French DVD/Blu-ray/UHD Recommendations

[andyli]

I don't have it, and won't do a review of it. There should be one soon on DVD Classik though.
I've a bit tired by Tamasa continuing practice of cramming content on badly encoded BD-25, and my understanding is that the whole set is BD-25. So I'm waiting for reviews to see how intense the expected issues will be. I have 0 clue about the restorations themselves, though.

Never knew that their BD encode was that bad. Would you say it's on the level of Potemkine's encode or worse? Would love to hold out for UK/US releases but I fear those could still be years away.

[tenia]

It’s clearly worse to me, because of how systemic it is (they also almost always encode soundtracks in DD, mono tracks will be DD 2.0 192kbps and 5.1 will be DD 5.1 448kbps), which is not the case at Potemkine.

Potemkine have had more select issues, being on BD or UHD. I don’t recall their Lynch UHD having dramatic compression issues, while their 3 Colors UHDs were godawful in this regard. In the same way, I was letdown by their encodes of their Kiarostami / Kanoon set, but Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us don’t have such issues. And some of the Rozier movies in their set are kinda in-between this, clearly not perfect but not that bad either. But Potemkine do often rely on an authoring house which is called IIRC La bête lumineuse and which I do think are doing particularly good work on BD.

Tamasa, on the other hand, have structural encoding issues. They favor cramming stuff on BD-25 and don’t prioritise the movie over the extras. This leads the movie having 20Mbps AVB, except they clearly don’t have the skills to encode properly at such a low AVB. Exceptionally, they’ll use a BD-50 and increase the AVB to at least 26 Mbps, but it’s obvious that in many cases, since the BD-50 disc space is poorly used, they still don’t really know what they’re doing compression-wise. And even fewer discs are BD-50 used in an optimized fashion, like Darling’s or Parfum de femme’s (the movies’ AVBs are maxed-out, disc space used as much as needed).

Such were not the cases, sadly, for the René Clair set, Europe 51, Thérèse, Ginger & Fred, I Vitelloni (which is windowboxed on top of everything else), Guendalina and Les adolescentes (movies are encoded at 25 Mbps on BD-50s with 49% unused disc space), L’amour nu, Jeunesse perdue, La dérobade, La femme flic, Archibald de la Cruz, or Nights of Cabiria. They have released 3 Marco Ferreri movies : Le lit conjugal, Le mari de la femme à barbe & Dillinger is Dead. Le lit conjugal is maxed out on a BD-50 and all is good. Dillinger is Dead is crammed on a BD-25 and is blocky.

All this to say Potemkine have a few screw-ups, while Tamasa have a few good surprises.

[andyli]

Thanks for the detailed breakdown. I seem to remember Tamasa's UHD of 'Round Midnight getting good reviews. Let's hope they're taking encoding more seriously now.

[ahmed1930s]

So Potemkine contacted me informing me they indeed can't ship outside of France duo to regional reights and so. 🥲 Such a shame since I have pre-ordered since second one this was announced!!! 🥲 They're gonna refund me. So does anyone think is it worth to get it somewhere else?!

[sidetracked]

Re Napoleon. Just received my copy from FNAC in Los Angeles.
The only thing -- with FNAC to the U.S. in recent weeks they've been consistently mislabeling films as cosmetics on the import forms, so you're charged a much higher duty rate by DHL, the only shipper they use. (Films and audio recordings are theoretically exempt from the new high rates)

(It was $65 on this, with one of those pleasant 'If you don't pay within 5 days, we send it back' emails).

So, basically you have to pay DHL's blackmail fee, and then fight to get the charge reversed by going to FNAC and getting them to send a corrected document to DHL. I have yet to get reimbursed on any of these, so who knows?

Does anyone know of a source for srt English subs for this? I have an Oppo, so - theoretically - I could play those along with the film.

[nicolas]

Does anyone know of a source for srt English subs for this? I have an Oppo, so - theoretically - I could play those along with the film.

I also got my copy today and subs are not available yet at the usual sites. Here’s hoping once more people get their copies!

[MichaelB]

Does anyone know of a source for srt English subs for this? I have an Oppo, so - theoretically - I could play those along with the film.

Not if there are no subtitles at all—the Oppo requires at least one existing subtitle track to be present.

And I gather that there are no subtitles on this disc, no doubt because they'd be completely unnecessary in an intertitles-only situation.

[sidetracked]

Oh well...guess it's time to learn French...

[tenia]

I confirm, there is 0 sub track on Napoléon.

