidence is presented in the form of still captures to help readers decide for themselves if they agree with the reviewer or not.
Nothing wrong with nitpicking if it's based on facts, rather than speculation! We tested higher bitrates and it didn't noticeably affect the sharpness. We had to encode the material in advance and keep the bitrates as they were in case new material or extras arose throughout the production process. The slight sharpness differences you're seeing on some films are overwhelmingly caused by the fact that the MoC set was encoded progressively.

The Arte is interlaced, and is prone to looking slightly sharper *when paused* if you get a non-combed grab. For the MoC release, the masters had pulldown removed, were deinterlaced, and encoded progressively. This results in the slightly less sharp *still* grabs.

What is very important in such comparisons, but hardly ever discussed in DVD reviews, is what the DVD looks like in *motion* and how the encoding affects this. Interlaced discs can look sharp when paused, but have motion issues on certain displays which result in a blurring of motion as the interlaced frames are displayed. Progressive discs in motion usually look far more normal and smooth to the eye, and are far more pleasing across a wide range of different display technologies -- which is why we encoded this set progressively.

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Andre Jurieu
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#135 Post by Andre Jurieu » Wed Dec 06, 2006 12:37 am

peerpee wrote: Nothing wrong with nitpicking if it's based on facts, rather than speculation!
When has that ever stopped us before? It would be fantastic though.

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HerrSchreck
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#136 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Dec 06, 2006 1:35 am

vogler wrote:
peerpee wrote:After writing a piece in the book explaining exactly the situation with materials, and spending the last 3 months on this project doing everything possible to make it as good as it could be, it's very disheartening to read comments like: "I believe that they could have done a much better job on the technical side of this project than they did."
I just read the review and to be honest this is the typical kind of review I expect from Beaver when reviewing silents. I feel 100% certain that you did the best you could given the available materials, especially since it is obvious that these are films that you care about and the set is obviously very important to you. The screen captures look great to me. Beaver always seems to judge dvds on the same technical criteria but it seems unfair to expect a dvd set of extremely old and rare Keaton shorts to even begin to approach the quality of all the well known and loved 'art-house' classics that companies such as Criterion regularly release.

The Rediscover Jacques Feyder set comes to mind also. .
100% on the money. Quite frankly that Beev review is par for the course-- a reviewing service which is completely oblivious to the unique terrain of silent film economics and disc production, which is always going to exist within a certain remove from the CC and WB discs (and most of the recent MOC's) which they so highly praise. Without categorical product perspective, the reviewing process is a disservice.

These criticisms levelled at MoC on this release, and the general refusal to review Kino's silent discs "until they get their act together" (no EDISON, MAN WHO LAUGHS, WARNING SHADOWS, 3 STILLERS, NIBELUNGEN, TARTUFF, FAIRBANKS BOX, ASPHALT, most Griffiths, etc etc, as well as the two fantastic Mamoulians, all absolutely sublime releases), the "shaking of the collective fist" at HVe for the sublime Feyder box, no PHANTOM (I could go on & on.. no Milestone TABU, HINDLE WAKES, TERRE, CHESS PLAYER, YEVGENI BAUER etc) amounts to the absolute equivalent of a Consumer Reports reviewer blasting an efficient, well powered, gas-efficient, crash-safe, Toyota or Honda, specifically because they lack the power and feature-rich luxury resident in a Maserati or Porsche or Morgan.

There simply is not the audience for silents for companies to run brand new telecine on large projects like this (especially when a digital tape from a recent run-thru exists.. in or out of one's own Pal/NTSC protocol; CC does it-- see MK2 Bresson's, Shepard's NANOOK, the same Library of Congress Robeson telecine used by Kino for their old VHS's) encode progressively and/or at soaring bitrates (which would amp up the number of discs required for this Keaton MoC set, bump into Nick & Doug's profit margins, and possibly kill the utility of this project from their perspective in the first place) for the vast bulk of releases. I actually worry about MoC because they put so much into this and other recent silent releases.. it frightens me that they may be overshooting into their own margins and put the co in trouble-- I don't want to lose these guys and would gladly settle for a 4.8 bitrate on a labor of love like this; quite frankly I was stunned that they went progressive on this, considering the vast bulk of material. And yes, 4.8 mb/s progressive is always going to look better onscreen than, say, 5-6 mb/s interlaced. We owe them nothing but gratitude gratitude gratitude for putting so much time and effort into a project like this. The caps are a clear, vast improvement over the original Arte run off the very same digibeta.

