I wonder if it will be worth as much as Rubber Soul with "Norweigian Wood" on it.Der Spieler wrote:There's a mistake on the front of The Conformist. Berndardo Bertolucci.
On all four panels.
lol.
Probably not.
Moderator: yoloswegmaster
I wonder if it will be worth as much as Rubber Soul with "Norweigian Wood" on it.Der Spieler wrote:There's a mistake on the front of The Conformist. Berndardo Bertolucci.
On all four panels.
lol.
Referring to conformist_new.rar, are the a's from Raro and the b's from Arrow ? [Guess I need to find a copy of Screencap Comparisons For Dummies. Can these websites be any more cryptic?]
a - screenshots from the Cineteca Bologna websitefdm wrote:Referring to conformist_new.rar, are the a's from Raro and the b's from Arrow ? [Guess I need to find a copy of Screencap Comparisons For Dummies. Can these websites be any more cryptic?]
Edit: Just to elaborate, the b's look similar to beaver's captures, but there seems to be a lot more grain in the a's. And the b's look way DNR'ed compared to the grainy a's.
I hate to keep referencing my years in audio in these recurring discussions, but there are definite similarities in the group discussing this BD at AVS Forums and a certain subset of audiophiles, namely those belonging to the "my system is so revealing it makes every recording sound like the s**t we all know it is." Nothing brought that group greater pleasure that ripping apart any recording and exposing its perceived flaws. It was so pervasive that one could wonder if they actually enjoyed listening to music in any context.MichaelB wrote:Since these amateur sleuths are mainly working from framegrabs and haven't seen either disc in motion, I'd take most of their "conclusions" about picture definition with a truckload of salt.
The more arguments I see like this, the more I'm convinced that Blu-ray screen capturing does more harm than otherwise - not so much in terms of the framegrabs themselves but in the often wildly erroneous interpretations that people place on them.Calvin wrote:It's baffling that some posters were questioning the superiority of the Arrow Blu over the Paramount DVD without even seeing it in motion.
I completely agree. In fact, you've just reminded me of an anecdote in Charles Shaar Murray's biography of John Lee Hooker in which he (Murray) and an allegedly music-loving neighbour would play each other samples of their record collection - until it dawned on Murray that the neighbour really wasn't interested in music at all, only technique. The crunch point, unsurprisingly given the subject of the book, was when Murray exposed him to some John Lee Hooker, and the neighbour asked "Why are you playing me this? This man can barely play the guitar."triodelover wrote:The discussion group at AVS applies these same traits to films. It's not that there aren't bad or inferior transfers out there. It's that the game seems to be to rip each and every effort to bring a film to DVD/BD, seeming without ever actually watching the film itself. One must wonder if these people enjoy cinema or have just developed enough technical expertise to delight in dismembering any effort at home reproduction and that such efforts are proof in the public square of their superior equipment selection ability.
Strangely, I think the Cineteca screenshots look better.Calvin wrote:a - screenshots from the Cineteca Bologna websitefdm wrote:Referring to conformist_new.rar, are the a's from Raro and the b's from Arrow ? [Guess I need to find a copy of Screencap Comparisons For Dummies. Can these websites be any more cryptic?]
Edit: Just to elaborate, the b's look similar to beaver's captures, but there seems to be a lot more grain in the a's. And the b's look way DNR'ed compared to the grainy a's.
b - the Arrow
I think the only Raro screencaps are here.
Could I ask which Blu-ray.com allegation you are referring to? I ask because from what you have written above it appears that there is some sort of an official statement in the Blu-ray.com review which links an old Paramount master to Arrow's release. The Blu-ray.com review certainly has not linked the two. The review also does not speculate that this is an upscale. Or are you addressing some random forum post?MichaelB wrote:OK, I've just had a chat with someone who worked directly on the technical side of the Arrow release, and he has confirmed that the Arrow release was not sourced from Paramount's HD master at all, let alone upscaled from the DVD - as will become obvious almost immediately if you compare the two, even aside from the glaring credits discrepancy. I ran both side by side a few weeks ago, and it never occurred to me for a millisecond that the two could have come from a common source - so I was genuinely surprised when Blu-ray.com made that allegation.
Also for the record, Arrow's master was supplied from Bologna, and the reasonable working assumption is that it's the same one used to fuel the Raro DVD - although obviously without the excessive DNR scrubbing. Since these amateur sleuths are mainly working from framegrabs and haven't seen either disc in motion, I'd take most of their "conclusions" about picture definition with a truckload of salt.
On a more general note, I strongly suspect that there's a serious case of overly inflated expectations here. The visual reputation of The Conformist is so towering that people may well be expecting a perfect image, but I have to say that the grain and definition on the Arrow BD looks pretty much as I remember it from numerous 35mm outings (I'm very familiar with how this film looks on the big screen, having been involved with promoting a mid-1990s revival as well as seeing it several times over the years). And if Storaro himself signed off on the master, one presumes he's broadly happy with how it turned out, although I'm aware that that name opens up a whole 'nother can of worms (although not aspect-ratio-related ones for once!)
