Predator Ultimate Hunter Edition comparison *PIX* - Page 3

Yeah...that grain made all the difference.

Perhaps it's best than that the studios continue to decide to plow grain under at every opportunity.

I smell a contrarian.

I think it does make a difference. Here's my point: If grain is added intentionally by the director to achieve a "look", then it should be preserved. I got that. However, if grain is there because the film quality is just junk, then perhaps some effort to remove it is justified? It would be great if we knew the director participated in the BD transfer, or at least knew what he thinks about it.

The director owns the art. If Lucas wants to add digital stuff in his movie he can do it, he owns it. It's his stuff. Your opinion of that doesn't matter. If Leonardo were alive today and wanted to make Mona Lisa a blond, that's his call. So yeah, if McTiernan wants to digitally replace Arnold, that's his call.

the point being that grain IS film. It's not something you can take away. It's like taking pieces of the physically film and taking little flecks out of it. you take something away the picture looses something of itself. It's properly preserved by keeping the grain inact.

I looked all over and can't find the grain removal...add grain button on my TV.

And thank god there are actual artists (Speilberg, Scorsese, Bigelow, etc) that won't jump on that band wagon.

This edition of Predator:

It's called digital noise reduction, look in your owner's manual.

I think if they had really tried with this release it could have been the best thing ever, instead its worthless. I think a light scrubbing of grain removal wouldn't have robbed that much detail (im sure most masters are DNR'd a tad) but to crank the dial all the way up to max wasn't what was needed.

What was needed, was to take the old master, provide a very light DNR scrub, encode in a high bit-rate AVC codec, serve with popcorn. But that didn't happen.

If the director wants to alter the look of the movie, I think that's fair game. But the mastering facility knob jockeys should stay out of it.

Once given to the masses, art belongs to the masses. I'm fine with alternate versions being available, sometimes those are even a better product, but the originals should be preserved.

Should the reanimated corpse of Michelangelo be allowed to redo the Sistine Chapel ceiling in a Spongebob theme or the French government to reshape the Statue of Liberty into Jerry Lewis?

The technology used today to remove grain isn't that good, sure. Give it time. Eventually you won't be able to tell if grain was removed. Just like you can't tell that grain was added. You can be absolutely certain that will eventually happen. These DNR threads are going to be really interesting when that time comes.

how can you remove something that is INHERENT to the film and not expect there to be some visible loss???? it's physically impossible. It's a matter of science.

Your display probably has a DNR setting and your Blu-ray player probably has one too. So, you can boost both of them to your liking - just check the manuals.

I rather see it like the director intended it to. What is so confusing about that?

Ok if this sort of hypothetical is where people wish to go, then I can play along. The answer to your question is YES.
The film is grainy. The film was shot intentionally. Therefore the film was shot intentionally with the grain it has. The studio could have chosen not to shoot the film, which would have avoided the grain.


Now to respond more seriously, it doesn't matter if the grain was intentional in Predator. The movie is, as they say, in the can. Its done. Over. Trying to play revisionist now is too late, as removing the grain at this point alters the film in such a way that it does not look the same as if it had been shot originally without grain. Let me repeat that for emphasis: removing the grain at this point alters the film in such a way that it does not look the same as if it had been shot originally without grain. Had Predator been shot originally with today's technology and film stocks, it would have clear textures and high frequency details that are removed in the DNR process. I can assure you that if Mr. McTiernan were to gear up and remake Predator today with the latest and greatest digital 3D cameras the closeups of people's faces would *not* look like they're wrapped in cellophane.

So basically even when film grain is a limitation of the original production, using DNR now is simply a matter of burdening the film with a different limitation. There is no particularly good reason to do this, especially considering that modern televisions can remove grain to the viewer's preference anyway. What is especially disconcerting as well is that the digital manipulation is clearly not being overseen by the (or any) film makers, but rather by some random employee working at some random post house that's trying to please some random home video manager.

Most TVs have a noise reduction feature, though the labeling isn't consistent.
Typically something like "Dynamic Noise Reduction" or some variation.

I've tried it on some of my televisions and it really does a pretty decent job of removing grain without making a huge impact on overall image quality. A lot of TVs have 2 or 3 levels of DNR as well, to suite personal preferences.

Some TVs also save the DNR setting per input rather than globally. So if your cable or sat signal tends to be a bit "dirty" you can crank the DNR up on the cable input, but keep it off for your XBox input as an example.

Another grain debate thread? hmm...Majority of this forum who is well informed on the inherent and necessary qualities of film grain - check. A few random stragglers who continually show their ignorance about it but continue to incite discord anyway - check. Shocking

Anyway, thanks again Xylon for your work, and saving me from a double dip. I'm going to wear a rubber mask the rest of the day in honor of the original release of this disc.

