779 Mulholland Dr.

[dwk]

Speaking of the opening, wasn't there a fade or something missing from the first Blu-ray? Has that been fixed?

[brundlefly]

Also of note: the Blu-ray is technically not the same as the old one but the encode's no better. The disc opens with an old StudioCanal logo instead of the Universal one, but everything else looks the same. I compared that opening car crash and the theater between the old disc and the new one and they're still pretty noisy on the new disc. I think all they did was change out the logos. I also tested out the "resume" feature, and stopping on the old one and then putting in the new one it resumed probably about 5-10 seconds off of where I left off on the other disc, more than likely because of the time difference between the StudioCanal and Universal logos.

Great. Is the one David M.'s working on going to be dual format as well?

[swo17]

Yes, and he had previously encoded the Blu-ray as well

[Finch]

I sure hope Studio Canal change the cover back to the eventual Standard Edition because that fake Hopper thing is as bad as the smeary soft focus and skewed angles of the titles on Fred Davis's CC cover. But Chris's initial impressions for the CC 4k are encouraging in case the SC release ends up costing more to import than the Criterion.

[swo17]

I think I'll buy the Criterion either way (to cancel out twbb not buying it) and wait to hear how appreciable the difference is on the 4K disc before deciding whether to get that as well

[brundlefly]

Yes, and he had previously encoded the Blu-ray as well

Thanks. Will hold out for the SC standard release then.

[tenia]

Thanks for the feedback Chris. As EddieLarkin wrote, Pixelogic have already output rather good UHD encodes so I was more curious than worried.

[mhofmann]

Thanks for the feedback Chris. As EddieLarkin wrote, Pixelogic have already output rather good UHD encodes so I was more curious than worried.

Taking a cue from investment disclaimers: "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."

I'd be more curious why, if they are capable of mastering good UHDs, their Blu-ray output for Criterion has been, and remains, so shoddy.
The inverse question is equally valid: given that their Blu-ray encodes are sub-par, why should their UHDs be better?

I doubt that these are separate departments or even people at Pixelogic. But then again I also doubt that they have never heard of the criticism targeted at them. Yet their Blu-ray encodes don't improve (much). It's rather puzzling.

[swo17]

They aren't very good at compression but this is less of an issue on a disc with twice the capacity?

[tenia]

It requires more care though, because some limitations might not be visible at 1080p but are egregious at 2160p (like chroma noise).
My guess is just that they probably never tweaked well enough their Full HD encoder setup and never bothered to, while they found (at least) a good one for UHD (even if just by chance).

mhoffmann, I get your point about predictability, but just like some restoration labs, encoding houses tend to be actually quite predictable in their output.

But then again I also doubt that they have never heard of the criticism targeted at them. Yet their Blu-ray encodes don't improve (much). It's rather puzzling.

I sent them and Criterion an email specifically about this sometime around 2014 (IIRC). Their encodes slightly improved (at least they stopped encoding legacy upscaled extras at the same bitrate that the main feature), but still are often largely perfectible.
Also, Fumiko Takagi and Peter Becker are aware of the compression issues.

[cdnchris]

So here are grabs from a similar shot (if they're the same exact shot it's entirely by accident, but they do come from the tail end of it) for both Criterion Blu-rays and then the 4K just so you can see.

Criterion Blu-ray, 2015 (3.2MB)
Criterion Blu-ray, 2021 (3.2MB)
Criterion 4K (11.2MB)

EDIT: I think the Blu-rays are from the exact same shot and had to double check to make sure I didn't accidentally post the same file twice because they looked too similar. But nope, they're each from the respective discs, and the one from 2015 is the original one I took from 2015.

[swo17]

Why does the 4K look so much less detailed?

[cdnchris]

The blown out headlight probably isn't helping, but I think it's from that sharpening effect on the Blu-ray giving the idea.

EDIT:

This might be slightly better. I took that shot because I already had the grab from the original disc. I don't have a matching grab from the 2015 disc for this next shot, but here's a comparison between the 4K and 2021 Blu-ray a second or so earlier in the film:

Blu-ray, 2021
4K

[mhofmann]

Thanks for posting! That looks a bit disappointing to me. I can see the same weird chroma blockiness in the grain pattern on the 4K that plagues the Blu-ray (and most other Criterion Blu-rays) at a quarter the resolution. But I don't want to jump to conclusions based on one frame just yet...

