So what's next? Two classic war movies, a recent Oscar Best picture nominee and modern Sci-fi classic. All neutered from what should have been a major upgrade worthy of the phrase " . . . the Ultimate High Definition Experience" (sic). Well most high definition titles are worthy. But excessive manipulation of the picture to cater and satisfy them make this all worthless. Why for the love of Allah you ******* ** ***** hide the details that's otherwise present in the movie on a 1080p format? WHY?!?

Its true that a majority of HD release are a substantial upgrade over the SD DVD but that is not an excuse if you make it look the movie is inhabited by wax mannequins with halos or "force fields" all throughout. Just like the CGI animation I see from the video game I play. Clean and smooth.

I don't think I need to tell how disappointed I am when reports start trickling in about the excessive DNR used. Ok, fine maybe its not too bad. Then screenshots from DVDbeaver went online and right away I see the movie is "Pattonized". For two weeks people asserted that the "screenshots can't be trusted" or "screenshots doesn't not represent the PQ of the movie" or "No waiii dat pixie is photochopped to make it look worse!". Well to those people watching this movie right now (assuming your viewing set is calibrated ;) ) what do you see? Does it match? or your TV has some magical powers to add fine detail to all HD releases. You did not have your sharpness setting set to 10 did you? ;)

Ok back to this piece of . . . err I mean Blu-ray disc. There are two versions , The Director's Cut and the Theatrical Cut. And YES there is a difference in overall PQ. But I will deal with that later in the thread ;) There is no seamless branching. The disc is structured just like the Golden Compass and I Am Legend. As far as the DTS-HD MA sound, its excellent. Outstanding. As usual.

I am not alone with what some called a "crusade" against DNR and EE. Let me correct you with that, WE have a "crusade" against Excessive DNR and EE. Even after all the arguments against these manipulations on films there are still some that just don't understand what is the big deal. It is better than DVD so what is the frakking problem? Let me show you:

http://www.imageviper.com/displayimage/125221/0/LOTRXylonAVS1.pnghttp://www.imageviper.com/displayimage/125224/0/LOTRDNRXylonAVS1.png

'nuff said? Need to see more?



Total Video
Title Codec Length Movie Size Disc Size Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track Secondary Audio Track
----- ------ ------- -------------- -------------- ------- ------- ------------------ ---------------------
Dark City: TC VC-1 1:40:29 19,710,339,072 45,528,093,014 26.15 18.09 DTS-HD Master 5.1 6046Kbps (48kHz/24-bit) DTS 2.0 256Kbps (48kHz/24-bit)


DISC INFO:

Disc Size: 45,528,093,014 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: No

PLAYLIST REPORT:

Name: 00021.mpls
Size: 19,710,339,072 bytes
Length: 1:40:29 (h:m:s)
Total Bitrate: 26.15 Mbps
Description:

FILES:

Name Size Length Time In Time Out
---- ---- ------ ------- --------
00045.M2TS 19,710,339,072 1:40:29.064 0:00:00.000 1:40:29.064

VIDEO:

Codec Bitrate Description
----- ------- -----------
VC-1 Video 18092 kbps 1080p / 23.976fps / 16:9 / Advanced Profile 3

AUDIO:

Codec Language Bitrate Description
----- -------- ------- -----------
DTS-HD Master Audio English 6046 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 6046kbps (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 1536kbps)
DTS Audio English 256 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 256kbps
DTS Audio English 256 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 256kbps


http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/844dc84b.jpg



Total Video
Title Codec Length Movie Size Disc Size Bitrate Bitrate Main Audio Track Secondary Audio Track
----- ------ ------- -------------- -------------- ------- ------- ------------------ ---------------------
Dark City:DC VC-1 1:51:43 21,823,856,640 45,528,093,014 26.04 17.83 DTS-HD Master 5.1 5913Kbps (48kHz/24-bit) DTS 2.0 256Kbps (48kHz/24-bit)


DISC INFO:

Disc Size: 45,528,093,014 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: No

PLAYLIST REPORT:

Name: 00019.mpls
Size: 21,823,856,640 bytes
Length: 1:51:43 (h:m:s)
Total Bitrate: 26.04 Mbps
Description:

FILES:

Name Size Length Time In Time Out
---- ---- ------ ------- --------
00043.M2TS 21,823,856,640 1:51:43.738 0:00:00.000 1:51:43.738

VIDEO:

Codec Bitrate Description
----- ------- -----------
VC-1 Video 17830 kbps 1080p / 23.976fps / 16:9 / Advanced Profile 3

AUDIO:

Codec Language Bitrate Description
----- -------- ------- -----------
DTS-HD Master Audio English 5913 kbps 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 5913kbps (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 1536kbps)
DTS Audio English 256 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 256kbps
DTS Audio English 256 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 256kbps
DTS Audio English 256 kbps 2.0 / 48kHz / 24-bit / 256kbps


http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/aa79f59e.jpg

This two sets are the only ones I will include the DVD.

Note: The DVD versions are NOT the benchmark here anymore. Its how the movie is faithfully transferred to the disc.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/2684807b.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/1a6fa6e6.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/e75f1894.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/16cc8499.png

The transfer is atrocious. Jennifer's face has no definition. Keifer's too. The image is "dead". The DNR is just so overbearing. I can't see any positive attribute to the overall PQ. A modern Sci-Fi classic finally to be seen and enjoyed in full high definition 1080p.

Except the definition is missing. Despicable.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/ec6b4ae7.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/059f7bca.png

I need to get some HD shots of Jennifer from other titles. Any recommendations? Preferably same AR.

:) Refresh-refresh-refresh

Wax City?

Can we get this out of the way right now?

Person A: "Wow, it looks so much better than the DVD!!! Why are you complaining?"
Person B: "It doesn't look like film and we should demand better."

What about:

Person C: "It doesn't look good but I'll put up with it."
Person D: "This looks as great as Patton!"

Okay, I made up that last one. Let's not go nuts.

Xylon is such a tease :D

While you guys wait, hers some comparisons, just make sure you click on the "hier" button:
http://caps-a-holic.com/hd_vergleiche/index.php?vergleich=dark_city

what's with these reserved threads?

Based on the capture comparisons already out there I have a few conclusions:

the jump over the dvd is huge, obviously

the HD version is waxed and EEed but it varies from shot to shot. Some shots are passable and some are approaching Patton territory with clay-like textures. Those with highly revealing 1080p setups are going to be the most disappointed.

Xylon, are you going to do any comparsions between the DC and TC on the Blu-ray? Apparently 2 encodes on the disc because the DC features new color timing (why do they always take the brown out? ex. Blade Runner, Matrix), while the TC retains the original.

Could be the theatrical cut is less digitally massaged in other ways too? I haven't looked at it yet because I didn't realize there were going to be such differences.

The DC looks good, but I was surprised how clean it looked. Doesn't seem all that detailed, but not waxy either, though I don't have the biggest screen around. Something along the lines of Batman Begins. And I thought the coloring was a little different, but not jarring at least. Still, I missed the browns, much just like when the re-did Matrix and Blade Runner.

Might be interesting to see if the less tweaked version is actually a more detailed image.

I'm hoping to watch this straight through tonight (rental, of couse) but likely won't be able to until tomorrow night or maybe even Thursday. I'm wondering what's up with the music scroe as far as changes.

Review will go up tonight. Sorry for the delay. I did not realize there are two versions in the disc. I need to check them both for accuracy.

Both versions should have the same color timing because both are from the same transfer/master. The extra material was just spliced in.

Based on the capture comparisons already out there I have a few conclusions:

the jump over the dvd is huge, obviously

the HD version is waxed and EEed but it varies from shot to shot. Some shots are passable and some are approaching Patton territory with clay-like textures. Those with highly revealing 1080p setups are going to be the most disappointed.

After viewing the BD, I would agree with that assessment. The degree of perceived edge enhancement and noise reduction can vary greatly throughout. Unfortunately, the image is caked with DNR more often than not.

Both versions should have the same color timing because both are from the same transfer/master. The extra material was just spliced in.

Really? This review says otherwise:
http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/darkcitybluray.php

And two encodes would account for the relatively low bitrates I observed when watching the DC.

Also, aren't the sound options different for each cut? Like 7.1 lossless only on the DC?

Here you go guys. Just to hold some over until I'm done with the proper screenshots. If it walks like duck, talks like a duck . . . . . . . ;)


http://www.imageviper.com/displayimage/125227/0/DarkcityWaxyAVSxylonbd1.pnghttp://www.imageviper.com/displayimage/125228/0/DarkcitycropWaxyAVSxylonbd1.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/a7d36e32.gif

I think I may have saved some of you gas money ;)

I think I may have saved some of you some gas money ;)

Nope I ordered mine from Amazon :D

Nope I ordered mine from Amazon :D

Party pooper :D

Nope I ordered mine from Amazon :D

i think he meant it as for those who were gonna drive to the nearby store to buy it. after seeing those screenshots i think some will decide not to buy.

i'm no expert, but there was no detail on the guy's face in that shot at all. never seen the movie but heard a bunch of praises on it, will give it a rent.

The bitrate graphic is disappointing (and snazzy! Xylon, hook me up ;)). Is seamless branching that hard to do on Blu-ray?

Poor Murdoch looks like he came out of a painting. Why do the truly great movies get such crappy treatment? Where's that Robert Harris quote...

To be clear, I'm not stating that there may not be missing detail on Dark City.

There has definitely been image manipulation.

What I am stating is that if there is, the film has not been plasticized, and nothing horrific has occurred.

Then he actually watched it and it went to Level Two on his list. Good stuff. :D

Xylon, are you going to do any comparsions between the DC and TC on the Blu-ray? Apparently 2 encodes on the disc because the DC features new color timing (why do they always take the brown out? ex. Blade Runner, Matrix), while the TC retains the original.



Yes :)

What are we going to do about this, for real. The Patton thing sucked, but this just makes me all out furious.

I got this today in the Borders 40% bunch, since I sold my DVD copy years ago...and at least the sound should sound good if not great. I figured why not? Maybe New Line will get the message about not using DNR and save some time/money on the processing and we'll get replacements.

The bitrate graphic is disappointing (and snazzy! Xylon, hook me up ;)). Is seamless branching that hard to do on Blu-ray?


I kind of like the idea of preserving the original color timing, since I'm not a fan of revisionist color timing, but it's ashame to make it be at the cost of a lower bitrate. Would be better to use separate discs, but maybe you need higher profile titles, like Blade Runner.

yeah, that's one of the problems. even a crappy transfer like this still beats out the best dvd, so many ppl who loved the film will still buy it. same goes for all other films, i'm sure there are plenty of people upgrading their DVD of Gangs of NY to BD.

Oof!

Not much detail to be found there...

Hey Xylon,

What is your video system, if you don't mind me asking? Not your PC but your TV or projector.

Thanks!
P

come on Xylon...thats not quite a comparison pic...

What are we going to do about this, for real. The Patton thing sucked, but this just makes me all out furious.

1. Don't buy the title.

2. Write a cordial letter to the studio explaining why you decided not to buy the title.

come on Xylon...thats not quite a comparison pic...Yes, I'd love to see a comparison to film. :D

come on Xylon...thats not quite a comparison pic...

