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  #1901  
Old 6th January 2013, 06:54 PM
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I tossed it on the other day for a few minutes and was mightily impressed with what I saw. I haven't watched the BU bd for quite a while, but it seemed the Arrow disc looked genuine and like a film (something the BU disc lacked at some points). A disappointment about the six seconds, if it gets fixed I'll request a replacement. Hopefully James White and his team are brought in again for future titles.
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  #1902  
Old 6th January 2013, 06:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Limey View Post
I always find it amusing when people slag off a disc on the basis of someone else's screen caps and proclaim themselves an expert. All this before they have even seen the disc in question....
This is one of the things I was trying to talk about, some people are just thin skinned.

anyways back to topic...

E-mailed Arrow about a replacement or the prospect of replacement and their now ignoring e-mails, not even a 'sorry but no' response...


If these bava discs turn out anything less than supurb i'm buying their stuff second hand only after that.
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  #1903  
Old 7th January 2013, 12:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by keirarts View Post
I NEVER SAID all people who look at screencaps and compare images are boring, it was a direct reference to the people out there who drone on endlessly in their jargon fuelled blogs ad infinitum.
Many or few, it really makes no difference. It's far from keeping in tone with the tag that is affixed to the bottom of every page. This is the last place I'd expect to see such a prejudiced view on an enthusiastic genre fan. You may find what they do boring, and you're entirely entitled to that opinion, but to call them a bore is very simply a personal insult. You don't know these people, you're speculating, making prejudice judgements based on merely what you know or speculate about them. I've seen you do this several times now, most recently with the release of They Live (1 & 2). People are MUCH smarter than you're giving them credit for. They're rarely the simple creatures you seem to make out. Often something is the tip of an ice berg, and it may look like they're basing something on one issue, but I highly doubt it's so simple.

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Limey View Post
I always find it amusing when people slag off a disc on the basis of someone else's screen caps and proclaim themselves an expert. All this before they have even seen the disc in question....
I see no issue with that. It's entirely your prerogative as it is theirs. I don't have an endless supply of cash, and am not able to see every release first hand, so screen comparisons do help. I do have very simple criteria behind what I actually take into account, I like to know how a screen grab is taken and how it is compressed (and these are becoming more and more common), I also place a litte more weight if both compared titles are captured by the same user. Of course that far from makes up the entirety of my buying choice, as I'm sure is the case with most, if not all people. I of course take into account reviews, but honestly find very few sources I genuinely trust, and sometimes wonder how often some sources are rushing a review out to captialise on traffic.

Quote:
Originally Posted by keirarts View Post
... some people are just thin skinned.
Oh please ! If you're going to start sniping away because someone takes issue with something you've said, welcome to Ignore. I'll now never be able to take issue with something you say, as I won't see it, enjoy !
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  #1904  
Old 7th January 2013, 12:20 PM
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Arrow does seem to have more than its fair share of these mastering/authoring errors. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there is a company releasing niche titles like the ones Arrow puts out (especially in today's economy), but there always seems to be at least one niggling little thing amiss.

Interesting that they blame the seamless branching for the missing 6 seconds. I've gone over the disc with BDInfo to identify the various .m2ts files that comprise the .mpls (playlist) files and the only thing that's different between the three versions are the opening and closing credits, none of which contains any part of the film proper (just the credits). There is one .m2ts (0004.m2ts) file that contains the main feature, which is used by all three playlists and it's missing those first 6 seconds. This means it's not a technical issue with the seamless branching that's causing players to skip footage, it's a case of the footage not even being there to begin with. I guess technically they could still blame the seamless branching as without it this error would have less likely occurred, but it's a more of a 'oops, we messed up the mastering/encoding' thing.

Quote:
Originally Posted by bigrob View Post
In Arrow's defense, they have said to me and Stephen in seperate that it's annoying that none of the QC that happened and the review discs that got sent out never picked up on it
That's not really a defence. Their QC process should have picked up on it - no distributor should rely on external reviewers to do their job for them (but in this case it seems that someone actually did tell them, which is worse). Lionsgate had a similar authoring problem with their release of The Cabin in the Woods last year and they ended up recalling all copies and issuing replacements, although admittedly in that case the issue was more distracting.

