Gaumont French Releases

[tenia]

Les bas-fonds' review will follow shortly, it also has English subs.

And here it is.

[Stefan Andersson]

Is there a site that lets people know the announcement and calendar of French blu releases (sort of like the news section in blu-ray.com)?

Hi!

This might be useful: https://www.dvdfr.com/
Under Sorties (=Releases) you´ll find weekly listings of French DVD and Blu releases.
Please note that each weekly listing often has several pages. Go to page bottom and click on page numbers to move between pages.
Listings of extras, as well as technical specifications, are usually detailed. As regards information about subtitles, HOH tracks etc. IMHO I wouldn´t take them as necessarily 100 % accurate and/or complete. Best to read specific reviews on other sites to confirm availability of subtitles etc. on a given disc.

[Rayon Vert]

Thanks!

[Stefan Andersson]

Update to my previous post -- what I meant to say was this:
Best to read specific reviews on other sites to confirm availability of subtitles etc. on a given disc.

Mods: I´ve updated my original post to reflect this also. Hope that´s OK, I feel this is a "general interest" clarification.

[Stefan Andersson]

Gaumont´s upcoming release of "Les sept péchés capitaux". in their "Gaumont à la demande" DVD series, is partially restored. The episodes by Chabrol, Godard and de Broca have been replaced with restored material.
French-language source:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/forum/viewto ... f#p2900317 - post by 1kult, May 25, 2021.

[Calvin]

November 3rd

Annoyingly, no English subtitles are listed. Hopefully that changes before release but there doesn't appear to be much logic as to which Gaumont Découverte releases include English subtitles and which don't.

[andyli]

This film (and presumably the 4K restoration) relegated to Gaumont Découverte?

[Calvin]

This film (and presumably the 4K restoration) relegated to Gaumont Découverte?

The DVD was also Gaumont Découverte. A Man Escaped is the only Bresson that has made Gaumont's main line; this, Angels of Sin, and The Devil Probably are all under Gaumont Découverte.

[GoodOldNeon]

La guerre est finie arriving on Blu-ray next month. I'm assuming this is the 4k restoration which was screened at Cannes.

[L.A.]

Judex (1917) and Tih-Minh (1918) coming December 8th.

[swo17]

Gulp

[DeprongMori]

I was wondering whatever happened to that Tih-Minh restoration from a few years back. Hope it finds a label with English subtitles.

[Matt]

I was wondering whatever happened to that Ti-Minh restoration from a few years back. Hope it finds a label with English subtitles.

Good news: Sous-titres : ‏ : ‎ Anglais

I looked back to remember when the restoration happened and I see I posted about it in 2008 and linked to a (now dead) article from 2005. That was so long ago there's been another restoration since!

[Jonathan S]

On the same topic of English subs, could anyone who actually owns Gaumont's TONI (Renoir) confirm please whether or not their Blu-ray has them? They were mentioned as included in a pre-release post in this thread, but none of the listings I've read on French sites confirm them and the Amazon.fr photo indicating their inclusion appears to be of the DVD sleeve. (I wonder if they were omitted from the BR due to the Criterion licence.)

In case it's useful to anyone, the 2-disc Gaumont release of L'HOMME DU JOUR (Duvivier) offers English subs on the main BR presentation but not on the unrestored version (an alternative edit) on the included DVD, nor - more predicatably - on any of the newly created extras.

[tenia]

I checked my BD (a test disc from Gaumont, but which should be 100% identical to the retail disc - otherwise, what the hell did I review ?!) and it has English and French subs on the main feature. The 2nd French track is Audiodescription.

Disc Size: 39,886,732,579 bytes
Size: 27,243,362,304 bytes
Length: 1:24:25.708
Total Bitrate: 43.02 Mbps
Video: MPEG-4 AVC Video / 38811 kbps / 1080p / 24 fps / 16:9 / High Profile 4.1
Audio: French / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 825 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 16-bit / DN -1dB)
Audio: French / DTS-HD Master Audio / 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1156 kbps / 24-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 768 kbps / 24-bit)
Subtitle: French / 32.814 kbps
Subtitle: English / 33.928 kbps

[Jonathan S]

Many thanks, tenia. It's strange that Gaumont sometimes don't publicise their inclusion of English subs - even in cases where there's no UK or US release.

[tenia]

I think it's just that we don't have this culture in France. Subs are included in various case-by-case-basis on releases, especially in regards with stuff released by the rightholders like Gaumont or Pathé, and while they're communicating on the restorations' workflows or the extra features, they just don't so much in terms of subtitles (just like they don't with Audiodescription).
And then, it's up to having accurate product pages like on Amazon (which rarely happens), finding reviews that go this extra step to list those properly or being able to track a readable scan of the backcover. Usually, DVD Classik does provide accurate reviews on this matter, but it seems like Toni is the odd one that doesn't (it states "no subtitles at all", which is plain wrong, and leaves out the English subs in the BD Info scan at the bottom of the page - a scan that is very incomplete anyway).