[rrenault]

So Potemkine contacted me informing me they indeed can't ship outside of France duo to regional reights and so. 🥲 Such a shame since I have pre-ordered since second one this was announced!!! 🥲 They're gonna refund me. So does anyone think is it worth to get it somewhere else?!

Does this apply only to their Napoleon release? Because I ordered something directly from Potemkine to another EU country not that long ago.

P.S. I actually think Netflix have the rights to the new restoration of Gance's Napoleon in much of the world, so I imagine it'll eventually show up there(presumably in 4K) depending on where you are.

I've never heard of a UK boutique being blocked from shipping a certain release to certain territories because of rights issues.

[rrenault]

It’s clearly worse to me, because of how systemic it is (they also almost always encode soundtracks in DD, mono tracks will be DD 2.0 192kbps and 5.1 will be DD 5.1 448kbps), which is not the case at Potemkine.

Potemkine have had more select issues, being on BD or UHD. I don’t recall their Lynch UHD having dramatic compression issues, while their 3 Colors UHDs were godawful in this regard. In the same way, I was letdown by their encodes of their Kiarostami / Kanoon set, but Taste of Cherry and The Wind Will Carry Us don’t have such issues. And some of the Rozier movies in their set are kinda in-between this, clearly not perfect but not that bad either. But Potemkine do often rely on an authoring house which is called IIRC La bête lumineuse and which I do think are doing particularly good work on BD.

Tamasa, on the other hand, have structural encoding issues. They favor cramming stuff on BD-25 and don’t prioritise the movie over the extras. This leads the movie having 20Mbps AVB, except they clearly don’t have the skills to encode properly at such a low AVB. Exceptionally, they’ll use a BD-50 and increase the AVB to at least 26 Mbps, but it’s obvious that in many cases, since the BD-50 disc space is poorly used, they still don’t really know what they’re doing compression-wise. And even fewer discs are BD-50 used in an optimized fashion, like Darling’s or Parfum de femme’s (the movies’ AVBs are maxed-out, disc space used as much as needed).

Such were not the cases, sadly, for the René Clair set, Europe 51, Thérèse, Ginger & Fred, I Vitelloni (which is windowboxed on top of everything else), Guendalina and Les adolescentes (movies are encoded at 25 Mbps on BD-50s with 49% unused disc space), L’amour nu, Jeunesse perdue, La dérobade, La femme flic, Archibald de la Cruz, or Nights of Cabiria. They have released 3 Marco Ferreri movies : Le lit conjugal, Le mari de la femme à barbe & Dillinger is Dead. Le lit conjugal is maxed out on a BD-50 and all is good. Dillinger is Dead is crammed on a BD-25 and is blocky.

All this to say Potemkine have a few screw-ups, while Tamasa have a few good surprises.

Potemkine's Lost Highway UHD is reference quality.

I was contemplating buying their Four Nights of a Dreamer blu-ray but am afraid it'll instantly get one-upped by Criterion if I buy it. I'm guessing their Rivette blu-rays are solid.

[nicolas]

I've never heard of a UK boutique being blocked from shipping a certain release to certain territories because of rights issues.

It depends on the circumstances but this definitely happens from time to time. Second Sight can't sell their George A. Romeo titles outside the UK and Indicator blocks certain US titles from being sold on their website, for example.

[nicolas]

Napoleon vu par Abel Gance 4K SDR Screenshots. @tenia: DV is MEL.

Disc 1

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Disc 2

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[tenia]

@tenia: DV is MEL.

Yup, the disc can now be decrypted and I noticed that.
Here are the 2 BD Info scans :

Spoiler

Disc 1 :
Disc Label: Napoleon_1
Disc Size: 98,964,403,006 bytes
Protection: AACS2
Playlist: 00004.MPLS
Size: 86,103,737,664 bytes
Length: 3:45:24.000
Total Bitrate: 50.93 Mbps
Video: MPEG-H HEVC Video / 42747 kbps / 2160p / 24 fps / 16:9 / Main 10 @ Level 5.1 @ High / 10 bits / HDR10 / BT.2020
* Video: MPEG-H HEVC Video / 80 kbps / 1080p / 24 fps / 16:9 / Main 10 @ Level 5.1 @ High / 10 bits / Dolby Vision / BT.2020
Audio: French / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4331 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 384 kbps / DN -23dB)