Still, it speaks for itself. The DVD isn't going to look better, and I would hope we all know generally what film is supposed to look like.

come on Xylon...thats not quite a comparison pic...

I've watched most of the Director's cut earlier this morning. Many shots look MUCH better (tons more detail, etc) than that picture he posted. I'm glad I wasn't mislead by that shot into not purchasing the blu-ray version.

Xylon...if you really wanted a bad shot...get the first viewing of Jennifer Connelly when she is singing..she has an extremely soft face there.

anyone seeing any EE rings in that shot, though? Not me...I guess we can't have it either way with New Line, can we?

'Mislead'? This isn't a religion, for pete's sake. Could we all please drop the freaking hyperbole??? If you want to buy it and you bought it and you are happy with it, more power to you.

sharkcohen...you will be happy with it, I guarantee it. it looks fabulous.

sharkcohen...you will be happy with it, I guarantee it. it looks fabulous.

It's already in my Netflix queue ;)

'Mislead'? This isn't a religion, for pete's sake. Could we all please drop the freaking hyperbole??? If you want to buy it and you bought it and you are happy with it, more power to you.

Religion:confused: I'm merely pointing out that the fact that the picture is far from the best looking shots of the transfer. If the entire movie looked like then I would agree with Xylon's comment "I think I may have saved some of you gas money ", but that isn't remotely true which is great news for big fans of the movie like myself :)

So in other words the transfer is great but occasionally looks like a oil painting?

Not to stir things up but does anything except cartoons pass the mustard pq wise around here?

Not to stir things up but does anything except cartoons pass the mustard pq wise around here?

not this crowd....:rolleyes:

YEP, everyone who doesn't get all giddy over DNR'ed **** just finds every release to be crap. Uh huh, THAT'S IT. What are you people, 12 years old to say something that silly?

Man...it is AMAZING how some people at this forum are busting on people who are upset at the DNR/EE stuff. I mean how hard is it to grasp? They (and I am included in this group) DO NOT see the point of this DNR crap and KNOW things could look better since the resulting look MAKES PEOPLE IN THE MOVIE LOOK LIKE WAX FIGURES. The bloody golden compass trailer/BD comparo xylon posted PROVES THIS YET PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO ACCEPT IT. How can ANYONE see that GC comparo and not be ticked that the disc doesn't look like the trailer? The difference is NIGHT AND DAY.

Why do supposed "enthusiasts" here gleefully accept mediocrity? If you don't friggin care how your HIGH DEF DISC looks like then go back to dvd and let people who actually grasp the point of HD be pissed off when unnecessary crap like DNR is done to good movies. Seriously. I am just at a loss to understand why some can't understand this. We KNOW there are transfers not DNR'ed to hell which means it isn't a needed process. We KNOW that many of those non DVR'ed titles look amazing. We KNOW the DNR process (as seen in these discs in question) causes a loss of detail which is DEFEATING THE MAIN POINT OF HIGH DEFINITION. We KNOW that none of these crazy DNRed titles look better than those that haven't been processed in the same way. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

I showed some of the dnr stuff to a buddy of mine today who is not an AV enthusiast and he was sickened by the DNR shots and he thinks people are insane to like the look and not be upset by it. He doesn't get why people defend the decision to DNR and the resulting look like it is their children. He, like me, has no idea why people would gladly accept it and wonders why if you don't give a crap how your HIGH DEF TRANSFER looks like then why even upgrade? If all you care about is the movie and nothing else then just stick to DVD!

Really, why is it so hard for some to understand? Oh and the "better than dvd" mentality is lame. OF COURSE IT WILL BE BETTER. The point is it should be as close to the film presentation as possible and DNRing stuff to hell does not make that happen. How DVD has become the quality standard to judge against is beyond me.

Oh and I am also sick of people busting on viewing screenshots saying they aren't indicative of anything. Really? It is AMAZING how I can view a screenshot and clearly see issues and then view it on my 106" screen and the issues BECOME WORSE! Seriously, how hard is this to understand as well? I see EE in a screenshot and guess what? I SEE IT ON MY SCREEN AS WELL ONLY IT IS WORSE. If ANYTHING, screenshots make things look BETTER. I have yet to see a screengrab or quality screenshot off a screen that looks worse than the in person quality.

You know, it's just a damn shame people back in the early days of DVD bitched and moaned about OAR and THEN bitched about anamorphic releases cuz hey, pan and scan or non anamorphic transfers would have been fine right? Those people complaining then and striving for these things were just picky I guess, right? Nobody benefited from those types of complaints, right? Just like nobody will benefit from the DNR/EE complaints now I guess...

Not to stir things up but does anything except cartoons pass the mustard pq wise around here?

Meet the Spartans. :D

As for making mountains out of hills you'd have to have a pretty nonrevealing setup for this release to have only minor problems.

Not to stir things up but does anything except cartoons pass the mustard pq wise around here?

any sony film except dracula pretty much..

sony is the only studio that gives a damn right now..

Every studio is hit or miss except Sony. In New Line's case, it is always miss, because they have DNR'd all their releases. It'll hit the fan when LOTR comes out heavily DNR'd.

YEP, everyone who doesn't get all giddy over DNR'ed **** just finds every release to be crap. Uh huh, THAT'S IT. What are you people, 12 years old to say something that silly?

Man...it is AMAZING how some people at this forum are busting on people who are upset at the DNR/EE stuff. I mean how hard is it to grasp? They (and I am included in this group) DO NOT see the point of this DNR crap and KNOW things could look better since the resulting look MAKES PEOPLE IN THE MOVIE LOOK LIKE WAX FIGURES. The bloody golden compass trailer/BD comparo xylon posted PROVES THIS YET PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO ACCEPT IT. How can ANYONE see that GC comparo and not be ticked that the disc doesn't look like the trailer? The difference is NIGHT AND DAY.

Why do supposed "enthusiasts" here gleefully accept mediocrity? If you don't friggin care how your HIGH DEF DISC looks like then go back to dvd and let people who actually grasp the point of HD be pissed off when unnecessary crap like DNR is done to good movies. Seriously. I am just at a loss to understand why some can't understand this. We KNOW there are transfers not DNR'ed to hell which means it isn't a needed process. We KNOW that many of those non DVR'ed titles look amazing. We KNOW the DNR process (as seen in these discs in question) causes a loss of detail which is DEFEATING THE MAIN POINT OF HIGH DEFINITION. We KNOW that none of these crazy DNRed titles look better than those that haven't been processed in the same way. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

I showed some of the dnr stuff to a buddy of mine today who is not an AV enthusiast and he was sickened by the DNR shots and he thinks people are insane to like the look and not be upset by it. He doesn't get why people defend the decision to DNR and the resulting look like it is their children. He, like me, has no idea why people would gladly accept it and wonders why if you don't give a crap how your HIGH DEF TRANSFER looks like then why even upgrade? If all you care about is the movie and nothing else then just stick to DVD!

Really, why is it so hard for some to understand? Oh and the "better than dvd" mentality is lame. OF COURSE IT WILL BE BETTER. The point is it should be as close to the film presentation as possible and DNRing stuff to hell does not make that happen. How DVD has become the quality standard to judge against is beyond me.

Oh and I am also sick of people busting on viewing screenshots saying they aren't indicative of anything. Really? It is AMAZING how I can view a screenshot and clearly see issues and then view it on my 106" screen and the issues BECOME WORSE! Seriously, how hard is this to understand as well? I see EE in a screenshot and guess what? I SEE IT ON MY SCREEN AS WELL ONLY IT IS WORSE. If ANYTHING, screenshots make things look BETTER. I have yet to see a screengrab or quality screenshot off a screen that looks worse than the in person quality.

You know, it's just a damn shame people back in the early days of DVD bitched and moaned about OAR and THEN bitched about anamorphic releases cuz hey, pan and scan or non anamorphic transfers would have been fine right? Those people complaining then and striving for these things were just picky I guess, right? Nobody benefited from those types of complaints, right? Just like nobody will benefit from the DNR/EE complaints now I guess...

What he said, but without the "Anger" :D

Every studio is hit or miss except Sony. In New Line's case, it is always miss, because they have DNR'd all their releases. It'll hit the fan when LOTR comes out heavily DNR'd.
With one exception: Shoot 'em Up. That New Line title has an absolutely stellar transfer and encode that I can't find a single fault in.

Wonderful...Now we have two threads bashing the DNR and EE in Dark City. Can't we all just wait for the comparison shots?

Xylon, thanks, yet again, for hooking us up with high quality screen shots. I look forward to each and every one of your comparison threads. You've saved me a lot of money. Keep em coming.

any sony film except dracula pretty much..

sony is the only studio that gives a damn right now..

Every studio is hit or miss except Sony. In New Line's case, it is always miss, because they have DNR'd all their releases. It'll hit the fan when LOTR comes out heavily DNR'd.

Really? Did you watch So I Married An Axe Murderer?

YEP, everyone who doesn't get all giddy over DNR'ed **** just finds every release to be crap. Uh huh, THAT'S IT. What are you people, 12 years old to say something that silly?

Man...it is AMAZING how some people at this forum are busting on people who are upset at the DNR/EE stuff. I mean how hard is it to grasp? They (and I am included in this group) DO NOT see the point of this DNR crap and KNOW things could look better since the resulting look MAKES PEOPLE IN THE MOVIE LOOK LIKE WAX FIGURES. The bloody golden compass trailer/BD comparo xylon posted PROVES THIS YET PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO ACCEPT IT. How can ANYONE see that GC comparo and not be ticked that the disc doesn't look like the trailer? The difference is NIGHT AND DAY.

Why do supposed "enthusiasts" here gleefully accept mediocrity? If you don't friggin care how your HIGH DEF DISC looks like then go back to dvd and let people who actually grasp the point of HD be pissed off when unnecessary crap like DNR is done to good movies. Seriously. I am just at a loss to understand why some can't understand this. We KNOW there are transfers not DNR'ed to hell which means it isn't a needed process. We KNOW that many of those non DVR'ed titles look amazing. We KNOW the DNR process (as seen in these discs in question) causes a loss of detail which is DEFEATING THE MAIN POINT OF HIGH DEFINITION. We KNOW that none of these crazy DNRed titles look better than those that haven't been processed in the same way. WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

I showed some of the dnr stuff to a buddy of mine today who is not an AV enthusiast and he was sickened by the DNR shots and he thinks people are insane to like the look and not be upset by it. He doesn't get why people defend the decision to DNR and the resulting look like it is their children. He, like me, has no idea why people would gladly accept it and wonders why if you don't give a crap how your HIGH DEF TRANSFER looks like then why even upgrade? If all you care about is the movie and nothing else then just stick to DVD!

Really, why is it so hard for some to understand? Oh and the "better than dvd" mentality is lame. OF COURSE IT WILL BE BETTER. The point is it should be as close to the film presentation as possible and DNRing stuff to hell does not make that happen. How DVD has become the quality standard to judge against is beyond me.

Oh and I am also sick of people busting on viewing screenshots saying they aren't indicative of anything. Really? It is AMAZING how I can view a screenshot and clearly see issues and then view it on my 106" screen and the issues BECOME WORSE! Seriously, how hard is this to understand as well? I see EE in a screenshot and guess what? I SEE IT ON MY SCREEN AS WELL ONLY IT IS WORSE. If ANYTHING, screenshots make things look BETTER. I have yet to see a screengrab or quality screenshot off a screen that looks worse than the in person quality.

