Kino

[member24958]

Blu-ray.com's review states 1080i for it also. Same with Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould.

[MichaelB]

If it's designed to be run at a slower rate than 24fps (and the 1923 production date suggests that this is the case), surely an interlaced transfer is actively desirable?

The sad fact is that whoever drew up the Blu-ray specification missed a golden opportunity to introduce genuinely variable framerates along the lines of, say, Quicktime - which means that we're still cursed with having to compromise.

[Forrest Taft]

If this forum came together and put out a best of list, no way Come and See slips past it.

We did, and called it the 9th best film of the 1980s.

I noticed the Kino page also mentions that the Our Hospitality Blu is only going to be in 1080i.

Thanks for the link.

I wonder how the forum is going to take to the Keaton news....

Received the disc a few weeks ago, and can confirm that the back of the cover says 1080i.

[swo17]

OUR HOSPITALITY was mastered to HD a few years prior to its release, and we didn’t have the long view at the time to how 1080p transfers are the superior standard. We know the value of 1080p now and everything will be released that way in the future.

[member24958]

Three Ages is another that is 1080i.

[MichaelB]

Three Ages is another that is 1080i.

Can anyone more technically savvy than me explain why this is a bad thing? Surely 1080p is a worse option for displaying films that are intended to be screened at a slower framerate than 24fps?

Granted, interlacing is by definition a workaround to compensate for deficiencies inherent in the format, but I'd be much more inclined to trust a 1080i transfer than a 1080p one with source material like this.

[Kirkinson]

Indeed, a 1080p transfer would look rather strange, wouldn't it? Unless the film was supposed to be projected at 12fps (or something that 24 easily divides to) a progressive transfer would have to either lose frames or present the film at a faster-than-normal projection speed. An interlaced transfer isn't perfect, either, but it certainly seems like the better option. Of course, you could also try something like 60p, but then you have to go down to 1280x720. At least a 1080i transfer is still full-res.

[swo17]

If 1080i is preferable for silents though, how do you explain how great the other Keatons have looked in 1080p, or Kino's promise that "everything will be released [in 1080p] in the future"?

[Roger Ryan]

Maybe I'm way off-base here, but interlace vs. progressive doesn't really affect frame rate does it? We're talking about the replication of a single frame of film: a progressive image will replicate the entire frame at once whereas an interlace image will replicate the frame by presenting every other line of video first, then go back and present the lines missed the first time around. Video is 30 frames a second* regardless of being progressive or interlace so it's not a perfect match for 24 frames per second film anyway, which is why players and monitors have the built-in 3:2 pulldown.

If anything, I think it's the 3:2 pulldown ratio that would be challenged by differing film frame rates.

*Of course, I'm referring to NTSC only here.

[MichaelB]

If 1080i is preferable for silents though, how do you explain how great the other Keatons have looked in 1080p, or Kino's promise that "everything will be released [in 1080p] in the future"?

Kino's other silents, by and large, date from the mid-to-late 1920s, when framerates were close to being standardised at 24fps. But if we're dealing with material shot before the mid-1920s, there's every chance that it should be projected at a slower rate.

As for Kino's promise... well, it wouldn't be the first time someone made a sweeping statement without thinking through the implications! But it seems to me that 1080i can be a better option under certain circumstances, and presenting slower-than-24fps films in such a way that they look convincing on Blu-ray would appear to be one of them.

[Kirkinson]

Video is 30 frames a second* regardless of being progressive or interlace

On DVD and VHS, this is true. But Blu-ray can do true 24fps as well as 23.976fps, allowing for a totally accurate representation of a film intended to be projected at 24fps if you're watching it on a set that can also display those frame rates, as most HDTVs now can. When people talk about a 1080p Blu-ray transfer, they are invariably talking about one of these two frame rates, as Blu-ray actually can't do 30fps progressive. The closest it can manage is 60p (actually 59.94p) at 1280x720. To display something in 1920x1080 at 30fps, the only option is to go interlaced. (See Wikipedia for more info.)