Quote:
Originally Posted by keirarts View Post
It is UNRELIABLE to compare screengrabs, and obsessing about small details as some online do is a little unhealthy, I genuinely feel some people have long since forgotten the pleasure of actually watching a film and instead focus heavily on comparing every frame for lack of detail.
It's only unreliable if you don't know how to interpret what you're looking at. For example, looking at screen captures I can easily see that Arrow's release of ZFE looks better than BU's. The framing is better, the colour rendition and contrast are more natural, and there is slightly more detail. Unfortunately I can't post links, but all of this is evident from just looking at the comparison on Caps-a-Holic. There's a shot of Paola in the shower that really bears it out - the framing and colour benefits are obvious, but look at the shower jet and you'll see that the BU version is missing some of the individual water streams and droplets, possibly due to filtering or dirt/scratch removal. The grain on Arrow's release also looks more natural and the BU 'grain' looks more like noise (of the sort that has been present on some of Arrow's releases, for which they were slated). It's actually pretty easy to tell whether a screen cap was captured correctly, especially if it's from a reputable source (like one of the 'blogs' you are so ready to write off). Some of us find those sources invaluable when making our purchasing decisions and they've certainly saved me from buying more lemons than they have prevented me from buying decent releases. I'm not claiming screen captures are the be-all end-all, but they are generally a good indicator of quality. Put it this way, I've yet to see a a poor set of captures translate to a nice looking BD and vice versa.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tele1962 View Post
If a film looks washed out and grey looking i can more or less guarantee it will be down to the viewing equipment being incorrectly set up. Most i am sure would want to view the material as originally intended.
What about Lady Snowblood? That is washed out because the levels are incorrect. In fact, the only way to view it as it should look is to change the RGB levels in the viewing equipment, which one shouldn't have to do. That should also have been identified and corrected before it went into mass production. Very few reviews picked up on that either, but it doesn't make it any less of an issue. In this case though I'm assuming Arrow just licensed it from a third-party, so it's not strictly their fault. Not sure what it would have taken to correct it; probably more time/money than they deemed economical.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BAKA View Post
As far as I'm concerned the whole 'DP Supervised' or 'Director Approved' is a marketing tool. The extent to which the DP or the Director is involved in these restorations is rarely revealed, and several times now we've heard of DPs or Directors claiming to have been consulted over the phone (most recently with the DP on Night Of The Living Dead '90, who never actually saw the print until after it was released).
I have to agree with that. With the exception of a few directors who maintain obsessive control over their home video presentations (such as James Cameron), a lot of 'director-approved' tags mean nothing. As a recent example, it's a little co-incidental that Quentin Tarantino decided both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown needed to look orange after years of having natural colour timing, especially when a host of other Lionsgate titles also came out with similar colour timing around the same time. There's also the issue of just what the director/DP approves. Is it the master or the final encode? If it's the former there's nothing to stop a distributor making radical changes to the look of a film before slapping it on a disc. Fellowship of the ring was supposedly director/DP approved, but that's now overwhelmingly green. Even Cameron has fallen foul of this; while he approved the old T2 master for home video releases years ago, he isn't responsible for adding noise reduction to the most recent release. However, even when he is directly involved with the final look of his Blu-rays he still revises the look of his films (Aliens), which opens up another can of worms... Terminator is also cooler than it used to be, but although I'm told it's director approved I can't say if that's the 4K scan Lowry did ages ago, or the final product.

Still, keeps things interesting, eh?
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  #1905  
Old 7th January 2013, 12:31 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentasm View Post
Interesting that they blame the seamless branching for the missing 6 seconds. I've gone over the disc with BDInfo to identify the various .m2ts files that comprise the .mpls (playlist) files and the only thing that's different between the three versions are the opening and closing credits, none of which contains any part of the film proper (just the credits). There is one .m2ts (0004.m2ts) file that contains the main feature, which is used by all three playlists and it's missing those first 6 seconds. This means it's not a technical issue with the seamless branching that's causing players to skip footage, it's a case of the footage not even being there to begin with. I guess technically they could still blame the seamless branching as without it this error would have less likely occurred, but it's a more of a 'oops, we messed up the mastering/encoding' thing.
It does worry me that seamless branching appears to be the scapegoat here (rather than QC), especially given its benefits. I was a little sad to hear someone from Arrow mention in e-mail to someone on another forum they would be staying clear of it in the future.
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  #1906  
Old 7th January 2013, 01:49 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentasm View Post
Interesting that they blame the seamless branching for the missing 6 seconds. I've gone over the disc with BDInfo to identify the various .m2ts files that comprise the .mpls (playlist) files and the only thing that's different between the three versions are the opening and closing credits, none of which contains any part of the film proper (just the credits). There is one .m2ts (0004.m2ts) file that contains the main feature, which is used by all three playlists and it's missing those first 6 seconds. This means it's not a technical issue with the seamless branching that's causing players to skip footage, it's a case of the footage not even being there to begin with.
I'm glad someone else has mentioned this as I did the same thing and came to the same conclusion. I've posted this up several times but people still insist on it being a branching issue and ignore this point. As you say, the video just doesn't exist on the disc which means whoever authored/encoded it has made a balls up somewhere. I do agree that it should have been caught at a QC stage though. No question.
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  #1907  
Old 7th January 2013, 01:53 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentasm View Post
Arrow does seem to have more than its fair share of these mastering/authoring errors. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there is a company releasing niche titles like the ones Arrow puts out (especially in today's economy), but there always seems to be at least one niggling little thing amiss.