You know, it's just a damn shame people back in the early days of DVD bitched and moaned about OAR and THEN bitched about anamorphic releases cuz hey, pan and scan or non anamorphic transfers would have been fine right? Those people complaining then and striving for these things were just picky I guess, right? Nobody benefited from those types of complaints, right? Just like nobody will benefit from the DNR/EE complaints now I guess...

Hmm...well I don't consider myself an "enthusiast" at all. In fact I would prefer not to be since most of the so called "enthusiasts" around the internet are too smug and pretentious for me.

I took a long time to sink in your words. Very good post, its good to let the anger out -that stuff will give you heart problems if you bottle if up inside:)
First of all, you don't get it, do you? EVERYONE wants the best possible quality from Blu Ray. I have never read a post stating otherwise. Its time people realize this. You guys take these forum posts way too seriously. Relax, its bad for your health to be so worked up over such a small issue. I could understand if you were worked up over dictators or warlords or the constant genocide that occurs around the world, but over this?

As long as some people think they are the only ones that want the best out of Blu Ray we'll just be banging our heads against the wall.

I have yet to see a screengrab or quality screenshot off a screen that looks worse than the in person quality.



Really? I find the opposite to be true. I have yet to see a screengrab on a computer screen that looks as good as the same shot on my TV screen.

In fact the only time screengrabs are any use to me is when they are used as a direct comparison with an upgraded DVD or a Blu Ray.

Even though the SD screengrabs of Dark City look worse than my DVD does the Blu Ray screengrabs look better than the SD grabs do so I can assume from this that the Blu Ray would look better than the SD DVD on my TV too.

EE doesn't affect me that much because I don't have a huge TV. I can see how too much DNR can have an adverse effect though.

Here you guys. Just to hold some over until I'm done with the proper screenshots. If it walks like duck, talks like a duck . . . . . . . ;)

I think I may have saved some of you gas money ;)

You guys are crazy, this DNR stuff really makes the picture pop, it makes my 13 inch HDTV look gorgeous from 10 feet away because there's no noise, and it's so much better than DVD, you people are too quick to judge just based on screenshots, I can confirm the entire movie is dripping in beautiful DNR quality...

http://dreamfan.com/img/dnr-sucks.jpg

The bitrate graphic is disappointing (and snazzy! Xylon, hook me up ;)). Is seamless branching that hard to do on Blu-ray?

Interesting how the DC hits more peaks though.

Xylon, can you not truncate the BDInfo data after the audio please? :p It would be interesting to see comparisons at the reported peak frames for each encode (listed by the chapters). We could see how much impact the bitrate spikes actually make there.

ROFL FooChan. Also love folks rationalizing, "it's a screengrab just an instant of the worst of the transfer."
Sorry folks if it were a great transfer no one would be able to pull these caps.
Just because some folks have their sharpness and DNR turned up on their displays doesn't change the fact NL provided a half-hearted <@55> product.
You do not need to see the original camera negative to know that this is not how it was shot nor exhibited in theaters.
DNR = NON-HD
Also DNR should not be used as a general term for various digital restoration tools.
Best Regards
KvE

I have watched this disc and it isn't as bad as it is being made out to be. What do you expect for a ten year old, low budget film? Some scenes are razor sharp and other scenes are soft.

What people are failing to take into account is that different cameras, different lenses, and different film were used throughout the making of this film. Further, this film averaged 1.8 cuts per second. So in one scene, one camera shot Connelly's cut. In some cases, a different camera shot Hurt's cut. Then to put the scene together, these different film stocks were edited together to create a flowing scene.

The result though, is that some shots were softer/grainier/whatever your complaint. Then they are spliced together with shots that are razor sharp. So this gives the film an overall inconsistent feel, especially on the DC where footage that hasn't been properly preserved/remastered are added back into the movie.

However, I doubt you would have found it to be any different in theaters in 1998. And thanks to the higher compression on DVD, the differences are masked, so people aren't expecting to see the variation from cut to cut.

Very true of the variables of camera, lighting, filmstock/speeds. All of these factor some of the anomalies that are inherent to the production
Here comes the but.
Film by itself does not create waxy detail one minute then the next crystal clarity. Even on a low budget film only a complete moron would let half the shots look waxy and the other half retain its high frequency detail.

Yes there are some focus issues in the film, however poor focus looks different to DNR scrubbing. Bad focus retains grain structure, where was DNR softens and removes grain along with high frequency detail; even on a soft focus shot.
Best Regards
KvE

The complaints here have nothing to do with how the film was shot and everything to do with how it was handled in the telecine/transfer stage.

I saw DC twice in theater. Once in '98 and another in 2000 where the director Alex Proyas and cowriter David Goyer spoke afterwards. Both times I noticed the cinematography, lighting, and textures. There was grain.

Details on the equipment used by New Line for testing their AV quality.

http://dreamfan.com/img/new-line-cinema-dnr-lab.jpg

ROFL! So true. Now just being a tad mean I think this is the setup some folks have that find this disc fantastic.
<G>
;}

Yeah the puppy has that "I'm so ashamed!" look about him doesn't it?

PS Oh didn't notice it before but you actually put a screencap in, oh you sly devil you!

I know it's a room for sound work but do you know what the viewing distance is?

I know it's a room for sound work but do you know what the viewing distance is?

The room is 72' x 52', with 115 seats in front of the console... it's a great place to mix from...

Have you ever been to Laser Pacific?

Have you ever been to Laser Pacific?

It's a block away from my studio, and yes, I've been there.

What if the studios planned this all along so they can release a 'Special Classic' edition later on?

What if the studios planned this all along so they can release a 'Special Classic' edition later on?

You realize the film has only had 2 different releases in 10 years, yes? This film hardly has the imprint of double dip mania written all over it.

Every studio is hit or miss except Sony. In New Line's case, it is always miss, because they have DNR'd all their releases. It'll hit the fan when LOTR comes out heavily DNR'd.
LOTR has some DNR on the DI which was visible on 35mm prints. That is likely to stay.

Not to stir things up but does anything except cartoons pass the mustard pq wise around here?
Who says cartoons pass the mustard? The Simpson movie has ringing. Rubbish transfer. :D
Everything that looks like the film it was made from passes the mustard. Unfortunately to insist that this simple rule is followed is apparently elitist snobbery and worse. :confused:

Really? This review says otherwise:
http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/darkcitybluray.php

And two encodes would account for the relatively low bitrates I observed when watching the DC.

Also, aren't the sound options different for each cut? Like 7.1 lossless only on the DC?

Once again, NL has put two complete versions of the same movie on the same disc? No wonder the PQ has problems.

Has Universal done the same thing with Doomsday?

Xylon...if you really wanted a bad shot...get the first viewing of Jennifer Connelly when she is singing..she has an extremely soft face there.

anyone seeing any EE rings in that shot, though? Not me...I guess we can't have it either way with New Line, can we?

One of many "soft faces" :)

I have watched this disc and it isn't as bad as it is being made out to be. What do you expect for a ten year old, low budget film? Some scenes are razor sharp and other scenes are soft.

What people are failing to take into account is that different cameras, different lenses, and different film were used throughout the making of this film. Further, this film averaged 1.8 cuts per second. So in one scene, one camera shot Connelly's cut. In some cases, a different camera shot Hurt's cut. Then to put the scene together, these different film stocks were edited together to create a flowing scene.

The result though, is that some shots were softer/grainier/whatever your complaint. Then they are spliced together with shots that are razor sharp. So this gives the film an overall inconsistent feel, especially on the DC where footage that hasn't been properly preserved/remastered are added back into the movie.

However, I doubt you would have found it to be any different in theaters in 1998. And thanks to the higher compression on DVD, the differences are masked, so people aren't expecting to see the variation from cut to cut.

This ranks as the funniest post of the week. DARK CITY did not look like this in theaters. This transfer suffers from obvious noise reduction and edge enhancement. A low budget has nothing to do with anything. In fact, this film had a top DP and was shot on quality film stock.

It's DVNR. Period. End of story. Not even worthy of debate. It's just a fact that cannot be ignored. This is an old, outdated transfer with new material added in and made to look like the other footage.

Now, if we find out that this is, in fact a new transfer from a new print, well, then it is even worse and less acceptable. However, that seems unlikely since it matches pretty much exactly to the HD cable 1080i version that has been shown a few times.

Details on the equipment used by New Line for testing their AV quality.

http://dreamfan.com/img/new-line-cinema-dnr-lab.jpg

Nice touch with the DC image on the screen also !:D

Art

Interesting plot variation from the two cuts.

In the TC he didn't do the prostitute because he just couldn't, you assume it is because he loves his wife and felt guilty and that was that

Art

I need to get some HD shots of Jennifer from other titles. Any recommendations? Preferably same AR.

How about the Hulk HD DVD? Both are 2.35:1 according to the cases at least.

Pretty sure Hulk is 1.85, but does indeed have some great close ups of her.

The transfer is atrocious. Jennifer's face has no definition. Keifer's too. The image is "dead". The DNR is just so overbearing. I can't see any positive attribute to the overall PQ. A modern Sci-Fi classic finally to be seen and enjoyed in full high definition 1080p.

Except the definition is missing. Despicable.

Exactly. What's the point of HD without the textures? We might as well be watching a SD version with better compression.

Love the example capture of LOTR DNR Edition. Too bad it seems it's going to have to come down to that for most DNE/EE friendly people to be upset. For me the !@#$ has already hit the fan with DC. We're ultimately stuck with this POS transfer.

Dark Water has Connelly and is 2.35:1. Also Blood Diamond but the PQ is reportedly iffy.

I'm sure this has been asked in the past, but I don't remember seeing it brought up.

Has it been considered that the DNR might be applied in order to reduce the file size of the film? I know a friend of mine is currently working on a DVD release that has fantastic image quality and is very heavy in grain, and the video alone is taking up 90% of the disc just to keep the image faithful.

While this is not a direct comparison, the below image is 273kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain1.jpg

This one is 105kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain2.jpg

And this one is 63kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain3.jpg

If the DNR-present version of Dark City is 45gb already (the movie being around half of that, it seems), isn't it possible that it simply would not fit with all of the grain intact if all of the special features and such are to be included as well?

So, a release like Gangs of New York or a Patton might have had these measures applied out of necessity (or, rather, not wanting to include additional discs), while an 85-minute movie like Shoot 'Em Up or Crank or Meet the Spartans gets a near-perfect reproduction.

Perhaps this has no validity and it is indeed more about catering to a certain demographic or some form of studio laziness, but I figured I would put it out there nonetheless. :)

I'm sure this has been asked in the past, but I don't remember seeing it brought up.

Has it been considered that the DNR might be applied in order to reduce the file size of the film? I know a friend of mine is currently working on a DVD release that has fantastic image quality and is very heavy in grain, and the video alone is taking up 90% of the disc just to keep the image faithful.



If the DNR-present version of Dark City is 45gb already (the movie being around half of that, it seems), isn't it possible that it simply would not fit with all of the grain intact if all of the special features and such are to be included as well?

