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Guess we all better hold on to our CC BDs of Barry Lyndon! For fuck's sake, Warner.

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 4:21 pmAnyways, where this stops making sense for me is with the recently released Clockwork Orange UHD. It is in 1.66:1! Why not 1.78:1 like FMJ and TS?

I believe that A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon (and Lolita and Dr Strangelove, both partially) were all hard matted in camera. It wasn't until The Shining that Kubrick started shooting open matte. This gives Warner the ability to open up from 1.85:1 to 1.78:1, whereas ACO would require a crop, which is what got them a load of crap in Barry Lyndon's case. Whether or not they would repeat that mistake for a BL UHD is anyone's guess, but they've always seemed to treat it and Lolita as the lesser thans of their Kubrick holdings (neither received a 2 disc DVD release back in the day, like all the rest did), so I wouldn't be surprised if Eyes Wide Shut is their final Kubrick UHD (naturally, BL would be an obvious choice for Criterion to upgrade, and I'm sure they'd love to do Lolita as well).

I can confirm from first-hand inspection of the relevant film cans that The Shining was to be screened at 1.85:1 in British cinemas. I don't know where this claim about it being screened at 1.66:1 in European cinemas came from. Certainly possible, of course, given that it's open-matte, but I haven't seen any actual evidence to back this up.

Although I'm not the tiniest bit fussed about it being presented at 1.78:1, especially since it was protected for 1.33:1.

EddieLarkin wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 8:22 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 4:21 pmAnyways, where this stops making sense for me is with the recently released Clockwork Orange UHD. It is in 1.66:1! Why not 1.78:1 like FMJ and TS?

I believe that A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon (and Lolita and Dr Strangelove, both partially) were all hard matted in camera. It wasn't until The Shining that Kubrick started shooting open matte. This gives Warner the ability to open up from 1.85:1 to 1.78:1, whereas ACO would require a crop, which is what got them a load of crap in Barry Lyndon's case. Whether or not they would repeat that mistake for a BL UHD is anyone's guess, but they've always seemed to treat it and Lolita as the lesser thans of their Kubrick holdings (neither received a 2 disc DVD release back in the day, like all the rest did), so I wouldn't be surprised if Eyes Wide Shut is their final Kubrick UHD (naturally, BL would be an obvious choice for Criterion to upgrade, and I'm sure they'd love to do Lolita as well).

Thank you for the clarification. I got myself into thinking that Kubrick preferred the 1.66:1 format, but of course, ACO and BL were shot in 1.66:1, probably only because they were European productions, and that format was standard widescreen in Europe at the time. And good point regarding BL. It would of course be awesome if Criterion were allowed to release it on UHD, but I'm sure Warner would want to include it in a "complete" UHD boxset one day when they're done releasing incomplete UHD boxsets (like the one with 2001, FMJ and TS in it and the extremely odd one with 3 UHD's and the rest of the films on old BD's), so my bet would be that Warner'll let Criterion keep the BD and then release a UHD, just like Sony did with Strangelove. And the same would go for Lolita, probably.

MichaelB wrote: Sun Nov 21, 2021 8:44 pm I can confirm from first-hand inspection of the relevant film cans that The Shining was to be screened at 1.85:1 in British cinemas. I don't know where this claim about it being screened at 1.66:1 in European cinemas came from. Certainly possible, of course, given that it's open-matte, but I haven't seen any actual evidence to back this up.

Although I'm not the tiniest bit fussed about it being presented at 1.78:1, especially since it was protected for 1.33:1.

Thanks. Any knowledge as to whether Kubrick himself oversaw and approved masking of the open mattes? He surely wouldn't have shipped out open mattes to cinemas and then let everymen projectionists do the masking as they went, would he? One thing that I find really weird for the perfectionist Kubrick is that if he indeed shot in open matte to have those versions shown on tv, why would he keep the helicopter in view in The Shining to be shown -- and ridiculed -- for decades until it was finally cropped when the film was released in widescreen (1.85:1) on BD, long after his death?

By the way, the 1.78:1 editions of TS and FMJ doesn't look wrong to me and they don't "bother" me as such. I just find it weird that Warner are releasing them in a format that they have certainly never been shown in cinematically, and if Kubrick approved the 1.85:1 versions shown in both US and European cinemas, wouldn't that be the more obvious choice? To release director approved editions?

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:07 pmAny knowledge as to whether Kubrick himself oversaw and approved masking of the open mattes? He surely wouldn't have shipped out open mattes to cinemas and then let everymen projectionists do the masking as they went, would he?

