Tommaso wrote:Too bad that I cannot watch the divisa disc for a comparison anymore (already sold via ebay), but looking at those caps, and the size-reduced ones from the divisa I once posted in the Silent Film thread, it seems to me that the MoC is far closer to the divisa than to the Kino in terms of colour intensity, and I actually prefer the stronger colours here. Which one is more correct is everyone's guess of course, but I would assume that divisa and MoC used the same transfer, whereas Kino didn't. Or Kino manipulated it a bit in the process; they had to change it anyway for getting their intertitle translations into it.
Inserting intertitles doesn't mean you undo the work of the telecine colorist, Tom. There's no reason to jump from the task of intertitle translation to modifying the palette of the film. I'd add that the intertitles on the German language discs appear to be electronically recreated, just as the English language one have been (I could be wrong but they have that perfect look without the image deterioration present in vintage print intertitles), so it's a matter in both cases of transferring/correcting the film elements, then inserting the electronic intertitles in whatever language the encode's market is going to correspond to.
As for which is better, it's kind of like the Michael scenario-- they both have their ups and downs. Sometimes the MoC looks like a newer, crisper, tighter print because of the boost, and then it in some shots seems to create garish phenomena; look at the sixth set of caps down, where you see Al Abel sitting at the outdoor cafe table at night. Look at the background details, particularly things like the vertical pillar, and the lights to the left of it, over the old womans head. You're getting some unwanted mottled effects/artifacts there, via the boosting seeming to interact with the grain structure and the chroma that seems to lightly touch both discs. The Kino looks smooth and filmic and the MoC looks chunky. Look at the word "Cinema" spelled in lights in the background between the two. The MoC almost looks like it says CIMEMA because of the mottling effect.
But then you have caps where the MoC looks better too, nice a crisp and tight. So go figure.