So, a release like Gangs of New York or a Patton might have had these measures applied out of necessity (or, rather, not wanting to include additional discs), while an 85-minute movie like Shoot 'Em Up or Crank or Meet the Spartans gets a near-perfect reproduction.

Perhaps this has no validity and it is indeed more about catering to a certain demographic or some form of studio laziness, but I figured I would put it out there nonetheless. :)

I think it is highly likely that this has been a factor in some cases.

I'm sure this has been asked in the past, but I don't remember seeing it brought up.

Has it been considered that the DNR might be applied in order to reduce the file size of the film? I know a friend of mine is currently working on a DVD release that has fantastic image quality and is very heavy in grain, and the video alone is taking up 90% of the disc just to keep the image faithful.

While this is not a direct comparison, the below image is 273kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain1.jpg

This one is 105kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain2.jpg

And this one is 63kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain3.jpg

If the DNR-present version of Dark City is 45gb already (the movie being around half of that, it seems), isn't it possible that it simply would not fit with all of the grain intact if all of the special features and such are to be included as well?

So, a release like Gangs of New York or a Patton might have had these measures applied out of necessity (or, rather, not wanting to include additional discs), while an 85-minute movie like Shoot 'Em Up or Crank or Meet the Spartans gets a near-perfect reproduction.

Perhaps this has no validity and it is indeed more about catering to a certain demographic or some form of studio laziness, but I figured I would put it out there nonetheless. :)

Oh, I'm sure laziness has something do with it, but I'll still be enjoying the hell out of my copy. I love Dark City.

Your theory is plausable and most likely has been done for some releases (*cough*Warner*cough*), but the transfer for Dark City was created long before HDM came along. The DNR was probably applied for anti-grain reasons and not to be compression friendly. For whatever reason though it was stupid and short sighted.

So then this will be the norm for most catalogue releases?

Not that Warner is doing this... but what's thier incentive to get it perfect right away? Releasing new and improved versions with more supplements was a winning strategy on DVD and I can't imagine they aren't taking that into consideration now. This coupled with the costs of remastering as well as the small market we currently have probably all weigh in.

PATTON, LONGEST DAY and others had grain removed because there were people involved who had not only zero understanding of the films and how they were shot, but also who were of a mindset that grain is bad therefore must be removed. One technician involved actually went on record as hating film and wanting a digital world.

Blu-Ray has so much space that no film needs grain removed to fit. It's that simple.

As to the future... Robert Harris made a big stink, as we all know and the word is studios have listened and quietly, behind the scenes, changes are being made. But anything in the pipeline is not going to be changed.

i'm curious to see what changes are going to be made and how long it will be before we see these changes..

While this is not a direct comparison, the below image is 273kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain1.jpg

This one is 105kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain2.jpg

And this one is 63kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain3.jpg

If the DNR-present version of Dark City is 45gb already (the movie being around half of that, it seems), isn't it possible that it simply would not fit with all of the grain intact if all of the special features and such are to be included as well?

You are ABSOLUTELY on the right track, afaict. I have implied as much (wrt "grain signature") in recent days, as well. I don't know the full truth behind it all, either, but I definitely suspect there is a "calling card" to be identified when we examine all sorts of movie image samples that have come through this forum where the grain or noise appears like pinpoints vs. appears like soft granules.

It opens a whole new avenue of controversy over dnr to be or not to be, and to what extent. Maybe unadulterated and full-bandwidth grain literally does require full-out br bandwidth? In that sense, is it still practical (or desirable) to demand absolutely NO dnr, or do we have to resign that some amount/degree/form of dnr is mandatory to even consider sub 30 Mb/s type of encodes? Should it come above all else in priority, including the presence of extra features, special features, audio features, etc?... Does it beg the question that film as a medium (and untouched by any dnr, whatsoever) is far more noisy than we have come to know in a classic sense- maybe even "too noisy", by modern technological standards? I really don't have an answer or stance for this, myself.

I watched some of the scenes posted here on my Theatrical cut on Blu Ray and they do not look blurry at all. I see alot of detail in almost every scene. Jennifer Connelly for example has more detail than the pictures posted. On my setup i could see her mustache hair and everything. Maybe its just the Theatrical cut but it looks a lot better than the images shown here on this site. The lack of grain and detail throughout the film is dissapointing though. It is suppossed to have a dirty look to it. I dont like how they cleaned it up. Still gonna keep my old dvd copy around.

Her mustache is in the Director's Cut as well.

I've sampled some portions from both, though I'd have to watch the entire Theatrical Cut again to compare it, my guess is they are the same quality (which very's shot to shot).

Heh, I love how Jennifer's moustache is getting much attention.

Something is just "wrong", when we just assume notice her moustache! ;)

I was going to mention, man, was JC one hot little number in her time! I know, she is still beautiful, and all. I'm just saying, back in the day...ridiculous!

Once again, NL has put two complete versions of the same movie on the same disc? No wonder the PQ has problems.

Has Universal done the same thing with Doomsday?
Doomsday does not have a theatrical cut on Blu-ray, only the uncut version. It's also one hell of a great transfer - I seriously can't come up with a single complaint and I could easily see it sitting in Tier 0.

Doomsday does not have a theatrical cut on Blu-ray, only the uncut version. It's also one hell of a great transfer - I seriously can't come up with a single complaint and I could easily see it sitting in Tier 0.

I only just now noticed from the HDD review that it is a single layer disc, making the inclusion of two versions unlikely in any event. As I noted in the PQ Tier thread, based on having watched only the first half hour so far, I was bothered by some soft shots in the cabinet meeting scene.

http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain1.jpg

This one is 105kb:
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/Grain2.jpg



I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. If I take image 1 and reduce it to 105kb, the pq is almost identical to the original:

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn26/gvjm2007/HDSDCOMP/Grain2.jpg

My point is that compressing it more didn't have a worse effect than what you did (which appears to be a blur effect which isnt the same as noise reduction)

Now here's the first image compressed to 66Kb
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn26/gvjm2007/HDSDCOMP/Grain3.jpg

Something is just "wrong", when we just assume notice her moustache! ;)

I was going to mention, man, was JC one hot little number in her time! I know, she is still beautiful, and all. I'm just saying, back in the day...ridiculous!

Ohh yea! She is definitely a beautiful woman, no doubt about that...moustache and all.

Funny how JC with no or minimal makeup, a "moustache", and in an unrevealing long dress is far more impressive than say Megan Fox made up to look like a porn star. :D

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. If I take image 1 and reduce it to 105kb, the pq is almost identical to the original:

Getting to greater detail, your example essentially takes the original down to a 20-step grayscale (essentially 4 and a half-ish bit representation) image- a valid "kind" of compression (as demonstrated by the similarity to the original), but I don't think you will have that same luxury when it comes to a full-color image with 3 color components, each of 256 steps. The original sample contains a natural distribution of every step in a 256 grayscale. So essentially, your example and his example are demonstrating the difference between spatial compression vs. color depth compression. Certainly, you can do one or the other to achieve the compression target, but you won't be able to preserve all color AND spatial information and achieve the same compression level. Something's got to be thrown out to pull it off.

...and as sperron remarks below, temporal is yet another dimension that will impact the compression that can be achieved while retaining a remotely similar image result.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. If I take image 1 and reduce it to 105kb, the pq is almost identical to the original:

It doesn't really matter. The image comparison is completely useless since it's only addressing a still image. Completely different then compressing a movie.

Funny how JC with no or minimal makeup, a "moustache", and in an unrevealing long dress is far more impressive than say Megan Fox made up to look like a porn star. :D

When I first watched Transformers I couldn't help but think they looked related. One is just a little beefier.

Funny how JC with no or minimal makeup, a "moustache", and in an unrevealing long dress is far more impressive than say Megan Fox made up to look like a porn star. :D

There are some considerable similarities, though. MF may never be a full replacement for JC in the new generation of "Hollywoodtang", but it's the best we got, so far! ;)

Over and over again, I must implore that a full dna and genetics profile of JC needs to be collected and stored for posterity (in the event that cloning or Nexus-6 replicants ever become a possibility). She is a fantastic "specimen", that we'll never experience again, in the course of humanity... :D

Dark Water has Connelly and is 2.35:1. Also Blood Diamond but the PQ is reportedly iffy.

Ah yes I have both. Will take a look.

I've been sitting in a hospital for 13 days (with my wife).....

That made me smile.. thank you... :)

I hope she is back home with you very soon. Best wishes to you and yours.

There are some considerable similarities, though. MF may never be a full replacement for JC in the new generation of "Hollywoodtang", but it's the best we got, so far! ;)

Over and over again, I must implore that a full dna and genetics profile of JC needs to be collected and stored for posterity (in the event that cloning or Nexus-6 replicants ever become a possibility). She is a fantastic "specimen", that we'll never experience again, in the course of humanity... :D

I'll take four clones of each, please:D

I've been sitting in a hospital for 13 days (with my wife).....

That made me smile.. thank you... :)

Tell your wife I'm gonna sneak her out of there and take her to Starbucks!!! (I'm sure she'd rather be kidnapped and taken there rather than me just smuggle it in!)

-Mike

Why dont you guys who care so much about these films actually do something rather than complain in a forum.

Find out what department handles the dvd releases and send them some letters. Right now you are all preaching to the choir and its getting super old.

It will take time. The studio hierarchy is not that simple. Or we could get lucky just like what happened with POTC BD framing error (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=900275&highlight=framing+error) where someone just said "do it". BTW thanks for that :)

i'm curious to see what changes are going to be made and how long it will be before we see these changes..

Hopefully not too long. Its not even a year since the format win.

Her mustache is in the Director's Cut as well.

I've sampled some portions from both, though I'd have to watch the entire Theatrical Cut again to compare it, my guess is they are the same quality (which very's shot to shot).

When you can see that level of detail it is amazing. Got it at Borders today $20 on sale. DNR or not the film looks stunning.

Getting to greater detail, your example essentially takes the original down to a 20-step grayscale (essentially 4 and a half-ish bit representation) image- a valid "kind" of compression (as demonstrated by the similarity to the original), but I don't think you will have that same luxury when it comes to a full-color image with 3 color components, each of 256 steps. The original sample contains a natural distribution of every step in a 256 grayscale. So essentially, your example and his example are demonstrating the difference between spatial compression vs. color depth compression. Certainly, you can do one or the other to achieve the compression target, but you won't be able to preserve all color AND spatial information and achieve the same compression level. Something's got to be thrown out to pull it off.

...and as sperron remarks below, temporal is yet another dimension that will impact the compression that can be achieved while retaining a remotely similar image result.


My point was that he used a blur technique rather noise reduction. And even so, extra compression doesn't necessarily require noise reduction to be applied...and even if it did, the blurred image was too extreme.

Also as others have pointed out -- the DNR was most likely applied for the purpose of a high def master for DVD... rather than a high def master for blu-ray... they are just banking that we'll buy it regardless... which is what some of us did... so we have a right to complain now!

