1104 Citizen Kane

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zedz
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#451 Post by zedz » Thu Nov 25, 2021 10:59 pm

david hare wrote:
Wed Nov 24, 2021 8:03 pm
schellenbergk wrote:
Wed Nov 24, 2021 6:27 pm
david hare wrote:
Wed Nov 24, 2021 5:37 pm
At least the new email option removes the malarkey of mailing and going to the fucking post office to say nothing of the cost.
Sorry, I’ve got to point out - the postage cost me $1.10. Are you seriously complaining about $1.10?
As someone who spends thousands a year on discs I would point out that involving the punter in additional cost for something that’s not of their doing is shit customer shit service. In any case I live in a place far away in another hemisphere and the whole fucking process of using a post office is both time wasting and, in this country, outrageously expensive for even the smallest despatch. Zedz here could probable confirm that.
I wish it wasn't true, but it is. For anything up to and including something like this set, the cost of returning a defective item to the USA or Europe is generally more than it cost in the first place.

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FrauBlucher
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#452 Post by FrauBlucher » Fri Nov 26, 2021 7:27 pm

tenia wrote:
Thu Nov 25, 2021 2:20 am
FrauBlucher wrote:Robert Harris really posted this on the HTF, #-o
There seems to be continuing confusion, as the Blu-ray and 4k sets are totally different. I'm unaware of any combined set.

It seems to be either a Blu-ray 3-disc set or a 4k, but not both.
As I often say, Harris really isn't reliable when it comes down to the aspects of a release directly related to video (in opposition to judging things from a photochemical and cinema experience) and seemingly, this now extends to knowing there's a DF release for Citizen Kane.
Going over there is like slowing down to see the car wreck. Harris' answer to those who corrected him was to question Criterion's marketing strategy of having a bluray only set. :lol:

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movielocke
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#453 Post by movielocke » Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:36 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Sun Nov 21, 2021 2:03 pm
This is the second big release recently to change the quality of transfer at the 30 minute mark— what causes this? If it’s happening more then once from more than one label, there’s surely some shared reason
Both releases with these shifts are probably at the (projection) reel change point. Reels are properly measured in feet (or meters), but roughly / colloquially most reels in older films are 10-11 minutes. More modern films like silence are more like 16-23 minutes long. I have no idea when it changed but I’m guessing the advent of platter systems allowed for larger reels which saved on shipping costs somewhat.

When working on posting a film, they’re assembled and delivered reel by reel. This is the case in todays nonlinear digital environment and was also the case in the 30s and before. This allows a better division of labor. If the director and editor can lock picture on reel three (for example) but are still working on the other reels, they can send reel three to score for final timing of the score to picture for that reel and mix so that dialog, fx foley can get their final timing to picture.

All those departments will deliver all their final product as related to the reels. If picture lock is changed on a reel (expensive!), then all of those departments will conform their work to the new picture and resubmit their updated deliverables to match the new picture. This is also of course true of VFX as well, and VFX heavy reels often have their shot lengths locked down as early as possible). Less common now in NLE systems but on big Hollywood features it was once common practice for a breakdown editor to come in at the end and balance the reel runtimes so that they maximized them feet of each reel ideally without breaking the continuity of the overall picture (getting every reel change at scene changes rather than mid scene).

So when bringing a picture to home video, all the elements as they are called up and scanned harvested digitized and Ingested is that every asset is based on its reel number-picture and sound. It then follows that all work done uses this pre existing organizational system and everything continues to be done reel by reel. And final files and or tapes are delivered to the vendor (that makes the disc) reel by reel not in one big chunk and the vendor make the final assembly. In house qc should verify all their files are ready to ship to the vendor, but obviously in house qc could have been the point where they didn’t do their jobs. But if everything was perfect on the in-house files they’re not responsible.

Major speculation ahead:

What probably happened here is that a setting for the down convert was toggled/flagged the wrong way on the latter reels at the vendor. At the vendor they watch backs the highest rez version end to end but since lower rez versions are derived from the highest rez version and because the high rez version had just been confirmed to be fine, they probably only “spot checked” the lower rez version.

