criterionforum.org

captveg wrote:Sometimes I wish all the tech info was blocked on these discs so people would be forced to watch the movie and judge it on that rather than on codecs, file sizes and bitrate numbers....

My copy of a newish MGM title actually has codec, bitrate and BD type on the packaging. That said, the reason we discuss these things is whether it will be worth spending hard earned money on. Especially, I might add, for those that already own several previous releases of the same film. Not everybody can afford to take a gamble, so numbers and screenshots are the next best thing, and they ultimately do mean something tangible in most cases.

It's like thinking you're buying a full length album but it has only 5 songs, yet you paid a premium price. Whether the quality of the songs are good or not, you still feel ripped off.

The thing that bugs me the most about this is the absence of the promised Eddie Muller commentary. Was it just listed in the original specs by mistake, or did he actually record one (or plan to), and something came up? As I own the old Columbia DVD, I see no reason to upgrade, but for that commentary (even with all of the technical disappointments), I might have grabbed the Blu.

According to a poster on Wellesnet, Eddie Muller claimed on another forum that he did a 20-minute on-camera interview for THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI Blu-ray, not a commentary. However, I wouldn't be surprised if this interview is actually the 30-minute noircast.net podcast listed as an extra since Muller is known as a noir expert.

I was a little surprised when I starting hearing how the new 4K restoration of SHANGHAI significantly cleaned up the image since the film has always seemed to be in good condition during theatrical screenings I've seen and on previous home video releases. Looking at those caps on DVDBeaver, the image looks nearly identical to the Columbia DVD release from 13 years ago!

I don't see the point of Sony doing such topnotch archiving if they aren't going to partner with companies they can trust to do their preservation/restoration work justice like Criterion. At the very least, when it comes to expensively remastered classics like The Lady From Shanghai, they ought to consider contractually obligating their other sub-licensees to use the best available bitrates and encoding standards.

captveg wrote:Sometimes I wish all the tech info was blocked on these discs so people would be forced to watch the movie and judge it on that rather than on codecs, file sizes and bitrate numbers....

While I understand your point about twisting the end results to seem disappointing because of a crappy authoring, it's also now common knowledge that a very good authoring can help a lot (see what's David MacKenzie does for a living). Also, VC-1 has a bad history about being coupled with a low video bitrate such as here. And while Gary's caps are notorious for not being very trustworthy, the 8th cap shows pretty bad compression issues.

Then, about the sound, well, it sure needs a good hear and a good setup to hear the difference between lossy and lossless. But still, it's lossy nonetheless, while there is no reason sound should not benefit from what is now a 6 years old lossless format.

I agree that all this are small things, but summing them up makes them big altogether. It feels cheap, rushed and lazy, as if they trully didn't care that they were releasins a brand new 4K restoration on BD. Instead, they squeezed the hell out of it, and rendered the sound like on a DVD (it probably really the same track than the DVD it's coming with).

So, you know : why bother to begin with ?

I do get that it's the combination of these matters coupled with the price point that has produced a death by papercut response. But ultimately my point is: what's the file size and bitrate on Criterion's The Earrings of Madame de...? Did anyone care about those things once they saw that the picture itself was the problem and no technical aspects of the encode could save it? Then you have something like Warner's The Adventures of Robin Hood - released VC-1 at ~16 GB, lossy DD 1.0 Mono audio, and a color film no less, and even though it's a disc from 2008 and has those tech limitations I don't think it's a release that would earn many complaints from a straight up viewing experience today.

Absolutely, which is why I nuanced as much as possible my post. There has been numbered of screw ups well beyond the scope of poor authoring. There has also been very good discs produced with VC-1 at low bitrates.
But in this case, it's the opposite : what seems to be a good source only limited by how it has been handled.

It'll be interesting to see if other reviews agree with Gary.

One reason I've been very slow to pick up any of TT's Sony titles is that Sony's done such a great job with their Columbia Classics of bringing films to DVD with strong unaltered grain and detail that the upgrade isn't as noticeable as it is with other studio's products (true to some extent with Fox as well, though they've gotten unreleased titles out so it's a bit different)

david hare wrote:Are you suggesting we should never question the bona fides of a big company like Sony, captveg?

I suggested nothing more than looking beyond just the numbers and seeing what the film itself looks/sounds like. The numbers mean little if one is pleased with their viewing experience.

david hare wrote:Even widescreen and color films came in barely above 4Gig. I can assure you the bigger your display (or projection system) the dodgier these start to look these days.

I'll vouch for this. The CinemaScope titles in Sony's Budd Boetticher set look like blotchy garbage when projected on even a modestly-sized screen.

What's so frustrating about the tech specs on *Lady from Shanghai* is knowing that (for a director of the magnitude of Welles) this release doesn't give you the best it's format is capable of offering, and you're denied the best possible product for the stupidest of reasons. Why would I spend money on a disc that would instantly be made redundant with something as simple and routine as a competent encoding? What a disappointment.