[swo17]

Yeah, that's a better comparison. I guess you can mainly see the difference HDR makes by focusing on her earring

[EddieLarkin]

Why does the 4K look so much less detailed?

Because that detail now exists at the higher end of the wider brightness range, and is thus being lost when the images are converted to SDR.

[McNulty]

4k (top)
Blu-ray ‘21 (bottom)

4k looks way more detailed here.

[tenia]

So indeed, the 2021 BD and the 2015 BD are exactly the same (down to the encode, it seems - save for the opening logo).
I guess we'll see with SC 2021 re-remastered BD how the latest 4K resto compares, since it means the 2021 Criterion BD and UHD aren't sharing the same source since it's basically a new restoration (down to a new scan).

Edit : I found the wording in the 2021 Criterion booklet (which of course contradict what Svet wrote in his review) :

Mulholland Dr. is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The 35 mm original A/B/C/D camera negatives were scanned in 4K resolution on a Scanity film scanner.

The 2021 restoration on the 4K UHD disc, undertaken by the Criterion Collection with the support of STUDIOCANAL, was based on the 2015 color transfer and was newly created in Dolby Vision HDR and supervised by Lynch. The 2021 near-field remaster of the original 5.1 soundtrack mix was supervised by Lynch and original rerecording mixer Ron Eng at Asymmetrical Studio in Hollywood.

[cdnchris]

Thanks for posting! That looks a bit disappointing to me. I can see the same weird chroma blockiness in the grain pattern on the 4K that plagues the Blu-ray (and most other Criterion Blu-rays) at a quarter the resolution. But I don't want to jump to conclusions based on one frame just yet...

Admittedly I'm still adjusting my expectations with 4K and I see what you mean but I don't think it's a deal breaker nor impacts things that much; I can't say it's all that noticeable on a television. After the accident, when the smoke is clearing the scene, the artifact is more evident, and watching again on a television it's kinda visible in that scene, but I'd say it's one of those things you'd actively have to be looking for. I'm curious how StudioCanal's will turn out, though.

Why does the 4K look so much less detailed?

Because that detail now exists at the higher end of the wider brightness range, and is thus being lost when the images are converted to SDR.

And I keep forgetting about this when dealing with SDR grabs and how details will get hidden due to the limited range, so it was indeed a bad shot to use to show difference in detail/compression. Yes, on my television, it does look quite a ways better.

[mhofmann]

Thanks for posting! That looks a bit disappointing to me. I can see the same weird chroma blockiness in the grain pattern on the 4K that plagues the Blu-ray (and most other Criterion Blu-rays) at a quarter the resolution. But I don't want to jump to conclusions based on one frame just yet...

Admittedly I'm still adjusting my expectations with 4K and I see what you mean but I don't think it's a deal breaker nor impacts things that much; I can't say it's all that noticeable on a television. After the accident, when the smoke is clearing the scene, the artifact is more evident, and watching again on a television it's kinda visible in that scene, but I'd say it's one of those things you'd actively have to be looking for. I'm curious how StudioCanal's will turn out, though.

Yeah, as seen above it's still way better than the Blu-ray. I'm curious how much of the chroma noise is part of the restoration itself and how much is due to artifacts induced by the encode. As a very crude approximation of what I mean, this is the contrast-normalized 'b' channel after a quick conversion to Lab in Photoshop (to view at 100%).

At least I don't see too many of the obvious macroblocks in this shot that are clearly beyond awful on the Blu-ray.

[yoloswegmaster]

Beaver Dr.

[andyli]

Caps-a-holic. It goes to show how poor the original BD is in terms of compression.

[flyonthewall2983]

That dinner scene at the end still guts me. The footage of Harring and Watts hugging it out after David calls cut in the behind-the-scenes stuff was so powerful to watch.

[yoloswegmaster]

Speaking of the opening, wasn't there a fade or something missing from the first Blu-ray? Has that been fixed?

Yes, the fade is now back in this version.

[swo17]

To both discs or only the UHD?