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here.Here's a much better example of what I was trying to demonstrate:

Sharp image, no grain: 213kb
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/jc1.jpg

Sharp image, with grain: 263kb
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/jc2.jpg

Sharp image, no grain, skin softened: 199kb
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/jc3.jpg

My point is that a more detailed image leads to a larger file and a more grainy image leads to a larger file, so perhaps there isn't always enough room for both in full force when you've got 30gb of special features and audio options to make room for.

As I said, a friend of mine is working on a DVD right now where the video is sharp, but full of grain, and that's taking up 90% of the disc. Meanwhile, his last project featured one of the most beautiful DVD transfers I've ever seen, and there was plenty of room for a slew of special features. Both were about two hours, both are impressive transfers, but the grain produces a substantially larger file size.

As you can see above, all I did on that third image was soften only her skin and that led to an almost 10% decrease in file size.

My overall point, grossly simplified, is that just because the discs are big doesn't mean they're big enough to store a constant stream of 1920x1080 images that are 100% faithful to the director's intent, especially when half of the disc tends to be taken up by special features.

And I go back to the qualifier that this may be my own rationalizing and perhaps the technicians' universal reasons have nothing to do with the above.

[IMG]http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-9/1071897/Page_2.jpg[IMG]

The above images are simply representative and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. They may have certain traits and/or mannerisms that may seem to suggest actual persons but we make no claim that these traits exist at all or in this combination in any person, living or dead.
__________________

LOL, good one :D I'm sure my wife and friends would say to me "You resemble that" after all the nitpicking and comparisons I've subjected them to over the years with AV stuff :)

When you can see that level of detail it is amazing. Got it at Borders today $20 on sale. DNR or not the film looks stunning.

Those scenes weren't the sharpest either. The close up shots of John Murdock and The Strangers have some amazing detail in comparision. The first time he opens his eyes in the beginning, would be nice to get a screen grab of that one. Still the movies always look better in motion on my 60" set than checking out grabs on a forum.

Sharp image, no grain, skin softened: 199kb
http://bunnydojo.com/MJ/jc3.jpg


Dayamn, that's a hot pic!...perhaps, not the best choice to demonstrate the cons of no grain + softening? ;) It's like early 90's JC inserted into Blood Diamond scene.

Thread rolled back to remove the usual bickering, off-topic posts and so forth. Infractions and suspensions issued.

Your theory is plausable and most likely has been done for some releases (*cough*Warner*cough*), but the transfer for Dark City was created long before HDM came along. The DNR was probably applied for anti-grain reasons and not to be compression friendly. For whatever reason though it was stupid and short sighted.

The scene so far mentioned as being particularly bad also looks wonky on the old DVD. So maybe when they made the original master, that scene was very dark and perhaps "pushed" and the resultant image was super grainy. In the theaters, not a big thing but for the old DVD, maybe they felt that would look horrible and be a compression nightmare so they DNR'd the hell out of it. Not saying the rest of the film isn't affected but some mention that like a third to a 1/2 looks great...

Too bad they just didn't spend the $ and make a new master.

This is a film that may never again look like it did in theaters. A moment of silence please.

Dayamn, that's a hot pic!...perhaps, not the best choice to demonstrate the cons of no grain + softening? ;)All too true! :) Something tells me that using a picture of Jennifer Connelly to demonstrate that grain inflates file size kind of distracts from what I was trying to say. :D All future examples will use an image of Bea Arthur instead. ;)

Agreed!

I wanted to say earlier, that if I could wake up to that face of JC every morning, all imperfections in the rest of this wretched world would totally not matter to me (br could dnr and EE to oblivion, for all I care). I could say I lived a full life. ;)

Or Ruth Buzzi....

;)

Dark Water has Connelly and is 2.35:1. Also Blood Diamond but the PQ is reportedly iffy.

Kram I may not need Jennifer's shot from other movies after all :) A full non-Pattonized version of her closeup is in this encode :eek:

I will get that revealing stuff tonight :)

Kram I may not need Jennifer's shot from other movies after all :) A full non-Pattonized version of her closeup is in this encode :eek:

I will get that revealing stuff tonight :)

Huh...?!?!?!?

Kram I may not need Jennifer's shot from other movies after all :) A full non-Pattonized version of her closeup is in this encode :eek:

It's not in the trailer is it? ;)

After viewing most of the new cut all I can say is thank god the theatrical version was included, even if it is in claymation. Will post thoughts on the new cut later on.

Just watched the movie tonight. This movie would look awesome if it werent for the DNR. Even with the DNR some of the face closeups of the strangers were really good. Can't say the same about Murdoch. He was a wax monster. There were a few shots of him and others that weren't DNR'd as bad... Some scenes are better, some are worse.

The sound wasn't as good as I thought it would be..

I agree. The colors and shadows look great but the textures are just smothered by the wax. Even the new material has the same plastic DNR which is puzzling. Just when was this transfer made?

The music score is all screwed up. In several spots it just fades in and out and in a couple of scenes it's been dropped or dialed down so low you'll wonder what's the point of it.

Will post thoughts on the new cut later on.

Please put comments on the new cut in spoiler tags.

Thread rolled back to remove the usual bickering, off-topic posts and so forth. Infractions and suspensions issued.

I honestly can't understand why you would delete the joke post of the picture of New Line's studio, and my followup comment about how it was funny. Seriously, what's the point? Trying to save a few bytes on the server? Exerting authority? People are having a little fun, is it really necessary to moderate so strictly? I don't mean any offense, and I post this publicly because you deleted my public post and others which I found amusing and certainly related to the topic being discussed.

edit: it's unfortunate my 1000th post here at a place I've learned so much from and come to really enjoy has to be a comment expressing my increasing frustration with what is IMO "excessive" moderation in certain threads.

I should be getting my copy from warner any day now. I've never seen this movie before. Should I watch the TR or DC, as a first viewing?

I should be getting my copy from warner any day now. I've never seen this movie before. Should I watch the TR or DC, as a first viewing?

Theatrical...Then DC.......

I wouldnt bother to watch the TC at all or at least not before the DC...whats the point of getting to know the whole story already at the beginning of the movie when you havent seen it before? just spoils the experience.

I wouldnt bother to watch the TC at all or at least not before the DC...whats the point of getting to know the whole story already at the beginning of the movie when you havent seen it before? just spoils the experience.

Opps you are right, DC then Theatrical if you want to see the differences...I got the two mixed up...

UK version is out next week from EIV... I wonder if it will be any different

UK version is out next week from EIV... I wonder if it will be any different
So far the EIV releases of New Line titles have been "clones" of their US counterparts.

And, no, they did not release the better Pan's Labyrinth disc. :)

New Line forgot to DNR the whole movie!

Ok I'm exaggerating its more like they missed a few frames here and there :D I'm glad they are not very thorough with their work on this because we can see another example of the negative effects of too much DNR on a high definition release. You can check other *PIX* threads to see earlier examples.

There are differences in overall PQ between the Director's Cut and the Theatrical Cut. Its contrast, color timings and varying amount of DNR applied. Unfortunately all versions are just really, really bad. Nothing substantial to recommend one against the other.

BTW the cropped images are only 200% resize not 400% or 1000%.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/94dfaca5.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/7b452c6e.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/aec99d21.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/19bacbc3.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/c811062d.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/50b6b10c.png

DNR was finally applied to the Director's Cut while the Theatrical cut is still DNR free.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/2eb61863.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/50448bfd.png

Lets advance a few frames.

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/d4d615cd.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/36cccf8f.png

Lesson No.1

DNR and Grain on films and its effect :)

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/495811f8.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/b0404b6f.png

Advance a few more . . .

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/10b5c87b.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/05338260.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/c48a0d6c.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/5ac29b64.png

Now its the Theatrical Cut's turn to get the treatment . . . .

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/cff758e8.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/3f8453a1.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/2d1e95c1.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/0669e0da.png

The DNR is now actually worse on the Theatrical Cut once its applied :eek: Varying degrees of DNR compared to the unmolested version. Bring it on New Line errr Warner ;)

Is it just me, or is it nearly impossible to make out anything from those shots of JC because they are so dark?

Really appreciate your efforts Xylon. Some portions of the shots are too dark to discern sufficient details.

So is the theatrical cut DNR free ? Or just part of it ?

Jennifers face is so much more detailed in the theatrical cut and look at the white light to the left of her face and the effect DNR has on the artistic look of the movie...With grain it looks perfect and moody but with DNR it looks shockingly bad.....Yet some people are coming onto the boards saying this is fine ?

I suppose it may play better in motion ( As i think The Mummy movies did despite some DNR but still i would rather they redid their masters using newly struck prints and i'd wait a year or two for the perfect release ) I think the studio's are rushing films out in order to get content on the format as they probably think most will not bother about things like this ( and they are probably correct ) shame really.

Its not that hard poeple. I was watching these scene on my PJ instead of my trusty Dell when I noticed it. Its very visible. Go ahead try it on your calibrated viewing set. Then get back to me :)

Come on people check it out. I think the scene is around the 10th minute? You will notice the actual moment when DNR kicks in :eek: Use your remote to frame step. If that doesn't convince you people then I don't know. Nothing will. Assuming you are a rational person of course ;)

So is the theatrical cut DNR free ? Or just part of it ?

Jennifers face is so much more detailed in the theatrical cut and look at the white light to the left of her face and the effect DNR has on the artistic look of the movie...With grain it looks perfect and moody but with DNR it looks shockingly bad.....Yet some people are coming onto the boards saying this is fine ?

Both have varying degrees of excessive DNR applied.

Its not that hard poeple. I was watching these scene on my PJ instead of my trusty Dell when I noticed it. Its very visible. Go ahead try it on your calibrated viewing set. Then get back to me :)

Come on people check it out. I think the scene is around the 10th minute? You will notice the actual moment when DNR kicks in :eek: Use your remote to frame step. If that doesn't convince you people then I don't know. Nothing will. Assuming you are a rational person of course ;)

Believe me, I have no resistance to the idea that DNR was applied in an excessive way. But using such dark shots to demonstrate this is not the most effective way to persuade people who do resist this idea. ;)

Xylon, it is hard for some of us (especially those of us at work ;)) to scrool right and left to look at these, so just crop the images of all side info and put Jennifer side by side. That way the images can easily fit onto one screen. We don't need to see the background, which is dark and out of focus.

Just have two images, side by side: Jennifer with DVNR and Jennifer without DVNR.

Very simple and easy to see.

Xylon

There is a scene near the end of the movie that has the same DNR/no DNR with Jennifer. I think they are sitting near the dock but the difference in detail shifts. I will try and find it tonight again and let you know. It isn't a dark scene so it was easy to spot.

Its not that hard poeple. I was watching these scene on my PJ instead of my trusty Dell when I noticed it. Its very visible. Go ahead try it on your calibrated viewing set. Then get back to me :)

Come on people check it out. I think the scene is around the 10th minute? You will notice the actual moment when DNR kicks in :eek: Use your remote to frame step. If that doesn't convince you people then I don't know. Nothing will. Assuming you are a rational person of course ;)

I agree... I was watching on my projector last night and didn't pause it, didnt look at bit-rate meter and I noticed it right off.... I said "wow.. this had so much potential". Also, I noticed how some frames had DNR and a few seconds later, some frames didn't. Such a shame.

