UHD Titles Worth/Not Worth Upgrading [Archive]

[Finch]

The poor audio was actually raised in the Shout disc's thread first, and the BFI one seems to have it as well. I was under the impression that it was inherent to the source but I could be wrong. Even so, the BFI is still the better disc overall but the Shout one is no slouch either if you're locked to Region A or don't want to import.

[M Sanderson]

To clarify, yes the B-R.com reviewer gave Shout’s audio a very high score.

Whereas the review on Criterion Forum’s main page of the BFI release states that dialogue is very difficult to hear.

But if the issue was first discovered in the Shout release…

[Finch]

Brotherhood of the Wolf (Studio Canal) (if compared to the 2011 BD)

Brotherhood of the Wolf (Studio Canal) (if compared to the 2023 BD)

German language review and comparison between the 4k, the 2023 BD and 2011 BD is here. The slides for the 4k/2023 BD are coming still but the comparison between the new and old BD show a big improvement in detail, contrast and color. Picture quality scores are 80% > 75% > 40% (2023 UHD > 2023 BD > 2011 BD). I gather from the specs that the European discs have more extras than the Shout and include the theatrical. The Shout only has the DC. EDIT: Forgot to add, the theatrical cut is NOT restored according to the review.

[Finch]

SwissHD on the other forum says the audio on the UHDs of both Musketeers films is pitched at 25fps. He's compared it against his PAL videotape and the soundtrack album.

EDIT: I've added a caveat to the OP re the audio pitch. As of 5/16/23, Studio Canal have not made a statement either way whether there will be a replacement of their European discs issued.

[Finch]

Our own forum member senseabove says the Drowning by Numbers UHD from Severin is unfortunately disappointing but still an advance over the old UK BD.

[nicolas]

My first impressions of the new Japanese Kurosawa UHD’s:

I’ve treated myself and bought all the new Japanese Kurosawa UHD’s on eBay.
Before I start, these don’t have English subtitles.

As both Ikiru and Stray Dog are limited by the lack of original elements, these UHD’s are not that easy to assess.

Stray Dog particularly is difficult since that one looks sourced from something even further away from the OCN than Ikiru. The amount of "resolution" is barely HD here and sometimes dips even lower. Ikiru looks surprisingly solid in that regard with some shots exhibiting beautiful detail but still nothing as a crisp OCN scan. I wouldn’t count this as a disappointment as there is nothing anybody can do against it. Audio is similar - I have no idea about the source and things like noise reduction.

However I think that Toho dropped the ball a bit when it comes to the authoring. Encoding isn’t optimal, exhibiting clipped highlights and likely a light grain scrub on top.

Don’t get me wrong, these look the best they ever have but there is potential for more. BFI could do great work but we don’t know if the filtering is baked into the master. Encoding would surely be optimized better. Both films use a BD-66 and use only around 55 GB each with no significant extras taking up the space.

As a result, it’s difficult to judge if these are worth it for Westerners for the exorbitant price. I’ve ripped- and will remux them but definitely sell the discs in the hopes for something special from the UK, France or maybe even Germany (Plaion). If these should remain the definitive releases though I’ll still be very happy though to have something better than the ancient Criterion discs. These are certainly very watchable masters, far from horrendous but still falling short of optimal.

I’ll receive Sanjuro and Yojimbo tomorrow and will report back.

[DeprongMori]

I assume you mean Stray Dog.

[nicolas]

I assume you mean Stray Dog.

Exactly this. Thank you!

[nicolas]

My take on the French M6 UHD of “Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez” which came out in 2022. This disc doesn’t have English subtitles.

I wanted to see with my own eyes if this is as awful as I heard… and yes, it sadly is.

The thing I thought would be most problematic (the color timing) actually isn’t the main offender, it’s the horrendous encoding.

To begin with, colors definitely lean warm and are occasionally too much yellow and teal (skies) but it’s not a blanket tint and in most scenes totally watchable. Inconsistency is a problem here - the lab clearly tried to emulate the feeling of a 35mm print being shown but it doesn’t work. For that, it looks too digital. Again, no full-on disaster but far from perfect.