If memory serves, that's precisely what did happen. This really is pretty routine: I'd say the vast majority of 35mm release prints that I've personally inspected (and I've inspected a lot between 1989 and 2011, when I successively worked in rep cinemas and as a BFI National Archive curator) were open-matte rather than masked. I suspect the role of projectionist has become debased since cinemas went digital, but prior to that they were professionals who took pride in their work - in fact, the wording of Kubrick's famous letter to them over Barry Lyndon clearly recognises this and treats them with appropriate respect.

One thing that I find really weird for the perfectionist Kubrick is that if he indeed shot in open matte to have those versions shown on tv, why would he keep the helicopter in view in The Shining to be shown -- and ridiculed -- for decades until it was finally cropped when the film was released in widescreen (1.85:1) on BD, long after his death?

It's not a case of "if" - there are storyboards from the film clearly marked up with instructions to the camera operator to frame for 1.85:1 and protect for 1.33:1. We know absolutely precisely what the correct aspect ratio of The Shining is, and that it was protected for open-matte TV screenings at the time of production.

And you might as well also ask why the shorter international cut of the film includes scrolling opening credits for two actors (Anne Jackson, Tony Burton) who are no longer in that version - although in that particular case I suspect the answer is "because it would have been too expensive to redo all the opticals". Being a perfectionist means that perfection is an ideal to aim for; it doesn't mean that it's always attainable in every particular.

By the way, the 1.78:1 editions of TS and FMJ doesn't look wrong to me and they don't "bother" me as such. I just find it weird that Warner are releasing them in a format that they have certainly never been shown in cinematically, and if Kubrick approved the 1.85:1 versions shown in both US and European cinemas, wouldn't that be the more obvious choice? To release director approved editions?

Their property, their rules. The difference between 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 is piddling (I guarantee you've routinely gained or lost more image to projector/masking overscan in cinemas), so I've never been minded to quibble.

MichaelB wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:37 pm The difference between 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 is piddling (I guarantee you've routinely gained or lost more image to projector/masking overscan in cinemas), so I've never been minded to quibble.

Out of interest, is there some sort of mandate at Indicator that any 1.78:1 masters they receive of films that were composed at 1.85:1, should be slightly masked? I've noticed a few titles (Happy Birthday To Me, Crimewave, The Anderson Tapes) were the Indicator disc shares the master with a release in another country, but it's 1.78:1 on those discs and 1.85:1 on the Indicator. Indeed I don't believe there is a single Indicator release that is presented in 1.78:1, which probably makes it unique amongst all labels and studios.

Over at the other forum, folks are complaining about poor compression on Kino's Invasion of The Body Snatchers disc. Can anyone here confirm?

It's quite obvious from the caps at caps-a-holic. The Dolby Vision FEL will help tighten things up but this is a big step down for Kino in UHD compression.

So, one to put into the "Only buy if you have a Dolby Vision player?" column rather than Disappointing?

If the Beev is correct about the audio, it's disappointing by definition as it simply ports across the flawed soundtrack that was on the BD, where an audio stem went missing during Don Siegel's cameo - you can hear him reacting to his radio, but not the voices that are coming through it.

As far as I'm aware, Arrow's version is the only Blu-ray edition that fixed it.

MichaelB wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:37 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:07 pmAny knowledge as to whether Kubrick himself oversaw and approved masking of the open mattes? He surely wouldn't have shipped out open mattes to cinemas and then let everymen projectionists do the masking as they went, would he?

If memory serves, that's precisely what did happen. This really is pretty routine: I'd say the vast majority of 35mm release prints that I've personally inspected (and I've inspected a lot between 1989 and 2011, when I successively worked in rep cinemas and as a BFI National Archive curator) were open-matte rather than masked. I suspect the role of projectionist has become debased since cinemas went digital, but prior to that they were professionals who took pride in their work - in fact, the wording of Kubrick's famous letter to them over Barry Lyndon clearly recognises this and treats them with appropriate respect.

MichaelB wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:37 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Mon Nov 22, 2021 10:07 pmBy the way, the 1.78:1 editions of TS and FMJ doesn't look wrong to me and they don't "bother" me as such. I just find it weird that Warner are releasing them in a format that they have certainly never been shown in cinematically, and if Kubrick approved the 1.85:1 versions shown in both US and European cinemas, wouldn't that be the more obvious choice? To release director approved editions?