Interesting that they blame the seamless branching for the missing 6 seconds. I've gone over the disc with BDInfo to identify the various .m2ts files that comprise the .mpls (playlist) files and the only thing that's different between the three versions are the opening and closing credits, none of which contains any part of the film proper (just the credits). There is one .m2ts (0004.m2ts) file that contains the main feature, which is used by all three playlists and it's missing those first 6 seconds. This means it's not a technical issue with the seamless branching that's causing players to skip footage, it's a case of the footage not even being there to begin with. I guess technically they could still blame the seamless branching as without it this error would have less likely occurred, but it's a more of a 'oops, we messed up the mastering/encoding' thing.


That's not really a defence. Their QC process should have picked up on it - no distributor should rely on external reviewers to do their job for them (but in this case it seems that someone actually did tell them, which is worse). Lionsgate had a similar authoring problem with their release of The Cabin in the Woods last year and they ended up recalling all copies and issuing replacements, although admittedly in that case the issue was more distracting.


It's only unreliable if you don't know how to interpret what you're looking at. For example, looking at screen captures I can easily see that Arrow's release of ZFE looks better than BU's. The framing is better, the colour rendition and contrast are more natural, and there is slightly more detail. Unfortunately I can't post links, but all of this is evident from just looking at the comparison on Caps-a-Holic. There's a shot of Paola in the shower that really bears it out - the framing and colour benefits are obvious, but look at the shower jet and you'll see that the BU version is missing some of the individual water streams and droplets, possibly due to filtering or dirt/scratch removal. The grain on Arrow's release also looks more natural and the BU 'grain' looks more like noise (of the sort that has been present on some of Arrow's releases, for which they were slated). It's actually pretty easy to tell whether a screen cap was captured correctly, especially if it's from a reputable source (like one of the 'blogs' you are so ready to write off). Some of us find those sources invaluable when making our purchasing decisions and they've certainly saved me from buying more lemons than they have prevented me from buying decent releases. I'm not claiming screen captures are the be-all end-all, but they are generally a good indicator of quality. Put it this way, I've yet to see a a poor set of captures translate to a nice looking BD and vice versa.


What about Lady Snowblood? That is washed out because the levels are incorrect. In fact, the only way to view it as it should look is to change the RGB levels in the viewing equipment, which one shouldn't have to do. That should also have been identified and corrected before it went into mass production. Very few reviews picked up on that either, but it doesn't make it any less of an issue. In this case though I'm assuming Arrow just licensed it from a third-party, so it's not strictly their fault. Not sure what it would have taken to correct it; probably more time/money than they deemed economical.


I have to agree with that. With the exception of a few directors who maintain obsessive control over their home video presentations (such as James Cameron), a lot of 'director-approved' tags mean nothing. As a recent example, it's a little co-incidental that Quentin Tarantino decided both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown needed to look orange after years of having natural colour timing, especially when a host of other Lionsgate titles also came out with similar colour timing around the same time. There's also the issue of just what the director/DP approves. Is it the master or the final encode? If it's the former there's nothing to stop a distributor making radical changes to the look of a film before slapping it on a disc. Fellowship of the ring was supposedly director/DP approved, but that's now overwhelmingly green. Even Cameron has fallen foul of this; while he approved the old T2 master for home video releases years ago, he isn't responsible for adding noise reduction to the most recent release. However, even when he is directly involved with the final look of his Blu-rays he still revises the look of his films (Aliens), which opens up another can of worms... Terminator is also cooler than it used to be, but although I'm told it's director approved I can't say if that's the 4K scan Lowry did ages ago, or the final product.