Disc 2 :
Disc Label: Napoleon_2
Disc Size: 89,381,636,946 bytes
Protection: AACS2
Playlist: 00004.MPLS
Size: 76,624,046,592 bytes
Length: 3:22:30.416
Total Bitrate: 50.45 Mbps
Video: MPEG-H HEVC Video / 42414 kbps / 2160p / 24 fps / 16:9 / Main 10 @ Level 5.1 @ High / 10 bits / HDR10 / BT.2020
* Video: MPEG-H HEVC Video / 80 kbps / 1080p / 24 fps / 16:9 / Main 10 @ Level 5.1 @ High / 10 bits / Dolby Vision / BT.2020
Audio: French / Dolby TrueHD Audio / 5.1 / 48 kHz / 4225 kbps / 24-bit (AC3 Embedded: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 384 kbps / DN -25dB)

I also had another look at it, and while it definitely looks like some scenes are struggling a bit with chroma, it's actually better than I thought, and some issues I saw were due to whatever is wrong at the moment on MPC-HC for me when playbacking tonemapped UHDs. I tried with MPC-BE, and the issues were gone, despite both players relying on MadVR. I'm now looking at plotting the HDR.
I still don't understand why Potemkine bothered with encoding (in 1080p25 !) the extras on the UHD, as they already were on the extra BD. I supposed it'll allow for a later UHD-only release, but I suspect that included an existing BD in a 2-UHDs release isn't that much of an oncost.

[nicolas]

I also had another look at it, and while it definitely looks like some scenes are struggling a bit with chroma, it's actually better than I thought, and some issues I saw were due to whatever is wrong at the moment on MPC-HC for me when playbacking tonemapped UHDs. I tried with MPC-BE, and the issues were gone, despite both players relying on MadVR. I'm now looking at plotting the HDR.
I still don't understand why Potemkine bothered with encoding (in 1080p25 !) the extras on the UHD, as they already were on the extra BD. I supposed it'll allow for a later UHD-only release, but I suspect that included an existing BD in a 2-UHDs release isn't that much of an oncost.

I checked disc 1 in my player just now and can definitely see chroma issues in motion but to my amazement it appears to be essentially limited to the snowball scene. I imagine the combination of HDR, the creamy tint and some surprisingly sharp and fine grain in that scene didn’t do the encoder any favors even though grain itself resolves quite well. Same actually for most of the film, which was a nice surprise.

Agree with you on the 4k extras. Completely unnecessary and they’re terribly bit-starved. A separate BD-25 next to film-only 4K and BDs would’ve been more appropriate but then again pristine technical quality and Potemkine usually don’t fit together that well. I noticed that they’ve already put out a BD standard edition for 45€ and as this seems to be a strong seller, a 4K standard will surely follow.

Luckily for us, it could have gone much worse and if this remains the only physical release, I’m happy.

[tenia]

I imagine the combination of HDR, the creamy tint and some surprisingly sharp and fine grain in that scene didn’t do the encoder any favors even though grain itself resolves quite well.

I spotted similar limitations in similar spots elsewhere in the movie, so I suspect that's pretty much it. Scenes with different tints don't look affected, but those creamy ones look more challenging. It remains relatively diffuse though, and in any case, it seems like most issues have been avoided (and as you write, the grain itself, for instance, is properly resolving).

A separate BD-25 next to film-only 4K and BDs would’ve been more appropriate but then again pristine technical quality and Potemkine usually don’t fit together that well.

But there already IS one separate BD, which is why this is weird. As it stands, the 5-discs set repeats the extras : once on this separate BD-50, and once on the UHDs. The BDs, for instance, are bare-bones and dedicated to the movie, which is logical since the extras are on the 3rd BD, so I don't understand why the same logic hasn't been applied to the UHDs.

It's the reverse of our French release of Kingdom of Heaven, in which the UHD is barebones (fortunately enough for such a long movie), but the BD of the main feature is sharing space with a few extras, despite the set having another disc (a BD-25) dedicated to the rest of the extras. This means the movie is unnecessarily over-compressed on BD : those extras could have placed on the dedicated 2nd BD instead, and the movie could have gained 5 Mbps more.

I don't know, sometimes it feels like some pros can't do a simple Excel spreadsheet and calculate the optimal AVB and content split.

[nicolas]

A separate BD-25 next to film-only 4K and BDs would’ve been more appropriate but then again pristine technical quality and Potemkine usually don’t fit together that well.

But there already IS one separate BD, which is why this is weird. As it stands, the 5-discs set repeats the extras : once on this separate BD-50, and once on the UHDs. The BDs, for instance, are bare-bones and dedicated to the movie, which is logical since the extras are on the 3rd BD, so I don't understand why the same logic hasn't been applied to the UHDs.

