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Cash Flagg wrote:Can anyone comment on the quality of their edition of The Lady with the Dog?

DVD Talk review

Indeed, the transfer here is just about flawless...

I'm skeptical though - how can this not be a bad PAL -> NTSC conversion?

DVDTalk reviewers notoriously don't notice interlacing or ghosting, I never ever take their word on any picture quality question

Perkins Cobb wrote:I'm skeptical though - how can this not be a bad PAL -> NTSC conversion?

Yes, standard conversions are less than ideal, but some look much better than others. Now I'm curious to see this Facets version of THE LADY WITH THE DOG. Their disc of Kozintsev's KING LEAR actually looks much better than the Ruscico edition, even though it's 4X3 letterboxed. It's entirely possible that Facets licensed a better transfer directly from Russia.

The Ruscico version of THE LADY WITH THE DOG looks fine, I have that one already.

It's a wonderful film, by the way, very much worth seeking out.

I have the new Facets disc, which certainly outclasses the old Ruscico release. Facets' transfer appears pristine, as if the print used was very close to the original negative. Everything--detail, gray scale--appears flawless to me. How a Soviet film from 1960 survived like this is beyond me; they've taken such wretched care of their films.

Gordon Thomas

The unsubbed Krupny Plan DVD transfers are reputed to be much better than Ruscico's versions. Perhaps, Facets is making use of these materials.

Is it the Lear that is markedly better -- or Lady With the Dog -- or both?

Michael Kerpan wrote:Is it the Lear that is markedly better -- or Lady With the Dog -- or both?

Sorry--I was speaking of Lady with the Dog, which is of Criterion-quality. I have the Facets Lear, too, but not the Ruscico for comparison.

Gordon Thomas

I am delighted to hear that these two titles, that I have long wanted to purchase, have been released in such nice transfers by Facets.

There are, however, two (probably) eccentric reasons for still purchasing these from Ruscico. One is the joy of having the artwork on the shelf in cyrillic, the other being the pleasure of supporting Ruscico directly. I have ordered from them three times in the past, and they have always been very kind and prompt in dealing with me.

Praise...for a Facets release?

Obama's already started changing America.

So King Lear looks good. Adding it to my rental queue.

How does Hamlet look?

jsteffe wrote:Yes, standard conversions are less than ideal, but some look much better than others.

It depends on how you do them, how much time you're prepared to devote for them and - inevitably - how much you're prepared to spend. A cheap real-time conversion will always look terrible, but a two or three-pass one that analyses each frame and calculates how to present it to its best advantage in the final video standard will be vastly superior.

I've seen NTSC-to-PAL conversions where the only giveaway is that the image is slightly softer than it could be (thanks to the lower NTSC resolution having to be blown up) - but if you step through it frame by frame you'd honestly never know: there's no ghosting or judder.

What A Disgrace wrote:So King Lear looks good. Adding it to my rental queue.

How does Hamlet look?

Here's what I said about it in a review on the TCM website:

It appears that Facets has used the same transfer and subtitles as the Russian Cinema Council disc, only with the subtitles embedded in the image and the 16X9 anamorphic transfer switched to a 4X3 letterboxed format. They have also squeezed the 2 1/2 hour film onto a single layer disc, which necessarily increases the amount of digital artifacts. As a consequence, the picture also looks softer and flatter, though it's still acceptable for viewing on an ordinary picture tube.

Michael Kerpan wrote:The unsubbed Krupny Plan DVD transfers are reputed to be much better than Ruscico's versions. Perhaps, Facets is making use of these materials.

Is it the Lear that is markedly better -- or Lady With the Dog -- or both?

The Facets Lear is definitely better, and it sounds as if *The Lady With the Dog* is, as well. I'm going to pick the latter up next time I get paid.

Does anyone else notice a slight improvement in Facets' DVDs?

Ever since their outstanding, director-approved Satantango box, they seem to be slightly more concerned about the quality of their transfers. If only all of their DVDs could be like their Satantango...

What really irks me is their constant reliance on pan-and-scan prints, especially their flat-out unacceptable edition of Lemonade Joe. Thankfully, they seem to have recently switched over to widescreen. It's about time (and that goes for all the other DVD companies, too!)

Metropolisforever_2 wrote:Ever since their outstanding, director-approved Satantango box, they seem to be slightly more concerned about the quality of their transfers. If only all of their DVDs could be like their Satantango...

Uh, I would hardly call the Facets' Satantango outstanding. Mediocre at best. Here's the previous discussion of it & the Artificial Eye version.

Metropolisforever_2 wrote:What really irks me is their constant reliance on pan-and-scan prints, especially their flat-out unacceptable edition of Lemonade Joe. Thankfully, they seem to have recently switched over to widescreen.