Their property, their rules. The difference between 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 is piddling (I guarantee you've routinely gained or lost more image to projector/masking overscan in cinemas), so I've never been minded to quibble.

My friend is a projectionist at our local cinematheque where they still often have 35mm and even 16mm screenings, in addition to the now majority of digital screenings. Of course, masking is a frequent discussion point, especially when he's experiencing wrongly marked reels, etc. But yes, I know of Kubrick's BL letter (as I also think most projectionists do), but, again, I discussed masking very recently with my friend, and he told me that back then (especially before the 90'ies), many European would only have a 1.66:1 mask and not a 1.85:1 one while it would be the other way around in the US. So I still believe that showings of open mattes could potentially vary quite dramatically in how they looked. Especially if you compared a 1.85 masked with a 1.66 one. I agree with you that the jump from 1.85 to 1.78 is often insignifcant. However, there are exceptions. Take, for example the famous one, Repo Man, where the OAR was apparently 1.78:1, but MOC cropped it to 1.85:1. I wouldn't call the cropping of hair in screenshots 2 and 7 insignificant: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReview ... review.htm

But again, I'm certain that Kubrick wouldn't compose his shots as tightly as Cox did in the above example, and this is confirmed by the look of the open matte dvd releases of his later film. They definitely look "wrong", and there's load of "empty" space in top and bottom. I was merely pointing out that I thought it weird to release the films in a ratio that they were never shown in, and never meant to be shown in. Odd, not necessarily wrong.

Finch wrote: Tue Nov 23, 2021 12:09 am So, one to put into the "Only buy if you have a Dolby Vision player?" column rather than Disappointing?

It's not known yet how much difference DV will make, as it's not a guaranteed fix. GeoffD says the Scream Halloween UHD is still a total shitshow compression wise in DV, even though it improves over the HDR10 base layer. And YMMV on compression anyway, for many people they don't see it and it doesn't bother them.

Menace II Society added as a reference disc (note that some BR users have confirmed scratches on their UHDs though this title's packaging has not received any complaints like Kane's has - I wonder what's going on there).

I assume the scratches are happening from the people putting the discs in the case (I'm pretty sure that with digipaks the discs have to be inserted by hand.)

Criterion are now in a situation where they are receiving really good looking encodes for their UHDs, and very poor ones for the equivalent Blu-rays. How on earth they or Pixelogic cannot see the problem now is baffling. All of the grain visible here in the UHD should be plainly visible in the BD, it would be a little chunkier because of the lower resolution but there's no reason any of it should disappear! And yet, it's practically all been removed by the shoddy compression. So in relation to the thread title, the result is that every Criterion UHD should be worth buying over even their own Blu-ray using the same source!

This shows again how Pixelogic never really cared about fine-tuning their BD encodes, at least just for sheer professionalism, since they're doing on-par stuff for UHD but still output rubbish encodes for BD.
And it's not even asking them to do impossible things, but just simply level up to the competition.
It also shows how no matter what, unlike other labels, Criterion's technical staff simply doesn't care enough because to them, that's good enough.

EddieLarkin wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 11:18 am Criterion are now in a situation where they are receiving really good looking encodes for their UHDs, and very poor ones for the equivalent Blu-rays. How on earth they or Pixelogic cannot see the problem now is baffling. All of the grain visible here in the UHD should be plainly visible in the BD, it would be a little chunkier because of the lower resolution but there's no reason any of it should disappear! And yet, it's practically all been removed by the shoddy compression. So in relation to the thread title, the result is that every Criterion UHD should be worth buying over even their own Blu-ray using the same source!

That looks terrible! I saw this film on Netflix when it was releaed, and I remember that I was pretty impressed with the grain rendering for a heavily compressed stream. Would be interesting to see a comparison of the 1080p stream and the BD. Obviously, the UHD wins overall, but Criterion is definitely heading in the wrong direction if their BD encodes end up looking worse than online streams. Kind of like when they released The Irishman on BD while a 2160p version was available online and clearly blew the BD out of the water.

Edit: The Lionsgate BD clearly looks better. Even with a lower filesize, it has a less murky and less macroblocked image than the Criterion.

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:33 pm Edit: The Lionsgate BD clearly looks better. Even with a lower filesize, it has a less murky and less macroblocked image than the Criterion.

