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Casablanca - 70th Anniversary Ultimate Edition - Page 3

post #61 of 193
3/17/12 at 5:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuther View Post

That will not stop others from saying 'why is there not more detail in such and such shots' just like they did with Wiz. Not that Bogart will get that treatment, it's for the ladies.

Yes, people need to be educated about the proper look of movies like this, but to say that an intentional production choice is 'robbing us of detail' is both inaccurate and misguided.
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post #62 of 193
3/17/12 at 6:54pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post

Yes, people need to be educated about the proper look of movies like this, but to say that an intentional production choice is 'robbing us of detail' is both inaccurate and misguided.

You are confused, I reffered not to an entire film but to specific female close-up shots that over used soften effects which, like it or not, eliminated detail.
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post #63 of 193
3/17/12 at 7:38pm
I bought the then current Casablanca BD from Amazon in February of 2010 for $14.99. I thought then and still think that it looked great. So why would I pay $44.99 for the 70th Anniversary Edition? The answer is that, although I was born at night, I wasn't born last night. In many ways, I am a purist nerd but even I have my limits.
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post #64 of 193
3/17/12 at 8:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuther View Post

You are confused, I reffered not to an entire film but to specific female close-up shots that over used soften effects which, like it or not, eliminated detail.

I'm not confused at all. I know exactly what you were talking about. It's part of the film. Those shots were designed to appear that way and their representation in the transfer does not 'rob us of detail'. The level of detail present is exactly the level of detail that's supposed to be present. If those shots 'rob us of detail', they also rob us of the color blue and they rob us of CGI dinosaurs and they rob us of anything else you can imagine that isn't in the shots and isn't supposed to be in the shots.
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post #65 of 193
3/17/12 at 8:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gamereviewgod View Post

There's not much difference here. I don't think there ever will be honestly. Casablanca has that smoky haze inside the club and heavy bloom to accentuate Bergman. The leap to 4K, probably even 8K down the line, won't put much of a dent in this one. That said, the difference is all in gray scale.

Compared to the HD DVD I have on hand and flipping to the spotlight-lit conversation with Sam and Bogie, the difference is substantial. Shadows are richer, deeper, and bolder, not a murky gray. The switch in codecs has cleaned by the grain a hair better too.

My review:

http://www.doblu.com/2012/03/17/casa...dition-review/

For those who want a run through of the box set, I posted a video for it. Even though I never owned it, the original box, the smaller one with lobby cards and such, had more content:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f7rp...1&feature=plcp

Thanks for sharing your review.
I wasn't very pleased by the HD DVD; so maybe an upgrade would be worth it, for me.
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post #66 of 193
3/17/12 at 8:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwsat View Post

So why would I pay $44.99 for the 70th Anniversary Edition?

Sounds to me like you wouldn't. However, if you wait until there's a non-trinket-encumbered version available for a price not dissimilar to the one you paid the first time around, you'll probably enjoy the improved picture and sound.
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post #67 of 193
3/17/12 at 8:13pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by wuther View Post

That will not stop others from saying 'why is there not more detail in such and such shots' just like they did with Wiz. Not that Bogart will get that treatment, it's for the ladies.

Are you posting soft focus (&/or soft filming techniques) weren't used on Boggy?!?!
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post #68 of 193
3/17/12 at 11:23pm
I'm not going to buy a box of overpriced junk... but when this is available as a regular release I'm definitely picking it up. It looks fantastic.
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post #69 of 193
3/18/12 at 2:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by BIG ED View Post

Are you posting soft focus (&/or soft filming techniques) weren't used on Boggy?!?!

It wasn't unheard of to use diffusion filters for close ups of males, but it was used almost exclusively for close ups of females. I'd say it's rather rare to find a movie that used this technique for male close ups.
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post #70 of 193
3/18/12 at 7:00am
Not a proper comparison, but there were matching screenshots on Blu-ray.com and DoBlu.com: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/113536
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post #71 of 193
3/18/12 at 12:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rezpekt View Post

Not a proper comparison, but there were matching screenshots on Blu-ray.com and DoBlu.com: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/113536

Thank you for this comparison! With reviews trickling in saying it's "better but not THAT much better", I wasn't sure I'd double dip on this one... but wow... the new release is so much more "film like" to my eyes. To me, it's like comparing a good Criterion disc with a bad Universal disc! And I love the increased contrast. Incredible improvement.