Certainly - you initially speculated and then stated outright that it's an old transfer (a charge you repeat at the end of this very comment that I'm responding to!), which is not the impression that Arrow has been giving me.pro-bassoonist wrote:Could I ask which Blu-ray.com allegation you are referring to?
Not explicitly, certainly, but if you read what you wrote with the knowledge that there are only two HD masters out there (as far as I'm aware), it would be an entirely reasonable inference that Arrow used the same HD master that fuelled Paramount's DVD. In fact, this was something I was wondering about myself, although a side-by-side comparison quickly banished that impression.I ask because from what you have written above it appears that there is some sort of an official statement in the Blu-ray.com review which links an old Paramount master to Arrow's release. The Blu-ray.com review certainly has not linked the two.
I thought I was clear about this at the time, but I'll very happily stress that that accusation was made on the AVS Forums, and that you do indeed make it clear that there's significantly more visible detail on the Blu-ray!The review also does not speculate that this is an upscale.
You'll have to argue this point with Arrow, but I understand from them that the HD master came from Bologna and was definitely not the mid-2000s Paramount HD master. I can be absolutely certain on the latter point, as the technical supervisor of Arrow's release also worked on the digital cinema reissue a few years back, which was sourced from Paramount's HD master, so he's handled both masters directly and is therefore familiar with the differences.Compare these two releases with the high-definition transfer used for The Conformist Blu-ray release. There are fundamental differences - and no, the source has little do with them, because if a new scan was performed, and then a new high-definition transfer was struck from the new master, The Conformist would have looked very, very different on Blu-ray.
But they don't seem to have done what you're suggesting they did!As I wrote elsewhere, I understand perfectly well why Arrow did what they did - it was the lesser evil they chose, because had they gone with the DNR-ed Italian high-definition transfer quite a few forums would have exploded again. I don't blame them, they did the right thing. And we can all agree on this.
But as far as I'm aware, this release was sourced from the same master that fuelled the Raro disc - I admit that I could be wrong on this point, because of course there's no way of being certain about this without contacting the suppliers in Bologna. But if this is the case, surely your entire premise needs a rethink? (I'm not disputing what you saw, since I believe you watch things through a projector and I don't, though I was perfectly happy with the amount of grain that I saw on a 42" plasma).But there are facts here that one has to recognize: there is very little, if any, grain on this release. What you see the majority of the time is pulsating noise and artifacts that create the illusion that there is grain, which is why definition is seriously compromised. Yes, the Arrow disc looks better than the R1 Paramount DVD, but primarily because the R1 DVD is extremely weak, practically unwatchable these days. A proper high-definition transfer struck from the recent restoration - and free of the denoising the Raro high-definition transfer suffers from - would produce a vastly different result.
This apparently bald statement of fact directly contradicts what I've been told.Finally, as far as Mr. Storaro signing off the master is concerned, well, the one question that needs to be answered is: When did he do it? In 2011, in 2012? The master that has been used to produce the high-definition transfer for this release is dated.
This isn't correct. What the review states is this, and I quote: "The relatively good news is that there are no traces of severe denoising - but the dated master the high-definition transfer was struck from was already filtered (more than likely because it was prepared with DVD in mind)." Using a dated master and using a dated transfer are two very different things. And as I noted before, the review does not link an old Paramount master to Arrow's reelase.MichaelB wrote:Certainly - you initially speculated and then stated outright that it's an old transfer (a charge you repeat at the end of this very comment that I'm responding to!), which is not the impression that Arrow has been giving me.
Well, it is good then that we clarified that the review does not link an old Paramount master to the Blu-ray release.MichaelB wrote:Not explicitly, certainly, but if you read what you wrote with the knowledge that there are only two HD masters out there (as far as I'm aware), it would be an entirely reasonable inference that Arrow used the same HD master that fuelled Paramount's DVD. In fact, this was something I was wondering about myself, although a side-by-side comparison quickly banished that impression.
Fair enough. I don't post on AVS and wasn't aware, so we agree.MichaelB wrote:I thought I was clear about this at the time, but I'll very happily stress that that accusation was made on the AVS Forums, and that you do indeed make it clear that there's significantly more visible detail on the Blu-ray!
I don't think I need to argue anything with Arrow because they have not created any confusion at all. You are the one who brought this Paramount master in the discussion, which I personally have never linked to Arrow's release. On the other hand, I do have an email from Arrow in which they make it clear that they worked with a pre-Raro master.MichaelB wrote:You'll have to argue this point with Arrow, but I understand from them that the HD master came from Bologna and was definitely not the mid-2000s Paramount HD master. I can be absolutely certain on the latter point, as the technical supervisor of Arrow's release also worked on the digital cinema reissue a few years back, which was sourced from Paramount's HD master, so he's handled both masters directly and is therefore familiar with the differences.