Encoding is an insult though. I’d consider this film’s encoding to be even worse than something like Potemkine’s Three Colors 4K encoding which I considered up to now the worst 4K encoding in France as of now. M6 (the distributor) doubles down on that.

Opticals and likely other second-gen material throughout the film have been grain-managed and the bitrate tends to plummet when "not much happens" on screen, which means that frequently landscapes and especially the skies become one big blocky mess.

OCN footage has been (I presume) left alone and, in occasional spikes of everything going well, looks gorgeous but only until the next scene / cut that reminds us again of the disaster this disc actually is.

I wish we had more Louis de Funès in 4K but I’ll take older masters any day over something like this again.

As I’m paying a premium price it’s usually 4K or nothing for me but I gave the included Blu-ray a shot to see if they fail that much on a regular BD as well and, guess what, it looks SIGNIFICANTLY better than the UHD (in DV or HDR10, doesn’t matter). The moments with grain management (possibly in the master itself) still don’t look good but the rest, such as low bitrates in static moments is not as heavily present here, sometimes even eliminated. I haven’t seen the entire film on BD of course but all the problematic moments on the 4K are solid here. Solid is the key word, it’s not a FiM BD. Grain and details actually look remarkably close to how Pixelogic encodes Criterion’s discs. So, maybe, a light low-pass filter has been used since the native 4K master can be very detailed but this is most definitely the lesser evil here.

[nicolas]

nicolas, thank you for the reviews! Have you seen M6’s La Piscine UHD by any chance? IIRC from the B-R forum, it’s not great and has visible chroma noise. I’m just curious how bad it is in practice.

Yes, I have this disc (sadly). It is the same disaster encoding-wise in SDR, HDR10 and DV with DV looking minimally better. The encode there looks on par with the Three Colors Trilogy (Potemkine release) which is actually an improvement considering how bad Le Gendarme… looks like. Essentially, all areas which aren’t remotely highlights in the whites and yellows are clipped to death. Not just the brightest highlights such as a bright sky but even moderate brightness is affected. Yes, chroma noise is a problem too but the encoding is worse.

I just checked the Blu-ray for you (I probably didn’t do that when I got the disc) but it’s atrocious as well. This entire release is a pile of utter garbage.

The funny thing is that the French or Italian restoration houses usually do strong work when it comes to scanning, restoring the film and delivering a pristine master but all that good work is ruined at the last step when it comes to the disc authoring. Ultimately this would be the most important step since the Blu-ray or UHD is the format people like us use to experience their work. Not so much theatrically apart from a few special runs here and there but the discs. I don’t mind yellow / teal color grading nearly as much as horrendous encoding. At least the grading seemingly happens with a reason (attempting to emulate a 35mm print or, as of recent, matching timed reference prints signed off by directors / DoPs) but there’s no excuse for such atrocious encoding. These labels save money where it matters most. It’s a disgrace for the medium and any serious buyer (which we are due to the niche nature of physical media) wanting to own these films in the best quality.

[AxeYou]

Thank you for checking La Piscine out, nicolas!

Ultimately this would be the most important step since the Blu-ray or UHD is the format people like us use to experience their work. Not so much theatrically apart from a few special runs here and there but the discs. I don’t mind yellow / teal color grading nearly as much as horrendous encoding. At least the grading seemingly happens with a reason (attempting to emulate a 35mm print or, as of recent, matching timed reference prints signed off by directors / DoPs) but there’s no excuse for such atrocious encoding. These labels save money where it matters most. It’s a disgrace for the medium and any serious buyer (which we are due to the niche nature of physical media) wanting to own these films in the best quality.

Yes it is saddening indeed. I totally agree that home releases are arguably more important than DCPs, not only because of the limited nature of theatrical runs, but also how utterly mediocre most theaters’ projection quality is. Modern 4K restorations lose some of their power when most independent rep theaters that get to show these only have old 2K projectors with meh contrast paired with small screens.

And on home releases, Criterion’s encoding, while nowhere as bad, also disappoints for the serious buyers. They are essentially holding so many pristine restorations hostage. IIRC didn’t David M say he offered his services to Criterion at one point? They either turned him down or never responded.