Having said all that... I refuse to double dip until this comes out in a more economical package. I bought the first round of "oversized Casablanca"; I don't need another! The moment it's down around $12.99, I'm happily diving in.
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post #72 of 193
3/18/12 at 12:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post

Sounds to me like you wouldn't. However, if you wait until there's a non-trinket-encumbered version available for a price not dissimilar to the one you paid the first time around, you'll probably enjoy the improved picture and sound.

Indeed, if a bare bones version of the new transfer became available for +/- $15 and I was convinced of its superiority to the old one, I very well might buy it.
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post #73 of 193
3/18/12 at 1:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by rezpekt View Post

Not a proper comparison, but there were matching screenshots on Blu-ray.com and DoBlu.com: http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/113536

That looks promising... But somethings might be a miss... I'll wait for proper screenshots to make a final judgment.

Here's what I can say, at the moment, based on the screenshots;
I love the more well-defined grain in the new edition. That is sure nice. ...But it also looks much, much darker. The furniture in the background is lost/crushed in the shadows, and the shadow on Bogart's forehead is almost as dark as his hair... I would like to know which edition has the correct brightness-level.
Also the new screenshot seems to have some dithering errors or more correctly it is dithered to a far smaller grayscale range than the original. This might be (hopefully) an error with the screenshot. The first screenshot has over a thousand different gray-level steps or "colours" if you like. The new version is limited to 256(!) That's a whooping 77% smaller grayscale range!.
But as I said, that's hopefully just erroneously taken screenshots (maybe converted from gif). I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
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post #74 of 193
3/18/12 at 3:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Deviation View Post

...but when this is available as a regular release I'm definitely picking it up. It looks fantastic.



A 2 BD disc Digipak is what I'm dreaming about.
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post #75 of 193
3/18/12 at 4:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kishiro View Post

Also the new screenshot seems to have some dithering errors or more correctly it is dithered to a far smaller grayscale range than the original. This might be (hopefully) an error with the screenshot. The first screenshot has over a thousand different gray-level steps or "colours" if you like. The new version is limited to 256(!) That's a whooping 77% smaller grayscale range!.

I'm not sure what kind of analysis you're doing, but Blu-ray is 8-bit colour, it can't have more than 256 greyscale values.

The new levels look better to me, the old transfer has elevated blacks.
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post #76 of 193
3/18/12 at 5:46pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kishiro View Post

That looks promising... But somethings might be a miss... I'll wait for proper screenshots to make a final judgment.

Here's what I can say, at the moment, based on the screenshots;
I love the more well-defined grain in the new edition. That is sure nice. ...But it also looks much, much darker. The furniture in the background is lost/crushed in the shadows, and the shadow on Bogart's forehead is almost as dark as his hair... I would like to know which edition has the correct brightness-level.
Also the new screenshot seems to have some dithering errors or more correctly it is dithered to a far smaller grayscale range than the original. This might be (hopefully) an error with the screenshot. The first screenshot has over a thousand different gray-level steps or "colours" if you like. The new version is limited to 256(!) That's a whooping 77% smaller grayscale range!.
But as I said, that's hopefully just erroneously taken screenshots (maybe converted from gif). I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

My screens are taken as .png then compressed slightly into .jpeg (1%) for bandwidth purposes. The furniture, at least here, looks fine in the new version, no crush, and nothing is lost. Not sure what part you're seeing as crushed. Can you be more specific?

If you want, I can send the source .png images your way. Posting them here automatically downconverts them.
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post #77 of 193
3/19/12 at 1:02pm
Maybe I'm confused here, but I thought Blu-Ray used 24-bit color, i.e. 8 bits per channel (channels being Red, Green, and Blue), for a total of 16.7 million colors.
Which indeed means you're limited to 256 shades of red, green and blue (Mixed together you get 16,777,216 possible colors, 256 cubed).

So if you encode a videostream in color, instead of b&w, you can have more than 256 grayscale steps because you use colors in the mix.
If you downsample the first screenshot to 256 colors, and choose 'nearest color' instead of error diffusion or dithering, you'll see that some of the greys will turn slightly purple and green.

