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Uh oh... I smell a Fanny and Alexander upon us..

The Beaver shots don't look awful

No, we must panic and we must panic now

I watched 30 minutes of it last night before I passed out. It looks fine.

It's a good thing Criterion improved the encodes they get over the past year because otherwise, this would clearly be an example of why you shouldnt cram so much material on 1 disc.
Glad to know it seems to pay.

I don't really know anything about encoding but despite the length of the film does the main feature being comprised of static shots with relatively restrained action inside the frame (the biggest transitions are mostly lights being switched on or off, or strobing in the final scene; and traffic in the rare outdoor shots) play a role in being able to fit it all on the single Blu-ray?

cdnchris wrote:I watched 30 minutes of it last night before I passed out. It looks fine.

But you didn't even make it to the potato peeling scene!

No not really. It depends on the length of the file. Since the movie is long and you want it to be in the best quality possible, you'd want to keep the movie as close to the size it was published in as possible (which should be about 30-36gb). Since the disc is a 50gb disc, usually you'd just keep a long movie like that on one disc and features on the other.

But here, there's only about 10-15gb room for special features (which isn't a lot). So hopefully the special features will just be compressed to make smaller to fit on the disc, since compressing the feature film to fit is really bad (and creates artifacts on the file).

kcota17 wrote:But here, there's only about 10-15gb room for special features (which isn't a lot). So hopefully the special features will just be compressed to make smaller to fit on the disc, since compressing the feature film to fit is really bad (and creates artifacts on the file).

All of the special features are pretty old, and those that were shot after the film itself are likely to be SD video, not film, so I could see those taking up little space. The feature length documentary is the main thing. I'm guessing it was shot on film (16mm?), and without compromising the main feature, it's possible they could have included it in HD if they had 10 GB to work with, but with a heavy dose of compression.

colinr0380 wrote:I don't really know anything about encoding but despite the length of the film does the main feature being comprised of static shots with relatively restrained action inside the frame (the biggest transitions are mostly lights being switched on or off, or strobing in the final scene; and traffic in the rare outdoor shots) play a role in being able to fit it all on the single Blu-ray?

It's a 1.66 movie so there isn't lots of black bars to help minimise the used screen surface. However, being static, yes, it doesn't need lots of video bitrate. However, since it was shot on 16mm, you'll need to be careful about that intense filmstock grain.

kcota17 wrote:No not really. It depends on the length of the file. Since the movie is long and you want it to be in the best quality possible, you'd want to keep the movie as close to the size it was published in as possible (which should be about 30-36gb). Since the disc is a 50gb disc, usually you'd just keep a long movie like that on one disc and features on the other.

But here, there's only about 10-15gb room for special features (which isn't a lot). So hopefully the special features will just be compressed to make smaller to fit on the disc, since compressing the feature film to fit is really bad (and creates artifacts on the file).

It depends on both the size of the movie AND its content. Video compression algorithms are mostly based on movement vectors : the more it moves from one frame to the other, the more bitrate you need. If the movie is more static, all the "easiest" for compression.


However, these 10-15 GB for extras ARE a lot. Remember that if they were composed in SD, they shouldn't take more than what they were taking on DVD, ie 8 GB. By allocating 12.8 Gb to Dielman's extra features, it means that Criterion isn't splitting the content over 2 discs anymore but however allocate the higher bitrate to extras than they got in the past, despite having basically no visual improvement to offer.

Example : David recently encoded the Carlotta release of Phantom of the Paradise. While the movie is much shorter than Jeanne Dielman, there is about 131 min of extras which were composed in true HD and which take 10.7 GB on the disc. So basically, Criterion is allocating the same bitrate to SD extras than for true HD ones (and in some cases, than the main feature itself).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, people from Gaumont don't upscale the SD extras at all on their discs, they leave it in 576i with a minimal bitrate. For instance, their recent re-release of The Dinner Game has 112 min of SD extras which only take 5.2 GB.


