Blu-ray Quality Check Detective Squad

[MichaelB]

So the questions is: How much worse are the BFI Disc's going to be, compared with Redemption / Kino!

Comparing filesize and bitrate only tells you part of the story - what's equally important is who's doing the actual encoding.

I don't know who encoded the Redemption/Kino discs, but David Mackenzie is doing the BFI ones, and his reputation very much precedes him.

[jsteffe]

To support MichaelB's point, as a counterexample the Hitchcock Blu-rays are dual-layered yet contain visible encoding artifacts, even in the better transfers. (Such as the obvious and very unfortunate banding in the shot where Grace Kelly kisses James Stewart in Rear Window.) Most likely this resulted from not spending enough time and encoding expertise on each individual title. From what I understand, bitrate is important up to a point, but it also matters a great deal how well the encoding is customized to the particular source material.

For the BFI release, it doesn't seem unreasonable to put 3 - 3.5 hours of feature film content on each dual-layered Blu-ray--especially if they have such an experienced encoder on board.

[MichaelB]

Just to give a very recent and controversial example, the Shout Factory encode of the German version of Werner Herzog's Nosferatu is fractionally over 27 gigabytes, and the bitrate is 26 Mb/sec. By contrast, the BFI version (which David also encoded) is a mere 25.3 gigabytes and has a bitrate of 25 MB/sec.

And yet if you believe the reviews, it's no contest: the near-unanimous view is that the supposedly "inferior" transfer in terms of filesize and bitrate is the runaway winner.

Which is why it's always a mistake to jump to conclusions based on raw figures without the evidence of the actual transfers in front of you. Wait for the reviews if you're really that bothered, although since the source masters will be the same I suspect differences will be negligible.

[tenia]

I've also seen very low bitrates being able to deliver without issue.

[domino harvey]

I feel like James Randi and the gold-plated audio cables with some of you of late. While watching the film, (assuming identical transfers) the imagined differences are quite likely to be imperceptible unless you are a wizard

[EddieLarkin]

Look at the sky in this comparison; the way the grain/noise just falls apart into an electronic mush is very noticeable to me during playback. That's soley down to poor encoding (both discs have the same transfer and very high bitrates).

[tenia]

It actually has most likely nothing to do with the encode but should be scanner noise coming from a badly scanned source element. Unfortunately, numerous Italian catalog movies suffer from this, like Django, House by the Cemetary or Tenebrae (first Arrow release).
If you want to see bad compression, this is a much better exemple, and a notorious one. But still, this a 200% zoom in.

[FerdinandGriffon]

Even when I can't really notice the issues with a transfer, I appreciate that there are people out there zealously watching for mistakes. It keeps the overall industry standard higher and helps ensures that fewer of the truly egregious examples make it to market.

[EddieLarkin]

It actually has most likely nothing to do with the encode but should be scanner noise coming from a badly scanned source element. Unfortunately, numerous Italian catalog movies suffer from this, like Django, House by the Cemetary or Tenebrae (first Arrow release).
If you want to see bad compression, this is a much better exemple, and a notorious one. But still, this a 200% zoom in.

Both of the screens show scanner noise, but only the Arrow disc is a blocky mess. Again, they're both the same transfer; the only variable is the encode (although I suppose Arrow may have made an attempt to denoise everything).

With your example, they are vastly different transfers, and so fail dom's test.

[tenia]

It actually has most likely nothing to do with the encode but should be scanner noise coming from a badly scanned source element. Unfortunately, numerous Italian catalog movies suffer from this, like Django, House by the Cemetary or Tenebrae (first Arrow release).
If you want to see bad compression, this is a much better exemple, and a notorious one. But still, this a 200% zoom in.

Both of the screens show scanner noise, but only the Arrow disc is a blocky mess. Again, they're both the same transfer; the only variable is the encode (although I suppose Arrow may have made an attempt to denoise everything).

With your example, they are vastly different transfers, and so fail dom's test.

I misunderstood your post, thinking you were saying that the scanner noise seen on both discs was encode issues. My bad. But I think Arrow's poorer presentation might be coming to an attempt to denoise this FUBAR source in order to hide the defect. I'm not sure it's 100% down to the encode anyway.

In this view, then yes, my exemple is not really useful.

[David M.]

Look at the sky in this comparison; the way the grain/noise just falls apart into an electronic mush is very noticeable to me during playback. That's soley down to poor encoding (both discs have the same transfer and very high bitrates).

EddieLarkin and Tenia: you are sort of both correct.