How can it be that the NYTimes, New Yorker, Film Comment, Premeire, et al say "All Hail Kino!", or "Imagining a film world without Kino is like imagining a park without trees,"... and that Milestone is worshipped by industrial icons like Scorsese, The National Society of Film Critics (the 03 HERITAGE award), et al, but yet, these indispensable services are mostly ignored, or when reviewed, are slammed for evidence of not operating on a WB disc-production budget.

Whereas we're all entitled to our own opinion, the only problem I have with this is kids come onto this site after discovering his service and take up the groupthink techdweeb rallying cry over the most negligible of freeze-frame artifacts, completely invisible during the viewing process, and-- sight unseen-- dismiss out of hand over nonsensical red herrings some of the most vibrant forces in film distribution both in the cinema and on disc.

Ignore the criticism Nick-- congratulations on a fine set which I'll be buying without hesitation.

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Steven H
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#137 Post by Steven H » Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:25 am

Great post, HerrSchreck. It's easy to lose sight of what matters most, and when it comes to silents, we're usually lucky they even exist. I find the words "not extant" far worse than "interlaced" or "less sharp". I guess it's just a matter of what we're looking for. My problem this year is cash, as I'm sure it's a number of people's. I might have the funds for an extra box set or two, and I'm split about ten ways (this, McLaren, Ruiz, Feyder...) The booklet in this might have it edge it out though (as it should.)

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MichaelB
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#138 Post by MichaelB » Wed Dec 06, 2006 3:24 am

peerpee wrote:"Lower bitrate" does not necessarily equal a "more visually destructive compression". Especially in this case, as Arte's encodes were done over 5 years ago, and ours utilise excellent new Cinemacraft multi-pass software.
This is absolutely right - I think people do place an excessive reliance on bitrate as a quality yardstick, as it's often pretty meaningless, or at least needs placing in context.

For instance, Ruscico discs are far from perfect, but their bitrates are absolutely sky-high - 8-9 MB/sec is not uncommon. In fact, as this Beaver review demonstrates, the equivalent Criterion might have a lower average bitrate (6.17 versus 6.70 - there are doubtless more extreme examples for those who care to look) and yet Gary is in no doubt whatsoever as to which transfer looks superior.

When I put the BFI's Quay Brothers set together, I deliberately kept the running time down on disc one in order to push the bitrate to the absolute maximum, and explicitly instructed the authoring house to do this. But if you look at the disc, you'll see that the final bitrate is nowhere near the 8-9 MB/sec that they had the space for (as the Beaver review reveals, the average bitrate - at least for the first three titles, which is the clump that he sampled - was 5.98-6.17 MB/sec). Yet, as seems to be the universal consensus, from the viewer's perspective the transfers are as close to perfect as makes no practical difference - from which I conclude that the bitrate is as high as it needed to be.

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HerrSchreck
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#139 Post by HerrSchreck » Wed Dec 06, 2006 4:06 am

Another great example of low-bitrate gorgeous image is MGM's release of the obscure (but Gunther Krampf-- of PANDORA-- photog'd) Gaumont British '33 vehicle THE GHOUL. Aside from a brief period of muddy contrast with Ernest Thesiger creeping thru the London fog handing off the note, the film looks almost totally like a Criterion release, and the SL disc is encoded at bitrates at times around 3mb/s.

And thank heavens it looks as good as it does, considering it's one of the most beautifully photographed talkies of all time, and the miraculously discovered print of this once-lost (but for a hideous Czech-subbed print) little piece of early 30's horror-heaven is in absolutely pristine, almost camera-neg condition.

