BD Impressions

Let’s celebrate gun crime

Aboard the HMS Whimsy, we often use the phrase “the Warner look”. Basically, what this means is an HD transfer that has a smooth appearance, but which has clearly had the top “layer” of fine detail removed through high frequency filtering. Such discs generally look pretty good, and tend to get high marks from most reviewers, but are not representative of the level of detail that high definition is truly capable of. The Brave One is one of the better Warner titles, lacking the unsightly ringing of the likes of V for Vendetta, but obviously coming up short if you compare it with the likes of Across the Universe from Sony.

The Brave One
(Warner, USA, VC-1, 19.6 GB)

All the colours of the rainbow

Discs like these are the reason why I’m pretty convinced that Sony Pictures, despite the rough shape of many of their early releases, are putting out the best high definition transfers available. Behold Across the Universe, an absolutely batty looking musical drama which arrived last Wednesday but which I still haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch yet. From start to finish it’s an absolute delight to behold, with crystal clear images and beautiful grain. I did spot some light compression artefacts in one scene (see Shot 11), and if I spot any more when I actually watch the disc all the way through, I’ll let you know, but I am very, very happy with this release.

Across the Universe
(Sony Pictures, USA, AVC, 28.2 GB)

Universal vs. Sony Pictures: Round 2

This morning, my copy of the Japanese Blu-ray release of Danny the Dog sailed through my letterbox and flopped gracefully on to my door mat. I’d been waiting for this release with some anticipation for a few reasons.

Firstly, while this title is (well, was) an HD DVD exclusive in the US, put out by Universal, in Japan the results are held by Sony Pictures, making it a Blu-ray exclusive. Whenever the rights are held by different companies in different territories, the possibility arises for rather interesting results as the two studios each handle their separate encodes (and, as the case may be, masters) differently. Additionally, two different cuts exist for this film: the American/British version, entitled Unleashed, is about a minute shorter than the international cut (Danny the Dog), lacking some character-building scenes and slightly extending an early montage, in addition to substituting the film’s final shot. Personally, I was disappointed when Universal failed to include the international cut on their HD DVD release, so, since 2006, I have been eagerly anticipating another distribution getting a crack at it.

Good news, then: Sony Pictures’ Japanese release is the international cut, complete with Morgan Freeman and Jet Li bonding over groceries (that’s not as weird as it sounds). Even better news: it includes subtitles in Japanese and English, both of which are optional. Beyond that, though, things become a bit confusing, particularly when it comes to the transfer.

In my DVD image comparison between the US, UK and French standard definition releases, I remarked that the French release (the international cut) had a markedly different colour palette in comparison with the other two (both the shorter cut). The short version, by and large, looked to have its colour values more heavily manipulated, resulting in “the warm-tinted scenes looking warmer […] and the desaturated ones looking more monochromatic” (to reiterate what I said in the Comments section of my comparison).

Well, the Japanese release features different grading again, less contrasty than either the French DVD or the UK/US DVD and HD DVD releases, which were quite heavily “pumped”, crushing some of the shadow detail and blowing out the highlights. In addition, while the US HD DVD was clearly taken from a digital intermediate, the Japanese version comes from a film source. It exhibits more grain (I strongly suspect that some noise reduction was performed on Universal’s HD DVD), but, while it seems to superficially show more detail, this is in fact due to edge enhancement, resulting in some unsightly halos around highly contrasted edges.

So, a toughie. I definitely prefer the look of Universal’s release, which appears smoother and more natural, and has (to me) a more aesthetically pleasing colour scheme, but have a look at the images below and see which you think is the more eye-pleasing of the two.

Unleashed
(Universal, USA, VC-1, 12.8 GB)

Danny the Dog
(Sony Pictures, Japan, AVC, 26.1 GB)

Dear Universal, this is what a catalogue release SHOULD look like

With Universal on the way to Blu-ray, they will soon find themselves up against Sony Pictures, whose transfers for catalogue titles, while not always perfect, are generally of a much higher standard than the ones being put out by the other majors - particularly Universal, who are often guilty of the worst Crimes Against Film.

Today, I received the UK Blu-ray release of one of my favourite films, Run Lola Run, and I’m pleased to report that it looks better than I could ever have hoped. Is it perfect? No, it’s not, and, unsurprisingly, it doesn’t have the detail that you would get from a DI-sourced transfer, but it does look really, really good, and puts Universal’s HD DVD release of American Gangster, which I also received today, a film that is nearly a decade younger, to shame. That’s just plain wrong.

Run Lola Run
(Sony Pictures, UK, AVC, 23.3 GB)

Speaking of sex and death…

Who would have thought a film with murder and incest as two of its primary themes could be so damn good-natured? I watched Pedro Almodóvar’s 2006 film Volver on Blu-ray recently, and am kicking myself for not coming across this gem sooner. Okay, I did spend most of its running time feeling that I was working the twists out a good half hour before the characters themselves, but that’s the only real flaw in what is otherwise a whimsical masterpiece.

Sony Pictures’ Blu-ray transfer isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s a solid enough presentation of a film-sourced (i.e. non-DI) master, with even the aged MPEG-2 codec not hampering things too much (though there are certainly artefacts there if you look for them). Detail isn’t exactly breathtaking, but I’m pleased that Sony have, as far as I can tell, left the image alone, rather than resorting to artificially sharpening it or trying to stamp out the film grain.