Still, keeps things interesting, eh?

interesting and fair enough. Points taken on board. Looks like i've offended one person a wee bit too much so i'll shut up now before I dig my self in any deeper.

Sorry folks!
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  #1908  
Old 7th January 2013, 05:16 PM
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im a bit out of the loop with all this 6 seconds/replacement/new pressing business but i just want to say i was happy just having ZFE on bluray and even when i learnt of 6 seconds missing i just thought ah well its 6 seconds
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  #1909  
Old 7th January 2013, 05:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mentasm View Post
Arrow does seem to have more than its fair share of these mastering/authoring errors. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that there is a company releasing niche titles like the ones Arrow puts out (especially in today's economy), but there always seems to be at least one niggling little thing amiss.

Interesting that they blame the seamless branching for the missing 6 seconds. I've gone over the disc with BDInfo to identify the various .m2ts files that comprise the .mpls (playlist) files and the only thing that's different between the three versions are the opening and closing credits, none of which contains any part of the film proper (just the credits). There is one .m2ts (0004.m2ts) file that contains the main feature, which is used by all three playlists and it's missing those first 6 seconds. This means it's not a technical issue with the seamless branching that's causing players to skip footage, it's a case of the footage not even being there to begin with. I guess technically they could still blame the seamless branching as without it this error would have less likely occurred, but it's a more of a 'oops, we messed up the mastering/encoding' thing.


That's not really a defence. Their QC process should have picked up on it - no distributor should rely on external reviewers to do their job for them (but in this case it seems that someone actually did tell them, which is worse). Lionsgate had a similar authoring problem with their release of The Cabin in the Woods last year and they ended up recalling all copies and issuing replacements, although admittedly in that case the issue was more distracting.


It's only unreliable if you don't know how to interpret what you're looking at. For example, looking at screen captures I can easily see that Arrow's release of ZFE looks better than BU's. The framing is better, the colour rendition and contrast are more natural, and there is slightly more detail. Unfortunately I can't post links, but all of this is evident from just looking at the comparison on Caps-a-Holic. There's a shot of Paola in the shower that really bears it out - the framing and colour benefits are obvious, but look at the shower jet and you'll see that the BU version is missing some of the individual water streams and droplets, possibly due to filtering or dirt/scratch removal. The grain on Arrow's release also looks more natural and the BU 'grain' looks more like noise (of the sort that has been present on some of Arrow's releases, for which they were slated). It's actually pretty easy to tell whether a screen cap was captured correctly, especially if it's from a reputable source (like one of the 'blogs' you are so ready to write off). Some of us find those sources invaluable when making our purchasing decisions and they've certainly saved me from buying more lemons than they have prevented me from buying decent releases. I'm not claiming screen captures are the be-all end-all, but they are generally a good indicator of quality. Put it this way, I've yet to see a a poor set of captures translate to a nice looking BD and vice versa.


What about Lady Snowblood? That is washed out because the levels are incorrect. In fact, the only way to view it as it should look is to change the RGB levels in the viewing equipment, which one shouldn't have to do. That should also have been identified and corrected before it went into mass production. Very few reviews picked up on that either, but it doesn't make it any less of an issue. In this case though I'm assuming Arrow just licensed it from a third-party, so it's not strictly their fault. Not sure what it would have taken to correct it; probably more time/money than they deemed economical.


I have to agree with that. With the exception of a few directors who maintain obsessive control over their home video presentations (such as James Cameron), a lot of 'director-approved' tags mean nothing. As a recent example, it's a little co-incidental that Quentin Tarantino decided both Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown needed to look orange after years of having natural colour timing, especially when a host of other Lionsgate titles also came out with similar colour timing around the same time. There's also the issue of just what the director/DP approves. Is it the master or the final encode? If it's the former there's nothing to stop a distributor making radical changes to the look of a film before slapping it on a disc. Fellowship of the ring was supposedly director/DP approved, but that's now overwhelmingly green. Even Cameron has fallen foul of this; while he approved the old T2 master for home video releases years ago, he isn't responsible for adding noise reduction to the most recent release. However, even when he is directly involved with the final look of his Blu-rays he still revises the look of his films (Aliens), which opens up another can of worms... Terminator is also cooler than it used to be, but although I'm told it's director approved I can't say if that's the 4K scan Lowry did ages ago, or the final product.

Still, keeps things interesting, eh?
I was refering to the posters quote on Calibrated TV's being washed out.
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  #1910  
Old 7th January 2013, 05:26 PM
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Woah there!

There's an "Ignore" function?

Sweet!
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