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Yeah, I'm disappointed by the screen caps although I still have it preordered. Gotta show support for ANY older films being released on blu. In that same video above, they noted how they reduced the grain on all the optical push ins to match the grain before the push in. Bummer. What a waste of time and resources.

The Narrator Returns wrote:So much for this video, where they specifically say that they leave film grain in.

It's still there, behind all the blur.

Pre-order cancelled.

I fear what they'll do with Vertigo...

Blu-ray.com comes to a different conclusion on To Kill a Mockingbird.

They gave Patton 5/5, too....

The guy at Blu-ray.com wrote:I seem to have a much higher tolerance for DNR than some.

The very same guy at Blu-ray.com also wrote:The results should please even the most persnickety videophiles.

I feel like the first quoted sentence makes him unqualified to write the second.

ShellOilJunior wrote:They gave Patton 5/5, too....

Different reviewers, FWIW.

Brian C wrote:

The guy at Blu-ray.com wrote:I seem to have a much higher tolerance for DNR than some.

The very same guy at Blu-ray.com also wrote:The results should please even the most persnickety videophiles.

I feel like the first quoted sentence makes him unqualified to write the second.

Well, considering the comments I've read from "persnickety videophiles" at various forums around the net (not unlike comments from persnickety audiophiles that drove me up several walls over the last four decades), there's no pleasing that crowd no matter what. As a favorite uncle used to say, "They'd bitch if they were hung with a new rope."

ShellOilJunior wrote:I fear what they'll do with Vertigo...

Well, their Psycho Blu was exemplary but I share your concern about their hit and miss treatment of their catalogue titles which is why I'm going to hold on to my Jaws DVD lest the Blu turns out to be all waxy-looking.

Finch wrote:

ShellOilJunior wrote:I fear what they'll do with Vertigo...

Well, their Psycho Blu was exemplary but I share your concern about their hit and miss treatment of their catalogue titles which is why I'm going to hold on to my Jaws DVD lest the Blu turns out to be all waxy-looking.

Spielberg is involved with the Jaws blu so let's hope this means a stellar presentation.

triodelover wrote:Blu-ray.com comes to a different conclusion on To Kill a Mockingbird.

Jeffrey Kauffman is Blu-ray.com's most unreliable reviewer when it comes to video quality. He constantly gives good reviews to heavily filtered and digitally tampered transfers.

Anyways, after wathcing that restoration featurette, it really saddens me that such people can work in film restoration and preservation...

I have to say that it struck me as bizarre that they would take issue with Streep's and Redford's movement within a tracking shot in OUT OF AFRICA and try to keep them steadily centered by digitally manipulating the image. That goes beyond restoration into the realm of reevaluating the aesthetics of a shot deemed suitable by the original film's director, cinematographer and editor.

In the case of To Kill a Mockingbird, there were a number of optical push ins (as opposed to zooms) which magnified grain to a really ugly degree, something shown quite clearly in the restoration featurette. Rather than "erase" the grain, which the team of restorers quite clearly state is unthinkable, they used a new algorithm which "averaged" the grain over the entire sequence, including before and after the optical push in.

This sounds like a terrible idea -- add grain to the entire scene to "equalize" it with the inevitably grainy shot adjusted in the optical printer? Why not just leave it alone?

They didn't add any fake grain, they just DNRed the whole film to make it blurry so the grain structure is not noticable.

Worth pointing out that the mysterious stranger who joined the forum just to post Universal's 2012 schedule then disappeared has turned out to be 100% correct. Several other forums picked up on his post here and doubted its veracity. Even all the Universal reissues of previous Criterion-licensed titles are available for pre-order. The art on a couple of them looks quite familiar:

AVS:

The reduction is apparent however the results aren’t egregious and don’t leave the type of pervasive digitally “scrubbed” and waxy unnaturalness that often accompanies heavily applied digital noise reduction. In fact other than only a few instances I found the image to be quite filmic and pleasing... 50 years later this wonderful film looks terrific thanks to a well executed restoration ... Kudos to Universal Studios.

I'm less thrilled, albeit not overly disturbed, by the handling of field enlargements, as rather than grain slowly building, it just isn't there. It's matched to the surrounding shots. This is a technical judgement call, but I don't agree with it.

Can someone explain what this means?

aox wrote:

I'm less thrilled, albeit not overly disturbed, by the handling of field enlargements, as rather than grain slowly building, it just isn't there. It's matched to the surrounding shots. This is a technical judgement call, but I don't agree with it.

Can someone explain what this means?

The film used a number of optical zooms in certain scenes where there was no actual camera movement during shooting; for example, an apparent composition change from a medium shot to a close-up was achieved in post-production by "zooming in" or enlarging a portion of the frame. During these shots, the film grain would be enlarged as well since only a portion of the original 35mm frame filled the screen. Originally, one could see the grain growing more prominent as the frame was being enlarged during one of these shots. The technicians preparing the Blu-ray release decided to digitally remove the added film grain so these enlarged shots would match the full frame shots surrounding them.

I have the disc, and can confirm that there's basically no grain to be found anywhere and pretty much every closeup looks like waxy shit.

Seems Mr. Harris concluded based on available elements this is the best Universal could do and so it's approved.

I still don't think it looks like film but I'll have to see the blu for myself to better judge.

I've tried to keep an open mind while reading the reviews and restoration notes, but this thing sounds like a mess. I hope those of you who didn't cancel your preorders will comment.

triodelover wrote:Well, considering the comments I've read from "persnickety videophiles" at various forums around the net (not unlike comments from persnickety audiophiles that drove me up several walls over the last four decades), there's no pleasing that crowd no matter what.

Not true. I'm a "persnickety videophile" - a professional one at that - and there is a huge quantity of excellent material on BD. Far more than there ever was on DVD.

Leave the grain alone, skip the edge enhancement, remove the dust/dirt specs, fix print damage. And provide a lossless soundtrack. If that's being persnickety than count me in. Criterion seems to do pretty well at it.

Blu-Ray.com and Beaver on All Quiet on the Western Front (ducks).

That depth of field is a true wonder.