[AxeYou]

Hopefully one final look at Three Colors: Red, I managed to capture Criterion's full FEL image and uploaded a 3-way comparison of Criterion's HDR10 base layer (BL), Criterion's DV FEL, and Curzon (from andreasy969's caps on BR): https://slow.pics/c/wcbjxkA0

To my eyes, Criterion's Enhancement Layer (EL) does not restore any detail lost from the filtered HDR10 BL, other than perhaps obvious compression artifacts like large pixel blocks which I did not specifically check for. This corroborates nicwood's observation on BR. As such, Curzon is indisputably the winner.

I don't know how much FEL helps on other problematic Criterion releases like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But, if it similarly doesn't restore much detail outside of obvious compression artifacts, this fact would very strongly suggest that Pixelogic indeed low-pass filters a master before encoding, as opposed to the filtered look being solely attributable to their encoder settings. In other words, if they pre-filter a master and feed that result as the "golden target" to the FEL delta-encoder, then of course the EL cannot restore any detail, which is what appears to happen here.

For those interested: I captured this with DoViBaker, which claims to "bake" the DV EL back into the HDR10 BL. I can confirm it works, because when I tested it on StudioCanal's Total Recall, the "baked" FEL fixed the BL's atrocious compression (comparison of BL from CAH vs my BL vs baked FEL). Obvious caveats: 1) I cannot guarantee that this process is 100% accurate compared to how actual UHD players deal with FEL, 2) the colors are off so please compare detail only.

[nicolas]

Hopefully one final look at Three Colors: Red, I managed to capture Criterion's full FEL image and uploaded a 3-way comparison of Criterion's HDR10 base layer (BL), Criterion's DV FEL, and Curzon (from andreasy969's caps on BR): https://slow.pics/c/wcbjxkA0

To my eyes, Criterion's Enhancement Layer (EL) does not restore any detail lost from the filtered HDR10 BL, other than perhaps obvious compression artifacts like large pixel blocks which I did not specifically check for. This corroborates nicwood's observation on BR. As such, Curzon is indisputably the winner.

I don't know how much FEL helps on other problematic Criterion releases like The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. But, if it similarly doesn't restore much detail outside of obvious compression artifacts, this fact would very strongly suggest that Pixelogic indeed low-pass filters a master before encoding, as opposed to the filtered look being solely attributable to their encoder settings. In other words, if they pre-filter a master and feed that result as the "golden target" to the FEL delta-encoder, then of course the EL cannot restore any detail, which is what appears to happen here.

For those interested: I captured this with DoViBaker, which claims to "bake" the DV EL back into the HDR10 BL. I can confirm it works, because when I tested it on StudioCanal's Total Recall, the "baked" FEL fixed the BL's atrocious compression (comparison of BL from CAH vs my BL vs baked FEL). Obvious caveats: 1) I cannot guarantee that this process is 100% accurate compared to how actual UHD players deal with FEL, 2) the colors are off so please compare detail only.

Thank you for this great and illuminating post.
You’ve now proven what I felt seeing with my own eyes back then. It really is fantastic to have at least a “close enough” method to properly extract DV layers and the ability to analyze them for their compression.

At this point there’s no denying anymore that Pixelogic does some very questionable things to the masters they’ve been handed and that terms like HDR and DV should be taken with a grain of salt.
Their SDR mastering has long been questionable but you could have attributed compression artifacts to the overall amount of footage on the BD’s with extras, bonus films etc. combined taking up a good amount of storage (Atom Egoyan’s Exotica being a recent example with hours of bonus AND another feature film on the same disc).

The UHDs are bare-bones though with all the disc space going to the feature. In no way should they look like either Three Colors or Baron Munchausen.

[tenia]

Pixelogic's encodes aren't solely problematic because of the sheer amount of data on the discs, since it's been some years now that they have changed their method and prioritise the movie over the extras. Yet, even at 30 Mbps, their encodes still are flawed.