The Lionsgate has a larger file size. Ironically, Pixelogic encode for Lionsgate too (which is why Apocalypse Now's compression is fine on UHD but a hot mess on the new BDs), so it may very well be the case that they did both Uncut Gems BDs. The difference is presumably a result of the extras, as the file size of the feature is 20% smaller on the Criterion vs the Lionsgate. Which really shows up Pixelogic's approach to encoding; it's obvious that one should use whatever space is necessary to compress the feature properly, and then use whatever remains for the extras, even if it means reducing their file size drastically. Instead, they have let the amount of extras compromise the feature, which should never ever happen.

Road Warrior replacement discs coming in mid-January according to Warner.

Studio Canal's UK disc of The Howling added as a reference title, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as a Solid/Appreciable update (superior colors, but some DNR applied)

EddieLarkin wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 5:16 pm

jegharfangetmigenmyg wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:33 pm Edit: The Lionsgate BD clearly looks better. Even with a lower filesize, it has a less murky and less macroblocked image than the Criterion.

The Lionsgate has a larger file size. Ironically, Pixelogic encode for Lionsgate too (which is why Apocalypse Now's compression is fine on UHD but a hot mess on the new BDs), so it may very well be the case that they did both Uncut Gems BDs. The difference is presumably a result of the extras, as the file size of the feature is 20% smaller on the Criterion vs the Lionsgate. Which really shows up Pixelogic's approach to encoding; it's obvious that one should use whatever space is necessary to compress the feature properly, and then use whatever remains for the extras, even if it means reducing their file size drastically. Instead, they have let the amount of extras compromise the feature, which should never ever happen.

Ah, thanks for the info. I didn't know that Pixelogic also did encodes for Lionsgate. It's such a shame that they're not paying attention to the source. I guess that bad compression on paper should be less of a problem if the source is 100% digital, but it can really ruin shot on film-material. Also, if the source material is in bad shape, bad compression can make a not too good looking source look horrible. The latest newer Criterion release I was most underwhelmed by has to be After Life taken from a 35mm copy where the source material had already been blown up for cinematic screening. Then add a layer of bad compression, and you're off to a bad start. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the Criterion and the BFI (don't know who does their encodes).

It's unfortunately still usual nowadays for several authoring houses (at least on BD) to basically encode the feature film and the extras at a similar AVB, including when they obviously have very different PQ. This is indeed silly : it looks like common sense to priorise the main feature first, since that's obviously what is going to be scrutinized first and foremost in terms of PQ and encode, but I'm still routinely seeing cases where that's sometimes clearly not the case and the main feature and the extras have been aggregated in runtimes and given the same AVB target, and cases where you can feel the main feature have been prioritise a bit but there hasn't been a deeper reflexion about how much space the extras actually require (especially in case ms where they're SD-sourced).
I'm also seeing cased where there is all that plus non-optimized soundtrack choices (giving lossless encodes to extras soundtracks or audio commentaries, keeping 48/24 encodes instead of going to 48/16 despite having 2 5.1 + 2 2.0 lossless tracks...).

I'm at a point where I'm considering building a small Excel table tool and send this to those authoring house since that's how easy it actually is to do those calculations they're obviously not all doing.

It's already hard enough for some to properly encode a BD even at 30+ Mbps, but if they don't even helpt themselves and work at lower bitrates...

EddieLarkin wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 5:16 pm (which is why Apocalypse Now's compression is fine on UHD but a hot mess on the new BDs)

Oof, thanks for this head's up.

brundlefly wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:00 pm

EddieLarkin wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 5:16 pm (which is why Apocalypse Now's compression is fine on UHD but a hot mess on the new BDs)

Oof, thanks for this head's up.

It's probably the most horrific example of this good UHD/bad BD compression phenomenon

EddieLarkin wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:11 pm

brundlefly wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:00 pm

EddieLarkin wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 5:16 pm (which is why Apocalypse Now's compression is fine on UHD but a hot mess on the new BDs)

Oof, thanks for this head's up.

It's probably the most horrific example of this good UHD/bad BD compression phenomenon

Oh god, my eyes!

I am not sure I understand why there are so many cases where the UHD is very good but the BD is poor. (1) Why do UHD's not have the problems that accompanying BD's seem to have? It seems to be something more than higher resolution? (2) Are the problems with the BD's that accompany UHD's different from those that pertain to stand-alone BD's? ( 2) Are the BD's that accompany the UHD's being encoded differently than the standalone BD's or the BD's before UHD's came into existence? If so, how and why? Since I am not a technical person, these questions may not have been expressed in the correct technical lingo, so please feel free to re-state them as you se appropriate before answering them. Thank you.