What does spot checked mean? Ideally it means watching the first five-ten minutes and then two minutes at every new file (reel), realistically a lot of qc people will watch the first ten minutes and then about five-ten seconds at every reel. Worst case it means they confirm aV sync playback of each file and are done in five minutes.

So why wouldn’t criterion just send one perfect master file to the vendor? Because encoding takes a lot of time and even if they did deliver one perfect master file of the feature, a vendor would chop up the master file to encode it in smaller pieces. This allows them to assess how they’re compressing it reel by reel and also allows them to replace bad encodes much faster. If there’s two minutes of a bad encode in a two hour feature it’s a lot easier to redo the compression on an eleven minute reel rather than a two hour feature. There’s also a security issue, sending a perfect master file is bad security in this digital era, much more secure to send everything in separated video and audio pieces that requiring a lot of labor to assemble the puzzle. Ideally the vendor should have in house scripting that handles/tags/flags asset submissions and automates a lot of the reassembly with settings already applied—and actually if there are such scripts at their vendor it’d be the first place I’d look to see if there is a problem in how settings/flags are applied consistently as the script iterates. The script could easily be generating a notification that error x hdr setting not applied to y reel and then in 4k playback (in A color accurate playback but not grading software) the setting would be manually toggled for playback for review—that correction would be applied downstream of the error and the 4k master would come out okay. But the error was corrected downstream. When their automated scripts later grab the upstream file for the Blu-ray or dvd encodes (since the low res versions would be based off the source file not the 4k encode) the corrected setting that was made in 4k playback is not applied, and since playback was done at the higher level it’s believed there’s no need to duplicate work at the lower levels. Because there’s so much automation, the error isn’t caught by the more limited layers of human review.

And then when check discs are made every effort is expended on the highest rez version at the vendor side and then also by criterion, but the lower rez version in both places will only get spot checking once again. And even if there is a policy in place at one or both places to watch back 100% all check discs, the modern reality is that attentionality and engagement for everyone is extremely low.

meaning it’s very easy for a spot checker to be on their phone for the entire watch down and then pass it—and 100% believe they’re effective multitaskers (nobody is) and were really definitely watching it the entire time except for a few texts (ha!) but the reality is that cellphones are massive attention black holes, and they suck every iota of attention someone has—and it truly is hard for someone doing QC whether a producer or a min wage worker to do twenty hours of uhd qc and then maintain 100% of their attention to a repeat 20 hours of hd qc, or a third repeat of sd qc. the second pass (if there is a second pass in the budget) and beyond is much harder for us humans these days

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tenia
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#454 Post by tenia » Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:53 pm

I doubt Criterion just sent 1 master file to Pixelogic, since that'd mean Pixelogic would have gotten the HDR UHD file and had to do the SDR conversion themselves. Considering properly downconverting to SDR relates to properly grading the movie for SDR, I'd assume it's not in the area of responsibility of the authoring house but rather the responsibility of those handling the restoration, in this case Criterion Post (judging by the booklet tech details).

Also, from what I've seen, authoring houses are receiving single files containing the whole movie in one piece (say, 1 250Gb ProRes file), not chopped up bits. I'm also unsure if there's any reality to your security bit requiring exploding the whole thing into a puzzle of parts.
And while UHD encoding is very slow to perform, BD encoding isn't that slow. Citizen Kane is 2 hours long, it's take roughly 10 hours to do a full encode (knowing that fine tuning the encoder settings most likely is the longest human task, once you get the encode running, you probably don't have to remain in front of the computer the whole time !).

Finally, it's very quick to spot check a BD by fast forwarding though it with your remote (if on a TV-type setup) or with a mouse and moving from 30 sec to sec. I can go through a 2hrs movie on my computer in a few minutes, and obviously, I'm not going to be on my phone at the same time (because I'll need my right hand to click !). It probably takes me a bit longer when on my TV but still, it's going to be an active task because I'll be looking at checking a lot of things in a short time. I'm much proner to be distracted when playing a whole movie than when just spot checking one.
And in such a case, it wouldn't matter : since the issue is constant over 75% of the movie, any "spot check" past the first 30 minutes would have been on a problematic section. It's not like missing a couple of blips, a missing line of subtitles, a skipped frame or a glitch lasting 10 frames. That's missing 90 problematic minutes.