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Kinsayder
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#140 Post by Kinsayder » Wed Dec 06, 2006 2:55 pm

Steven H wrote:I find the words "not extant" far worse than "interlaced" or "less sharp".
I agree. And I hope that MoC make lots of money from this release, which they can then put towards the publication of silent films that are not already extant in good, in-print English-friendly editions.

Anonymous

#141 Post by Anonymous » Mon Dec 11, 2006 8:00 am

I don't think the Saudis use Dinars.

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MichaelB
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#142 Post by MichaelB » Tue Dec 12, 2006 1:01 pm

Geo wrote:I don't think the Saudis use Dinars.
Maybe that's where Nick was going wrong?

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Paul Moran
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#143 Post by Paul Moran » Tue Dec 12, 2006 7:31 pm

Have any other Denon owners had problems with Disc 3 in this set?

My main player is a multi-region Denon DVD2900. It had no problems with discs 1, 2 and 4, but refused to load disc 3 on the first attempt. On subsequent attempts, it either refused to load, or loaded very slowly then was unable to play a selected item without lots of errors (freezes, blocks, jumps, etc).

My Region 2 Denon ADV-M71 also refused to load the disc (I only tried it once).

However, my old Region 2 Pioneer DV-737, my two multi-region Sony DVD recorders (RDR-GXD310 and RDR-HXD710), and my PC DVD-RW (NEC ND-3530A) loaded it without any problems, and I've played the disc all the way through on the Sony RDR-HXD710.

I've noticed on several occasions that my Denon players seem to be the least tolerant of the six devices, so this may be a problem peculiar to my Denons, or it may be indicative of a wider Denon compatibility issue.

BTW, many thanks to Eureka/MoC for this release, which I enjoyed very much. I admit to being a little disappointed by some of the transfers, but I've read page 4 of the book, so I understand the difficulties.

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Arn777
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#144 Post by Arn777 » Tue Dec 12, 2006 8:41 pm

I have the Denon 2910, Disc 3 plays fine on it.

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Caligula
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#145 Post by Caligula » Wed Dec 13, 2006 2:38 am

I have a Denon DVD 2900 as well (also multi-region).

Grabbed disc three this morning, loaded it twice without problem or delay. Al the films on the disc start without any hassle.

I'd go with Flixy's advice, if I were you...

alfons416
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 5:39 am

#146 Post by alfons416 » Wed Dec 13, 2006 6:50 am

bought the box today, havent looked at the transfers yet but i've looked at the booklet and it looks real nice. but what happend to the blue artwork with buster and the girl that was supposed to be on one of the amarys? i loved that one..

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Paul Moran
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#147 Post by Paul Moran » Thu Dec 14, 2006 6:14 pm

Thanks for the tips and for checking, guys.
If I have any problems with disc 3 the next time I play this set on my main player - I don't think it will be a Denon - I'll certainly try a "deep clean".

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zedz
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#148 Post by zedz » Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:30 pm

Am I particularly obtuse, or is Neil Brand completely overlooked in the credits for this set?

I'm only part of the way through, but Neil deserves some major kudos for his marathon work accompanying these films. Indefatigable is the word that springs to mind, but also constantly alert and responsive.

peerpee
not perpee
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#149 Post by peerpee » Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:05 pm

Neil Brand is thanked in the booklet, and is mentioned on most of the end credits on the films themselves.

I agree, his work is exemplary on these films (Neil's recordings were done for Lobster Films in Paris a few years ago, and were not done specifically for MoC).

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Kinsayder
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#150 Post by Kinsayder » Mon Dec 18, 2006 5:39 pm

The Barbican Centre in London has a weekend devoted to Neil Brand on Feb 17-18th:

"Neil Brand is one of the UK's most celebrated pianists working with silent film, and in this special weekend presentation he will share his secrets about the art of musical improvisation, followed on Sunday 18 Feb with a accompaniment to F.W. Murnau's overwhelming 1927 film, Sunrise."

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