Being a part-time photographer, when shooting models (especially head-shots) the eyes are used as focal points. When I'm looking at proofs, the first (& easiest) thing I'll look at to assure tight focus are the eyelashes. So in these frames when looking at JCs lashes as you go from no DNR over to DNR applied, suddenly focus is gone. And gone to the point where I would have to toss the photo or overly sharpen it in post, which can cause ringing (halos) in other contrasty areas like hair strands. A similar process to DNR is sometimes applied excessivly to photos as well to clear up blemishes, sun damage, age spots etc etc but at the end of the day you get a Cosmo or Playboy cover as opposed to a natural photo. It's great for selling magazines but seems way out of place in movies.

Xylon, it is hard for some of us (especially those of us at work ;)) to scrool right and left to look at these, so just crop the images of all side info and put Jennifer side by side. That way the images can easily fit onto one screen. We don't need to see the background, which is dark and out of focus.

Just have two images, side by side: Jennifer with DVNR and Jennifer without DVNR.

Very simple and easy to see.
right click -> properties on picture -> copy & paste the url into a new browser window -> click the pic to view it in full size -> alt+tab back and forth between both for a better comparison.

Believe me, I have no resistance to the idea that DNR was applied in an excessive way. But using such dark shots to demonstrate this is not the most effective way to persuade people who do resist this idea. ;)

The whole movie is dark :)

Well there's shell beach at the end and there are plenty of shots that aren't nearly as dark and actually well lit that have great contrast. Plenty of shots with a ton more detail and clarity as well. The first time Murdock opens his eyes (very beginning of the movie) for example has tons of detail. Still the grabs don't do it justice compared to watching on my display in motion.

I wish they did a close up of the older leader as he has incredible detail with every wrinkle crystal clear in some shots.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39/dark%20city%20blu-ray/large/2/large%20dark%20city%20blu-ray131.jpg

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39/dark%20city%20blu-ray/large/2/large%20dark%20city%20blu-ray225.jpg

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39/dark%20city%20blu-ray/large/eyes.jpg


More here:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39/dark_city_blu-ray.htm

I agree... I was watching on my projector last night and didn't pause it, didnt look at bit-rate meter and I noticed it right off.... I said "wow.. this had so much potential". Also, I noticed how some frames had DNR and a few seconds later, some frames didn't. Such a shame.

I agree. I watched this last night on my PJ as well. The application of DVNR is very noticeable.

Some have compared the level of DVNR to Pan's Labyrinth. IMO it's worse than in PL.

Is it just me, or is it nearly impossible to make out anything from those shots of JC because they are so dark?

Perhaps it's the display you are using. I am able to make them out fine.

Having not seen this yet, I'm now confused. Some frames are DNRed, and some aren't? What is the result when the movie is actually playing? I wonder now if applying DNR only to some frames was intentional, and an attempt to get the file size of the movie down with hopes of not fully impacting picture quality.

So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that.

Briank, all those shots on DVDBeaver have varying degrees of DNR with the worst being the closeups of Hurt, Kiefer, and the alive and dead hookers. This is truly a release where the image would look better on a smaller screen.

Xylon

There is a scene near the end of the movie that has the same DNR/no DNR with Jennifer. I think they are sitting near the dock but the difference in detail shifts. I will try and find it tonight again and let you know. It isn't a dark scene so it was easy to spot.

I will check that out too. I think there more moments like this in the transfer. Hilarious :D

Amateur hour.

So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that.



A few frames here and there but enough to see a glimpse of what could have been :(

Really shabby job DNR'ing the transfer :D

I noticed that the deleted/extended scenes also have the same DNR which leads me to believe that all of it was transferred around the same time. So the master/transfer can't be that old, right?. Maybe 2 or 3 years at least, and they still DNRed the !@#$ out of it. :(

Hey Xylon, free up your Inbox man. :D

Opps you are right, DC then Theatrical if you want to see the differences...I got the two mixed up... Thanks for the help thunderbolt and ph8te, I'll watch the DC first. I don't wan't the whole story given away at the beginning.:)

So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that.

Briank, all those shots on DVDBeaver have varying degrees of DNR with the worst being the closeups of Hurt, Kiefer, and the alive and dead hookers. This is truly a release where the image would look better on a smaller screen.

Yup, some shots are very soft, some are very detailed and other shots in between as well. Very inconsistent. I wish DVDBeaver had done some of the great shots below the city, some of the stranger shots have some fantastic detail, rendering every wrinkle nicely. Also the shots of the goldfish and the broken glass looks great (why is the water clear in the tub though when it was very murky when Murdock was in it. Well that would probably have killed the fish then :( )

I will agree that there are some shots that are quite nice and aren't as affected by the DNR/EE monster but overall it's a mess. The textures just don't breathe and the EE halos around some objects are pretty obvious. A real shame because the colors and shadows are fantastic. So it would be like this:

Detail
5/10 - Sometimes sharp/sometimes soft/almost always plugged up with waxy DNR which is a killer

Colors/Shadows
9/10 - Almost perfect. I think the shadows are a little crushed compared to the theatrical prints I've seen but the colors and tones are gorgeous. Does the DC really have different color timing in some shots?

I'd rate higher, maybe a 7.5 or 8, but to each their own. I probably have a different display and distance than you(60" 1080p24fps at about 8 feet) than you as well as other factors. On my setup and distance plenty of shots exhibit very nice textures and fine detail(similar to those pics I posted from DVDBeaver, which IMO and look better in motion and on my display). They certainly don't always looked waxy and heavily DNR'd, far from it. I'd used blurry to describe some shots for sure though, especially when first introduced to JC's character. Kenneth Brown nailed it pretty well in his review at HDD. He was dead on as my wife was very pleased being a newcomer to the title.

So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that..
Is that so? Are the spared frames around fade ins? That would make sense.

I'd rate higher, maybe a 7.5 or 8, but to each their own. I probably have a different display and distance than you(60" 1080p24fps at about 8 feet) than you as well as other factors.

So you're a little over 1.5 screen widths away but not too bad.

I'm about 30" from my lousy 24" Dell lcd so any DNR/EE is going to be obvious. So suff like this

http://thumbnails9.imagebam.com/965/677e839644876.gif (http://www.imagebam.com/image/677e839644876)
this
http://thumbnails9.imagebam.com/965/059bab9644880.gif (http://www.imagebam.com/image/059bab9644880)
and this
http://thumbnails9.imagebam.com/965/d9e0759644887.gif (http://www.imagebam.com/image/d9e0759644887)
are very distracting and unnatural.

Well it isn't a nature documentary and doesn't have that look(my setup) for sure. I still don't feel it is unatural looking in general, just a some bad shots that are blurry and could look much better. Even at home the pics look quite different going from my 24" iMac display to my old CRT PC monitor upstairs. If my friend hasn't watched it yet maybe I'll bring it over to his place to fire up on his 1080p Panasonic projector, though I still prefer my home theater setup overall (much nice audio than his) his screen is much larger.

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul
So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that..

Wait, I thought you've watched it, so wouldn't you know the answer to this?

Though my answer would be no, unless it is DNR but so very light that I didn't notice it on several scenes. The first JC singing scene though from actually watching it last night, I did notice the grain going away during the fade in when I was looking to take pictures. Still shots simply don't look as good for the most part. Plus my budget digital camera and lack of skills (not sure what the best setting, etc) and lack of tripod didn't lead to very good results. DVDBeaver's pics look much better.

so any DNR/EE is going to be obvious. So suff like this...

The EE around the cops in the diner is most obvious. The one of William Hurt suffers from excessive DVNR, but the middle one just seems poorly focused. You can even see the fine hairs floating around her head and the threads one the edge of his coat. That on is a reasonably good shot I'd say. Wish it was better focused on their faces is all.

I have to say, when I watched this on BD the other night, I really enjoyed it although I certainly noticed the changes in the image which I thought at the time was just very poor DP effort at keeping the subjects in focus. My oldest boy is about to start film studies at an honors university. He'll probably teach me a lot over the next couple of years as a result. ;)

edit: Okay another closer look and I can now see a bit of EE around the dark right side collar. huh.

How does this new release compare with the old DVD edition....I mean as far as DNR goes...I would expect the old edition to maybe have macroblocking and MPEG compression issues but did it have bad DNR for a DVD ?

I ask that because it's obvious New Line prepared this for the biggest selling format which is DVD and thus Blu Ray is using the DVD master and that's why it doesn't fulfill it's true potential so it would be interesting to see a screenshot comparison using the old DVD.

So the only frames with little or no DNR is at the begining of a fade in? How cruel is that.

Maybe the dog was distracting the DNR guy. (If you've been keeping up on this thread:))

God bless that dog.

Wait, I thought you've watched it, so wouldn't you know the answer to this?

I would've but it's kind of hard to pay attention to the amount of DNR AND Jennifer Connelly singing in the same frame. :D

I did go back and checked out that shot though. It's not a fade in at all but a key light fading up as JC begins to sing. I think the DNR appearing to kick in is just how this type of processing reacts to changes in the picture though. Why there is a difference in the amount of DNR between the theatrical cut and dc is a mystery.

I will have to disagree that's it just a few bad shots that plague this transfer. Almost every shot has some processing artifacts going on and it's visble in motion. Skin and clothing textures get hit the hardest. A decent 1080p setup from a reasonable viewing distance should reveal this junk.

How does this new release compare with the old DVD edition....I mean as far as DNR goes...I would expect the old edition to maybe have macroblocking and MPEG compression issues but did it have bad DNR for a DVD ?

I ask that because it's obvious New Line prepared this for the biggest selling format which is DVD and thus Blu Ray is using the DVD master and that's why it doesn't fulfill it's true potential so it would be interesting to see a screenshot comparison using the old DVD.

It's not the same transfer as the old dvd and LDs which were actually quite good when they was released in 1998. Even with it's fugly DNR the HD version crushes them of course.

Hey Xylon, free up your Inbox man. :D

Freed up some space. Good for about 24 hours :D

=(. i have this on pre-order and can't canel it anymore (WHV). ah well ce la vie.

this will be my final pre-order for ANY BD now because i just can't trust studios to not skrew it up.

I'm not sure what you're trying to do here. If I take image 1 and reduce it to 105kb, the pq is almost identical to the original:

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn26/gvjm2007/HDSDCOMP/Grain2.jpg

My point is that compressing it more didn't have a worse effect than what you did (which appears to be a blur effect which isnt the same as noise reduction)

Now here's the first image compressed to 66Kb
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/nn26/gvjm2007/HDSDCOMP/Grain3.jpg


your last one looks noticeably darker overall since the black smeared into the white. it's difficult to notice what is going wrong with a random pattern like that.

also if you apply DNR to a DSLR file the size becomes smaller, if you do tons of sharpening it becomes larger.

film grain and noise shift so much frame to frame that it's also gotta be tough on motion compression, since the grain specs total shift each frame to frame. even on titles with lots of grain left in, sometimes it seems to act a little weird, I think since the motion compression isn't quite really handling it right.

anyway if you look at DSLRs and look at the same shot shot at different ISO you see that the higher the ISO the larger the file size, in fact, a quick test of how noise free a camera is is to jsut take the same shots and see hwo teh file size compares between the cameras.