Do they have a lot of DVDs that are in the wrong aspect ratio? I didn't realize that. Most of the titles of theirs I've watched have been 1.33:1 OAR, so I haven't thought about pan-and-scanning.

If you have specific complaints or praise, you should list them here, and perhaps Scharphedin will incorporate them into his Annotated Facets Catalog post, here. His efforts in that vein are appreciated.

As for whether they're improving, I'm not convinced they are. The most recent Facets-authored title I've purchased was The Lawrence Jordan Album which I thought had disappointing picture quality issues. DVD Savant praised the transfers quite highly, but I saw combing, lots of jaggies, and I still suspect that most if not all the films are too zoomed-in. Furthermore, Sophie's Place on disc three is several minutes shorter than the (correct) listed runtime, which suggests that it is either incomplete or was transferred at too fast a speed. That's one of Jordan's greatest films, so it's pretty distressing.

I think I've said this elsewhere, but you cannot go by anything DVDTalk says about picture quality, as they routinely ignore combing issues to the point that their reviewers must be watching the discs on CRTs

domino harvey wrote:I think I've said this elsewhere, but you cannot go by anything DVDTalk says about picture quality, as they routinely ignore combing issues to the point that their reviewers must be watching the discs on CRTs

Or more propably they have players that de-interlace the image automatically. Before I bought such player myself I was very annoyed about interlaced DVDs but nowadays I wouldn't even know about without checking the DVD on my computer. This of course doesn't mean they shouldn't find these things out some way and inform the reader.

I have a progressive scan player (Oppo 970 HD), if that's all you mean about de-interlacing, and yet I have noticed minor combing on three discs recently: the Jordan one I discussed above and the Kino discs of Applause and Love Me Tonight.
I don't know what kind of display Savant uses but I routinely see him at least attempt to make careful rankings of the transfers of discs within a Warner box set, for example. If he was watching Sophie's Place carefully, he should have noticed all the jaggies and the fact that the film is about 8 minutes too short. The digital artifacts are really bad, and it's particularly noticeable about 30 minutes into the film where all the straight lines and edges of the classical architecture and geometric shapes are crawling with some kind of moiré effect. Hard to think of any way my player or my projector are causing all these problems with transfers that are supposedly "clear and sharp, often looking almost too good to be 16mm in origin" (Savant). I did not buy the set on the basis of his review and I'm not sure why I even cited it ,except perhaps to note the way that many reviewers seem to give Facets a pass on picture quality (more so recently?).

Gregory wrote:I have a progressive scan player (Oppo 970 HD), if that's all you mean about de-interlacing, and yet I have noticed minor combing on three discs recently: the Jordan one I discussed above and the Kino discs of Applause and Love Me Tonight.

I don't know much about these technical matters, but this is what Wikipedia says about progressive scan and scaling:

Scaling works well with full frames, therefore interlaced video must be deinterlaced before it is scaled. Deinterlacing can result in severe "combing" artifacts.

and on this page about deinterlacing:

If done by an embedded electronic device, the quality varies depending on the overall quality of the device. High-quality electronic devices are in many cases defined by their deinterlacing ability.

I just checked my copy of Applause with my player (PS3) and I couldn't spot a single instance of combing, either by looking at the moving picture or by pausing it. So my guess is that PS3 has better deinterlacing filters than your player. Again of course interlacing should be mentioned as as I've understood, interlaced image can never be as good as progressive no matter how good the deinterlacing filters are, though the image on Applause still looks very beautiful and sharp to me.

It was minor, only noticeable when looking closely at objects in motion. I have a screen that's 8 - 9 feet, so that may be one reason why it was noticeable. I'm not denying that there might be player issues involved here, though.
The combing was also minor with the Jordan set -- far from the top of my list of complaints. The weird patterns I'm noticing around edges of things are, I'm assuming, compression artifacts. I also am not expert in techincal matters.
As for Savant, at least he reviewed the set. I didn't see any of the other usual DVD review sites do so.

Can anyone comment on Facets' DVD of the Karoly Makk film Love? I'll wager the Second Run disc is superior, but just in case...

Hopscotch wrote:Can anyone comment on Facets' DVD of the Karoly Makk film Love? I'll wager the Second Run disc is superior, but just in case...

It's actually more than decent. Karoly Makk is one of my favorite filmmakers, and they treat the film well, even with a minimum of extras. The transfer is pretty good, and its definitely worth picking up (I mean, who else would release this film in R1?).

Glenn Erickson on Poil de Carotte.

Is their Satantango even worth the rental or should I not watch it until I get an all-region?