Hammer restored classics coming to bluray - Page 2

Originally Posted by Partyslammer

You might wanna go back and re-read my comment before farting out some snarky reply.

Originally Posted by dvdmike007

Have you seen near dark?!?

Originally Posted by Rathbone

Oh my god, why ...

Remember this was a brand new 4K scan before you watch the screencaps

http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.com/...-in-march.html

Finally, there have been several posts here and elsewhere regarding screen grabs from DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS suggesting over-use of DNR and lack of grain. We can assure you all that when you see the film in motion you will definitely see plenty of grain! It isn’t really possible to draw conclusions from low-res JPEG screen grabs, however we can state that the DNR used on the restoration was very light indeed, only on a handful of scenes, and only when absolutely necessary. We can also state that there were no blanket noise-reduction filters used at any point during restoration. Any loss of focus and fading on the picture as presented on the Blu-ray is due to the age of the scanned materials rather than DVNR or the use of filters.

Originally Posted by NJPete

http://blog.hammerfilms.com/?p=66

NB: We originally posted that DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS was scanned at 4k. This was a mistake. The film was in fact scanned at 2k. This has now been corrected on the original post.

Originally Posted by Rathbone

These JPGs are not highly compressed. Look at the sizes of them. JPG compression with this file sizes is minimal and should not have a noticable visual impact.

Originally Posted by Phantom Stranger

First review I've seen for the new Dracula: Prince Of Darkness BD, from a trusted reviewer in Chris McEneany. Our worst fears confirmed about the DNR seen in the screen captures.

http://www.avforums.com/movies/Dracu...5/blu-ray.html

Originally Posted by rezpekt

What screencaptures? All I see a cover of old DVD release and three shots from the film, all in different random resolutions and horribly compressed.

Originally Posted by DM2006RI

"We recently discovered a small audio synch issue within a couple of scenes of the Dracula Prince Of Darkness discs that were released on the 5th of March.

This problem occurred at the authoring stage where a fix was not implemented despite being supplied.

With this in mind we will be replacing any discs that have this issue present.

Please send your proof of payment and your address to enquiries@vdcgroup.com and we will endeavour to send a working replacement to you promptly."

http://www.hammerfilms.com/news/arti...ess-blu-raydvd

Originally Posted by DavidHir

Hopefully people are e-mailing their displeasure. It would be ashamed if all of the upcoming Hammer titles are of the same "quality."

DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS — smoke & horrors

As we discussed on this blog previously, DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS was filmed in Techniscope aka 2-perf, which utilises only half the frame of a standard 35mm film cell in order to create a 2.35:1 image without the expense of anamorphic lenses and by using half the amount of film stock one would use shooting full-frame 35mm.

The center sequence in the opening flashback scene of the film is from the 4-perf negative of DRACULA aka HORROR OF DRACULA. That film was shot on the full 35mm frame and intended to be screened at 1.66:1. To make it all fit together, the filmmakers reduced the size of the flashback scene from DRACULA and added a diamond-shaped smoke-effect mask. The result is that there’s a real issue with the grain: it is very tight and crowded due to the shrinking of the 1.66:1 image. In addition, the overlay of the larger and more exaggerated grain of the 2-perf smoke effect creates all sorts of problems once the image is digitised and compressed. The problem we faced when encoding is that the overall composited picture in this scene had marked white noise and very distracting movement where the MPEG-4 (Blu-ray/HD) encode struggles to keep up with the grain in the film. The DVNR used on this scene (definitely not a blanket filter across the entire film as previously posted) resolved this issue, albeit with some “posterization”. On balance it was felt that this was the lesser of two evils.

However, so many of you have commented about this scene, that we, along with StudioCanal, decided to see if there was another way to filter and encode the picture. We did some research and have found an alternate encoding software package that will enable us better to tweak the opening sequence and create an improved encode. We have already completed several tests, and although it’s not perfect (it never could be, due to the workflow from 2-perf OCN to encoded Blu-ray) we feel that we have obtained a better result with less posterization. StudioCanal will replace this scene on the revised discs (with sound synch corrections) which will be available in April. We hope you like it!