It wasn't because he despised pan-and-scan. I don't even recall when pan-and-scan was even an issue. He preferred the 4:3 version to a letterboxed version. Obviously, the letterboxed version isn't panned-and-scanned.

These 2 posts seem to be at odds here.
True to the negative or true to the "director's intention?"
What ended up on the negative may or may not have been an accurate representation of the creator's intention.
Unless it is so stated by the director, at least and providing he/she has voiced an opinion on such.

Don't get me wrong...I don't mind grain, providing, PROVIDING it reflects the visuals desired by the filmmaker.
However, if it DOESN'T.....



Judging by the fire in these discussions, I would say quite a few.

These are the worst BD screenshots I have ever seen. This is embarrassing incompetence.

This is a clear cut case of DNR gone mad resulting in the destruction of a film. Saying otherwise is like saying the moon is made of cheese.

But yes, I know, some here think the moon IS made of cheese.

Cameron said he preferred the 4:3 version for home viewing, at a time when widescreen TVs didn't even exist, for all intents and purposes. His position was based mainly on the small TVs that were common then--that the details of the film would be missed when viewing a 2.35:1 letterboxed image on a 27" TV from 10' away. This was way back in the LaserDisc days, of course (I believe the original quote came from his introduction letter in the The Abyss SE LD). I still thought he was wrong then, but at least he did compose all of his shots with home viewing in mind, and most importantly, gave the viewer the choice of the widescreen or 4x3 comps. Fox has given us no choice with this disc, except the choice to buy the original release while it is still in print. I took that route.

Hi, welcome to AVS Forum. We discuss audio/video technology here, especially as it relates to film, television and music.

Clearly you haven't had a lot of experience with any of this, so allow me to educate you briefly. Film grain is a stylistic choice, one the director (or at the very least, his cinematographer) decides on early in the production. It is not a technical flaw or limitation: it can make a presentation appear "grittier" or provide a faux historical appearance to a more recent production.

As an example of a director who would "want his work distracted by this", I give you a recent film: 300. This was shot digitally, but large amounts of grain were added during production to generate a certain look. This is the look the director intended. Similarly, with a film like Predator, it seems likely they chose the stock of film they did (one which has lots of grain visible) precisely because it makes the film appear grittier. As a final example, consider the recent reincarnation of Battlestar Galactica. Again, a show shot digitally with no film grain present in the source, but a large amount of it added during production because this was the desired outcome.

To bring the discussion full circle: Blu-ray Disc should be about film PRESERVATION. Technology can be added in televisions (or playback devices) to perform this DNR on the fly for people who find the grain distracting, but once performed by the studio, people like me who prefer seeing the production as it was originally presented have no option of getting that fine detail/grain back.

Actually 300 was shot on film, not digitally, although they added tons of grain and mostly it was because the blue and green screen FX was incredibly obvious without it IIRC...

Technical specifications for
300 (2006) More at IMDbPro »

Camera
Arriflex 235, Panavision Primo Lenses
Arriflex 435 ES, Panavision Primo Lenses
Panavision Panaflex Gold II, Panavision Primo Lenses
Panavision Panaflex Platinum, Panavision Primo Lenses
Photo-Sonics 4ER, Panavision Primo Lenses

Laboratory
Technicolor, USA (prints)

Film length (metres)
3183 m (Sweden)

Film negative format (mm/video inches)
35 mm (Kodak Vision2 100T 5212, Vision2 Expression 500T 5229)

Greetings,

I received this from Fox for review. Those comparison pictures are accurate. I am not sure whose idea this was but the results would be funny if it wasn't such an atrocity. I reviewed the original release and compared several scenes. I can't believe someone looked at this and thought it was an improvement.

I will say that it doesn't affect the entire film, which is probably worse because it makes the noise redution so obvious.

If you have the original Blu-ray release hang on to it.


Regards,

Yes, it did. And if you don't think that it made a definitive difference in the look of all of those films then I don't know which films you watched.

This is really taking a HUGE toll on my interest for collecting BD movies...
If the future of catalog titles is heavy DNR jobs like this, then I WILL give up on it. Most movies coming out today is crap, and the catalog titles is what is keeping the flame burning for me. But it IS about to burn out.

FOX, if you try this kind of **** with ALIENS, I WILL ****ING DESTROY YOU, MOTHER****ERS!!!!!!

If Aliens gets this treatment, I will not be buying the box set. I don't NEED Blu-rays, and I'm done throwing money away at mediocrity in this format.