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andyli wrote: Sun Sep 21, 2025 3:07 am

ryannichols7 wrote:circling back to Come Drink With Me from 88 - certified safe upgrade?

To my eyes it’s a massive upgrade from the Spectrum 4K. They did have access to the master before degraining and regraded the color to be less green (and more pink). I don’t know their color references though.

How is the encode? Did you spot any weird pixelations around objects and faces, such as in wide shots where skies are visible? Thanks!

Ben Stoddard / BFI replied to an inquiry by BR user leonc48 about the Herzog situation:

The 4K master came directly from the licensor and it was created by Alpha Omega in Germany. Whilst I appreciate your comments about the approach that was taken and am confident that if the BFI had restored the film from the original negative, it would look markedly different, we either had to release the master we were delivered or cancel the release entirely. The latter wasn't something we were going to do.*


Shout Factory accessed the 4K scans from the licensor and undertook the color and restoration themselves, hence the difference between our release and theirs. I think that in some aspects our master looks better, but in other aspects it doesn't. The BFI was not in a position to access the same scans and the investment that would have been required to produce a brand new 4K master would have made any release financially unfeasible. The UK market is not comparable to the US one.*

Hmm... based on their official stance I'm not going to upgrade the Herzog titles from BFI. The old box set will do fine. If I ever need the 4K I'll get the Shouts when they are discounted. Off-looking color is much easier to correct/adjust on the user end than de-grained image.

I have to disagree with Ben Stoddart, too. If the only other option was to cancel the release, they should have told the Germans, no thanks (unless of course, they weren't allowed a preview of the master before the acquisition and were stuck with what they were given after they had already paid for the 4k licence). I appreciate that the BFI seems to think the projected/anticipated sales figures would justify releasing these films as provided but it falls really short of the high standards set by their own releases of Get Carter and The Proposition. Those first few 4K releases seemed to suggest an unassailable track record to equal Indicator's, and that, to me, has taken a little bit of a hit this year (with their Kurosawa releases having worse audio and in some cases somewhat inferior video than the Criterion and those decades-old subs on Seven Samurai, and now those two Herzogs). They may well bounce back with the Franju though.

I’m still a bit cautious with Eyes Without a Face as the 4K master is natively SDR and only Criterion present it as-is. It could be another Wages of Fear situation where the BFI HDR grade slightly exacerbated textures at the expense of very fine grain in the master. As David Mackenzie doesn’t do any filtering, that behavior is most likely unavoidable in the process when adapting to the wider color space, however if the end result looks as good as The Hidden Fortress (assuming it’s another FiM HDR re-grade), I’d be fine with it. I currently lean towards the Criterion also because of the subtitles.

You’re spot-on regarding BFI’s track record, Finch. With these Herzog releases, they’re counting on buyers who don’t import and / or don’t mind the imperfections in the masters, which is an approach that, dare I say, I normally associate with labels like Kino instead of the high-quality boutiques. Here’s hoping that the Herzogs remain exceptions to the rule.

Finch wrote: Sun Sep 21, 2025 9:32 amthey should have told the Germans, no thanks (unless of course, they weren't allowed a preview of the master before the acquisition and were stuck with what they were given after they had already paid for the 4k licence)

I'd suppose that if they had the possibility to look at the master, realise it wasn't good enough, and cancel the plans in a viable way, the BFI would have done so. It still does happen that right holders are slippery, and labels are then stuck with masters not-good-enough for what they wanted to but the money is already too much gone to just sink the costs. From what Ben wrote, it looks like this is one of these cases rather than a drop in the BFI's structural approach and them going the Kino route.

I would also tend to put the Kurosawas aside : they're huge titles, yes, but from a rightholder that's notoriously difficult to deal with. In this context, the result is not that surprising to me, in that the restorations aren't flawless, and Criterion managed to pick marginally better versions of them. What's more of a bother to me are the subtitles. AQ is a structural issue in video, even more so with Japanese titles. For the issues the Kurosawas might have compared to the Criterion counterparts, the BFI have done several Ozus good by including older better tracks, while Criterion simply included the awful latest soundtracks.

As for Les yeux sans visage, the French release made by Le chat qui fume, which heavily liaised with Gaumont for this, was already HDR and DV, so I guess this is feasible without too much issues.

tenia wrote: Sun Sep 21, 2025 2:22 pm the BFI have done several Ozus good by including older better tracks, while Criterion simply included the awful latest soundtracks.

