People are so sensitive to any negative talk towards their beloved Blu Ray! Why are people going back to my old quotes when it was already explained to me after my criticisms why the Blu Ray doesn't always look as great in my eyes (due to poor electronics store set-up)? I'm totally willing to accept now that Blu Ray looks better than DVD once I see a correct set-up. Blu Ray seems great and all, I just have a feeling that the HD clarity may not benefit certain kinds of scenes such as CGI, sets, make-up, etc. (as I said earlier with the opening scene of Raiders of Lost Ark on DVD, it looked like a stage set, which is bad). Even watching the newscasters in HD on an HDTV is a bit creepy now - the make-up artists are either going to have to adapt to the HD clarity change or get rid of all that make-up. I've been watching newscasters on an HDTV for about 3 years now and it still seems like the make-up artists can't adapt to the HD change.

I just want to give another example of the CGI being more fake after doing a comparison of the Transformers Blu Ray (I watched it in the electronics store) versus the Transformers DVD:
1. Blu Ray - When the other autobots are entering the earth's atmosphere as comets, those comets look like CGI animation plopped right onto the background. They didn't really merge nicely into the background or environment.
2. DVD - When the other autobots are entering the earth's atmosphere as comets, those comets look pretty believable and merge nicely into the background and the rest of the environment.

I have nothing against bad CGI or good CGI, I just think that Blu Ray may not benefit CGI scenes, poorly made-up scenes, or certain type of stage sets...

Blu-ray

Theoretically, a blu-ray transfer of a theatrical movie should look exactly like that movie looked in the theater, if shown on a much smaller screen. If you had the equipment to blow the blu-ray up to theater-sized, it would likely look dismal. All this grousing about makeup or CGI looking worse in Blu-ray vs DVD suggests that the makeup or CGI looked just as bad in the theater and that video artifacts are a godsend to filmmakers.

Apparently, the new BFI Blu-ray is region coded B. I would love to hear otherwise, because I would like to be able to play their subsequent 'Red Desert.'

but that's not bluray's fault - it's the filmmaker's part.

Giles, are the filmmakers going to learn? I hope so...The worst kind of filmmaker that doesn't adapt is George Lucas. Those prequels looked like video games with actors pasted on in the theater and on DVD. I can't wait to see how bad those prequels will look on Blu Ray.

So what are the best Blu Rays of a CGI/action-oriented film that have none of the above-listed weaknesses?

With few exceptions, the vast majority of Blu-ray titles in current release have offered -- at the very least -- a modest improvement over their DVD counterparts. That is to say, they more closely resemble the original source material -- fake-looking or not. Seriously: if the concern is whether or not you'll see the strings holding up the spaceships, etc., I recommend sticking with VHS.

yet you look at some movies where bloopers have been erased

'Raiders' in particular where the glass separating Indy and the snake was removed but the shadow of the bouncey block letting Marion and Indy out from the Well of Souls isn't optically removed. Given all the tools filmmakers have at their disposal, it's interesting to see how movies are tweaked for video and in most cases not. The overuse of DNR is one of the negatives of film to video hidef transfers - 'Patton' being an excellent example.

My concern is not the strings, but the spaceships...(but yeah, that's up to the filmmaker rather than the media format. But that filmmaker needs to realize how it's going to look on that format)

Film has a much higher resolution than Blu-ray, I'm sure that is the filmmakers main concern.

Toddly recently posted in the International forum on this site (Salo BR thread) that he would rather watch movies on VHS than Blu-ray. So it's only natural to assume that he started this thread in the HD forum to troll.

Got it. It makes sense now.

I understand the basic complaint that too much clarity can make some (esp. low budget) things that are passable in low resolution formats look pretty bad, but that's still a fairly goofy comment.

You know, in all the years I've been wearing glasses I've been really struck by how many ugly people there are.

Stupid glasses! Why do you make people ugly??

are the filmmakers going to learn what? all of the things you're complaining about have been evident in theatrical presentations since well before Blu-ray was even conceived. they have nothing to do with Blu-ray in particular, except that if they are evident in the theater, they're more evident on Blu-ray than on DVD, which is exactly what most people want out of a home video format: better transparency to the theatrical presentation.

furthermore, of all the Blu-ray's i've watched, only a handful (at best) of the movies have had these kinds of filmmaking flaws that i noticed on Blu-ray, but not on DVD. to denigrate a format because better transparency to the theatrical presentation might expose a few minor flaws that existed in the theater on a few movies seems odd and irrational to me.

I didn't know the Theatrical Cut of Army of Darkness had any problems. I know Anchor Bay's Director's Cut was sourced from a VHS and thusly looked like crap, but I thought the TC was fine.