And I do hope that professional people whose litteral job it is to produce and QC those, are making a living out of it, selling them and making money out of it, are more thorough than even I, an unpaid amateur reviewer, can be.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#455 Post by DimitriL » Sat Nov 27, 2021 2:10 pm

And yet, these defects happen all the time. How could Paramount miss 100k copies of Saving Private Ryan going out with mis-synced audio? There have been recalls on the Mad Max 4k set, Donnie Darko and the Friday the 13th box recently. It happens, and it will continue to happen because there are a lot of points of failure, especially when titles are getting pressed during a busy holiday schedule.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#456 Post by cdnchris » Sat Nov 27, 2021 4:14 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:It seems to me RAH is imagining a problem where one doesn't exist.

I suspect the papers appear very bright at that moment on the UHD and it's led to RAH assuming they are "blown out". Fair enough, but then to blame HDR and Dolby Vision, when in fact they would make highlight detail more visible, comes across as quite suspect. Almost as if he was scouring the UHD for anything he could use to demonstrate why "HDR bad for old films".
Comparing the UHD with the BD (in this set, mind you, not the Warner one, though the scene is before contrast goes wonky) the document looks more blown out on the standard Blu-ray, and as the shot transitions you can actually make out the text on the page a little better on the UHD, so Dolby Vision/HDR appears to be helping in this case.

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tenia
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#457 Post by tenia » Sat Nov 27, 2021 4:29 pm

DimitriL wrote:And yet, these defects happen all the time. How could Paramount miss 100k copies of Saving Private Ryan going out with mis-synced audio? There have been recalls on the Mad Max 4k set, Donnie Darko and the Friday the 13th box recently. It happens, and it will continue to happen because there are a lot of points of failure, especially when titles are getting pressed during a busy holiday schedule.
Of course they do, but even a thorough QC doesn't have a 100% detection rate. The matter then is how low the defect rate can go and how long it'll remain that low.

I regularly read people these days stating these happens "all the time" recently, and sure there seems to be an increase in those, but practically speaking, even with this increase, that's out of how many releases being released yearly ? There are about 400 yearly BD releases of catalogue movies from independant French labels only. Add to that what studios are doing, then add the US market, the UK market, etc etc. What's the final percentage of screw ups ? 1% ? 0.1% ?

IIRC, the Citizen Kane issue will be the sole replacement program for Criterion this year, possibly their only QC mistake in such form. They've released about 55 releases, several of them being multi-movies boxsets. That's a 1-2% defect rate.

And it doesn't matter if you're pressing 100k of Saving Private Ryan or 1000k of whatever, since it's a matter of having that one authoring that then will be replicated.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#458 Post by swo17 » Sat Nov 27, 2021 5:20 pm

We're mildly inconvenienced as consumers, but what is the cost to the companies who have to recall the titles? I'd imagine fixing CK might run tens of thousands of dollars. However, if that cost is less than the wage of an additional QC employee, they might not be blamed for cutting corners in this respect. A bigger issue is technical problems deemed not worth the effort

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tenia
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#459 Post by tenia » Sat Nov 27, 2021 6:52 pm

I still do wonder what happened there because again, that's something that doesn't seem very long to spot, so it seems like something wrong happened in the project's workflow rather than corners having been caught because it looks like the BD's encode wasn't controlled at all.

