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At least you can tell with Children of Paradise that it had a grain structure. Which is more than I can say about Predator or Patton.

david hare wrote:Greg, you're watching the big wide shots which on the BD are the best things there. The encode has been resolved in such a way that it projects well and probably looks worse for detail and black level the smaller the screen you view it on...
I suggest you start the Second part and scan forward - well anywhere really -to see how bad it gets...

I thought the great inferiority of the DVD was apparent even before those opening crowd shots (and I did go a bit beyond those as well): the lettering of the opening titles was much more blurred and compressed than on the blu ray. I'll brace myself again for the blu getting worse in Part 2, but after seeing what the DVD looks like on my current set-up, I don't ever want to watch it again. When I originally saw the Criterion DVD, I was projecting onto a screen half the size of my current one, so the flaws were a lot less apparent.

I've just been reading the new Sight & Sound, and unreservedly recommend Peerpee's two-page feature on the horrors of grain removal - there won't be much in it that the likes of us don't already know, but I suspect a great many film buffs have no idea about the atrocities being perpetrated on important films in the name of "restoration".

The main illustration is an damning enlargement of part of Pathé's Le Samouraï.

rdanduran wrote:Why didn't criterion just say no to Pathe in this case, since this is by far the worst Blu-ray release they ever issued? They could have just canceled or delayed it and made me less miserable. Are we going to be stuck with the 2002 DVD as the best edition for ten, twenty years down the road? How many years does it take between restorations of the same film? We aren't putting enough weight on criterion, since they actually chose to release this.

Actually, I'm also wondering why Criterion hasn't done the work on their own, in order not to use the awful Pathé restoration.
I'm quite sure Criterion will release Le samourai in 2013, and also quite sure they won't use Pathé encoding.

Honestly, I can't believe that anyone can think such a deadful grey-gradation can be the original look of the movie.
There are things where you can have doubts, like the contrast or luminosity. But not something like this, as for the poor level of details.
They have issued a 4K restoration (not only scan, but restoration), and it has less details than a 2K restoration issued from a 2K scan.

There is something instantly wrong when watching the movie.

tenia wrote:Honestly, I can't believe that anyone can think such a deadful grey-gradation can be the original look of the movie.
There are things where you can have doubts, like the contrast or luminosity. But not something like this, as for the poor level of details.
They have issued a 4K restoration (not only scan, but restoration), and it has less details than a 2K restoration issued from a 2K scan.

There is something instantly wrong when watching the movie.

Didn't this forum widely prefer the dreadful grey-gradation of MOC's M vs Criterion's more film-like transfer? I thought dreadful grey-gradation was de rigeour for most older titles; almost as popular here as the green=more-asian=more-correct theory of color timing.

My biggest concern with this restoration is they did a film out to a new negative, so on the newly created elements, all that degraining is baked in.

movielocke wrote:Didn't this forum widely prefer the dreadful grey-gradation of MOC's M vs Criterion's more film-like transfer ? I thought dreadful grey-gradation was de rigeour for most older titles; almost as popular here as the green=more-asian=more-correct theory of color timing.

I don't know about M, but I'm quite sure there is no such "green is better for Asian movie" theory. Less pink, that's for sure, especially when you look at the god-awful 10 years old Musashi trilogy transfers, but I think also of Good Morning, where it has been clearly proved that the current green-colored material used for video releases is not the correct color scheme.

movielocke wrote:My biggest concern with this restoration is they did a film out to a new negative, so on the newly created elements, all that degraining is baked in.

This should be confirmed or infirmed by anyone who has seen the new DCP in theaters.

tenia wrote: I don't know about M, but I'm quite sure there is no such "green is better for Asian movie" theory. Less pink, that's for sure, especially when you look at the god-awful 10 years old Musashi trilogy transfers, but I think also of Good Morning, where it has been clearly proved that the current green-colored material used for video releases is not the correct color scheme.

I'm afraid Movielocke is correct in this. The green vs. red debate on asian color titles has been going on here for years and years.

Didn't this forum widely prefer the dreadful grey-gradation of MOC's M vs Criterion's more film-like transfer? I thought dreadful grey-gradation was de rigeour for most older titles; almost as popular here as the green=more-asian=more-correct theory of color timing.

Color timing? On a black and white film?
I'm guessing you mean dynamic range distribution/density rather than color?

tenia wrote:I don't know about M, but I'm quite sure there is no such "green is better for Asian movie" theory. Less pink, that's for sure, especially when you look at the god-awful 10 years old Musashi trilogy transfers, but I think also of Good Morning, where it has been clearly proved that the current green-colored material used for video releases is not the correct color scheme.

Proved where? There might be some excessive green due to fading on Good Morning but the image on BFI's Blu-ray does represent Ozu's color palette as clearly seen in his other color films. The Criterion emphatically does not. It's better to keep that image the way it is, which doesn't bother me at all, than attempt to fix it.

Which reminds me - can't wait to see the new Blu-ray of Floating Weeds. Goodbye lilac skies and harsh, overly bright and boosted colors!

tenia wrote:This should be confirmed or infirmed by anyone who has seen the new DCP in theaters.

I saw the DCP in theatres this summer, but I was not primed beforehand to look for problems, I arrived at the Aero very nearly late and had a poor viewing angle. I sat in the back corner and I enjoyed the film and thought it looked wonderful. Had I been primed/alerted to potential issues I'd have been much more attentive and sought a better seat after intermission.