I guess I've always been more inclined to simply enjoy the movies and not get caught up in the tech minutia. I could die tomorrow so I live for today and not what could have been or what future release could happen in x number of years. And I just don't see the practically non-discernable difference between a 1948 mono lossy or lossless soundtrack to be all that concerning, for example. Things can always be improved, but we all draw our lines in the sand at different places. Some people go nuts over not having a slipcase because that's important to them. Just give me the movie in a viewable means within reason of current industry standards and I'm fine.

captveg wrote:I do get that it's the combination of these matters coupled with the price point that has produced a death by papercut response. But ultimately my point is: what's the file size and bitrate on Criterion's The Earrings of Madame de...? Did anyone care about those things once they saw that the picture itself was the problem and no technical aspects of the encode could save it? Then you have something like Warner's The Adventures of Robin Hood - released VC-1 at ~16 GB, lossy DD 1.0 Mono audio, and a color film no less, and even though it's a disc from 2008 and has those tech limitations I don't think it's a release that would earn many complaints from a straight up viewing experience today.

Criterion's Madame de... takes up 27 GB for the feature and has a 35.10 average bitrate. And it's 13 minutes longer than The Lady from Shanghai.

When the BFI mistakenly encoded An Autumn Afternoon at 14GB, with a 14mbps bit rate, they repressed and offered a 23GB, 24mbps replacement.

I doubt TCM hold themselves to similar minimum standards.

FlickeringWindow wrote:

captveg wrote:I do get that it's the combination of these matters coupled with the price point that has produced a death by papercut response. But ultimately my point is: what's the file size and bitrate on Criterion's The Earrings of Madame de...? Did anyone care about those things once they saw that the picture itself was the problem and no technical aspects of the encode could save it? Then you have something like Warner's The Adventures of Robin Hood - released VC-1 at ~16 GB, lossy DD 1.0 Mono audio, and a color film no less, and even though it's a disc from 2008 and has those tech limitations I don't think it's a release that would earn many complaints from a straight up viewing experience today.

Criterion's Madame de... takes up 27 GB for the feature and has a 35.10 average bitrate. And it's 13 minutes longer than The Lady from Shanghai.

My point exactly.

My point was that tech spec is not the end all be all of viewing experience. Of course the source makes a difference. It makes most of the difference.

The comparison wasn't pointless. It was simply to state that most people would prefer great source with less impressive tech stats > poor/manipulated source with tech bells and whistles bitrate/mbps/encode codec/wow-bang-zoom (if both are not present, which obviously quiets most criticisms if the disc has a great source and impressive tech spec)

And I say life is too short to fret so much over numbers.

But I'm a glass half full fool I guess.

Let's say that when everybody's happy to see that Lady from Shanghai got what seems to be a nice new 4K restoration, it's sad to see how limited its on-disc use is done.
One can of course be pretty happy that it's available at all, but I do think that TCM should not be satisfied by how they handled it. It's basically turning a 2013 work into a 2008 disc.

Since TCM is the exclusive distributor of this release, those who are disappointed have a unique opportunity to flood the site with negative reviews that could have an outsize impact on sales, so long as they stand. Reviews take a few days to post, but my negative review, which I wrote when this news broke, is already up. Anyone who cares should stop posting here and take a minute to write a bad review on the TCM webpage for The Lady From Shanghai, which, apparently, any old schmo can do without even having an account or logging in.

"Excellent" marks for video/audio from Glenn Erickson at dvdtalk

Gonna be interesting to see how additional reviews shake out.

captveg wrote:"Excellent" marks for video/audio from Glenn Erickson at dvdtalk

The same enthusiastic marks he gave Children of Paradise. And Earrings. I'm sure there are other examples. He's known for giving high grades (with little accompanying technical analysis) to transfers that have received generally negative reviews elsewhere.

Good to know he's less discerning. More than anything I'm curious about what Robert Harris' take will be (always controversial), as well as blu-ray.com.

And Gary at dvdbeaver has his biases as well. Which is why I said it'll be interesting to see how the compilation of reviews shake out.

As for the audio - I cannot tell the difference between lossless and lossy 1.0 Mono audio, so it makes little difference to me. My conclusion is my hearing is just not that refined in that regard. Obviously lossless is the smarter way to go, but on a personal level I just can't get worked up about this. If it was a stereo track I'd have more misgivings about lossy.

Even if we can all find flaws in each and every reviewer, some more than others yes (I've grown to be particularly cautious about the "few words" from RAH, which is very competent in his domain, but seems not to be at all for BD reviews), the more reviews the better, obviously.
What I'm waiting for is actually 1080p trustworthy caps, being on Blu-ray.com or caps-a-holic.