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dwk
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#460 Post by dwk » Sat Nov 27, 2021 7:59 pm

I assume that some of the QC issues can be attributed to the lack of pressing plants. With only one major plant in North America, labels are no doubt in a rush to make sure they don't miss their slots in the plant's schedule. And when people hurry they get sloppy.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#461 Post by swo17 » Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:05 am

I just watched the UHD on my current setup, which I've stated elsewhere is a UHD player hooked up to a 1080p projector. I justified this moderate waste of time because I was mainly watching for the new commentary, but I've been playing several other UHDs this way for my kids, and I feel like I am already seeing some of the benefits of the format--motion seems a little more smoothly resolved, colors subtly deeper--am I merely imagining this? Probably! But I think if nothing else the Citizen Kane UHD just looks like a better-encoded Blu-ray than the actual Blu-ray, and that's putting aside the SDR conversion error that they're replacing the disc for. Honestly, if the cost of a full system upgrade is scaring you off, but you're also annoyed by the subpar compression regularly seen on Criterion Blu-rays, I'd recommend buying a UHD player and watching the UHDs as though they were just properly compressed Blu-rays

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#462 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:00 pm

That's a good way of putting it swo- I just watched the first twenty minutes or so, and without anything to compare it to (I'll likely do comparisons with by blus vs. newly-arrived UHDs of 2001 and A Clockwork Orange later) I agree in the sense that I don't detect a significantly noticeable improvement in PQ overall (though I know my setup isn't ideal for it) but the motion does feel smoother and the image better-encoded, if only slightly. Particularly the grain, in the scene where Thompson enters the library, looks natural and fluid in the spotlight shining down on the hardwood table (which also looks a little more refined). The snow too... So maybe some things are quite noticeable after all. I'll take it!

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#463 Post by Tuppence » Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:39 am

Glowingwabbit wrote:
Tue Nov 23, 2021 8:26 pm
However I found it very dark too. It's been awhile since I have actually watched it so I thought maybe it was just me expecting the picture to look clearer throughout. It just seemed like details were being lost in the blacks.
I agree with this. Most of the contrast spectrum is fine and very attractive, but the darkest areas of the image have been graded quite severely, to the point where the darker shots in the film look underexposed. Lots of shadow detail just vanishes. You can barely make out the "K" against the sky in the final shot. (Ironically, though, Joseph Cotten is the clearest I've ever seen him in the projection room scene.)

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#464 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:23 am

Obviously I have less of a fine eye than you, but I struggled with the beginning being darker than I had remembered, and less with later parts of the film (perhaps my eyes had adjusted?)- Would this be a rare occasion to change the "standard" setting to "bright" or "brighter"- even though I know that's not generally advised?

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bad future
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#465 Post by bad future » Wed Dec 01, 2021 1:33 am

For what it's worth, I know the rtings dot com recommendations for my TCL tv model (the 2018 "6 series") say to set the TV to "brighter" for all HDR content. Doing so definitely seems to raise the backlight to such a degree that things like the black bars on CinemaScope films obviously don't look as black as they normally would, but I wonder if they have good reason to consider that an acceptable trade-off for other elements of the HDR presentation. (I assume some compromise is inherent with any non-OLED TV, but at the same time, for all the times I've randomly encountered people treating rtings recommendations as gospel elsewhere across the internet, I have no idea if they should actually be taken seriously, in this instance or in general.)

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#466 Post by jsteffe » Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:27 am

I also found the HDR grading to be fairly dark and lacking in highlights compared to other 4K HDR discs and Blu-rays of various black and white films I've seen on the same system--to say nothing of many 35mm prints over the years. The image is really dominated by medium gray.

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Tuppence
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#467 Post by Tuppence » Wed Dec 01, 2021 5:29 am

The restoration notes talk of "a 35mm print from the collection of the Academy Archive" being used as a grading reference, but no detail as to why. Although they were forced to rely on 2nd- and 3rd-generation elements, it's graded like they were going from an original negative, without adjusting for the lessened dynamic range of the dupe materials. The shot of Thatcher dictating the letter to Kane about receiving his fortune looks alarmingly free of shadow detail when he walks around the desk - it's virtually black on black.

To my eyes, the Warner Blu-ray still seems to be the most satisfying version.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#468 Post by EddieLarkin » Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:01 am

Compare this same SDR converted shot from the UHD from caps-a-holic and DVDBeaver. Look at the snow in particular on the roof. Note how it's a strong white at caps-a-holic, and far more grey at DVDBeaver. This is an example of poor SDR conversion vs better SDR conversion.