The scene so far mentioned as being particularly bad also looks wonky on the old DVD. So maybe when they made the original master, that scene was very dark and perhaps "pushed" and the resultant image was super grainy. In the theaters, not a big thing but for the old DVD, maybe they felt that would look horrible and be a compression nightmare so they DNR'd the hell out of it. Not saying the rest of the film isn't affected but some mention that like a third to a 1/2 looks great...

Too bad they just didn't spend the $ and make a new master.

mayeb since it was a little OOF and lacking in non-grain high-freq detail they felt they could use more DNR, maybe at DVD size that's not too bad, but the lack of grain is odd looking at 1080p though.

The DNR is now actually worse on the Theatrical Cut once its applied :eek: Varying degrees of DNR compared to the unmolested version. Bring it on New Line errr Warner ;)

pretty damning!
ugh

i wonder if some of it might not be part of the motion encoder trying to fit the movie into the small shared space or not max out the bitrate longer than spec allows??

one thing though, if as some say, the DNR and that is all set in stone in the master, well doesn't this prove otherwise??

The scene so far mentioned as being particularly bad also looks wonky on the old DVD. So maybe when they made the original master, that scene was very dark and perhaps "pushed" and the resultant image was super grainy. In the theaters, not a big thing but for the old DVD, maybe they felt that would look horrible and be a compression nightmare so they DNR'd the hell out of it. Not saying the rest of the film isn't affected but some mention that like a third to a 1/2 looks great...

Too bad they just didn't spend the $ and make a new master.
The problem is that spending more money on this film was never really an option. It's the reason I picked it up - I don't expect to see another version of this film for a very, very, very long time and it's the best that's available.

I don't have it yet but will look tomorrow night.

Art

I would've but it's kind of hard to pay attention to the amount of DNR AND Jennifer Connelly singing in the same frame. :D

I did go back and checked out that shot though. It's not a fade in at all but a key light fading up as JC begins to sing. I think the DNR appearing to kick in is just how this type of processing reacts to changes in the picture though. Why there is a difference in the amount of DNR between the theatrical cut and dc is a mystery.

I will have to disagree that's it just a few bad shots that plague this transfer. Almost every shot has some processing artifacts going on and it's visble in motion. Skin and clothing textures get hit the hardest. A decent 1080p setup from a reasonable viewing distance should reveal this junk.

I watched a fairly substantial part of this for the first time last night and I definitely agree that it is not an isolated problem. Nearly every shot suffers from clearly visible problems.

I saw this last night for the first time knowing about all the complaints of DNR. While I immediately noticed that William Hurt's face looked waxy, I couldn't reconcile why I was able to make out Jennifer Connelly's peach fuzz in the very same scene. Could some of Hurt's waxiness be due to makeup?

ps. I liked Jennifer's singing, I don't know why they dubbed her for the Theatrical cut.

I only watched a few minutes of it, but I did notice the DNR when I got close to the screen(I have a 60" Sony SXRD TV). From a regular viewing distance, it's harder to spot. Some EE was also visible, especially that shot of the cop's hat in the diner. I can imagine people who watch this on a 100" screen would have a much worse experience.

Overall it's a good transfer and it absolutely blows away the DVD(as does the audio). And the extras are plentiful. But it is frustrating to think how much better this could've looked.

I only watched a few minutes of it, but I did notice the DNR when I got close to the screen(I have a 60" Sony SXRD TV). From a regular viewing distance, it's harder to spot. Some EE was also visible, especially that shot of the cop's hat in the diner. I can imagine people who watch this on a 100" screen would have a much worse experience.

Overall it's a good transfer and it absolutely blows away the DVD(as does the audio). And the extras are plentiful. But it is frustrating to think how much better this could've looked.

From my regular viewing distance (one screen width from a 40" LCD) the DNR is not at all hard to spot. Instead, it's hard to miss.

Overall it's a good transfer and it absolutely blows away the DVD(as does the audio). And the extras are plentiful. But it is frustrating to think how much better this could've looked.

I think this sort of post pretty much sums up the state of affairs with what a lot of catlog is getting. We know that there are great transfers of films spanning literally generations. The age of the film isn't the problem, it is will the folks at the helm care enough with time ,money or expertise to do it right. The most frustrating part is the fact that these are likely all we are going to get. The films aren't Blade Runner so if the result is substandard then that's it. It is one chance.

Art

The age of the film isn't the problem, it is will the folks at the helm care enough with time ,money or expertise to do it right.

Art... I would be willing to bet that this transfer was one of the older New Line transfers that they were doing in the 90's, and that they integrated, and matched in, the new footage... just a guess...

But money will always be at the heart of this issue when it comes to catalog titles.. that variable buys time and expertise.

But is it wise to put up the money for a limited, fairly fixed return?

As I've been told many times over the years.. it's not "Show Art" it's "Show Business.." ;)

Art... I would be willing to bet that this transfer was one of the older New Line transfers that they were doing in the 90's, and that they integrated, and matched in, the new footage... just a guess...

I'm fairly certain the transfer is new but was done a few years ago since it's been shown on cable HD a few times. The "new" footage blends seamlessly with the rest PQ wise and has the same DNR artifacts.

But money will always be at the heart of this issue when it comes to catalog titles.. that variable buys time and expertise.

But is it wise to put up the money for a limited, fairly fixed return?

I think we got really lucky when Sony gave us a remastered Fifth Element so quickly. I'm not sure if that will ever happen again.

Watched this last night, and I pretty much echo what others are saying. It blows the DVD out of the water and is the best way to view a fantastic movie. Yes the DNR is pretty bad in the closeups, but for the most part I was pretty pleased. Definitely not as bad as some here would lead you to believe.

Considering this movie has a cut almost every 2 seconds, the lack of detail on closeups is never on the screen for that long. The colors popped and the blacks were very nice. The only part where I thought the overall PQ was bad was at the end of the movie, when they were by the ocean, it looked pretty horrible. I'd give it a solid B.

While I wish we could have had a DNR free transfer given to us, it's not enough for me not to purchase this great film. I will gladly double dip if they ever release a better transfer, but that could be years from now.

if we can chalk this one up to an old transfer, how do we explain brand new movies like the golden compass that are heavily dnr'd?

if we can chalk this one up to an old transfer, how do we explain brand new movies like the golden compass that are heavily dnr'd?

Golden Compass is being blown out of proportion. It has some DNR (I'm pretty sure mine was the first published review to point that out, thank you very much), but it's generally mild and nowhere near as bad as Dark City or Gangs of New York. Golden Compass still looks quite good overall.

Golden Compass is being blown out of proportion. It has some DNR (I'm pretty sure mine was the first published review to point that out, thank you very much), but it's generally mild and nowhere near as bad as Dark City or Gangs of New York. Golden Compass still looks quite good overall.

You're right, but why was DNR applied at all? When you see the trailer and see what could have been, it's very disappointing. RIP New Line. Not sorry to see them go. I bet you Rush Hour has DNR applied to faces too.

You're right, but why was DNR applied at all? When you see the trailer and see what could have been, it's very disappointing. RIP New Line. Not sorry to see them go. I bet you Rush Hour has DNR applied to faces too.
I wonder how Shoot 'em Up was lucky enough to escape DNR usage. It's one of the best looking HD titles out there and it's from New Line. You see a wonderful presentation like Shoot 'em Up and you wonder why the rest of their catalog didn't get the same treatment.

You're right, but why was DNR applied at all? When you see the trailer and see what could have been, it's very disappointing.

For all we know, it may have been applied intentionally at the Digital Intermediate stage of production to make the CGI and live action blend better. That is a common practice. The trailer may have been cut together from unfinished footage.

For all we know, it may have been applied intentionally at the Digital Intermediate stage of production to make the CGI and live action blend better. That is a common practice. The trailer may have been cut together from unfinished footage.Also, imdb.com says that The Golden Compass was shot partially with a digital camera:

Panavision Genesis HD Camera (aerial shots)

So, some manipulation may have been called for in order to maintain more consistency.

--Darin

I wonder how Shoot 'em Up was lucky enough to escape DNR usage. It's one of the best looking HD titles out there and it's from New Line. You see a wonderful presentation like Shoot 'em Up and you wonder why the rest of their catalog didn't get the same treatment.

The reasonable answer is that the film makers might want these titles to look this way, right or wrong, and it very well could be the DI looks this way also.....

New Line has been an autonomous division up until now, and it's been the same people doing the same work for years...

It's speculation on my part, but it may be a look that they've been passing off to directors and producers that they were able to sell as being preferable, it may be a business decision, etc.....

Just my .02.. so don't flame me.. :cool:

I wonder how Shoot 'em Up was lucky enough to escape DNR usage. It's one of the best looking HD titles out there and it's from New Line. You see a wonderful presentation like Shoot 'em Up and you wonder why the rest of their catalog didn't get the same treatment.

pretty comical considering that shoot 'em up is probably one of the studio's worst movies EVER.

by the way, the dark knight trailer looks awesome too -- tons of detail on the joker's face, but it was not this way in the theater.

I wonder how Shoot 'em Up was lucky enough to escape DNR usage. It's one of the best looking HD titles out there and it's from New Line. You see a wonderful presentation like Shoot 'em Up and you wonder why the rest of their catalog didn't get the same treatment.

For one, it was a very, very short movie at 86 minutes.

For all we know, it may have been applied intentionally at the Digital Intermediate stage of production to make the CGI and live action blend better. That is a common practice. The trailer may have been cut together from unfinished footage.

Also, imdb.com says that The Golden Compass was shot partially with a digital camera:

Panavision Genesis HD Camera (aerial shots)

So, some manipulation may have been called for in order to maintain more consistency.

--Darin

Nope.
Generally in post production one tries their darndest not to degrade the elements or manipulate it in a way that causes loss of detail.

Now for the HD camera with film, what they would add is a film grain structure similar to the filmstock they chose to work with into the HD footage.

Some of the shots with CG integrated into the trailer are finished shots and are identical to what is in the film, sans dnr. What normally happens with CG apart from color timing is feathering or blurring rather. Then add similar grain structure.

Best Regards
KvE

Xylon...if you really wanted a bad shot...get the first viewing of Jennifer Connelly when she is singing..she has an extremely soft face there.



You should see the shots of Jennifer at the detective's office.

*damn*

For one, it was a very, very short movie at 86 minutes.
It also had two encodes on the disc for the PiP, however.

Hey Xylon,

What is your video system, if you don't mind me asking? Not your PC but your TV or projector.

Thanks!
P

I'm sure its not as revealing as yours.

You should see the shots of Jennifer at the detective's office.

*damn*

The worst is the dancing DNR on her face when she sees Kiefer for the first time in his office. But that was on the old DVD as well. They must've done it to the master a long time ago

I think we got really lucky when Sony gave us a remastered Fifth Element so quickly. I'm not sure if that will ever happen again.I think the best evidence for that is Gangs of New York. I still can't believe how awful that title is.

I'm gathering that they had a master that has been kicking around for sometime and returned to the original film negatives for the 'newer' footage. Part of the reason why some elements of the film actually looks relatively decent.
Next I think someone was working on a small monitor and applied additional DNR when they could see the grain more prominently in the brighter seens. Hence the schizophrenia of darker scenes of no dnr while lighter scenes has tons. Then realizing detail was lost they applied some EE to 'bring back' said lost detail.