But there we are talking about the Blurays, and given how Criterion have dealt with the Kurosawa films' audio on the recent 4Ks, it seems unlikely that we'd get a repeat of how Criterion covered Ozu compared to the BFI on 4K, even taking into account that we're also talking about different rightsholders with Ozu. Criterion's and BFI's track records on the Ozu BDs actually makes it more surprising that the BFI had the inferior audio on the Kurosawa UHDs.

Did Toei offer the same licensing options to both Criterion and BFI, or not? And if both had the same choices, did Toei ask for more on the cleaner audio and BFI couldn't afford it? Or were both offered the exact same track and Criterion had the means to clean it up but BFI didn't?

I'm curious how all of this worked out the way it did.

I know we were talking about BDs regarding Ozu, but the result still stands as to what the BFI included vs what Criterion didn't (bother to).

As for the Kurosawas, I believe Criterion have a stronger relationship with Toho than what the BFI has, and wouldn't be surprised to learn Criterion managed to get a master a bit upstream of the final master, while the BFI did with what they were given full stop. Look at High and Low : the BFI BD has a very similar texture to the Toho UHD (ie coarse), but the Criterion UHD stands aside as finer, meaning Criterion managed to release something finer than the rightholder itself.

Regarding the AQ, Criterion has dozens of titles arbitrarily additionnally filtered solely for their releases, and then a few where they sourced stuff from outside what the rightholders offered as the latest digital element. I don't recall what happened for every Kurosawa rereleases, but unlike PQ where you can't just go back to the LD because the latest 4k resto is rubbish, it happens more and more nowadays with AQ (and I don't believe all licensing deals are equal when it comes to including other stuff like this). If you look at Seven Samurai or Throne of Blood soundtracks comparisons on Slow Pics, it's almost as if every track is different from each other, some of them significantly.
Which is why I brought the Ozu to the discussion : I don't even know what they're sourced from, and when they were prepared. Possibly, it's from an older restoration; possibly it's digitized from whatever older presentation whose sound is better anyway.

All this to say AQ on home video releases has endemic issues leading to a specific complexity to know what's coming from where, and that's even more so for Japanese movies (too often poorly restored) (1) and Criterion (who used to additionnally filter and downgrade their AQ) (2), which only muddles the waters.

Hackers (Shout, 88 and Capelight) - comparison. Both imports are superior to the Shout in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn include an Atmos mix. I have the Shout, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular.

So is BFI's UHD of Herzog's Nosferatu a rare blu-ray>UHD situation if we're comparing BFI's 4K to their own blu-ray?

We don't know how the Shout has turned out of course, but even with Aguirre, despite the problems, the BFI is seen as the lesser of two evils.

Screenshots of the BFI 4K release for Nosferatu the Vampyre. Genuinely insane that they looked at the master and said "Yep, that's 4K worthy."

I try to be very understanding of Ben since he's very transparent and open with us, but this has to be one of the worst releases I've seen on the format yet

EDIT: this thing is absolutely getting fried on reddit and Facebook, rough business

If Reddit and Facebook users are criticizing this one, things are really, really bad.

BR user Nazca posted this comparison of a silent film “restoration” Alpha-Omega-Digital made which tells you everything about this company: https://slow.pics/c/dFdgCFgn?image-fit=contain

Are these proper screenshots or taken off someone's TV? either way, my copy is arriving tonight but going unopened straight into the trade pile.

I suspect cancelling the releases altogether would have lost them even more money but this is an awkward situation to be in. But honestly, if this results in fewer but absolutely wonderful UHDs where they had more control over the master files, then this hiccup will have been kinda worth it.

And to be fair to BFI, some of this year's releases like La Haine and Women in Love were great.

Maybe it's just me, but those Nosferatu the Vampyre screenshots don't even really look AI upscaled to me, it just looks like normal DNR you would see on some older 4K releases. It doesn't really have the same level of over-sharpness nor does it have many anomalies that suggest AI did it. The first screen cap kinda looks like AI to me, but the rest don't. Caps 3, 8, 11, and 19 in particular look more like traditional DNR to me. Maybe someone can fill me in if I'm wrong.

To be fair, the Herzog films were never good-looking on the blu-ray format either. Same DNR approach from the same company responsible for the restoration. BFI's just unfortunate to get involved in this mess. Ben's comments that if BFI were handling the restoration it would "looked markedly different" says it all. Fuck the Germans for trashing one of their national treasure directors across so many formats. (And these restorations are doing the rounds in theaters as we type this.... Shame!)