[denti alligator]

Judex (1917) and Tih-Minh (1918) coming December 8th.

Too bad it's not Barrabas and Tih-Minh, but I'll take 'em, either way. It's going to be a real treat to see these in HD. I've pre-ordered them both: I know what I'm watching for Christmas!

[mhofmann]

La guerre est finie arriving on Blu-ray next month. I'm assuming this is the 4k restoration which was screened at Cannes.

In principle it's a very nice looking restoration. However, something must have gone horribly wrong somewhere in the process, potentially during the Blu-ray video mastering.
Many of the shadow greyscale tones look horribly quantized, resulting in very noticeable banding throughout the whole film. The restoration otherwise looks very beautiful, which makes this just the more puzzling.

[feihong]

Aw man, are you serious? How frustrating.

[mhofmann]

Quite serious, unfortunately. It could also be caused by just really awful compression, which at closer look this disc has in any case. High-frequency areas look fine, but low-frequency areas look extremely bit-starved. Very frustrating, indeed.

[tenia]

Out of the 6 Gaumont I have to review this month, it's one of the 2 I haven't had a look at it yet. I suppose it might be a case à la Elevator to the Scaffolds, which is odd since it's been quite some time since it last happened to a Gaumont release. Quite a shame if that's indeed the case.

[tenia]

I watched this one and Le jour et l'heure this afternoon, and I get what you're saying though no, it's not another Les amants or Elevator to the Scaffolds.
It looks like another case of Eclair having elevated the blacks too much, resulting in darker areas being visibly grey though totally flat and detail-less instead of being more purely black. I had a look and while on PC screencaptures, blacks have RGB values of 0 0 0, many scenes here have blacks stuck at 14 14 14, and even sometimes 20 20 20.
The compression isn't that bad, but because these areas are totally life-less and grain-less (unlike indeed the brighter parts of the frame), they look like very digital and the encode struggles in many places and end up macroblocking the whole thing. This happens in particular with dark uniform clothes (for instance, a dark black dress) and dark backgrounds. It's not a matter of disc space, since the movie has a quite healthy 30 Mbps AVB.

Le jour et l'heure however is even worse in terms of grading, so much I almost switched my PS3 to RGB Full Range instead of Limited. I'm not sure how high the black levels are but it reminded me of Spotlight on the Murderer, which Arrow had to color-correct because it was so grey. It just looks like a mess in this regard, especially the first 10 minutes that look as if it was presented from a non graded exploitation print. The opening digital Gaumont logo already has blacks at 6 6 6, but the first ten minutes struggle sometimes to go below 30 ! It gets better later on, but it then looks like La guerre est finie with a photography that isn't helping on top of it. And of course, there are about the same encode issues.


I'll be publishing the reviews with the relevant screencaps somewhere next week (for those wanting to see how this can look).

[mhofmann]

The compression isn't that bad, but because these areas are totally life-less and grain-less (unlike indeed the brighter parts of the frame), they look like very digital and the encode struggles in many places and end up macroblocking the whole thing. This happens in particular with dark uniform clothes (for instance, a dark black dress) and dark backgrounds.

True, although I'd call the compression bad as soon as severe macroblocking happens, which is the case in almost all uniformly grey areas. This doesn't have to be the case - there are many other films with slightly raised black levels without encoding issues as severe as here. Funnily enough the encoding in grainy areas is just fine, but any less textured region looks awful. It's almost as if no one checked the mastered result on a proper screen.

I think there are two separate issues here: One is a strange choice of tone curve which flattens and thus ruins the shadow areas. The second is an encoder on autopilot which allocates all the bits to the other regions in the frame and induces macroblocking in the shadows.

Le jour et l'heure however is even worse in terms of grading, so much I almost switched my PS3 to RGB Full Range instead of Limited. I'm not sure how high the black levels are but it reminded me of Spotlight on the Murderer, which Arrow had to color-correct because it was so grey. It just looks like a mess in this regard, especially the first 10 minutes that look as if it was presented from a non graded exploitation print. The opening digital Gaumont logo already has blacks at 6 6 6, but the first ten minutes struggle sometimes to go below 30 ! It gets better later on, but it then looks like La guerre est finie with a photography that isn't helping on top of it. And of course, there are about the same encode issues.

I'll be publishing the reviews with the relevant screencaps somewhere next week (for those wanting to see how this can look).

Wow, this sounds bad. Kind of curious about the screenshots of Le jour et l'heure.

[tenia]

I totally agree with you, it's a combinaison of both issues : the weird grading in low lit areas/shots and the encode which can't properly handle it.
I'd however add that there might be a third issue : the darker elements look pretty smooth, as if brighter elements retained their high frequencies but darker ones didn't. In some intermediate (in terms of lighting) shots, faces for instance are quite smooth, as if some grain management was applied but depending on the brightness of the content.

I posted a few of the Clément shots here : https://twitter.com/Testsbluraycom/stat ... 2925831171