Volver
(Sony Pictures, USA, MPEG-2, 27.2 GB)

Edith Piaf’s waxy face

Some screen captures from TF1’s Blu-ray release of La Môme (La Vie en Rose) for your appreciation. This is a very strong transfer in all but one respect: noise reduction. Whoever encoded the disc (or perhaps it was done at the digital intermediate stage?) made the decision to apply a grain-sucking effect on certain shots, which has the effect of making textures, particularly the actors’ skin, look waxy and unnatural. This is most pronounced in the first shot below, but crops up throughout to varying degrees, although some shots appear to be completely unaffected. It’s just a shame that the studios feel the need to resort to such image manipulation, because interference like this shows up especially badly in high definition.

La Môme
(TF1, France, AVC, 20.2 GB)

What edge enhancement is and why not to use it

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, which is why I’m going to keep this post brief. The screen captures below are taken from Lions Gate’s Blu-ray release of Crank, a disc that has been praised by many reviewers but gives me a headache every time I look at it for more than a few minutes. Why? Because it is riddled with edge enhancement, and I suspect that seeing this sort of ringing at a resolution of 1920x1080 will give you some idea of why I am so against this practice.

The weirdest part is that this video vandalism appears to have been intentional, added during the film’s post production phase, presumably as a means of adding “intensity” to the scenes that have been affected. A number of shots and even some entire sequences are unmolested, a good example of which can be found in the sixth screen capture below. In this scene, a split-screen effect has been employed, with the shot of Jason Statham manipulated to buggery but the shot of Amy Smart seemingly unmolested. It really beggars belief.

Crank
(Lions Gate, USA, MPEG-2, 19.8 GB)

Tight, emphatic close ups, framed under the hairline and above the chin

This is some of the best detail I’ve seen in an HD release taken from a print source rather than a digital intermediate. The best-looking discs invariably tend to be the ones that have come from the digital domain, but Buena Vista shows with The Rock that you can still get very good results indeed from an interpositive. There’s a bit of what looks like edge enhancement (see especially Shot 15, below), but I’m not sure whether this is a result of deliberate sharpening or a side effect of using a film-sourced master. Detail is exemplary, barring a few shots featuring location type, which have been taken from a poorer quality source, and the compression is extremely well handled, as it was on the Criterion standard definition DVD.

The Rock
(Buena Vista, France, AVC)

A tortuous web

Where to start? I haven’t seen the first two Spider-man films, but I’m told this third instalment in the franchise is the weakest of the bunch. Myself, I thought it was fairly mediocre, but too long (as most films are these days), shambolic and utterly cringe-inducing throughout much of its second half.

Anyway, in terms of transfer quality, the detail in the Blu-ray release may well be the best I’ve ever seen. Encoding is also superlative, and indeed, were it not for one small niggle, this would probably have been my top-rated disc of all time, at least in terms of film-sourced material. Unfortunately, it is let down by a handful of shots that have been artificially sharpened (see the first and fourth images below). The rest of the film looks stellar, but this small number of problematic shots lets the side down, meaning that Spider-man 3 falls shy of the coveted 10/10 position, instead earning a respectable 9.5.

Spider-man 3
(Sony Pictures, UK, AVC, 41 GB)

Hair of the rat

If I ever met Pixar’s Rick Sayre, I would shake him warmly by the hand and say “Thank you, sir, for a job well done.” The guy is possibly the best professional encoder in the business - he struck gold with the PAL DVD of The Incredibles, and he’s done so again with Ratatouille. Even the absolute best HD releases generally have mild compression artefacts if you pause and zoom in close enough to inspect them in minute detail. Not so with Ratatouille. The image is, to my eyes, completely flawless. It just doesn’t get better than this.

Ratatouille
(Disney, USA, AVC)

See every fleck of blood in living colour

Lions Gate’s track record for Blu-ray output has been rather spotty so far, but given the right materials, they are capable of producing some absolute gems. The best Lions Gate title that I’ve seen is The Descent, which bears the honour of being one of a small number of films available in high definition that not only looks superb but is also an excellent film. This is a very natural-looking title, pleasingly grainy and not having the extremely clean look of the likes of Black Snake Moan or King Kong. Basically, it looks rough and ready, like the caves in which the heroines find themselves trapped.

The Descent
(Lions Gate, USA, AVC, 20.1 GB)

Satan created MPEG2

So far with my HD screen captures, I’ve been selecting the best-looking titles in order to give readers an idea of what HD DVD and Blu-ray are capable of. Today, I’m going to do something slightly different, and show some captures of a title with obvious flaws. The transfer of The Devil’s Rejects on Blu-ray is basically solid in every area except encoding: the movie was shot on 16mm film, and was then encoded on a single layer 25 GB Blu-ray disc using the aged MPEG2 codec. This results, unsurprisingly, in noticeable compression artefacts. Generally speaking, it looks reasonably pleasing on motion, but there are some rather nasty moments where the lack of available space, coupled with an inefficient codec and difficult material, causes a few hiccups (the second shot being the most extreme example).

The Devil’s Rejects
(Lions Gate, USA, MPEG2, 20.4 GB)

Stay tuned later today for a comparison between the Blu-ray version and the earlier standard definition DVD release.

James Bond, Sony’s unofficial marketing agent

As promised, here are my first ever Blu-ray screen captures. I decided to start with some of the absolute best the format had to offer (Open Season is, in my opinion, the single best-looking title on Blu-ray, but we no longer have a copy of that film), so it made sense to go with the excellent-looking Casino Royale, a title which showed that Sony had well and truly learned from their past encoding mistakes.

Casino Royale
(Sony Pictures, Finland, AVC, 31.5 GB)

The actual process took me longer than I was anticipating - a combination of my laptop’s slow 5,400 RPM hard drive and the fact that I was attempting to install several Windows Updates in the background, while copying a substantial amount of data from one machine to another. I hope to follow this up with some shots of The Descent and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, the two other Blu-ray exclusives that I’ve seen which warrant 10/10 transfers, but I don’t have an ETA on them.