[AxeYou]

A fun bonus comparison of Three Colors: Red. This time 4-way among:
- CC HDR10 BL
- CC DV FEL
- Janus ProRes 422 HQ Trailer* (689 Mbps!!)
- Curzon

https://slow.pics/c/h3szXqgy

*The ProRes trailer comes from Vimeo. It turns out you can download the original uploaded (non-transcoded) version from them with yt-dlp . This is probably the closest any of us can get to the master.

EDIT:
- Removed my previous comment on how these compare, as I've realized I mistakenly tagged the same cap as both from the trailer and from Curzon (thanks nicolas). The link above has been updated.
- With the corrected caps, my summary would be:
- Criterion is still filtered, no surprises there.
- Curzon does a decent job reproducing high frequency detail, but next to the ProRes trailer, it's obvious that it has a lot of macroblocking in highlights and exhibits some chroma noise.
- ProRes trailer also has some minor macroblocking in highlights, but this doesn't necessarily mean MK2's master is compromised. It may just mean that the ProRes encode itself is not very optimized.

[nicolas]

A fun bonus comparison of Three Colors: Red. This time 4-way among:
- CC HDR10 BL
- CC DV FEL
- Janus ProRes 422 HQ Trailer* (689 Mbps!!)
- Curzon

https://slow.pics/c/nw3OaW8x

*The ProRes trailer comes from Vimeo. It turns out you can download the original uploaded (non-transcoded) version from them with yt-dlp . This is probably the closest any of us can get to the master.

The Curzon is basically a reference encode of the ProRes. I cannot detect any loss of detail. And again, Criterion's FEL does not restore any detail from their BL and is still clearly filtered.

Again, great information, Axe. The comparison between the Janus Vimeo ProRes trailer and the Curzon encode is very interesting.

You mentioned that Curzon practically encoded this ProRes, high resolution master onto a UHD-100 without having any loss of detail.

But why are their discs full of clipping in the highlights in SDR / HDR10 and DV? I saw the same macroblocking in your Vimeo screenshot. Do you think that these issues are inherited in the master which MK2 provided to licensors?

I haven’t downloaded the full-res trailer yet (will try to figure it out using the tool you mentioned) but if true, that would be a major disappointment as any future editions could therefore not improve anything in that regard other than going to the raw files (which seems unlikely to happen).

[AxeYou]

You mentioned that Curzon practically encoded this ProRes, high resolution master onto a UHD-100 without having any loss of detail.

But why are their discs full of clipping in the highlights in SDR / HDR10 and DV? I saw the same macroblocking in your Vimeo screenshot.

I must apologize!! I was in a hurry to leave for an appointment so didn't double-check when I uploaded these. I now realize I've mistakenly uploaded the same caps for the ProRes trailer and Curzon. No wonder they appear identical, too identical even. Corrected caps at https://slow.pics/c/h3szXqgy. I'll also update my previous post to not mislead others.

Flipping between the corrected caps, the Curzon is no longer a true "reference" encode. It definitely loses a lot of highlight detail and exhibits some chroma noise. Still, it reproduces the grain field decently, whereas you can say neither Criterion's BL nor FEL even remotely tried.

Do you think that these issues are inherited in the master which MK2 provided to licensors?

I assume you are referring to macroblocking in the highlight next to her thumb for example? With the correct caps, now the trailer exhibits some light macroblocking toward the brightest spot in the middle while the Curzon basically has a maroblock of light.

As for whether it's baked into MK2's master, I think it would be hard to tell given the current evidence. I hope it's not. It may just be that this trailer is an automatic SDR ProRes encode (8-bit? 10-bit? mediainfo doesn't tell), and the encoder was still de-prioritizing highlight detail as that's less perceptible, even though it produced an extreme bitrate.

I haven’t downloaded the full-res trailer yet (will try to figure it out using the tool you mentioned)

Install yt-dlp and ffmpeg. Then run in a command prompt / terminal:

Code: Select all

yt-dlp -f "bv*+ba/b" "https://vimeo.com/721106411"

[Finch]

Would it be fair to say that the Curzon set, while not truly reference quality, should still retain a top tier spot given how much of advance it represents over the ten year old Blu-Rays, and over the Criterion UHDs (two of which at least seem decently encoded)?

