779 Mulholland Dr.

[yoloswegmaster]

I would assume UHD only, as the blu-ray is using the older 4K master.

[Finch]

comparison caps between Criterion and SC

Unsurprisingly, the Criterion looks absolutely fine on its own but the grain looks appreciably better to me on the Studio Canal thanks to David McKenzie's compression skills. Who knows why Studio Canal dropped a lot of the bonus features for their release but honestly, who watches any extra as regularly as the film in question? Still, you could call it a tie: SC for the superior image and the superior Blu-Ray included with the UHD (SC's Blu-Ray is sourced from the latest 4k master as well as being properly encoded while Criterion just included their 2015 flop), Criterion for the bonus stuff.

[dadaistnun]

(SC's Blu-Ray is sourced from the latest 4k master as well as being properly encoded while Criterion just included their 2015 flop)

This right here is why I went with the SC. Who knows when I'll have a 4K set up, so having the better Blu-ray was top priority for me. And I have the old Criterion for the extras. My copy of the SC arrived today, hoping to check it out this weekend.

[omegadirective]

Has anyone noticed weird artifacting in the black bars at the top and bottom of the 4K?

I just got mine in the mail today and noticed it when I was scanning through the disc.

I can’t figure out how to upload an image from my iPad here.

[omegadirective]

It’s amazing how artificially bright the blu ray is.

I popped the 4K disc in and was scanning through it to see how it looked and got to the sex scene.
When Laura Harding takes her clothes off, I thought, “wow that seems very dark” as I just watched the blu ray about a month ago.
That scene sticks out, obviously, so I noticed lots of detail on the blu ray.

Seeing how dark the 4K is, I popped the blu ray in (I have a blu ray player and a 4K player hooked up through my Denon amp to my 4 k tv)

Swapping inputs on the amp from the blu ray to the 4K, the sex scene now looks like it was filmed during the day time on the blu ray, it’s that much brighter.

I think the 4K may be a bit too dark, but it certainly does look sharper and have less artifacting.

However, this was also the scene where I noticed the artifacting in the black bars of the 4K disc that i mentioned above.

[tenia]

I've started comparing the 2 SC BDs (2017 and 2021) and they seem actually quite different in grading (the new BD looking darker), so I'm not sure if the difference you're seeing comes from the discs' technologies or from the gradings at the sources.
From what I compared so far, the older disc look warmer and brighter, and on the few comparison caps I did so far, there's also noticeable differences in the framing.
I certainly didn't expect this based on the detailed workflow of this restoration and seeing how it was supposed to recycle so much of the 2015 work.

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

So, oh, the Criterion Mulholland UHD look terrible in comparison with its UK Studio Canal counterpart. Check out the overall grain rendering and especially the red light in this shot: https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?a=1&x=71 ... 0&i=7&go=1

The SC has the lesser filesize so it must come down to compression procedure. Does anyone know who did SC the encode? Have they finally learned how to do it properly?

Now it will certainly be interesting to see how the Warner Kane UHD compares to the Criterion when it arrives next week.

Criterion's entry into UHD land has certainly been a bumpy one...

[yoloswegmaster]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

[swo17]

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

[jegharfangetmigenmyg]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

It looks great, I have it myself. But in comparison with the SC, I think the compression looks terrible. And it shouldn't, as it even has a larger filesize than the SC.

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

Thank you. Great job on this one. Don't know if he worked on the SC's that I found to look questionable (maybe it was titles that didn't look good without Dolby Vision, though). But the Italien UHD's of the Carpenters certainly has better compression than the UK's.

[tenia]

Saying that it looks "terrible" is just BR.com levels of hyperbole.

Yes, it doesn't look terrible, plus we need to factor in (at least from a Dolby Vision watching point of view) that since David used MEL while Pixelogic used FEL for the DV stream, it's likely the comparisons aren't totally fair texture-wise once downconverted here.
Still, this looks like there's a possibility for Pixelogic still not to yield as good an encode as possible, though not to the same extent than on BD (which would be on par with what I heard so far about their UHD encodes).

And it shouldn't, as it even has a larger filesize than the SC.

Comparing file sizes isn't really the right metric here, since the DV encodes don't have the same strategy, that the 5.1 tracks don't have the same bitrate at all by quite a margin (since both are 48/24, I wonder what happened here), and that the European disc has 2 dubs on top of this.
Comparing AVBs (and, since we have them, instant video bitrates) is a better metric, and in the present case, I wouldn't say the Criterion is higher than the SC, but rather equivalent : the Criterion HDR10 stream has a 70.36 Mbps AVB, the Canal a 72.32 Mbps, which is pretty much equivalent. Even when factoring in the DV streams, Criterion AVB is 77.9 Mbps, Canal 72.4 Mbps, which is only a 7% difference.

The conclusion is the same though : this likely is down to the encoder settings rather than pure bitrate, but still, as it is, I'd say we're comparing here 2 encodes at about the same video bitrates, rather than one being higher than the other.

[swo17]

David Mackenzie did the SC encode, just as he has for a handful of their other releases

Thank you. Great job on this one. Don't know if he worked on the SC's that I found to look questionable (maybe it was titles that didn't look good without Dolby Vision, though). But the Italien UHD's of the Carpenters certainly has better compression than the UK's.

No, he didn't do the Carpenters. I'm unaware of any release he's encoded that's been received as anything less than exemplary

[EddieLarkin]

You only have to look at the Criterion Blu-ray of the film to see how vastly improved their UHD compression is for these sort of ultra fine grain sources. But that doesn't mean a bunch of humps like Pixelogic are ever going to approach David M's level of compression. As long as they keep Criterion's UHDs looking far away from some of the absolute disasters we've seen on Criterion Blu-ray, I'll be happy.