Additionally, the HD-DVD of the TC was awesome because the combo version had an anamorphic version of the DVD on the flipside. The stand-alone release Universal's had for years is non-anamorphic. Since I never had an HD-DVD player, I bought it for that.

Josh Z, I never said I would watch VHS over Blu Ray. I said that some movies or scenes of movies can look better on lesser quality media formats. I can never watch VHS again. I'm a DVD snob, and maybe someday I'll be a Blu Ray snob.

I have no understanding of your troll comments. I have intentionally posted threads on Blu Ray for discussion, debate, and learning. Some people prefer DVD over Blu Ray as you've seen in my other poll thread. So what? There are positives and negatives to every new technology...

Another great thing that I realized about Blu Ray if it totally phases out DVD, is that it will hopefully make Pan&Scan and Full Screen versions of films obsolete, which are still showing up on DVDs.

Wasn't there some sort of image issue with the Dracula blu ray? I never really looked into it since I don't really care for the movie but I seem to remember people being unhappy with the blu ray.

Not exactly. We're just changing from one fixed ratio to another. While this should alleviate the problem of 1.85:1 transfers being released as 1.33:1, there is still the possibility of cropping other material that doesn't fit. They're already doing it with IMAX films, but there is debate over whether this is acceptable or not.

Yep, what Drexl said. There's potential for 2.35:1, 1.66:1, and 1.33:1 film and TV to all be cropped or open-matted (or some combination of the two) to fill out the 16:9 frame. The Lord of the Rings films had all the digital effects rendered in open-matte 16:9 for just such an eventuality.

Fortunately, right now studios are releasing most material in OAR, but there's as much potential for abuse of OAR as there was with DVD.

The new transfer made for the Dracula BD was darker and had different/less saturated colors than the Superbit disc. Those that were disappointed with it were going off the assumption that the Superbit had a correct transfer. However, several prominent film restorationists publicly stated that the new transfer on the BD and DVD CE was closer to how the film was originally intended to be seen.

It wasn't "several prominent film restorationists". It was one film restorationist (Robert Harris) and a rep from the studio.

This is not the place to rehash that debate, but there is still plenty of disagreement about "how the film was originally intended to be seen".

sex in real life : sex in porn :: watching a movie on SD : watching a movie in HD

However, since Harris has been working with Copolla for several years on the Godfather restorations, he's in a better position than most of us to have authoritative information.

Wow. How could they have ever gotten that assumption in their poor minds!


How about the fact that is how it looked in the theaters and all those great press releases trumpeting how Superbit was so great!

http://www.dvdfile.com/news/web_wire.../superbit.html

Oh yeah and I wouldn't neccessarily call Mr. Harris very objective when as you mention he probably has a lot of business relationships with Coppola.

It wasn't just "a rep from the studio," it was Kim Aubry, who was Technical Director and Vice President for Engineering and Technology at American Zoetrope and was part of the Coppola team since 1986. He was credited as a Technical Supervisor on Dracula. He was also the producer on the 2003 restoration of One From the Heart.

http://www.filmsondisc.com/Features/Aubry/kim_aubry.htm
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0041447/
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/artists/a...ex-410670.html

He's also head of ZAP Zoetrope Aubry Productions, which handles DVD productions of the American Zoetrope films, among others.

From
http://www.zap-sf.com/
ZAP creates high quality original content for DVD, and part of that process includes restoration of film sound and image for the digital medium.

From:
http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/draculabluray.php
In a brief e-mail conversation with the producer of this DVD (and longtime Coppola collaborator) Kim Aubry, Aubry does confirm that the Superbit transfer was done without either his or Coppola's involvement. He also goes on to say that a new HD transfer was created using an interpositive found in Sony's vault. Said element was compared to a print of the film that Coppola and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (The Departed) had approved for the initial theatrical release of the film. Quoting Aubry, "this new HD master is much closer to the original final answer print that Coppola and Ballhaus made when the film opened at the end of 1992."

Nothing in the Superbit press release mentions accuracy of the transfer. All a Superbit did was provide a lager video bitrate for the video. In most cases they were the same transfers as used before.

As for "how it look in the theaters," the film was released over 15 years ago, so the average moviegoer's memory of what the film actually looked like in theaters is suspect.

It's safe to say that the quality of the Dracula transfer is at least debatable. This might not be the best thread to resurrect this debate, so let's just label the Dracula transfer as "controversial" and move on.

The way it was projected originally is also questionable as many theaters turn down the wattage in the projectors to save money.