It's the reverse of our French release of Kingdom of Heaven, in which the UHD is barebones (fortunately enough for such a long movie), but the BD of the main feature is sharing space with a few extras, despite the set having another disc (a BD-25) dedicated to the rest of the extras. This means the movie is unnecessarily over-compressed on BD : those extras could have placed on the dedicated 2nd BD instead, and the movie could have gained 5 Mbps more.

I don't know, sometimes it feels like some pros can't do a simple Excel spreadsheet and calculate the optimal AVB and content split.

Oh, I didn’t realize that re. the third BD. That makes the situation indeed even more perplexing. You truly have to wonder who they’re hiring each time and why there’s so little consistency. You already mentioned this with the varying quality of their BDs, which is my experience as well. It seems they have a pool of authoring houses they work with and hand over different titles to each, which is similar to how Australian labels work. With Imprint, there’s even a difference of authoring houses within a box set for example. I guess if they save a couple of euros, it’s worth it for them.

In that vein, Potemkine are also releasing a Caligula set. BR member dallywhitty is a huge fan of the film and worked with all the different labels that put the film out in 4K. He made Potemkine aware of FiM and apparently they reached out but decided against it for cost reasons, although I like to think that this is BS as David encodes for smaller labels with tight budgets too. I feel it’s more likely that the Potemkine people don’t care as much about that side of things and rather packaging and licensing so that they have exclusives to sell in their store in Paris.

[FrauBlucher]

God, I really hope it gets released in the states. [-o< Criterion, Flicker Alley, Milestone [-o<

What are the chances that Eureka/MoC release this in the UK?

[tenia]

In that vein, Potemkine are also releasing a Caligula set. BR member dallywhitty is a huge fan of the film and worked with all the different labels that put the film out in 4K. He made Potemkine aware of FiM and apparently they reached out but decided against it for cost reasons, although I like to think that this is BS as David encodes for smaller labels with tight budgets too. I feel it’s more likely that the Potemkine people don’t care as much about that side of things and rather packaging and licensing so that they have exclusives to sell in their store in Paris.

I know fairly well their project leader, and she's quite open-minded regarding tech continuous improvements, something the label has demonstrated in the past.
I can't speak about what happened on Caligula, but would be prone to trust that it might have been for actual cost reasons no matter what if that's what she said. However, while open-minded, I don't think it'd be unfair to say that I know other project leaders that are more tech-minded than her (though I also know several who just aren't at all, like, abysmally not at all), or at least more visually discerning when it comes to things like video compression.
It might also be that if indeed working with a pool of authoring houses and at least some of them being very good, the lesser ones are getting unfairly trusted because of how the good ones are good and the label thinks they're all that good.

What are the chances that Eureka/MoC release this in the UK?

My understanding is that nothing can happen in the UK outside the Brownlow version.

[rufus2056]

Tamasa lists French subtitles (Sous-titres sourds et malentendants) for all films.

The films have French subtitles, the extras have no subtitles.
Review:
https://www.dvdclassik.com/test/blu-ray ... gue-tamasa

[tenia]

Sadly, and as expected, the encodes are a mess.

[andyli]

Thanks for the heads up... Unfortunately these reviews came in too late; my Fnac order has already been charged and prepared for shipping. I guess there's no point canceling at this point.

EDIT: Looking at the screenshots, I figure the underlying restorations are not that good to begin with. Some have better potential than others (which look like plain old HD masters). Still, unrealized potential.

[Finch]

My understanding is that nothing can happen in the UK outside the Brownlow version.

Oh, how come?

[tenia]

Right holdings issues, IIRC (but some here are more knowledgeable than me regarding the movie's right holdings).

[MichaelB]

Yes, my understanding is that thanks to convoluted rights agreements initially drawn up between Francis Coppola and the BFI back in 1980, the Kevin Brownlow/Carl Davis version can only be screened in the UK*, and no other version can be shown there.

In the mid-2000s, StudioCanal were all set to release the Coppola version on DVD, and even got to the point of sending out review checkdiscs (I still have mine somewhere), but I wasn't too surprised that the plug was pulled. They also cancelled Austerlitz at the same time, presumably after a ruthless commercial calculation about its likely appeal if Napoleon wasn't going to be released as a potential marketing hook.

(*I assume separate one-off agreements were drawn up when the Brownlow/Davis version was briefly shown in the US.)