Fritz Lang on DVD/Blu-ray

[perkizitore]

Metropolis

[domino harvey]

What the fukk... Put in my copy of While the City Sleeps and after a properly academy ratio RKO logo, it stretches to fit the widescreen format of my TV. I can't tell if the disc is giving bad signals or something to the player (though that wouldn't explain why the RKO logo is fine at the beginning) or whether the disc itself is presenting a stretched 1.78... but seriously, what?!

[Roger Ryan]

What the fukk... Put in my copy of While the City Sleeps and after a properly academy ratio RKO logo, it stretches to fit the widescreen format of my TV. I can't tell if the disc is giving bad signals or something to the player (though that wouldn't explain why the RKO logo is fine at the beginning) or whether the disc itself is presenting a stretched 1.78... but seriously, what?!

What aspect ratio setting is your TV/Player on? It sounds like the RKO logo is anamorphic -pillarboxed (proper academy aspect ratio reproduction when the TV/Player is set to 16:9 standard) and the feature is not. WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS is supposed to be 2.00:1 ratio widescreen, right? But I'm assuming this disc presents the film unmatted?*

Check to see if the time counter on the player returns to zero after the RKO logo. If it does, then the logo is a separate video file than the rest of the feature, one that is properly anamorphic for a widescreen presentation.

My apologies if this is too simplistic, but you may have to manually set the TV or player to 4:3 instead of letting the auto setting do the work.

EDIT: *I see from looking back to the previous page that the film is presented 4:3 unmatted.

[domino harvey]

It doesn't change chapters, the RKO logo is part of the print and what follows is also part of the print, but stretched to fit 1.78--it's not my player stretching the image (I've never had this happen before or otherwise) and I can't double check what I already suspect on another played since it's a R2 disc. The caps provided in the previous page confirm that the widescreen image is stretched, not cropped... Could I just have gotten a fucked up disc or something?

[Roger Ryan]

It sounds like something went wrong during the transfer or encoding if the logo is fine and the rest of the film is stretched. Can you manually adjust your TV to a 4:3 ratio? I guess I'm confused: if your TV is squeezing the image back to 4:3 (with the TV placing the black or gray bars on either side), then the image should look accurate, right? Or does the image still appear stretched even with the TV-imposed black bars on the sides?

NOTE: With some widescreen TVs, you need to reduce the output resolution of the player (to 480p for instance) in order to manually change the TV aspect ratio to 4:3.

[matrixschmatrix]

I just tried the disc on my (widescreen) computer and didn't have any trouble.

[domino harvey]

Okay, I took the changing my player to 480 advice and can now confirm that I am screwed:



My disc is still encoded in stretched-out widescreen, no matter what I do, and while it doesn't need pictoral evidence, if I run it through the normal 1080p settings, it just fills the whole TV with the stretched widescreen image. Great!!!!!

[Roger Ryan]

I wonder how many discs are affected? Obviously, "matrixschmatrix" doesn't have this problem. It reminds me of the defective encodes that Netflix Instant Viewing serves up.

Hopefully, "Domino", you can get this remedied.

[martin]

I've had a look at my disc and can partly confirm domino harvey's experience. It's very weird actually! The main video stream is flagged correctly as 4:3 when analysed in DVDDecrypter. The film, however, changes aspect ratio to 16:9 after the RKO logo when played on VLC player (PC). I don't think I've seen this behavior before, so it seems like there's something wrong in the encoding (the logo and main title are all part of the same video stram). But Powerdvd handles it correctly and keeps the film in 4:3 all the way through on my PC!

My dvd players seems to handle it correctly too, but I'm not 100% sure because my Panasonic plasma tv is able to enforce 4:3 no matter what.

[Dick Laurent]

After reading this I am reluctant to order the dvd, it is a very weird problem the way it's described here. I author dvd's for a living myself and never seen a mixed aspect ratio flag, either a stream has a 16/9 or a 4/3 flag, as far as I know the two can not be mixed. So my guess is there is something wrong with the master, or they edited the logo and the feature, and screwed up there. But this seems strange, since some people seem to have no problems.

Martin, when you say VLC switches to 16/9 after the logo, does the movie window change in size?

Is there a possibility that there are two pressings in circulation, the first being the one with the problem, wich was then corrected with a new pressing, maybe comparing barcode numbers on the back of the discs can reveal this information ?

[Der Spieler]

Tested the disc on my system and all is well. My TV is set to automatically detect the disc's ratio and I'm playing it in my Philips DVD player.

I bought my copy from the first pressing.

[Lemmy Caution]

Film Forum in NYC is running a Lang series this week, until Feb 10th.

Looks great and hopefully means that new prints of some of these will start being distributed.

[ianthemovie]

Are the newly restored scenes from Metropolis looking strangely off-center to anyone else? I understand that they have been slightly window-boxed, but they seem to be "dropping" all the way to the bottom edge of my TV (i.e., no black border on the bottom). Do I need to adjust something or is this just how Kino formatted it?

[knives]

There should be a message at the beginning of the movie explaining things, but the footage from the 16mm is going to look oddly cropped on top and to one side.

[ianthemovie]

Thanks, knives. That makes sense--I haven't watched the beginning of the disc yet, hence my ignorance.

[perkizitore]

DVDBeaver on the Italian You Only Live Once blu-ray

[bugsy_pal]

DVDBeaver on the Italian You Only Live Once blu-ray

The Beaver points out that the DVDs may be horizontally strectched, or the bluray is horizontally squashed. To me it looks like the bluray is squashed.

I have the Australian DVD (which is the same as the British one, with the addition of a small feature) and it looks fine. It's a great shame that the bluray appears to be compromised by this squashing.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Big Heat coming from Wild Side Fr. on blu 2012

[Der Spieler]

Big Heat coming from Wild Side Fr. on blu 2012

It's probably going to cost 35$ to import but I sure will.

[BillWatkins]

Has anyone bought the Warner Archive editions of WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS and BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT? How do they compare to the R2s?

[Der Spieler]

Would love to get BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT but Warner doesn't ship to Canada...

[Frankinho007]

If you're looking for a good DVD of Lang's Secret Beyond the Door I can recommend the Italian disc by Kinos. Apart from the rather ugly artwork it features a very solid transfer as good or even better as the DVD from Wild Side and the disc is not region coded. The Italian title is Dietro la porta chiusa.

[perkizitore]

There is also an Italian disc by Ermitage Cinema, is that a PD disaster?

[Der Spieler]

I really wish someone in the US would release this. Importing from Italy is really expensive.

I think Exposure Cinema was going to release Beyond a Reasonable Doubt but they're apparently bankrupt.

[Frankinho007]

I really wish someone in the US would release this. Importing from Italy is really expensive.

I think Exposure Cinema was going to release Beyond a Reasonable Doubt but they're apparently bankrupt.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was rated by the BBFC on March 28th, and Exposure Cinema is still listed as distributor but their website is down since March.