So in some sense, you're correct: the question of whether 1080i is better or worse than 1080p for a silent film projected at less than 24fps doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether it's progressive or interlaced, except insofar as many people may consider an interlaced transfer inherently inferior (as is almost always the case with DVD). The real issue is that with a full-res Blu-ray, a progressive transfer must be 24fps, and a transfer done at 25fps or 30fps must be interlaced, and there are no other options.

EDIT: Obviously, both 1080p and 1080i are compromises when you're talking about a non-24fps silent. There's no way to do it 100% right. The only question is which option will get you closest to right when you watch it.

[Roger Ryan]

Thanks for the response.

This raises an interesting question for me personally. I shoot on a Sony HD camera virtually everyday with the setting of 1080/30p - my intention is to go with a Hi-Def video look and not a film-rate look. I assume "30p" is 30 frames progressive at a 1080 resolution. If I desired, I could also shoot at 1080/24p, but frame rates above 30 require the image to be interlaced at 1080 resolution. Will a Blu-ray disc not support the 1080/30p setting? I haven't actually tried it since all of my footage goes directly to the web.

EDIT: O.K., I found this out there as well...

In the United States, the original ATSC standards for HDTV supported 1080p video, but only at the frame rates of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97 and 30 frames per second (colloquially known as 1080p24, 1080p25 and 1080p30).

The above is excerpted from a Wiki entry which goes on to say that the broadcast industry is working on developing a 1080/50p or 60p resolution format in an attempt to standardize HD. The entry only says that Blu-rays support 24p, but not 50p or 60p which is understandable. Again, is 30p really out of the question for Blu-ray?

According to this post, yes...

Some concert films and nature shows, which are shot digitally in 1080p are shot at 30 frames/second. but Blu-ray does not support 1080p/30 so these get mastered onto Blu-ray at 1080i/60, with each half of the 1080p frame split using 2:2 pull down (in other words, no judder is introduced as the 30 FPS signal is evenly split between the interlaced frames). A Blu-ray player will only output this type of source at 1080i/60 (with no de-interlacing) or at 1080p/60 (doubling the frame rate). A good player will detect the underlying 2:2 cadence and output a correct 1080p/60 signal (without trying to do 3:2 pulldown processing).

Very well. Of course, none of this has anything to do with Kino's Keaton Blu-rays. Do we even know if something like OUR HOSPITALITY is being transferred at a frame-rate other than 24 frames a second?

[MichaelB]

Of course, none of this has anything to do with Kino's Keaton Blu-rays. Do we even know if something like OUR HOSPITALITY is being transferred at a frame-rate other than 24 frames a second?

Happily, the information supplied in the Beaver review allows us to be very precise about this, because the running time is given at 75m34s. So all we need is the length of the source print, and we can calculate the transfer's exact framerate.

I don't know the length of the exact print used for this specific transfer, but every source I have says that the film should be somewhere around 1895-6 metres, so let's assume that this is the case here. We can therefore calculate that a print of 1896 metres should last:

- 69m06s at 24fps
- 72m04s at 23fps
- 75m20s at 22fps (bingo!)

I therefore conclude that the film has been transferred at 22fps, that this is probably the correct speed (it makes historical sense) and that the transfer should be interlaced to achieve the most effective Blu-ray presentation. And I have no idea what Gary is banging on about when he claims that:

I suspect with enough investment Our Hospitality could have been 'bumped' to a progressive transfer.

If the film's ideal frame rate is significantly different from Blu-ray's standard 24fps, no amount of investment is going to create a viable progressive transfer, short of pumping inconceivably vast sums into creating an entirely new digital format with an authentically variable framerate and persuading people to buy new players. But with Blu-ray and DVD in their existing form, you have to compromise - and an interlaced transfer seems to me to be the least worst option given the format's inherent limitations.

[Gregory]

Presumably Criterion intentionally presented Bucking Broadway, The Rink, and The Immigrant in 1080i for the same reason.

[MichaelB]

Presumably Criterion intentionally presented Bucking Broadway and The Immigrant in 1080i for the same reason.