In the City Of The Living dead link, what you highlight here is tube telecine noise being "eaten alive" by compression. This high frequency noise is difficult to compress and very space-hungry. It looks a lot like whoever was producing the master applied sharpening to try and bring out the details, and in doing so of course also exaggerated the noise.

IMHO, the proper thing to do in these cases is to lowpass filter the image - rolling off the high frequencies. If you "look through" the telecine noise, you'll see that the film image below it is not hugely sharp anyway. Whether or not that's down to the film element itself (printed-in softness) or something else in the telecine system (out-of-focus CRT beam) is up for debate. Reducing the appearance of the machine noise in this way is something I advocate because it allows the noise (bad) to blend in better and pass for film grain (good). Using specialist denoising filters tend to operate temporally so any attempt to reduce the machine noise also reduces the grain and produces electronic sludge.

Tenia: I don't think that what you point out in the Once Upon A Time In America shots is telecine noise, but rather film grain. Well, what's left of it after the encoding, anyway.

But I think Arrow's poorer presentation might be coming to an attempt to denoise this FUBAR source in order to hide the defect. I'm not sure it's 100% down to the encode anyway.

I can't speak for Arrow because this was before my involvement with them. However as a compressionist I can tell you that the smoothed-over areas in the Caps-a-holic comparison is 100% down to compression. There are no signs of prefiltering in those grabs.

Compression issues and noise and/or grain reduction often get confused with each other, because both tend to operate by reducing the high frequency content of the image. In the case of compression, that's a function of the encoder trying to meet a target bitrate. In the case of grain reduction, for aesthetic effect. The easy way to tell if it's down to compression is to look at the structure of the area where the detail differs. You'll see there that there is an 8x8 block pattern to the areas being discussed.

[EddieLarkin]

Sorry tenia, I can see now I wasn't being very clear.

Thanks David for confirming a few things instead of leaving it up to us amateurs who actually rarely know what the hell we're ever talking about . It's very interesting to hear about your preferred method for treating a transfer like City of the Living Dead; I was looking at caps for Eden and After (particularly this one) and felt it looked similar (Trans-Europ Express looks the same, with the rest being better). Tube telecine noise as you describe it (though please correct me if I'm mistaken). Will your encode of this transfer maybe alleviate this issue at all?

[tenia]

Tenia: I don't think that what you point out in the Once Upon A Time In America shots is telecine noise, but rather film grain. Well, what's left of it after the encoding, anyway.

For OUATIMA, I was only pointing to awfully poor compression, without taking in account noise or grain.

However as a compressionist I can tell you that the smoothed-over areas in the Caps-a-holic comparison is 100% down to compression. There are no signs of prefiltering in those grabs.

Compression issues and noise and/or grain reduction often get confused with each other, because both tend to operate by reducing the high frequency content of the image. In the case of compression, that's a function of the encoder trying to meet a target bitrate. In the case of grain reduction, for aesthetic effect. The easy way to tell if it's down to compression is to look at the structure of the area where the detail differs. You'll see there that there is an 8x8 block pattern to the areas being discussed.

After understanding better what Eddie was pointing at, I saw the poor compression he was talking about. Thanks though to rule out filtering on the Arrow disc, which I would have deem more responsible for the end result that only poor compression. And that's why I'm no professional.

[MichaelB]

They did no clean-up at all so the sparkling grain drives me nuts.

The grain shouldn't be "sparkling" - are the sharpness settings on your player and monitor turned off or to their lowest setting?

On a properly calibrated setup, the grain should look wonderfully natural and filmlike. I'm very familiar with both these films, and I've never seen them looking so good (especially Aguirre).

[David M.]

Ditto - what's the TV make and model, and also the BD player make and model? Plus the picture settings?
Some TVs and BD players from a certain brand have noise reduction running in the background that does indeed make the grain "sparkle"... hopefully you can solve this with a settings change though.

It's ridiculous that in 2014, you can't just get a TV and see an unmangled image out of the box.

[Koukol]

They did no clean-up at all so the sparkling grain drives me nuts.

The grain shouldn't be "sparkling" - are the sharpness settings on your player and monitor turned off or to their lowest setting?

On a properly calibrated setup, the grain should look wonderfully natural and filmlike. I'm very familiar with both these films, and I've never seen them looking so good (especially Aguirre).

Iv'e got a 60 inch Panasonic plasma which has been properly calibrated by a THX certified technician.
My player is an Oppo 95.