[nicolas]

Would it be fair to say that the Curzon set, while not truly reference quality, should still retain a top tier spot given how much of advance it represents over the ten year old Blu-Rays, and over the Criterion UHDs (two of which at least seem decently encoded)?

I think it definitely deserves it just for the lack of the egregious low-pass filtering on the Criterion. That alone makes their release quite disappointing, at least for me. I’d pick the Curzon any day to watch the trilogy and Véronique.

[AxeYou]

Would it be fair to say that the Curzon set, while not truly reference quality, should still retain a top tier spot given how much of advance it represents over the ten year old Blu-Rays, and over the Criterion UHDs (two of which at least seem decently encoded)?

I totally agree! Certainly "spectacular upgrades" if not quite "reference" material.

Btw Finch, I'm preparing some audio notes on a few releases I've picked up since my last giant note. Will update here.

[Finch]

Thanks AxeYou!

M Sanderson asked about the Thelma and Louise 4k. Has anyone seen any credible reviews of the disc and the grading? Chris hasn't reviewed it yet, I think.

[cdnchris]

Thanks AxeYou!

M Sanderson asked about the Thelma and Louise 4k. Has anyone seen any credible reviews of the disc and the grading? Chris hasn't reviewed it yet, I think.

I don't have the previous editions. My library has the DVD so i might borrow that, but whatever is on Amazon Prime is far more teal than what Crierion's features, especially in the opening. Some interiors look cool on the Criterion, even blue. The opening section feels cooler while the final section in the desert looks different, hotter, but the opening portion on Amazon is really teal in comparison, like the diner Louise works in. It's nothing like Thief or Bull Durham and looks far better than whatever is streaming.

I'll throw in the caveat I have not looked at the Criterion Blu-ray yet, but I doubt it is all that different.

[Finch]

James Luckard discovered that the film presented on Studio Canal's European release of Brotherhood of the Wolf is likely an old HD master of the Director's Cut with the DC scenes removed, and the audio is pitched too high. Revising OP.

[Finch]

Caps comparing the new High and Low 4k out of Japan with the Criterion BD reveal a massive upgrade. Hopefully it's on their slate for the rest of the year.

[nicolas]

After a week of delay in customs I finally got both Yojimbo and Sanjuro today.

Since the other two Toho UHD’s I saw so far, Stray Dog and Ikiru, were a little disappointing due to their mediocre authoring and a light grain pass, I kept my expectations in check for the other two,…

…only to be very positively surprised. Yes, they still did the masters some minor disservice by leaving 10-15 GB on these BD-66 discs empty but the moments I checked looked very good.

Again, I’m not entirely sure what film elements have been used and were available but both films look astonishing in that regard. This is another example of a night-and-day improvement over the Criterion’s. I honestly believed that these ancient masters will be roughly all we’re ever going to get for these beautiful films but no, both films look as if they’ve been shot not long ago.

If I had to guess, apart from the optical obviously, Yojimbo looks like an OCN scan and Sanjuro a first-gen IP scan. That’s how good they look, even in SDR.

Even though all this deserves praise, I still feel Toho has again done a light grain wipe to attempt a "seamless" experience with the opticals. There’s frighteningly little difference between the opticals’ resolution and the regular footage. Yes, there is a difference albeit a very small one. Especially for an era when opticals were still everything but "sharp" these Kurosawa opticals are very surprisingly detailed.
I honestly think that the opticals spread over the Three Colors trilogy, made 30 years later, look worse and less detailed than those I’ve seen during my spot-check of Yojimbo and Sanjuro.

Don’t get me wrong, there is grain everywhere, this is not a DNR atrocity, it just feels slightly odd all in all. I think I should probably attribute this to how different and better these films look now compared to the Criterion. My brain still needs to adapt to the sudden beauty that’s been unearthed.

Like with the other releases, these only have Japanese subtitles. PCM 2.0 and 3.0 audio is included each.

Anyway, can’t wait for High and Low, Kagemusha and especially what they managed to achieve with Seven Samurai and its lack of the OCN.

(If anyone is interested, I’ll sell both discs and the other Toho UHD’s on a certain bay).