As far as the details lost in the shadows go, I'm looking at a properly calibrated monitor, but I'm starting to believe that it (the monitor) is set to dark or clipping the blacks. At any rate, I would still like to know which of the transfers use the correct brightness-levels.

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post #78 of 193
3/19/12 at 1:48pm
Video on Blu Ray is YUV encoded. A black and white film should have only an Y component and the colour difference signal should be 0. Of course you can encode it as colour film as well and allow minute color deviations from a pure gray scale image. But what's the point?
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post #79 of 193
3/19/12 at 2:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhafner View Post

But what's the point?

Well, as Kishiro indicated, the point would be to produce a more nuanced greyscale.
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post #80 of 193
3/19/12 at 2:01pm
If you have a black & white film I think it's best to leave any colour out it. For example if you look closely at Criterion's The Killing (which was incorrectly encoded with colour information) you can see green and purple blobs of compression artifacts here and there, looks absolutely terrible.

By the way I'm looking at that same cap from Blu-ray.com and it doesn't count more than 256 in Irfanview.
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post #81 of 193
3/19/12 at 8:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post

Sounds to me like you wouldn't. However, if you wait until there's a non-trinket-encumbered version available for a price not dissimilar to the one you paid the first time around, you'll probably enjoy the improved picture and sound.

Wait about a month........
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post #82 of 193
3/19/12 at 10:14pm
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Casabl.../33623/#Review

Had to break down and order it after reading the review.
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post #83 of 193
3/20/12 at 5:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post

Well, as Kishiro indicated, the point would be to produce a more nuanced greyscale.

Which would be artificial and wrong unless the b&w original had the same slight tints in it already. The proper way to get a more "nuanced grayscale" is a 10 bit delivery format.
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post #84 of 193
3/20/12 at 6:52am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhafner View Post

Which would be artificial and wrong unless the b&w original had the same slight tints in it already.



It would just be additional greyscale values available to use.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mhafner View Post

The proper way to get a more "nuanced grayscale" is a 10 bit delivery format.

Sure, but that option isn't available within the Blu-ray standard.
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post #85 of 193
3/20/12 at 12:08pm
i'll jump on this once there is a release that isn't the box-o-crap edition or if there is a decent deal on the box-o-crap edition (like the current deal on the sound of music box-o-crap edition)

as i said already i've spend -$5 on the previous bluray (free hd dvd, red2blu deal running out of casablanca uce, free bluray, sold hd dvd)
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post #86 of 193
3/20/12 at 12:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post



It would just be additional greyscale values available to use.

Except they wouldn't be greyscale. Also I'm not sure if the eye would actually treat the slight addition of colour in some pixels as a different lightness level. I'm guessing it would be an extremely minor difference compared to pure greyscale 10->8-bit conversion with dithering at best. And even then the chroma subsampling of Blu-ray would only mess everything up.
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post #87 of 193
3/20/12 at 12:24pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Brad View Post

It wasn't unheard of to use diffusion filters for close ups of males, but it was used almost exclusively for close ups of females. I'd say it's rather rare to find a movie that used this technique for male close ups.

Yeah, butt we're talking bout "Casablanca" & in the flashback scene Boggy is shot as soft as she was.
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post #88 of 193
3/20/12 at 1:25pm
There's a scandinavian release out soon (probably regionfree like all the other Warner releases). Nice alternative for those who won't shell out for the boxset

Price is about 25 USD



http://cdon.no/film/casablanca%3a_70...-ray)-17812133
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post #89 of 193
3/20/12 at 1:58pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kishiro View Post

Nice alternative for those who won't shell out for the boxset

At least for me, it's not about 'shelling out'; I'd pay more, if I had to, to be free of the giant trinket-chest.
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post #90 of 193
3/20/12 at 2:25pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by spectator View Post

At least for me, it's not about 'shelling out'; I'd pay more, if I had to, to be free of the giant trinket-chest.

Then why don't you do as I've done in those situations (Citizen Kane, Ben Hur, Casablanca 1st Limited Box, etc), make your own custom cover , or download one. I'll bet there are several custom covers for Casablanca 70th Ann. out there on the web allready.
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