The software responsible for ruining the restoration is Dark Energy Professional. Although the software purports to denoise/degrain without image degradation, simply looking at the example on their page shows it to be not true. It turns an image into the mess that is Children of Paradise. The goal of a restoration should be to RESTORE, not try to change or improve the image by removing grain. That is absurd. Watch and weep...

moviemaker wrote:The software responsible for ruining the restoration is Dark Energy Professional. Although the software purports to denoise/degrain without image degradation, simply looking at the example on their page shows it to be not true. It turns an image into the mess that is Children of Paradise. The goal of a restoration should be to RESTORE, not try to change or improve the image by removing grain. That is absurd. Watch and weep...

That's disgusting.

This tale gets worse and worse!

david hare wrote:I've seen this software mentioned before but I think it's a red herring in this case. Anyway who is even able to definitely say it was specifically used by any one of the parties in the restoration/BD encode. Why would they use an American software house for digital cleanup when they are in the greater land of Ritrovata, Eclair and all the facilities available in Europe?

I don't buy this one.

Dark Energy used on Children of Paradise

The demonstration video is disgusting! It's shocking to see the number of clients they list on their website.

DignanSWE wrote:It's shocking to see the number of clients they list on their website.

To be fair, digital cleanup software is not intrinsically evil - it's the (mis)use to which it's put.

Best software ever.
Treats grain in the same way than compression artefacts and able to sweep all this to replace is with fake grain which is nowhere to be found on the original source.

To think that a restoration can be done by using this is simply unbelievable. I hope this software is never used as the video shows, because that would simply be being fully incompetent. Seeing the list of clients, I think it's not the case, but you never know.

MichaelB wrote:To be fair, digital cleanup software is not intrinsically evil - it's the (mis)use to which it's put.

I don't know anything about digital restoration, but this particular software seems to be really destructive. Can the degraining/replacing with fine structure ever be justified? Maybe Cinnafilm offers other more useful products, and shouldn't be judged by this one.

It's depressing how proud they seem of their process. Look at these before and after shots. It's great they could remove the huge black dot, but they seem to have royally fucked over the entire picture in the process.

I'd rather have had it unrestored. The black dot lasted for a frame; the ghastly de-noised image is there throughout.

BEFORE

The restoration from 2002 for the DVD actually gets rid of most of the problems without introducing new ones. It's probably the best we'll get -- at least for ten years.

That before and after shot is really quite startling.

moviemaker wrote:The restoration from 2002 for the DVD actually gets rid of most of the problems without introducing new ones. It's probably the best we'll get -- at least for ten years.

The transfer for the 2002 DVD introduced all the problems inherent in presenting a film in standard-def NTSC encoding with MPEG-2 compression obviously. Taking the captures from the that disc at DVDBeaver and zooming them in to a similar size as the images above shows them to be covered with wall-to-wall compression artifacts, which cover up even more detail than this new restoration has.

Gregory wrote:

moviemaker wrote:The restoration from 2002 for the DVD actually gets rid of most of the problems without introducing new ones. It's probably the best we'll get -- at least for ten years.

It introduced all the problems inherent in presenting a film in standard-def NTSC encoding with MPEG-2 compression. Taking the captures from the 2002 DVD at DVDBeaver and zooming them in to a similar size as the images above shows them to be covered with wall-to-wall compression artifacts, which cover up even more detail than this new restoration has.

Ahh, sanity overcomes hyperbole. The 2002 DVD comes with its own steamer trunk of baggage, much like the 2012 BD does. It's not infinitely better (sorry, David). It just presents a different set of trade offs and, as always, one's taste in imperfections is an individual choice.

Gregory wrote:

moviemaker wrote:The restoration from 2002 for the DVD actually gets rid of most of the problems without introducing new ones. It's probably the best we'll get -- at least for ten years.

The transfer for the 2002 DVD introduced all the problems inherent in presenting a film in standard-def NTSC encoding with MPEG-2 compression obviously. Taking the captures from the that disc at DVDBeaver and zooming them in to a similar size as the images above shows them to be covered with wall-to-wall compression artifacts, which cover up even more detail than this new restoration has.

A fun experiment would be to NOT zoom in and to watch samples of the three restorations because we experience them that way. The 2002 and 2012 MPEG2 DVD restorations and the 2012 Blu-ray H264 (assuming it is H264). That's what I also find problematic with the example on the Dark Energy website. They zoom in to show compression artifacts that aren't really visible under most viewing conditions. The lack of detail and overal mush introduced to the image is clear in the recent 'restoration'. Furthermore, they added back digital grain for reasons that completely escape me (unless they think it restores detail lost with their process).

Be that as it may, the Dark Energy process is distressing, both in the cleanup stage and in the ridiculous "regraining" second stage. This wasn't the right process for this restoration, because it removed so much sharp focus from the source material. The regraining did not put that sharpness back into play--how could it? They had already taken it all away.

I'm sure it is a question of what values you most want to keep from the original picture, but for me there's no contest: I would rather have crisp, sharp focus and the most depth-of-field possible in my blu-rays, and for that I'm willing to put up with flickers, pops, scratches, blotches, and--gasp!--grain.