Coraline - Regular Blu-ray (2-D and 3-D anaglyph) vs Blu-ray 3D comparison PIX

My second favorite stopmotion animation movie...

The higher bitrate and AVC codec really are usefull here...
Just look at the picture of Coraline entering the theatre: the lit front door, the stones on the floor... everything looks detailled now!
And of course, no fake 3D effects here, as it was shot twice directly on the sets...

Thanks for your comparisons...
What about the supplements... are there still on the disc?

Now, how long will we have to wait to get 'The Nightmare before Christmas' without DNR?

This might be a BD doubledip for me even though I don't have 3D, as it seems the fugly compression artifacts are largely gone now thanks to the codec switchover and greater headroom. Up close, the original release is really pasty and Warnerish.

Thanks! The improvements in the new release are clearly visible.

Agreed. That's still one advantage physical models have over digital animation: the ability to get more of that real world detail, including the light and shadows. With digital animation, the animator has to account for everything. With models, you can see it come together in the real world and get some of those happy accidents with the lighting and textures.

I love good model work. Too bad it's slowly dying away in favor of CG. It was refreshing to see physical models used in scenes from "Batman Begins". Those shots were so good looking, I was stunned to see someone reach into the "behind the scenes" shot and pick up the Tumbler in the making of featurette. They were that convincing.

On the other hand, I thought the model shots in Moon looked like CG. I thought they were until I watched the featurette and found out they used models with some CG enhancement.

I guess it pays to have a true model craftsman doing your work - and a director that encourages it. Henry Selick, who did this movie and "Nightmare Before Christmas" is obviously a master at these quirky stop motion worlds, considering he used different crews on each and they both are spectacularly done.


It depends on how long most of us live...

Shame the new version still has the ringing, that means it's in the master, but at least the compression is better. Fifth shot, the house in the rain, has a lot of smeared detail on the old Blu-ray.

If you've got some time, could you take shots of these scenes from the new AVC encode?

00:00:48 (blocking and banding in lower part of the sky):


00:01:35 (mosquito noise around credits):


00:55:15 (the texture in the sky looks filtered, though perhaps the scene was just composited that way):

So this is an ignorant question, but I generally refuse to pay attention to 3D technology. Can the 2D version of the film on the 3D disc be played on a non-3D BD player?

The 2D version will play fine without 3D compliant software.

Thanks! Where did someone find the BD3D for CORALINE; I'm not seeing it listed in Amazon.

It's (along with Ice Age 3) currently only available as a mail-in offer after buying a Panasonic 3DTV, or on eBay from someone who's willing to part with it.

Studios really need to stop using low-bitrate VC-1 for anything. The main culprits are Universal and Warner. The AVC encoders are just too advanced at this point to even consider VC-1 below 30 Mbps for full transparency and an image free of artifacts.

Thanks a lot, the AVC encode shows improvement in all examples. Now to wait until you don't have to pay $100 on eBay to get it...

In the second set of shots, does neither eye match the angle of the regular Blu-ray?

I know that this is the comparison thread, but I never realized that some of the shots in the movie where composited this poorly. Not only is it obvious these elements where composited (duh) but the fact that you can see the key choker at work is horrible (the choker can make green/blue screen areas appear gray. Useful for lines around talent/objects).

Who ever composited that shot was either under a tight deadline (my take) or they forget to apply a light wrap (youtube it. It helps blend elements together). Either way, I sincerely doubt that this was the intentional look. Then again, it's probable that they didn't expect people to look at stills of the movie.

It's funny, when I was ranting on here about the terrible encode everybody but a few seemed to think that all the five star reviews are right and that the film was perfect as is. Now maybe you people can get the **** out of your bathtub and see what a real encode does. Seriously, some of you idiots **** me off. And for the record, you will never see all the compression artifacts on a crappy jpeg with you computer monitor. Blow this up to 40 inches on a local dimmer or plasma and they are clear as day. I'm not saying the original was as bad as the worst but it definitely needed a healthy dose of 5 or so mbps in the least and they gave us even more I say thankfully. Now to whine about that fantastic mr. fox at 25 or so lol. JK.

Well the banding is obviously there on both, but it looks cleaner on the AVC. The bands have been muddled somewhat by macroblocks on the VC-1 encode, but that's not exactly SBMV technology so personally I prefer the AVC.