I'm sure they did, and they were right to do so. In fact, for a distributor whose Blu-ray output is normally strictly progressive to release an interlaced transfer is a clear sign that they're treating each case on their individual merits.

[swo17]

I don't doubt any of what you say, but if it's true, isn't it a little disconcerting that Kino makes it sound as though if they had had the foresight to master Our Hospitality in 1080p, they would have done so? Also, in contrast to treating each case on individual merits, Kino has stated: "We know the value of 1080p now and everything will be released that way in the future."

[knives]

I don't doubt any of what you say, but if it's true, isn't it a little disconcerting that Kino makes it sound as though if they had had the foresight to master Our Hospitality in 1080p, they would have done so? Also, in contrast to treating each case on individual merits, Kino has stated: "We know the value of 1080p now and everything will be released that way in the future."

I don't have a purely scientific answer for this, but Battleship Potemkin is 18fps and their Blu is progressive. This means that they have some way of tricking the format.

[MichaelB]

I don't have that disc, but has anyone tried stepping through it frame by frame?

Because it seems to me that one very easy way of reducing playback speed to 18fps while preserving a progressive transfer is simply to duplicate one frame every six - digital stretch printing, in effect.

But this wouldn't work for a 22fps film.

[manicsounds]

But with "Our Hospitality" encoded at 1080i 23.976fps as Beaver says, couldn't it have been easy to flag it for progressive playback? Just a flick of a switch in the pressing.

I just hope this doesn't mean that Kino is going back to its old ways of interlaced DVD transfers...

[MichaelB]

But with "Our Hospitality" encoded at 1080i 23.976fps as Beaver says, couldn't it have been easy to flag it for progressive playback? Just a flick of a switch in the pressing.

But the film itself, if my calculations are correct, is effectively playing at 22fps. So what would this "flick of a switch" actually accomplish? The problem is that if you want to play a 22fps film on a 24fps system, you have to compromise somehow - either you speed it up to 24fps (which would look fine on a 1080p transfer, aside from the drawback of being visibly too fast) or you do a bodge job involving an interlaced transfer. But there really isn't a practical alternative given the current limitations of the DVD and Blu-ray formats.

(As Peerpee pointed out during a similar discussion, you really need something like Apple's Quicktime player, which has no problem playing back at non-standard frame rates. But a feature-length Quicktime file would be enormous, especially in high-definition).

I just hope this doesn't mean that Kino is going back to its old ways of interlaced DVD transfers...

The sad fact is that interlacing is often the only viable method of presenting films at non-standard playback speeds, thanks to the fixed frame rate of DVD and Blu-ray. Which is not to say that Kino haven't got it wrong on occasion (there should be no excuse for interlacing a 24fps film) - but a conscientious silent-film specialist will have to interlace on occasion.

[Kirkinson]

But with "Our Hospitality" encoded at 1080i 23.976fps as Beaver says

That has to be a mistake. There's no such thing as 1080i/23.976fps in Blu-ray standards. If it's 23.976fps, it's progressive. If it's interlaced, it can't be 23.976fps. Unless I'm very wrong.

[manicsounds]

yeah, that's what I thought.

[swo17]

Criterion posted a photo of Tarkovsky on the set of Andrei Rublev on Facebook today, his birthday (which is hopefully just a table scrap from a forthcoming re-release ) but I'm posting here because I noticed the following in the comments, which is the first I've heard of this:

Stalker is probably getting a Kino Blu in 2012/13 according to Kino.

Though I can't find any firsthand confirmation, so take this with a grain of salt.

[aox]

Dream come true, but I hope it's done with meticulous care. They never managed to get the DVD right....either time.

[Peacock]

Apologies guys, but I was confused; Kino mentioned on their Facebook page 2012 for Come + See, Derzu Uzala and Mirror, and i'd thought I'd read something where they'd said Stalker would be afterwards, or 2013; but i've just seen this post by them on their page after a question about Stalker...

Sadly, our rights are DVD only.

Which is strange considering they're working of The Sacrifice with plans for Mirror as well...