Headsup for anyone who ordered Nosferatu from Orbit: I emailed them and asked if I can return for a refund and they said yes, I just need to cover the return postage. This was dependent on the package (of the disc, not Orbit's parcel!) unopened. So if you haven't received your order yet, just ask them for a return, and put a label on top of theirs.

I obviously had already opened and watched Aguirre so that I can only trade in but luckily I kept the slipcover, too.

andyli wrote: Tue Sep 23, 2025 4:27 am To be fair, the Herzog films were never good-looking on the blu-ray format either. Same DNR approach from the same company responsible for the restoration. BFI's just unfortunate to get involved in this mess. Ben's comments that if BFI were handling the restoration it would "looked markedly different" says it all. Fuck the Germans for trashing one of their national treasure directors across so many formats. (And these restorations are doing the rounds in theaters as we type this.... Shame!)

Sorry, where does this claim come from? I always thought and felt that the BFI box set was phenomenal. Encoded by Mackenzie, beautiful transfers, etc.

Come Drink With Me (88) - caps by Nutcracker @BR. They indeed brought back the grain and considerably brightened the film up. Colors are also more saturated but from personal taste, something in the middle may have been more correct. As seen in the cap above, the writing on the red cloths and the ornaments next to them are blown out on the 88 compared to Spectrum’s. Encoding seems to be better but it’s not perfect such as in cap 6 in white areas and on the floor.

Did anyone get the 88 and can elaborate more?

Drucker wrote: Tue Sep 23, 2025 2:33 pm

andyli wrote: Tue Sep 23, 2025 4:27 am To be fair, the Herzog films were never good-looking on the blu-ray format either. Same DNR approach from the same company responsible for the restoration. BFI's just unfortunate to get involved in this mess. Ben's comments that if BFI were handling the restoration it would "looked markedly different" says it all. Fuck the Germans for trashing one of their national treasure directors across so many formats. (And these restorations are doing the rounds in theaters as we type this.... Shame!)

Sorry, where does this claim come from? I always thought and felt that the BFI box set was phenomenal. Encoded by Mackenzie, beautiful transfers, etc.

The old BFI box set beats the Shout one for sure. But overall the transfers are not that great either. Except for a couple of key titles like Aguirre and Nosferatu (these two were first issue separately anyway), the others suffer from mild to heavy DNR approach when their HD transfers were created. I've watched the set multiple times to reach this unfortunate conclusion, often times finding the accompanying shorts looking better than the main features, and if you need I can provide screen captures to support it. There are plenty reviews published over the years already, though. As blu-ray and as product of the time it's serviceable surely. But I won't call it phenomenal. Again, I'm not criticizing the encode, just the restoration.

Comparions online show the old BFI boxset as being better than the Shout sets on some films and worse than them in others. If you want the best of the Blu-rays you need all three sets.

Here’s one comparison.

Peacock wrote: Wed Sep 24, 2025 2:38 am Comparions online show the old BFI boxset as being better than the Shout sets on some films and worse than them in others. If you want the best of the Blu-rays you need all three sets.

Here’s one comparison.

Thanks for the correction. Yes plus they offer different sets of films anyway. And there's a volume two to the Shout set.

The Sound of Music (Disney) - caps. Fine upgrade in detail and grading but the BD was solid and quite a bit of chroma noise crept into the 4K encode.

nicolas wrote: Tue Sep 23, 2025 9:23 pm Come Drink With Me (88) - caps by Nutcracker @BR.

Liersi on the other forum took further caps and elaborated, which I think is worth quoting in full:

took a few shots from the beginning to illustrate what - I think - Kitano is talking about. Initially the 88 looks quite pleasing. Brightness will do that. It's only in direct comparison that you see the distortions in dynamic range incurred by juicing the source. Colours lose saturation, gradations become ill defined. the entire mid range is blown out, and the top range is compressed and actually loses subjective brightness. The two presentations actually feature similar peak brightness in these shots, believe it or not. The shot with the parchment it probably the easiest to see what happens, but these shots all show it clearly. Look at the trails and switch back and forth. Look at clothing, skin and highlights and you'll see how the 88 desaturates and loses definition, and thus contrast and depth. The title is a good example of what happens to the reds, the parchment for the whites, and the rest for the mid range.

Note that I make no comment at all with regard to intent or colour grading, or even the mood that Kitano mentions. All valid points. This is simply to say that there is no additional dynamic range in the source over the Spectrum, and the higher brightness comes at a price.