Is the DVDBeaver cap closer to what you're all experiencing with the UHD?

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#469 Post by jegharfangetmigenmyg » Wed Dec 01, 2021 12:37 pm

So, are there people out there weird enough (sorry, if I offend) to collect failed pressings such as this? I know that there are vinyl collectors collecting test pressings that plays backwards, etc. I mean, should/could I keep my UHD/BD in wrap and sell it for $1000? It was sent upon release date before they Criterion announced the destroy and return campaign, so it must contain the bad BD.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#470 Post by jsteffe » Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:12 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:
Wed Dec 01, 2021 7:01 am
Compare this same SDR converted shot from the UHD from caps-a-holic and DVDBeaver. Look at the snow in particular on the roof. Note how it's a strong white at caps-a-holic, and far more grey at DVDBeaver. This is an example of poor SDR conversion vs better SDR conversion.

Is the DVDBeaver cap closer to what you're all experiencing with the UHD?
It's difficult to compare, but it I would say the UHD is somewhere in between. The snow doesn't look bad, but it's on the dim side. The UHD image overall has lower contrast and is darker than the Warner Blu-ray, but this is more obvious in some scenes than others. The opera sequence has some nice gleaming highlights and the play of light and shadow works effectively. In other scenes the highlights do seem compressed. The detail and grain are, of course, wonderful otherwise.

I also compared it this morning with Sony's DR. STRANGELOVE UHD, and again it is darker overall, with not as many whites.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#471 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:44 pm

I think the snow looks spectacular, but I'm also floored by its incredibly smooth movement in motion, which is impressing me about this format enough to deter my focus away from miniscule shades of grey/white

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EddieLarkin
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#472 Post by EddieLarkin » Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:56 pm

jsteffe wrote:
Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:12 pm
The snow doesn't look bad, but it's on the dim side. The UHD image overall has lower contrast and is darker than the Warner Blu-ray, but this is more obvious in some scenes than others.
Darker yes, but it having lower contrast is not borne out by the caps-a-holic screens, only the DVDBeaver screens, which I believe are incorrectly converted. Here for instance, it's the old Warner Blu-ray that is low contrast, not the UHD, and all the other caps are the same. This has me concerned that those that are saying the UHD has low contrast and grey whites are actually victims of poor HDR10 mapping, especially if a projector is in use. I would strongly recommend David for instance does check out the disc on his DV enabled TV, to see if it is different.
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:44 pm
I think the snow looks spectacular, but I'm also floored by its incredibly smooth movement in motion, which is impressing me about this format enough to deter my focus away from miniscule shades of grey/white
I may be wrong, but I don't think the UHD format has any inherent motion advantages over Blu-ray. Are you sure you haven't got some motion smoothing enabled in HDR, but disabled in SDR? The menus for each will be unique, meaning when the TV switches over to HDR, the menu settings will not be what you had them on in SDR.

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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#473 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:04 pm

EddieLarkin wrote:
Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:56 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Dec 01, 2021 2:44 pm
I think the snow looks spectacular, but I'm also floored by its incredibly smooth movement in motion, which is impressing me about this format enough to deter my focus away from miniscule shades of grey/white
I may be wrong, but I don't think the UHD format has any inherent motion advantages over Blu-ray. Are you sure you haven't got some motion smoothing enabled in HDR, but disabled in SDR? The menus for each will be unique, meaning when the TV switches over to HDR, the menu settings will not be what you had them on in SDR.
I'm not sure about anything- since I haven't sampled the blu vs. UHD on my new player, but it could just be a natural step-up from my old Sony.. I'm more going off swo's post about how image presents as a subtly better encode for UHD even if it's still closer to blu-ray quality on the player itself

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tenia
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#474 Post by tenia » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:24 pm

But, Svet keeps talking about how UHD improves fluidity !

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swo17
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Re: 1104 Citizen Kane

#475 Post by swo17 » Wed Dec 01, 2021 3:30 pm

I was careful to avoid the term "motion smoothing" when I said "motion seems a little more smoothly resolved." I don't know how else to describe it. It's also possible that I'm completely off-base

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