I've seen both these films in the theater on opening night and besides the stock footage of the bat I never noticed the grain like on these new BDs.

Bottom line is BluRays require SOME clean-up.

[David M.]

Iv'e got a 60 inch Panasonic plasma which has been properly calibrated by a THX certified technician.
My player is an Oppo 95.

Glad to hear you're calibrated. I had input into both of those products

The grain will look a lot sharper than it would in the theater from a release print, though, because the entire resolution is better when you're watching a BD scanned from the original negative. Also, since you're watching on a TV-sized screen (albeit a big one), all of that high-res detail is being shown on a much smaller surface than a movie theater screen.

For that reason, I disagree with your last sentence and the notion that grain needs to be "cleaned up" - it's not dirt

[Koukol]

Iv'e got a 60 inch Panasonic plasma which has been properly calibrated by a THX certified technician.
My player is an Oppo 95.

Glad to hear you're calibrated. I had input into both of those products

The grain will look a lot sharper than it would in the theater from a release print, though, because the entire resolution is better when you're watching a BD scanned from the original negative. Also, since you're watching on a TV-sized screen (albeit a big one), all of that high-res detail is being shown on a much smaller surface than a movie theater screen.

For that reason, I disagree with your last sentence and the notion that grain needs to be "cleaned up" - it's not dirt

Grain shows up most when the aperture is set wrong or when the film is blown up.
Of course some directors do this on purpose.

So I see unintentional grain as naturally inherent as hiss is in audio recordings.

Boost the brightness on the latest CD...you boost the hiss.
Unless some clean-up is done the hiss MAY be annoying to some.
Same with grain...boost the sharpness you boost the grain.
BluRays are boosting sharpness in films to their limits.

Whenever I complain about excessive grain the first reply I get is do I have the sharpness level too high.
My sharpness is set on 0.

Unfortunately we have SO many over dnr'd BluRays that most people react negatively with ANY reduction now.


I often wonder how people feel about a release like the Italian BD of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (or the new JAWS to name another) when they give glowing reviews to excessive grain BDs like these BFI's?
These releases were done right imo.

[David M.]

I don't feel JAWS was bad, but I wouldn't have done it that way personally. I didn't like the grain reduction artefacts.

Same with grain...boost the sharpness you boost the grain.
BluRays are boosting sharpness in films to their limits.

The sharpness wasn't boosted - that's how it looks naturally.
(Unless you consider scanning a high-res element like the negative, instead of a softer one, to be "boosting sharpness" - I don't think you meant that, though).

True, it is different to watching a release print in a theater.

[Koukol]

The sharpness wasn't boosted - that's how it looks naturally.

Then this makes me wonder why so many BDs look snowy.
I've never had this problem in the theater.
By snowy I mean some BDs have clear skies that look like the old tube TV tuned into a non-broadcast channel.

Have you seen Blue Undergrounds DJANGO?
What went wrong there?

[Zot!]

Not sure what you're getting at. There are modern movies like Hurt Locker that are intentionally bathed with natural film grain.
A dumbed down but reasonable explanation.

[tenia]

Have you seen Blue Undergrounds DJANGO? What went wrong there?

I think this was discussed either in this topic or in another one, but the scan from Django original material has been poorly done, and lead to what I used to call "scanner noise" (I unfortunately don't recall how David called it).

[EddieLarkin]

That discussion can be found here.

[Koukol]

That discussion can be found here.

Cheers!

OK, I got this quote from David M there...

"In the City Of The Living dead link, what you highlight here is tube telecine noise being "eaten alive" by compression. This high frequency noise is difficult to compress and very space-hungry. It looks a lot like whoever was producing the master applied sharpening to try and bring out the details, and in doing so of course also exaggerated the noise."

THIS is what I've been trying to say in my inarticulate way.
I also had no idea where in the process something went wrong.

So why does everyone say the sparkling noise on these BFI's are actual grain?
Do they watch these films projected?
(In the theater because of distance I don't notice grain unless I walk up to the screen.)

[David M.]

"The sharpness wasn't boosted - that's how it looks naturally."

Then this makes me wonder why so many BDs look snowy.
I've never had this problem in the theater.

That's because you are not watching the negative in a theater (assuming we're talking about film projection, you're watching something that has been optically softened via many generations of copying).

THIS is what I've been trying to say in my inarticulate way.
I also had no idea where in the process something went wrong.

So why does everyone say the sparkling noise on these BFI's are actual grain?

It is actual grain. Which "sparkling noise" scenes are you referring to, so we can be sure we're on the same page?