.02
Best Regards
KvE

I'm gathering that they had a master that has been kicking around for sometime and returned to the original film negatives for the 'newer' footage. Part of the reason why some elements of the film actually looks relatively decent.
Next I think someone was working on a small monitor and applied additional DNR when they could see the grain more prominently in the brighter seens. Hence the schizophrenia of darker scenes of no dnr while lighter scenes has tons. Then realizing detail was lost they applied some EE to 'bring back' said lost detail.

.02
Best Regards
KvE

This appears to be a plausible scenario and I have been thinking the same.

I'm gathering that they had a master that has been kicking around for sometime and returned to the original film negatives for the 'newer' footage. Part of the reason why some elements of the film actually looks relatively decent.
Next I think someone was working on a small monitor and applied additional DNR when they could see the grain more prominently in the brighter seens. Hence the schizophrenia of darker scenes of no dnr while lighter scenes has tons. Then realizing detail was lost they applied some EE to 'bring back' said lost detail.

.02
Best Regards
KvE

I have an idea why don't we AVS rabble rousers set up a fund to help buy some decent viewing monitors for these guys.

Well except Sony studios ;) I want them monitor(s) :)

Well except Sony studios ;) I want them monitor(s) :)They're probably still using Trinitron CRT monitors. Nothing beats those things in PQ. ;)

if we can chalk this one up to an old transfer, how do we explain brand new movies like the golden compass that are heavily dnr'd?

Maybe someone can check me on this, but, when I saw it in the movie theatre Golden Compass appeared the way it looks on the Blu-ray with some sort of DNR/post production diffusion on it, despite the fact that earlier trailers were "unsoftened."

It's not rare for the final images of movies to be tweaked to some or to great extent before it is a final product in the movie theatre.

For all we know, it may have been applied intentionally at the Digital Intermediate stage of production to make the CGI and live action blend better. That is a common practice. The trailer may have been cut together from unfinished footage.

Not sure if digital intermediates were standard procedure back in 1998. Dark City may or may not have gone through this process.

I've seen this movie in HD about half a dozen times. I watched the BD directors cut this evening. Without screen shots I'm going to commrent that most if not all of the added footage is significantly more detailed than the original theatrical cut footage. Additionally the added footage in the directors cut has grain while very very few iinstances in the theatricaol footage does it exist. There also appears top be little or no EE in the added footage.

Art

The Kiefer meeting Jennifer Connely scene is completely recut in the DC with dialog and shots not seen before, also alternate takes were used. That is the worst looking scene on the disc. Every shot of Jennifer looks horrible. Many of those shots ARE the new footage though.

The Kiefer meeting Jennifer Connely scene is completely recut in the DC with dialog and shots not seen before, also alternate takes were used. That is the worst looking scene on the disc. Every shot of Jennifer looks horrible. Many of those shots ARE the new footage though.

Those were incredibly grainy and also out of focus more than any other shots in the TC.

I will work on some screen shots this weekend but ,for now at least ,half a dozen places it was consistant with my previos post comments.

Art

Gotcha. There are at least 3 scenes where Jen and Jen only has these really weird streaky, smeary (DNR?) artifacts going on. Almost looks like a PAL-NTSC converted juddery image.

Also see when Jen first meets Sewell back in the apt. And when Bill Hurt and Jen are in the dead prostitute's apt. it's there too.

Working on that scene right now :)

It would be very interesting to hear from the folks who actually worked on this release. Of course they have been probably reading the forums and are scared poopless at the idea of sharing with us 'Elite Pompous Wanting-the-Best Videopile Rabble Rousers!' ;}

I haven't seen the disc proper yet but I trust Xylon and other posters. Especially after investigating for myself with prior releases. So from what I've seen from the screen grabs this disc was culled from an old HD master, most likely not a DI, then had new footage added. All of which was tweaked to look 'better' afterwards.
To me it just seems like dnr was only applied when grain was more visible.
It simply is weird that some footage actually looks good but other stuff has been waxyfied.

Best Regards
KvE

Love or hate the DNR debate, this is one of the most interesting discussions we've had in quite a few months. I'm loving it.

It would be very interesting to hear from the folks who actually worked on this release. Of course they have been probably reading the forums and are scared poopless at the idea of sharing with us 'Elite Pompous Wanting-the-Best Videopile Rabble Rousers!' ;}

I haven't seen the disc proper yet but I trust Xylon and other posters. Especially after investigating for myself with prior releases. So from what I've seen from the screen grabs this disc was culled from an old HD master, most likely not a DI, then had new footage added. All of which was tweaked to look 'better' afterwards.
To me it just seems like dnr was only applied when grain was more visible.
It simply is weird that some footage actually looks good but other stuff has been waxyfied.

Best Regards
KvE

Indeed. I think they did heavy DNR when certain shots came out grainy. Since this master was reportedly made a couple of years ago, they probably had DVD primarily in mind. best to get rid of excess grain for downconversion and compession, yes...?

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/acce5ca9.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/5cfd59bd.png

I think its about time we mention what version of Dark City we are watching :)

Its obvious there are varying degrees of DNR applied on different versions. Too grainy and lacks definition or too smeary and lack definition. This also explains a LOT about some reviews seeing "more details or sharper" then others claiming its "soft and smeary". Maybe someone wrote down the DNR settings on a post-it note and when its time to do the other version they somehow lost it :D

And yes that is one ugly shot of Jennifer :(

In that shot, the DNR and grain shift radically from frame to frame.

Xylon, Intersting in that they added blue streaky lights to the big showdown scene FX in the DC. makes the miniatures look a bit less miniaturey. After the machines and clock bust through the city there are these added light FX now.

And when Mr. Book is impaled a VERY cool new effect of the essence of the alien leaking out. Can you compare these?

Thanks!

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/5d106f85.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/c12306ec.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/599a487e.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/08b8e1b7.png

"Chekov, raise shields and fire photon torpedoes!"

Not sure if digital intermediates were standard procedure back in 1998. Dark City may or may not have gone through this process.

I was talking about Golden Compass in that post, not Dark City.

It's very unlikely that Dark City had a DI. The process was only just starting to be developed at that point and was very rarely used.

I was talking about Golden Compass in that post, not Dark City.

It's very unlikely that Dark City had a DI. The process was only just starting to be developed at that point and was very rarely used.

If I recall, "The Cell" (2000) was one of the first (all of the "IN THE MIND" sequences..).. they were output on film and cut into the rest of the negative..

"O Brother Where Art Thou" (2000) was the first where the whole film was filmed out as a DI...

I remember being at an audio layback for "Mortal Kombat" for video in 1995.. New Line was starting to do HD masters at that point..

Yep, Oh Brother was the first for the whole film.

Not sure if digital intermediates were standard procedure back in 1998. Dark City may or may not have gone through this process.
Dark City had no DI. In 1998 DI was in the earliest stages with hardly a single film done that way worldwide. Up to that time only selected sfx sequences were done that way, filmed out and and cut back into the negative or positive. That year Pleasantville (1998) was released, the first Hollywood film with a complete DI, as far as I know.

Actually the black and white scenes were done via DI but the rest is straight 35mm. The director mentions it in the commentary track. The HD version was made from a IP BTW but it looks gorgeous and the grain is intact from what I've seen on cable hd.

Am I the first to come up with title of DNRk City? :D

I really wish we were talking about some crappy new movie that got plasticized and not this film.

Actually the black and white scenes were done via DI but the rest is straight 35mm.
Right, I forgot not all scenes are desaturated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_intermediate

Golden Compass is being blown out of proportion. It has some DNR (I'm pretty sure mine was the first published review to point that out, thank you very much), but it's generally mild and nowhere near as bad as Dark City or Gangs of New York. Golden Compass still looks quite good overall.

Sorry, but didn't you also say the Traffic HD-DVD was excellent? No offense intended here, I'm just asking....it's been proven that the traffic transfer was basically the dvd transfer upconverted and thrown on to a disc.

I'm trusting what my eyes are telling me...I saw smearing in at least 3 or 4 scenes during The Golden Compass and other times, the image was quite soft and grain-free. I have not seen this on any other discs.

Damn Strangers... Last nights tuning seems to have left something out. DOH!!!

Picked up Dark City yesterday. Yes, even after reading and seeing everything in this thread. What can I say? I love this movie. Plus, I am an audio guy so for me, the upgrade to BD is fully justifiable. :D

Just watched the opening of each the TC and the DC. The DC opening is sooooo much better. Although, the DNR that I saw wasn't too bad. Frustrating but passable. I totally think that the EE on this disc is a much worse offender than the DNR, IMHO.

BTW - I was watching this on a 100" screen.

Damn Strangers... Last nights tuning seems to have left something out. DOH!!!

haha, 7 days worth !!

I just watched this on weekend in full and love this movie. The Blu-ray PQ is ok and the AQ is great! The PQ is nothing great with some some obvious EE and DNR but also not near as bad as many seem to say. There are some really bad looking scenes and some very good looking ones as well. It is pretty inconsistent. I'd give it a 6 out of 10 or so overall for PQ.

Sure it could have been better (and maybe someday they'll release an improved version which I would buy as well) but I don't believe there is another version I could buy to watch at home that can compare at all.

Watching on a 1080p 46" set from about 6 feet.

Damn Strangers... Last nights tuning seems to have left something out. DOH!!!

When was the last time you remember seeing grain?? No, think about it - when was the last time you clearly saw the grain?? :eek:

Grain? Saw some in my cereal...

Actually I get spolied every nite watching my definitive Twilight zone season sets on DVD. Going in order. grain aplenty but in a good way. Some of these SD eps. actually look better than some BDs I've seen!!!!!

:eek:

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/617e2fc0.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/4557f215.png

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/1b94c79e.pnghttp://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u98/adzez/Dark%20City/23292063.png

Attack of the lizard men.

OT, So what does this hold for Se7en ? am I the only one who wants the silver nitrate print ?
The grain structure was more visible and the contrast was bolder, are we writing off New line ? was Shoot Em Up a happy accident

Do New line even exist anymore? wont Warner do all their transfers from now on?

OT, So what does this hold for Se7en ? am I the only one who wants the silver nitrate print ?
The grain structure was more visible and the contrast was bolder, are we writing off New line ? was Shoot Em Up a happy accident
What's this about a silver nitrate print? I do know that any difference between the original version on DVD and the Platinum Series releases for Se7en were completely intentional. There's even a special feature on Fincher and his DP going over the color timing in every shot. The SE for Se7en is definitely one of my favorite DVDs out there. If that movie gets screwed over with DNR or a sub-par transfer/encode, heads will roll.

Do New line even exist anymore? wont Warner do all their transfers from now on?To the best of my knowledge, GDMX is doing everything.

The cutscenes in Dark City The Video Game are looking good. :D

Really not too far from Half-life 2:
http://lh4.ggpht.com/daxiongames/R3lKlQqR2jI/AAAAAAAAAcc/M_ORvrjczuA/d1_trainstation_010004.jpg?imgmax=800

It's all pretty sharp IMO but the DNR and EE kill it.

It's all pretty sharp IMO but the DNR and EE kill it.

Definitely wasn't in my experience. DNR or out of focus, definitely some blurry shots of Connelly.