I am unsure what this means since Raro used a pre-Raro master.MichaelB wrote:But they don't seem to have done what you're suggesting they did!
Well, Michael, I think that next time you should check with your sources first before you suggest that I need to rethink my premise. I am not here to argue. I am here to quickly share the information I have, as well as my impressions of this release, which obviously are very different from yours.MichaelB wrote:But as far as I'm aware, this release was sourced from the same master that fuelled the Raro disc - I admit that I could be wrong on this point, because of course there's no way of being certain about this without contacting the suppliers in Bologna. But if this is the case, surely your entire premise needs a rethink? (I'm not disputing what you saw, since I believe you watch things through a projector and I don't, though I was perfectly happy with the amount of grain that I saw on a 42" plasma).
Your exact words, posted in this thread, were: "there is very little, if any, grain on this release. What you see the majority of the time is pulsating noise and artifacts that create the illusion that there is grain, which is why definition is poor."pro-bassoonist wrote:This will be my last post in this thread because it seems like I constantly have to come back and address statements that I have not produced. First it was the statement where the review apparently linked this Paramount master to the Arrow release, now there is a statement that "there is no grain on the master".
OK, you now appear to be contradicting yourself - so is it safe to assume that the statement I quoted above was made in error? Because that's clearly what my contact was responding to - and his argument seems hard to refute, because why would Arrow have bothered to hire him (as a freelancer) if there was nothing to work on because all the grain had been replaced with "pulsing noise and artifacts"?The master could be filtered (or manipulated in various way) and there can still be grain on it. What type of work has been done on the master is an entirely different topic. Since in the review it is clearly noted that healthy film grain is noticeable, it should be obvious that I have never argued that "there is no grain on the master". If there was no grain on the master, then how did the grain I addressed end up on the high-definition transfer?
Not necessarily, because you're assuming that the materials for Easy Rider, Deep End and The Conformist were stored under near-identical conditions, which may not have been the case - in fact, it probably wasn't the case, since all three films were shot by different companies in different countries with different preservation track records (Paramount had funding and distribution involvement with two of them, but it wasn't the original production company).Clearly, however, a modern restoration from the ON with a new high-definition transfer, such as the one I mentioned to you which Sony did for Easy Rider, would have produced very different results.
Did Before The Revolution have this kind of restoration because I thought the BD looked fantastic, better than The Conformist?MichaelB wrote:Put it like this: I have no doubt that if The Conformist had the benefit of a full-scale photochemical restoration and 4K master along the lines of The Red Shoes and The Leopard, it would look amazing. But it would need that level of investment, and most films just aren't going to get that.
I doubt it - I suspect it was simply a case of better-preserved materials. I agree with you that it has the edge over The Conformist - in fact, I'd say it's the best-looking Bertolucci release to date in any video medium (given The Last Emperor's notorious aspect ratio issues).j99 wrote:Did Before The Revolution have this kind of restoration because I thought the BD looked fantastic, better than The Conformist?
And since in these exact words I don't see the word "master", it should be perfectly clear that I have never argued that "there is no grain on the master".MichaelB wrote:Your exact words, posted in this thread, were: "there is very little, if any, grain on this release. What you see the majority of the time is pulsating noise and artifacts that create the illusion that there is grain, which is why definition is poor."
It may appear to you, but I am clearly not - just like I never linked an old Paramount master to Arrow's release yet it appeared to you that I did, and just like I never spoke about a dated high-definition transfer (I spoke about a dated master), yet it appeared to you that I did.MichaelB wrote:OK, you now appear to be contradicting yourself -
Since I had never produced the statement "there is no grain on the master", I beg to differ. I don't like it when people claim that I have said something that I have not.MichaelB wrote:(There's not much point hair-splitting about distinctions between "the master" and "this release"...).
I am not assuming anything. Regardless of the conditions of the ON of The Conformist, if there was a recent scan, a new master prepared and a new high-deifnition transfer struck, the current Blu-ray release would have looked vastly different. By the way, this is the reason why the BFI Blu-ray release of Before the Revolution looks so good - because it uses a recent scan from the original negative done on a Spirit Datacine, not because it was "simply a case of better preserved materials", as you speculate.MichaelB wrote:Not necessarily, because you're assuming that the materials for Easy Rider, Deep End and The Conformist were stored under near-identical conditions, which may not have been the case - in fact, it probably wasn't the case, since all three films were shot by different companies in different countries with different preservation track records (Paramount had funding and distribution involvement with two of them, but it wasn't the original production company).Clearly, however, a modern restoration from the ON with a new high-definition transfer, such as the one I mentioned to you which Sony did for Easy Rider, would have produced very different results.