To sum up : if there was one thing that Criterion / Radius60 could still improve on their encodes, it's being way more challenging regarding the disc space for the extras. You don't need 30 Mbps for a 1080i upscaled extra that was output in SD to begin with. If Criterion was to be able to upgrade visually the extras and justify the bump, why not ? But 99%, it isn't the case. For instance, for Jeanne Dielman, I doubt that Saute ma ville is offered in true HD.

I can't speak for this release, but I can absolutely confirm that compressing the hell out of the extras is normal practice on virtually everything that I've personally overseen. I make an exception for things like short films or similar things where image quality is important, but if it's a talking-heads-driven reminiscence piece or making-of, the priority is to get it as small as possible while still remaining watchable.

tenia wrote:For instance, for Jeanne Dielman, I doubt that Saute ma ville is offered in true HD.

The Cinémathèque royale de Belgique did a 2K DCP of Saute ma ville alongside Jeanne Dielman and her other early work, so it should've been.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:

tenia wrote:For instance, for Jeanne Dielman, I doubt that Saute ma ville is offered in true HD.

The Cinémathèque royale de Belgique did a 2K DCP of Saute ma ville alongside Jeanne Dielman and her other early work, so it should've been.

YES, I bet it will be - how did I miss that extra? I caught both restorations the same week at MoMA, a bittersweet screening for the presenters because Ackerman had just died and had been expected to attend.

So yeah, this looks fine overall. It looks pretty good most of the time and it's a substantial improvement over the DVD as well. Definitely not a Fanny and Alexander deal. There is one issue, though, and it has to do with framing: a little after the 1:11:00 mark, where Jeanne meets her one friend/acquaintance on the street, you can make out a microphone sneaking in on the right-hand side of the screen, which isn't visible on the DVD. It was my daughter that caught it, trying to figure out what it was that was sneaking in there. When I explained it to her it just blew her mind that stuff like that was required in making movies and that in reality there were people all around off screen helping to make it.

cdnchris wrote:Definitely not a Fanny and Alexander deal.

What's the Fanny and Alexander deal, just out of curiosity?

Long movie on one Blu-ray

domino harvey wrote:Long movie on one Blu-ray

Ah, gotcha. Thanks!

So, after reading Chris' review, I take it that Saute ma ville isn't presented as a true HD element but rather an upscale ?

"...it has not been enhanced for widescreen televisions" implies that it's not even an upscale but encoded as 4:3 SD. (HD on Blu-ray is natively 16:9, so it's always "enhanced for widescreen televisions.") Very disappointing.

IIRC, SD 1.66 always is problematic to upscale in HD without having framing-retention issue.

The Fanciful Norwegian wrote:"...it has not been enhanced for widescreen televisions" implies that it's not even an upscale but encoded as 4:3 SD. (HD on Blu-ray is natively 16:9, so it's always "enhanced for widescreen televisions.") Very disappointing.

I doubt it, since Criterion has made it a rule to upscale all SD extras to 1080i for about ten years now. What Chris meant is probably that they upscaled the letter boxed 1.66:1 SD material the way they would normally do with a 4:3 video, resulting in a 1080i encode with black bars on all four sides. Needless to say, a bit disappointing.

I have to apologize on that. It IS in high-definition (and looks good too). When doing reissues a lot of the time I just copy what I've previously written about supplements and then make changes where appropriate, either tech specs or my opinion. Somehow my update for the short film didn't make it up there but everything else did. But yes, it ishigh def 1080p/24.

So I was wrong and The Fanciful Norwegian was right about the upgrade here. Good thing to learn, then.

Awesome. That sweetens the deal.

tenia wrote:So I was wrong and The Fanciful Norwegian was right about the upgrade here. Good thing to learn, then.

It's more that I fucked up and gave the wrong information to begin with ](*,)

Admitting that you made a mistake is a rare trait these days. You're to be commended.